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'

Snow birds and big trees

Some 'snow' birds are showing up here in southwestern Ontario. A Snowy Owl was seen by Jim Burk a few weeks ago, but it seemed to disappear. Then a few days ago, Irene Woods reported one on a pumphouse near the corner of Bisnett Line and Lagoon Road. It apparently likes this vantage point....far enough away from any road to minimize disturbance, and in a slightly lower portion of the ag field where it is less breezy. I've seen it on this pump house on several occasions. This is a highly cropped image from a photo taken with lens giving the equivalent of a 22X binocular. Fortunately this is a species that even at a distance is easily identified under less than ideal conditions.

Snow Geese are not common in this area. In eastern Ontario, they can number for a few days in the tens of thousands in a single field. Here, we are lucky to see a few individuals each fall. In checking the database of the Blenheim/Rondeau Christmas Bird Count, which has been going for 75 years (and most often between Dec 15-21 so at the very tail end of fall), we've recorded them only about a third of the time, and even then, mostly in numbers less than 10. The blue phase of the Snow Goose is even rarer here. In those same 75 years, we have recorded them on only 7 occasions. So it was a nice treat to see this blue Snow Goose hanging out with several hundred Canada Geese along the east side of Rondeau, which is off limits to hunting and the birds are fairly tolerant.

A juvenile white phase Snow Goose is still in the area, but I didn't get photos of it. It has sometimes been seen along the east beach of Rondeau, but yesterday I saw it with several hundred Canada Geese along the lake shore off of Erieau.

Another mostly snowy white goose is the Ross's Goose which I saw, got decent photos of, and posted about recently. Those two seem to have left the area, as several birders have been diligently looking for them without success.

Right at the beach edge of Rondeau I noted this:

I don't think it will be in high demand for picnicking any time soon, but it might be useful for small kids to put their beach toys on next year. That is if it survives the winter ice, etc.

Sticking with the snowy white bird theme, these large majestic birds are frequently seen, unfortunately in increasing numbers, around Rondeau Bay.

Mute Swans are popular with the general public, but most of the public are not aware (or perhaps don't care) that these birds are some of the most vicious, nasty and damaging species of waterfowl we have to contend with. They really play havoc with almost all of our native species of waterfowl, taking over large areas of wetland and refusing the presence of other species.

Owls are also popular with almost anyone, whether it be a Snowy Owl as shown above, one of the largest of our owls, or the smallest of our owls, the Northern Saw-whet Owl. The Northern Saw-whet is the smallest owl species in Ontario, being only 20 cm (8") although when you see them they usually look even smaller. Just a few days ago one is thought to have flown into a window or something and was sitting in a rather vulnerable place, being threatened by a cat. The landowner brought it to the park. Nothing seemed to be broken, so it was put on a safe branch of a pine tree and left to recover.

A few days ago I purposed to explore part of the Keith McLean Conservation Lands (KMCL), just north of Rondeau, that I had never been to. I was encouraged to do so after having had a conversation with Ken Bell, who had earlier seen one or more very large trees near the far northeastern corner of the property. So I ventured out. En route I crossed a portion of the wetland/creek system that was still free of ice. Some Mallards, Gadwall and this Ruddy Duck were enjoying the respite from the waterfowl hunting going on around Rondeau Bay.

One of the plants that stand out at this time of year is Pokeweed (Phytolacca americana). The dark purplish blue berries against the reddish purple stems are quite obvious. They aren't edible for humans, but birds love them!

 I eventually got back to where some big trees were. I came across a Shagbark Hickory that measured 87 cm dbh (dbh is the official height for measuring tree diameter. It is 1.3 metres above the ground which is about 4.5 '). That makes it one of the largest Shagbark Hickories I have ever seen. But larger trees were in store. Near a cluster of woods where some older farm buildings and a residence formerly occurred, I came across this tree that Ken had told me about. It is a Sugar Maple, and measured 125 cm (almost 50") dbh.

And as I gazed across the field towards the wide creek system at the eastern edge of the KMCL, I noted some oak trees that were impressive even from a distance. I had to see them. One of the first Red Oaks I encountered was almost exactly one metre (~40") dbh, but that one was small. One not far away was 155 cm (slightly more than 5') dbh.

Red Oak, 155 cm dbh

 The Red Oak that is almost a metre dbh is in the background of the photo above.

This one isn't in great shape, but that is typical of trees that have been around for a couple of centuries or more and qualify as old growth specimens. It is hard to tell how old this one is, but is likely at least 200 years old.

Old trees often have hollow sections, which are quite popular with wildlife. When I first saw this raccoon, I thought it was just basking in the sun, but in very short order, I realized it was dead. There has been an outbreak of distemper amongst raccoons this year, which often happens when populations are high, so this individual might have been a victim of that.

As I continued along the top of the creek system, I encountered a real behemoth: this Red Oak, although it was difficult to measure using the exact protocol of the Ontario Forestry Association for the Ontario Honour Roll (OHR) of Trees.

Those standards require measurement at 1.3 m in height from the highest point of land the tree is growing on, which in this case is at the left hand side of the photo. This specimen is on a slope, and measuring at the 1.3 m height means that the large branch on the creek side will interfere with the measurement. So I measured a bit below at about the narrowest diameter, and it came up at about 190 cm (which is almost 6.24 feet across!). It is likely even older than the previously shown one, and it is not impossible for this tree to be ~250-300 years old. It does seem to be in better shape than the 155 cm one, based on outward appearances. I noted afterwards that there were other very large specimens elsewhere along this creek system, perhaps even larger than the ones I've seen already.

This is not the largest Red Oak in Ontario, however. That bit of notoriety is claimed by a specimen growing on private property closer to Blenheim which I measured and proposed to the OHR in 1984 at 194 cm. I intend to get back to measure it again. No doubt it has grown even larger in the 30 years since!