Fall 2021

The trees in the 2009 and 2010 planting areas have grown up and together this summer and it is starting to feel like a part of the forest now. There are a few open areas where the grass is holding on but under the thicker canopy and the evergreens the grass is pretty sparse. The 2011 and 2013 planting areas are still very open. Many of the seedlings planted by the cub scouts had a good year and are getting to be able to hold their own against the grasses and vetch.

I haven't made any posts to this blog this summer as I was unhappy with the camera on my old phone, so the following are some notes about the summer that never made it into a post:

• The patch of trilliums is hanging on, but not getting larger.
• I saw bats and fireflies one evening
• I saw a few monarchs fluttering along the Avenue.
• I attacked the dog strangling vine patch again. It is just as big a patch as it ever was.
• The path that the mower had cut through the sumac last year filled in as predicted with a thick covering of young sumac.
• A squirrel was hanging out in the old birdhouse. It had stuffed the hole in the back wall of the house with grass to make a more comfy home.
• I took off the lowest branch from the big oak tree this year. It is now quite a handsome tree.
• I also limbed up some of the poplars to try to get some light down to the slower growing maples in the 2009 and 2010 areas.
• I planted a maple and a spruce seedling on the north side of the berm with a couple of stakes to protect them from the mower.

Red in Beak and Claw?

Last weekend I planted a couple of baby trees I rescued from the garden. The trees are very small, the stakes are very large. Good thing I put the stakes in right away as the next day the mower came by. This part of the north side of the berm was originally planted by the school children 12 years ago but the mower accidentally cut down about a dozen trees a couple of years later before they realized what they were doing. Some trees and bushes started to regrow from the stumps so I planted one six foot high stake at the edge of the tree planting area to indicate where the trees were regrowing. The north side of the berm only gets mowed a couple of times a year so it has to be a pretty substantial stake for the mowers to see it. Unfortunately over the years sometimes the mower would consider it a challenge and squeeze between the stake and the trees, again cutting down the saplings that were valiantly trying to recover. There is still one hazel bush that I recognize as from the original planting as well as a few other volunteers that are growing from seed.

The other day as I was coming back from watering the trees I started to pull away in my car when I noticed a crow was fighting in mid-air with some sort of bird in front of me. I stopped and decided to intervene to save the poor bird that was by then on the ground with the crow on top of it. Before I even got out of the car a red wing black bird dove down onto the crow distracting him. I then got there and the crow flew up into the bushes where one of his mates was looking on. I could then see that its victim was a small baltimore oriole that was sitting in a depression in the grass, clearly injured from the attack. He didn't move when I approached and I didn't know what to do. I thought of taking him to the Wild Bird Center that is off Moodie but I was afraid that he would injure himself further if I attempted to pick him up and I didn't have anything to carry him in. I could tell he was quite alert even though he wasn't moving, but those crows were right above watching us and I was in a bit of a quandary about what to do. Eventually those two crows flew off while I was scratching my head. Then the oriole took the dilemma out of my hands and ran off into the bushes when I briefly turned my back. I guess in his eyes I wasn't anymore a friend than those mean crows.

I sure hope the little guy wasn't too badly injured and is able to recover. The brief episode from start to finish probably wasn't more than a couple of minutes, but I think it will stick with me for quite some time. What strikes me as remarkable is how both the red-wing blackbird and I reacted in essentially the same way to the suffering of an individual from a different species. Who is to say the red-wing blackbird didn't also feel empathy for the poor oriole?

Early Spring in 2021

It was a pretty mild winter this year without any particularly severe cold snaps and without any thaws either. After a green Christmas we had a good blanket of snow shielding the ground all through January and February. Now soneone has flipped the switch and spring is running at full speed.

Below are three photos of the north side of the berm from March 20 to March 30. Ten days ago it was still winter on the north side of the berm. Now the snow has practically disappeared and the crocuses are out.