indigenera

thoughts at publication

40-acre old-growth woods, Camillus Unique Area

© Stephen E. Ludwig

Roadkills and Towerkills

Around the cusp of April with May, 2008, this site was heading for publication. It was another Spring characterized by extremes: high highs, low lows.

When driving, I have tried to keep alert for Amish rigs, as well as for deer and for avian males intent on charging my vehicle. Most always, robins and red-winged blackbirds are not in jeopardy as they swoop over the car, but ruffed grouse joust with extraordinary daring. At least one, which I know of, failed to correct in time. I still mourn it as I mourn a growing list of road kill that I have caused: opossum, a small hawk, a downy woodpecker. The last occurred, I figured out when another downy flew alongside my car and kept parallel with it: the flight path of the species is set at about the same height as my '91 VW Golf. The previous bird had struck my windshield when it tried to cross in front of me without gaining altitude. I do not know what these observations add up to, if anything. Yet they do give me a sense that road mortality must be very high for some species of birds and, together with towerkills, could be a threat to their long-term viability as local populations (See the Jon Boone article on Readings page). Deer herds, on the other hand, are uncontrolled in central New York, and deer/vehicle collisions do not threaten the species although they are traumatic on both sides. As for the Amish, I respect their industry and simplicity even as I fear for their safety on Route 80 where much bigger rigs than theirs speed around curves and over hills on a road whose 19th-century planners had in mind vehicles more like those of the Amish than cross-country truckers when they chose the path of the roadway.

Restoration of Wetland plants

This year's purchase of native trees from the Saratoga State Nursery was of shadbush, aka shadblow or serviceberry. I got 100 of them bare-root and had the not altogether unpleasant problem of finding homes for them. They cannot be sold, only given away, as per the purchase agreement with New York State. One bundle of 25 went to a new friend in Hamilton, another bundle went to a friend on a hill above Otisco Lake, another was divvied up among city gardeners in Syracuse, while the bundle I kept went into the landscape of my friend's narrow lot on DeRuyter Lake. They join other trees and shrubs that I have introduced there: black spruce, tamarack, black oak, swamp white oak, Pinus rigida, Northern white-cedar, black gum, hemlock, American sycamore, balsam fir, redbud, Clethra alnifolia, Cephalanthus occidentalis, Spiraea alba, Lindera benzoin, and Cornus sericea. This wide range of plants has been chosen for reforesting a wetland site, where heavy clay soil resists all but the most intrepid species. My overall plan has been to plant a lot of trees and shrubs and see what survives. My friend and I are "rooting" especially for the swamp white oak and the Pinus rigida, which were about 5 feet high and especially gawky saplings when brought to the site from a wetland plant nursery in western Massachusetts three years ago. The outcome for many of the plants is still very much in doubt, yet if a species is on good soil it's doing well, the tamarack particularly. On clay, the sycamore is rapidly sending up inches per season, while the Cornus sericea thrives and by its fourth season has propagated itself all over the place. The site also has 8 plants of Viburnum prunifolium that are doing well despite some damage each season from the Viburnum leaf beetle. I have found that prunifolium and, to a lesser degree, lentago offer some resistance to this pest. Leaves of V. dentatum and V. trilobum, however, were skeletonized their first season at the first site where I planted these shrubs and, consequently, died. I did not have a chance to study V. lentago further, since the 5 survivors from a group that might have totaled 10-12 at the start were tilled under by the owner of the field where I had been allowed to plant them initially.

Among the plants that have self-sown into the site, or have been allowed to germinate from the soil's "seed bank," are several sedges and grasses, which are difficult to identify unless one is a specialist. These are interspersed among the shrubs and are companions to plants that have more conspicuous flowers: St. Johnswort, asters and goldenrod, for example. A few surprises have turned up on their own; these include Mimulus ringens ('monkey flower,') Cardamine pratensis ('cuckoo flower,') Sisyrinchium sp. ('blue-eyed grass,') and Epilobium spp. ('willow-herbs'). I gave in to the temptation to plant the showy, intensely red Lobelia cardinalis ('cardinal flower,') but have made a resolution not to replant it if it does not make it.

Sand dome as turtle egg depository

On May 30 I chanced upon a female painted turtle using her back legs (which are huge) to dig a hole in the sand dome that is the leach field for the septic system at a DeRuyter Lake cottage. I approached her, yet she remained intent on her task of scooping out dirt by actually clutching it in her webbed claw and drawing it up and out of the hole, trading back and forth between both legs. The digging went on for a very long time and it seemed by the rocking back and forth of the turtle and her extending of the one digging leg then the other one way into the hole that she was excavating a chamber that was larger than its entry path. Eventually, she stopped and after a pause of considerable length an egg quickly passed from her down into the chamber. It was white and somewhat smaller than a robin's egg. I stayed to see the process of egg deposition through and counted 10 eggs. When she had finished and began to replace, laboriously, the excavated soil into the hole, I eventually gave up my watching and wandered off. Later I saw her on her way to the waters of the lake. One source on the internet said 76 days; another said 13 weeks. Mid-August will be the time to start my vigil.

Circumspice,

See: http://www.valleyheadsmoraine.org