Arboreal and Spiritual Rescue

Protecting a tree sapling in a wire cage

We've had perfect autumn weather this year in the northern Piedmont, and today was no exception.  So, I decided to "fly the coop" for an hour or so this morning to take care of two trees in serious need of attention.

I've got five guys on my stewardship (i.e., maintenance) staff who should be doing this kind of job. However, because the weather was so nice, and because it would have been harder to tell the guys where the trees were located than to just do the job myself, I went out in the field.

The first tree, a linden (or basswood) with a diameter of about 8 inches, was being rubbed by white-tailed deer bucks almost to death.  When rutting season comes around, the deer rub their antlers against trees they find suitable and, in the process, scrape off the bark.  If they scrape the bark all the way around the tree, it will kill the tree.  For some reason, the deer seem to find basswoods irresistible, and they will savage any specimen that is not adequately protected.  My staff either encloses the trees in wire cages or they wrap large trees with burlap sacks.  In the case of the basswood tree I went out to rescue, the burlap bag had slipped down and the trunk was exposed.  So, I firmly reattached the bag and I enclosed the tree in a wire mesh cage.

The second tree I went to rescue was a red oak sapling whose protective wire cage had been completely overwhelmed by the insidious invasive vine porcelain-berry.  Imagine the tree being planted in the image at the head of the post completely blanketed by a mass of vines and you get the idea.  I cut away and uprooted the vines, replaced the wooden stakes supporting the cage, and generally tidied up the planting spot - I'm an "anal" neat freak.

While I was working, a man stopped to tell me that there was a sizable snapping turtle alongside the trail about 50 feet away.  I had just walked the trail to get to the tree and hadn't even noticed the turtle, which looked like a big, gray rock when I went up to see it.  Cool!  Then, when I went back to the tree to finish up, a woman walked by and thanked me for saving the tree.

She went on to say that my preserve is the one thing in life that keeps her sane and she didn't know what she would do if she couldn't walk the trails and rejuvenate her psyche.  She knew my name (though I didn't recognize her), and she concluded by thanking me profusely for being the heart and soul of the preserve.  She told me that she had so much gratitude and appreciation for me and and my commitment to the natural world.

Deferential type that I am, I sorta' gave her an "Aw, shucks" response.  But, you know what?  She really did lift my spirits.

Phantom of the Woodland Edge

For the last two years, I occasionally have seen a white-splotched female deer in my preserve.  This strikingly distinctive (and not very shy) doe frequents the meadows and a private fenced-in lawn just south of my organization’s headquarters. 

This doe is pied (or piebald), a condition that is relatively common among mammals, birds, and even reptiles.  A pied animal has irregular unpigmented patches of hair, feathers, or scales commingled with normally pigmented patches. The animal's skin is also unpigmented under the light patches and pigmented under the dark patches.  The piebald condition results from leucism, a genetic abnormality in which pigment cells fail to develop normally while the animal is an embryo.  If all of the animal’s pigment cells fail to develop normally, the animal will be completely white; if only some of the cells are defective, the animal will be piebald. 

 

Though the doe stands out because of her large white patches, she is not an albino.  In albinism, only the cells that produce the pigment melanin are defective whereas other pigment-producing cells continue to function normally, so albinos often have a pale yellow color created by other pigment-producing cells.

Another difference between albinism and leucism is eye color.  Albinos cannot produce melanin in their eyes, so they typically have red eyes because the underlying blood vessels show through.  In contrast, Pennypack’s piebald doe, like most piebald animals, has normally colored, dark eyes because the pigment producing cells in its eyes developed from different embryonic tissues than did its skin and fur cells.

The proportion of white to normal-colored skin on individual piebald animals can vary considerably between generations, between different offspring from the same parents, and even among members of the same litter.  Our piebald deer is a perfect example of this characteristic of leucism because our deer had two fawns in the spring of 2015, both of which were completely normal in coloration.

 

Incidentally, the terms pied and piebald entered the English language five centuries ago.  These terms referred to the magpie's black-and-white plumage combined with “bald” in an obsolete use meaning “streaked with white.”

So Bizarre As To Be Nearly Unbelievable

 A white-tailed buck in the natural area fitted with a radio collar

For the last three years, we have been working cooperatively with a wildlife biologist at a local college to track the movement of radio-collared white-tailed deer inhabiting the natural area preserve.  We provide the land and part of the financial support, and the college provides the know-how and labor (in the form of students).  It's a nice synergistic relationship because we get to learn about the movement and population size of the herd, the biologist gets publishable research data, and the students get some exciting hands-on experience tackling deer (in a trap) and fitting them with the collars.

Over the three years, the college has trapped and monitored 33 deer.  Each collar transmits data for about three months until its battery is nearly exhausted, and then the researcher drops the collar off electronically.  Once retrieved and fitted with a new battery, the collar can then be placed on a new deer.

Yesterday morning, I came to work and found one of my employees gutting a newly-killed doe in preparation for taking the deer to a butcher for processing.  Though a little disconcerting first thing in the morning, such a scene is not at all unusual here.  What was unusual was that my employee told me that the deer had been found dead in the parking lot that morning, and that it had been shot with a 22-calibre handgun.  Although we're in the midst of hunting season, it's not legal to hunt with a handgun.

Later in the day, the wildlife biologist telephoned to fill me in on details.  It seems that around midnight, the biologist and his students captured a deer.  After fitting the animal with a collar, they released it and it sprang away into the woods (as they all typically do upon being released).  Then, before the biologist and students could even clean up and get ready to go home for the night, they head a shot that came from the direction of one of the roads adjacent to the woods.  The group turned on its collar-locating electronic device and soon found the just-collared deer, dead in the parking lot.  The unfortunate animal, traumatized by the capture and collar fitting, had been shot dead minutes later by some yahoo (a kind term) with a handgun cruising along the road after midnight.

On a personal note:  I used to run along some of these same roads, and my runs were often after dark.  This incident made me realize that some yahoo could just as easily have shot me, left me to die alongside the road like this deer, and no one would ever have apprehend the perpetrator.  It gave me pause.   

Midsummer Miscellany

 Katydid (Image from InImage.com, not one of mine) 

No theme to today's post, just a few random notes.

First, last night (Wednesday, July 13), the annual katydid chorus began.  Only Tuesday, I had mentioned to Kali that I'd been hearing cicadas for the last week or so but hadn't yet heard a katydid.  But on our quotidian evening stroll to close the gate after sunset, three or four katydids were serenading from the trees.  Nothing says mid- to late-summer than katydids at night.  Fortunately, it got cool last night and I could leave the windows open to hear them.

Second, the flock of three hen turkeys and their combined 15 poults have gotten up enough courage to eat the seed spilled under my bird feeder.  Prior to yesterday, they'd been too skittish to allow me to sprinkle seed under the feeder for them, but now they've gotten used to me.  The poults still scuttle away a short distance when I appear, but the hungry females rush for the seed, and the young are not far behind.  By autumn, they'll all be demanding seed.

Third, deer have gotten into my garden. Either I left the gate open, or they pushed it open, but when I went down to cut basil for spaghetti sauce on Monday evening, the gate hung ajar and the tomato plants had been partially ravaged.  Nearly all of the fruits were gone, and much of the plant material had been damaged.  Fortunately, there were still some fruits left, and some of the plants have flowers on them, but it will be a lean and late harvest this year.  I secured the gate and strung deer netting higher up on the fence posts; I hope it keeps them out.

Finally, Kali and I are heading West tomorrow to cross off one of the items on my "bucket list."  Notice I said my list, not our list.  She's a good sport and, if everything goes well, she'll have a great time, too.  Update during the last week of July when I return.