Photo by D. Sillman
I finally did rake up my leaves this fall. Instead of bagging or burning them, though, I worked them into piles along the natural topographic lines of the yard. So, under the north line of crabapple trees, under the bisecting line of spruces and young oaks, under a central island of spruces and red maples, and under the eastern line of arbor vitae the mixed leaves are piled up a foot or so high. They seem to be staying put even when the wind is blowing (my neighbors will glad to hear that!). I also filled up my compost bin with fresh leaves and mixed in the last of the fall compost from my tumbler barrel. I even threw in some earthworms that had come up onto my driveway on one warm, wet November night. I am sure that that compost will be ready for next year’s garden!
The Cornell Laboratory of Ornithology recommended not raking at all, and I tried that last year but the moldering leaf cover made the first few spring lawn mowing events a bit too aggravating to my allergies. Watching my leaf piles, though, makes me realize that the Cornell people are right about the quality of leaf dominated soil ecosystems. Right now six male cardinals and three female cardinals, two blue jays, two Carolina wrens, five dark eyed juncos, and a white-throated sparrow are all tearing into the leaf pile under the spruce tree just outside my window. The leaves are flying and often the birds get buried in the mix, but then they gab something that is too small for me to identify at this distance and gobble it down. Then they go back to digging around.
The leaves make a natural overwintering habitat for dozens and dozens of species of invertebrates. Insect larvae and pupae, torpid and hibernating insect adults and earthworms are all tucked into the insulating spaces of the leaf piles. Further, small frogs (like the gray tree frogs that sang all summer) might be down in the leaves frozen and inactive just waiting for the spring thaw or some hungry blue jay or crow to dig them out and swallow them whole. I speculated last year that the increasing number of tree frogs around my field might just be due to the leaf habitats I have been allowing to build up out in my woodlot. Maybe I will get even more with these new leaf piles that are closer to the house.
When I take Izzy out for her late night walk, I try to stay away from the line of arbor vitae and hemlocks. If I get too close to them the birds that are night-roosting in the dense branches start to fuss and sometimes even fly out into the cold, dark night. In the early morning, after Izzy’s pre-breakfast walk, I fill up the sunflower seed feeders as early as possible so that these chickadees and titmice and song sparrows and white-throated sparrows roosting in the arbor vitae can all fuel up and get ready for the next cold night.
Photo by D. Daniels, Wikimedia Commons
We have a pair of golden crowned kinglets that have also set up their night roosts in our arbor vitae. They land on the thistle feeders during the day, but I can’t say for sure if they are just pausing there or actually eating seed. You would expect the kinglets to forage for insects and other soft bodied invertebrates, but in the winter other sources of energy might be taken. The kinglets are birds of the northern coniferous forests. They just come to us for a few months each year because of our “mild” winters (and, maybe our thistle feeders?).
Photo by D. Sillman
One of my 60 year old blue spruces broke in the wind storm that roared through in the last week of December. It broke right above my bat house and, fortunately, fell out into the field well away from the house. One of the young scarlet oaks close by is bent a bit by some of the spruce branches. This spruce is one of the last of the original trees planted when this house was built. Most of them went down nine years ago in a colossal June thunderstorm. The tree guy is coming this week to clear it out (and has promised to salvage my bat house!). He and I looked
Photo by D. Sillman
at the huge Norway spruce at the front of my yard that is leaning threateningly toward the front of my house. I would hate to have to take that tree down. It shields the house and our deck from both the sun and all of our neighbors, but I think that I would hate even more to have it fall on the house.
The tiny dustings of snow we have received are lingering in the shade of the remaining spruce trees and on the north facing slopes of the yard and field. Weather predictions taking El Nino into account indicate that we will have very little snow here in the northeast this winter. We’ll see. Over Christmas, my daughter reminded me of Chris Farley’s portrayal of El Nino in a 1997 Saturday Night Live skit. He was a big, bullying, blustering wrestler pushing all of the other storm systems around (until the unexpected happened and he was pinned by a little, skinny storm). Weather is mostly determined by the unexpected.
There are three gray squirrels racing up and down my spruce tree. They seem more interested in each other than in looking around for any buried chestnuts or cached corn or peanuts that they have “liberated” from my bird feeders (I find corn stuffed into all sorts of crevices around the yard!). Possibly this is a sign of early winter mating. I speculate that two of these squirrels are competing males and one is a desirable female. These squirrels have a reliable enough food source to support two litters (early spring and mid-summer) a year. I may have to start putting out more peanuts!