You need this book [addendum at bottom]

I'd like to recommend one of the two or three best books of natural history I've ever read. Despite the word "piedmont" in its title, I can assure you that nearly everything in it applies to the plant and animal communities of the southern Appalachians.

It's not new, but its excellence and usefulness is such that I've been evangelizing for it since the day it was published. The book is the "Field Guide to the Piedmont" by Michael Godfrey, who (I think but I'm not positive) is the son of the old radio and TV entertainer Arthur Godfrey. I first got this book when it was part of the Sierra Club field guide series. Later it was reissued in a handsome trade paperback format by the University of North Carolina Press, with revisions and over a hundred new illustrations.

I don't often encounter a book whose quality is such that I am stumped for superlatives. But this book taught me more about the land -- and the plant and animal communties on it -- than any other book I've read. I am tempted to apply to it the overused and now weakened word "classic," because if any such book deserves it, this one does.

In describing the plant and animal associations of the Piedmont (and to repeat, nearly everything he says of the Piedmont applies to the Appalachians), Godfrey uses two ruling schema. First is the moisture content of a community and the drainage regime that produced it.

There are three of these: xeric, hydric, and mesic; basically dry, wet and somewhere in between.

The other ruling idea is the concept of plant succession: the collection of transitional communities that occupy a given plot of ground, each with a different set of dominant species, from bare or nearly bare earth to mature climax forest. The progression of communities from first to last is known as a sere. Each drainage regime has a different sere, with a predictable series of plants, insects and larger animals associated with its various stages.

Within these seres are microhabitats at various stages. One of the most interesting, and most typical of our region, is the community associated with woody, fence-line hedgerows, a familiar sight to anyone driving through the Blue Ridge and Alleghenies.

Different drainage regimes produce different kinds of forest. There's a similar division in hydric, or wet, areas: one community is associated with lotic, or flowing water; another with lentic, or still water. We learn, for example, why ponds are, geologically speaking, short-lived phenomena, due to the rapid deposit of organic and mineral sediments in the impounded area. Thus, a pond becomes a marshy field and eventually a grassland and forest as plant sediment piles up and increases the local elevation.

In xeric environments, western Virginia hawkwatchers will be familiar with early colonizers of old fields: bull thistle, hawthorn and cedar, all familiar companions at Rocky Knob and other high pasture environments.

There are few books I feel safe in recommending to all amateur naturalists in the southern Appalachians. One is "The Field Guide to the Piedmont" by Michael Godfrey. I've persuaded many people to buy copies, but none regretted adding it to their library.


ADDENDUM: I should have made clear when I first wrote this piece that "field guide" is not quite the phrase I'd use for this book. Godfrey identifies quite a few species of all types. But it would not be my first choice when going out in the field after birds or trees or flowers or mammals or herps.

Rather, its excellence lies in the clarity of Godfrey's exposition about how animal and plant communities are related to each other and to different landforms. Stick with this volume from start to finish and I guarantee you'll come away with a new awareness of the multifarious connectedness of plants and animals in the mountains and piedmont.

Tech biologist on the mystery bat disease

This note below was just forwarded to me. My thanks to Mike Purdy for the heads-up. It's a letter from Dr. James Parkhurst, wildlife biologist at Virginia Tech. We've already noted the issue on this blog.

________________________________________________________


I wanted to call to your attention an emerging and potentially serious situation involving bat populations throughout the Northeast that experts here in Virginia currently are monitoring. I have provided a link to an article that recently appeared in the Boston Globe, near where the epicenter of this problem currently exists (predominantly in New York and Vermont so far) that provides some useful background information on the situation as it now exists.

To the best of our knowledge at this time, the disease has not yet been documented or confirmed in Virginia, but efforts to validate that are underway. Therefore, for now, this is only a cautionary note to get this situation on your "radar screen." As you will note in the article, this outbreak is having serious consequences on bat populations in the affected states, where tens of thousands of bats have succumbed to the disease. In an effort to avoid the potential spread of the disease, should it come to this area or already be present in our area, experts are recommending that people refrain from entering any caves or abandoned mines over the next several months, primarily as a means to avoid further taxing the energy stores of hibernating bats. Bats very often are disturbed by intruders, which forces them to expend important energy reserves needed to get them through the full winter hibernation cycle.

If you know of any individuals or groups in your area who frequent caves, please pass along this notice. If anyone has visited a cave recently and witnessed what appeared to be an unusually large number of
dead or sick bats, or bats that may have displayed the characteristic "white frosting" about the nasal area, please have them contact one of two individuals within the Department of Game and Inland Fisheries: Rick Reynolds, Non-Game Biologist and bat specialist (rick.reynolds@dgif.virginia.gov), or Jonathan Sleeman, wildlife veterinarian for the agency (jonathan.sleeman@dgif.virginia.gov). Specific details of the cave(s) involved, dates of contact, and description of symptoms witnessed would be most helpful.

I will keep you posted on any new twists as they become available. To reiterate, there is no immediate threat or danger to most residents, but special caution would be advised for those who are active spelunkers.

James A. Parkhurst, Ph.D.
Associate Professor and Extension Wildlife Specialist
144 Cheatham Hall
Virginia Tech

The impact of rural gentrification

Another friend of mine on this blog shares my concern about rich outlanders moving into these mountains, driving up taxes, and making it impossible for natives to afford the very land they were born on.

It's hard to write about such a topic without sounding hostile to people who have done me no harm. But here is a story at Yahoo Finance on how the process is affecting communities out west. It specifically mentions "social tensions," which is certainly a factor.

The other factor is the accompanying development, which inevitably destroys habitat for neotropical migrants and other species. I think of what's happening to Belcher Mountain in Patrick County and it almost makes me ill.

What to do? I have no idea. Maybe nothing. Personally I'm a libertarian, who believes that if you want liberty yourself, you have to allow it to the other guy.

But I confess there are days when I wake up and wonder: Will we not be satisfied until we have paved over everything and there is a Starbucks and McDonald's everywhere you look?

Raven redux

According to William Roberts, our local wildlife rehabber (along with his wife Joyce), Bernd Heinrich (known for his studies of ravens and a book titled, Mind of the Raven: Investigations and Adventures with Wolf-Birds) was surprised when on one or two occasions, cooperative family groups did participate in the rearing of next generation young. This behavior is apparently rare and unexpected in the wild.

Occasionally groups of breeding pairs nest in close proximity, but breeding success is less than that of the more common solitary pair. Heinrich speculates that the group breeding event may have to do with added protection from perceived dangers in the neighborhood.

According to William, there are nesting ravens in a warehouse in Winston-Salem, which is very strange. Historically and today as well, ravens are more common farther north, and are full-time residents within the Arctic circle. Typically, the farthest south they have been seen until recent years has been around here, in our mountains. But more reports of ravens are coming from places like Chapel Hill and Durham, North Carolina, for instance, with widespread anticipation of imminent breeding documentation. I read last night that ravens, once considered to be intolerant of human activity, are learning to adjust. Opportunism does indicate intelligence, for good or ill.

New River State Park, Alleghany Access, Mouth of Wilson, Va.

There is a North Carolina state park nearby, an old farm given to the park by the old farmer, down on the New River. I go there often, formerly with Aaron Floyd, and now with Mica Paluzzi, a 13-year-old friend who has taken to birding.

Surrounding the park are huge vacation home developments, gated, growing like fungi. So this part of the park is an oasis, lots of trails, primitive canoe camping areas provided. Aaron and I discovered the endangered golden-winged warbler breeding here three years ago, fully documenting the process from building the nest, to bringing caterpillars to the young. But deer have pretty much destroyed their preferred fragile habitat, so no warblers of that kind have been seen breeding here since.

In the summer, the undergrowth makes off-path walking a challenge -- but, ah, in the winter, everything opens up. Today Mica and I spent half of our time just rambling about, and though it was warm, there was ice, making trudging through the marshy areas a solidified breeze. We discovered an old farm road, found an old foundation, saw remnants of fence rows, etc. I pointed out the various signs of how successional field-to-forest events were happening before our eyes.

Across from the park, below a new house, there is an enormous rock face that has played host to generations of nesting ravens. Three years ago was the last time anyone had seen activity there, but today we not only saw a raven on her nest, but two others nearby playing on the rock face and soaring, depending on their mood. This is great news, and I intend to monitor the site throughout our late winter. This is the typical time for ravens to nest, for they must tend to their offspring for nearly a year, and they need a jump start on things.

Aaron's father knew the old farmer, who had one of the most amazing arrowhead collections known in these parts, picked up from the fields after spring plowing. When Aaron was a lad, he visited the farmer and was shown the wonderful array of chiseled beauties. Aaron and his brother have a pretty good collection they drew on for comparison.

The raven show suggested some questions regarding their behavior. We watched off and on through the four hours there, and never saw four. Just the one on the nest, and those other two, often picking at the hardy plants clinging to the sheer face of the rock, and otherwise flying around and joking in raven.

It is possible that there are two couples, and possibly another nest not detected. This afternoon after returning to my library, I could not find any documentation of second-generation ravens aiding in the rearing of the next, helping their parents as some corvids do. So, anybody out there that might have some closer knowledge would be of great help to us.

Mica is working on his bird-watching merit badge, and after only a year of our sharing these jaunts, he has become, shall we say, daunting. My abiding advocacy is: get those kids outside, mentor, share, and have fun.

More on the bat disease

Scientific American has taken note of the mysterious bat illness.

There's a sad photo of four bats whose faces show the signs of the fungus from which the syndrome gets its name.

First bees, now bats?

There was a troubling AP story earlier this week about a mysterious disease that's killing bats as they hibernate. It's been spotted to the north of us, in Vermont and New York state.

Dubbed, for lack of a better name, "white nose syndrome," it has killed as many as 90 percent of the bats in some caves. The species hardest hit is what I think of as the "default bat" in our area, the little brown bat. It causes migrating bats to burn up their fat reserves long before they would ordinarily emerge from hibernation.

The bat infection has been compared to "colony collapse disorder," a viral infection that decimated honeybees in North America. If it's really that bad, it may well migrate south down the spine of the Appalachians in our direction.

This story jumped out at me because it was in the past year that a friend of mine told me about a mass bat die-off from a roost in a horse barn. At the time I suspected rabies, but could it have been white nose syndrome?

The beautiful vanishing bobwhite

Mark Taylor has a piece today in the Roanoke Times about a new state initiative to save habitat for Colinus virginianus, the bobwhite quail.

This little bird has always been dear to my heart, from my childhood in Texas when I'd sit on my granddad's front porch in the evening and watch a bobwhite mama lead her young ones across the yard, til right now, when I have a hard time finding any at all.

When I moved to Floyd County back in the '70s, I saw and heard bobwhite all the time without any effort. A stretch of Woods Gap Road between the town of Floyd and the Blue Ridge Parkway had prime bobwhite habitat on both sides of the road. It was hard to drive down that road in the spring and NOT hear a bobwhite calling. Clyde Kessler tells me that the bird was once, if not dirt-common, at least plentiful in Floyd and Patrick and Franklin Counties.

But for every four birds that existed in Virginia four decades ago, today there's only one.

Why have bobwhite numbers collapsed? It's the old story: vanishing habitat. The quail require early successional growth, brushy areas that are interspersed with fallow fields and small stands of pine and hardwoods. To someone intent on maximizing income from land, such habitat looks like a mess. Nowadays, less and less land is allowed to remain in such an "unproductive" state. Instead, it's likely to be either pasture, farmland or developed for housing.

There are groups devoted to saving the bobwhite quail, such as Quail Forever and Quail Unlimited, which has a central Virginia chapter here. Both are organized mainly by and for hunters.

At any rate, a focus group has recommended to the Department of Game and Inland Fisheries that a "Bobwhite Quail Action Plan" be developed, and DGIF agrees. Let's hope it bears fruit.

OK, forget the lion

Kevin Myatt at the Roanoke Times reports that the photos below have actually been circulating for a while "in several northeastern states."

Looks like a real mountain lion in any event, but just not in Giles County. I will leave the photos up in case anybody wants to compare them with others they find on the 'Net. But the bottom line is that this is probably another for Snopes dot com -- it's safe to go back in the woods.

Mountain lions in Giles County?

The buzz today is of possible mountain lions in Giles County. Supposedly they're in the Big Stoney Creek area of the county. The photos here are of a lion who came to somebody's back porch supposedly, "looking for food" and reportedly "very agitated." The real thing? I don't know. But be careful out there...