Spring Stirrings 2020

Pink Spotted Lady Bug Coleomegilla maculata

These pink spotted lady bugs over-winter as adults in large groups and can often be found stirring from their slumber location in the early spring sun. I came across a bunch of them earlier this spring at the base of the large oak tree. A couple of days ago I think I came upon the same group but this time they were chowing down on dandelion pollen. Practically every dandelion close to the oak tree had a pink lady bug on it.

I've met this cute baby bunny a few times this past week. He has been hanging out by the large poplar cut down by the hydro people. The logs provide convenient hidey-holes for him. The logs also provide convenient places to sit.

I've planted 5 sugar maples seedlings, 2 baby spruce and a small cedar this spring. I've also done a fair bit of clearing of poplar suckers to give more light to the slower growing maple trees.

Guerrilla Gardening and Escapees

There is a fine line between guerrilla gardening and escapees. I think this pulmonaria is probably an escapee from the neighbour's garden but I don't know how the lone daffodil below got there. Yesterday I checked out the bloodroot and trilliums I guerrilla gardened. The bloodroot is slowly establishing itself but the trilliums are not having a good year. It seems like someone (looking at you Rabbit) is eating the flower buds. There were only two trilliums in flower yesterday while I recall seeing seven flower buds earlier this spring.

The other day I was checking out a bit of raspberry that I had planted back in 2009 on the north side of the berm. It had never amounted to much as it never overcame the grass in that area, but I was surprised to notice right by the rasperry plant some yellow trout-lily leaves poking through the grass. There isn't any yellow trout-lily on the berm east of Ben-Franklin Park but these guys must have come along for the ride when I took the raspberries from a ditch south of Barrhaven.

I was attacking the patch of dog-strangling vine today, when I happened to notice a Baltimore Oriole feeding in the poplars above me. The patch of dog-strangling vine at the end of Newhaven seems to be surviving my regular attacks on it. I don't believe I have let it set seed since I noticed it a couple of years ago yet the patch is surviving just fine either from the seed bank or from growing back from the roots.

Another rare visitor to the berm I saw last week was a little raccoon. We both froze when we spotted each other and had a bit of a stare-off until he decided that I wasn't going to get out of his way and meandered off into the trees.

In flower

• Dandelion
• Daffodil
• Pulmonaria
• Bloodroot
• Trillium
• Violets
• Garlic Mustard
• Yellow Rocket

Poplar Canker

This March never had a serious return of winter weather, with many days hovering around freezing. Now the ground is bare on the south side of the berm, while soggy snow remains on the north side. The red-wing black birds and robins have been hanging around for a while now. Spring is in the air, the chickadees are flitting around in pairs, a bright red cardinal announces his territory high up in the poplars, and geese make a racket as they fly overhead.

I can remember back in the late 80s cardinals were a rarity in Ottawa but by around 1995 they were pretty common. I found one reference (pdf) that indicates the lower Hudson valley was the northern limit of their range in 1945. So in about 50 years cardinals have extended their range by about 400km!

The big poplars on top of the berm are susceptible to cankers on their trunk that cause them to weaken, die and break. The picture above is of a canker on a yet still living tree. The broken tops of trees sometimes remain suspended as in the picture below making the forest look very messy.

This March I pulled down some of the smaller suspended tree tops like the one below. It was very satisfying exercise.

Winter Rabbits

I don't know how rabbits get enough energy from bark to keep going all winter, but somehow they do. You can see from the amount of droppings in the photo above that they tend to sit around in one spot a lot. Here one has been chomping on the big poplar that fell last fall. I've cut off its limbs so that the rabbit can reach more of them. I think it is only one rabbit that is around there. I see one fairly regularly in that area and they seemed to be quite sedentary in winter, sticking to their favorite spots.

I heard a robin and some redwing blackbirds up in the trees today. This warm spell has got them thinking it's spring.

The Eastern Cottonwoods

The tallest trees of the 1995 plantings are the Eastern Cottonwoods. They are now about 75 feet tall whereas the rest of the forest canopy looks to be about 40 feet high. They grow quickly and the 20 year old trees already have substantial trunks. They are, however, very short lived trees; some of them have already toppled over. The cottonwoods take their name from the fluff their seed pods produce (see above). The ground beneath the female trees can be covered in the stuff in late June.

The cottonwoods sucker but their suckers are not particularly successful, dying back either in winter or in summer droughts. Only one sucker, pictured above, in the 2009 planting area has survived for more than 3 years. When the suckers do grow, they grow very quickly and can reach over 6 feet in a single season. The large shiny triangular leaves, pictured below, are quite distinctly different from the other suckering poplar species on the berm: the smaller rounded leaves of the aspen suckers (see last picture). As can be seen in the picture, that aspen sapling is suffering from poplar leaf aphids.

Flickers Courting

A couple of common flickers eyeing each other high up in the poplar trees.

Snowy December

Today is the earliest sunset of the year. Hopefully yesterday's snowfall stays around to brighten up the rest of the winter. I only learned last year that the length of the solar day varies over the course of a year due to the earth's axial tilt to the celestial equator. The solar apparent noon varies by as much as 16 minutes from noon over a semiannual cycle. In Ottawa, in November the solar noon is about a quarter of an hour before noon while in February it is about a quarter of an hour after noon. At the equator where there is always about 12 hours of sunlight, the earliest sunset occurs in early November, but because our hours of sunlight, this far north, are still shortening in November sunset continues to get earlier and earlier even as solar noon moves back towards the clock noon.

In the foreground of the above picture you can see several clumps of poplars that have sprung up on the north slope of the berm. These suckers have grown about 20 feet over the past four summers since the mower was banished from the slope. They are already starting to shade the trees planted on the slope in 2009. The planted trees may have to put up with some shade for a couple of decades, but that is the way of natural succession. The sugar maples will still be relatively spindly in 20 years time. The ones planted in 1995 still look like they could be toppled by a couple of blows with a good sharp ax. Poplars are very fast growing but short lived trees. you can see in the background of the above picture one of the parent poplars, planted in 1995, had already grown into a large substantial tree before it was blown down by a wind storm this summer.

A redwing in the poplars

Today was the first really warm day in over a week and the snow was melting fast. Walking along I was on the look out for a redwing blackbird. I heard this fellow before I spotted him high up at the top of a poplar. It isn't the best picture because he was so high up. The eastern cottonwood poplar trees from the 1995 planting are amazingly tall trees now just 17 years after they were planted. Last summer a wind storm knocked a few of them down, and the year before a dead trunk fell down into the 2009 planting area. Perhaps in another 17 years the current giants will no longer be here. They don't seem to be a very vigorous suckering plant. There is one sucker growing in the 2009 planting square, and another in the 2010 west side area. There are loads more suckers of the other species of poplar invading the 2010 and 2011 planting areas. I believe those poplars are trembling aspens. On the 2010 west side and in the 2011 planting area past Newhaven, the aspens are sprouting up so quickly and densely that they are liable to crowd out the new maples if I am not careful. These aspens sucker vigorously but the parent trees in the 1995 planting area are only half as big as the Eastern Cottonwoods growing beside them.

Actually, I'm not certain that the larger poplars are true eastern cottonwood poplars. I suspect they are a hybrid commercial variety that has been selected for its vigorous growth. Eastern cottonwoods are not native this far north being more a tree of the Carolinian forest.(Poplar identification, pdf with more details). The trees do carpet the ground beneath them with masses of cottony fluff when they disperse their seeds in summertime though, so I will continue calling them cottonwoods.