Except for one lone apple high in the tree,
all the apples have fallen from the tree (they’re not a long-hanging variety). When
I checked the camera trap there were photographs of wildlife that had come to
eat the last of the fallen fruit.
The most interesting were a series of photos
of a bit of a confrontation between a gray fox and an opossum. Both species are
omnivores in that they’ll eat both meat and vegetable matter. Although gray fox
eat a lot of fruit, they tend to be more predators in that they actively hunt
insects, small mammals and birds.
Opossums, on the other hand, eat a lot of
carrion that they find – although, if they can catch them, they will kill and
eat the same insects, mammals and birds as they gray fox.
The two species tend to be about the same
weight, but the fox is by far the faster and has a more aggressive personality.
There were two apples and two animals when the photo series began –
In the final two photos, first the gray fox
picked up an apple and apparently carried it off –
Virtually all of the acorns have fallen now
and, since there was not a super abundance, most have been eaten or buried for
future use. As long as acorns were available, wildlife preferred them to apples – acorns contain a lot of fats and proteins compared to
apples. By late October apples are once again the most abundant and easily
obtained source of energy wherever there are apple trees.
For several weeks, as the acorns were
dropping, most of the apple drops were left untouched except by the ants and
yellowjackets that readily fed on the fruit. The ground was covered with fallen
apples, only a few of which were in various stages of decay.
The camera traps didn't capture photos of any wildlife seeking apples. Then, over the
course of only two or three days all the fallen apples disappeared. They
disappeared into the white-tailed deer that had returned to feed on
apples once again –
Now any fallen apples were vanishing
each night as deer –
And gray fox came to eat –
An opossum also fed on fallen apples–
It was joined by another the next night –
Not to be outdone, a black bear also took part
in the apple feast – fortunately it didn’t climb the tree and tear off limbs to
get at more of the apples as bears frequently do –
Apparently this was not the bear that
visited during the summer, that one had a tag in its right ear as can be seen in
this post.But it may well have been the large
male, with scars on his face, that the camera trap caught in the spring and whose photo can be seen here.
One night there were two gray foxes feeding
on apples at the same time –
Now there are only a handful of apples on
the tree; they will soon be gone and the season of bounty will be over.
Returned to Pennsylvania’s elk range
several times during the rut, which usually begins in early to mid-September
and ends about a month later in mid-October. On the drive out I was able
to photograph a bull elk fording Sinnemahoning Creek –
The most reliable and favorite place for
most people to see elk has been on Winslow Hill, a spot that had once been an
area of small farms, was then extensively strip-mined for coal and where some of the old farms have more recently been subdivided and developed for hunting
camps. Much of the of the surrounding land has been state forest land for many
decades and many of the old farms and mined land have been acquired by the
Pennsylvania Game Commission, reclaimed and managed for elk habitat.
But, recent tourist-oriented developments
by both the Department of Conservation and Natural
Resources and the Game Commission have also markedly changed Winslow
Hill. DCNR was the lead on creating the Elk Country Visitors Center – a grandiose
edifice –
And the Game Commission created a parking
lot and viewing area –
The viewing area offers a distant view of “The Saddle”, one of the reclaimed strip
mines –
The large grasslands on and around The
Saddle have been an area frequented by both some very large bulls and those seeking
to photograph them. This year, the only large bull elk that I saw at The Saddle
was a bull with a broken tine that loomed out of the fog one morning, and was
still nearby just before sunset that evening –
There were other fairly large bulls on
Winslow Hill, but most kept far from the hordes of visitors. Toward the end of
the rut, one of those bulls had a small band of cows.
Several of the cows were lying down and
were repeatedly approached by the amorous bull. Whenever he approached one, she
would extend her neck and lay her head on the ground. The bull would then
stroke her back with his chin and neck – all to no avail since by the end of
the rut virtually all of the cows would have already been bred.
It was good to see the elk on Winslow Hill,
but disappointing not to see any of the really large mature bulls that had
frequented the area in years past. Where were the big bulls? Killed during the last hunting season? Someplace else where more nutritious or more abundant food was available?
While some elk become so habituated to humans that they're less skittish than many beef cattle, others seem to have the opposite reaction. Perhaps the big bulls were elsewhere because of disturbance from all the tourist activity.
Well, here it is
the middle of autumn and the trees and shrubs of forest and field are in the
midst of one of the most fruitful autumns in many years. Oaks, both red and
white, are dropping acorns. Although the oaks had a larger crop of acorns last
year, in some areas walking in the woods is like walking on ball bearings as the
acorns littering the ground roll underfoot.
The chipmunks,
blue jays and squirrels are busy squirreling away their winter food supply –
Even the beech
trees have produced one of their infrequent crops of seed –
Grapevines are
sagging under the weight of their abundant crop that will feed ruffed grouse,
fox, songbirds and wild turkeys –
Everywhere we go
the apple trees, both cultivated and wild are laden with fruit, fruit that in
some cases is heavy enough to break the trees’ limbs.
There are apples
of every size and color, some pretty enough to grace the shelf of a grocery
store -
Some misshapen, discolored and covered with blemishes -
The appearance of
the apples doesn’t matter to the wildlife that feeds heavily on apples. The
raccoons munch away –
Gray fox may be
carnivores, but they eat apples too –
As soon as the
apples started to fall the white-tailed deer began cleaning up the fruit that
fell from the trees –
One of my camera
traps captured a sequence of a young buck devouring two apples –
Over broad areas,
trees of the same species typically produce bumper crops of seed at the same
time, often on a three to seven year cycle. The question that is often asked is
how trees coordinate their seed production over
wide portions of their range. It seems that temperature and available moisture
are major factors coupled with the fact that heavy seed production severely
depletes a tree’s reserves such that several years are required for those
reserves to be rebuilt sufficiently to allow significant seed production again.
This cyclic seed
production also serves another purpose – if seed or fruit production was consistent from year to year, seed
predators (weevils, moths, mice, chipmunks, squirrels, turkeys, deer, bear)
could build populations large enough to consume all the seed every year. With cycles of scarcity and abundance, there may not be enough seed predators to consume all the seed
produced in good years. And so, some seed survives to germinate and grow.
The ridge and valley section of Pennsylvania is
geologically quite old and was, with minor exceptions, not covered with ice
during either of the last two glacial epochs (the Wisconsinan and the
Illinoian). The ridges are composed of folded layers of sedimentary rock, often
compared to the ridges formed when a carpet is pushed up from one side.
From Bing Maps
The result is that most stream valleys are quite
mature, the streams having eroded their way through the underlying strata
during the last several million years. In addition, there are very few places
where the strata are anywhere near horizontal.
Therefore, waterfalls are very,
very uncommon in the ridge and valley section unlike in areas to the north that
have been relatively recently glaciated and the underlying sedimentary rock is
in more horizontal layers.
McElhattan Run is one of the streams in the ridge
and valley section. The stream originates in a wetland known as Rosecrans Bog
and flows for almost two miles across a fairly level high valley, losing but 65
feet of elevation. The stream, there called Jamison Run, is the major tributary
to the reservoir that supplies drinking water to the City of Lock Haven and
other communities.
After exiting the reservoir the stream’s name
changes to McElhattan Run and it begins its descent of over 1,100 feet in seven
and three-quarter miles until it enters the Susquehanna River near the town of
McElhattan. For the first three-fourths of that distance the stream flows through either
state forest or watershed land, through a deep, narrow gap in the long ridge
that is Bald Eagle Mountain.
Only twice have I hiked along McElhattan Run, the
first time in 1986 and the second two weeks ago. In that deep gap there are
large boulder fields, what in German would be called Felsenmeer (sea of rocks), relics of the last glacial epoch when
the area was impacted by low temperatures and resembled regions currently above
the Arctic Circle.
However, the more aesthetically pleasing features
of McElhattan Run are the large rock ledges and outcrops in the upper reaches –
Which are surpassed in visual beauty by the pair of
waterfalls not far below the reservoir, one on the main stream –
And another, on an unnamed tributary, almost
directly across from the first –
The waterfalls aren't very high, but they're still well worth the hike up
through the deep gap.
