Spring....slow but sure

I've been home a lot, as have most people. Nonetheless I have been able to get out a bit, and either through good fortune or good planning, have always been at a place where there is nobody else. I'd like to think it is good planning. While the general recommendation is for people to stay home unless going out for groceries or a medical appointment, on those occasions one is far more likely to come in contact with someone else, and therefore much more dangerous than getting out to some relatively remote location where even if there is someone else, you can stay hundreds of metres away.

So I have been able to observe a bit of spring continuing to unfold, although it has been cool enough that it is well behind normal, at least for now.

The McKerrall Woods is off by itself, and the spring wildflowers are doing well. Bloodroot, this first one, is about finished.

Cut-leaved Toothwort is just starting and will be one of the main wildflowers soon.

 Dutchman's Breeches is common.

 Giant Blue Cohosh has a fairly inconspicuous flower.

 Spring Beauty has been out for awhile, but is still in fine form.

 Red Trillium is just starting. I usually find it to open a bit before the more commonly seen Large White Trillium, shown following. The white one will likely need a few more days of warmer weather before it really opens up.

 On a sunny day, this Yellow Trout Lily, a.k.a. Dog-toothed Violet, will be noticeable. Even when it is not in flower, the forest floor is sometimes covered with their distinctive mottled leaves.

 A somewhat unexpected find at this site was a Coyote den. I had seen a Coyote at this woodlot on an earlier visit. It appeared fairly freshly dug. Here's hoping it will provide some photo ops in the future!

 At Clear Creek Forest, things are moving along well. In the wetter wooded areas Purple Cress is quite plentiful. The pink/purple flowers and slightly hairy stem are good clues to separate it from others in the genus.

 I was pleased to find a bit of this Wild Ginger. I hadn't seen it at Clear Creek before. It is pollinated by ground beetles, so the brownish/maroon coloured flower is usually under last year's leaf litter.

 In the vicinity of the old gravel pits now surrounded by well developed woody vegetation, there were a couple of dozen swallows out looking for food. On occasion they would land for a rest, as these two Tree Swallows and single Barn Swallow are doing.

 Capturing a swallow in flight is no easy task for a photographer, as they change direction quickly and often. But I managed to capture a couple of Tree Swallows doing their thing.....

 ....while a Northern Rough-winged Swallow took a rest.

 Nearby a couple of Yellow-rumped Warbler were looking for insects as well. This one is an obvious migrant, due to the brighter colours than over wintering Yellow-rumps will have.

A couple of dozen Canada Geese were on the pond, honking their displeasure at my presence. There were several of their mates scattered around the pond, obviously on nests. In another few weeks, the ponds at Clear Creek Forest will likely have dozens of goslings paddling around.

At one point I stopped to check a dead tree stub that had a Pileated Woodpecker nest in it a couple of years ago. At first glance I thought I was looking at the wrong tree, as no obvious hole was visible, and then I realized there was something in the hole. It was a red phase Eastern Screech Owl, as you can tell by the slightly reddish feathers on the head, peeking out catching some sun. The gray colour phase is more common.

 Another flying critter was this Narrow-headed Marsh Fly (Helophilus fasciatus) resting on a dead leaf. It is a type of Syrphid fly that is fairly common from spring until fall.

Moving on, I stopped at the Keith McLean Conservation Lands. With the high water, it looks like it could be great for shorebirds again this year. There were about 17 Dunlin along the shallow edge of 'Lake McLean'.

 A couple of dozen Bonaparte's Gulls in various stages of their spring plumage were coming and going.

In the odds and ends category, Northern Flickers are pretty regular wherever you go. I photographed this one at Fletcher Ponds.

 A flooded field in southern Chatham-Kent was attractive to this Wilson's Snipe.

 At Erieau, you can always count on Double-crested Cormorants, and on this particular day it was no exception. There were at least 50 coming and going to this tree across from the channel. This is the tree where a Neotropic Cormorant was seen periodically last year. Will it return? Time will tell.

Death of a Giant Senior Citizen

It is true....one of the giants of Chatham-Kent, indeed of all Ontario, has come crashing down and is now dead.

I'm talking about a tree, an American Beech tree to be precise. The last time I measured it, it was about 95 cm in diameter at the official measuring height of 4.5 feet above the ground. Here it is as of April 2016.

It is located in one of the newest provincial parks in Ontario, Clear Creek Forest Provincial Nature Reserve, at Clearville in southeastern Chatham-Kent. It is one of the least known and visited natural areas of Chatham-Kent. I devoted a blog post about it in my series of Natural Areas of Chatham-Kent a little less than a year ago. You can read that post at this link.

As I was winding down my career with OMNR in 2011, I took some of the colleagues out to a few sites to pass along various aspects of their significance and management. Here is one of my colleagues being impressed by this huge tree......

.....and here is what it looked like this past week. The staff of Rondeau Provincial Park are in charge of administering Clear Creek Forest, and maintenance staff had been here recently to clear the trail from the huge trunk that had fallen across it.

You can see from the first two photos above that there was a lean to the tree, which is typical of many older growth trees as they age. The right hand side of the base of the tree had deteriorated with age, so it was only a matter of time. One of the fierce westerly winds we had over the past couple of months was the deciding moment, and down it came. Although I doubt that anyone was there at the time to verify it, I am quite sure it made quite a bit of sound when it fell! It took another medium-sized beech tree down with it.

 As mentioned, its diameter was almost a metre. According to one source on trees of the Carolinian Zone, where this species is abundant and grows the best, the largest one known a few years ago was 92 cm in diameter. The tree here was several cm in diameter larger, but the other specimen had not been measured for awhile and if it was still alive, may have surpassed this one. Regardless, the one at Clear Creek Forest is/was one of the largest of its kind in Ontario.

This next photo shows how fragile this tree was in its old age. The outer shell looked fairly sound, but the inside at the bottom was quite hollow, again, not unusual for a tree of this age.

 And speaking of age, I did a count of the rings as best as I could although parts of the cut surface were hard to see due to the chainsaw cuts. You can see from this next photo that some of the rings were quite close together, and others were relatively far apart, reflecting the varying ability to grow over the decades. Certainly a lack of moisture at a critical period of seasonal growth would be one limiting factor.

 Close to the centre, it was impossible to count any rings due to deterioration, as you can see in the next photo. However since American Beech is a tree of a closed canopy type forest, typically the growth is very slow in the first few decades of its life. Unless there is a larger over storey tree that dies or falls down providing a significant amount of sunlight to the forest floor allowing young trees like beech and maple to grow vigorously, the growth rings would be so close together it would be difficult to count them. So with that in mind, I estimated that this tree was at least 250 years old, and could very well have been 300 or more years. Large mature trees are known to live up to 400 years.

Now that this tree is dead, it will no longer be providing beech nuts for critters such as the Eastern Grey Squirrel, Blue Jay, various woodpecker species or Wild Turkey.

However its remains will be quite useful for many other creatures over the next few decades until it completely decomposes. In fact it is well known that a dead tree provides life for far more species than a live tree, so all is not lost. Whether it be beetles or other invertebrates, various species of fungi or other creatures, this fallen log will be of enormous benefit to many forms of wildlife. Salamanders will be one of the larger types of wildlife that will eventually call this rotting trunk home.

Blue-spotted Salamander

Red-backed Salamander

While I was checking out Clear Creek Forest, I wandered the trail to see what else there was to see. Obviously this provincial park is about more than just one tree, although the older growth character along the main trail is certainly an important one, and a reminder of what large parts of Chatham-Kent once looked like.

Spring wildflowers are finally appearing. I saw several species, including:

Dutchman's Breeches

Hepatica

Bloodroot

Skunk Cabbage

Silver Maple

Birds were not plentiful on this brief woodland visit, just things like chickadees and robins.

I did spend a bit of time on the north side of the road where a very different character of the provincial park occurs. There were geese and ducks in some of the ponds; swallows and kingfishers were searching for food, and a couple of Yellow-rumped Warblers were busy in their search as well. On occasion one of the swallows would take a break and rest on a branch over the water.

Northern Rough-winged Swallow

A few Ruby-crowned Kinglets were busily foraging along the shrubby edges of the ponds.

May this forest giant 'Rest in Pieces'

Winter owls, of course, but a swallow and oriole?

The St. Clair National Wildlife Area Christmas Bird Count is behind us, and I will provide an overview in the next post. But since that count on Jan 1, I've been out trying to catch up with various lingering birds. The lack of any real winter in the last few weeks has likely made it a lot easier for some of them to survive.

First off was to check out the Northern Rough-winged Swallow that was found by Blake on the Wallaceburg CBC back on Dec 27. The bird has survived, but on both of my trips to check it out, there were few if any insects flying about, so I'm not sure how successful it has been in getting enough to survive on. Although it flies quite well, when it lands its wings are typically drooping, and some of the chest feathers look a little dishevelled. With the prospect of some cooler weather on the way, it will be interesting to see how long this bird survives.

On my way back and forth to Wallaceburg, I keep an eye out for Snowy Owls. They don't seem to be quite as plentiful this year as some, but there are still 4-5 around between Chatham and Wallaceburg. I always check this gas pipe enclosure, and so far this winter have not seen any owls using it. That changed on this last trip. At first it doesn't stand out, blending in with the various white pipes.

 Once you get a bit closer and with the sun at the right angle, the Snowy is quite apparent. The sun was really bright, making the white feathers of this bird a little overexposed.

A couple of other vehicles with photographers came along just about the time I was finishing up, and they got some photos as well.

Being the beginning of a new year, I was hopeful in getting the Barred Owl at Rondeau on my list. This species is so rare in this part of Ontario that there are only 4 other records for the park, and none since the early 1980s. However even though it is still around and being seen intermittently, going out to look for it is not usually successful. But on Saturday, just as I was heading out the door, I got a text from Steve that it was in campsite 6. By the time I got to the park it had moved very close to the parking lot just outside the campground. It was almost impossible to see unless someone pointed it out. This first photo is taken at an equivalent of about 12-16X.

 It doesn't really jump out, but this next very cropped photo is the equivalent of about 40X.

The dozen or so other birders eventually left, on the search for other avian targets. I watched and waited for a few minutes longer which paid off. In just 10 minutes or so, it decided to move to a lower and closer branch. I think it had heard something in the leaves, as it looked quite intently at the ground, lowering and moving its head to pin point a sound.

A few minutes later it dropped to the ground and grabbed something in the leaves. It almost immediately flew up onto another branch a bit farther away and began tugging on whatever it was in its talons. The leaves it had grabbed along with its victim dropped away and there was a small critter remaining. I pointed it out to three others who had just come by, and at that point the owl flew off towards the south and out of view. I hoped it hadn't gone too far, and perhaps it didn't, but in spite of several of us looking in the direction it flew, it was not seen again. It is quite likely it saw us, however. It is interesting that Barred Owls seem to be more plentiful in Ontario and elsewhere these last few weeks. Certainly several Christmas Bird Counts have had them, with some reporting a higher number than usual. And a recent item by CBC News, which you can read here, indicates this phenomenon is occurring farther east as well.

Satisfied with seeing my owl target, I decided to try for birds at the north end of the campground. I had seen the Baltimore Oriole tucked away in a dense tangle the other day, and in spite of my best efforts, this was the best photo I could get.

I certainly wasn't satisfied with that, so thought it would be worth another look today. Jim and Quinten and I got a brief look at the oriole high up in a cottonwood tree, but it disappeared. Mike B was in the area, and after a bit of a chit-chat, the four of us headed off in different directions. A few minutes later I got a message from Jim that he had an Orange-crowned Warbler, so I headed his way. The bird was in a large tangle and although we saw Golden-crowned Kinglets, a Carolina Wren, several Black-capped Chickadees and Dark-eyed Juncos, the warbler was well hidden. As I circled around the tangle, I inadvertently stepped on a small branch and the crack of it startled a bird larger than a warbler. It flew up into a small vine tangle and it was apparent it was the oriole! It flew up into a red cedar and although the light was quite poor, a bit of work with the photo on the computer made it reasonably identifiable.

There was the usual mix of other birds in the campground, including Yellow-rumped Warbler.

One of the park's other inhabitants met its demise not long ago. I saw this deer carcass floating at the edge of the bay. No doubt it ventured out on the thin ice a few weeks ago, and broke through, perhaps breaking its leg. Perhaps a coyote or a Turkey Vulture or, if it stays around long enough, a Snapping Turtle will have a feast of venison.