August 10, 2025: Shelburne, Vermont

We took a trip to northern Vermont this week to explore the Shelburne area along Lake Champlain's eastern shore.  Little did we know we’d be heading right into the worst part of the smoke blowing in from the wildfires in Canada. We didn’t have any big hiking excursions in our plans, so the smoke didn’t impact our activities but it did reduce visibility and paint the sky a dull gray all week. One of the highlights of the trip was a day at the Shelburne Farm, and right there at the first field we entered was an osprey nest.

Osprey on a man-made platform at Shelburne Farms.

There didn’t appear to be any juveniles in the nest, and several times a second osprey tried to land on the nest but the inhabitant refused their approach every time. There wasn’t any physical altercation between them, just a lot of squawking at each other.  Eventually the nest-sitter flew off to harass the intruder. 

Off on the attack.

And then returned to its place as king of the roost.

Returning Home

This made me aware that I haven’t seen or heard as many osprey on Lake Wicwas this summer as in recent years. They must have found some other primary fishing spot.

 
The Shelburne Farm and its opulent house and barns were built by Lila Vanderbilt Webb, the youngest daughter of William Vanderbilt, and her husband William Webb. Her inheritance allowed the couple to purchase 33 farms covering 4000 acres along Lake Champlain in the late 1800’s.

That's just the barn.

The farm is now “an education nonprofit on a mission to inspire and cultivate learning for a sustainable future.” [Ref: Shelburne Farms]  It’s a beautiful property, open to the public with no admission fee.

The Shelburne Inn overlooking Lake Champlain.

With a view across the lake to the Adirondack Mountains in New York.

We also spent a day at the Shelburne Museum which is a huge outdoor museum with more than 40 structures covering everything from farming to the history of the circus in America. 

There’s an up-and-down sawmill like the one that cut timber at the Page Pond mill dam on Meredith Neck.

Up and down Sawmill originally powered by the White River.

This sawmill was built in 1873 and operated in South Royalton Vermont, probably until the mid 1800s when it would have been upgraded to a circular saw which continued to operate into the early 1900s.  I loved the juxtaposition of the 1873 sawmill with a truck load of saw logs heading off to a 2025 sawmill.

There’s also a two-lane covered bridge that was moved to the museum from Cambridge Vermont where it spanned the Lamoille River for over 100 years.

I don’t think I’ve seen a two-lane covered bridge before.


Nestled in between Shelburne Farm and Shelburne Museum is Shelburne Bay Park which extends about a mile along Lake Champlain.  One of the park's trails goes up and over a steep hill – too steep in places for logging to have taken place, and that's where I found quite few very old trees that escaped the sawmills.  Most impressive was this White Oak which I knew was something special when I saw the incredibly thick and deeply furrowed bark.

Other ancient trees there were Shagbark Hickory, Red Pine, and Eastern Cedar.

Cedar

Shagbark Hickory

References I found estimate the oldest trees in the park to be 200 years old, perhaps older. This means they survived the clear cutting of New England during the mid-1800’s Sheep Craze when much of New England was put into pasture land, and again around the turn of the century when, after the forest had regrown for 50-80 years, most of New England was deforested for the second time for lumber, charcoal, and paper.  Lime production was an important Vermont industry and it required a huge amount of wood. A lime kiln operated in South Burlington from 1825 until 1971. [Ref: MyChamplainValley]

While we were away I received multiple reports and pictures that show all is well with our loon family even though there were a number of rogue loons visiting the lake. 

Spangle is molting her baby fluff, revealing bits of her juvenile chevron pattern underneath.

The family is becoming more independent now.    

One loon and one chick.

Thank you all for keeping us updated while we were away!

December 16, 2018 - The Mighty White Pine

"From little acorns mighty oaks grow"

We have all heard that proverb.  But even more mighty than the oak is New England's White Pine which towers above even the largest oak in the forest.

While doing some boundary monitoring on a conservation easement I saw some of the largest pines I have come across.

A towering white pine

I expect some will recognize the location.  I went back to take some measurements and found the tree shown above has a circumference of over ten feet!

But have you ever seen the seed of the mighty pine that hides inside the cone up at the top of those trees?  I hadn't, but I know they're in there, not only because tiny pine trees sprout up everywhere, but also because red squirrels spend so much time tearing those cones apart.

Stripping a pine cone, staring at the stem end

Working its way down the spine

Just about empty

Hey, you watchin' me?

Scraps left underneath the kitchen table

Watching this diligent effort to extract those seeds motivated me to pick up a couple of cones and dissect them to learn about what lies inside.

The very beginning of three white pines - one seed is attached to the pointy end of each scale

I was surprised to find just how tiny they are.

The numbers indicate centimeters

At five millimeters in length they must pack a lot of energy to warrant the effort expended by so many animals to access them.

After extracting those seeds it took me quite a while to remove all the sap from my hands, which made me recall a video I had taken of a squirrel eating pine seeds.  At the time I wondered what it was doing after its meal, but now I realize it was cleaning its tiny paws of all that pine sap.  You can watch it here.  You'll also notice it was not happy with my presence in its territory.

If you want to see how it stripped the cone, you can watch a shorter video here.  It must peel off one scale at a time then extract the seed attached to it.  The scales are also called "wings" since they help distribute seeds away from the mother ship when the wind blows.  [Ref:  NC State University]  They perhaps aren't as sophisticated as the helicopter wings on a maple seed, but they certainly do the job to propagate pine trees, especially when aided by the squirrels caching cones away in various places for winter food.

It's a wonder of evolution that this tiny seed can take the nutrients provided by earth and atmosphere (and the symbiotic efforts of other life forms such as fungi) and grow into the enormous structure of a 150 foot tree.  It makes one wonder why the oak gets the proverb when the size ratio of seed-to-tree of the pine outshines the oak by orders of magnitude.

A massive white pine on the Magenta Trail in the Smyth Easement

And in an interesting coincidence, check out the white pine in this post that the Lakes Region Conservation Trust posted just yesterday.  The trees shown here pale in comparison to that monster.

A final note:  the ice did freeze up enough this week for some smooth skating on the entire lake.  Snow forecast for tonight might end it, but if there's only a little it might blow off again.

April 1, 2017 - Carnivorous White Pines

That may sound like an April Fool's joke, but it's true, though somewhat indirectly.  A friend recently told me about spotting bunches of snow fleas - a type of insect know as springtails - on the snow (thanks BB!).

Snow Fleas on my finger

These are very tiny animals, but there are lots of them.

This reminded me of something I read in the Society for the Protection of New Hampshire Forest's publication "Forest Notes".  [Summer, 2017]  It has been found that a certain type of fungus, the bicolor deceiver (Laccaria bicolor), has a toxin that kills springtails when they feed on the fungus.  The toxin paralyzes the springtail, and then the fungus absorbs the insect's nutrients through filaments it extends into its body.  Knowing that the underground portions of fungus exchange nutrients with trees, scientists tagged a bunch of springtails with a radioactive tracker so they could follow it through the food chain.  The tagged springtails were placed near fungus which were in proximity to white pine, and after a few months, they found the pines contained radioactive nitrogen from the snow fleas.  It is incredible how so many creatures are interrelated and depend on each other for survival.  You can read more details about the process from the SPNHF article here.

The snow fleas will be around all year, though once the snow is gone they won't be noticed without looking for them, as they blend into the forest floor.

Snow fleas on an oak leaf

But they'll find the mushrooms, eat them, and in return, be fed to our giant white pines.

How many snow fleas were consumed in creating this giant?

As the snow melts, signs of spring are becoming more evident.

Puddles forming on the lakes

Hobblebush Viburnum ready for spring

Beaver ponds starting to open up

Meredith Bay peeling back

There are even a few green plants starting to photosynthesize the increasing sunlight.

Tree clubmoss (Lycopodium dendroideum) reappearing from under the snow pack

But don't let these signs fool you - there isn't much spring in the lakes on this April first.

Happy Easter!

September 24, 2017 - Rock Tripe

Last week we saw a wide array of fungi, organisms that tend to grow in damp, rich environments - just where you'd expect to find life thriving.  But there are other organisms that somehow defy logic and have adapted to grow in places where they have no right to live.  If you have walked around in some of the darker forests in New Hampshire, particularly near ledges or large boulder fields, you have probably seen this prime example, the Rock Tripe.

Rock Tripe (genus Umbilicaria) growing in the Smyth Conservation Easement

Rock Tripe is a lichen, which are composite organisms made up of at least two, and sometimes three, very different organisms.  One component of lichen is always a fungus, and the second is usually an algae.  The algae lives inside the fungus and the two organisms exchange nutrients - not unlike what a fungus does for a tree. And since algae can photosynthesize using sunlight, CO2, and a few nutrients, [REF: http://allaboutalgae.com/what-are-algae/] it can provide energy to the fungus, which in turn, provides a home for the otherwise structure-less algae.  It's a pretty nice arrangement, and can produce some really large Rock Tripe.

These are nice and green, but in a dry season or on a sunny ledge they can be brown, dry, and stiff.

In case you're ever hungry in the woods, these are edible.  The recommendation is to soften them by boiling, though I can't say I've ever tried it.

We were up in New Brunswick, Canada this week and saw another great example of lichen that grows in an amazing location.

Beard Lichen (Usnea subfloridana)

This is called Beard Lichen, and it's common in the Lakes Region of New Hampshire where I usually see it on the ground after it has been dislodged the tree branches above.  This lichen pulls most of its nutrients right out of the air and it is a great indicator of air quality; it can't live in polluted air, and the better the air quality, the larger it grows.

Beard Lichen on the ground back in Meredith, New Hampshire

Ferns are another plant that often grow on granite, though these use a more conventional approach: they take root in the rotted debris that has collected on the tops of boulders over many years.

They can find the smallest nook to set roots into.

Or they can take over an entire boulder.

Christmas ferns (Polystichum acrostichoides) crowd out all others on this boulder

Christmas ferns got their name because they stay green well into winter, often being seen still bright green when covered with snow.

There are also large plants that manage to take up residence where they have no right to.  White pine and hemlock are both good at this, and all it seems to take is a small crack or depression in the rock which captures both water and a seed, and a tree can take root.

A white pine establishes a toe-hold on Sheep Island in Lake Wicwas

This relationship is more damaging to the host (though even lichen will eventually degrade the rock), as over time, as the root grows, it will slowly pry a granite boulder apart, accelerating the demise of the rock, but helping to create sandy beaches for us (in a few millions years).

Here is a white pine farther along in this process:

This pine has been growing for 10-20 years

During which time it has pried up a large piece of the bedrock

Next is an example of an oak tree that started out trying to grow on top of a boulder, but it didn't work out well for it.  At one point it got toppled over, bringing up some bits of mother earth with it.

But that didn't slow it down much.  It just took a 90 degree turn back up towards the sky and kept right on growing.

Very adaptive in its quest to find the sun

Nature can be both resilient and persistent.  It can also be tolerant.  Take a look at these two trees:

Two different trees with an intimate relationship.  (Credit goes to Jim G. for discovering this.)

The branch of one tree grew right across the trunk of the other, and over the years, the two have grown together.  Even more interesting is that it is an interracial marriage - they are different species. The one on the left with the branch sticking out is an oak, while the receiving tree is a maple. Notice how the oak has grown its bark out, wrapping right around the maple tree.

These trees are in the soon-to-be-conserved extension of the Page Pond Town Forest.  A planned trail will go right by this, so when the property is open I'll provide directions so you can see this natural anomaly for yourself. Until then, be on the outlook for plants growing in unique ways as you travel around the Lakes Region, and let me know what you find growing where it has no right to.