More trouble with Daphne
July 4, 2009
In an email retired MNR guy Brian Anderson suggested I protect my walnut seedlings by putting out a blood-scented bait to scare the deer out of the field. Opening day of bass season produced a supply of fish carcasses, so I placed them around the field, producing immediate results: within a couple of hours the fish-heads were widely dispersed as though a litter of coyote puppies had played with them. From then on I saw no more damage to the seedlings in the back field.
Then came the episode with the spotted fawn E. T.’s visit to our orchard last Sunday. Yesterday morning over my pancakes I watched E.T. and Daphne’s Mom grazing in the neighbour’s soybean field, about six hundred yards away. Fine. No problem.
This morning after a heavy rain I looked over the walnut fields on the way to the woodlot, then settled into a casual mushroom tour on the Ranger. I picked three different types of oysters, one in quantity, so now I need to determine if the things are edible.
On the way back to the house I looked down into the new 5 acre patch of seedlings, and there was Daphne, cheerfully munching on one of the priceless blight-resistant plants the butternut people entrusted to my care. Yelling and waving my Tilley, I gunned the Ranger to the rescue across the 700 feet to the culprit and her victim.
Daphne was not impressed by my wild west routine. She simply retreated into the tall hay about a hundred feet, turned and stared blankly at me. I stopped by tree #WP92-23 and shut the machine off. If you’re interested, #23 is located at
N44.39.720′
W76.13.561
441′
She raised her eyes and ears above the hay, looked at me and my Ranger, and slowly started to walk toward us. Again, she walked up to about forty feet from me, licked her lips, chewed her cud a bit, and looked quite frustrated that I had put myself between her and her breakfast. It doesn’t seem to matter to Daphne that the whole world around her is green with potential food for a deer at this time of year. When she sets her taste buds on one particular tree, that’s the one she intends to eat.
She tried several circles downwind of the Ranger. My one-sided conversation with her seemed more to intrigue than frighten her. Growing a bit tired of the standoff, I tried dismounting from the Ranger to give her a scare. She just did her gallop-into-the-tall-hay bit, then turned around and returned, tail held high, and gleaming in the sunlight from the dew on her flanks.
She’s a beautiful animal, but I couldn’t notice how, while walking in silhouette in the hay, she has moves a lot like a young Michael Jackson in his early dance steps. That jerky, but fluid step?
So we’ve established that Daphne has a very strong will, fixates on a particular plant that she wants to eat at that time, has some decent dance moves, and that she’s also not very afraid of me. The fact remains that she’s poised to damage a priceless bit of the Canadian genetic heritage, and the only way I could get her to give up on her breakfast in time for me to return for mine, was by running after her across a five-acre field until she eventually gave up and ducked into the woodlot to await my departure.
I guess the only solution will be to bait the butternut seedlings with fish heads and hope she develops a taste for Glen Baker’s soybeans. Time to go fishing. Now that’s a plan. Thanks, Brian.
UPDATE: July 11/2009
Another encounter with Daphne went somewhat better for both of us. When I came upon her she was firmly ensconced in the middle of my neighbour’s wheat field. She looked up at my approach, froze, and stared me down until I grew bored and drove away. Hey, she’s not eating my nut trees, so what’s the harm? Hope you enjoy the wheat, Daphne.
Something is eating my butternut trees!
June 7, 2009
A couple of weeks ago I was driving Leeds County Stewardship Coordinator Martin Streit around the property as I explained our needs for next spring’s tree planting project. I showed him various groups of saplings which we had planted in the spring of 2006, and I commented that the butternuts donated by the Rideau Valley Conservation Authority were doing very well, even though they were not the later, blight-resistant variety he sent along last year. Then we came to the actual plot, and half of the trees had lost their leaves!
This had to have happened within a couple of days, because I had been back there checking on them recently, and they were fine, except for a few black beetles crawling around some leaves. The bugs had seemed harmless. Now half the 116 trees looked dead.
What’s more, when we checked the mature butternut in the woodlot whose photograph Martin had included in his annual report, it had been defoliated, as well. Because the lowest branch is about 60 feet up, collecting leaf samples from this tree was out of the question.
Martin told me he would contact Susan McGowan, the MNR Forest Health Technical Specialist based in Kemptville. Sue arrived two days later and examined the saplings in the butternut plantation. By this time many were beginning to sprout new vegetation, so they didn’t look quite as devastated as they had when Martin and I first encountered them. They were still in big trouble, though.
This was my first chance to watch a forest detective in action. My biggest problem was to stifle the questions and let her work, but Sue was very tolerant of my curiosity.
She immediately examined the tip of a branch where the compound leaves had been sheared off. “A deer did that?” I argued that we don’t have deer here; the coyote has always kept them away. She just pointed to the tracks next to the tree. Oops. Then I remembered: the coyote was killed on the highway a couple of months ago.
“But that’s not all. Look at this.” She broke off the tip of a branch and extracted a fat grub. “That’s a twig borer.” She took pictures and dumped it and a few others she collected into a brown paper sack.
When I later tried to produce a grub to show Martin, I just kept breaking off healthy branches. I still don’t know how she knew where to find the twig borers, but she never missed.
Sue pointed to a crumpled, dying leaf. “That’s a gypsy moth. And here’s a forest tent caterpillar. Notice how it doesn’t have a solid stripe on its back like a regular tent caterpillar? If you look closely you’ll see a series of little keyholes down its back. This one does not spin a web.”
Sue went on to find more of the little black beetles I had earlier captured, some exotic insect with vivid orange legs, and a few tent caterpillars, as well. Everything went into the large bag for the lab in Sioux St. Marie. “They hate it when I send more than one thing in a bag, but what can you do? We’re in the middle of a perfect storm of things eating your trees. It must just be a really good day for insects.”
“And deer,” I mused ruefully. Sue departed with the evidence for the lab, and promised a report with suggestions as to how I can prevent such an infestation in another year.
The large doe who chose my walnut field as a nursery last week? That’s another matter. I need a good coyote, right away. That thing is munching her way through my walnut seedlings at a great rate! She even came out for a feast today while I was mowing the field. The doe is a beauty, though, and I think it was a maple she was eating this time, not a little nut tree.
We haven’t seen the fawn yet. Maybe we should hold off for a couple of weeks on the coyote.
the Walnut Diary 