Signs of Summer 3: A Hike at The Todd Nature Reserve

Photo by D. Sillman

The Todd Nature Reserve (formerly called “Todd Sanctuary”) is a rocky, stream crossed, 176 acre site owned and maintained by the Audubon Society of Western Pennsylvania. The Reserve is in Sarver in southeastern Butler County and has been, for all of the thirty-two years Deborah and I have lived in this area, one of our favorite places to hike. There are five miles of crisscrossing trails in the reserve that include a two mile “Loop Trail” that encircles the site’s perimeter and takes you from stream beds to ridge tops and back again through young to middle-aged hemlock stands and a variety of mixed hardwood forests. There are also a number of shorter trails (with wonderfully descriptive names like “Hemlock,” “Indian Pipe,” “Pond,” “Warbler,” and “Polypody”) that interconnect fern capped rock cities with densely vegetated copses and the human-constructed pond (built in 1969).

When we arrived (12:30 in the afternoon on a beautiful Saturday afternoon!) there were seven other cars in the parking area! This might be a record parking lot crowd for Todd! Many of the people apparently had decided to walk the Ravine Trail (we heard their voices disappearing down into the hollow), but even with the ones that stayed up on the forest trails, we felt like we had the reserve to ourselves. These trails never seem to be heavily used and have, in our experience, never been at all crowded.

Photo by J.McCulloch, Flickr

At the parking area there is a tall, wooden tower with a chimney swift picture and descriptive sign on it (there is, as we will find in little while, a second, wooden, “swift tower” up by the Naturalist’s Cabin, too). Chimney swifts (Chaetura pelagica) are native birds of North America that, quite obviously, existed here prior to European colonization (and the subsequent construction of chimneys!). Chimney swifts are small, dark gray birds with long, slightly curved wings, and stubby tails. Roger Tory Peterson famously described them as “a cigar with

Photo by National Park Service

wings.” These birds are gregarious. They often nest in very large groups and forage on the wing for flying insects in smaller groups of 3 to 4 birds. The anatomy of their legs and feet prevents them from perching on branches or even walking on the ground. They are designed specifically to grip onto the vertical sides of their chimney habitats. Before there were chimneys in North America these swifts utilized tall, hollowed out trees and vertical crevices in cliffs for their resting and nesting habitats. It is likely that the proliferation of human-made chimneys increased their numbers significantly. Lately, though, the numbers of chimney swifts have begun to decline possibly because of a decreasing number of suitable chimneys for their roosting and nesting. In 2010 they were re-classified as “near threatened,” and the construction of artificial, vertical roosts seems a logical way to reestablish their needed habitats.

Deborah and I watch chimney swifts flying out over our field at home almost every summer morning and afternoon. It has been estimated that a mated pair of swifts with three nestlings will catch and consume up to six thousand housefly-sized insects each day, and if we converted that figure into to “mosquito-sized” insects I bet that it would sound even more impressive!

Baneberry (Photo by D. Sillman)

We hike down the gravel path to the bridge that crosses the ravine of the small creek that connects into Watson Run (the main stream that cuts through the reserve) and, passing the Naturalist’s Cabin cross a field that is VERY full of poison ivy! We are careful to stay in the middle of the narrow trail! On the way Deborah sees two plants (one in flower and one just past flowering) that she does not recognize! We stop while she takes pictures and closely examines the leaves and flowers. One of the plants she identifies as baneberry (Actea spp.) while the other is still under consideration.

We walk past the tangle of poison ivy and enter the cool and quiet of the shady hemlock forest that lines the banks of the creek. THIS is my kind of forest! The air is cool and wet and smells of damp hemlock needles. The sunlight is broken up into spotlight-like rays that highlight some of the forest floor plants and leave the others in deep shade. The water flow over the rocks in the creek makes a steady background noise that is loud enough to cover up the scuff and crackle of our boot steps. It is so peaceful!”

Photo by D. Sillman

The Loop Trail is clearly blazed with red marks. We hike steadily up and leave most of the hemlocks behind. In the hardwood stands there is a large amount of downed wood. Branches and entire trees have fallen in parallel lines all around and all along the trail. This is a sign of a young forest shedding its early successional species and, possibly, stretching itself into a more complex structure. The downed trees are foot diameter black cherry that are well riddled with woodpecker holes and some even larger oaks that may have succumbed to the accumulated stresses of the repeated gypsy moth outbreaks of the early 1990’s. A few of the trees are broken high up on their trunks probably after some weakening events. There are also many others that have been completely wind thrown and lay across the forest floor with twelve to sixteen foot root balls that have been pulled up out of the shallow, rocky soil. In these sun gap areas black cherry and yellow birch saplings an inch in diameter and twelve feet tall grow thickly. I think that it would be possible to determine the ages of the wind throws by measuring the sizes of the fast growing trees within their sun gaps.

In the understory vegetation there are a large number of white oak seedlings and saplings! Looking back at some of my notes from 2010 I mention that there were very few oak seedlings along this trail! These oaks, then, are a recent addition to this forest! In time, with luck, a fine oak forest will come to dominate these upland sections.

Photo by D. Sillman

The broad, flat, parasol-like leaves of Mayapple (Podophyllum peltatum) spread out alongside the trail. Most of the plants are setting their fruit but a few still retain their delicate, white flowers. This perennial plant grows from expanding rhizomes and often forms large, interconnected patches of dozens to hundreds of genetically identical plants. Mayapple relies on soil fungi (mycorrhizae) to assist their uptake of soil nutrients. Competition with plants that inhibit these soil fungi (like garlic mustard) can be very harmful to Mayapple. Reproduction in Mayapple is via both vegetative growth (the expanding rhizomes) and via sexual reproduction (flowers that form fruit after pollination). There is a steep physiological cost involved in making flowers and fruit, and, as I have mentioned before, and this cost can significantly drain the energy reserves from the colonial rhizome and may even cause the interconnected clonal colony to die.

There are small gnats swarming around our faces. These gnats are mentioned in almost every set of notes that I have taken on walks in Todd! They seem to fly slower than we can walk, though, so keeping moving reduces the density of their clouds. Multiflora rose is growing in scattered patches that are larger than they were five years ago. Garlic mustard is also more abundant. These two invasive species have the potential to do a great deal of harm to the native plant species in the reserve. There is still a very nice array of native plants that are still in flower: columbine, clustered snakeroot, bluets, violets, golden ragwort, wild geranium, Canadian mayflower, and sweet Cicely light up the trail with their blooms. Ferns are also abundant along the trail including Christmas fern, evergreen woodfern, New York fern, sensitive fern, interrupted fern, hayscented fern, cinnamon fern, and rattlesnake fern (one of Deborah’s favorites). There is also an abundance of raspberry and blackberry along the trail (good news for some quick snacks on our later summer hikes!).

Photo by D. Sillman

As we walk up to the pond, bullfrog tadpoles as big as my thumb dart from the open water into the leaf covered bottom mud. Several adult bullfrogs float half submerged among the dense leaves of the pond lilies. In the distance green frogs make their distinctive, plunked calls. Two wood ducks swim near the far shore and hide in the shoreline vegetation upon seeing us. Deborah and I agree that we need a pond. Just being near the water is relaxing and rejuvenating!

We hike back toward the cabin crossing a stone path over the running creek. An old, shallow limestone quarry is off to the right of the trail. The rocks and the carved out depressions are completely covered with overgrowing vegetation.

We cross the cabin bridge and hike up the gravel trail toward our car. The way up seems much longer than the way down had been. There are only three cars left in the parking area, but we have only seen one other group out on the trails.

We open up the car doors to let out the accumulated heat. The air is warm and dry and a hunt of insect spray underlies the scents of the surrounding woods. It is beginning to really feel like summer!