Early Spring 2024

It is a very early spring this year with the alder tree's catkins already spreading pollen and some maple trees in flower.

Rabbits caused a significant amount of damage to some trees and bushes this winter. The serviceberry bushes in the 2010 area got severly attacked as did many apple trees as in the above picture. It is interesting how the winter damage varies from year to year. That apple tree had escaped their notice for about 10 years until this winter. I also found damage this year on sumac, basswood (see below) and cedar, trees that don't usually get much significant browsing damage. Perhaps it is just a matter of individual taste. Perhaps it was just one rabbit hanging around having a good feed on his favorite things.

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.

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.

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.

Winter Storm

There was a record snowfall on Tuesday. Trudging out to the trees yesterday the fluffy snow was up to my knees and it was hard work just to go a few hundred meters to take this picture. The rabbit below was having a hard time getting through the snow as well. Here he is at the entrance to his bolt hole.

I heard a chickadee announce that "tea's ready" yesterday, a sure sign that spring is coming. Winter started quite late this year (there were dandelions blooming on Christmas Day). I wonder how much more of it we have to see.

Rabbit ears are directional

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.

Two Wet Rabbits

This past week has been cold and wet, really putting a halt to the warm dry spring we have been having. It isn't over yet, as we are forecast to have a couple more nights of frost before we get some warmer weather. There has been very little growth of buds and little in the way of flowers or insects to photograph.

Last evening I came across these two wet rabbits enjoying a soggy silflay at the corner of the mowed path around the square. I didn't see any rabbit tracks all winter in this area but now here are two rabbits coming to the area again. I've seen a couple of rabbits get frisky back at the house so I suspect it is mating time for these guys which drives them out to go seek mates away from their winter home territories. That spot at the corner of the path had been a popular rabbit hangout spot in 2010 but in 2011 I rarely saw rabbits there. There is a clear animal path that goes from a hole under the fence along the back of Kimdale St. up the berm towards this area. The thing I don't know is if that path connects up with a larger network of animal paths throughout the area, or if it is mainly just local rabbits that create this path as they go between their favourite spots in their territory.

Squirrel tracks in snow

It is really starting to look like spring out there, at least on the south side of the berm. I even saw some small spiders crawling over the grass yesterday. I've been meaning to make a post on squirrel tracks in snow similar to the rabbit tracks post but I held off in hopes of getting a picture of a squirrel actually visiting the berm area. Frustratingly the squirrels haven't obliged. So before spring gets much further here is a picture I took earlier this winter of a squirrel's track he left as he hopped through a fresh dusting of snow.



Here is a photo I took last week of the north side of the berm. It is still winter on the north side and you can see the tracks of a dog, a squirrel and a rabbit running up and down the berm. You can clearly see the tracks the rabbit made as it ran up the hill (on the right). It puts its front paws one after another. The middle tracks are from the squirrel as it hopped through the fresh snow. The squirrel planted its front feet beside each other as it bounded over the snow. The tracks of the back feet are almost on top of the front feet prints leaving a much more compact set of tracks.

There haven't been that many squirrel tracks on the berm behind Kelvin this winter. There isn't much to eat except a few crabapples and I suspect the squirrels are mostly hanging out in backyards getting a free lunch at a bird feeder. I've been on the lookout for a squirrel or squirrel tracks along the berm for over a month, ever since I found squirrel remains where some predator caught himself a meal. There haven't been any squirrel sightings and few tracks. I've concluded that squirrels have been only infrequent visitors to the berm area. Rabbits have visited even less frequently, the above tracks being the first I've noticed heading towards the top of the berm in a long while.

Where are the winter rabbits?

I went for a walk today to see if I could find some rabbit tracks along the Hunt Club berm. I was quite surprised to find that except for close to the cedar hedge by Kimdale street there aren't any rabbit tracks visible along the berm east of Newhaven. There are some squirrel tracks but no rabbit trails. Rabbits often follow specific paths and it is interesting that no rabbits have chosen to live this winter along the berm. There are rabbit trails in the bushy area to the east of Kimdale.



Above is a picture of a rabbit trail among the cedars to the east of Kimdale. In the first picture the rabbit trail goes up and to the right in the picture. You can see some discoloration in the snow due to rabbit pee and a few rabbit pellets along the trail. You can't make out any particular rabbit tracks as the trail is so heavily used.



In the second picture above is a single rabbit track. Squirrel and rabbit tracks are very similar when viewed in isolation. The context of it being on a clear rabbit trail in association with rabbit pellets makes it very likely to be a rabbit track. In addition, rabbits tend to put their front paws one in front of the other parallel to the direction of travel while squirrels tend to put their front paws beside each other. In the above picture the rabbit was traveling away from the camera. When a rabbit is moving it puts its back feet down in front of where it planted its front feet.

One interesting thing about the second picture is the blue rabbit pee in the left paw print. According to the following link the blue pee is due to the rabbits eating buckthorn bushes.

Creatures of habbit

Crows and geese aren't the only creatures of habit that can be found regularly in the same spot. Rabbits also have their favourite spots. Take for instance this rabbit I passed along Kimdale St. yesterday. He must really like that hole in the cedar hedge because I took the below picture of him at the same spot 10 days earlier.



One thing I've noticed this past year is that there hasn't been rabbits in residence on the eastern side of the triangle area. Last year and the year before I regularly passed a pair of rabbits hanging out at the end of Kimdale St. and then would spot another rabbit along the path at the north eastern corner of the square. Not to say that there are no rabbits around, just that their regular hangout spots aren't the same as before. For instance, there were quite regularly some rabbits hanging out along the forest edge by the crab apples this past summer.

Cottontail rabbits are a relative newcomer to the area. 25 years ago there weren't any around. I remember going to the University in Waterloo in the early 90s and being excited to see all the rabbits on campus. They started appearing in the Manordale area in the 90s and quickly became quite common. As I understand it, there are several species of cottontail rabbits. Ottawa is on the very northern edge of the eastern cottontail range. The Fletcher wildlife garden has a good page describing the habits of our rabbits.

Lilacs and rabbit

Went for a walk along the berm this Victoria day to inspect the trees. This past week has been very good for the trees, with lots of rain and warm days. The newly planted trees in the Newhaven Extension are doing great. Most of the trees are growing vigorously, even the Burr Oaks that take a long time to get started are starting to leaf out. There are about 20 Burr Oaks in the new planting and only 2 or 3 do not show signs of life yet. The only tree that does not yet have signs of life are the shagbark hickories. I still have some hope, but because they tend to form a tap root they have a reputation of not transplanting well.

I snapped the above picture when walking along the northern fence.

In Bloom:
Dandelion
Garlic Mustard
Forget-me-not
honeysuckle
lilac
ajuga
serviceberry
crabapple
apple
Solomon's seal

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.

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.

Predators and a visit to Ben Franklin Wood

Yesterday while inspecting the West Side planting area I saw a couple of rabbits scuttle into the thicket. They must have heard something besides myself because I had been standing still at the time. Moments later another rabbit bounded past at a full gallop through the trees into the thicket. Hot on his tail there was a crash and a crack and a big red dog jumped out of the forest. He was suprised to see me as he had evidently been focused on rabbits. His master called and he bounded back into the wood having evidently forgotten about the rabbits. The dog got me thinking about the predators on the berm. Obviously the dog was a predator although he might not be too successful with rabbits. What other predators were there?

In the insect world there were loads of unidentified spiders crawling through the grass. I had also seen many 12 spotted lady bugs and one spiny soldier bug but what potential large wild predators were there? I have seen scat of a medium sized carnivores but haven't actually seen anything. It would be very exciting to see a coyote, fox, weasel, or shrew as there is evidently a plentiful supply of meadow voles around. I have no doubt that there are red tailed hawks that visit the area but I haven't actually seen them.

After inspecting how the trees are doing (everything is leafing out quickly now) I continued on to Ben Franklin park to see if the Trilliums and Dog Tooth Violets were out yet(they were). Along the way I noticed the evidence that some predator had caught a bird. By the amount of feathers and the size of feathers it was quite a large bird, perhaps a sea gull or a pidgeon. Further on, as I entered the woods I found some more evidence of a successful predator. A squirrel tail was lying on the path, either someone has a full stomach or there is a very sorry looking squirrel running around in Ben Franklin Wood.

In bloom:
dandelion
common speedwell
shepherd's purse (under oak)
yellow rocket
violet
garlic mustard
forget me not
elderberry (north corner 1995 planting)
cherry ( escapee by north corner)
crabapples (just about to start)
daffodil (escapee by north fence)