Site Discussions

I have wondered for years if the reason that Oaks and Beeches hold onto their leaves is because of the leathery quality of the leaves.  Could it be also that they remain closer to being evergreens?

How refreshing to see an article that includes the spiritual aspects of the natural world and the role of humans within it.

For 2-3 weeks I have coming to my bird feeding area turkey hen, she has one leg only. Few times another hen joined her. I am just worried, how the one legged survive the harsh winter. Obviously with one leg only she cannot hold well up on the branch tree over night. I live in almost rural area with many trees around. One day I also spotted red fox on my property. Is there any way how I could help that poor bird?

Those empty nuts aren’t caused by the fungus, Ashley; they’re nuts that never got pollinated. On any mast year there will be a mix of pollinated and unpollinated nuts. Beech is wind pollinated, so if you have a year where most of the nuts seem empty, poor spring weather conditions are the likely culprit.

Beech are one of my favorite trees. We have a large stand at the top of our forest and I am always sad to see these trees stricken with the disease. Looking forward to a resistant beech species. I would like to plant them to revive this part of the forest.

Thank you for the beautiful blog post. Merry Christmas to you Dave!

I will installing a bat house on my lakefront property, spring of 2018. What is the right time of the spring to put up the house to have a better chance of a bat or bats occupying the new house?

The fungus also has another negative consequence…it causes the trees to produce empty nuts.  The tree still makes the shell, but when you crack them open with a fingernail, there’s no nut inside.  That not only impacts wildlife, but foragers like us.  We enjoy eating beechnuts, and they’re harder and harder to find these days.

I saw my first live possum (I usually see them dead on the road) I named Oprah. She was eating bird seed under the bird feeders. She met my dog Ottavio, 22 lb min poodle.
She was here all afternoon, I hope she stays. Better yet, I hope she survives the next week. The weather is going to be in the single to minus digits at night! She looks young but what do I know?

Thank you for a lovely reflection. You hit my sense of faith square on target.  And why I feel like I’m in a cathedral whenever I’m in a forest.  Merry Christmas.

As another recovering Catholic, the woods is my cathedral, my land is my sanctuary.  Working with it to bring out the gifts of nature is my vocation.

Don’t forget that people die or get hurt, too, in encounters between vehicles and animals. Nothing like a deer or moose through your windshield, or slewing your car into a tree or ravine while trying to avoid an animal of any size. If programs to save animals from roadkill included human casualties in their campaigns, they might gain broader support from the public.

Thank you for this information. While I hope to never need it, it’s good to have in my repertoire, and to know where to find it. I am passing it to my rural and semi-suburban dog-walking friends.

In the 1980s I was an ELF volunteer at Mary Hogan School In Middlebury, VT. ELF: Environmental Learning for the Future

My favorite event was rotting logs:
First I set out firewood and asked the young students to pull the wood apart to look for bugs. Guess what? They could not.
Then I presented semi-soft logs so the back would slide off and the students could see the channels. But still no bugs.
Then I brought out the laundry baskets with soft rotting logs that were falling apart. There were lots of critters.
Sometimes those same children -  now parents themselves -  will see me in town and comment on the rotting logs in the classroom from their days at Mary Hogan School.

Thanks for the sweet memory of volunteer activities with children in nature.

Dear Dave Bushrod Mance III,

Like you, I was raised Catholic and parted muskrat skins with the church as a teenager to seek my own answers. I discovered that when in the woods, I sure felt a hell of a lot closer to my beliefs than setting in any pew ever got me.
I have a theory on that “odd phenomenon” you speak of when a land owner suddenly wakes up to the blessing he’s had right under his nose for years. I think it’s the development of a conscience. They tend to get more defined as we get older. Funny thing about a conscience. It usually won’t stop us from doing what we shouldn’t, but it sure can put the damper on enjoying it.

Merry Everything and a Happy Always
Bill

Well said, Dave

Very, very nice, Dave. Merry Christmas.

Mike, I hear you - unfortunately, I don’t have a great suggestion. The flies are entering in autumn through any little opening you have in your structure, and I’m guessing a camp just isn’t going to be tight enough to keep them out.

Depending on your setup, you might look to see if there are particular areas on the inside that they are likely to be using to come from the walls into the heated spaces (ex. an attic vent) but again, assuming a cabin/other typical camp structure….a couple of strategically placed hand vacs may be your best option!

I have a terrible cluster fly infestation in a camp in patten Maine. I would love to know how to effectively keep them from getting into our building, or make them not like our building.

What a nice article! 

I have an old house and we definitely get explosions of cluster flies, mostly outside thankfully.

Thanks for pointing out the little known fact that yes, some flies are pollinators too!