PA Presque Isle: All But Gull Point

One of the reasons I love winter hiking is that I can really see the structure and heart of a landscape.  What makes one kind of place entirely inhospitable to certain flora and fauna may be the reason it is ideal for others. Presque Isle is a large curving sandspit that juts out into Lake Erie. It was great fun to explore in winter and to see how this unique place "fits the curve."  Amos and I did a six mile loop hike through the interior sandspit under snowy/squally/windy skies. 

Big winds drive sand over snow

Despite being a southern hound, Amos absolutely loves the cold, the windier the better. He's never enjoyed hiking in hot weather but here on our second day in February exploring Pennsylvania's 47 miles-long coast, he was absolutely smitten. He pranced, jogged, wagged, and sniffed his way from beach to bog, forest to sand plain. Only at the end of our hike did he finally sit down. He's livin' the winter life!

The sandspit that forms Presque Isle is a dynamic landscape feature that pushes out into Lake Erie a full two miles. It's built by longshore currents which keep the whole structure moving steadily north - despite engineering attempts to contain it. Gale force winds had blown through the night and upon our arrival to begin our hike, it was clear that a two-mile walk out on the exposed Gull Point would be uncomfortable for both of us so we began at the end and we did our hike in reverse. Sand blew steadily about on the exposed beaches across palustrine sand plains that emerge or submerge with fluctuating lake levels. It was amazing to hear the sand moving over snow.  We then hiked into the forest to see what the interior held.

Presque Isle Lighthouse

We hiked into a sheltered forest that borders an extensive Alder and Buttonwood swamp. Named the Sidewalk Trail, we followed the path that originally linked the Presque Isle Lighthouse to the once busy boathouse and life-saving station on the interior of Misery Bay.  This site connects to the current U.S. Erie Coast Guard Station today. The scent of recent beaver activity excited Amos so much that he hollered a few times over the silent, frozen ponds. This shrubby wetland complex harbors hardwood edge forests of large Red Maple and mature Black Gum, fringed with Paper Birch, Black Oak, and Pitch Pine. Despite the driving winds on the beaches, the snow that had fallen during the night still laid gently along limbs and branches undisturbed by the morning gusts. 

A gusty, cold day

From Pope & Goreki (1982) 

As we hiked towards the Coast Guard Station, the wetlands changed in variety and size from shrub swamp to tussock marsh to bog and shallow ponds. A Red-Tailed Hawk soared over the floating cottages and another one hunted from the top of the station's entry gate. Beaver lodges stood high above the frozen pond surface with plenty of evidence of their winter work all around. The winds continued to roar over our heads while the rhythmic sound of lake waves crashing onto the shore surrounded us. But we were still protected from the wind. Blue skies opened then closed. Snow squalls enveloped us then moved on hide the City of  Erie across the bay. Everything was in motion except for the quiet still wetland ponds and the paths we took behind the shoreline.

Big lake skies and wind

Lighthouse supply path "Sidewalk Trail"

The tussock sedge marsh communities something to see, patterned with snow and the lay of the sedges according to the prevailing winds. Someone in a recent workshop said that she loves exxploring Pennsylvania because there is so much here and I couldn't agree more. As we continued to wander all the interior trails I made a note in my sketchbook about not getting out to Gull Point and that if I wanted to this year, I'd have to make plans to return soon as the park will close the sandspit to humans when shorebird nesting season starts up again in April.  

Tussock marsh

One of many great conservation success stories is happening out on Gull Point.  The endangered Piping Plover (Charadrius melodus) is staging a comeback on the Great Lakes, and here on the point and two pair of Piping Plovers established nests in 2017 - the first return to Pennsylavnia's shoreline since 1955. They've been back to this wide, sandy hook every year since and biologists are cautiously optimistic that with continued efforts to restrict access to the point during nesting season with trail closures our first recovered population will continue to grow.

U.S. Lighthouse Service Path

Gull Point is the only Pennsylavnia breeding area for this once abundant Great Lakes species. During the 1950s and 1960s  as massive housing and industrial landscape transformation impacted Lake Erie's sandy and pebble beach shores, populations of Piping Plover dropped from hundreds of pairs on Lake Erie alone to just fifteen pairs for all of the Great Lakes region and those found only on Lake Michigan shores. 

Northern hardwood edge - White Birch

In 2010 and 2011  the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, PA Game Commission, with other state and federal partners funded a two-year restoration of Gull Point at Presque Isle that included managing access to the point of beachgoers and boaters.  By 2015, birders out on the Erie Bird Observatory (EBO) noted that Piping Plovers had returned to the sandspit to forage and have a look around. By 2017, they had established two nests! Now, hundreds of people excitedly await news of each year's current breeding/nesting status, though this past year was a REAL nail-biter!  (See Notes) 

Sand Barrens

The interior trails closest to the leading edge of the curving sandspit featured many beautiful sand barrens and I'm sure when it warms up, there will be plenty of ground nesting bees to observe here. At one point we were the ones being observed as a Merlin perched in a stunted pine gave us a loud kee-kee-kee! This fierce little falcon was particulalry rankled that I stoppped to admire the field. At one point he rocketed straight up and hovered over the grass. With that, he plummeted down and snagged a sparrow! Oof! Time to move on so the Merlin could pluck his supper in peace. 

Palustrine Grassland

Another mile and we re-emerged at the parking area to Gull Point. The wind was still raging and even though we could have walked to the point, a large snow squall was about to engulf us. Back to the lighthouse we went, leaving Gull Point for another time.  Hat tip to the EBO who keep such good wacth over Gull Point and are working to help re-establish the Great Lakes Piping Plover population in Pennsylvania.  

Sand over snow

Happy and tired Amos

Notes: 

Presque Isle is an ever-changing landscape feature no matter how hard we humans want it to stay put:

Pope & Goreki (1982) "Geologic and Engineering History of Presque Isle, PA" 

The 2023 Gull Point Nesting Report was a real nail-biter!  See this 2023 report by the Erie Audubon and Erie Bird Observatory (EBO) by Mary Birdsong, "The Agony and The Ecstacy"

 

The Erie Bird Observatory does some really amazing work in coastal PA with their monitoring and surveys. Thanks to all the birder volunteers who do this critical work. 

PA Erie Bluffs

Mid-February here in Pennsylvania is usually considered to be the apex of winter. On my trip out to Lake Erie I was expecting the year's most expansive cover of ice, but it wasn't to be. In fact, it was nothing, just wide open wavy water as far as the eye could see. With the hope of maybe a little steelhead fishing, I found the creeks to equally empty of ice - no shelves or pans, not even slush. My cold water waders never left the duffle bag. 

Amos comes to meet the Lake.

Keeping my waders company were my snowshoes and winter gloves in the back of the truck. Though it was super windy on the bluffs over the lake, the woods were pleasantly cold, not piercing or frigid. Mind, I do love winter. Way fewer people and virtually no bugs. And, it's a good thing I really like earth colors - but I did miss snow and ice on this trip to the northwestern corner of the Commonwealth. 

Black Oak savanna 

We were out at sunrise which was hidden by a watercolor sky of snow squall clouds zooming in from the north. Break-thru sun persisted throughout the day as we covered miles of savanna and woodland trail. The park is undergoing a long period of restoration to bring back (hopefully) the now rare Black Oak Savanna (BOS) in Pennsylvania, and to some extent, the use of fire as a rejuvenator of managed prairie plots and edge woodland. We walked through burn areas, tracks of woodland that have seen selective removal of tree species, and fully restored BOS sections as well as tracts of forest where invasives reign over everything. 

Amos enjoying the Big Bluestem

The Erie Bluffs

We made our way along a bluff trail and stopped to admire the gunmetal grey lake, whipped up with waves and whitecaps. Without the protection of a shoreline ice shelf, angry winter waves bash right into the base of the sand and glacial till escarpment furthering the erosion that eats away at the Pennsylvania coast. The weather forecast was calling for gale force winds that night so I was excited to see and hear the changes bigger winds would bring tomorrow. 

Trail atop a fossil dune ridge

Down from over fifty million acres of prairie-meets-deciduous woodlands with less that 30,000 acres surviving, BOS can only be found now in protected landscapes in Ohio and Pennsylvania, just 2 percent of its once historic range.  Part woodland, part prairie, this open woodland savanna is unique to Lake Erie shores and contains great biodiversity that represent Great Lakes coastal hardwood forests with the tough Black Oak (Quercus velutina) dominating over open-glade ground cover of native grasses, wildflowers, clubmoss, lichens, and heath shrubs. 

Fire-tough Black Oak sapling in a burn area

Black Oak (Quercus velutina) 

On this trip I'd see two of those protected landscapes, both being actively managed to conserve this rare ecosystem in PA's Erie Bluff State Park and Presque Isle State Park. A visit to the North Kingsville Sand Barrens in Ohio is on my list to see this summer, hopefully with a swing back through these two PA parks to see the prairie and sand barrens in full bloom along with their pollinators. 

 

Elk Creek

The BOS saw its greatest decline as agriculture, large-scale logging, and industrialization came to Lake Erie's shores during the 1800s.  Adding to the drastic changes was the loss of lake wind driven fires that came to the wooded savanna every few years and the introduction of aggressive invasive plants, some native, others not, that quickly overtook the region's remaining woodlands. I wondered about how our prescribed fires today compare with the lake wind fires of hundreds of years ago. In my humble opinion, and not being an expert of fire management, I venture a guess that controlled burns of today are nothing like the sweeping prairie fires witnessed by first Erie People.  Black Oak is a very tough tree, even young saplings can withstand heat and flame. Without these intense fires, however, other species - especially invasive native Black Locust - will shade out the prairie glades. I saw lots of surviving Black Locust saplings on the control burn areas and wondered about the effectiveness of low intensity fires.

Red Osier Dogwood swamp

We wandered into a frozen Red Osier Dogwood Swamp and rather than sinking knee deep in cold water we were able to hop from frozen grass hummock to frozen grass hummock without getting wet. The color of the Red Osier stems reminded me of the famed "dragon's blood" pigment described in  Kassia St. Claire's The Secret Lives of Color (2017) as having been an "exclusive pigment from before the time of Christ" until it was discovered in the 16th century that dragons didn't actually exist and that the color was derived instead from a similar swampy plant sourced from India. Without a belief in dragons to sustain it, writes St. Claire, the deep red pigment faded into obscurity.  

River Birch

Fossil dune and the mouth of Elk Creek

Back through the woods I made some quick sketches of places where restoration has taken place. Open canopy with understory and shade-loving competitor trees removed, large swathes of forest floor are now semi-grassland exposed to more sun and wind than the dense forest elsewhere. Patches of amber and yellow grasses create open glades along the top of a relic dune. Carpets of Striped Wintergreen and Clubmoss poked above thin layers of oak leaves. I pocketed a few acorns as I admired many of the old Black Oaks that were growing on the steep slopes of sand and till. 

Mouth of Elk Creek

While wind blew hard over the bluffs, I counted three immature Bald Eagles cruising the coastline. Out on the open water there was a raft of Long-Tailed Ducks, Arctic visitors who fish for mollusks and clams and love periwinkle snails plucked from marsh grass. We made our way down a well-worn trail to the shingle beach at the mouth of Elk Creek and the Lake. A deceased Long-Tailed Duck on the shore revealed its toothy bill designed for holding and crushing mollusks. Too cold to sketch, I took a series of reference pictures to sketch from. Small flocks of Bufflehead and Scaup winged past at a distance while Black Ducks and a single Loon bobbed in choppy waves closer in to the escarpment. Canada Geese sheltered in the cove while Red-Headed Mergansers hugged the edge of the shingle and tree debris.

Shingle beach

The waves pounded against the base of the bluffs and while I stood there in the full blast of wind, a small section of frozen sand slid from the top to the brushy bottom. Eleven periods of glaciation have impacted these shores, making and remaking them as dunes, carved valleys, and vast wetlands. In between times of ice, the waves have reclaimed the front dunes and banks of glacial till, adding sediments to the lake bottom where aquatic grasses anchor in sand and silt. These are important nurseries for freshwater fish. I watched long and hard at the mouth of Elk Creek for any sign of Steelhead but only saw one, belly up rolling against the bank already having spawned and died upstream.  Amos was very interested in retrieving it, but we needed to move back into the shelter of the oak forest. 

Driftwood banks

Toothy bill of a Long-Tailed Duck

As we climbed the escarpment I heard cackling calls of the Long-Tailed Ducks floating in their big raft about two hundred yards offshore. These are the most abundant of the Arctic ducks wintering on the Great Lakes and surely the most talkative of all the Arctic bird visitors. In summer, they nest on open barren ground along the edge of land but mainly spend their time on open cold waters. Though still very abundant, their populations are trending downward. Climate change and industrial fishing are thought to be the two main culprits and are raising concerns among Arctic conservationists. Without sea ice to protect vulnerable open ground for nesting colonies, nesting sites are flooded and washed away forcing birds to choose sites where more predators lurk. Large trawler fleets that can make their way deeper and deeper into now ice-free Arctic waters often haul in huge numbers of drowned Long-Tailed Ducks with each haul. It is now a species considered vulnerable and threatened.  

This was the extent of ice on my visit. 

On way back to the hotel in Erie, we made one more stop at a community park where cameras mounted to trees are positioned to watch the ever-eroding bluffs. I met up with a park employee who showed me a picture of the park thirty years ago to compare to the what I saw today.  "Without winter ice, this erosion will only eat away faster more of the bluff and there's nothing we can do about it," he said.  In the past two decades, the length of his career with the township, he has watched this park slump into the lake at a rate of ten feet a year. Under threat now is a park road, a picnic area, and a pavilion. Gone already is the bluff edge forest that once buffered the park from wind and a trail that accessed a small shingle beach. "It's like in my one lifetime so much has gone. How much longer before we will have to abandon the park?" 

Actively eroding bluff

One more look at the lake from the edge.  It's strange, I thought.  I described childhood visits to family and friends who lived near both Lakes Erie and Michigan and recalled how thrilling it was to see the ice stretching as far as the eye could see. Ice fishing, ice boat sailing, and winter birding were some of my favorite memories of spending time with my U.S. Navy uncle and his family near Chicago in the 1970s. On our way to and from Chicago, we'd stop along the Erie coast to see the big laker ships in winter layover or in the channels hauling ore and coal. He described ice fishing and skating as his favorite winter pastimes and having grown up not far from here, how "the lake might as well be family."

Lake Erie - ice free

Notes: 

February 16, 2024, report by NOAA about our nearly ice-free winter.

NOAA  "Ice Cover Nearly Non-Existent."

Fact sheet by DCNR  on the Black Oak Savanna Restoration at Erie Bluffs  

Winter is no time to camp near Lake Erie so I found that Sleep Inn (a subsidiary of Clarion Hotels) happily welcomes pets. Amos had a great time. First floor rooms with easy in and out, pet friendly staff, and even a doggy gift bag to welcome him!  Affordable and comfortable when all you need is a warm room and a nice hot shower and a comfy place to rest your chilly bones. We stayed at the Sleep Inn on Peach Street in Erie. It was a great first hotel experience for Amos and he was a very good boi. 

PA Kellys Run Preserve

Close to home today, I hiked the four-mile loop at Kellys Run Nature Preserve in Holtwood, PA. The past week of failing forests has really saddened me and I needed this hike to work out the sads and the mads. 

Choices!

Kellys Run is hands down one of the most popular preserves located along the Susquehanna River in southern Lancaster County, PA. I met only two other people out early - and their leashed dogs (thank you!). The mature and thriving Oak-Hickory forest here provided much needed contrast to the declining forests of earlier in the week.  Today's loop hike combined the blue blazed trail & orange blazed Conestoga trail with the red blazed connector trail. My hiking stick came in handy many times today since all the creek crossings are 'wet-footed' and the trail turned out to have some ice on it.

A healthy woodland

We crossed the high meadow on the bluff and down the hill to the old paved road. The sky was so blue and the air warming up so fast that I forgot it was gloomy ole' February still.  After two weeks of non- stop work (at two jobs) this hike felt more like an act of resistance than a much needed break. Gosh, how I am aching to return to the long trails and truck camping with Amos. End-of-winter affects me this way. I ache for things I haven't done in a while. I miss the people I've not seen lately. I get restless.

February is when I look for loud colors and listen for bright sounds. More than at any other time of the year, I push back against schedules and workloads in sometimes desperate efforts to find new ground, explore new things.  Its my spring mental cycle; don't worry, I'm not quitting my jobs. Cabin fever? I can hike a little more defiantly, but will also stop a hike and turn around if winter conditions warrant it. 

Abandoned Holtwood Road

Deckless but still a beauty

Kellys Run ravine

I can't say that this loop lends itself to one of our more pedestrian strolls.  We crossed the mouth of Kellys Run at the bottom of the hill and began our ascent up the ravine with not a soul in sight. The solitude was matched by the ruggedness of the trail and I was glad I had decided to spend a whole hour on my morning yoga as I was bending, stretching, and reaching every which way. 

One of many cascades

I try to do this loop every February and some years I can't complete it due to dangerous trail conditions. I note the hike in my journal and compare it past years. One year ice was so thick on the old Holtwood Road I never made it to the creek. Another year I made it halfway up the ravine before the trail became quite dangerous for me and my dog. This year it is open - though at times still icy - from the very start of the ascent. It was nice to focus only on the next step, securing the best handhold, and enjoying the slow progression up the boulder path. 

Rock Polypody Fern

I was so focused that I began to really hear the ravine in all its beautiful watery music. Ice dripping, cascades tumbling, even Amos' thick claws on scratching on rock. A pair of Ravens were calling out from above a massive outcrop. In contrast to the local Crows carrying on below me, I heard clearly the difference in their language, in tones and pitch and volume. It has been over a century and a half since Ravens were last observed in the River Hills region, now home to two nesting pairs, one nest above the Enola Low Grade Rail Trail on the cliffs about five miles north of here and this new  pair scouting around for a new nesting site. I've been watching them for about three weeks, as they arrived in late January, and I've been able to observe them from both the York and Lancaster County shores. 

Ravens above me

The shape of the walk took on depth and edginess. Scooting across an icy ledge I stopped to look up and found I was just about as tiny a thing as I could imagine at the bottom of this chasm. Ice shimmered from outcrop shadows. The ravine itself controls who comes this far and whether they continue up, down, or turns them around.  I reached the turn around place from last year's aborted winter hike. Moving past it, I rocked hopped on towards a set of hand carved stone steps on the opposite side and climbed safely up to an old wagon road. 

The road is an old one and in places it is washed away forcing a scramble here or a scoot there. A tattered old yellow "No Trespassing" sign hung in two parts from a tree up the slope, but I know this is all Conservancy land now and whoever the former landowners had been long ago, paid little attention to the steepest sections of their boundary since the growing girth of the tree had long ago torn the sign apart. The old road climbed further on leaving the trail to make a hard right across the creek again.

Tulasnella violea

A glowing pink log drew my attention from the tattered yellow sign.  Tulasnella viola, a winter fungus so bright it tricks some to thinking it might be spray paint, was popping  out along the length of a fallen Yellow Birch. February is the best time to observe this outrageously pink wood eater. Its cousins in the Tulasnella genus are equally outrageous with their shocking orange, blood red, and yellow crusts. They provide some of the wildest winter colors.  This is the genus most recognized as mycorrhizal partners to our splendid North American orchids.  

Christmas Fern 

Intermediate Wood Fern

Before crossing the creek for the third time, I noted two more evergreen ferns to go with the Rock Polypody spotted earlier. Christmas and Intermediate Wood Fern are perennial ferns, green all year long, very tolerant of damp, wet habitats that are part sun, shade, ice, and snow. One last creek crossing and Amos and I were well up into shady Rhododendron banks. 

Almost done

We finished our hike back at the truck with a celebratory meat jerky stick. After two years of turn-arounds, made it all the way on a winter day (in the 50s) in February! Watching us closely was a Grey Squirrel that I had a feeling would have rushed for the  meat sticks if it wasn't for the dog. February is the hungriest time of year and winter-active animals are running low on stored reserves of fat. At the bird feeding station at home, squirrel thievery is definitely a thing. I can't seem to keep a suet cake for more than a few hours before they're running away with it - sometimes cage and all! Guard the jerky, I said to Amos and he gave his best ARROOOO. 

That hungry squirrel had his own sads and mads when we loaded up and drove off. 

Notes:

Kellys Run Nature Preserve https://www.lancasterconservancy.org/preserves/kellys-run/

MD Loch Raven Reservoir: Bosley Point

Surveying local forests this week for a college class I'm teaching has been a soul-crushing experience. This once familiar forest of my own undergraduate years many decades ago is no longer. Instead it is a tangle of invasive vines, dead standing snags, and little to no understory except for acres and acres of multiflora rose. Where glades of oak once stood are now solid stands of Tulip Poplar underlaid with impassable thickets of privet and bush honeysuckle. The look and function of the present forest is greatly diminished and while we can point to an overabundance of White Tail Deer as the root of this decline, it is made worse over time by human neglect and management.

Solid stands of Tulip Poplar above invasive understory

When I was studying in the early 1980s at MICA in landscape drawing and botanical illustration, our professor would set us loose on Bosley Point to select, identify, and draw Quercus (oak) species as exemplar specimens of their kind. I remember being very proud of my side-by-side illustration of a Black and Red Oak, massive specimens under which grew moss banks, lowbush blueberry, and pink ladies slippers (Cypripedium acuale).  I searched for the two trees and only found one, the Red Oak still living but in decline. 

Canopy collapse

Professor Whitaker knew we couldn't get lost; we were on a point of land surrounded by water. The point was big enough, however, to hold a dozen students spread out across old fields and hardwood/pine stands working independently for hours. One of my favorite places to work was in the hollow of an old quarry where a wetland plant community grew in the shelter of a weathered outcrop of Cockeysville marble. The outcrop is smothered by banks of privet today. 

Marble outcrop and privet

Bosley Farm Road at the quarry

As with many old roads that are no longer active, they may still exist as hiking or equestrian trails. On Bosley Pont, the road is used by fisherfolk to connect many side paths to the shoreline.  I descended into the abandoned quarry hollow and it became clear that even a very determined fisherperson could no longer follow the old road as it continued over the rise.  Over the bank, it simply stopped at a impenetrable wall of privet, bush honeysuckle, multiflora, and greenbrier. 

Bosley Farm Road beyond the quarry

Landscape change was happening long before the Loch Raven Reservoir was created in the early 1900s, however. Farm abandonment and the collapse of the the Ridgely Plantation complex allowed much of the watershed to reforest on its own by the late 1800s. By the time the dam was built across the Gunpowder River to capture water for Baltimore in 1912, successional forests had already reclaimed large sections of the watershed with Oak and Hickory. Missing was American Chestnut. Much of this forest was salvage-logged when the waters were planned to rise. Deserted villages, ruins of mills, an iron furnace, and the rural road system were submerged. Remaining forests were found on the high ground gathered out on the points, along ridges, and on hilltops now islands. 

Impounded waters

Woodlands that may have stood a chance to thrive succumbed instead to neglect. As the City of Baltimore, the owners of the watershed properties, allowed no hunting on the land huge herds of deer browsed away replacement generations of trees and the shrub layer. The failing forest is thus in perfect condition perfect for an invasive plant take-over.  In a 2004 botanical report (See Notes) it is noted that at the time of the survey, invasive plants accounted for a whopping 33% of the total plant profile. "There is no program currently in place to manage exotic species in the watershed," it states. (pg. 89)

Virginia Pine

Red Cedar (juniper)

There's a lot to unpack here:  The lack of a fire regime is matched by the lack of conservation management. Restricted hunting ensures a large population of deer. Ideas of what counts as invasive, native, and non-native are loaded socio-ecological terms that overlay understandings of  ecological functionality. The legacy of neglect couples with an uncertain future involving state, local, and community forest health planning. As I stood in the quarry hollow I observed a half dozen tree tubes that protected sapling trees planted here within the last few years. Not enough, I thought, as multiflora rose thorns pierced my brush pants. Even though comprehensive plans for conservation management do now exist, is it too little too late? Should we content ourselves with the idea of ecological sacrifice through poor or slow stewardship efforts?

Recent beaver activity on Tulip Poplar

As I pushed my way down overgrown trails I was happy to find White Pine, Virginia Pine, and Red Cedar as well as a few American Holly growing in open glades.  Many of these trees were surrounded by very young saplings, tiny pines and red cedars that encircled their parent trees. None was over two feet high, however, before showing signs of deer browse. Missing completely were saplings older than five years or higher than five feet.  The exception were several young American Holly growing in thickets seemingly protected from browsing, encapsulated by thick underbrush.  I tried to push my way to the end of the point but I wasn't able to make it through. Discouraged I turned back and tried to parallel the old road which, in its sunken track, was completely inaccessible. 

Virginia Pine

American Holly pushing through 

Back on campus we discussed the poor health of the college woodlands. We stood on the edge of a mowed field to study the architecture of invasive vines as they grew like heavy drapery  hiding the supporting trees on the edge of the woods. "I wonder how many people coming to campus, students and teachers, look at these as 'natural woodlands' and have no idea of what is happening here?"  one student asked. With that, we picked up our loppers and began to rescue a nearby American Walnut. 

Rescue and release.

Notes:

Redman, D. Earl (2004) Vascular Flora of the Loch Raven Watershed, Baltimore County, Maryland https://www.mdflora.org/Resources/Documents/Vascular%20Flora%20of%20Loch%20Raven%20Watershed.pdf