What: The month of green! I had meant to get this up a couple of days ago, but didn't have a chance. The snow has melted and our woods and lawns now have a greenish tint to them! So exciting. The powerlines still seem a bit drab, but there's lots of fiddleheads from cinnamon, interrupted, and sensitive fern coming up in the area and the sumac buds are bursting (they're the straight sticks in the foreground). Phragmites (the light brown reeds along the brook) shoots are erupting.
Phenology notes from previous month:
Osprey nesting
Woodcocks "peent"ing
Spring ephemerals coming up (e.g. bloodroot, hepatica, spring beauty)
Grass greening
First dandelions coming up
Spring migrants arrive in droves, big flush still to come
Colder species of amphibians singing in full force (toads, treefrogs, bullfrogs still to make their full debut)
First leaves appearing in understory
Maples starting to leaf out
Sapsuckers returning, as second flush of sap starts flow (as non-maple species start to get sap flowing)
Woodchucks are out and about
First warm nights
First 70 degree weather
Fireflies out and about, not mating yet
Shorts and t-shirts abound!
Snow and ice has all melted
Dawn chorus is louder and louder (starting around 5am with robins then chickadees then cardinals then song sparrows, at least near my house).
What: Even with the leaves off the trees and sounds (particularly I-89) filtering through the woods with reckless abandon, there's still a peacefulness to the movements of the woods in winter. While walking across the Winooski Bridge I admired the slow undulating flaps of a Cooper's hawk above and the odd oscillations of the water bubbling back and forth off the ice as it came to a halt in front of the dam. The hawk flitted gracefully to the west, cut a quiet line through dense air and alighted on a distant smoke stack.
There's an equal grace and peacefulness to the slow bending of a hemlock - what I call the Winter Tree - under the sway of the wind. Among the conifers, hemlock stands out to me as such a delicate and deeply cold tree. The rich green of the foliage feels more like the shadow of a leaf, like the tree was born in winter only to endure summer each year.
The branch above is about 2 3/4" across
Enduring the summer means slooooow growth. I was out harvesting wood for coasters, and I found a giant old hemlock that had come down across Wool Pullery Brook in South Burlington. I cut the branch from the trees in the photos at the top (about 35' from the trunk) right at the base where it came off of the tree (if the tree were still standing the branch would have been about 25' up). Hemlocks are about the most shade tolerant species, and a single hemlock needle can live for up to 40 years (in part because it can deal with as little as 10% light and still photosynthesize enough for the plant to keep it around; for contrast, white pines are far less tolerant of shade and lose about half their needles each year).
I guess I shouldn't have been, but I was surprised at how ancient the branch was given its size. It was too hard to count the rings by eye so I sanded and finished the "cookie", photographed it, then ramped up the contrast. Each arrow represents 10 years of growth. The rings were extremely tight, and there's a distinct boundary between the heartwood and sapwood (sapwood is the lighter section of rings on the outside). The branch was much less resinous farther out, indicating that the distinction was largely due to the tree needing extra support in holding up that branch for 106 years.
Where: Hemlocks grow at extremes - there are hemlock swamps and there are steep rocky hemlock slopes. It can grow in the shadiest of places, less than about 10% light. This tree was growing along Wool Pullery Brook in Centennial Woods.
What: Our first rains in ages!! And that new rain seemed to be a bit too much for the beavers of Centennial Woods. The rain started on Saturday night and continued well into today (Monday). I was out yesterday and the lower dam (which burst in January and was repaired in February) blew out by about 1pm. Sometime later on Sunday the upper dam blew out. Luckily over the last week they had built a new dam in between that kept up a channel about 3' deep.
Ecological notes: The water was awfully murky from the heavy siltation due to all the rains. Not only was this the first rain in a while, but the temperature has dropped considerable. I watched the beavers from about 4:30 to 8:30 and by the end I could see my breath pretty clearly. Since the beavers are right next to the trail, it was neat to watch how they respond to dogs and hikers. They definitely perceived the hikers with dogs well before those without. It also took the beavers less time to return to baseline following a hiker without a dog. Hikers with dogs were less likely to notice the beavers. Everyone was definitely enthused about the beavers though and it was great to get to share their excitement.
And I'm still trying to wrap my head around why the beavers will slap their tail. It's not as easy as they do it when they feel threatened and to ward of would-be-predators. I think they will do it to communicate to others over longer distances. This one slapped its tail while it was on one side of the bridge and the other two beavers were upstream. It was as though it were saying, "Hey don't forget about me, I'm down here where all the people are (there were 8 of us at one point)." It seems to also serve as an indication of investigation, as with the chickadees, "Chicka-dee-dee" call they make when they get close to people. It seems like they're saying, "I"m going to go investigate something, would you check in with me in a little bit to make sure I'm still alright." I've seen beavers make this sound to nothing in particular before they headed upstream out of eyesight of other beavers.
Where: Middle terrace of the beaver dam under the Velco powerlines.
Other notes: Twas also a great afternoon for birds. Saw a pair of geese land in the retention pond, a Cooper's Hawk, flicker, and phoebe skirting the edge of the pond, winter wrens singing, and lots of cardinals, robins, song sparrows, grackles, and red-winged blackbirds. Surprised I haven't seen more nests yet - I'll have to spend some more time tracking individual birds. And no sign of Ryan's ruby-crowned kinglets today.
What: One of the beavers wound up passing out on the bank of Wool Pullery Brook and slept there for 10 hours! I had watched it the night before and caught it on my game cam. I figure it was active for about 12 and a half hours straight, plus the three previous days had been super warm. Like everything else it was probably just enjoying the first taste of summer in March!
Ecological notes: While the videos are from last Friday, I was back out at the pond tonight. The weather is about 60 degrees colder now and a thin sheet of ice is blanketing the pond. I watched as the beavers actively cleared out the ice by putting their heads above it and pushing down. It was funny to watch as one of the beavers had chunks of ice stuck to its nose.
Where: Wool Pullery Brook at the upper terrace of the beaver pond (there are now three terraces). Still haven't their upper den, but I think it's right next to the upper dam.
Other notes: The beavers seem to start being active around 7pm, an hour or so before it's dark.
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