Emerald Ash Borer is here

The trilliums are just about over for another year. Above is a picture of some of the trilliums we transplanted to the 1995 tree area in 2009. This clump and the clump of bloodroot transplanted at the same time are only slowly expanding.

There is an ash tree close to the trilliums that I have suspected for a while was suffering from emerald ash borer. The winter before last I saw a hole which looked like a woodpecker had been feeding on the tree and last year it only had a sparse canopy. This year while visiting the trilliums I noticed that there are several of the D shaped holes (see below) in the trunk that Emerald Ash Borers make when they emerge as adults from the tree.

This spring the only signs of life on this tree are on the shoots coming up from the base. Presumably the emerald ash borers have completely girdled the trunk of the tree. The shoots at the base of the tree are another indication that the tree is under attack, but I probably should use the past tense as once you see the exit holes the emerald ash borers have done their work and have already left.

On the berm beside Huntclub these are the first definite signs I've seen of Emerald Ash Borer but last year the damage from the ash borers really became noticeable in this part of the city. There was a whole line of dead ash trees on Baseline and some dead trees along Woodroffe.

Winter Damage 2014

I took a walk around the berm area today inspecting the winter damage. The winter damage to the pine trees was more severe than last year. Some of the buds look dead. There was also a lot of meadow vole damage. The sugar maples in particular were severely damaged but even the sumacs were hit. Below is a picture of the base of one of the sugar maples where the voles got at it below the white plastic protective spirals.

Orange-Banded Arion (Arion fasciatus)

Spring Equinox

This is the official start to spring but there is still a lot of snow on the ground and the weather is supposed to stay cold for another week. This has been a cold winter for much of North America. In Ottawa the snow came early and has stayed all winter. There are robins and starlings about but they are going to have to wait a while longer before there is bare earth along the berm.

Snowy December

There has been a winter's worth of snow this December. Above is a photo of a spruce seedling I planted 5 summers ago. I took the picture on the 23rd of November. Below is an image from approximately the same location taken on the 28th of December. All you can see of the spruce seedling is one twig poking out of the snow.

First Snow and Crows

We had our first proper snow yesterday and the flock of crows was visiting the berm area. In recent years every fall and winter a flock of crows forms in Ottawa. Each evening they pass Manordale in a long steady stream heading back to their roost on the Rideau river. They don't clump together and often you only see a few flying by at a time but it is a steady stream that mounts to hundreds passing over head in just a few minutes. Yesterday a part of the flock settled in the trees along the berm. Their tracks were all over the place in the fresh snow. They seem to be very mindful of what the passing human is doing; as soon as I stopped to take out my camera, a large portion of the flock flew off.

Fall 2013

Five summers after being planted, the trees have grown. Many of them have outgrown their white plastic trunk protectors. I've taken quite a few off that were tight and we'll see how the trees do without them. Below is an image of the trunk of one maple tree that got attacked by the field mice last winter. The ant is crossing the new growth that has partially filled in the wound. The tree had a plastic trunk protector on but it didn't stop the rodent. I'm going on the theory that at a certain point, the bark gets so thick that rodents no longer find the older trees very tasty. When the spirals are removed though, the trunk that was protected looks younger than the parts of the trunk that had been exposed to the weather so I am a bit worried that the field mice will attack the trees that have been newly uncovered.

Cornfield ant (Lasius neoniger?)

2013 planting

A few weeks ago I was walking through the tall grass along the berm west of the 2011 planting area and I noticed that the boy scouts had planted quite a few seedlings in the area. The tall grass hadn't been cut all year and I wondered if that meant the city had given the boy scouts permission to plant there and that it was to be an expansion of the naturalization area. Unfortunately it was not to be, for only a few day later the mower came along and cut down the long grass and the couple of dozen seedlings that had survived the summer there. There are about a couple of dozen other seedlings still surviving in the 2011 planting area. The seedlings were quite small and the vetch grew very quickly, so many of them got crowded out. The boy scouts planted a lot of white pine and a few deciduous trees I had a hard time identifying. I'm fairly confident that I have the two new tree species identified now (see pictures below).

Highbush Cranberry (Viburnum trilobum)

Blue Beech (Carpinus caroliniana)

I noticed on my walk a single dog-strangling vine about 75m from the west end of the 2011 planting area. It is spreading from the infestation that is further west along the berm. I attacked that patch this spring while the young vines were still easy to pull out. That measure seemed to be effective as the plants didn't come back but there were more of them in the shade of the trees that I didn't get to so it was really just a delaying tactic. I read in the paper that scientists in Ottawa are releasing a biological control agent that is specific for dog strangling vine. I hope it is effective; I wouldn't want all the wild places of Ottawa to turn into the Fletcher Wildlife Garden.

A Cluster Fly (Genus Pollenia) resting on a highbush cranberry.