November Gold

One of Aldo Leopold’s best essays was “Smoky Gold” included in his A Sand County Almanac – "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 …" Tamarack is pretty scarce in northcentral Pennsylvania however, occurring only in some widely scattered wetlands -- relics of the last time a glacier came this way.

Tamarack

Tamarack is known by a variety of different names across its wide range – tamarack, hackmatack, eastern larch. That range extends from Newfoundland to the Yukon and south to the Lake States and West Virginia. It is very intolerant of shade and is most commonly found in wetlands and recently disturbed areas. While we don’t have much tamarack, there’s quite a bit of the related European larch and Japanese larch in this part of Pennsylvania.

It’s obvious from their names that European and Japanese larch aren’t species native to our area, but are instead imports that have frequently been planted in old fields and also used to re-vegetate strip mines. In Leopold’s Wisconsin the tamarack turn color and begin to shed their needles in October; here the larches are at their best in early to mid-November. Gleaming golden on the hillsides, the larch are readily apparent to even the most casual observer. And, yes the larches are deciduous conifers – unlike the pines, spruce and fir that always have green needles on their branches, the larches shed all their needles each autumn.

Although they’re very similar in general appearance, the imported larches can be told apart by the color of their new twigs. European larch twigs are straw-colored while those of Japanese larch are salmon-colored.

European Larch                                                          Japanese Larch

Unfortunately, many of the larch plantings were on soils that are unsuited to their requirements. Thus, many of the trees are failing to thrive and won’t be around for too many more years.

But for now we can enjoy the November gold, it’s obvious after the hardwood leaves have fallen and among the last of nature’s bright colors that we’ll see until next spring.

Bucks Out Back

Deer feed in and around the house the year ‘round, eating natural vegetation, drops from our apple tree and plants in the garden. They bed beneath some of the shrubs and small conifers and hide young fawns in patches of dense vegetation. Sometimes we see them, sometimes not. During spring and summer most of the deer we see are does and fawns; most years we see an occasional buck too – and some years a buck spends enough time here that we see him with some regularity.

On the hill behind the house a camera trap catches photos of deer throughout the year. Although I pulled the camera traps out of the Big Woods weeks ago, I kept four on the hill behind the house.

This summer the camera traps on the hill only produced three photos of bucks with developing antlers. Two of those were of the same 4-point buck taken in quick succession. The third picture was of two 8-point bucks traveling together – deer that we never actually saw ourselves.

And that was the way it was until the bucks’ hormones began pushing them into the rut and they started to seek out does. In the past month six different bucks appeared on photos from the camera traps –

Young Buck Without Antlers

Spike Buck

4-Point with Broken Tine

5-Point

6-Point

Different 6-Point

8-Point

The camera traps also caught some interesting deer behavior. White-tailed deer have scent glands between their toes, on their hind legs and in several spots on their faces. Like most mammals, deer live in a world of scents that we, mere humans, can’t enter and that is largely incomprehensible to us. These scents apparently convey information about the individual animal’s age, sex, breeding status, health, vigor, place in the dominance hierarchy and ….

The cameras caught the large buck rubbing his forehead gland and perhaps his preorbital glands on a small shrub and leaving his scent there –

Nine minutes later a doe checked the scent –

And 20 hours later a young buck stopped to check the scent –

The End of Color

Autumn is progressing rapidly and the last two weeks have brought high winds for several days in a row – several times. The leaves’ abscission layers (where the petiole joins the twig) allow the leaves to part easily from the twigs and sail away in the wind.

Each species of tree tends to have its own schedule for losing its leaves. In northcentral Pennsylvania black and yellow birch vie with red and sugar maples for the earliest to shed their leaves.  After that comes a rush of white ash, black cherry, cucumber-tree, black gum, black locust and a host of less common trees. Last are the tulip-poplar, silver maple, the aspens and apple as well as American beech and the various oaks. Some oak and beech trees, especially younger individuals, may retain their brown leaves for a long time – even until the new leaves begin to emerge in the spring.

In spite of the high winds, we’ve recently been able to enjoy the last of autumn’s show of foliage. All on trees that typically shed their leaves toward the end of fall –

Quaking Aspen

Scarlet Oak

Tulip-poplar

Red Oak

American Beech

White Oak

Red Oak

Soon the last of these colorful leaves will be gone and November will assume its typical drab garb of brown and gray.

Limpy's Gone

One hunter has a trophy – and all of Pennsylvania’s wildlife watchers and photographers have lost. On the second day of Pennsylvania’s annual elk hunt Limpy, one of the least wary of the elk herd’s big bulls, was killed. 

For more about Limpy see here or my posts on elk in September and October.

 

Unfortunately, killing an animal like Limpy that is thoroughly habituated to humans and totally unwary does nothing to enhance the image of hunters in the minds of the vast majority of the public that does not hunt and already might view hunting as a questionable activity. 

 

Perhaps Limpy’s death and the reaction it may generate will prompt the Pennsylvania Game Commission to enlarge the “no kill” zone within the elk range – but that’s doubtful as long as the Commission derives virtually no revenue from non-hunters, even those who have an abiding interest in wildlife.

Mighty Oaks From Little Acorns Grow

“Mighty Oaks from Little Acorns Grow”, is a very old adage that has appeared in a number of versions, but is as true today as when it originated – apparently in the 1300s.

This year many of the oak trees in northcentral Pennsylvania had a fairly good crop of acorns; not a bumper crop, but there are still a lot of acorns on the ground. The variability of acorn crops mystifies a lot of folks, but it makes perfect sense when you consider it from the trees’ perspective. There are hordes of seed predators that eat acorns in any oak forest; from the large: deer, bear, and turkeys through the medium: squirrels, chipmunks, blue jays and wood ducks to the small: acorn weevil and acorn moth larvae that can infest up to 90% of the acorns in some years. These seed predators seem to be the primary reason oak, and most other, trees produce such variable crops of seed.

If seed production was constant the populations of the various seed predators would be stable and they would be able to consume all or almost all of the acorns; and so the trees have apparently evolved a mechanism to insure their genes will be passed on by producing widely variable amounts of seed. During years when acorn production is very low the seed predators’ populations tend to plummet. If, in a following year while seed predators’ populations are low, there’s a bumper crop of acorns, many will escape being eaten and germinate to produce seedlings. This is especially true because squirrels and jays tend to bury significant numbers of acorns in places that are ideal for the seed to germinate and grow but they do not retrieve all those buried acorns.

 

 

Red, white and chestnut oaks in our area were dropping acorns throughout the Big Woods this fall - 

 

Chestnut Oak Acorns

White and chestnut oak acorns mature the same year the trees flower; the acorns germinate soon after they hit the ground in the fall. Following germination the radicle (root) emerges, elongates and enters the soil.

 

The acorn then overwinters with its root in the ground, but waits until the following spring to develop an above-ground stem and leaves.

 

Chestnut Oak Seedlings - 1 year old

 

 

 

Red oak (and black, scarlet and pin oak) acorns take two years to develop from the trees’ flowers and wait until the spring after they fall to germinate and begin to grow.

 

Red Oak Acorns

Oak seedlings, unlike those of most other species of trees in the northeast, spend their early years growing a large root system and put minimal resources into top growth. They frequently spend anywhere from five to 15 years growing their root systems and only then begin to grow rapidly in height.  

 

White Oak Seedling - 8 years old

 

While the oak seedlings remain short they’re vulnerable to browsing by white-tailed deer. Where deer populations are excessive, repeated heavy browsing results in the seedling’s death and may result in total elimination of oak reproduction over large areas.  

 

The Colors of Autumn 2014

The days have been getting shorter for more than four months and those shortening days triggered changes in tree leaves throughout the northeast. As the days became shorter the production of chlorophyll, the green pigment in leaves that produces sugars, declined and finally ended. The chlorophyll broke down revealing the anthocyanins (red pigments) and the carotenoids (yellow and orange pigments) that had been hidden all summer. As this is occurring an abscission layer of corky material forms at the base of the leaves’ petioles, cutting off the flow of water to the leaves, and weakening the leaves’ connection to the twig – which resulted in most of them falling to earth in the last few weeks. 

The entire process resulted in an influx of “leaf peepers” by car and tour bus, all looking to enjoy the brilliant autumnal colors that decorated our hillsides. Even we locals took pleasure in the colorful display, although we may not have enjoyed the increase in traffic on normally quiet rural roads.  
The display is almost over now, but photographs remain to remind us of the pleasures of autumn. 

‘nough said, enjoy the show –

October Elk

Back in September I visited Pennsylvania’s elk range at the peak of the breeding season and recently went back again. By mid-October the elks’ breeding activity is rapidly drawing to a close. Almost all of the females have already been impregnated and the bulls are fatigued from chasing cows and battling rival males.

The big bull that the group of elk photographers call Limpy, and was the subject of a video in my post "September Elk", was still hanging out with some cows --

and would bugle occasionally,

but made no effort to mate with any of the cows.

A younger, but mature, bull that was several hundred yards away was more interested in breeding, was still bugling vigorously and pursuing the cows in his band.  

As the light grew dim (almost too dim for photography) on a day that had turned cloudy I headed back to the car for the trip home, another big old bull was continuing to bugle but not chasing any of the nearby cows.

In early November comes elk hunting season for which the Pennsylvania Game Commission has issued 108 licenses. Elk hunting in Pennsylvania has been rather controversial since seasons began in 2001; with some landowners and farmers wanting the population reduced, hunters wanting the opportunity to shoot a trophy and naturalists, elk viewers and photographers wanting the elk to expand their range and an increase in the number of large photogenic bulls. 

I’ll return to the elk range in mid-winter to see and photograph the elk again – may they always roam these hills and valleys.