Garter Snake

I never tire of finding snakes and it’s amazing how many of them are willing to sit quietly while I take pictures. The camera lens was six inches from the snake’s nose when I took this shot. This is the Eastern Garter Snake, a common species in Ohio that is normally found somewhere near water. This one was about 100 feet uphill of the creek. The Garter Snake seems to be the last species to head under cover in the fall and is usually the most common snake I find in November.

When I was a kid, finding something like this was like finding buried treasure. Back then I didn’t mind the snake’s “Stinky Poop” defense and would have had this guy scooped up and half tamed before my Mom could say “What have you got there, Steven? Put that down!”

This snake is looking a bit blue. Maybe it’s just depressed at the thought of cold temperature soon to come. This species can display quite a range of colors and confuses some people into thinking they are seeing many different species of snake.

The two old snake nests are not far from where I found the Garter Snake. Garter Snake young develop inside the female and enter the world fully formed and ready to go, so those nests couldn’t have been made by this snake.

 When I looked up from photographing the snake, I was startled to see this object. At first I thought Rover had come to return me to The Village. Then I saw it was just balloon number five of the season. Not a Halloween balloon as I had predicted, but good enough to tie my record for one year’s find. One more balloon before the end of December and I have a new record.

Tuliptree

Where there is life, there is a continual struggle to survive. There are always more living things than there is space in which to live. At Blue Jay Barrens, billions of seeds of hundreds of plant species are produced each year. Each seed has the potential to develop into a mature plant, but the landscape is already full of plants, so it’s going to be tough for these new plants to find a place to grow. I see evidence of this battle for dominance everywhere I look. Decades ago a seed of the Tuliptree, Liriodendron tulipifera, managed to germinate and begin to grow on this rocky hillside.

That Tuliptree overcame many obstacles to reach its present size. An extremely dry, rocky hillside does not provide the best of growing conditions for this species. Cedars were already established here when this tree began to grow and blocked a lot of the necessary sunlight. A cedar that may have caused the death of the tiny Tuliptree seedling was pushed aside as another cedar fell. This may have given the fast growing Tuliptree the opportunity it needed to put on some height.

Pushed aside, but still living, the cedar still poses a threat. The Tuliptree is growing around the strangling roots of the cedar. This may cause a defect at the base of the tree that will shorten the Tuliptree’s life expectancy.

The rapid growth of the Tuliptree has allowed it to overtake the cedars that shaded it as a sapling. Now the Tuliptree is producing shade to the detriment of the cedars. As the amount of shade increases, the vitality of the cedars will decline. With enough Tuliptrees doing this same thing, the hillside could be transformed from a cedar to a deciduous forest.

The trunk is sound and should increase greatly in size before this tree gives up its life. This is the kind of rugged bark I always thought of in elementary school as being real tree bark. Back then, if bark didn’t have deep furrows and wide ridges, I didn’t think it deserved to be on a tree.

These remnants of successful flowering are all that are left after the seeds have been distributed over the surrounding area. If this tree gained its position in the forest because of some superior genetic trait, then its offspring may be able to accomplish the same feat.

Bush Honeysuckle

Here are some rather misshapen fruits of a Bush Honeysuckle. There are several different Asian species of Bush Honeysuckle that are invasive and aggressively becoming established in woodlands in this area. Maybe this fruit is the first sign of a devastating disease attacking exotic honeysuckles. That would be nice, but highly unlikely.

Like the vining Japanese Honeysuckle, the Bush Honeysuckle seeds are distributed by birds and when a plant becomes established, it spreads by sending out rhizomes that spawn a long series of clone plants. Nursery owners love this type of behavior in plants because they can rapidly increase their stock. Invasive plant fighters loathe this reproductive method because of the speed in which a plant can blanket a new territory.

Bush Honeysuckle is an understory plant, meaning that it lives beneath the mature forest canopy. Like other plants of the woodland floor, the honeysuckle develops leaves early in the spring and holds them well into fall, so it can take advantage of the sunlight available when the woodland trees are without their leaves. A trip to the Cincinnati area will show you how this plant can quickly grow to produce a monoculture in the woods. I will not let that happen to the woods at Blue Jay Barrens.

Fortunately, honeysuckle is highly susceptible to glyphosate herbicide and can be killed by spraying any time the leaves are on. The plant has a shallow root system, so seedling shrubs can also easily be controlled by pulling. Just grab the little shrub and give a steady pull.

Depending on conditions, you may have soil clinging to the root mass. Some people believe that the disturbance caused by pulling plants can create ground suitable for colonization by exotic species. This is probably true, but I believe the risk is minimal. The fact that an exotic species is growing there in the first place, makes me believe the site was perfectly suitable before I began messing around. It’s also evident to me that I’m not the only source of disturbance in these woods. From this place in the woods, I can see areas scratched up by foraging turkeys, areas torn up by running deer, strips heaved up by foraging moles, holes left open by digging squirrels and divots knocked away by falling branches. Besides that, the soil is loose and workable, so growing conditions are ideal where ever a seed falls.

If the plant is dropped to the ground with even a little bit of soil protecting the roots, it may just continue to grow. I knock the soil from the roots so it goes back into the hole it came from. The exposed roots will dry out and the plant will die.

Some people are afraid to even let the bare roots touch the ground for fear of the plant reclaiming its position in the forest soil. They’ll hang the pulled plant on a tree branch to deny it any chance of finding soil again. Maybe this is like hanging a crow on the garden fence to keep other crows away. I’ve never had any of these pulled plants continue to grow, so I just drop the bare rooted plant on the ground.

Embarrassed Deer

This is the face a deer that is both startled and embarrassed. In pursuit of love, he forgot his basic survival instincts and just about walked over the top of a human.

I was standing about ten feet to the side of a trail when three does ran up the trail and shot by me more quickly than my camera could awaken. After they disappeared from sight, I turned around to wait for whatever had them on the run. This buck was already in view.

He clearly had their scent and was wasting no time moving up the trail. He seemed oblivious to my presence and kept moving towards me.

Bucks can be unpredictable during this time of year and have been known to give people a sound thrashing. When he got within 20 feet of me I decided it was time to gently alert him to my presence, so I said “Smile!” His head shot up and when he finally realized I was standing there, he turned and ran a few feet back down the trail.

He stopped to give me one last look before running away. I think he was making an appeal that I keep this encounter just between the two of us.

Tall Dropseed

Three weeks ago I was visiting the tiny grass called Common Dropseed. Today I’m looking at its big brother the Long-leaved or Tall Dropseed, Sporobolus asper. Many people look at a field of grass and fail to see the different species that make up the stand. Each species differs in its palatability to different animal species, in its growth habits and in its method of producing seed.

Tall Dropseed grows about four feet tall and sometimes forms patches dense enough to exclude other species. The most noticeable characteristic of this grass is the apparent thickened stem at the top of the plant created by rolled leaves. Once you get this visual image in mind, you can see the Tall Dropseed start to visually pop out of the grass stand.

The flowers and seeds are found inside this rolled leaf sheath. The cycle of wetting and drying causes the leaf to gradually open to release the seeds. The speed of this process varies among plants and sometimes takes several months before the seeds are released. It takes some work to open the rolled leaves so birds usually leave these seeds alone when other food is available. It’s not uncommon in late winter to find where a bird has worked to open a rolled leaf to get at the seeds inside.

The lower leaves and the leaves on non-flowering plants form thin wispy curls. These leaves are what give away the Tall Dropseed’s presence in early summer. The thin leaves of the young plant form what appears to be an almost insubstantial green mist among the other tall grasses.

Kingfishers

I got to add the Belted Kingfisher to the Blue Jay Barrens bird list this week. When the little bit of water you have completely dries up each summer, it’s hard to attract water associated species. This female and her presumed mate were searching for a meal in the recently filled pond.

I was working beside the house when I heard a splash from out front. I walked around the corner and saw a male Kingfisher fly off and this female sitting on the wire with a mouth full of dripping weed stalks. By the time I got my camera out of its holster, she had shed the debris and was back to scanning the water.

A lot of the water flowing into the pond comes off the road, so it’s usually pretty brown after a heavy rain. Since the pond was dry for nearly two months during the summer, I know that there were no fish for the Kingfisher to catch. It doesn’t seem possible that it mistook a weed stalk for a fish.

After a couple of quick pictures, the bird took off in the direction of the male. She didn’t seem bothered by my presence and probably would have stayed longer, but was startled by a pickup roaring down the township road just behind the pine trees. It was fun while it lasted.

Skywatch Friday - Prairie Sky

The prairies are really attractive this time of year with the golden color of the tall grasses glowing beneath the blue sky. The prairie will begin to look a bit ragged as the rain, snow, wind and cold temperatures work on it through the winter.

The oaks are about the only trees still holding on to their leaves. They’ll maintain their leaves for quite a while, but the colors will trend more toward dirty grays and browns.

This view is from a section of trail that I travel very often. Over the next few months I’ll watch the Indian Grass stalks become bent and broken. Deer and turkey give this area some heavy use during the winter and the results of their foraging and bedding activities sometimes look as though a battle had been fought.

This area is going to be mowed during the winter to help control cedars and other woody vegetation. Hopefully I’ll get a pair of Grasshopper Sparrows to nest here next year, instead of making their usual failed attempt in the neighbor’s hay field.

As the trees lose their leaves, I begin to see the neighbor’s house and barn. There goes the illusion of wilderness. Of course, I can’t spend much time outside without hearing one of the three most common sounds of rural America; Gun Shots, 4-Wheelers, and Chainsaws.

Clouds temporarily blocking the sun remind me of the winter weather soon to arrive.

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