I've been outdone by a one ounce bird.  All year, I've been struggling to decipher the mysteries of incubation then keeping the chicks alive until they're ready to fend for themselves.

Meanwhile, with little fuss, our song sparrow has hatched all four of her eggs and raised them until they're nearly fledged.  I see her perched here and there with insects in her mouth at least once a day, and the chicks were so well fed that they only cracked their eyes sleepily when I stuck the camera lens down onto the nest.

All this despite a variety of disasters that I did nothing to avert.  I forgot to mention the nest before Mark mowed the garden, but its location tucked up against a stump saved the day.  The cats both came down to frolic in the mule garden as I planted there last week and our dog is always patrolling, but none caught the scent.  Despite all of these potential catastrophes, four eggs turn into four chicks with nary a loss.  Maybe I should ask my favorite sparrow if she's willing to take on an apprentice?

"Be careful!  I almost stepped on you!"

I was walking down to the far end of the furthest garden patch to check on our three week old chicks, and at first I thought the little bird flitting out from under my feet was a baby chicken that had hopped through a gap in the fence to explore the outside world.  But it flew up and away into the bushes --- a sparrow, not a chick.

"What were you doing down there?" I asked.  (Yes, I do talk to birds, snakes, toads, and plants in the garden.)  I crouched down to look into the grass that had grown up in a hard-to-mow spot beside a small stump and gasped in delight.  Four tiny, speckled eggs, mere feet away from my oldest cucumber patch.

I barely caught a glimpse of the mother, but I'll assume she was a song sparrow since they're our most common yard sparrows at this time of year.  If so, I only have to keep the mower away from her nest for the next three weeks --- 12 to 13 days of incubation, then 10 days of chick rearing before the mother turns the youngsters over to their dad and moves on to brood number two.  (At this time of year, it might even be brood 3.)  Sounds a bit like the way I foisted off my own chick-rearing duties on a hen last month....

Outside the small manicured zone where steam lodge guests generally hang out, the area around Cozumel's steam lodge was clearly old farmland turning back into young forest.  I could tell that the earth needed a little love --- the further I wandered, the more it felt like abandoned city lots, full of debris, where dirt feels dirty instead of succulent with life.

Just like similar scrubby areas in the U.S., there are inhabitants who enjoy the early successional zone in the Cozumel forest.  The Magnolia Warbler on the right was flitting around looking for insects amid a morning-glory-choked tree while the hummingbird above kept catching my eye throughout the day as it visited cultivated flowers.  I didn't really get a good enough shot to be sure, but I think the hummingbird might be a species found only on Cozumel --- the Cozumel Fork-tailed Emerald --- which would make a visit to the steam lodge very much worthwhile for serious birders looking to add a notch to their life list.

The real natural beauties near the steam lodge, though, were the butterflies, and they were too quick for my camera.  While Petrus and Jose Luis filled the lodge with hot rocks, I saw a big blue butterfly (perhaps a Morpho), fly directly toward the entrance before veering away at the last instant.  Later, when we emerged, two long-winged black butterflies with a red and yellow spot on each pair of wings fluttered around us in air that suddenly seemed full of light.  Clearly, Petrus's care of the young earth was paying off and Cozumel's natural inhabitants were rebounding.

Find the time to do what you love with Microbusiness Independence.

Although the army ant column and its camp follower birds were the highlight of my visit to Coba, dozens of other types of animals caught my eye.  As you can see in the top photo, my old friends the leaf-cutter ants were out in force, carrying leaves and even immature fruits along paths they'd cleared through the woods.

Nearby, termite mounds hung from branches.  More properly known as termitaries, these nests are made of a combination of digested wood pulp and merely chewed and regurgitated wood pulp, which together make a cardboard-like wall.  Later, I read that trogons like to hollow out old termitaries to make their own nests, and I couldn't help thinking that the half-digested wood pulp would make a good garden mulch.

Speaking of trogons, I was lucky enough to catch a view of this perching insect-hunter.  I didn't catch enough details to tell whether my beauty was a Violaceous Trogon or a Black-headed Trogon, but I did get to see it foray out from the branch in search of flying prey.  These photos don't do the bird justice --- its breast is brilliant yellow.

One of our most amazing sightings occurred right at the beginning.  As we poked around the Coba group (near the entrance), a rustling in the undergrowth caught my attention.  We crept closer and peered through the leaves to see a huge turkey with a blue head.  The Ocellated Turkey was too quick for me, as you can see from this photo, but that's probably a good thing since Mayan legend holds that the Giant Turkey Spirit is one of the Lords of the Forest which takes revenge on folks who kill more turkeys than they need.  Maybe snapping too many photos would also incur his wrath?

Then there were all of my old friends who had flown south for the winter to Coba.  This waterthrush bobbed along the ground just like it does along the edges of our creeks, although it seemed content to spend the winter away from a burbling brook.  Later, I saw several warblers  and vireos who were far too fast for my camera, but who looked awfully familiar as well.

Beside the trail, a brilliant Blue Bunting stripped grass seeds.  Later, as we ate our own lunch overlooking the lake, we were treated to a flock of grackles bathing in the shallow water, several Great Egrets, and a pair of grebes who continually ducked under the surface, only to pop back up moments later.  Oh, and did I mention the beautiful little lizard (maybe a Ghost Anole?) that was so sure of its camouflage that I was able to poke my camera lens nearly down onto its back?

In fact, between the lucky viewing of the army ants' camp followers and the other very tame wildlife, I have to say that Coba is the best spot I've been too for birding and wildlife viewing in years.

Keep your chickens happy and healthy while you're on vacation using our homemade chicken waterer.

The ruins at Coba were stunning, but my very favorite part of the visit (and of the entire vacation) was running across a group of army ants.  I've read about army ants for over a decade, about how these masses of insects march through the forest consuming other insects, lizards, small birds, and anything else they can get their hands on.  More recently, I learned that dozens, perhaps hundreds, of species of "camp followers" are associated with army ants.  These hangers-on take advantage of prey that flies out of reach of the ants, but which can be quickly consumed by larger, winged predators.

It was these camp follower birds who first caught my eye.  At the quieter, southern end of Coba, several birds were hanging out at the edge of the woods and seemed relatively impervious to my approach.  I snuck closer, trying to snap a shot, and saw a Woodcreeper (top photo) working its mouth like crazy, trying to get a cricket to go down its gullet.  Next, I noticed two Brown Jays watching the ground, and one darted off the branch to snag another insect.

Lower down, a brilliant orange-brown Rufous Piha reminded me of our Wood Thrushes.  Before I knew it, a real Virginia native popped out of the undergrowth --- a Hooded Warbler had flown hundreds of miles to winter in the Yucatan and was enjoying its army-ant-flushed dinner.

By the time I tired of photographing tame and unwary bird life, over half an hour had passed and Mark had wandered off.  As the Mastercard commercial goes, "Entrance to Coba, $5.  Experiencing an army ant foray --- priceless."

Faunal species at Hidden Valley are plentiful. Game animals abound including Black Bear, White-tailed Deer, Bobcat, Raccoon, Squirrel, Turkey, Ruffed Grouse, etc. But there are other animals worth noting too such as Southern Flying Squirrel, numerous salamanders, dragonflies, and myriad butterflies.

Hidden Valley is well known for its birds. Several species of high elevation warblers, vireos, woodpeckers, cuckoos, and raptors, inclusive of an occasional Bald Eagle, are found here.

The epiphyte flowers Maggie was constantly collecting from the trail all seemed to be cast from a similar mold.  Most of the blooms had long tubes and were either pink, orange, or red --- clear signs of hummingbird pollination.

Scientists estimate that about a sixth of Monteverde's plants are pollinated by these tiny birds, and whole families seem to have placed their reproductive potential into the beaks of hummers.  Ericaceae, Gesneriaceae, Bromeliaceae, and --- on the forest floor --- Heliconiaceae are all hummingbird pollinated.

As you ascend the mountain above Monteverde, hummingbird-pollinated flowers become more and more numerous.  Cooler temperatures at high elevations make it tough for insects to fly, so hummingbirds are the best pollinator around (although bats and hawkmoths are also common pollinators.)  So it's no wonder Monteverde's cloud forest floor is littered with pink and orange tubes, leftover from yesterday's hummingbird feasts.


3-26-01
Today we got our housing contract made --- quite an ordeal, but we did it.  The contract even explains that I have one surname since I'm from the US --- apparently everyone here has two.  The lawyer was very unfair to us, and I had to make him go back and change part of the contract, but after 2.5 hours, it was done.

Maggie:

 3-30-01
I had to wait for the bus to come at noon, and ended up watching the hummingbirds swarm the feeders near the tables....  I sat there watching the birds and listening to the tourists compliment the soft drinks.

Eventually some terrible birdwatchers took the bench beside me....  The father was really pleased with his sons. Then they started talking about the birds calling them by numbers as found in the Common Costa Rica Bird Guide they carried. "There's a 24-7 page 7. Is that a 23-3?" Then a North American looking tour guide came over and started telling them all the names in numbers. "Here's a 23-9. Add that to your list."

The father gloated to the side to the young American tour guide, "Isn't it great? They're just kids." The funny thing is that when two yellow song birds came to the hummingbird feeder, the boys got all confused. "These hummingbirds aren't in the book. I cannot find any yellow hummingbirds." Eventually the guide explained that they were 40-24, not hummingbirds at all. "We should have known since they weren't hovering."

Anna:

In the Monteverde area, the pluses and minuses of ecotourism were painfully obvious.  On the one hand, tourism brought in foreign dollars that kept the standard of living in the area quite high and provided jobs that didn't destroy the local environment.  On the other hand, this same influx of capital often drives land prices out of the reach of the common man --- we learned that Monteverde acreages were significantly more expensive than those at home in central Appalachia.  If I couldn't afford to settle in Monteverde, could local Ticos?

And humanity was still impacting the forest, even if the trees weren't being cut down in droves to be replaced with banana trees (for export to the U.S., of course.)  Escaped house plants dotted the forest floor --- Wandering Jew (Tradescantia zebrina), an African Impatiens, and Polkadot Plant (Hypoestyes phyllostachya) were the most striking.  It became clear to me that wherever we go, we leave footprints behind us.



Although I believe that anything is better than central Appalachia's current core industry --- mountaintop removal coal-mining --- I wonder whether ecotourism is, in fact, the answer.  Will tour guides come from afar with the tourists, relegating the uneducated Appalachian to fast food server and taxi driver?  Or is there a way to lift up Appalachia's culture and ingenuity while still protecting the mountains we call home?

Although no single tree species dominates a tropical forest, the Avocado Family (Lauraceae) contains many prominant forest trees in the Monteverde area.  With 66 species in the area, Lauraceae is also the most diverse family of trees at the elevation of the town.

I didn't notice lauraceous fruits until near the end of my stay in Monteverde because every species in the family fruits simultaneously at the beginning of the rainy season.  Once they started falling, though, I loved picking up lauraceous fruits as I walked along the road and trails.  Each one was like a tiny avocado --- one large seed in the center surrounded by firm, green flesh.

The fruits are too large to be gulped down by small, generalist birds and have instead evolved to be eaten by bigger specialists, like quetzals, bellbirds, guans, and toucans.  The elongated shape of lauraceous fruits helps them slide down the larger gullets of their favored dispersal agents, who are the lucky recipients of flesh rich in proteins and lipids.

As a budding botany geek, I was intrigued to learn that Lauraceae and Piperaceae are both members of the plant subclass Magnoliidae, an ancient line of plants that is considered to be neither monocots nor true dicots.  Scientists think that Magnoliids may have been among the earliest flowering plants to evolve, which would explain their pantropical distribution.

Geekery aside, you're probably more familiar with the Avocado Family than you think.  In addition to providing us with the oily fruits that give the family its name, Lauraceae includes Cinnamon, Spicebush, and Sassafras.  Pluck a Sassafras fruit this fall and tear it apart to see the exact same kind of fruits I drew with such glee in Costa Rica.


6/27/01
While Maggie glowed in the embrace of the expatriate American Quakers, I withdrew from the machismo of the Ticos (native Costa Ricans.)  Central American culture separates women quite neatly into the Virgin or the Whore, and by wandering around without a man (and leaving my bra at home), I was placed in the latter category.  As I drew plants up in the Monteverde Cloud Forest Preserve, Tico workers would walk by whistling and leering.  In retrospect, the problem was largely my own fault --- I was young and figured the world would bend around me, but a traveler is obligated to bend around the world.

Later, I discovered that Monteverde culture had become much more supportive of strong women in the last 35 years.  In the 1970s, 80% of the women in Monteverde were illiterate, and nearly none worked outside the home.  Then, in 1982, eight women artists came together to produce CASEM --- Cooperativa de Artesanas de Santa Elena y Monteverde.  The gallery coop gives women a space to show their arts and crafts, in the process channeling tourism dollars into the womens' families and also building the womens' self esteem.  If you ever make the trek to Monteverde, be sure to stop in and see the handicrafts of local Ticas.

Water is a magnet for animal life, and the Oxbow Lake is no exception.  I often see swallows swooping down to pick off airborne insects above the lake and deer slipping through the trees for a drink at the water's edge.  But the lake's real characters are Mallards and Pied-billed Grebes.

Ever since I read The Wind in the Willows, I have had a soft spot in my heart for dabbling ducks like Mallards.  Kenneth Grahame describes their behavior best in his “Duck's Ditty”:

Mallards look like they are having so much fun as they duck their heads down in search of underwater bugs and plants, leaving their tails bobbing above them.

And then I met the Pied-billed Grebe, which quickly became my favorite type of waterfowl.  I rounded a bend in the trail and saw a small, duck-like bird, dark against the reflective water.  Then --- pop --- the bird was gone! Pied-billed Grebes are much shier than Mallards and are prone to dive down completely underwater if disturbed.  The grebe's diving habit is not just a way of escaping predators, though.  Pied-billed Grebes regularly dive deep beneath the lake's surface in search of food which is beyond the reach of dabbling ducks.

The dining habits of Mallards and grebes are more than just a curiosity.  For the birds themselves, dabbling and diving are methods of living in the same lake without fighting over dinner.  Just like the plants along the Cliff Trail which are able to coexist by living in slightly different niches, Mallards and Pied-billed Grebes coexist by feeding on different foods.

Spring always reminds me of a really good adventure story --- there's the angst of late winter, then the relentless build toward the climax, followed by the happily ever after period of warm weather, flowers, and bird song.  Right now, I feel like we're beginning the first tiny steps toward spring's peak.

In early January as the days lengthened, a few hardy birds began to sing.  I heard Great Horned Owls duetting from opposite hillsides, and the bright song of a cardinal pierced the cold air.  A month later, I was stunned to notice that the bluebirds had changed back into their brilliant summer plumage --- I'm afraid I just stopped what I was doing and stared for a while.

Last week, I hunted down a blooming Witch-Hazel, knowing full well that Witch-Hazel is a winter bloomer and not a sign of spring.  The American Hazel catkins that had sat on the branch all winter were starting to lengthen and soften, but were still far from full bloom.

On my farm, the honeybees came out for a cleansing flight in the midst of last weekend's balmy weather, and I even found them a quarter mile away in the woods.  Finally, Monday, I saw what all the fuss was about --- the first real spring flower was blooming in the yard.  Granted, speedwell is an alien invasive species, but at this stage of the spring adventure roller coaster, I have trouble minding.

Plants sit politely for you to take in their beauty, but the amateur naturalist is often sorely disappointed by the lack of animals along his path.  To most wildlife, we bumbling humans are potential predators, to be avoided at all costs.  Since wild animals are faster, quieter, and more alert than we are, we're often lucky to see as much as a chickadee and squirrel on our walk along the trail.

Think like a wild animal, though, and signs of life quickly become apparent.  The River Trail is the best place on Sugar Hill for wildlife watching since nearly every animal needs to stop by the river for a drink now and then.  The extreme fertility of floodplain plant life makes it a great place for animals to stop for a nibble too.

Patches of mud are often indented with the hand-like prints of a raccoon or the divided heart of a deer hoof.  On a little rise, an elongated scat (that's naturalist-speak for pile of poop) marks the boundary of a fox's territory.  And don't miss the beaver stumps, gnawed to a point where these river-dwellers chopped down saplings and trees to strip the tasty inner bark and then tote the remains away to build their lodges and dams.

Birds are even more apparent --- with their wings to carry them to safety, many are willing to let you catch a glimpse of their brilliant plumage.  The Great Blue Heron can often be found wading in shallow water at the river's edge, waiting for a passing fish to be speared by its elongated bill.  While the heron wades, the Belted Kingfisher waits patiently on a perch overhanging the water, ready to swoop down on the unwary fish.  Open your ears and you'll likely hear the kingfisher's rattling call as it flies along the shore to a new branch.

Dragonflies are hunting here too, but they are in search of much smaller prey.  They dip and soar over the water, scooping up minuscule insects to fill their bellies.  Below the water's surface, the larval forms of the dragonflies feed the fish that feed the birds, and the circle of river life continues.

A short distance past the turnoff for Marlene Path, the side of Sugar Hill turns rocky and precipitous.  As you round a small bend, Pete's Rock rises up beside you, tall and dry on the sunny side of Sugar Hill.  The cliff is a perfect spot to explore the plants that can survive dessication --- ferns like Purple-stemmed Cliff-Brake and Wall-Rue are two good examples.

On one of my first visits to Sugar Hill, I was thrilled to see a bird nest glued to the side of Pete's Rock.  Despite being passed by several hikers a day, the nest was full of tiny birds --- probably swallows that make a living skimming insects off the surface of the nearby river.  Who knows what you'll find sheltered under the craggy overhang? 

The small patch of Giant Cane found near the bottom of Marlene Path is typical of the current extent of America's native bamboo.  But before Europeans grazed the cane nearly to death, Giant Cane was an integral part of the floodplain ecosystem.  Imagine thickets of bamboo so dense you could barely walk, reaching thirty feet into the air, and covering entire river bottoms, and you'll get an idea of the plant's former scope.  Some scientists think that the brilliant green Carolina Parakeets --- now extinct --- flocked around canebrakes and depended on cane seeds to trigger nesting behavior.  We may never know which other plants and animals veered toward extinction as canebrakes dwindled into isolated clumps.

Like oak-hickory forests, canebrakes may have been artificially expanded by Native Americans' use of fire.  Giant Cane depends on disturbances like fire to keep the forest canopy from closing and blocking out the light cane needs to thrive.  The short canes you can see along Marlene Path are probably responding to the paucity of sunlight beneath the forest canopy.

In fact, encouraging cane may have been one of the primary purposes local Native Americans had in mind when they lit woodland fires.  The bamboo was a raw material for building houses and weaving mats, bowls, and baskets.  Without cane, the Native American way of life followed the same path as the Carolina Parakeet.

When I think of the oak-hickory forest, I think of nuts.  Acorns and hickory nuts are a very important food source for most animals that live in this forest type since the nuts are large and full of nutrients.  Critters like turkeys can eat whole acorns and grind them up with rocks in their gizzards.  Nearby, squirrels perch on logs and nibble away the outer casings of the acorns, leaving the debris in a heap below their favorite perch, then chew up the tasty interior.  Native Americans ate a lot of acorns too, although they processed them by pounding and boiling them to remove the bitter-tasting tannins.

To anthropomorphize wildly, oaks and hickories get riled up when they spend so much of their energy making nuts that just get gobbled down by Blue Jays and squirrels.  Sure, both species like to cache nuts, hiding a few underground for later snacking, but these critters also have pretty good memories and tend to go back and eat up the nuts they have hidden.  Luckily, oaks and hickories are even wilier and over centuries they came up with a strategy known as masting.

Most years, oaks produce a few nuts --- not too many, but enough to keep the squirrels, Blue Jays, and turkeys alive.  Since these animals determine how many offspring to produce based on how well nourished they are, acorn predator populations stay steady, never growing past the point where the few nuts dropped by the oaks can sustain them.  Then one year, every single oak in an area somehow teams up and decides this will be the big year, the mast year.  Like a Thanksgiving dinner, the oaks produce so many nuts that the squirrels eat until their bellies nearly pop.  Every animal in the forest gorges during mast years and hides nuts for the winter, but there are just too many nuts to use them all.  Hundreds or thousands of leftover nuts litter the forest floor, rolling underfoot, and then sprouting to grow into oak trees.  During mast years, I can almost hear the oak trees snickering.  “Take that, you squirrels!” they seem to be saying.  “We fooled you!”

Hickories, beeches, and white pines all go through mast years as well, although their years do not tend to coincide with the oaks’ mast years.  In fact, saying that all oaks mast during the same year is an oversimplification --- there are actually two main types of oaks that mast on different schedules.  The white oak group contains White Oak and Chestnut Oak, as well as a few other species, all of which have rounded leaf lobes with no pointy bits.  The red oak group contains Red Oak, Black Oak, Pin Oak, and Scarlet Oak, all of which have long points at the end of each leaf’s lobes.  These two groups of oaks seem to speak different languages, with the red oak group masting in one year and the white oak group masting in another.

Scientists are still trying to decipher how a group of oaks decides whether to mast in a certain year.  Most likely, oaks respond to weather conditions like summer droughts and spring frosts, combined with an inherent tendency not to produce a big crop of acorns every year.  However, I have always wondered if their decision to mast might be a bit more complicated.  In the last couple of decades, scientists have started turning up startling examples of plant to plant communication.  In one example, an alder tree bitten by an insect emitted chemicals that alerted the neighboring trees that ravenous insects were in town.  The neighboring trees then produced nasty chemicals in their own leaves that kept the insects from nibbling.  If trees can “talk” and warn their neighbors to scare insects away, who is to say that they cannot actually “talk” about whether now would be a good time to mast?

As I walk down the Marlene Path, I like to imagine the oaks chattering away above my head.  “So, Jimmy, how are you feeling this year?  Ready to make some nuts?”  “Sure, Joe.  Those pesky squirrels are giving me headaches.  Let’s stick it to them!”

Populations of old field birds have dwindled over the last few decades as small farms were turned into subdivisions or were merged into huge agricultural operations.  In either case, the Eastern Meadowlark and other typical residents of old fields lost their homes.  If you keep your eyes peeled as you walk through the field south of the Frenchman’s Settlement, though, you are likely to catch a glimpse of the brilliant yellow breasts and melodic songs of Eastern Meadowlarks.

The future of the meadowlark does not have to be grim.  Many farmers are beginning to operate with old field birds in mind, realizing that they can make their fields into better habitat for these birds while only reducing agricultural yields marginally.  Hedgerows of trees are left in place along fencelines, providing a spot for animals to hide from predators, and small sections of a hayfield are left unmowed each year to provide breeding habitat.  Even a simple matter of timing can make a difference.  Mowing pastures and other fields later than usual --- around early August --- allows meadowlark chicks to fledge and fly away rather than being crushed in their nests.  The field at the top of Sugar Hill is mowed infrequently enough to keep the meadowlarks regaling us with their clear whistles.

What kind of forest greeted the first settlers to our region?  We like to think of North America before European settlement as a vast expanse of unbroken forest, but the truth is that forests have been pushed, chopped, frozen, or burned down as long as they have existed.  Every time, the forest eventually regrows.  Sometimes the regrowth is slow --- if an entire hillside sloughs off in a mudslide, the bare rock that is revealed may take thousands of years to turn back into forest.  On the other hand, if a single tree dies from insects or disease, the surrounding forest may close up the gap in just a few years.

The south half of the Loop Trail is a perfect example of what scientists call forest succession --- the stages that an ecosystem goes through as it regrows a mature forest after some type of disturbance.  In this case, the original forest was wiped out by centuries of farming, remnants of which are seen in the mature apple and pear trees which line the peak of Sugar Hill.

Once the farmers left the land to its own devices for a few years, nature quickly began to take over.  This first step in forest succession is called the old field stage and is visible just south of the Frenchman's settlement along the Loop Trail.  Ankle to shoulder high plants abound in the old field stage, and most of the earliest ones have wind-dispersed seeds.  The most common examples are thistles and milkweeds which produce light seeds with hairlike projections, well-adapted for catching a breeze and wafting for a few feet or a few miles.

The growth of thistles and milkweeds provided protective cover, quickly attracting birds to the old field.  Like wind, birds are another vector for the spread of old field plants, leaving behind seeds of species like Pokeweed when they defecate.  These bird-dispersed plants produce tasty berries as an inducement for their avian friends to spread the plants' seeds into new habitats.  Other plants, like burdock, grow seeds covered with little hooks that catch in the fur of passing animals, hitchhiking to a new spot.

Milkweeds, thistles, Pokeweed, and burdock maintain their dominance of the old field for only a few years in nature before they have built up enough organic matter in the soil to allow wind-dispersed tree seedlings to gain a foothold.  The first trees to enter an old field in our area are often Box-Elder, Red Maple, Eastern Red Cedar, and Tulip-tree.  Without the frequent mowing which maintains the fields on Sugar Hill, young trees would smother out most of the old field herbs within a decade.  The dense thicket that forms is often full of thorny shrubs like Multiflora Rose and blackberries and is known as early successional forest.  Native Americans often burned forests to produce these thickets since they house and feed game animals and are often full of plants edible to humans as well.

Just as the old field herbs enriched the soil to allow early successional trees to grow, the early successional trees lay the groundwork for their own demise.  Another decade or two may pass before the Red Maples and Tulip-trees form a dense canopy, but once they do their sun-loving seeds are no longer able to germinate.  Instead, magnolias, Beech, and other trees begin to sprout in the dense shade on the forest floor.  These trees are the first signs of what scientists call the climax forest --- the type of plant community that will live in an area in the absence of disturbance.  The cove hardwood forest discussed in the last chapter is one of the climax forest types that can be found on Sugar Hill.

After a few hundred years, the forest has hit its stride.  The rabbits and meadowlarks that hid in the old field and early successional forest have given way to Pileated Woodpeckers that hunt for grubs in standing dead snags and Black Bears that curl up on winter nights inside hollow trees.  Trees have aged and range in size from saplings to behemoths.  Some have fallen over, leaving behind logs that host mosses, voles, and salamanders.  None of Sugar Hill has quite reached this stage --- which is commonly known as old growth --- but the hill above Oxbow Lake comes close.

And then little disasters strike.  A tree is blown over and takes down dozens of its neighbors, opening up a treefall gap --- a sunlit opening in the forest.  If the gap is large enough, a little field forms, full of milkweed and burdock, then young Tulip-trees, then Beeches and magnolias, and the cycle continues.

Many of the plants outlined in this chapter are most visible in the spring, but you will notice the interwoven vines of Dutchman’s Pipe at any season of the year.  Like the wild grapes that grow nearby, Dutchman’s Pipe begins as a sprouted seed on the forest floor, then winds its way up into the canopy, draping over tree branches to cushion its ascent.  Unlike the grapevines, though, Dutchman’s Pipe has smoother bark that does not come loose in curling strands.

If you keep your eyes open in June, you may see another field mark of the Dutchman’s Pipe --- black caterpillars speckled with orange spots.  These are the offspring of the Pipevine Swallowtail, so named because its caterpillars munch solely on the leaves of Dutchman’s Pipe and the related Pipevine.  You have probably heard of Monarch caterpillars that will only eat milkweed and related plants, but you may not realize that several other caterpillars are just as picky eaters.  Adult butterflies, like many adult humans, are happy to flit from food source to food source, but caterpillars are more like human children who refuse to eat anything except pizza.  To the caterpillars of the Pipevine Swallowtail, Dutchman’s Pipe is pizza --- the only food worth eating.

Why so picky?  Scientists cannot explain why your kid will only eat pizza, but they have made progress toward deciphering the picky nature of Pipevine Swallowtail offspring.  As the caterpillars munch on Dutchman’s Pipe leaves, they gather poisons out of the plants and safely pack them away within the caterpillars’ own bodies.  Blue Jays and other predators may consider the big caterpillars and butterflies easy pickings, but as soon as they eat their first poisoned caterpillar, the jays get a serious case of food poisoning and quickly learn to hunt down more nutritious food.  Although a few Pipevine Swallowtails may die in the process, the species as a whole is able to bypass most predators through its childhood of picky eating.

As you will soon learn, nature is full of cheats.  Several other butterflies in our area look remarkably similar to Pipevine Swallowtails --- the most common example is the black female version of the usually yellow Eastern Tiger Swallowtail.  The Eastern Tiger Swallowtail caterpillars cannot eat Dutchman’s Pipe leaves without getting sick themselves, but they can mimic the species that does.  The result?  Blue Jays tend to leave the black Eastern Tiger Swallowtails alone, afraid to take any chances on another noxious nibble.  Like the grapevine, the Eastern Tiger Swallowtail has learned to get ahead by working the system.

Scientific Name: Impatiens pallida
Family: Balsaminaceae (Jewelweed Family)
Habitat: Moist, shady places
Blooms: June to September

Walk along any creek in our region and you will quickly find the orange flowers and succulent stems of Spotted Jewelweed.  Sit down nearby and before you know it a Ruby-throated Hummingbird will flit out of the woods, feathers sparkling brilliantly green and red in the sun, to dip its long beak into the jewelweed flowers.  Once the hummingbird has moved on to the next plant down the line, I like to tap the seed cases of the jewelweed lightly with my finger and watch them explode, sending seeds in all directions --- no surprise that another common name for jewelweed is touch-me-not.

The Yellow Jewelweed found at Sugar Hill is slightly less common in our region than its orange-flowered cousin.  Beyond the flower color, the two species are nearly interchangeable, although Yellow Jewelweed is more likely to be found growing on shady, wet hillsides over limestone.  Even thick technical manuals like Strausbaugh and Core’s Flora of West Virginia wax eloquent when describing this lovely plant --- “flowers pale yellow...hanging on their pedicels like jewels or ladies’ earrings.”  The Yellow Jewelweed might just make up for the Wood Nettles you waded through to reach it.