NY Tifft Nature Preserve - Trip Log May 19

Off to the edges of the Mid-Atlantic to far Western New York State for a long weekend trip with my daughter Em, her daughter Kenzey (13), son Aiden (8) for a Devonian adventure. Though this area is far removed from home, it does have a marked impact upon where we live in Central PA and Delaware. Highly charged low pressure systems fill with ocean moisture  and combine with cold fronts that pour out of the Arctic over the Great Lakes with strong winds to deliver some mighty big Nor-Easters and blizzards.  Lake Erie makes its own weather and with its abundant snow-making capability, storms roar southward to deliver our classic "lake-effect storms." Lake Erie, like all of the Great Lakes, is a fluid memory of the Ice Ages. One of our first stops was to sit on its shore and face the sunset with the remains of a once booming industrial coast at our backs. We had a paleo-lecture to attend so we couldn't stay quite till dark, but it was magic enough to imagine a mile-thick sheet of ice over our heads.

Aiden and Em snuggle for a chilly sunset on a calm but cold Lake Erie beach.

Another one of our first stops was to visit Tifft Nature Preserve just south of the First Ward district in Buffalo. This site has a heavy industrial-use history but is now blanketed in green meadows, wetlands, and forest. It was hard to remember that this was once a landfill and shipment base for coal, grain, and iron ore.  We walked through a bird-filled woods literally saturated with a wave of colorful migrating warblers where it seemed hundreds of birds were all singing at once. Yellow warblers were especially abundant and they darted here and there like bright speckles of feathered sunshine flickering through the leaves.

Cargill grain complex in the background.

Emily's capture of a Baltimore Oriole.

Emily got this great shot of a Magnolia Warbler.

Another Em capture: Bay-Breasted Warbler

Erie's industrial coast from Pennsylvania through New York is recovering its natural profile from a century of heavy industry, economic decline, and site abandonment.  Never out of view along the boardwalks and trails are the visible hulks of grain silos and steel plants.  But a transformation is taking place as Rust Belt ruin is giving way to a new green economy that capitalizes on outdoor recreation and nature appreciation. "Buffalo Rising" is a social, economic, and environmental movement that incorporates re-wilding practices as green remediation of heavily polluted wastelands while offering residents and visitors new ways to enjoy the waterfront on hike-and-bike trails, lake access for paddlers and fisherfolk, and new opportunities for the outdoor industry to thrive here.

One of hundreds of yellow warblers flitting through a very young forest.

Em tracked this Yellow Warbler into the sun for a beautiful back-lit portrait.

From the deck of the Tifft Nature Center - another Yellow Warbler!

Some of the serious environmental issues that plague Lake Erie are similar to our home waters of the Chesapeake Bay: overloading of nutrients and algae blooms, invasive species, and poor water quality. And, like at home, there are a boatload of environmental programs and organizations working hard to address these issues. There was a sense of great pride among the residents we met on our hike and certainly at the fossil dig we participated in the following day at Penn Dixie Preserve, that the lake and its shores were on the mend. Though the loss of heavy industrial jobs over the past several decades  has hurt terribly, the environmental field offers new directions and possibilities.

This corridor, an old factory road, was dripping with warblers!

Far back from the shores of the post-industrial wasteland is a hopeful economic landscape composed of precision metal manufacturing and other highly technical (and less polluting) industries. One family who intersected our hike was talking about a technical training program for their high school child.  The old industries of grain storage, coal, and steel aren't coming back despite politically charged promises that seem almost outdated and out of place in today's post industrial economy.

Aiden stands on the edge of a willow wood, partially flooded by beavers that create even more habitat.

Eco-economies are highly adaptable and need the creative energies of new generations to envision and put in place healthier more resilient infrastructures. Thinking like a beaver, with the right amount of support and structure, whole new environments can be built that reflect restoration as well as renewal.

Orioles were everywhere!

For mega-ecoregions like the Great Lakes old industrial identities die hard, while for specific communities within the Lake Erie coastal zones like Buffalo, NY, and Erie, PA, local efforts to re-imagine a wilder and greener future offer a lot of hope and excitement. We definitely felt this at Tifft Nature Preserve and Penn Dixie the next day. I'd like to spend more time here to fully explore the rewilding shores of Erie. Put that on my list.

Tifft Nature Preserve is bounded by the Southtowns of Buffalo and a redeveloping green waterfront.  Google Maps.

Notes:

Tifft Nature Preserve is owned and managed by the Buffalo Museum of Science and is continuing to transform the landscape. http://www.tifft.org/tifft/

Following the Trail of a Giant: Alfred W. Crosby

The downside is that spring has been taking its time coming to South-Central, PA. It's snowing heavily again tonight. I've made the best of the sunnier days, however, to get down into the many ravines and valleys along the Susquehanna to search for signs and sounds to prove that, in fact, it is on the way.  The upside is that I've had more time to see into the woods and read the lay of land - one of my favorite things about winter.  During these weeks of exploring the deep places, the field of environmental history has lost a founder, Dr. Alfred W. Crosby (b. 1931), who greatly influenced how I look and think about land through the lens of biology and culture.

A "catwalk" trail follows a narrow ridge.

Crosby's work inspired and launched the whole new field of environmental history that includes ecology and biology as important frameworks for research and  interpretation.  His books The Columbian Exchange: Biological and Cultural Consequences of 1492 (1972) and Ecological Imperialism: The Biological Expansion of Europe, 900 - 1900 (1986) changed how I see the landscape around me. His work ignited my passion for environmental history.  By the time I graduated from high school in 1978 (and thanks to a progressive teacher in biology and evolution), I'd read and written a critical essay about Crosby's ideas of invasion biology  in The Columbian Exchange. What we see today, I summarized, is not pristine North American "nature" but the result of biological processes introduced by multiple waves of human invaders.

A wagon ford (foregound) can usually be found just before a creek's steep descent.

The myriad trails and pathways I take to access the deep ravines of the River Hills  can be made out clearly in the leafless landscape. Catwalks, the rocky, narrow ridgetop paths made by Susquehannock and earlier native peoples allow for winter views into these valleys and out across the river. Catwalks follow the spines of rocky ridges and the edges of cliffs formed by the great uplifted bedrock, sharp and boulder-filled. They aren't very safe for anyone on horseback, but their persistence as trails today show that we are still using them. Local  hunters still use catwalk trails for harvesting deer that move through the valley bottoms. I've done so myself.  Original human hunters, Indigenous people arriving after the retreat of glaciers, were the first wave of human invaders. Their mark on our landscape includes what we no longer see: wood bison, mastodon, ground sloth, giant beaver, and other megafauna that were ill adapted to human hunting pressure.

A trench ravine closes in quickly and any hope of a road is lost.

Well into a second wave of human invasion during the age of European discovery, Crosby argued that long before European settlements were established, introduced diseases had already moved rapidly ahead of them, wiping out up to 90% of native people. Diseases hit particularly hard those who lived in dense camp clusters and towns, which tended to be along rivers. Smallpox and the flu were particularly vicious, he asserts, reaching epidemic proportions long before settlers arrived. There was much evidence in our region of a plague-type epidemic: rapidly abandoned villages, empty camps, deserted horticultural sites.

A massive hemlock towers out of a deep ravine.

Crosby was very interested in how diseases traveled among both vulnerable human and non-human populations. The way was made clear for the tens of thousands of Europeans who followed the explorers because disease had preceded them. Benjamin Franklin boasted that by 1760 there were a million more "native" Britons in America courtesy of the 80,000 or so immigrants who began the process of colonization a century before. Crosby reshaped the idea of colonization in both its human and biotic history as the concept of ecological imperialism. 

Wilson Run Gorge

"These lands had to have a temperate climate, the migrants wanted to go where they could be more comfortably European in life style than at home, not less. To attract Europeans in great numbers, a country had to produce or show clear potentiality for producing commodities in demand back home in Europe - beef, wheat, wool, hides, coffee - and its resident population had to be too small to supply that demand. And so it was that so many Europeans poured into cornucopian North America, into Australasia, and into southern Brazil... bleaching out whatever Amerindian and African traces might have existed." (1) 

Otter Creek Gorge.

Crosby divided waves of Eurasian and European migrants according to how, when, and why they arrived. Eurasians crossed land bridges and introduced new hunting technologies. Europeans sailed to the New World and counted those who came for new economic opportunity or religious freedom. By 1750 up to 80% of new arrivals from Europe were indentured servants, military/naval conscripts, prisoners, and enslaved peoples from Western Africa. Economic opportunity led to exportations of products and resources back to Europe.

A trail so steep that switchbacks are marked with a triple blaze.

What was the environmental cost of ecological imperialism? The loss of native people are the saddest and cruelest chapters of Crosby's work,  but he speaks also about the exchange and demise of native animals for European oxen, horses, hogs, and poultry - even the honeybee. I've done some research on a once-common species of American bumble bee succumbing to introduced pathogens from domestically raised, packaged, and accidentally released European bumble species for a growing greenhouse industry in Canada and the Northeast. The exchange/demise is still occurring and disease is still the main factor.

What is missing?

Crosby brings attention to European naturalized weeds and grasses we can count among our biological inventories. "The eastern third of the United States and Canada, where half the population still lives, though it has been over three and a half centuries since the founding of Jamestown and Quebec, is the Neo-European seedbed of North America." (2)  On a spring day, even in the remote bottoms of these deep gorges, I can find in abundance black mustard, plantain, thistles, nettles, nightshade, dandelion, groundsel, dock, knot-grass, and mullein. Add to these, up on the cultivated plateaus of farmland and forest, all the forage crops including white clover. European flora (weeds) according to Crosby, "moved with amazing speed, sometimes bounding ahead of the settled frontier." (3)

An early-mature woodland at the edge of a ravine - this was once open pasture.

Crosby recast the human migration history of the Mid-Atlantic and Northeast as a great biological invasion and his ideas were unsettling for some established historians when Ecological Imperialism was first published. His work continues to have its critics especially among those who revere European dominion narratives and who hold history against certain ideological qualifiers. There can be no denying, however, that the spread of infectious diseases was the monumental consequence of European migration to North America. By some biological invasion histories, we are still under-estimating the numbers of native people whose deaths were attributed to smallpox. Crosby can be considered a giant among historians for his work on pathogens and contagions, but there is so much more.

Bug and Amos lead me up an old wagon road, to a steep switchback, and on to a catwalk trail.

Among his other works - some of which blew my head off when I first read them - are his books America's Forgotten Pandemic: The Influenza of 1918 (1976). This work informed my own research into the ecologies of industrial warfare, landscape of war, and WWI.  Crosby's book inspired the excellent centennial documentary Influenza 1918 shown on American Experience, PBS. Throwing Fire: Projectile Technology Through History (2002) inspired some new venues of research into the effects of biological and explosive weaponry on farmlands in my dissertation work.

Steep gradients in the river hills valleys ensured a healthy crop of mills and small factories in the 1800s.

Crosby's work inspired my fascination for the technologies of European societies that enabled exploration and exploitation across such a large global landmass. My interest in milling technologies, hydro and wind power, navigation, surveying, and time-keeping are the direct result of reading his book The Measure of Reality: Quantification of Western Society, 1250 - 1600 (1997). I remember sitting in an old gristmill-turned-nature center where I once volunteered, so totally engrossed in this book that I didn't notice the had sun set and someone had locked me in. I had to call someone with keys to come let me out. After that I got my own set of keys. Of course, this led me down a huge rabbit hole to explore the technologies, sciences, and maths of other cultures and their chain of impact on Mid-Atlantic natural history. It was a busy year of reading that had me thinking hard about going for my doctorate in agricultural history and landscape studies. Hence, my early PhD work with native bumble bees, agricultural technologies, and European imports...

Bug and Amos listen politely to a quote by Alfred Crosby.

Thinking about the influence Alfred Crosby has had on me as an environmental historian and backwoods wanderer, I looked down at my tired pups who have accompanied me on all six weeks' worth of ravine hikes. "We will content ourselves with one last archaeological trench," quoting Crosby from The Measure of Reality.  "Trench" seemed to a much safer term to use around coonhounds as compared to rabbit hole. Each ravine, every gorge, holds evidence of past cultures' impact on the land and the fact that I can see and interpret that evidence, rooted intellectual and physically in the environmental and biological consequences of colonization, we'll continue to follow the trail of the giant.  Rest in history, Dr. Crosby.

An "archeological trench." 

Notes:

Crosby, A. Ecological Imperialism: The Biological Expansion of Europe, 900-1900. Cambridge University Press, 1986.

 (1) "The lands had to have temperate climates...." pg. 298.
 (2) "The eastern third of the United States..." pg. 149.
 (3)  "The weeds could move ..." pg. 162

American Experience "Influenza 1918" is available to stream and includes interviews with Alfred Crosby. http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/americanexperience/films/influenza/

Smithsonian interview with Crosby on the Columbian Exchange.
https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/alfred-w-crosby-on-the-columbian-exchange-98116477/

Obituary, Alfred W. Crosby,
https://networks.h-net.org/node/23910/discussions/1543442/obit-alfred-w-crosby

PA Ferncliff Wildflower Preserve

For Lent I've decided to take as many dawn walks as I can up until Easter.  Lent as a fasting period to prepare for the High Holy Days in the Catholic Church has its roots in early Christian traditions, but the word itself is derived from the Old English lencten and means the lengthening of days, the coming of spring. Like many Christian holy days and periods of religious observance, the forty days of Lent are overlaid upon cultural traditions that predate Christianity.  Among Celtic traditions the late winter fast was a period of rationing the last of the winter stores and a time of anticipation for spring's warmth and light.

A dark, rainy, foggy start to forty walks at dawn on Ash Wednesday: Mason Dixon Trail on the Susquehanna

To honor the Lenten fast today people give things up such as certain foods, not-so-healthy-behaviors, and conveniences. Many of my friends are going offline or doing without certain social media. Some friends are taking on something new that may challenge an old routine or way of thinking. I chose this year to take on forty walks at dawn. It is now the first Sunday in Lent and so far I've done five dawn walks starting in the dark and ending with enough light to enjoy a view.

A sunny dawning on Day 4 of 40: Susquehannock State Park, Lancaster County, PA

To the Celts, the natural world contained life lessons, spiritual meanings, and religious observances. Nature was not separate from humankind, but the home in which people lived - an ecology of relationships with all things living and non-living. Central to the Celtic deities were the spirits that inhabited trees, the holy spaces we now know as sacred groves, and recognized the plant world as having soul and wisdom.  It only made sense to mix my Big Tree theme for the 2018 hiking year with the Celtic-Druid love of trees, so I am trying to be conscious of choosing woodlands, like today's visit to Ferncliff, for these forty hikes at dawn.

Ferncliff, part of the Old Growth Forest Network.

Ferncliff is a Lancaster Conservancy site that has an old road to the river through a deep ravine. Ravines are topographically important in the River Hills region and are notable for containing old growth forest, large assemblages of native wildflowers, and wildlife. I thought Ferncliff would be a good choice, too, for taking (pretty big) new coonhound puppy Amos to see the river up close. The day dawned sunny but by the time the dogs and I had made our drive across the Susquehanna, clouds were banking above the ridge tops. The sun shone through porthole openings briefly now and then and the previous night's beautiful snowfall was melting fast, plopping on us all in fat wet dollops from the hemlocks and rhododendron overhead.

Dark diabase schist forms the stream bottom bedrock.

For a coonhound Amos did pretty good not getting too distracted by all the scent trails and deer paths, while his much older sister Bug insisted on walking any puddle she could find. The deer trails are incised deeply in steep ravine hills and I thought how much these paths are like bad habits we try to shake off during Lent - they usually follow contours of least resistance and are well known to other animals as well. It's easy to follow them. Amos was less interested in the well-trodden paths but very interested in the fallen trees that lay across and beside the old road. He hopped right up and tracked who-knows-what animals that use the trees as pathways. Among coonhound clubs, there are contests and "degrees" for how the dogs perform on track and Amos surely earned his degree in log-walking.

The narrowness of the ravine is apparent here.

Bug has always preferred work the edge of streams so her degree would be as a "wet tracker" and with the stream so close to the path she and Amos had me pulled in two directions as one walked logs and the other waded the stream. Thank goodness for long leads! It got to be a little much so I ended the fun and put them both on a double lead. At least I could walk straight ahead instead of staggering side-to-side.

Ancient rhododendron reach over the road like an arbor.

Ferncliff is a site designated by the Old Growth Forest Network as containing significant mature tree communities. The rhododendron were particularly impressive with thick twisting trunks that reached out to any sunlit patches down through the hollow. Groves of old hemlock, incredibly high tulip poplar, and ancient beech occupy every bend and flat in the stream valley. Ironwood and pawpaw filled the open spaces between the old trees while oaks of several species towered over everything, growing high on the steep land above the stream.

Old growth forest communities occupy the flat stream banks and bends in the narrow ravine.

The snow was not very good for tracking but according to the dogs' noses the sodden leaves and damp earth beneath was perfect for snuffling and snorting. This slowed our pace so much that I had the opportunity to study the rock formations, angular and sharp, showing none of the shapely curves of long exposure to river currents. The ravine is rough cut and raw.

Barnes Run is the stream that cuts this ravine.

Cut deeper with every major flood event with walls steep enough that mudslides and rock fall are part of its wall formation, it is easy to spot slippage slopes that carry heavy runoff down to the stream. The diabase, a type of igneous intrusion parent material, has been squeezed over time and at great depths into sheet-like layers now exposed standing vertically at the surface. These layers pop apart in freeze-thaw cycles. Tablets and tables of it laid in the stream bed having broken off from the outcrops far above, some of it weighing several tons.

A old grove sheltered below a diabase fin.

A slippage slope.

I'd be interested in coming back here every month or so to photograph the changes in the tree cover and the procession of wildflower blooms. Various websites list those plants that wildflower enthusiasts can find here in season, including some interesting orchids.  What caught my attention as we neared a stream ford, however, were some interesting small ferns tucked into rocky ledges. I found spleenwort and rock polypody growing from an almost hidden crevice in a roadside outcrop. How many people walk past this, I thought. I was thankful for the very slow nose-pace the dogs were setting.

Old growth hemlock.

The nose-pace ended at the stream ford and young Amos had to face his first wet crossing. He was very hesitant but being double leashed to Bug he walked carefully alongside her, flank to flank, until we got to the other side. I made sure to give him lots of pats and "good boy!" encouragements and he was pretty proud of himself. Every experience for him is new right now so it's fun to see how he sizes up things like edges, water, mud, and new sounds - like the raucous call of a pileated woodpecker.

"Don't worry," says Bug, "That's just a very large woodpecker."

Sunlight came and went as quickly as the clouds were moving overhead. One minute the valley was in shadow, cold and murky, the next minute it was bright with snow and glittering water.The sound of water dripping from the branches and the playful plops of wet snow slipping from the hemlock was soon absorbed by the sound of the swollen Susquehanna ahead. We climbed the railroad embankment, crossed the tracks, and looked out on the wide river fat with snowmelt from New York and northern Pennsylvania.

Playful sounds of the ravine were soon overtaken by ....

...the mighty thrum of meltwater moving down the Susquehanna to the Chesapeake.

Amos stood in awe of the river. His ears stood out an he sniffed the air. He'd seen nothing like it in his six months and was transfixed. He watched the water lap at the embankment and stared intently at logs and debris mats floating by. A gull landed on a drift log and he whined and let out his first real "roo" - the famous coonhound bay that might wake the dead. Startled, he looked at me as if to say "That came out of me?!" Like with all young animals and people, the fun for us grown ups is watching them discover something totally new and thus we see it afresh with own our eyes.

Every child has come to know the name of God
Not the God of names
Not the God of don'ts
Not the God who never does anything weird
But the God who only knows four words
and keeps repeating them, saying
"Come Dance With Me.

-Hafez, Persian poet

Notes:

Ferncliff is one of many beautiful natural areas under the management and protection of the Lancaster Conservancy. https://www.lancasterconservancy.org/preserve/ferncliff/ 

 

DE Redden State Forest: Georgetown Tract, 5 Mile Loop

Returning from the annual Maryland Association of Outdoor and Environmental Education conference in Ocean City, I decided to hike the Georgetown Tract of Redden State Forest in Sussex County, Delaware, part of a multi-tract holding of state lands in the area and the largest. In keeping with this year's theme of Big Tree encounters I wasn't disappointed!

Loblolly, Shortleaf, and Virginia Pines.

A sand road double-loops around the forest but first-time hikers be warned - there are no trail markers of any kind except for the educational trail entrances along the loop road. I took a screen shot of the trail system on my phone and checked it at all intersections. I made a 5-mile figure-8 that included the educational trail. Keep in mind that this is a working forest and there are all sorts of management regimes at play from thinning to selective harvest to clear-cutting. It is an education to see the many ways a forest can be managed for lumber, habitat enhancement, or to protect biological treasures.

Pitch Pine, Pinus ridiga

The educational trail section seemed to harbor all the big tree species and from this foot path I was able to spot enormous Pitch, Virginia, and Loblolly Pines, sometimes all in one view. The weather was very grey and photography was a challenge with poor light. The dark trees back-lit by bright but cloudy skies made it hard to distinguish species. I do want to go back when things are blooming and budding as there was so much along this trail in the wet woodlands and slightly higher sandy hummocks that warrant another look.

Boardwalk over wet areas on the educational trail.

Big Tree Champion marked with a tiny ribbon and nail - Pitch Pine, 93'

Bird life was minimal with only a few White-throated Sparrows and Chickadees working the thickets along the road edge. Although I heard Pileated Woodpeckers calling throughout the forest, it was easier to find evidence of their being here by the many de-barked dead pines as they search in winter for beetle grubs. It was cold and dark, so if I was a bird, I'd stay fluffed up and snoozing in some protected hiding place in a Holly or thicket. So I gave the birding a pass. As dark and foreboding as the forest seemed today it's interesting to remember that this, like so much of our Mid-Atantic forested landscapes, was once open farm fields.

Pitch pine cone with a sharp spike per seed scale.

The main 250 acres of state forest complex that holds the old lodge, former stables (educational center), and ranger's office (an 1800s farmhouse in the classic Delaware "Dutch" style) was once a working farm. As I walked through the surrounding woodland I observed all the different ways the forest is managed such as pine plantation for lumber production so densely planted that no understory can grow in its shade...

Pine plantation for lumber, a monoculture.

 ... to selective harvest tracts for loblolly. This tract has a great understory so it will be very birdy come spring migration time in a few months. Deadfall is an important aspect of maintaining a rich insect and predator population, so old limbs and fallen trunks are left in place. Warblers, woodpeckers, and other insect-eating birds help keep insect pests in check.  Soils are enriched by rotting deadfall and wind-thrown trees that help create water catchments in root holes.  Selective harvest forests can be wildlife havens and its clear the foresters here manage for just that. As beautiful pineland habitat, Redden State Forest is on Delaware Audubon's Birding Trail for its rich southern forest bird populations. I can't wait to come back in a few months to stalk Summer Tanagers, Worm-Eating Warblers, Red-Headed Woodpeckers, and Vesper & Grasshopper Sparrows.

Selective harvest tract of Loblolly Pine.

Water basins form in the root hollows of toppled trees.

There are areas that are managed as grasslands where clear-cutting has helped create openings. These openings may serve as future woodland nurseries if replanted or may be kept open as fire breaks or habitat for open land and edge species like white tail deer. I heard a deer go crashing through the woods as I rounded a bend to this open area but I never caught sight of it. If the weather hadn't been so threatening, I would have stayed a while at this meadow to watch for hawks hunting from the young pine woods across the field.

Open grassland from a clear cut.

The decrease in populations of Bobwhite Quail over much of its former range is thought to be the result of the loss of persistent openings such as this, so its always encouraging to see meadow and field being protected for grassland species. Historically, the pine woods of the lower Delmarva region were highly valued. Shortleaf Pine was the most prized wood for furniture, home, and ship building and it didn't take long for lumbering interests to clear the sandy southern counties right up into the 1980s. In many southern states the Shortleaf is receiving special restoration attention, including in Delaware. In 2007 the Shortleaf Pine Initiative began and in twenty-two states multiple agencies and private landowners are working now to re-establish Shortleaf Open Woodland and Savanna.

Open woodlands of mixed pine and hardwood.

A flash of black and white rocketed through a beautiful mixed stand of Pitch Pine, oak, and gum. I knew in an instant that my presence had flushed a large Pileated Woodpecker and only a few hundred feet further along the Educational Trail, I found his project tree. The bright orange inner bark of a dead pine revealed he'd been at work for a few days. Large chunks of pine bark lay scattered about and hunks of inner wood on the standing trunk were blown out by his powerful hammering.  The undersides of the bark pieces showed bark beetle holes and the inner wood showed the tunnels eaten away by beetle grubs.  Standing dead timber is just as important for wildlife as standing live is to our lumber industry. Soon, this beetle grub buffet will host woodpecker cavities for nesting and after that any number of cavity nesters will take over the woodpecker homes. A fine tree indeed.

Pileated Woodpecker project tree.

The big Pitch Pines, black and almost non-photogenic against the darkening skies had captured my attention for the day however. Their massive trunks and wavy, unkempt tops grew this way and that. The wind was picking up and rain drops began to fall. The pine woods began to sing. Donald Peattie in his 1948 Natural History of Trees of Eastern North America writes poetically of this tree -

As long as our forests stand, as long as the trees march down to the sea or climb the wind-swept ridges, its dark plumy crown, its grand, rugged trunks, the strong, sweet, pitchy odor of its groves and the heavy chant of the wind in them will stand for something that is wild and untamable, and disdains even to be useful for man. (23)

Pitch Pine.

Notes:

Take a screen shot or pic of this map to navigate the trails for the Headquarters (Georgetown) Tract.
https://dda.delaware.gov/forestry/maps/2017/Redden/headquarters_2016.pdf

Delaware Audubon's Birding Trail contains Redden State Forest and many other pine land habitats to explore.  http://www.delawareaudubon.org/birding/BirdingTrail5.html

Shortleaf Pine Restoration Initiative is a multi-partner project to restore this legacy pineland landscape and the many species of birds, mammals, and reptiles that depend upon it.  http://shortleafpine.net/

Peattie, Donald. (1948). A Natural History of Trees of Eastern and Central North America. (New York, New York, Houghton Mifflin Co.)

Delaware Forest Service. https://dda.delaware.gov/forestry/forest.shtml