Pen DauBach, Clifftop

Now that cold winter has gripped our bluff lands, many natural sources of animal wildlife foodstuffs are becoming depleted. While “hard mast” oak acorns and hickory nuts strew our forest floor, they will begin to decompose in the winter’s duff. Our grasses and forbs, both important animal food sources, have died back. Crops, which help feed many of our critters, are harvested out of our farm fields. And, many, thin-skinned “soft mast” native fruits — like mulberries, persimmon and blackberries– have already been consumed or desiccated by the cold temperatures.

But, in reserve, many of our common woodland native trees, shrubs, and vines still have berries, which will persist throughout winter and provide a safety net of food sources for wildlife. And wildlife is drawn to berries in winter like a wet dog to a well-dressed visitor.

Our native berries provide an important source of carbohydrates, fats and sugars for wildlife, particularly in the dead and coldest months of winter. Many berries have low appeal to wildlife when they first mature, but alternate cycles of freezing and thawing soften and sweeten the berries, making them more palatable to wildlife.

Jeff Vanuga, USDA NRCS, Bugwood.org

The dark purple fruits of our warty-knobbed hackberry trees are favorites of fox, squirrels, quail, and turkey. They also support 24 species of birds and are adored by flickers, sapsuckers, mockingbirds and cardinals. Hackberry berries are also a favorite food of our reclusive and seldom seen nocturnal flying squirrels.

Eastern red cedar trees, trooping along fencerows, invading old fields, and skulking deep in the woods, provide valuable nesting and roosting habitat for birds.  Their dark blue berries with a whitish blush overall, which are borne only on the female trees, are favored by bobwhite quail, turkey, rabbits, fox, skunks, opossums, red squirrels (but not gray squirrels), and coyotes. In addition, they attract 54 species of birds, especially our wintering-over cedar waxwings, mockingbirds and thrashers.

Pen DauBach, Clifftop

As the name indicates, possum haw, or swamp holly, also produces fruits loved by opossums.  Our only native holly produces bright red fruits, which remain on the tree during the winter so long as birds and mammals let them stay.  Although the secondary name suggests this holly only grows in moist soils, it actually can be found far from bottomland woods and does well in a variety of habitats, including our drier upland woods.

The red berries of flowering dogwoods and the white berries of rough-leaved dogwoods, both high in calcium and fat content (24% by weight), help sustain all 62 species of mammals in the county, turkey and quail, and 40 other species of birds. Woodpeckers, cardinals and bluebirds especially adore these berries.

Dogwoods, among some of our other native berry-producing trees, demonstrate an important evolutionary reproductive strategy called “foliar fruit flagging.” The berries bright colors combined with brilliant fall foliage readily attract wildlife, which consume the berries and then drop seeds, often miles from the tree, insuring greater reproductive success for the tree.

A number of shrubs, in addition to rough-leaved dogwoods, also produce wintertime berry food for wildlife.  Spicebush’s glossy red berries are favorites of rodents and squirrels and also sustain about 20 species of bird life.

Pen DauBach, Clifftop

Smooth sumac’s clustered red berries attract small rodents and 31 species of birds, especially bluebirds. White-tailed deer also like the berries. But the sumac’s best friend is a cottontail rabbit. Studies have shown that sumac seeds in rabbit pellets germinate at a much higher rate than any other eaten or uneaten sumac seed.

Our native Viburnums — black haw, nannyberry and rusty nannyberry  — produce blue-black berries eaten by game birds, robins, bluebirds, thrashers, Eastern chipmunks, and squirrels. Viburnum berries however often rot on the twig. There low fat content dampens their appeal for much wildlife.

Ohio State Weed Lab, Ohio State University, Bugwood.org

Whether growing as a shrub or in vine form, the small white berries of poison ivy are an important food source. More than 60 species of birds relish the fruit. Many are fall migrants attracted by “foliar flagging,” others are winter residents including bobwhites, yellow-rumped warblers, and flickers. Animals seem to have no difficulty with this plant, richly colored and attractive red in the autumn, which causes a scratchy, weepy itch on contact for most people.

Hanging like ropes from the forest’s canopy, wild grapes provide oodles of soft mast to stock the wildlife larder.  There are five species of grapes native to Monroe and Randolph Counties.  The grapes are eaten in winter by bobwhite quail, turkey, pileated and red-bellied woodpeckers, thrushes, waxwings, cardinals, and deer.  Raccoons, opossums, skunks and squirrels also eat wild grapes.

Terry Spivey, USDA Forest Service, Bugwood.org

Among other native vines, the berries of American bittersweet feed 15 species of birds and small mammals. And our very common Virginia creeper, a member of the grape family, which sports beautifully brilliant fall foliage and luscious and nutritious blue berries, supports an additional 35 species, including skunks, foxes, deer, flickers, woodpeckers, bluebirds, thrashers, robins and fox sparrows. Fermented Virginia creeper berries on the vine will occasionally mildly intoxicate wildlife.

So please proceed with caution in our bluff lands vast forests, carefully marking your distance from tipsy thrashers or stumbling skunks. And, if you are inclined to conserve and support our myriad of wildlife, take care of the berry-producing native trees and shrubs in your woodlots and lawn edges, and consider planting more of them for the benefit of wildlife.

Clifftop, a local nonprofit organization, is focused on preserving and protecting area bluff lands.

A version of this article appeared in the December 3 2010 edition of the Monroe County Independent.

© 2010 all content rights reserved, Clifftop NFP.

Tom Rollins, Thomas Rollins Photography

Wild turkeys are a magnificent bellwether bird, proof positive that our bluff land forests afford healthy and sustainable habitats for a variety of wildlife.

Wild turkeys (Meleagrus gallopavo), the largest game bird in North America, have long held a special place in the natural world for peoples of our continent.  Many Native American tribes considered turkeys as sacred and provided them with ceremonial burials.  Other Amerindian groups – including the Illini – used turkey feathers as offerings to the dead, whose souls, they believed, could then fly to the next world.  Native Americans were the first to semi-domesticate turkeys, insuring a ready source of food.

The earliest Spanish explorers in the Western Hemisphere were quick to capitalize on their discovery of the wild turkey.  In 1511, the king of Spain ordered that every Spanish ship returning home from the Americas should bring five male and five female turkeys with them.   By 1600, turkeys were a common sight in farmyards across Europe.  Both the common and scientific names reflect confusion over the species’ land of origin.  The scientific name resulted from a perceived resemblance to the African Guinea fowl.  The belief that the bird originated in Turkey gave English speakers their name for the bird; but speakers of German, French and Italian all refer to a “cock of Calcutta or of India” in their common names.   So, while England’s first colonists in America at Jamestown and Plymouth brought turkeys with them, they may have been somewhat surprised – as well as pleased – to find the birds already here.

Early Euro-American pioneers and settlers had a variety of uses for turkey in addition to food.  The sharp spurs on turkey legs were made into arrowheads and the feathers were used to stuff mattresses and pillows.  Turkey wings became makeshift brooms while the tails were used as fans.

Wild turkeys, bountiful and ubiquitous in the forests throughout Eastern North America, served as a food mainstay in early America.  They came to symbolize the seemingly limitless natural resources of our expanding nation.  Benjamin Franklin proposed that the wild turkey become our national mascot in recognition of its industrious strength in defending its nest rather than the Bald Eagle, a bird that, in Franklin’s opinion, was lazy and opportunistic.

Tom Rollins, Thomas Rollins Photography

The widespread felling and destruction of eastern forest lands and zealous overhunting both for food and for feathers used by clothiers brought a sharp decline in turkey populations in the United States.  New England saw its last turkey in 1818.  New York’s last turkey died in 1844.  In Illinois, wild turkeys were extirpated by 1903.

In 1959, the Illinois Department of Conservation (the precursor of today’s Department of Natural Resources) began releasing wild turkeys that had been captured in other states into southern-most Illinois.  In 1973, with the founding of the National Wild Turkey Federation, whole scale, nationwide efforts were begun to prevent the overharvesting of wild turkey populations and to improve habitat for these game birds.

Wild turkey have now returned to all parts of Illinois where suitable habitat is found.  Sustaining those habitats is the absolute cornerstone to maintaining healthy and plentiful turkey populations.  Wild turkey lifestyle actually demands several types of habitat.

Tom Rollins, Thomas Rollins Photography

Turkeys are birds of both forest and field.  They feed on the ground, often in flocks.  When faced with danger they prefer to run, rather than fly, and can reach running speeds of up to 15 miles per hour.  At night, turkeys roost in trees, often quite near the top.

In spring, males – Toms – will wander widely and noisily in search of hens.  Toms will mate with multiple females.  Toms display “mood colors” during breeding season, with the head and neck brightening to vivid hues of red, white and blue in seconds should a hen or another male approach.  Males often fight viciously as they compete for hens.

After mating, hens go off by themselves into woodland areas. Each one scratches a shallow depression beneath a shrub, a low branch or brushy pile to make a nest.  Egg laying can occur over a period of several days with 10-12 eggs laid in the average clutch.  Incubation begins after all the eggs are laid.  Whenever the female leaves the nest to forage, she covers the eggs with leaves.

Incubation takes about a month.  After hatching, the hen leads the chicks, called “poults,” to brooding areas where they feed themselves a calorie-rich diet of insects and insect larvae.  The poults can fly in about two weeks and will follow their mother hen as she flies up into trees to roost for the night.  By day, she continues to lead her chicks to food in the brooding areas.  Good brood cover is key to the survival of the poults.

Quality brood habitat provides both insect food and offers protection from predators.  Fairly tall herbaceous vegetation that is open near the ground fits the chicks’ needs, since insects abound in the green growth which also serves to conceal the poults from predators.  Native grass stands, old farm fields and unharvested crop fields, so long as they are located near woodlands, can provide good brood cover.

Tom Rollins, Thomas Rollins Photography

All grasses, however, are not equal.  Non-native grass stands, especially mat-forming ground-hugging non-native fescues can entangle and trap poults.  Native grasses, particularly bunch-forming ones such as both big and little bluestem grasses, leave bare-ground patches around which the poults can scurry.  Native grasses also harbor many more insects, providing poults with plenty of nutritious “bug bites.”

The chicks mature along with the summer season.  By the time they are sub-adults the family groups begin to join others in larger flocks.  Brood hens and their poults merge to form groups of 30 or more individual birds.  Toms also form flocks of a dozen or so individual males.  In the fall, immature males, called “jakes,” often form their own groups of bachelor birds.  By winter, however, all the groups split again into small flocks as they retreat deeper and deeper into woodlands in search of food to sustain them through the cold season.

Wild turkeys feed omnivorously as their diet changes with the seasons.  The poults that had fed almost exclusively on insects – rich in protein, fats and calcium – quickly turn to plant sources by summer’s end.  Turkeys will browse a variety of plant foods, including seeds, leaves and tubers, and, even, field corn and milo.  But their dietary staple is the hard and soft mast produced in our area woodlands.  Hard mast, acorns and nuts, and soft mast, berries and fruits, are essential to the survival of turkeys for these foods are the mainstays of their diet and their lives.

Written accounts of the earliest explorers and settlers indicate that pre-European- settlement America hosted about 20 million wild turkeys.  By 1970 that population numbered about one million birds.  Today, after much effort, and no small expense, the wild turkey population has reached around seven million birds.

The successful restoration of wild turkeys – in all of the U.S., in Illinois, and in our bluff lands – has centered on maintaining and improving natural habitat in woodlands.  Hard and soft mast production is crucial to the health and sustainability of turkeys and a host of additional game and non-game wildlife.  Improving forest health – helping mast producing native trees achieve their wildlife larder filling potential – and maintaining forest edges with native grass and shrubby borders are the keys to wild turkey and wildlife habitats.

Clifftop, a local nonprofit organization, is focused on preserving and protecting area bluff lands.

A version of this article appeared in the October 2 2009 edition of the Monroe County Independent.

© 2009 all content rights reserved, Clifftop NFP.

Tom Rollins, Thomas Rollins Photography

As the dominant trees of our bluffs shine in autumn’s sun, creating a glowing tapestry of color, they also provide a rich food source for wildlife.  Mast is the broad term for various nuts and fruits produced by trees and shrubs.  There are two kinds: hard mast and soft mast; both are crucial in sustaining the wildlife of our woods’ ecosystem and in the regeneration and continuity of our forest lands.

The “overstory” trees — the tall, mature oaks and hickories along with scattered Black Walnut trees — produce acorns and nuts, the hard-shelled and long-lasting crunchy foodstuff of hard mast.  “Understory” trees and shrubs — which are able to grow well within the filtered shade of a woodland — produce fruits, berries and drupes, all with a soft, perishable layer holding single or multiple seeds, the soft mast relished by wildlife and, sometimes, humans.

The answer to the question “What’s for dinner?”  almost always entails, for most of us, a trip to the refrigerator or freezer which was previously stocked by trips to the supermarket,  paid for by journeys to and from the workplace.  Most of us work hard for our food — probably contributing far more hours per day to subsistence than the two to four hours needed by members of the few remaining gathering-hunting cultures, perhaps the only  true “leisure societies”  on Earth.  For wildlife, the answer to the same question is found in even simpler and entirely raw terms — the hard and soft mast of woodlands,  supplemented, in warm months, with a protein-rich insect, spider, and crustacean diet.

The availability of mast for wildlife is never guaranteed.  The vagaries and timing of temperature and precipitation throughout the year cause tremendous fluctuations in the quality and quantity of both hard and soft mast produced each year, often challenging wildlife to find alternate food sources.  The very variety of food sources, and the ability of wildlife to partake of so many foodstuffs, provide a safety net for alternative wildlife sustenance.  A number of tree species produce soft mast.

The dark purple fruits of our warty-knobbed hackberry trees are favorites of fox, squirrels, quail, turkey, cedar waxwings, yellow-bellied sapsuckers, mockingbirds, and robins.  Also dark purple, but with a blackberry shape, are the fruits of red mulberry trees.  Most birds and small mammals adore the fruits and generally will out-compete humans intent on turning mulberries into delicious jams, jellies or pies.

Our Eastern Red Cedar trees, trooping along fence rows, invading

Pen DauBach, Clifftop

old fields, and skulking deep in the woods, provide valuable nesting and roosting habitat for birds.  Their dark blue berries with a whitish blush overall, which are borne only on the female trees, are favored by bobwhite quail, turkey, rabbits, fox, skunks, opossums, and coyotes.

The black berries of Wild Black Cherry trees are very popular with non-game birds, deer, turkey, squirrels, mice and voles.  The bark and berries are rich in prussic acid, the old-fashioned term for hydrocyanic acid, and a referent to the rich blue color known as “Prussian blue.”  Native Americans used the berries and infusions made from the bark for coughs and congestion as well as a de-wormer.  Ingredients for cough medicines still are extracted from the berries.  Black bear cubs relish the fruits and while still small enough to get into the trees, will climb up to feast while their mother stands guard below.  In the Appalachian Mountain area a common caution  among outdoorsmen is to “Watch out for cherry bears!”

Pen DauBach, Clifftop

While black cherry fruits are an early summer treat,  mid- to late-autumn brings on persimmon tree fruits.  The thick, one-inch round, purple-black fruits — slightly mushy when ripe — offer a sweetly complex flavor.  But woe to the individual who pops an unripened persimmon into their mouth, for no more tart and bitter a taste can be imagined!  As the English explorer and founder, in 1607, of Jamestown, VA, Captain John Smith wrote,  “If the fruit not be ripe it will draw a mans mouth with much torment.”  Ripe persimmon fruits are favored by songbirds, quail, flying squirrels, fox, raccoons, skunks, deer, dogs, and, above all, opossums.  An early-1800s American song noted the passion for persimmons:

“Possum up the ‘simmon tree,

Raccoon on the ground.

Raccoon says to the ole ‘possum,

“Won’t you throw them ‘simmons down?”

Early settlers made a beer with fermented persimmons and wheat as the primary ingredients.  Both Amerindians and early French settlers used persimmons as an ingredient in making breads.

As the name indicates, Possum Haw, or Swamp Holly, also

Pen DauBach, Clifftop

produces fruits loved by opossums.  Our only native holly produces bright red fruits which remain on the tree during the winter, so long as birds and mammals let them stay.  Although the secondary name suggests this holly only grows in moist soils, it actually can be found far from bottomland woods and does well in a variety of habitats, including field edges and drier slopes.

The red berries of flowering dogwoods and the white berries of rough-leaved dogwoods, both high in calcium and fat content, sustain 36 species of birds and mammals, including deer, rabbits, turkey, and quail.  Both the bark and berries of dogwoods contain cornic acid and both were used by Native Americans as a remedy for malaria, a usage also adopted by those living in the Confederate States of America during the Civil War when they were unable to obtain quinine.

A number of shrubs, in addition to rough-leaved dogwoods,  also produce food for wildlife.  Spicebush’s glossy red berries are favorites of rodents and squirrels and also were used by early European settlers in cooking.  Smooth sumac’s clustered red berries; Serviceberry’s reddish-purple berries; and the dark-blue drupes of sassafras are eaten by birds and small mammals.  Our native Viburnums — Black Haw and Nannyberry — produce blue-black berries favored by game birds.  Whether growing as a shrub or in

Ohio State Univ., Bugwood.org

vine form, the small white berries of poison ivy provide food for over 60 species of birds.  Animals seem to have no difficulty with this plant, richly colored and attractive red in the autumn, which causes a scratchy, weepy itch on contact for most people.

Arching along the woods’ edges and often forming dense thickets, nine species of wild blackberries provide beneficial soft mast.  The canes have a two-year life span, fruiting in the second year.  Thickets formed by blackberries are favorite nesting spots for rabbits, and the warblers Yellow-breasted Chats and Common Yellow-throats as well as Eastern Towhees, Brown Thrashers, and Indigo Buntings.  Box turtles, deer, rabbits, and turkey relish the berries.  Extremely rich in vitamin C, wild blackberries also make excellent jams.  Native Americans and early European settlers also used the berries as a medicinal for diarrhea and stomach ache.

Hanging like ropes from the forest’s canopy, wild grapes provide oodles of soft mast to stock the wildlife larder.  There are five species of grapes native to Monroe and Randolph Counties.  The grapes are eaten by bobwhite quail, turkey, pileated and red-bellied woodpeckers, thrushes, waxwings, catbirds, cardinals, and deer.  Migrating Tennessee Warblers love them and often will defend their temporary patch of grapes against other hungry birds.  Raccoons, opossums, skunks and squirrels also eat wild grapes.

Taken together, hard and soft mast provide food stuffs for over 90

Dennis FitzWilliam, Clifftop

species of birds and mammals in our bluffs’ woods.  But the quality and integrity, based on the very variety of tree, shrub, vine and herbaceous species found within our woodlands, now face some challenges.  These alterations, largely a result of human actions and inaction, threaten to close the larder for wildlife or, at a minimum, to reduce mast bounty to one or two varieties of food offerings.

Invasive tree species and exotic invasive shrubs and vines are quickly taking over forest edges and moving deep within our woodlands.  As they do so, they out-compete and shade-out native species, reducing our once bountiful and diverse woodlands to bare-ground monocultures of limited to no food-producing aliens.

Tree-of-Heaven (Ailanthus altissima), imported from Asia to Pennsylvania as an ornamental in 1751, probably has not been purposefully planted for more than a century, but now occurs in nearly all states.  A prolific seeder (up to 300,000 seeds per tree), it also spreads through numerous root suckers and re-sprouts from cut stumps and root fragments.  Once established, Tree-of-Heaven can quickly take over a site and form an impenetrable thicket.  Unfortunately, Tree-of-Heaven thickets are only too numerous along the talus slope of our bluffs all along Bluff Road; even more unfortunately, Tree-of-Heaven is spreading deep into the woods.

In similar fashion, Silk Tree or Mimosa (Albizia julbrissin), is a strong competitor to native trees and shrubs in open areas and forest edges, particularly along stream banks.  Widely planted as an ornamental since its introduction from Asia in 1745, and a particular favorite amongst early French settlers of our area,  it spreads by both vegetative and seed reproduction.

Both bush honeysuckle and Japanese (vining) honeysuckle (Lonicera mackii and L. Japonica) also were introduced as ornamental plants and sometimes still are  recommended as wildlife browse, particularly for deer.  But the hunter who pins hopes on these plants soon learns to curse the day he or she encouraged honeysuckle, for, while deer do eat the plants, they cannot keep up with the rampant growth.  Where a healthy woodlands once nourished a variety of game and non-game species, a honeysuckle thicket soon grows and offers little food but endless tangles and noisy trip snares for humans who seek to walk through the nearly solid mass of shrubs and vines.

And, though a native of our bottomland forests, Sugar Maple (Acer saccharum) also is an invasive of our upland oak-hickory woodlands, particularly along moister north-facing slopes.  Although seeds are not produced until trees are at least 22 years old, sugar maples are prolific reproducers, with the winged seeds carried up to 330 feet by wind.  A Michigan study tallied 70,000 seeds per acre in the center of a clear-cut in a forest.  Coupled with high average germination — up to 95% — mixed-wood forests can become dominated by maple growth.

Sadly, much of this encroachment is due to us and, perhaps most regrettably to our lack of action.  Certainly our inaction is as innocent in intent as that of the Pennsylvania farmer who first planted and admired the speedy growth of a Tree-of-Heaven.   While we happily profit from a timber sale of White and Black Oaks and Hickory trees, we do not plan for the cleanup and maintenance of the empty spaces left after logging.  We assume that “nature” will rightly guide the regeneration of the same species which then can be walked under, hunted amongst and, finally, harvested, in turn, by our grandchildren.  We do not see ourselves — nor the species introduced by our great-great-great-grandparents and the species to which we lay out logged-over welcome mats — as forces of “nature.”

By our actions or inaction we can help preserve a healthy and diverse woodland ecosystem.  But our actions or inaction also can create a maple shade desert, a Tree-of-Heaven ghetto or a honeysuckle wilderness of tangles.  Our deer, turkey, quail, squirrels,

Dennis FitzWilliam, Clifftop

songbirds, mushrooms, wildflowers and all members of the forest biota depend on mast which itself is part of a slow, steady regenerative process.  Not every acorn, hickory nut, soft fruit  — all the mast that keeps wildlife fed and healthy — is consumed.  Some fall into the soft duff of leaves and moist soil in the filtered shade where they take root, slowly grow and recreate the forest itself.  But under the dense shade created by invasives the next generation of mast producers grow leggy and weak, unable to compete and complete their cycle.  In time, food sources are reduced and the wildlife that depends on such foods also fail to successfully reproduce.  Forest bounty and forest diversity are one and the same.

Clifftop, a local nonprofit organization, is focused on preserving and protecting area bluff lands.

A version of this article appeared in the November 7 2007 edition of the Monroe County Clarion.

© 2007 all content rights reserved, Clifftop NFP.