Discovering sap

Sapcicle on a broken boxelder twig

What: There are lots and lots of stories concerning the origins of sugaring. The stories have grown over many generations and may or may not resemble the original tellings of the story. As was pointed out to me by Judy Dow, basketmaker and member of Oyate, an organization that protects and preserves indigenous stories and culture, many of the stories white people tell about Indians sugaring have been bastardized, distorted, misappropriated, and anglicized. In their new forms, they now tell the stories of colonialization. They may not even reflect how sugaring was discovered in the first place or adequately/accurately portray the culture from which the story may have originated.

Websites for sugaring operations are quick to root the practice in indigenous folklore (whether it be the Abenaki story of Gluskape diluting sugar, the Haudenosaunee story of the chief sticking his hatchet in a tree, or another story of red squirrels chewing branches). I tend to be skeptical of the credibility of websites that generalize these stories and say things like, "The Indians made maple syrup. They would take a hatchet and cut a gash in the tree and insert a wooden or bark shim. The sap poured off into pots. The trees were bigger back then, and must have had plenty of sap. The Indians concentrated the sap by dropping hot rocks into the pot to boil off some of the water." Adding to my mistrust of these sources is that I'm always skeptical until I try something myself to prove (or disprove) it or observe it myself (like watching a red squirrel "tap" a sugar maple at Rock Point and come back later to eat the icicles and lick the wound sites).

Like most things, I'm sure there are elements of truth in all of the stories we've inherited about maple sugaring. My own sugaring origin story, if I didn't already know about sugaring might have begun last week when I started seeing all these rotting white pines laying on the forest floor in Centennial Woods. My attention was drawn to the down slope side, where almost all the stumps had icicles oozing out. The icicles were all a beautiful amber color with these dark hair-like strands curling up on the bottom. I tasted a few and they had an almost coffee-like flavor. They were okay, but not great. On my way back home, I spotted a boxelder that had been crushed by a careless UVM facilities truck, leaving many branches broken (see image at top). At the wound sites, icicles hung down. Each icicle had the sweetest droplet of sugar water beaded up at the tips.

I paddled the Winooski River with Brian on Saturday and at one point we paddled under a silver maple tree yawning over the gentle river. From some past flood event a few of the lowest branches had been broken off. The sap had been oozing out of the broken twigs and in the cold had formed icicles. Brian and I enjoyed sucking the sweet icicles off the branches. With such a sweet surprise, I'm sure any curious mind would have wondered what other trees would ooze a sweet sap and how could they harvest more of it. I'd start breaking branches, bending them over to collect in little containers. I don't know that I would rock boil them, but I'd drink nothing but sap water for the first month or two of spring when it was flowing in the maple genus. I'll bet harvesting sap from twigcicles would have come before "tapping" the trees, or harvesting in some other way from the bole, or trunk, of the tree.

Where: Broken branches everywhere

Other notes: Maples are still the only species to be flowing so far.

Mourning doves

What: We've got a pair of mourning doves (Zenaida macroura) that started to build a nest in a boxelder (Acer negundo) at the end of our street. I watched the male bring supplies to the female all morning. It was a hot and listless day and the female was yawny waiting for the male to return with sticks (for more on how to identify male vs. female, check out: The Secret Life of the Mourning Dove by Michele Patenaude; in short males are larger, have rosier chests, and have more irridescent heads).

As is evident in the video, it appeared as though the male was testing the strength of each twig/pine needle to be added to the nest by banging it against the ground. Flimsy ones were discarded, sturdier ones brought back. It was fun to watch him pick through the bounty of needles and twigs in search of the perfect ones. I was in and out all morning, but I'm pretty sure the male worked on this for about 6 or 7 hours before my sister and I left the house. By the following afternoon it was abandoned for whatever reason.

A finished mourning dove nest is kind of a disaster so it was hard to tell that it had even been abandoned. I found one a few years ago with Ian Worley and I asked if it was old because it looked like it was in awful shape. He said that was par for the course and the active nests I've seen since then look almost like the birds don't really care at all for craftsmanship or aesthetics. But I guess if you're building a nest in a scraggly tree like a boxelder you build a scraggly looking nest to blend in.

Ecological notes: The nest went unfinished and I think they selected a nearby site over the next couple of days after the video. Last Sunday, Brian was outside and watched the doves attacking a red squirrel. I went out and the red squirrel was coming down a white pine with feathers clinging awkwardly to its mouth. At least one of the mourning doves, and I can't really think of a more docile bird, were going crazy. So the video is from July 1st, 7 days before "the attack". I suspect that they rebuilt and soon after laid eggs. I don't know that the eggs had hatched yet, but my guess is that the doves defended their nest from the red squirrel and the red squirrel might have bit back, but not been actively hunting the doves.

Where: Burlington, VT in my backyard.

Other notes: The red squirrels have been extra bellicose the past couple weeks. It's amazing, I hadn't really seen any of them in my back yard for about two months - just an occasional sighting. But now that the fruits on our black walnut (Juglans cinerea) are swelling, they've been fighting off the gray squirrels like that's the last food source on earth. They start wailing at dawn and don't really stop. What's interesting is that the gray squirrels, though they are certainly submissive, have been equally vocal.

Also, there was a robber fly in my backyard today. I couldn't tell what kind it was nor could I tell what it was eating, but it was fun to watch it devour its meal in fits and starts.

Ruby-crowned Kinglet

What: Ruby-crowned Kinglet (Regulus calendula).

Identification: The Ruby-crowned Kinglet is one of the smallest songbirds in North America, weighing only 5-10g (0.2 - 0.4 oz). Its distinguishing characteristics are the wing bars and olive & yellow coloring on its wing tips and backside. The ruby crown that the males wear is hard to see until a male dips its head, and even more rare is when it sticks up the crest like a bright red mohawk. The song is challenging to describe, as it is a jumble of notes; it often begins with 2-3 high pitch "tsees," followed by 5-6 low "tur" notes, and ends with ending with a repeated "tee-da-lett!"

Where: Centennial Woods

Ecological Notes: Ruby-crowned Kinglets can be found as a year-long resident throughout Southern New England, but will come up to mixed woods forests of Northern New England and Canada for breeding. We won't find their nests unless we scale 100-foot tall trees, but they are known to make nests that are quite large compared to their body size, in order to accommodate a large clutch.  Its small, thin bill is indicative of its feeding habits on small insects, but it will also forage lower in the forest on fruits and seeds in the late autumn and winter.

Other Notes: These tiny songbirds are feisty and hard to track, hopping from tree to tree with such alacrity. I went through dozens of worthless, blurred photos before I could capture one in its fleeting stillness. Teage and I began our morning walk being prompted by a mentor of ours who knew the call right away. The rest of the morning, we trailed several kinglets until we made it past the power line clearing, where they came down to just above eye level, and we finally got a good look at the male's fire red crest.

Little leaves

What: Quiz Time! This seems to be the hardest part of the year for telling which trees are which: the buds are bursting, becoming unrecognizable, and the little leaves, just emerging, haven't quite yet taken full shape. It's like looking baby photos of friends and trying to guess who they are. The leaves in the photos below are some of the early ones to come out. Roll over each to test your ID skills (there are both shrubs and trees). 

Ecological notes: You can compare the male boxelder shown above to the female boxelder from my post on boxelder bugs. Also, the last photo shows the seeds from an ornamental Siberian elm in Centennial Woods. Ryan Morra and I were pondering over greenness of the seeds. One possibility is that they're actually photosynthetic when they're young (boxelder, white pine, oaks, walnuts, and probably other seeds that invest a lot in endosperm are also green when young). I would imagine that this would take away pressure on the leaves to produce energy for the developing seed. In the elm photo it's a fly on the seed, but other pests can destroy a seed. If leaves were producing energy for growth, winter storage, and the seed, they might be more likely to be at a net loss each year. Having seeds responsible for their own growth is energy insurance for the rest of the plant.

Spoiler alert: The species above are, in order, Populus tremuloides, Cornus alternifolia, Rhamnus cathartica, Acer rubrum, Rhus typhina, Acer platanoides, Acer negundo, Acer negundo, Ulmus pumila.

Other notes: Just a pattern I noticed - willow family and maple family seem to be among our earliest trees to leaf out. Big-tooth isn't out yet, birches are barely opening up, and the buds on some of our more southern species are only beginning to open (e.g. walnut, oak, hickory)

Boxelder bugs

What: Full on outbreak of the boxelder bugs (Boisea trivittata). Coincides with the flower buds on the female boxelders (Acer negundo) bursting open.

Ecological notes: These population booms are (primarily) associated with female boxelder trees. But then again, a single boxelder tree is only mostly female or mostly male, meaning that on a single tree you can find both male and female flowers, just with one sex being in the vast majority (the fancy term is polygamodioecious). I heard the bugs before I spotted them. It's been so dry here that their rustling in the leaves made them sound much louder than they actually were. At first I thought (and hoped) it was a hibernacula of snakes waking up in the warm (60o) weather. Alas it was not.

Once I spotted the culprit (actually hundreds and hundreds of culprits) my interest was piqued. I'd watched some type of fly by the lake mating yesterday, with their rears touching and the boxelder bugs took the same posturing. The males are the larger of the two and have much brighter orange bellies. They more or less dragged the females over the rocks. Pairings seemed to last anywhere from 2 to 5 minutes or so.

Where: The bugs were lining the train tracks where North Ave crosses over (by the Donahue Sea caves). The whole stretch of the tracks between North and 127 is lined with boxelders, both male and female. The bugs were mostly along the rocks between the rail lines and the horsetails where it was the warmest.

Other notes: I didn't spot any eggs, but the females will deposit them in the bark of the boxelder. Once they hatch, these little guys have a gradual metamorphosis. They can't fly when they're young but develop wings as they get older (the young look like red aphids). Supposedly they eat boxelder seeds. I'd seen lots and lots of seeds this winter on boxelders that had little holes bored into them - I'm not sure if that was from these insects.