Morning ramblings

American beech

This morning I heard three calling eastern phoebes while standing in one spot. One to the right of me, one to the left and the third overhead. They seemed to be engaged in a round robin (pun intended) of “fee-bee”ing to see which could out “fee-bee” the others.


The blue jay nest that I found last week appears to be finished and doesn’t look any better than the mass of sticks it was when it was still a work in progress. This morning, mom blue jay was on the nest—I could see her tail feathers sticking out of it. As the nest is high, I can’t tell if she was intent on laying an egg or already incubating her clutch.

Yesterday, one small and unknown warbler was flitting around on the other side of the lane. As I was letting the dogs out after returning home from work, I did not have my binoculars in hand. Dogs and binoculars do not go well together, so the warbler remains unknown.

My photo today is of one of the three large American beech trees in my front forest. This one could be a bit larger than the other two, but all are very nearly the same size. I can’t photograph the entire tree in one photo because whenever I back up far enough to get all of it in the same shot, the other trees around it begin to obscure it. It is a lovely and venerable beech tree, with small sapling beeches all around it. Most of those won’t survive, as they can’t compete with this large tree for light. Those little trees won’t get their chance until this large tree has had its century or two and no longer dominates.

The tree is more than twice the height of the cabin and way too big for me to circle the trunk with my arms. It’s always been my favorite tree at the cabin, rising straight and tall, past the tulip poplars and even some of the oak trees. I’m sure it’s more than 100 years old and is easily going on 3 feet in diameter. Someday I should measure its trunk so I can tell you exactly how big it is. But that’s a topic for another day.

Damaged

My blogging has been a bit quieter than usual this week. Perhaps after weeks of rain, storms and tornados I’m just not used to silence around the mountain again. I keep expecting something big and flashy to happen and it hasn’t.

I’m glad nothing major has happened this week, but I find I’ve lost my habit of looking for smaller things. It’s hard to write about smaller things when a tornado comes through. And yet after the tornado and all the rest are gone, those smaller things are suddenly harder to focus on again. My eye skips over the tiny flowers, searching the sky for the next storm. I need to get back in the habit of observing the everyday again.

And then this damaged American beech tree caught my eye. The tree wasn’t damaged by the tornado. I don’t know what happened to it. At the moment it is still alive but its long-term survival is in doubt. I was simply attracted by the textures on the tree, and then I looked closer. Even where the bark isn’t completely split, I can see the beginning cracks of another split. Even the interior wood is cracked.

To my eye, the damage to this tree does not appear to be recent, though I can’t tell how old it might be—last year, before the winter, if I had to guess. How much longer can a tree with this much damage survive? It could, perhaps, last another few years, but with this much interior wood exposed, I don’t think this is a tree that will last over the long term. Even without a tornado or another storm, not all trees in a forest survive to great size. Not all dramas are big ones.

Just a pretty tree

Late fall is such a teaser. One moment it’s clear and gorgeous, even warm. Then the sun goes behind a cloud, and it’s time for a jacket, maybe even a heavy one. The changeable weather isn’t unusual, but the change in how I dress when I go outside confounds me for a bit every year. Yesterday was nearly shirt-sleeve weather during the mid-day, and today I’ve had to search for a heavy sweater. Some days I wish I were like the dogs and could just grow a nice winter coat for the new season. That sure would be cheaper.

Today’s photo is one of the many American beech trees that inhabit the local forest. They are a common sight, though too many of them have initials and hearts and what-all carved into them. Beech trees don’t do well in cities, apparently they are sensitive to carbon monoxide. Their roots are shallow but tend to take up just about every square inch of space underneath them. And their leaf canopy blocks sunlight. So nothing much can grow underneath beech trees.

I have two large ones in my front forest, both the same size. This is one I found down in the valley below Roundtop. They are often found in the final stage of forest succession, and they like this area because of the amount of annual rainfall I see here, typically 30-50 inches of it. The temperature also suits them. They can tolerate the cold better than heat above 100o. Perhaps they will be a good indication of future climate change in this area.

I find them a very pretty tree with their gray bark. There’s another reason I like them, too. Even with their shallow root system, they are considered to be rather rootfirm. I like that in a tree, especially in the trees around the cabin.

Thaw

Likely this thaw won’t last. It’s not uncommon to have a January thaw in this area that lasts for several days or a week. We didn’t have a January thaw this year. It waited until February for that. If this thaw lasts more than a week or so, it will be both unusual and cause for concern. Rising sap could cause the buds to appear and everything from fruit trees to dogwood blossoms could then be damaged or destroyed when the weather returns to normal again.

But for a few days, I won’t worry about that just yet. For now, it was enough to be out in the sun on a warm day and enjoy a vacation from winter without ever leaving the area. At this point, one or two days into the thaw, there’s no sign of spring. There’s simply mud and decaying leaves, wet and flattened from weeks of being covered by snow and ice. This is a good thing. It means last year’s leaves are already turning into forest loam. Some years, when it is dry through the winter, last year’s leaves greet the spring still crunchy and not much decayed. A normally wet and snowy winter moves that process along nicely.

The other thing I noticed is the number of trees with marcescent leaves, such as those in today’s photo. In this area, that pretty much means I’m looking at a lot of American beech trees, though a very few others, often oak, will have them, too. Marcesence simply means that the trees hold on to their leaves until the new leaves push them off in the spring. Sometimes, as the new leaves are just starting to come out, you’ll see both the new leaves and last year’s leaves on the same tree.

Scientists argue about what causes marcesence and whether its effects are positive or negative. Sometimes one will say the effect is positive when another calls the same effect negative. I find their arguments interesting but so far have found nothing in them to get overly concerned about. Here on Roundtop, marcesence on beech trees simply is a normal way of the forest’s life.