An Owl

It was a lovely day today to visit the roadside berm. I spent some time clearing out the european buckthorn bushes that form a barrier between the 2009 area and the older forest. It is really easy to recognize the buckthorns at this time of year as they are the only deciduous bushes with grean leaves still hanging on. On my way home I was surprised by this owl just hanging out a few feet from me.

The 2009 replanting area is now starting to resemble a forest. Some of the maple trees are starting to gain some character, like the one below that is starting to push up the earth as the root flare grows. The forest floor of the 2009 area is losing its grass and some seedlings are starting to establish themselves. Below is the first pine seedling I've noticed growing in the area.

As I was walking along, looking at the forest floor, I found one odd bit of trash. I wonder if it was a eurpoean or african swallow that dropped this.

Late Summer Update 2020

We had a dry June and July but we have had a few good rains in August and the grass has greened back up. The picture above is of the 2013 planting area. The seedling pine trees that were planted there 6 or 7 years ago, are now about 6 feet tall. Some of the burr oaks (picture below) are also about that tall while other are still fighting with the grass.

Grass still dominates the 2011 and 2013 planting areas but has grown sparse in the 2010 and 2009 planting areas where the sumac and trees have formed a continuous canopy. The grass is still holding on underneath the sumac and in clearings but some perennial old-field plants like goldenrod, milkweed and thistle that had established themselves in the 2009 area are now losing ground.

Annual Updates:

• I saw some bats one spring evening when I was out late on the north side of the berm.
• I saw a monarch butterfly along the berm yesterday.
• I cleared out the patch of dog strangling vine at the end of Newhaven again. It is every bit as large as previous years. I found a single DSV plant behind the houses along Kimdale St.

Spring 2016 Updates

Invasive Honeysuckles

The Trilliums did well this spring with 11 flowers. I'm not sure I could say that any new plants have developed but the existing plants are larger and more vigorous than previous years. I visited the trilliums in Ben Franklin wood as well this spring and they are doing ok. There are more red trilliums in the woods than I remember seeing before.

There doesn't seem to be very much field mice damage to the trees this spring compared to previous years. A few trees that had been girdled the previous winter but had still leafed out last year didn't come back this spring but I don't notice any damage that I can say for sure occurred this winter.

The white pines took a hard knock on their inventory of older needles over winter. Some of them look quite sparse except for the buds growing with the current year's needles.

The patch of dog strangling vine (at the end of Newhaven) I hand removed last year has come back strong. I have already removed 200+ stalks of dog strangling vine from the patch this spring.

Most but not all ash trees on the berm have been killed by the emerald ash borer. There are a few smaller trees that haven't been attacked yet and the smaller seedlings are growing especially on the north side of the berm.

and suddenly Summer

The trilliums seem to be holding their own against the garlic mustard. There are seven trilliums flowering in the patch rescued back in 2010. The hot and dry weather over the past week has compressed spring. The trees are leafing out already. The crabapples are blooming as are the wild plum back in the corner and the serviceberry. In addition to the trilliums and garlic mustard pictured above, there are dandelions, yellow rocket, forget-me-nots, violets and wild strawberry blooming.

Seven-Spotted Lady Beetle (Coccinella septempunctata)

Last year I don't think I saw one of these traditional looking lady bugs; this is the second one I spotted this year. Last year about this time I saw loads of the twelve-spotted lady bugs that aren't so hemispherical and are a paler shade of red. I haven't seen any of those yet this year.

A troop of scouts have planted a bunch of pine seedlings in the 2011 area. The place needed it as many of the evergreen trees had not survived the past two summers of drought. I'm not sure how well the new trees will do. The scouts seem to have just sliced the sod with a spade and then dropped the seedling into the groove without much thought of trying to match the soil depth or using loose soil to pack in the root ball and avoid air pockets.

Yellow-rumped Warblers

Yellow-rumped Warbler (Setophaga coronata)

Fall has arrived. The nights are cool; the leaves are changing; and all the photogenic insects are hiding. There are still some sluggish grasshoppers and wasps about, and a cloud of gnats appeared around my head, but nothing particularly caught my eye. I think I'll have to go after the warm blooded now.

I noticed a couple of little birds foraging among the branches of the above pine tree. I was too far away to see them clearly and at first thought they might be sparrows. They seemed to be hunting for insects; flitting from branch to branch; sometimes even hovering to catch something out of mid-air. It turns out that they were Yellow-rumped warblers in their fall plumage. They still have a bit of yellow on them but I was too far away from them to get a good picture. It's nice to see birds like this taking advantage of the new habitat in the naturalization area. These warblers particularly like coniferous trees in the north but in their winter range they specialize in the waxy berries of the myrtle bush.

Hopefully these birds don't run foul of this guy:

Summer Transplants

Last August I transplanted a few seedling into the 2009 square to fill in some gaps where the trees had died. There were six red maple seedlings, two cedars, a pine tree and what I believe is an ash tree; all less than a foot tall. I figured that August was a good time to transplant the trees because the trees had had the summer to build up their energy reserves while it gave enough time for the trees to put some roots down before the frost. Initially they all seemed to do very poorly. The deciduous trees very quickly lost their leaves, the cedars turned an olive brown colour and the pine showed no sign of growth. Finally in October one of the maples started putting out new growth just in time for the frosts to kill it off.

With that inauspicious start I was worried the trees wouldn't survive the winter but this spring they are all showing promising signs of life. The buds on the pine tree (see above) are swelling, the maples look healthy (to right) and the cedars are greening up. These small trees were transplanted from flower gardens and from under trees where they had planted themselves. In the case of the cedars they had rooted in among the pebbles under the eaves of the house and came away with bare roots. It amazes me that they all survived since I don't know how many roots they lost in the transplantation. Yet the late august seedlings have a better record of survival than the potted trees transplanted for the city last spring. I'll save their sorry tale for another post.

In Bloom:
Forget-me-not
Dandelion
Yellow Rocket
Garlic Mustard
Trillium
Serviceberry

Winter injury to white pines

The pines from the 2009 planting on the south side of the berm all have significant winter damage. Winter damage is where the freezing and thawing over the winter damages the needles of evergreens. It typically occurs (as in the above picture) on the south western side of the tree where the afternoon winter sun is strongest. The sun warms up the needle enough for it to come back to life. It opens its stomata to breath in some air to start photosynthesis but in so doing it loses some moisture that is not replenished from the still frozen roots. The winter winds dry out the needle and the ends of the needles turn brown. The pines planted on the north side of the berm have very little winter damage though as they get very little winter sun.

Salt from the road is also a potential desiccant that can damage evergreens. These trees certainly have to put up with a bit of spray from Hunt Club Road that could be a contributing factor to the winter damage, but the pines are about 100m from the road and I can tell from the discolouration of the late winter snow that the road grime mostly stays closer to the road.(more information on browning of evergreens)

In the above picture it is interesting to note that you can see from the spacing between the branches on the trunk that it took two full years for the tree to recover from the transplantation. It grew even less in 2010, the year after transplantation than it did in 2009 the year it was transplanted.

Freezing rain and snow

Freezing rain then some sticky snow put a heavy load on the trees today. This pine is bent right over. It seems like the pine trees that grew over a foot last summer are still standing upright but those that didn't do as well for some reason are bent over like this one. I suspect that the ones that had a bigger growth spurt didn't catch the snow as well since their needles and branches are more spaced out. Hopefully these bent over trees spring back once the snow is gone.

Summer is here

Summer is here with some really hot days. It was supposed to get up to 30C today. There hasn't been a proper rain since the weekend the trees were planted. Today and yesterday the city worker came by and watered the new trees. The trees desperately needed it since they hadn't had time to spread out their roots. Some of the maple trees that had frost damage are starting to recover and are producing new leaves. A few of the pine trees that were planted don't look like they have any life in them. I suspect they may not live.

This heat is bringing out the flowers. On the south side of the berm where the grass was commonly mown and where it is a bit drier the speedwell is all over the place in the short grass. Speedwell seems to be past the prime of its bloom period. Chickweed another small white flower that does well in short grass areas is starting to become more common. On the north side of the berm the common low flower is the purple creeping charlie. It is spread out all over and it doesn't seem to be bothered by competition with tall grass as it is all through the area where the tall grass is growing. It is really quite pretty.

One interesting looking plant that has been a mystery all spring finally reaveled itself to be the devil's paint brush. it grows in several large clumps in a sunny dry area on the south side of the trees where the mower goes once a year. They have been large mats of individual small plants. Until now the plants have stayed low to the ground and have just put out some very hairy leaves from a central base. With the hot weather a flowering head has jumped up and opened up to reveal the bright orange head of a devil's paint brush hawkweed.

In Bloom:
dandelion (going to seed)
speedwell,
creeping charlie,
chickweed
devil's paint brush
fleabane, (pink just coming on)
forget-me-not
blue eyed grass ( one location)
yellow rocket
garlic mustard (past prime)