Category Archives: Environment

For the Pine Being

By Sandy Stott

“Like great harps on which the wind makes music. There is no finer tree.” — Henry Thoreau writing about the white pine in his Journal, September 16, 1857.

 

It took one microburst, three consults, and a dark, wind-fraught night before we made the final call.

“Yes, Jeff,” we said to local arborist Jeff Gillis, “we’d like to set up a time to take down our front-yard pine.” Some few minutes later, we had a date.

That October ‘19 night, the power had gone out, unleashing a racket of generators and darkening the street. Rain beat like thrown pebbles on the windows. When I’d stepped outside in the lee of the house, it was utterly dark and alive with the speech of trees enduring. Another thump on the roof punctuated their many-pitched moaning. It was like living inside a drum at a rock concert.                                                                     

Throughout the slow hours, we lay awake, counting and huddling toward daylight. Somehow, even the wan light of predawn seemed hopeful. And with it, the wind began to ease; we looked out on a branch-littered world.

When I walked out in the morning, I found that others had been less lucky. Our next door neighbors had had their car crushed, its roof now caved in where driver and passenger once sat. Just down the street, a large pine lay astride a back roof. Inside, an arm-thick branch stub had punched a hole in the ceiling. Water dripped steadily from the limb into a bucket set beneath. Throughout town it was a morning of saws.

When we bought our house nearly 20 years ago, part of its appeal lay in the way it was set within woods. The lot was very small, but wherever you looked through our many windows, you saw trees; their long stalks lifted your eyes. Sky peered through the gaps in the crowns. It was an optimist’s aspect. Many neighbors shared it, living tight to their trees too.

While we all lived day-to-day, the pines grew. High above, they spread the sails of their foliage, caught whatever winds blew and leaned and swayed in response. Their roots, as pine roots will, remained shallow. And, in our neighborhood, which lies atop alluvial sands put down by the last glacier, there’s not much for a tree to grip.

We began to call our front yard pine the Worry-tree; it was our conundrum. Prince of the yard, it rose more than 90 feet due west of our house. On days when I felt so inclined, it was a big hug, too big, in fact, for a little man to grasp. The Worry-tree had its name from its habit of leaning a few degrees east of true. If neighbor Worry were to go anywhere, we would receive it square.

When a microburst blew through in September of 2018, taking down seven large pines within 100 yard radius of the Worry-tree, including a like-sized king pine 50 feet away, we knew we needed to do something. So began the consults.

We considered cabling the two lofty leaders together, but that didn’t answer the pine’s tilt; it simply meant that if it went, we’d get its fullness rather than half a whack. Either one would crush the house. “Go to the basement if a gust-front blows in,” we were told.

After the October ’19 storm, I sent a note to Jeff Gillis:

“Our primary concern with the tree and its threat to our house lies in worry about a gust front/microburst. They often come from the west or northwest as part of a thunderstorm line, and wind from that direction would push the tree right at our house, which is also the way its weight tends. That sort of storm is usually a summer sort, and even a March cut of the tree would get it removed before summer. Winter storms, when they’re severe, tend to be nor’easters, or occasionally blow-ups from the south or southwest, and the wind gusts don’t tend to reach the level of a microburst. So, even as the tree leans in our direction, those winds would tend not to drive it at the house.”

I got this back: “Your reasoning for, and timing of the pine removal sound dead on to me. As such, we will keep the March 12th work date, and, I will continue to look for a sooner time.”

The “sooner time” arrived in January on a 15-degree day that featured also winds up to 25 mph. Not much of a day for time up high, but arborists are hardy folk. We were away, but, throughout the day, I felt a persistent sadness. I’d seen big pines taken down, and I knew roughly how it would go. When we got back, I went out to the stump to take in what was: it measured four feet in diameter, and its rings — counted twice — summed to 85, rife with their thick or thin stories of growth and endure years.

Neighbor tree, I thought, we lived together as long as we could.

Postscript: some solace: after the felling, I talked with the foreman of the crew about his frequent work in our neighborhood.

“Yes,” he said, “when these houses were built, many of the pines were only 40’ high. Now many have reached their limit, and we’re here all the time. In fact, I built half of my house from neighborhood pine. We try to use what we can, so much of our cutting doesn’t end up in a hole.”

A vision of a snug house of local pine rose in my mind; I thought back to the “tall arrowy white pines, still in their youth” that Thoreau felled for his house at Walden. I liked that vision.

Sandy Stott, formerly of Concord, Massachusetts, is a Brunswick, Maine resident, chair of the town’s Conservation Commission, and a member of Brunswick Topsham Land Trust’s Board of Directors. He is the Roost’s founding editor, and he writes for a variety of publications. His recent book, Critical Hours — Search and Rescue in the White Mountains, was published by University Press of New England in April, 2018; Tantor Media released an audio version of the book in February, 2019. He may be reached at fsandystott@gmail.com .

Loving Doves at Creekside

By Ashton Nichols

Lovey and chick make the best of their accommodations at “Creekside.”

Lovey (a.k.a. Lovey Dovey) is in residence at “Creekside,”  our c. 1840 farmhouse. Lovey is a mourning dove, of the family Columbidae, and this year she has had the misfortune—largely self-imposed—of moving into last year’s sparrow’s nest for her spring mating and rearing of chicks.

She is twice the size of the sparrows who built this well-made nest last spring in our screened-in-porch. One morning Lovey’s head is hanging over the edge of the nest tucked into the brick wall of Creekside. The next morning her tail is hanging out of the nest, so far in midair that it looks as though she might plummet to the ground at any moment. But she stays firmly at her task, sitting tightly on top of those eggs, keeping the center of her small, down-lined nest at least close to her own body temperature.

The mourning dove (Zenaida macroura)  is one of the most common birds of wildflower fields and suburban lawns, evident in in almost all of the lower forty eight states all year round, and in summer well into British Columbia in the West—along the Alaska passage—and in the East to the top of New Brunswick and Nova Scotia. The call is a muffled oo-wooo-coooo-wooo, and it lasts a long time; the book says often from four to six minutes. The birds also make a loud, flapping whistle every time they take off.

Chandler Robbins’s wonderful Birds of North America (a Golden Guide to Field Identification) reports that while these doves nest singly, they feed “in flocks.” Whether in a nearby flock or off completely on his own, Lovey’s mate showed up for the first time this morning, looking extremely well fed. He sat on the nearby waist-high metal fence for a long time. Then, he flew back into the neighboring maple tree, cooing all the while, and suddenly he flew up to Lovey’s nest, landed directly on top of her, and pushed her off into the air. She flapped twice and landed nearby in the yard’s largest maple tree.

Mourning doves are one of those bird species in which the male shares egg-sitting duties with the female: she typically sits all night and he during the day. He literally nudges her out of the nest when he lands. She acts almost surprised, and yet this must have happened every day since she laid her eggs. Now he sits there quietly, turning his head from side to side, and she flies off across the yard to gather food for herself and her offspring to be.

Yesterday, for the first time, we realized that two eggs had hatched in the sparrow/dove nest and that two newborns were lying still in their down-lined space. Lovey looked as though she could not get comfortable for most of the morning. She would stand, turn around, flap her wings — singly, or in unison — then peck toward the center of her nest as though something was annoying (or pleasing) her? By the afternoon, we could see two balls of fluff, their heads barely visible amid each feathery ball.

By noon today, Lovey as mother was feeding them for the first time. She disappeared without her mate replacing her and returned within the hour to begin feeding her magic dove’s milk. Mourning doves, like their close relatives — pigeons — make a milk-like substances in their digestive tract to feed their young. It looks more like cottage cheese and it has more proteins than cows’ milk; it also has more antioxidants and immune-producing substances. So Lovey is now putting her closed beak into her squabs’ tiny mouths, opening her bill, and regurgitating this life-giving fluid into each chick’s waiting gullet.

It is a spring full of birds at Creekside this year; some mornings we virtually feel like an aviary. A nearby robin occasionally fly out from her chest-high nest into the wide yard, coming back with a worm that she swallows. Soon these worms will not be for her. So far this spring, in addition to countless robins, we have seen the usual starlings, grackles, blackbirds, and sparrows, also several cardinals, mockingbirds, nesting house wrens, and—excitingly—a fluty-throated wood thrush, the flash of two Baltimore orioles and one gorgeous brilliant bluish-violet indigo bunting.

So, keep your eyes open all spring and—with any luck—you are likely to have ornithological sights galore surrounding you!

Ashton Nichols is the Walter E. Beach ’56 Distinguished Chair in Sustainability Studies and Professor of Language and Literature at Dickinson College

 

Touchdown!

Lawrence Millman (blue jacket) leads mushroom foray in Estabrook Woods on February 3 as an alternative activity to the Super Bowl.

By Lawrence Millman

Thoreau Farm and the Thoreau Society sponsored the 2nd Annual Super Cup Fungus Foray on Sunday, February 3, in order to provide citizens of the Commonwealth with a healthy alternative to watching a bunch of grown men smash repeatedly into each other in an event known as the Super Bowl.

Cup fungi are somewhat smaller than a football stadium, but considerably more interesting.

This fungi flashcard showcases some of the fungi found in Estabrook Woods during the Feb. 3 foray.

We found several on the Super Cup Fungus Foray that was held in Estabrook Woods in Concord, Massachusetts.

Altogether, we found 41 different fungal species — not bad for the dead of winter.

Here’s the species list:

  1. Angelina rufescens (cup fungus — uncommon)
  2. Apiosporina morbosa (Shit on a Stick — a parasite of Prunus species)
  3. Bisporella citrina (cup fungus)
  4. Botryobasidium sp. (crust)
  5. Camarops petersii (Dog’s Nose Fungus — uncommon)
  6. Cerrena unicolor (Mossy Maze Polypore)
  7. Chlorosplenium chlora (cup fungus)
  8. Crinula caliciiformis (asexual form of Holwaya mucida)
  9. Daedaleopsis confragosa (Thin Maze Polypore)
  10. Daldinia concentrica (Cramp Ball)
  11. Diatrype stigma (pyrenomycete)
  12. Diatrypella sp. (pyrenomycete)
  13. Exidia recisa (Brown Witches Butter — everywhere!)
  14. Holwaya mucida (ascomycete — uncommon)
  15. Hydnochaete olivaceum (Olive Toothed Polypore)
  16. Hymenochaete rubiginosa (crust)
  17. Hypomyces pallida (on Tyromyces chioneus)
  18. Hypoxylon fragiforme (pyrenomycete)
  19. Irpex lacteus (Milk White Toothed Polypore)
  20. Kretschmaria deusta (pyrenomycetre)
  21. Nectria sp. (ascomycete)
  22. Lachnelulla resinacea (ascomycete on pine resin)
  23. Panellus stipticus (Night Light — bioluminescent)
  24. Peniophora meridionalis (crust)
  25. Phaeocalium polyporaeum (ascomycete — on Trichaptum biformis)
  26. Rosellinia sp. (pyrenomycete)
  27. Sarea resinae (cup fungus on pine resin)
  28. Sarea difformis (cup fungus on pine resin)
  29. Schizophyllum commune (Split Gill)
  30. Stereum complicatum (Crowded Parchment)
  31. Stereum ostrea (False Turkey Tail)
  32. Trametes cinnabarina (Cinnabar-Red Polypore)
  33. Trametes concyifer (Tender Nesting Polypore)
  34. Trametes hirsutum (Hairy Turkey Tail)
  35. Trametes pubescens (Pubescent Turkey Tail)
  36. Trametes suaveolens (Anise-Smelling Polypore)
  37. Trametes trogii (Big Pored Polypore)
  38. Trametes versicolor (Turkey Tail)
  39. Tremella lutescens (Witches Butter)
  40. Trichaptum biformis (Purple Toothed Polypore)
  41. Tyromyces chioneus (Cheese Polypore)

Lawrence Millman is an adventure travel writer and mycologist.