Snow showers today. I caught one earlier and because it is such a quiet baking day, I played with the shots.
The two surviving cottonwoods at the edge of the bog and orchard.
Flakes of snow.
I've spent some time reading to see how much damage the porcupines are going to create on the tamaracks. Foresters say they are awful pests. Naturalists note that the tamarack inner bark is a favorite of porkies. From "Tamarack Time" at Flandrum Hill:
The inner bark of tamaracks is edible and has many medicinal uses among Native Americans, among them, treating burns, wounds, inflammations and headaches. It’s also a favourite of porcupines.
Tamarack habitats are used by a variety of wildlife species. It provides cover from summer heat for bear, deer and moose, but is browsed by relatively few species. Snowshoe hares feed on twigs and bark, and porcupines feed on the inner bark. Spruce grouse and sharp-tailed grouse eat the needles and buds. Ospreys nest in the dead trees. Red squirrels cut and store the cones. Mice and voles eat large numbers of the seeds off the ground.
I checked all of my archives for photos I may have captured of all of the "pests" of tamarack. I have not found one. But I did possibly find the cocoon of Hyalophora columbia, a rare silkmoth that loves tamaracks. I brought the cocoon inside to raise, but it never developed. But my daughter, Amelia, did find an adult in nearby Brownington at school. That was such an exciting day for both of us! It was also an extremely frustrating day since I have been searching for these for 20 years and she found one in her first bug hunting year.
Columbia Silkmoth (Hyalophora columbia)
I have also documented the Larch Tolype (Tolype laricis), whose host is tamarack. It's a beautiful fuzzy gray moth with a brillo-type haircut. It was my husband's favorite moth each season.
Larch Tolype - Hodges#7673 (Tolype laricis)
Larch Tolype - Hodges#7673 (Tolype laricis)
I know that if I called Vermont Fish & Wildlife there would be no advice. It is illegal to move any wildlife to anywhere at all (even skunks). It is illegal to harass wildlife in any way (and who would want to?). And while it may be legal for me to shoot them, I won't.
My conclusion is that I will leave the porkies alone. I will stop resenting them. I will learn to appreciate their place in my biosphere. If they kill one or two tamaracks (they are chewing on two that I know of), I'll get over it. I will hope to see an osprey nest in a dead tamarack here. I will think of the grouse, deer, moose, mice and voles, and snowshoe hares that use the tamaracks. My snowshoe hare tracks, in fact, are always in the same area near them. I will keep track of the progression of tree gnawing. I have an entire new research project.
How high will a porcupine go?
They love the main stem inner bark the most.
I still don't know how they got out on those small branches on the left. I read that many die from falling off trees.
I learned today that the two porcupines that I see are most likely denning together for the winter under the barn. I remembered that they love salt. I remembered when my foot slipped into an underground den of theirs up above the house in the cliffs and came out covered in porcupine poo.
I'm going to ask Amelia to get me a tamarack shoot so that we can plant it indoors as the USFS author did.
Tamaracks can live up to 400 years. My attitude towards porcupines is irrelevant, trivial, compared to that.
Here is a YouTube video of a porcupine eating tamarack inner bark.
When I let Lucy out after supper, just at dusk, I looked up at my favorite tamarack tree as I always do and said, "Aww, there are two bird nests from the summer up there." But then I stopped and said, "No! Those nests were not there yesterday or last week or this morning! It's the porcupines!" And I groaned.
Just after the tamaracks lost their needles (they are a deciduous conifer tree), I saw the evidence of my Barn Porcupine damaging the tree. I showed it to my kids and they chuckled.
Porcupines ate the bark off the left branch.
The kids didn't know what they were looking at, so I pointed it out to them:
But even I was questioning if it was porkies eating the bark because it isn't the strongest branch and the damage was way out at the end—where the tenderest bark is. Porcupines can be huge like the one that is living under my barn. In the top photo, my Barn Porcupine is on the right on the trunk of the tree and presumably his smaller lady love, who may or may not be under the barn living with him, is on the left here in the photo:
Here is Lady Porcupine
This was a handheld shot with my bug camera (I have lent Amelia my huge camera with my long lens and think I have to get it back now). I used digital zoom while I braced my arms on my walker while sitting on a stool in the laundry room with the back door open heating the entire outdoors with the price of oil what it is.
I'm going to call Fish & Wildlife for advice about my trees. I have over 100 tamaracks that my husband carefully tended for me because I love them so. Plus the apple orchard, which porcupines also love. Plus the sugar maples that they love that we used to tap.
A porcupine's only natural enemy is a fisher cat. Fisher cats are vicious wolverine-type furry animals that will attack for no reason at all and are legend for killing house cats and small dogs. I have had them trying to get into my house in the summer through open windows. I close all first floor windows at night in the summer now. But I haven't seen a fisher here for years. I don't want them back. And I don't want the porcupines to kill my trees. And I don't want them shot.
The same tamarack in 2013. It was much smaller. In November they turn this brilliant orange and are seen blazing on mountain sides everywhere here. The boulder is Pansy Rock where Angel Pansy, a disabled cat, was buried by my husband.
The photograph above is of the branches of a tamarack (American Larch) tree, one of my favorites. This is a deciduous conifer (a cone-bearing tree that sheds its needles). Native people used this tree to make canoes and kayaks. We are cultivating every seedling here that we find. The tamaracks glow orange in the late fall long after the other trees have shed their leaves in the autumn.
Large female cones
Tamaracks have male and female cones on the same tree. Above you see the large female cones. It is winter now and the ground is covered with snow. The tamaracks are bare — except that they still have these cones on them.
Male cones
In the photo above you can see (perhaps; you may need to click the photo and see the original size on Flickr) the itty, bitty male cones.The National Phenology Network tells us on their tamarack page that
The small, yellowish male cones bear pollen and the reddish brown female cones mature and become pale brown. Cone production begins when the tree matures at about 15-40 years of age, and pollination occurs by wind.
After the foliage season here, we have Stick Season. That is when the woods are dark, without leaves. The trees are sticks. This season lasts until winter — whenever the snow first comes. But right in there somewhere when all the trees are sticks is tamarack season. These are northern larch trees. They are also called American larch, eastern larch and hackmatack. Long after the oaks and maples have given us their beauty, these tamaracks seem to be on fire. After this bright foliage display, they lose their leaves and appear to be dead. I was going to cut mine down the first year I was here because I thought I had a bunch of dead trees! Thank goodness I didn't. They were back the next spring with vibrant new green leaves. These trees are great for making canoes. They grow quickly and spread easily. As John restored the ancient stream beds and regraded the land here to prevent anymore flash floods, he carefully saved every tamarack tree he could see. We now have over a dozen of the trees between the house and the upper field. These are photographs of three of them.
Come drive our roads during tamarack foliage season. The mountains are wild with their color.
%20(3)_edited.jpg)
%20(5)_edited.jpg)
%20(October%2028,%202013)%2011.jpg)
Wordless Wednesday