Todd Almanac

British Soldiers, a lichen, show thier bright red "caps," part of their fruiting bodies, through the winter.

Heavy rains in the week before Christmas made the streams at Todd swell dramatically in only a few hours. Hemlock Trail, which is dry for most of the year, was completely impassable. We were looking for pine siskins and white-winged crossbills, two species of birds that are unusually common this winter, but were unable to hear them over the rush of the streams.

The first two weeks of December were deer hunting season. You could see people wearing orange jackets and jumpsuits all over southwestern Pennsylvania! Hunters look for deer rubs, where bucks have scratched their forehead and antlers against a tree, when looking for a good spot to wait for deer. Deer also leave a smell on the rubs that warns other bucks of their presence. Deer rubs appear in the early fall, but remain visible all winter.

In November we enjoyed some of the last warm days of the year, as well as the tail end of the fall foliage. This is a picture of wild carrot, or Queen Anne's Lace, taken at the beginning part of the month.

The first snow came in November. Although it melted quickly, it was pretty while it was falling. We especially liked the contrast of the falling snow in front of this maple tree, in a clearing on one of the drier parts of the nature reserve.

In May, Audubon acquired forty-four acres of new land on the northern border of Todd Nature Reserve. We are working on building trails for the spring, when the land will be open to the public. The land was a cornfield until this year and is home to a number of plants not found anywhere else at Todd. There was also a family of red-tailed hawks nesting on the hill. We are excited to share the new land with you in 2009!

In mid-summer, milkweed pods are green, and give off a gooey, milky substance (see August photos, below). But by the fall, most of the goo has dried up. If you open up a milkweed pod in the fall, you'll see lots of seeds. But if you wait long enough, you won't need to open the pod up - it opens on its own. The seeds of milkweed are light enough to be dispersed by the wind, like dandelion seeds.

There was a noticeable increase in caterpillars at Todd in September. We found this particular one next to the pond - it is a Banded Tussock Moth caterpillar.

Walking around Todd on a rainy day in mid-September, I saw this wood frog right in front of me. I bent over, cupped my right palm a few inches in front of the frog, and poked it in the butt to make it jump. I didn't expect my plan to work, but the frog jumped right onto my wrist. I stood up quickly and the frog didn't move until I started to bend over to let it go - it jumped off as I was preparing to put it down.

Hurricane season took its toll on the nature reserve. On September 14, the remnants of Hurrican Ike tore through Pennsylvania, blowing over power lines and trees. At Todd, there were a few trees whose entire root system was uprooted. In this photo, a carpet of roots were torn up from the rock on which they were resting. One big tree took several smaller trees with it, exposing a large, flat rock a few inches beneath. Todd Nature Reserve's land steward, Kevin, stood next to the upturned roots. To give you a sense of scale, it helps to know that Kevin is over six feet tall. As you can see, he is still only about half the height of the upturned root carpet.

Milkweed is the primary foodstuff for monarch butterfly caterpillars (the adults nectar on a variety of plants, including milkweed.) It is called milkweed because the leaves and pods, when broken, emit a sticky white substance that looks like milk. This picture was taken on August 19 - two weeks earlier, there were no pods on the milkweed plants at Todd.

At Todd NatureFest in August, a former summer naturalist showed us the site of a former dam, used to power an old gristmill in the nineteenth century. The entire reserve is second-growth forest and the site where Todd is today has been home to mills, a stone quarry, a farm and a hunting lodge in the last one hundred and fifty years.

Bee balm is a plant that grows in moist environments, so the ravine is a perfect place for it to thrive. Although the flower can be purple or white, all the bee balm we saw growing at Todd was red.

In July, Watson's Run, which runs through the ravine, was still running high, fed by summer storms throughout the first half of the summer. By the end of August (and through September), the water in the creek had dropped so low that in some places the water had dried up completely leaving a dry dusty stream bed.

Watson's Run. You can find crayfish in the reserve as long as the weather is warm, from early summer into fall. They like to hide underneath rocks and can be difficult to find - when you pick up a rock, you also pick up sediment that hides the crayfish so it is always good to replace the rock where you found it.

Indian Pipe plants look like fungus, but they are not. They are parasitic plants that depend on fungus for their energy. Since they do not produce their own chlorophyll, they can grow in deeply shaded places. They thrive at Todd in June and July, when the forest is very dense and little light reaches the forest floor.

Todd Nature Reserve's first-ever full-time, year-round employees joined the Audubon staff in June. Our favorite early discovery was huge boulders lining Polypody Trail.