Losing a Neighbor

This year's big windstorm took down several large trees in our subdivision.  I was saddened to lose this neighbor as it has provided oak acorns with acorn weevils to show WOLF students.  They are a good example of another small lifecycle that goes on around us unnoticed.

These Curculio sp. live out of sight.  When our Master Naturalist Buck Keagy was collecting acorns to plant hundreds of oaks in the past, he would dump them in a bucket of water and plant only those that sank, knowing that the floaters had weevils or were otherwise damaged. I do the opposite, throwing out the sinkers to find acorns likely housing weevils. You can read about their life cycle and the weevil wasp Cerceris halone that depends on them in this blog.

Estimating the tree's age based on its diameter at breast height, most tree sites would have called it around 110 years old.*  In this case, by tree ring count it was 90 years old. The difference is that urban trees that are watered regularly and in open sun grow large faster.

This giant broke off at the roots about 16" underground. Oaks in nature spend more of their energy in the first few years creating deep roots before t.heir growth spurt to height and diameter later.  My forester professor Jim Gulden supported my theory that its shallow root system likely came from frequent urban lawn watering.  If gets all that free water, why bother with deeper roots?

The only good news is that the trunk will be making someone good furniture. 

* Estimating a standing trees age is explained at this web site.

Dining Out

 

We recently looked out our patio sliding glass door and saw this juvenile Cooper's hawk sitting on our bench 6 feet from us.  It wasn't bothered by us, more intent on our bird feeders which had been hosting a bunch of English sparrows.

Cooper selecting dinner

With Barb's 90+ species of native plants in 1/10th of an acre backyard, we have a wide variety of food choices for birds. In addition to the seeds of flowers and shrubs, there are all the pollinators, butterflies, bees, beetles and other insect species climbing on the flower heads. This and our bird-feeders provides a cafeteria for birds ranging from hummers to bluejays and mockingbirds.  There are also chipmunks and skinks scurrying along the ground to catch the eye of our diligent hawk.

Cooper's are model fathers, building the nest, feeding the female while nesting and then bringing baby food for the nestlings before they fledge the next month. What is not to love about a daddy like that!

It's a bird-eat-bird world out there as seen in our neighbor Cyrus Taylor's backyard video of the Cooper's dining alfresco, munching and spitting out the feathers of an unknown bird.

We humans are the apex predator on our planet. Now we are faced with picking winners among the smaller species.  By taking down our bird feeder we may slightly lessen songbird mortality.  On the other hand, there are still the chipmunks and baby rabbits. A Cooper has a family to feed, hopefully choosing English sparrows. In the long run, it is still a bird-eat-bird world. 

More on Cooper's Hawks at this MDC Field Guide link.

++++++++

An interesting side note, the name Cooper's Hawk is part of a debate in the birding world.  As described here, the American Ornithological Society is changing the names of several birds because the name is associated with Confederate officers and/or slave owners of the Civil War period.  Who was Cooper?

"He was an American naturalist born in 1798 and one of the original officers of The New York Academy of Sciences. He was a man of “exceeding modesty,” according to a written history of the academy. “Over cautious in naming new species, he generously permitted others to use his material and sometimes to gain the credit that might have been his.”

As one  member says, “I just find it a little bit excessive. It’s one thing to take down statues of Southern Civil War generals and outright racists,” he said.

It gets even more complicated.  The Audubon Society is named for John James Audubon, a well-known early American birdwatcher and a wildlife artist during the 1800s who created “The Birds of America,” a collection of 435 life-size prints of various bird species.  

"He also was a slave owner who opposed emancipation and was accused of academic fraud and plagiarism, stealing human remains and sending human skulls to “a colleague who used them to assert that whites were superior to non-whites,” according to the National Audubon Society." Sun Times

This is all part of a slippery slope, acknowledging our past society sins without totally ignoring the achievements of the "sinners".  To me, it raises the obvious question, "who is next?"

Pollinator Island

Sitting in our backyard reading, my mind wandered off to the aromatic asters (Symphyotrichum oblongifolium) along the patio edge.  Watching it closely over 5 minutes I counted over 25 species of pollinators flitting from flower to flower, gathering food in an urban desert. These range from a bumblebee and several butterflies to assorted skippers, syrphid (flower) flies, and unidentifiable others down to 3-5 mm long.  This video shows only a few in action.

We are in a subdivision with close cropped lawns of turf grass and non-native plantings.  As I watch the show there is the roar of a lawn service next door running a commercial lawnmower larger that a small car trimming the neighbors turf grass lawn to a smooth 2" putting green with no insects surviving.

My wife, Barb, has planted over 90 species of native plants on our 0.10 acre backyard. Over several years we have watched a variety of new creatures move in, ranging from skinks, lizards and box turtles to baby rabbits, chipmunks and birds. Caterpillars and other insects also draw in excited neighborhood children.

Our backyard opens onto a street, prompting lots of stares and occasional visitors wanting information. You can sample it in this drone view.  There are lots of resources available to expand native plants in your yard. Springfield Yard Ethic has resources including advise, rebates and signage helping to explain your yard to neighbors and draw in two-legged visitors.

We would encourage you to consider native plants which are both beautiful, non-invasive and ecologically friendly.

Yellow Log

By our resident (amateur) mycologist, Mark Bower.

Click to enlarge

While hiking in the Bull Creek area I noticed a bright yellow log in the distance. I first thought it was a reflection of sunlight, but as I got closer, it was indeed yellow. I then thought that it may have been painted, but as I got closer, it was clear that this was a massive spore deposit.

My suspicion was confirmed when I poked it with my hiking stick and a strip of bark fell off. Underneath the bark were the telltale structures of Xanthoporia andersonii, the canker rot of oak.

This fungus is a polypore which is a pathogen of oaks and sometimes hickories. Its spores enter a living tree through an injury of a branch stub or sometimes the trunk. The spores germinate and form the fungal hyphae, which grow into and infect the heartwood, causing white rot (i.e., preferentially digests lignin). As the infection progresses, it extends outward and eventually reaches the cambium and kills the tree, sort of a natural girdling. It then forms its tubular fruiting bodies and the yellow spores are shed.

Interestingly, peg-like fungal outgrowths are formed, which push out against the bark, causing it to detach from the tree, allowing the spores to escape. The display is brief as this fungus is short-lived, quickly turning dark brown, then black, leaving a log which appears to have been burned.

This is just one more example of the tiny creatures that are all around us in nature when native species are allowed to pursue their own life cycles.