Acair Fearann

Frass is the technical term for insect poo. It has a nice hiss to it, probably very appropriate to what the oak stand I was in today would have sounded like at the height of the gypsy moth infestation this year.

It is truly weird to walk through a good quality oak forest, with plenty of mature red and white oaks, in the summer….in full sun.  It should, of course, be deep shade. It felt like one of those odd days that happen in March when the temperature spikes but there are no leaves yet, except the sun angle was wrong and the other foliage said late summer.  Almost complete defoliation of every single oak tree in sight.  It is difficult to really grasp the scope of the damage, because for half the year that is a completely appropriate ‘look’ for an oak tree. So it isn’t that it is a ‘wrong’ sight so much as it is an ‘out of season’ one, and that creates a certain dislocation of time and a certain difficulty in comparison: we’ve seen that oak tree looking that way before and it was normal, but now it isn’t normal.

The mind is an odd thing, we rely on so many different cues to stand there and say ‘summer’.  The logical, rational calendar is perhaps the weakest of the lot.

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or disruptions of the kingdom. The big snag of the silver maple was cut down yesterday. I mostly watched, removed the crown as it was cut up (new addition to the highway fence*), and otherwise cheered. I know better than to be in the way of someone dropping a twenty four inch diameter, leaning, rotten to the core, thirty five foot tall snag….in such a way that it lands exactly right and does not hit anything worth saving.

It turned out to be entirely hollow from the break almost to the ground: an inch wide ring of living wood surround a void.  But not a dead void.  It had ants, thousands of ants.  Every cut of the saw to make another chunk (really ring) came with a wave of ants from both sections of cut wood, rather along the lines of a horror movie if one doesn’t care for bugs.  Today the ants have mostly vanished, probably into the highway fence.

The ants, however, weren’t nearly as impressive as the other denizens of the rotted center. As one gets down towards the base, the void of any hollow tree is filled with rotted dirt/wood/organic material.  In this case it is also filled with the biggest white grubs I have ever seen.  Half inch in diameter and three or so inches in length.  I do wonder what sort of beetle they end up as…..and how many we will find when the remaining fifteen feet are finally cut up….I wish I could tell our various insectivores (the foxes, weasels, skunks, etc) about them; they would have a ball.

*the highway ‘fence’ is a long brush pile built out of whatever chunks of wood, branches, etc come to hand and placed on the very edge of the highway easement. Over time, it will hopefully end being solid along the entire frontage; whenever I have a good bit of tree that is easily place on it, I try to do so. Interwoven and stacked so that the pointy ends face out, it would be possible to take a bulldozer to it, but climbing over it is less than attractive in many spots now.  Made even less attractive by the carpet of poison ivy that blankets the strip between it and the highway, said poison ivy is quite deliberate.

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The dry weather has brought hints of fall color early this year. Among them is tulip tree.  As always, it is starting to turn from the inside out: a sprinkling of pure gold leaves deep within the still clear green leaves hints at the turning season.  The tulip trees are a green silver underside early in the year, but now they are going gold.  It is the reverse of its early flowers: those votive candles are lit all over the tips of the branches.  Now, the light has retreated, burning brightly within the tree.

Or so a poet would have it.

The botanist would note that those are likely the most stressed leaves and thus turn first!

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Slightly irritating point in the afternoon: people I consider friends calling wanting to ban target shooting in the town. May their garden get eaten by the deer and may the coyotes get their chickens, again.  I don’t happen to like what my neighbors have going every weekend (slightly drunk, loud people for six hours each day in my case), but I’m not proposing a law against it either. Argh. I might be more sympathetic if the guy ever sighted his rifle in at 6am in an unsafe location, but he doesn’t.  The occasional mid day on a weekend, on private property, in a location with a good backstop isn’t the end of the world.

In other news, I was sitting here writing a weekly piece for my church when I heard that most distinctive of noises: a sharp Crack, then a series of muffled crunches, and an almighty Thud.  Spend any time in the woods near a logging operation and the sound is unmistakable: a large tree with an intact crown just fell over.  Dead wood, by the way, often makes no sound at all until it hits; the crack and the crunching rustle need live wood and a crown interfering with other branches. Not that it really matters, one doesn’t want to be under either sort.

It took a bit of looking to find the tree in question: the big old Silver Maple by the driveway entrance, the survivor of the original pair planted c. 1935 when the state highway was realigned.* Its trunk snapped about thirty five feet up. Just a little too much wind from the northeast, courtesy of the hurricane that didn’t.  The crown fell down right along the trunk, which was nice of it. Had it snapped at the base it would have made a mess, as it stands! the damage to surrounding trees is minimal: it smashed one hemlock and possibly a volunteer beech; but did not come near two important spruces, a Japanese Maple, or the driveway pines.  The trick will be the trunk itself.  But, I know people 🙂

*Unless they were even older and belonged to the house on the other, the old east side, of the highway, before the highway moved east. I’ve never been sure.

** I’ve just outed myself politically haven’t I? Guns, God, and logging.  Oy, my apologies to one very specific aunt in particular who loves the woods and has an entirely understandable dislike of guns.

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Habitat therefor.  Southeastern Connecticut (Patchaug State Forest, Wyassup Road Block), two years on from a clear cut for New England Cottontail habitat. Also excellent for certain birds. Completely, totally impossible for a person to walk through. Hence, the popularity with things like rabbits, bobcats, fox, grouse, turkey, and all that sort of critter.

Believe it or not, the New England Cottontail (identical on the exterior and interior, aside from a slight difference in the shape of the inner ear, to the Eastern Cottontail) is a species of concern, despite being a rabbit.  Actually, it makes a great deal of sense, since (unlike the Eastern Cottontail) it doesn’t care for suburbia or intense agriculture, preferring instead the natural fields, burned areas, and beaver swamps, and now human created clearcuts.

Who knows if one will ever see a rabbit.  But, I bet it is going to be an awesome birding location!

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It is odd how we always think of crickets as a summer insect, but they really aren’t. Or more accurately, summer is a complicated set of seasons and not one season at all. Crickets belong to late in August, to the lengthening nights, the tall and drying grasses, and the leaves that are no longer the luscious green summer leaves but have become whip thin and rustle in the stirring breeze.  Sometimes, there is the drenching summer humidity; but nearly as often are the days with temperature changes of twenty or thirty degrees.  This is cricket weather, they don’t belong in the velvet darkness of June or even July, when the fireflies are at their peak and all is green and growing. They are an odd echo of the spring peepers, but somehow a steadier sound. The peepers are frantic and (naturally) very directional, since they always come from one location: a suitable pond. If the peepers are a sudden wellspring of life, the crickets are the steady, encompassing beat of life fulfilled.

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