Snow Mold

This snow mold seems to be actually growing from the snow. Or perhaps, as is more likely, the mycelium was growing in the melt water between the ice crystals and as the snow melted away it draped the web of mycelium fibers on top of the grass. In the spring time great mats of the stuff are revealed on the grass as the snow melts away. The threads are even more delicate than a spider's web and only remain visible for a day or two after the snow melts away.

Snow mold is a fungus that feeds on grass in cold wet weather. It doesn't necessarily need snow and is a problem for golf courses and other turf grower even where it does not normally snow. There are several different types of snow mold; the two most common being the grey snow mold and the pink snow mold. I believe the above image is of the grey snow mold as the reddish-brown sclerotia are visible embedded in the grass leaves. In the image below you can more clearly see one of the sclerotia after the thatch has dried a bit and the mycelium has disappeared. The sclerotia is the dormant form of the fungus that stays in the thatch through the hot and dry weather of the summer. The fungus starts growing again in the fall when the necessary cool and wet conditions are present.

The pinkish hue on the lower portion of the grass leaf in the above picture is a bit of a mystery. There are patches of this faint pink on the dead thatch all over the grass. I thought it might be from the spores of pink snow mold but I am no longer sure. I couldn't find any good close-ups of what pink snow mold is supposed to look like. All the pictures I found on the web were only useful for identifying the circular patches of dead grass it creates in lawns and golf courses.

Late Spring Snow

It felt quite spring-like last Sunday when I visited the south side of the berm; the ground had thawed; the tiny wolf spiders were scurrying through the long grass, and the buds on the silver maples were swelling. But yesterday, winter had one last encore.

Robins are back

Yesterday was a fine warm day where the temperature got above 10 degrees. The snow is rapidly melting and the robins have finally returned. The day before yesterday I saw my first robin on the berm.

This is an exciting time of year when each day one or two new insect species make their first appearance after the long winter. Yesterday the flies like the one below were out in force.

Cluster Fly (Genus Pollenia)

Cluster flies overwinter as adults and are the most common fly around in early spring according to one commenter in the bugguide. Their larvae are parasites of earth worms.

Signs of Spring

I saw my first insect yesterday, some sort of flying insect, a midge perhaps. The temperature was hovering around zero and the ground is still snow covered yet the insects are stirring. The birds know spring is around the corner too. I saw my first red-wing blackbirds on the 12th staking out claims in the bushes across the road. I haven't seen a robin yet, perhaps the snow is still too deep. It will take quite some time to melt the snow pack this year. A couple of weeks ago on the 12th when the last warm spell attempted to make a dent in the snow banks, it formed a large puddle over the bike path.

The abrupt end of one meadow vole.

More snow today. We have had quite a lot of snow this winter which makes a change from the last two winters. One unfortunate side effect of deep snow is that the white plastic spirals that protect the trees from the meadow voles aren't as effective. In the below photo you can see a meadow vole has almost completely girdled a maple tree just above where the plastic spiral stopped. A warm spell in January had given a hard crust to the snow, then a later snowfall gave the voles something to tunnel through at this new surface. This photograph was taken at the end of January when another warm spell revealed their pathways. Some of them were only market out by the dirt from their feces. In the photo below the dark specks of dirt on the snow around the trunk are feces from the meadow vole.

Not too far from this tree I spotted tracks that told a very clear story in my mind. In the first photo below you can see the tracks of a meadow vole as it was hopping over a fresh sprinkling of snow past a few grass stalks poking out of the snow. Suddenly its tracks stop at a place where there are a whole mess of confusing tracks. Looking more carefully in the second photo below there are a few specks of bright red. Somebody caught the poor guy and whoever caught it must have flown there. You can see what are clearly the mark of the bird's broad tail and the marks of its feet. About 10 feet from this spot in the third photograph are the marks of a large bird's tail as it brushed the snow. The story that comes to me is of a meadow vole scampering along in the dark over the fresh fallen snow when an owl perched 50m away in the bushes spots it. It launches itself and glides in low over the snow. It caught the vole before the little guy even knew it was there and dispatched him on the spot before taking off to feed at a more secure location. I would bet the bird was an owl as a vole is quite unlikely to be out in the open like that except at night, the most likely candidate being a Barred Owl as I know they are about because I saw one this winter in the Stoney Swamp.

As a bonus, here is a Youtube video of a meadow vole behaving quite strangely in broad daylight. This isn't my video but I saw a meadow vole behave like this several years ago on the berm. It just rested in broad daylight on top of the snow as I passed quite close by on my skis. I didn't have my camera with me that day or else I would have had plenty of opportunity to get a good closeup of the fellow.

Turkey Tracks in Snow

There is no mistaking the evidence that wild turkeys visited the berm area in the past couple of days. In the image below you can compare the turkey track with the smaller tracks of a crow. Their tracks in the snow are at least twice as wide as a crow's and it is easy to see the individual toe marks.

I have very rarely seen a turkey fly as they mostly get around by walking. I followed the tracks of the one that landed below as he walked with his friend along the berm from the 2009 planting to the 2010 planting. I wonder if they continued on and visited Ben Franklin Wood.

This is the first time I've seen wild turkey tracks in Manordale. Wild turkeys were only introduced to eastern Ontario about 20 years ago and Ottawa about 12 years ago. This area is north of their historic range but they have been very successful so far.

Winter Rabbit tracks

The temperatures plunged this week from above freezing on the weekend down to around -30C. This with a dusting of new snow made it an excellent time to go looking for tracks on the berm. There were a whole load of fresh crow tracks in among the 95 trees. It must have been a whole flock of them giving the forest a good picking over. There were also a few rabbit tracks.

The picture above shows heavy browsing on an apple tree by a rabbit. This apple tree is rather bushy because it is just the regrowth from the root stock after a crabapple tree fell down a couple of years ago. I find it incredible the number of pellets he produced. The snow fell a couple of days ago so this pile is just from the past two days. I followed the tracks of another rabbit through the woods and he also was passing a huge number of pellets. Every few feet along his track there would be another pellet. And it was clear this was just one rabbit; the track was wandering around so much it couldn't be the pellets on a rabbit run poking out of the snow. It is purely my speculation, but I believe the rabbit I was following wasn't actually feeding but was just out in the cold -20C degree weather to pass scat and would have quickly returned to his burrow afterwards. I located his burrow to be an old groundhog hole (in center of picture below) under a glossy buckthorn bush by the eastern path over the berm. Cottontails don't make their own holes but they aren't above using one if there is one available.

Last year there were hardly any rabbits overwintering on the berm. This year there seems to be at least two: one on the east side living in the old groundhog hole and another living along the fence behind Kelvin that occasionally visits the crabapple trees.