Signs of Summer 14: The View From My New Window

Our new back yard. Photo by D. Sillman

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I have set up my writing desk next to a large, double window that looks out onto my new back yard. This space is more confined and more restricted than my previous “sit-spot” view back in Pennsylvania. Here, a surrounding, six foot high, cedar fence shields off the view of the neighbors. The small gaps in between the fence planks reveal fuzzy, passing forms of people and dogs that flicker by as if illuminated by a strobe light. The dogs bark when then see or sense Izzy out in the yard. Izzy, of course, reciprocates (although we are working on teaching her better manners).

Back in my old yard I would frequently be surprised by some large creature walking through the open space. Deer, wild turkey, neighborhood cats, possums, skunks, and stray dogs were regular visitors, and once a red fox darted past and another time a Chinese pheasant trotted by. That yard was full of surprises and wide open to anyone or anything in the area.

I don’t expect to see any large fauna moving through this new backyard. There are, though, a few things going on here!

Ponderosa pines. Photo by D. Sillman

There are four, tall (60 to 80 foot) Ponderosa pines on my property. One is in the back yard, and three are in the front. Red-tailed hawks and great horned owls use the front yard pines as perches. The hawks greeted me on my first visit to the house, and the owl was an early morning visitor about a week after we had moved in. The presence of these avian predators may explain why, with the exception of two hummingbirds that I saw a few evenings ago,  I have seen no small birds in or around my yard over the past three weeks! There are a few Eurasian collared doves out on the power lines that run along the fence line, but there have been no sparrows, or finches, or chickadees, or nuthatches, or robins, or blue jays, or flickers (all birds I have seen in local parks) anywhere around the house!

Walking around the neighborhood, I have seen no bird feeders! My daughter, who lives about a mile away, has a feeder, and finches and chickadees (and, of course, squirrels, feed at them avidly. She also has robins probing around in her garden soil and flocks of blue jays making regular group flights and commotions overhead. She even has crows!

The lack of birds here is quite un-nerving. I have put out and filled several bird baths thinking that a water source would be a good draw in this hot, dry climate. I am also going to put out a black oil sunflower seed feeder as soon as I can. I hope that if I do succeed in attracting some birds, though, I don’t end up simply providing an easy food source for the hawks and owls!

Along with the Ponderosa pines, there are four other types of trees in my yard. A very substantial (25 feet tall) honey locust is growing along the back fence, and a very small blue spruce, an equally small (and very dry looking) quaking aspen, and several, tree-sized staghorn sumacs are scattered around the property. The sumacs had sent up numerous, small suckers, but I trimmed those down last week to bring some order to the yard.

Honey locust tree with seed pods. Photo by D. Sillman

The honey locust’s natural range is well east of here with a western boundary of eastern Texas, Oklahoma and Kansas. It is, however an extremely adaptable and robust tree that grows very well in most urban and suburban settings. Over the years, in fact, my students and I back at Penn State planted many honey locusts along the streets in the city of New Kensington as part of the local Tree Vitalize program.

A true, “wild” honey locust, is covered with formidable thorns and spines on its trunk and branches. The size and strength of these spines are thought to be evolutionary vestiges of protections developed by the tree to prevent damage from browsing by now extinct mastodons and giant ground sloths.   (see August 8, 2016 for an expanded discussion of this!). In these more simple, modern times, though, a number of domesticated honey locust strains with less formidable protective spikes have been developed.

The nearly thorn-less honey locust in my yard is covered with seed pods. The pods grow primarily at the tips of branches in clusters of five to seven. The pods are green and about a  foot long but dry and ripen to a dark brown when they fall to the ground. These pods are a great attraction to squadrons of local squirrels. (but, I plan to talk about them next week!).

Blue spruce. Photo by USDA, Public Domain

The blue spruce is the state tree of Colorado, so it is very appropriate that one is growing in my yard. There are a number of very large, robust blue spruces up and down the streets of the surrounding neighborhood. Blue spruces like long, cold winters and hot, dry summers. They are, though, frequently planted well outside of their natural range and ideal climate. My house back in Pennsylvania was surrounded by a dozen blue spruces. Those trees, though, only lived 50 or 60 years before they succumbed to fungal diseases due to the accumulated stresses of living in a too wet climate (see Signs of Summer 12, August 3, 2017).

The little quaking aspen tree is barely four feet tall. Its leaves are a very pale green and are edged with brown. It looks like it is extremely drought stressed. I must remember to water it!

Quaking aspen. Photo by Pikist

Quaking aspens are the definitive hardwood tree of the mountains of the Middle Rockies. They also have the broadest natural distribution of any tree in North America. Northern Pennsylvania is even included in the vast, continent-wide distribution of this species! It is a quick growing and relatively short-lived tree (100 to 150 years) that become quickly established after a fire. Quaking aspens reproduce by root sprouting and often form dense, clonal groves. They also produce air-transported, fluffy seeds that blanket the downwind areas from the mature aspen groves, although seed reproduction is not nearly as important to the species as root sprouting. When you see a stand of aspens it is possible that you are really looking at a single organism! The trees are not only genetic clones but are also highly interconnected via their roots. In southern Utah there is a 100 acre grove of quaking aspens that are one highly interconnected entity. This multi-tree organism weighs 14 million pounds and is estimated to be 80,000 years old!

Considering the “natural” growth configuration of aspens as great clonal clumps, it is hard to imagine what it must “feel” like to be a single, isolated aspen tree! I don’t want to get too “Peter Wohleben” on this (“The Hidden Life of Trees” see Signs of Fall 10, Nov. 21, 2019), but it must be hard not to be connected to acres and acres of your own clones!

A syndrome that is affecting quaking aspens all across the country is called “sudden aspen decline” (SAD). There seems to be no specific pathogen associated with this die-off but rather it seems to be the consequence of drought and possibly climate change. Many of the larger quaking aspens in our neighborhood are showing signs of SAD. Several, I am sure, will have to be taken down in the next few years.

Next week I will talk about a mammal that is actively interacting with my Ponderosa pines and honey locust! Everyone’s favorite rodent, squirrels!