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'

Salamander Snippets

I've recently had several people send me photos of salamanders they've come across, wondering what kind they were. Some are quite easy to tell, but others not so much. What are salamanders doing out so late in the season, you ask? Well it has been warmer than usual, and in reality, salamanders can tolerate quite cold temperatures, even though they are cold-blooded. In fact in the spring, they will emerge from their over-wintering sites and be found mating in woodland pools even while there is still snow on the ground and ice on the water!

One of the most easily identified salamanders in southwestern Ontario is the aptly named Spotted Salamander (Ambystoma maculatum). It is a small type of salamander, but the bright yellow spots are unmistakable.

Another one that is quite easily identified and also small, is the Red-backed Salamander (Plethodon cinereus).

A colour variation of the Red-backed is known as the 'Lead-backed' Salamander, as the back is more grayish than reddish in colour.

Another spotted type of salamander fairly common in southwestern Ontario is the Blue-spotted Salamander (Ambystoma laterale). It is also a small salamander normally ranging between 10-14 cm as an adult. The amount of blue spotting can vary a bit, as the following two images show.

This next image shows both of the latter two species, which I found under the same piece of woody material on the ground.

There are other salamander species that occur, or historically occurred, in southern Ontario but are quite rare. These include species such as Small-mouthed Salamander (Ambystoma texanum) found only in some areas of Pelee Island and Tiger Salamander (Ambystoma tigrinum) which is a much larger salamander that historically occurred in portions of Essex County. I have never seen a Tiger, unfortunately. Others are restricted to the Niagara Gorge such as the Allegheny Mountain Dusky Salamander (Desmognathus ochrophaeus) and Northern Dusky Salamander (Desmognathus fuscus) neither of which I have seen, either. Still others are more often found in eastern Ontario: Four-toed Salamander (Hemidactylium scutatum) and Northern Two-lined Salamander (Eurycea bislineata). Rounding out the line-up of Ontario salamanders are the Mudpuppy (Necturus maculosus), an aquatic species, and Central Newt (Notophthalmus viridescens louisianensis). You can read more about all of these salamanders via the Ontario Nature link provided below.

And that leads me to discussing one of the most challenging and confusing salamanders of southern Ontario: Jefferson's Salamander (Ambystoma jeffersonianum). The Jeff's is largely restricted to south central Ontario, although ongoing research has had it turn up slightly beyond that area. It is a large salamander, with adults reaching 18-20 cm in total length. It is dark bluish black, with a few lighter whitish-bluish flecks, but not as large or as brightly marked as the Blue-spotted Salamander. What makes things especially challenging in identifying these salamanders in the field is a result of the unusual reproductive process and ultimate genetics of these two species. They hybridize, and there is a broad zone of hybridization. One can really only tell what kind one is by doing DNA analysis, which for these salamanders requires snipping a small tip of the tail, running it through a blender of sorts, and then examining the DNA. There are many variations of the genetic make-up of these hybrids, as there are crosses and back-crosses through many generations. It is by far one of the most bizarre and complicated reproductive systems of any organism, which is still puzzling biologists and researchers. For more information you can check out this link.

In the immediate Rondeau area, there are no known pure Jefferson's Salamanders. However there are individuals that have some Jefferson's genes, and are larger than typical Blue-spotted Salamanders. A few years ago there was some sampling of salamanders in the park. There is a tremendous amount of habitat for salamanders with dozens of kilometres of linear slough habitat interspersed with ridges of woodland habitat. Some of the individuals caught were quite large. This one in the next photo is almost 15 cm, certainly long for a Blue-spotted.

It doesn't have the typical well defined and numerous bluish-white markings that a typical Blue-spotted would have, especially on the body. This one, although it has characteristics of Jefferson's, turned out to be predominantly a Blue-spotted hybrid.

Salamanders are most often found under objects on the forest floor when they are not under ground. Even though they are seldom seen, they are a valuable part of the forest ecosystem, both as predators of worms and grubs as well as being food themselves for larger predators.

Salamanders are just one part of the reptiles and amphibian group known as herptiles. There is an ongoing effort to document the reptiles and amphibians of Ontario through the Ontario Reptile and Amphibian Atlas, coordinated by Ontario Nature. For more information on this worthwhile project, and to contribute sightings if you can, please visit this link.

Black is beautiful, and more

When it comes to the health of tallgrass prairie and savanna, that is, black at this time of year is a beautiful sight and means there is something to look forward to in the very near future!

If you have been to Rondeau in the last couple of days, you may have noticed that some formerly grassy areas which showed the beautiful dried grasses of a healthy prairie or savanna and looked like this.....

.....were now looking like this:

The park staff carried out a much needed burn a few days ago. Fire is a natural phenomenon required to maintain healthy prairie vegetation. And healthy vegetation results in a healthy mix of prairie adapted fauna, including insects, herps, birds  and mammals. If the prairie was not burned and the nutrients not recycled quickly, the prairie plants would get smothered. Shrubs and trees would eventually take over, shading and crowding out the prairie plants and stifling the prairie fauna that requires prairie habitat to live in.

The results of such a burn are dramatic. The soil, now temporarily covered with black ash, absorbs the sunlight energy more readily, and warms the earth to stimulate the prairie vegetation to start growing. In just a few weeks it will look something like this, with wonderful displays of colourful wildflowers to attract butterflies (and photographers :-).

Wildlife will be attracted to it, either very soon or next season. A fire doesn't have to happen on a prairie every year. In this part of the world a fire every 3 years on average would be about right, depending on the condition of the prairie site.

While I was at Rondeau yesterday, an American Woodcock was ditsy-doodling right along the road side, in an area of a prairie site that had not burned. It was rooting around in the soil, searching for worms or grubs, and did not seem in the least bothered by my presence. I was able to use the car as a blind and got several shots.

At one point after several minutes, the bird must have been startled by something in the leaves....perhaps a mouse or something. It jumped up, turned around and raised its tail feathers showing some agitation as demonstrated in the next image. But only for a minute or so, and then it resumed feeding.

Eventually the bird wandered farther from the road side, getting more difficult to see. One can see that its mottled coloration blends in quite nicely with the dead leaves and grasses.

The east winds had picked up, and birds that were around earlier in the day seem to have moved on.....or moved back south! At any rate, birding had diminished.

Even though a deer herd reduction had taken place at the park late last fall, they are still around in good numbers. They do look a little tattered this time of year, as they shed their winter coat of gray-brown to be replaced by their summer coat of reddish-brown over the next few weeks. Hopefully they don't need their winter coats any more!

I decided to check out Clear Creek Forest Provincial Nature Reserve. I hadn't been there in awhile and I have a spring wildflower hike scheduled there in a couple of weeks.

The spring wildflowers are coming on, but not all that quickly due to the slow spring. Hopefully the timing of the hike will match the peak of the wildflower display. Some of the earliest wildflowers are already visible in small numbers, such as Bloodroot and Spring Beauty.

Bloodroot

Spring Beauty

There is a huge amount of Dogtooth Violet appearing, with very few in flower. This shot was taken in a previous year.....I only saw a couple of single flowers out during this visit, but this is what to expect in another week or so of sunny weather.

Dutchman's Breeches are also out, but just barely.

The creek itself doesn't have a lot of flow at this point, but its gravelly bottom and some spring flow is enough to attract some fish to spawn.

Clear Creek

I noted these two suckers spawning in the shallow gravelly area of the creek.

A third one had been there moments before, but didn't stay. I am not a fish expert, but I believe these are Longnose Suckers, which are known from the area and enter cool streams along the lake to spawn. Clear Creek is one of the few streams remaining in Chatham-Kent that could be classified as a cold water stream, as there is some type of forest vegetation along its entire length to this point. Most other streams in C-K have little or no forest vegetation to shade the water, and are now considered to be warm water streams.

I also had the opportunity to catch up with a couple of salamanders, in this case a Red-backed Salamander and a Lead-backed variation of a Red-backed Salamander, both of which were resting under the same bit of debris.

Red-backed (L) & Lead-backed (R) salamanders

Red-backed Salamander

The colours, they are a-changing

That isn't really news, if one takes even a casual look around the landscape these days. Even after a short time, the changes can be dramatic.

I have been to Rondeau a couple of times over the last week, and this is what looking north on Rondeau Road just north of Gardiner Ave looked like the first time.

Four days later, it looked like this.

Bennett Avenue showed a similar trend.

Not a lot of difference in the four days compared to the previous set from a couple of kilometres south at Gardiner Ave.

Here is a dry slough south of Bennett Ave. The very large tree on the right is a Silver Maple and is just a bit more than a metre in diameter.

The roads can still be a magnet for reptiles and amphibians, as they soak up the sun beating down on the pavement. I've seen a few dead ones in the last couple of weeks. Fortunately this Northern Ribbon Snake was crossing on a less travelled portion of the road system, and on a rainy day when there was less traffic and the pavement wasn't warm to hold it on the pavement.

I came across this large cluster of a bracket type of fungus known as Chicken of the Woods. It is present all year around, but the fruiting bodies on rotting logs are most noticeable in the late summer and early fall.

Rotting logs are great for other things as well. Salamanders love them.

Red-backed Salamander

I noted this attractive,, small, grayish white spider clinging to the underside of a piece of rotting wood. I haven't determined what kind it is yet.

Harrison Trail is fun to explore, sometimes for the scenery....

 ...and sometimes there are other things!

This is a stinkhorn fungus. It is something you often will smell before you see it. In fact I smell them regularly in the late summer and early fall, but I seldom see them. The breezes can carry their odour for a ways, and one can't always follow the wind currents upwind to find the offending fungus. I didn't actually find the stinkhorn that I was smelling on this trip....this photo was taken a couple of years ago. Some stinkhorns are orange, other species are more muted in colour.

The stinkhorn doesn't produce spores that are dispersed by wind currents as most fungi do. Instead, the tips of the fungus produce a distinctive, with the emphasis on 'stinct', odour that attracts flies that are normally attracted to decomposing things. When the flies walk around on the smelly tip of the fungus, the spores are transferred to their feet and delivered to the next thing that they walk around on.

Much more attractive are the berries of this Maple-leaved Viburnum (Viburnum acerifolium). The maple like leaves are obvious, and the blue-black berries are notable at this time of year. This shrub is not common, but regular in a few places along Harrison Trail and elsewhere in the park. It seldom grows more than 2 metres high.

Maple-leaved Viburnum