Fence Repairs

Along one mile of my property line is a fence that has been in place for close to 50 years.  The effective lifespan for a fence expected to contain livestock is 20 years.  Since my neighbor and I neither have livestock, the fence needs only to serve as a visual indicator of where the two properties join.  This fence is primarily bordered by woodland.  The combination of falling trees and deteriorating posts results in a fence that sags and at times lays flat on the ground.

The fence wire is rusty, but is still strong and functional.  I periodically select a section of fence where I will splice broken wire and replace non-functional posts.  This year I chose an 1100 foot stretch and spent five days cutting and setting posts, cleaning obstructions from the fence line and attaching the fence to the new posts.

Posts are cut from cedars in the woodland that died long ago from lack of sunlight and have stood long enough since death to lose their outer coating of bark and sapwood.  A typical tree will give three eight foot posts with diameters ranging from eight inches at the base to four inches at the top.  The red inner wood of these posts is rot resistant enough to survive for many more decades.  Notched poles are used to hold broken posts in place until I’m ready to attach the fence to the new posts.

My primary fence building tools are the spade, spud bar, and posthole digger.  The star of the show, and the tool I would most like to leave in the barn, is the 18 pound spud bar.  The chiseled end is used to break up rock encountered while digging postholes and the flattened end is used to tamp in the earth used to fill the holes after post placement. 

This is a common sight in most of the postholes.  Shallow bedrock is responsible for the conditions that allow such a diversity of rare and unusual life to exist at Blue Jay Barrens.  I remind myself of that fact as I chisel away at the rock with my spud bar.

My work is helped along somewhat by the condition of that rock.  The meteor that hit this site 350 million years ago fractured, and in some cases pulverized, the bedrock.  Much of the time, I’m able to break out chunks of rock by applying pressure to already existing cracks.  There are times though that the spud bar rebounds from the rock with the sound of a clear chime and I know that I’ve found a bit of rock that is both massive and unbreakable.

Even when it does break apart, dealing with rock is tedious and time consuming.  Sometimes I accumulate a nice pile of rocks.

In some locations the limestone bedrock occurs in thin beds sandwiched between clay.  These beds, usually an inch or less thick, eventually yield to the spud bar.  Getting the first break in each layer is the hard part.  After breaking through, it’s fairly easy to chisel an opening large enough to accommodate a post.

The most uncommon experience is to encounter no rock at all.  This was my only rock free posthole.  It just served to remind me of how quickly I can set a post when I don’t have to deal with rock.  That made the rock filled holes that much more aggravating.

The fence isn’t pretty, but at least it’s recognizable as a fence.

I’m pretty good about staying on task while I’m out working, but occasionally I’ll take some time to look at nearby things of interest.  I was wondering why there always seemed to be a shaft of sunlight breaking through the tree canopy at just the place I was working, when I noticed the chewed condition of these Prickly Ash leaves.

It didn’t take long to find the cause of the chewed leaves, the caterpillar of the Giant Swallowtail butterfly.  This is one of those bird poop mimics and its camouflage is quite effective.

I had to pull the branch down in order to photograph this guy and in the process, I annoyed it enough that it displayed its red osmeterium.  The osmeterium is a defensive mechanism designed to discourage predators not put off the bird poop appearance.

I also found several clumps of Indian Pipe just beginning to emerge.  Indian Pipe is a saprophytic plant that lacks chlorophyll and harvests its energy from decomposing organic matter.

I had my own fan club of Hackberry Butterflies.  These butterflies love to lap up sweat and I sweat enough to support legions of these guys.  Most of the butterflies were going for my back and shoulders, but a few found that I had imparted enough sweat to my tools to make them a convenient place for a drink.  Though they seemed to have abundant energy, none of the butterflies helped with the fence building in any way. 

Giant Swallowtail Larva

Some people find it hard to believe that a face like this can be found on an animal in Ohio. It looks to me like something you would see on the Outer Limits. This is the front end of a Giant Swallowtail Larva and the face is just a decoration that’s part of its defensive arsenal. The actual head is located below that mouth-like slit.

Earlier this year I showed the young larvae that depended on their resemblance to bird droppings to avoid being eaten. Larger specimens still bear a bird dropping appearance, but they are much more noticeable and have gained a few additional tricks to avoid being something’s meal. At the slightest disturbance, the enlarged thoracic region of the caterpillar raises to display its mask to a potential predator. A show of eyespots is often an effective way to scare off birds.

A more aggressive disturbance causes the caterpillar to draw its weapon, a projectable organ known as an osmeterium. The osmeterium exudes an unappealing substance that combines touch and smell to deter predators. In cases like this, I usually attack using a stick so as to avoid carrying the odor with me on my fingers.

If the attacker comes from the front, the osmeterium takes on the appearance of a snake’s tongue, another visual deterrent to attack by birds.

This larva is about an inch and a half long. It won’t be long before it moves off to find a suitable place to form a chrysalis, the form in which it will spend the winter. Maybe I’ll see this guy in adult form next spring.

I found several suitable photographic subjects. There are many fluorescent blue spots and streaks that make the caterpillar appear to be throwing electrical sparks. I wonder if those might serve as another warning to potential predators.

A single clump of Prickly Ash contained half a dozen larvae. Most were resting quietly on the stems, but this one was busily consuming a last leaflet.

There’s quite a defoliation effort going on here. Fortunately, there are only one or two larvae per shrub. If these can all make it through the winter, next year may surpass our current record butterfly numbers.

Giant Swallowtail Larva

This could be a fresh bird dropping, but it’s not. This is the larva of a Giant Swallowtail Butterfly. Bird dropping mimicry is one trick used to avoid being eaten by hungry birds.

That blurry, winged thing in the middle of the picture is a female Giant Swallowtail looking like she’s trying to deposit an egg. I’ve never seen a live Giant Swallowtail that was not moving. This one was no exception. She bounced across a couple of leaves and then shot out through the woods. These butterflies are fast.

This prickly Ash is what attracted her. This is the primary host plant for Giant Swallowtails in this area. It’s normally found scattered through the woods as an understory shrub.

Instead of eggs, I found a young larva. Larva of many species avoid feeding in an irregular pattern such as this, because it is likely to attract predators. That’s apparently not an issue when you look like bird poop.

The easiest way to find Giant Swallowtail Larvae is to view the leaves from below and look for their silhouette. Of course, lots of other things also sit on the leaf, so not every shadow is a larva.

The larva I found was not in an easy to photograph location, so I had to do a little work to get him properly positioned. First I used my walking stick to lower the branch and then I hung dead branches along its length to get the larva in just the right position. The larva is on the leaf in the bottom center of the picture.

Giant Swallowtail larvae have a special irritant producing gland that they bring into play to repel predators. This larva is not yet old enough to produce the irritant, but I was able to make it show the rudiments of the developing gland.