Site Discussions

I enjoyed reading this article by Katrina very much. It made me think of my childhood in northern Alabama where I roamed the forests around my home. Growing up in that environment made me love the outdoors and want to protect it. I came to New England when I was 23 and never left it. I have spent many years hiking the White Mountain trails and surroundings. Nowadays, at age 77, I’m content to wander all the wonderful town forests in southern New Hampshire to get my “nature fix”. I recommend the SELT (South East Land Trust) properties which are very well taken care of. Thank you, Katrina and Miles. Keep up the good work.

Great article! I’ve been watching the PA farm country eagle cam and wondered about eagle winter migration and happened upon this info. Thank you!

The discussion of tree line is mistakenly assumed to be a temperature phenomena.  It isn’t. It is a partial pressure of gases issue with CO2.  Specifically the eastern tree line at Mt Washington etc is lower because the atmospheric pressure is lower due to the high speed winds in the area. The tree line corresponds very well to the partial pressure of gas because it will be higher on one side of the mountain where the wind blows faster than on the other side.

It is related to the ability of the plants to photosynthesize sugar. This tree line issue happens in the tropics at very nearly the same altitudes as in the West USA etc.  It even happens in Africa the same way where the mountains go above about 9,500 feet (3000 meters).  Even on the flat the large areas of Africa (Rift Valley) see the same effect. 
Sorry folks but looking at this for climate change in terms of temperatures is not borne out by the recorded data.  Look up DENSITY ALTITUDE calculations for pilots. When I was young the CO2 levels were lower and the tree line was lower, not because it was colder lower, but because the partial pressure of CO2 changed.

Are the Autumn Olive in all the counties in Vermont??

Great information Laurie. My experience is only anecdotal, but it seems that I see as many or maybe more than I did twenty years ago.
I saw one today in a little marsh surrounded by thousands of acres of forestland in the Allegany National Forest.

Thanks.

I have the Stihl 120C, which turns out (according to my dealer) to have the same power and bar length as the more expensive version with the longer life battery that was used in the article. I recall I paid somewhere around $300-400 for it (don’t quote me). I have found this saw to be a life saver! My model (without the extra weight of a gas saw) is really wonderful in terms of lugging it around, and it cuts really well and cleanly. For me, now almost 73 years old, the lighter weight and the ease of starting makes chain sawing so much safer and more efficient.  Every operation is much more controllable for me, and therefore a lot safer, especially if one is on a ladder. It is true that the smaller battery doesn’t last all that long - maybe an hour of limbing.  However, I purchased a spare battery, so now I can get a longer cutting time, which generally suffices for the jobs I need to do.  The extra battery was not too expensive, and is really a smart purchase. Finally, it is just more peaceful to use this electric chain saw, as noted in the article.  The smell of fresh cut wood is aromatherapy for me.

Today my daughter was standing beneath a tree talking to a friend when a morning dove laid an egg on her head. The egg bounced to the driveway and cracked. The egg was still soft and warm. Has anyone heard of a dove laying an egg without a nest?

Lovely article.  After a walk in the woods in southern Ontario, April 17 2021 I noticed Beech trees in several pine groves.  These Beech were isolated from other Beech and seemed to hold “territory”.  Is it possible they are like Walnut in this respect?  I think this spacing is more than coincidence.  A forest stream was nearby in the general area.  Other species included white and red pine, cedars, currents, raspberries, Mayapples, Skunkmcabbage, Canadian Anemone, Oak, Maple, Willows, and one unidentified tree possibly Hickory (a long dead single specimen in a 10 mile radius).

My brother has the Makita double battery saw and likes it. He has cut a bit of 6-8” diameter hardwoods with it and seems to think it does OK.  However, it’s the only saw he has ever run, so he does not have much to compare it to. His main reason for buying it is that he was already fairly heavily invested in Makita Cordless tools, so he had plenty of batteries for it.

I’ve had the opportunity to use the Milwaukee M18 Fuel chainsaw with a 16” bar a couple of times. When used with one of their larger, high output batteries (such as the 9 or 12 Amp-Hour batteries), it has good life and seems to cut on par with some of the better 40cc gas chainsaws. I was impressed enough that I will probably buy one at some point. Since I already own plenty of batteries, I’ll save a bit of money and buy the tool only.

We were burned badly by early attempts. Although our DR saw was useful, the batteries have failed, there is no replacement, and DR sort of shrugged their shoulders.

Nevertheless, I’m delighted to read that progress is being made. It was wonderful to saw in relative quiet and without fumes! Can’t imagine that these electric saws, like cars, are not much further!

Great detailed information and enthusiasm for his many-faceted job. Thanks.

Thank you James for your kind and thorough comment!

You are certainly correct that beavers have negative impacts; many land owners would likely have less kind words for me than your thoughtful comments.

That said, by most estimates, beavers have returned to dramatically smaller population levels than their pre-European hunting numbers.  Doubtless, they have dammed far fewer streams in recent years than they did before European colonization.

By extension, many of those streams would not have been suitable trout streams in that earlier time frame.  Removal of beavers may well have significantly expanded brook trout range in streams. It’s interesting to consider.

And they certainly remove trees both directly and by inundating their roots.

So is the return of the beaver a correction to a more natural state? If yes, this begs a second question: do we like this more natural state? I don’t think I’m smart enough to fully answer that question to the satisfaction of all.

There are so many interesting questions….but only so much space in a 750 word essay.  You may enjoy “Eager” by Ben Goldfarb.  He covers some interesting ground….and far more of it than I did.
Cheers
Declan

This is a great photo and article about the importance of vernal pools to “mole” salamanders and other species of wildlife.  The underwater photos are outstanding.  Thank you for the time and effort you put into the documentation.

The author of the article has done an excellent job of describing the pluses associated with beaver—- even mentioning some pluses I hadn’t thought about. However, it is unrealistic to say or imply that everything beaver do is a plus.  In substantial portions of New York State (certainly in the southwestern part of the State where I live) populations have expanded in many, many instances to nuisance or overstocked levels resulting in the killing of large desirable trees that are adjacent to their impoundments.  The need for a place to exist leads them to even take residence in existing ponds and lakes that benefit very little if at all from their presence.  They find highway culverts an easy place to establish an impoundment.  The State Division of Wildlife now routinely issues beaver destroy permits to private landowners and highway departments. After all, fur trapping has diminished to the point that it no longer seriously keeps beaver populations in check.

There’s another negative impact of beaver ponds that needs to be acknowledged. Wild populations of trout here in the mid-Atlantic States are more and more confined to the very headwaters of a limited number of stream systems especially if the stream systems are not of high gradient such as those found in more mountainous areas.  These lesser gradient (but not low- low gradient) headwater streams that historically had wild populations of trout are also where in my experience beaver populations prosper and proliferate quite successfully because their dams are less likely to get washed out (literally blown out) during periods of high runoff. Unfortunately the shallow impoundments created by beaver result in significantly warmer summer water temperatures—- warm enough so that cold-water-requiring trout can no longer survive in the stream except possibly in an even smaller piece of it.  Any significant fishery for these fewer remaining and typically small trout becomes essentially non-existent. The truth is that if there is no real trout fishery in these headwater streams, there is less concern for what is to become of any wild trout that they may hold.  And the situation for wild trout populations in general in many parts of the East can only get worse with climate change.

It may at first seem ironic that if you have beaver ponds on headwater streams in the Rocky Mountains, survival of wild trout is not in jeopardy at all (at least not at present) and you will in fact have some outstanding trout fishing in these ponds BUT the same is not true in much of the eastern United States because our streams are not fed in summer months by snowmelt.  Here in the mid-Atlantic region high gradient mountain streams and a relatively few lesser gradient streams notably fed by large year round springs are the principal hold outs for decent wild trout populations.

In conclusion, I will be among the first to say that beaver are of great benefit to a large array of species (waterfowl and wading birds immediately come to mind) but let’s also recognize that beaver can have negative environmental impacts too, especially when checks other than the amount of habitat available to them limits their populations.

I found one of these in a seasonal pond on the back of our property yesterday.  The pond was dried up-it has been a very dry spring and I found it under a rotting log.

I believe the reference to the cacophony in the article is specific to the frogs.

Fascinating! Thanks so much for sharing this interesting experience and information.

As the author of a book on brook trout (Squaretail: The Definitive Guide to Brook Trout), and Executive Director for a native fish non-profit (Native Fish Coalition), I understand what the regions wild native brook trout are up against.  Habitat degradation, fragmentation, warming water, nonnative fish, droughts, and floods have all taken their toll.  Another problem is angler exploitation and stocking, the latter of which is driven by the former.  NH and VT routinely stock over wild brook trout, including nonnative browns and rainbows.  In addition to competing with wild fish for food and space, stocked fish displace wild fish, and can introduce disease and parasites, negatively impact genetics, and prey on them due to their larger-than-natural size and concentrated high numbers.  Angler exploitation, a real problem in frontcountry rivers and streams as well as small ponds, reduces populations making them more susceptible to the impacts of floods and droughts, decreases genetic diversity, and diminishes fishing quality which results in calls for stocking.  In ME, the primary problem is nonnative fish such as muskies, pike, bass, smelt, and golden shiners.  In NH, while wild native brook trout persist in backcountry headwater streams, they are all but gone from most rivers, large streams, lakes, ponds, and easy-access small streams.  These waters are propped up almost solely through recurring stocking.  Interestingly, when I was young, many of the backcountry streams were exploited by the “worm and creel” anglers, which compromised many to the point that they too needed to be stocked.  As this group of anglers passed, traffic in the backcountry went way down and wild fish populations went up.  In fact, in some cases the streams of my youth are fishing better today than they did forty-plus years ago.  While addressing habitat degradation and fragmentation is critical to preserving and restoring wild brook trout, if we want to see them in the frontcountry, large rivers, and lakes and ponds again, we will need to address angler exploitation and stocking as well, something most groups have avoided due to pressure from state fish and game agencies and the angling community.  In Maine, there is a term that has been used by generations of anglers to describe waters with poor fishing: Fished out.  And to be clear, pressure is not the problem, harvest is, as many western waters withstand far more fishing pressure than most northeastern waters.  Adding woody debris is cited as reducing predation, in some cases man is the predator we need to protect the fish from.

I think these picture-dialog portraits of weekly happenings in our NH woods is one of the most interesting and informative articles anywhere available.

I have put a link to your ‘Week in the Woods’ on our Sutton Conservation Commission website. 

Henry Howell, Chair
Sutton Conservation Commission

Thank you Brett!

This is way cool. Wish I knew more about these wonderful creatures. 

This past summer I had a number of Covid refugees spending time in the Barrett Pond (Stoddard, NH) environs.  A couple kids with magnifying glasses and one with a very cheap “microscope” commented on all the “water wild life” in our pond. I have no idea what they found, but,  they found lots of remarkable forms of life in and around that pond resulting in hours of speculation and uncertainty. The kids loved it.

If you (or anyone from Harris Center) would like to make Barrett Pond a focus of your studies (short or long term), I’d like to invite you to set up shop here for a season or a decade or longer.  Does the Harris Center have any formal long-term study sites in Stoddard?     

I’m not going anywhere and I think you know where to find us.

George