Our Neighbor the Gray Fox

Over 40 years ago we built our house in woodland that had developed in a long-abandoned pasture. Choosing to live in that location we also chose to share the space that was already home to a large variety of wildlife. From white-footed mice to star-nosed moles; turkeys and pileated woodpeckers; white-tailed deer and black bears, we’ve seen a lot of species – some only a few times, others frequently. One of our wild neighbors that I’ve never seen here and my wife has seen but once is a gray fox.

Because humans are diurnal critters and most other mammals are primarily nocturnal, I’ve kept at least one camera trap out behind the house for as long as I’ve used them. Although I took the camera traps out of the Big Woods well before hunting seasons began, the ones behind the house were left in place.

While the gray fox keeps out of sight, it doesn’t escape the camera traps. Yesterday, a check of the cards from two cameras out back revealed 412 photos including 193 of one or more gray fox – so the gray fox certainly isn’t camera shy. It’s not even shy of the camera’s flash, with sequences of photos taken over a short time as rapidly as the camera’s flash capacitor could recharge.

The gray fox is an interesting animal: the only canid that regularly climbs trees; it may form lifelong pairs; it eats about anything, from nuts and berries to mice, birds and rabbits; and prefers extensive woodland. They spend the day in a den, usually among or beneath rocks, in a hollow log or perhaps in an old woodchuck burrow. On the ridge above the house are extensive rocky areas where the fox probably spends the day, but there are a few scattered fallen hollow trees that would make suitable den sites. In any case, in all my wanderings I’ve never found a den.

We’re glad to have the gray fox for a neighbor; it keeps to itself, doesn’t make much noise, and doesn’t seem to mind having its picture taken.

Happy Thanksgiving

Happy Thanksgiving everyone --

For food , friends, fields, forests and family may we be ever thankful.

The Loser

Bill was telling us about an experience he recently had while walking their two dogs in a wooded area on their farm. It seems the dogs discovered an injured, barely moving 6-point buck lying at the edge of a small valley. He decided that the dogs would best be taken home, so he took them back to the house and then returned to look at the deer. 

By the time he got to the deer it had died, so he searched for a wound and found none. Grabbing an antler to move the deer, he realized that its neck was broken. Then he saw that its lower jaw was also broken. Bill said that a large 10-point buck had repeatedly been seen in the area and he figured that the two bucks had gotten into a battle, which the 6-point lost in a big way. 

 

In October there were reports and photos of one of Pennsylvania’s bull elk that had been killed in a rutting battle. While relatively uncommon, mortal wounds from fights during the rut do happen. Whether deer or elk, these are powerful animals equipped with potentially lethal weapons.

 

Bill’s account made me wonder about the remains of antlered bucks that I’ve found over the years. Although these look somewhat similar, they are not the same deer –

 

I’d usually assumed that these deer had been shot during hunting season and not recovered or been hit by a vehicle and run off to die some time later – 

 

But, that’s not an assumption that should be made.

Fatal wounds are not the only way that rutting males can die. In the 1950s we went to the Heads and Horns museum at the New York Zoological Society’s Bronx Zoo. Part of the museum’s collection consisted of many pairs of male elk, moose and deer that had locked antlers while fighting and, being unable to disentangle themselves, perished. That collection was subsequently moved to the Buffalo Bill Historical Center in Cody, WY.

 

Battles for mating rights don’t always end with the looser going off to fight another day; sometimes the loser loses his life.

Bear Diggings

Anyone who spends much time in the outdoors in late summer or fall has seen our eastern chipmunks gathering nuts and seeds. “Chipmunk cheeks” is a most appropriate description for the way these critters look as they stuff their cheek pouches and scurry back to their burrows.

The chipmunks are gathering their winter food supply – for, although we probably won’t see them until spring, they don’t hibernate. Instead, they go through sleep/wake cycles; sleeping for extensive periods, then waking to eat some of the food they’ve stored in chambers in their burrow. The storage chambers contain the fruits (that is a pun, is it not?) of the chipmunk’s labor – hickory nuts, acorns and other seeds and nuts. 

Now our black bears also favor hickory nuts and acorns as a fall food while they gorge and build up the fat reserves which will see them through their winter’s nap. Bears will gather individual nuts from the ground and climb trees to get them directly from the branch. But, it’s apparently much more energy efficient to locate chipmunk burrows and raid their storage chambers.

The Big Woods are full of chipmunks and has a significant population of black bears. Occasionally I’ve walked up on a bear excavating a chipmunk burrow –

Once the bear was partially submerged in the hole –

Scattered throughout the woods are numerous signs of the bears’ diggings –

There are several old roads through the Big Woods that have been improved by the addition of a few inches of fist-sized crushed rock that was covered with smaller aggregate. The gaps between the larger rocks seem to have been ideal for chipmunk burrows. Now the bears are digging up the roads to get at the stored nuts. In a one hundred foot length of one road bears had dug at four different spots.

And what of the chipmunks that have lost the contents of their winter larder to a bear?

The Peregrine Is Back

In the last few years there have been three known peregrine falcon nests within 25 miles of my place, two on bridges and one on a traditional site on a cliff along the river. Several of the adult birds now also spend the winter near one of the bridges where there is a large population of pigeons on which they prey.

On a recent morning as I walked along the river one of the peregrines was perched in the same tree where a peregrine frequently spent time last winter.

It was in the same tree where I photographed a peregrine exactly 364 days before.

The return of peregrines to Pennsylvania and many other eastern states is one of the real conservation triumphs of recent years. Thanks to banning of DDT, which thinned eggshells - resulting in broken eggs, and the efforts of both government agencies and volunteers to re-introduce peregrines, many of us now have the opportunity to be thrilled by the sight of these birds.

Years ago I worked with a fellow who, when he was much younger, reportedly had removed a clutch of eggs from a peregrine’s cliff nest – the eggs were said to have gone to a museum for its collection. Since the final successful nesting of peregrines reported in Pennsylvania during the DDT era was in 1957, that nest must have been one of the last nests in the state before DDT eliminated peregrines as a nesting species.  

Now they’re back – Great!

The Flats

A while back I took a long walk on an area of the Big Woods that we’ve always called “The Flats”. At about 2,000 acres The Flats is pretty good-sized, but not huge. It acquired its name because, compared to the rest of the Big Woods, it is quite flat.  The terrain gently undulates until it reaches the several deeply incised stream valleys that border The Flats. Cross those valleys and the rolling terrain stretches on, covering well over 8,000 acres in total.

The Flats were logged long ago using railroads to haul the larger logs to a sawmill. Even the smaller trees occupying The Flats in those long-ago days were also of value to the loggers. After the small trees were cut they were put on the logging railroad, hauled to a spot where they were transferred to a main-line railroad and then transported to the coal mines of eastern Pennsylvania. There they became props and lagging to hold up the roof of many miles of underground mine shafts.

The grades of the old logging railroads wound across The Flats and into the valleys. Although no adequate records remain, logging of the old-growth forest apparently ended here before 1916, perhaps even before 1908. The Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC) transformed some of the old grades to roads in the 1930s; since 1980 others have been used in logging the second-growth timber that has grown since the original logging. However, many of the grades were abandoned and forgotten; those are slowly being lost through frost action and the growth of vegetation. The CCC also built foot trails across The Flats, some of which have been used as part of a recreational trail network.

The forest now growing on The Flats would impress few people, the trees are not large nor are they very tall. Beneath the trees are extensive patches of witch-hazel and the evergreen mountain laurel; below those higher shrubs grow several species of huckleberry and blueberry and a groundcover of teaberry. Photographs taken during the logging railroad era show a forest very much like the one we see today, not the inspirational old-growth that was found in other places.

From Benj. Kline

Along one of the old CCC trails, just beyond the end of one of the railroad grades, is a pile of four-foot long American chestnut bolts. Almost all of the chestnut in this part of Pennsylvania succumbed to the chestnut blight fungus around 1920, but chestnut is amazingly resistant to decay and the bolts remain where they were stacked. So, might these chestnut bolts have been cut for use as ties for the logging railroad or were the CCC fellows perhaps cutting dead chestnut for firewood?

The Flats tends to be a place where few people spend much time. The forest itself is not inspirational; the soils are acidic and infertile; except for ubiquitous songbirds like black-capped chickadees, wildlife sightings are few and infrequent. And yet, and yet, there is something hauntingly beautiful about The Flats that brings me back occasionally. This time it was the autumnal reds of black huckleberry leaves – 

and the scarlet oak saplings that hold their leaves long after the leaves of larger trees have fallen to the ground.

Latest from the Big Woods – and the last for this year

The early hunting seasons have begun, so it was time to bring in the last of my camera traps from the Big Woods – a commercial trail camera that takes color photos during the day and infra-red photos at night. It’s been in place for a month, ever since I brought in the “homebrewed” camera trap that had been on a nearby tree. Unfortunately, the infra-red flash takes about a second to produce enough light to give proper exposure. That results in a lot of very blurry pictures – so blurred that sometimes it’s impossible to identify the animal.

But, now that the rut is beginning the older white-tail bucks with large-antlers are showing up again. The camera at this spot hadn’t gotten a picture of a buck with large antlers since June 19. Now that the older bucks have appeared only one young buck with small antlers has shown up in the pictures – the other young bucks have probably been driven off by the mature bucks.

The smallest set of antlers captured on camera in the last month were on this deer –

His antlers look like those on this buck that was camera-trapped in September –

but a close look shows that it’s not the same deer –

Next in size was this relatively young 9-point, notice how thin his antlers are –

Those antlers pale in comparison to the antlers worn by this buck: the thickness of his antlers shows that this is an older deer than the 9-point –

To my eye the most impressive buck the camera trap caught in the last month is this one: his antlers aren’t the thickest; with eight points, he doesn't have the most tines; his antlers don't have the widest spread. But the length of the tines, especially the brow tines, is really imposing –

The best photo taken in daylight by the camera trap last month was of a black bear –

There were no photographs of any bucks taken during the month in daylight. Similarly, there were photos of impressive bucks taken at the same location late last winter after all hunting seasons had ended – also all at night. But then, they didn’t get to be old enough to grow a large set of antlers by wandering around when hunters are in the woods.

Where do they go? Well, there are large areas with really dense patches of chest-high shrubs as well as steep, extremely rocky hillsides throughout the Big Woods; both of those conditions make walking difficult and unpleasant for humans – take it from one who knows. A buck that’s either lucky enough, or has learned to stay in those areas during hunting season has a good chance to live to see another day – and being active primarily at night helps too.  

Those of us who hunt with a gun may be frustrated by those big bucks, but those of us who hunt with a camera are glad that those bucks have the ability to survive.

October Gold

More than 50 years ago my freshman botany professor began a lecture by reading the essay “Smoky Gold” from Aldo Leopold’s A Sand County Almanac. Immediately after classes ended that day I hastened to the bookstore to buy myself a copy of Leopold’s book – which still resides on the shelf of my bookcase.

Leopold wrote: There are two times to hunt in Adams [County]: ordinary times and when the tamaracks are smoky gold. … The tamaracks change from green to yellow when the first frosts have brought woodcock, fox sparrows, and juncos out of the north. … I regard a phalanx of young tamaracks, their golden lances thrusting skyward. Under each the needles of yesterday fall to earth building a blanket of smoky gold …

There’s not much tamarack in northcentral Pennsylvania, it only occurs in some widely scattered wetlands that are relics and reminders of the last time a glacier came this way.

Tamarack

Instead, we have the October Gold of sugar maple leaves. Many of our sugar maples wear their autumn colors early in the season and then drop their leaves early. But, there are those individual trees that hold their leaves longer than most and grace the hillsides and field edges with their glorious color long after most of their neighbors display nothing but bare branches.

From a human perspective, sugar maples seem to be one of nature’s best creations – wood that is hard yet easily worked; excellent for flooring, bowling alleys, furniture, bowling pins, musical instruments and turned bowls; the provider of sap that, when boiled, becomes delicious maple syrup and maple sugar. Because of its brilliant fall coloration sugar maple is a favorite shade tree and brings hordes of leaf peeping tourists to areas where it is abundant.

In this age of rapid climate change the future of sugar maple is clouded. Sugar maple does not tolerate high temperatures well, and there are predictions that our average temperature will rise by 6-10 degrees over the next 100 years. If it does, sugar maple will be only a minor component of Pennsylvania’s forests when our grandchildren have grandchildren of their own.

Out Back

With the coming of hunting seasons and the folks out scouting for deer, bear and turkeys, I’ve pulled all but one camera trap out of the Big Woods. Cleaned up those cameras and put several out behind the house to join the one that’s always there.

The cameras have been out for thirteen days now and with a forecast of rain for tomorrow, temptation got the better of me and I decided to see what they’d caught – a total of 383 photos on the three cameras.

For most of the summer a doe and her twin fawns have been hanging around, feeding on fallen apples and plants in the garden. The twins are a young doe and her brother that we’ve watched grow larger and gradually loose their spots.  One of the cameras had a photo of the young buck, now with spots only on his hip. Soon even those spots will be gone and he’ll have his full winter coat.

Another of the camera traps had a photo of the only antlered buck that’s been around the house this year – just a young fellow, born in 2012

The way one camera was oriented produced several rather artistic backlit photos of the deer that passed by.

Along with the deer the camera traps caught the usual gray squirrels, rabbits, opossum –

and raccoon --

But the real prizes were a number of pictures of the gray fox that comes by several times a week 

Several of the photos portrayed two of these cat-like foxes that have semi-retractable claws, frequently travel on fallen logs and can climb trees, and not just leaning trees. 

As usual, downloading photos from the camera traps is like opening the contents of those colorful packages beneath the Christmas tree – always a bit of a surprise and always a treat.

Charcoal Flats

Large areas of the Big Woods are seemingly deserted, only visited by an occasional hunter or hiker and of those only the most energetic. But beginning in the 1820s some parts of the Big Woods were a beehive of industrial activity. Throughout central and southern Pennsylvania iron furnaces were constructed to turn iron ore into pig iron for the burgeoning industries of the young country.

 

The furnaces were pyramidal stone structures with a central chamber which was loaded with iron ore, limestone and charcoal and then ignited. The burning charcoal produced a temperature of 2,500-3,000 degrees which was vital for extracting iron from the ore. It is estimated that an average 19^th century iron furnace required the charcoal produced from one acre of woodland for each day’s production. 

 

Production of enough charcoal to fuel an iron furnace required a significant acreage of woodland and a substantial labor force.

 

Take a hike through some sections of the Big Woods and you may find remnants of that charcoal production in the form of “charcoal flats” or hearths. These are flat areas of 25-50 feet in diameter where four foot long billets of wood were stacked,

From PA DCNR

covered with a layer of leaves, then a layer of soil and ignited.

From NPS

There was a central chimney in the pile and vents around its base; these vents were opened or closed to control the burn of the smoldering stack – too little air and the fire would go out, too much air and the stack would burn leaving only ash instead of charcoal.

 

The workers that produced charcoal were called “colliers”, who, with one or two helpers, tended the smoldering wood around the clock for 10 to 14 days until it became charcoal. The collier and his helpers lived in primitive huts, often constructed of poles covered with soil or canvas, and tended a number of piles. Being a collier, although requiring considerable skill, was a dirty, lonely job and colliers were often considered among the lowest of the low.

From PA State Archives

When the collier determined that all of the wood had become charcoal the vents were closed, depriving the stack of oxygen and ending the burn. After the charcoal had cooled, which took about a week, the covering was removed, the charcoal raked out, and loaded onto wagons to be hauled to the iron furnace.

From PA DCNR

Only a portion of the Big Woods was affected by the iron industry so it’s not every day that I find an old charcoal flat.

This one was about average in size and a little poking about revealed some left-behind charcoal.

Not far away was an old pitch pine snag – pitch pine lives up to its name as the wood is filled with pitch making it very decay resistant. The snag bore the scars and charcoal of a long-ago fire. It also had an undercut made with an axe when someone in the dim, distant past had begun to cut down the tree. Was the tree burned when the charcoal stack was opened before the charcoal had sufficiently cooled and started a forest fire? Or …?

The iron furnaces that would most likely have been supplied by these charcoal flats were built in the 1820s and ‘30s. Some iron furnaces had a large land base and were able to wait 30-40 years for the areas that were cut first to once again produce trees large enough to cut for charcoal; others were forced to close after all the readily available woodland had been cut for charcoal. By 1850 coal and coke had begun to supplant charcoal as fuel for the furnaces, in part due to charcoal shortage. With the discovery of high-grade iron ore near the Great Lakes and vastly improved transportation the small iron furnaces scattered across Pennsylvania were no longer economically viable and began to close; almost all were out of production before 1900.

The colors of autumn

Those of us who live in the northeastern states and adjacent Canada are a truly privileged bunch, for there are only a few places in the world that see the forests turn color as they do here. At this time of year the forests of our area display a riot of color: from sere brown to lemon yellow, bright orange, brilliant red, maroon and port-wine purple. It’s an ephemeral display, lasting but a few weeks before wind, rain and gravity strip the trees of their leaves.

The display of fall colors brings a parade of leaf-peeping tourists that are always in search of the “peak” of the display. On TV the weather folks announce the southward progression of the peak of fall color; and communities publicize their foliage festivals. Earlier this week as my son and I drove through the valley in which he and his family live we were treated to one of the most brilliant displays of fall color I’ve ever seen. Tongue-in-cheek we decided that the “peak” occurred at 10:38 am on Tuesday, October 1.

We happen to live on the transition between the northern hardwood beech-birch-maple forest and the southern oak-hickory forest. Although named for their dominant species, these forests have scores of associated varieties of trees, shrubs and vines, many of which also display colorful foliage . The commonly used names for the predominant forest types are really simplifications since they contain numerous species of maple, birch, oak and hickory. Because we live in the transition zone, we enjoy a longer foliage season than most people as the different species turn color in a general north-south progression. 

First to turn color are the birches, which typically turn pale yellow and lose their leaves early. Next come the leaves of red maple, which unsurprisingly, turn bright red

and those of sugar maple that may vary from yellow through orange to red – often on the same tree and sometimes on the same leaf.

In the oak-hickory forest all the hickories turn bright yellow,

while the oaks vary from yellow to dull red

and some of the associated species are real treats: the orange-gold of sassafras,

and the color spectrum of staghorn sumac

The final fling is the bright yellow of tulip-poplar that grows on the moist fertile soils of the hillside valleys.

For a readable, easily understood explanation of the complicated process leaves undergo to change color visit http://northernwoodlands.org/outside_story/article/the-causes-of-fall-color