10 years

It was 10 years ago this May that the first trees were planted by Manordale School kids. The first few years were quite hard on the trees. Some got smothered by the grass, some were girdled by field mice, and some just failed to thrive in their new location. Other trees arrived, either as volunteers or as new transplants. As the years have passed the survivors have established themselves and I have grown to know many of these trees as individuals. Each spring I nervously check to see who was attacked by the darned field mice over winter. I haven't noticed any girdled trees so far this year which would be a first if it holds up. Sometimes the girdling is hidden by grass until later in the summer when the drier conditions make the lack of connection to the roots much more apparent.

10 years of watching this area develop has given me an appreciation of how slowly mother nature can move. Even violets, a nuisance that spreads all over the garden and lawn at home don't spread quickly once you let Mother Nature be the gardener. The violets in the above picture have basically stuck to the same location where I first noticed them 10 years ago. The clump is a bit bigger, but they haven't spread more than a few meters. The trilliums I rescued over a decade ago are still exactly where I planted them. I understand why people are instructed to not pick the trilliums; the great glades of trilliums you can see in the woods each spring are probably the product of centuries of growth. I don't think the little patch I planted can sustain even the odd rabbit who comes by each spring to see if trilliums are tasty.

This spruce tree is one of the surviving seedlings planted by the kindergartners 10 years ago. The child is probably as tall as this sapling now.

December Crows 2017

The crows are back this December. I counted hundreds flying overhead each evening before the snow got thick on the ground. Now that the snow is thicker I see small groups hanging around looking for food but I don't notice the long streams of them flying east each evening. It could be that I'm just not spending as much time out in the bitterly cold weather.

We had a beautiful fluffy snow fall over Christmas and now we are enduring a proper cold spell of -25^oC nights and -15^oC days. The above picture is a meadow vole's breathing hole. You can see the ice crystals that have formed at the edge of the hole where the warmer air from their nest hits the colder air above the snow. The snow is very fluffy, and it is evident from the lack of tracks that they have just poked their head above the snow to keep the hole clear but haven't left the safety of their tunnel. According to this paper I read, 2 to 3 meadow voles huddle together in a nest for warmth with several nests forming a cluster. I noticed several holes in the vicinity of this hole; I wander if each of these holes is associated with a single nest chamber.

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.

Spiral Tree Protectors

After 6 years some of the trees are outgrowing the spiral tree protectors. I took some of the spiral protectors off last fall from the largest trees and most of the rest from the 2009 trees this spring. Unfortunately, as a result, one of the last remaining sugar maple saplings was completely girdled by the field mice over winter. But if I don't take them off I am worried that the trees will be choked by the tree protectors themselves. On some of the trees, as in the picture above, the plastic spirals were starting to constrict the growth of the trunk.

Sometimes the tree protectors fail to fully protect the trunk yet the tree is lucky because of some small factor like the stick in the picture below protecting a portion of the trunk, other times they are lucky one year but not the next. Sometimes they will come back and sprout up from below where they were girdled. In that situation the new bark of the sprouts is very attractive to the field mice the next winter. Occasionally the tree is super lucky and the field mice spare one or two just because they can't reach all sides of the sprout.

In the end I'm not sure there is much that can be done for some species of trees except not plant them in a location that is attractive to meadow voles (field mice). It occurred to me today that one might have more success planting sugar maples in a raspberry bush than in an old field.

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?)

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.

Green Grass and Fall Colours

After four summers the 2009 trees actually have a few leaves this year to contribute to the fall colours. Perhaps in a couple of more years they will be more than just a few blobs of colour in a field of long green grass.

I've been pulling back the grass from the base of the trees again this fall but I haven't seen much evidence of voles. I don't really know if pulling the grass back from the trees is doing any good; perhaps there just aren't as many voles for some reason or perhaps the earth around the tree roots has compacted so much that it isn't a particularly desirable place for voles to make their home anymore( at least compared to the root balls of first year transplants).

I've noticed that the grass this year is easier to pull away from the trees than it has been in previous years. It seems less dense with fewer grass plants per square inch. Where in previous years I could grab so much grass in a handful that it would be physically hard to pull up, this year I can tear a handful out pretty easily. That is unless it is a fescue. A fescue is a course grass with wide rough-edged leaves that forms clumps. I'll invariably pull up a sod of earth if I grab a handful of fescue. I'm not sure which type of fescue it is but it looks pretty much like meadow fescue according to this linked identification guide. The other common grass I'm pulling away from the base of the trees is kentucky bluegrass. I can tell it is a bluegrass from the boat prow shaped tip of the grass blade. Kentucky bluegrass grows quickly in cool weather, and is one of the first grasses to develop seed heads in spring. It has a second growth spurt in the fall long after the seed heads have disappeared. The lush green grass in the above photograph is primarily due to the renewed growth of the bluegrass.

The third most common grass in the field is quack grass. It is a perennial and is forming several large patches. The fourth most common grass in the area also forms patches that persist from year to year. It is an as yet unidentified 7 foot tall perennial grass that looks a bit like a fescue. To round out the list of common grasses I've noticed, Timothy is quite common but doesn't form large clumps. I've also identified some meadow brome and orchard grass growing in the area but they don't seem to be very common.

Meadow vole droppings

The snow has disappeared from the south side of the berm revealing the meadow vole runways and the damage they did to the trees. The damage in general doesn't look too bad, the most damage was in the bushy area. Several bushes, particularly serviceberry bushes were attacked. The meadow voles evidently spend a significant amount of time at their feeding because they leave a considerable pile of droppings below every bush that is damaged (see above).

I planted groups of 4 serviceberry bushes last year instead of planting them separately. This was in hopes that the meadow voles would either spread the damage between the plants or that the voles would be satisfied with only some of the canes and leave the others. That is sort of a herd strategy where the plants find safety in numbers. Voles are said to be territorial, therefore planting the bushes in a group means that only one group of voles would attack the bushes whereas if each plant was planted separately each one would be in a separate group's territory and, since serviceberry is a favorite food, likely heavily damaged by the voles of that territory. I also was careful to wrap the plastic spirals around the best branches, although as the first year proved that isn't always effective since voles will dig down and attack the roots. It looks like we may have some of the bushes survive, but it is too early to tell how much damage was done to their roots.

A short tailed shrew

This past week I have been spending about an hour a day getting the trees planted this spring ready for winter. That involves pulling back the grass, removing the mulch circles and fixing the planing job if they were planted in appropriately. I received a hundred white spiral tree protectors from the city forester last monday to put around the tree trunks. I have gone through about half of them cutting them in two to protect twice as many trees.

Today as I was attempting to fix a particularly bad planting job where a maple tree had been planted several inches too deep, I heard a squeek and the soil I had been carefully digging started moving. I thought I must have disturbed a meadow vole but then a pink snout pushed out of the ground. What ever it was, it was apparently digging its way out. I quickly got my camera out, to at least get a shot of the little guy's snout. As soon as he spied me he ducked back under again. But with a little coaxing and patience I eventually got the above picture of him just before he scooted away intoo the long grass.

I believe he (or she) is a short tailed shrew. The pink rather pointed snout, the pale grey sleak fur, the size and shape, the small ears and eyes all lead me to believe this was actually a short tailed shrew.

The northern short tailed shrew is a small carnivore that eats insects, worms, mice and voles. They have a reputation as voracious eaters and are also noted as one of the few venomous mammals. Their venomous bite allows them to incapacitate larger prey such as voles. Since they are active throughout the year and are just about an ideal size to be able to use the meadow vole's runways under the snow, I imagine voles make up a significant portion of their winter diet.

Meadow vole damage

The above is a picture of some Meadow vole damage in the 2011 planting area. The trees in this area had a manufactured circle of mulch placed around the base of the tree. This helped with preserving soil moisture around the newly planted root balls. However they produce a convenient location for field mice to hide. As the night time temperature goes down they will extend their burrows underground around the tree roots. Once their food runs low they will start eating the roots killing the tree. They like the taste of some trees better than others. The above sugar maple would probably be killed this winter if no action is taken.



I attempted to collapse the burrow entrances by punching down the soil around the roots. I then added soil to bring the soil back up to the original level. There was a tag left on the tree that might have damaged the tree in a few years as it grew. I removed this tag and added a tree protector to keep the meadow voles from girdling the tree at the base of the trunk. Hopefully these steps help the tree to survive the coming winter.

Bugs are out

So I walked through the square on Wednesday to check out the meadow vole damage. It was the first nice warm day in a long while. Before that we had had about a weak of weather that rarely got much above freezing. The snow was gone but the ground was still frozen. But nevertheless there were a multitude of little black spiders hopping and scurrying over the long grass. I saw about 2 for every step I took. The spiders were limited to the long grass, and when walking over the mowed areas no spiders were evident. I also saw a small fly so insect life has definitely come back to the field for a new year.

There was surprisingly little rodent damage to the trees in the square. None of the trees look like they are toppling over and I didn't see evidence of girdling by mice. It was a totally different story on the west side where the new trees got severely hit by either the rabbits or the mice. Any tree that didn't have plastic protecting around the trunk looks to be girdled.



I didn't visit the north side of the berm as winter still had a hold there.

New resident? Groundhog

I think this is a new groundhog who has taken up residence in the holes on the east side of the berm. The holes had seemed disused for some time but this little guy was out there the other day making himself at home.

I saw some scat the other day that looked like it was perhaps from a coyote. It was black and full of fur and about the size of a dog's scat. I saw a coyote a couple of weeks ago not a mile west along Huntclub so they are certainly about. Hopefully they come by and take a few of the meadow voles. I have caught glimpses of the voles too often to not be sure that they are plentiful. I don't often get a good view of them though , I just see the little brown ball streaking across a bit of ground before it disappears into the grass. I learned though that the voles can be vocal. They make a high pitched squeek when they are disturbed by something. The other day I heard this high pitched squeek in the grass as I was walking through the square, when I came back to investigate I found a ball of grass about the size of my palm that turned out to be a nest of mice. There were 5 mostly hairless blind voles in the nest. Three of them came away in the covering when I removed the roof of the nest. I put them back and they seemed to be ok. 3 of them squiggled into the grass and the remaining 2 seemed to be asleep. When I came back a few hours later they were all gone. hopefully the mother had made a new nest for them.

Are deer visiting the area?

I was taking the tags off the newly planted trees this past week when I noticed that many of the serviceberry plants (Amelanchier arborea) have had some of their twigs cut. The cut was quite a distinctive cut. About a foot off the ground at a 45 degree angle, cleanly cut through with some damage to the bark on one side. The twig can be found by the plant with some of the leaves still on the twig. After consulting the internet I think it is unlikely that it was deer. Downy serviceberry is listed as one of the trees unlikely to be damaged by deer. Also browse evidence is supposed to be a ragged broken end not a clean cut.

I think it is much more likely it is a rodent cutting down the twig in order to get at the tasty leaves higher up. This fits with the 45 degree cut. Supposing the rodent cocked its head to the side to reach up and use its incissors to cut the twig. The damage to the bark on one side of the cut could be the mark of the lower teath. So which rodent is the culprit and why is the damage occuring all of a sudden? In the triangle cottontail rabbits are a common sight. I know meadow voles are around ( The other day I suprised one as I was pulling the grass away from the base of a tree. I practically grabbed it when I went to grab a handfull of grass, it then scurried away between my legs disappearing down one of its runways), squirrels are common, there is a chipmunk living on the east slope by the path as is a groundhog.

I have never seen a squirrel eat leaves and a meadow vole or chipmunk wouldn't chop down a twig a foot up from the base. No the most likely culprits are groundhogs or rabbits. Of the two I believe a groundhog is more likely because rabbits are too common a sight on the south side of the berm where the damage occured. If it was rabbits surely there would have been more damage all along. No I think it was a wandering groundhog looking for a new home that came by and opportunistically took some time feeding on his favorites.

Meadow Vole Heaven

The meadow voles did a real number on the trees planted last year. There are signs of their runways and burrows all over the long grass between the trees. Many of the trees were killed by the rodents eating their bark either just below ground or at ground level. The bushes were extensively eaten as were the oaks and the sugar maples. The trees that survived the best were pine, spruce, tamarack, red maple and sumac. I guess those trees don't taste very good to voles.

The runways the meadow voles made under the snow cover the square planted on the south side of berm last year. The north side of the berm fared better. My hypothesis is that this is due to the type of vegetation growing. On the south side a lawn that has been regularly mowed was allowed to grow wild. This produced a very pretty mix of clover, chickweed, vetch, birdsfoot trefoil and grasses. In places the trefoil and clover made a dense mat underwhich rodents could safely go about their business away from flying predator's eyes. On the north side of the berm the slope had been mowed once a year and the area was a well established field with tall grasses. There was rodent damage evident here as well but not nearly as extensively and the runways were not as well packed.

The meadow vole runways are about the width of two fingers. They sometimes end in larger chambers under the snow, sometimes they end in a hole leading underground. Note the bush that has been stripped at the bottom of the picture.

The plastic wrapping didn't do too much good for this poor tree as the rodents gnawed the roots completely away