A fishing rod introduced the warbler and me

Saturday, February 26, 2005

Bernd Heinrich, a highly acclaimed naturalist and wonderful writer with a national reputation, lives in Vermont, but he has ties to the Morning Sentinel and Kennebec Journal coverage area. This professor owns a summer home near Alder Stream in Perkins Township southeast of Mount Blue State Park and attended Good Will Hinckley School in the 1950s.Ê

Human nature being what it is, folks enjoy writers who agree with them, and for me, Heinrich falls into that category. In his book, The Trees in My Forest, he outlined a theory that matches one of my thoughts exactly. "A bird' s life in the forest is one of boom and bust," Heinrich wrote, "And outcomes are often determined by imponderable trifles."

Heinrich backs the quote by mentioning an explosion of winter wrens around his Maine summer home one year, thanks to his recent, small-scale lumbering operation. His cuttings had left a scattering of limbs and tops on the ground, which he claimed created good nesting habitat. This observation underscored a basic truth about wildlife in northern climates. Enhanced habitat and mild weather often add up to short-term boom cycles, but a single, severe winter can devastate populations of certain species.

Heinrich's quote referred to songbirds, but hunters and anglers notice booms and busts with game critters. Those of you in my age bracket and older can surely remember winter 1970-1971, when heavy snow from mid-December through late March killed one-third to one-half of Maine's entire deer population. Whitetails did not bounce back from that devastating winter until the late 1980s, when a form of bucks and then the any-deer-permit system brought the herd back in the bottom third of the state. Woodcutters in the 1970s and 1980s destroyed wintering habitat in northern Maine, which has hampered deer-restoration efforts there and will continue to do so until primary conifer stands grow back to offer shelter in the cold season.

Ruffed-grouse hunters note peaks and valleys in this game bird's population. However, in central Maine, grouse have continued declining because untold acres of edge cover with shrubs and poplars have turned into primary forest, favoring turkeys. These days, outdoors folks wandering central Maine's woods routinely see far more turkeys than grouse per year, and I am not talking about field sightings of turkeys, either. I am referring to all the turkeys we stumble across in the autumn woods while chasing grouse.

I've thought of Heinrich's boom-bust quote often in the last four months because abundant rodent and songbird species have caught my eye, certainly illustrating two boom trends around my home.

During deer season, I have never seen so many mice in the woods in my life. Every time I sat down on a stump or fallen tree, a mouse would soon be rustling leaves near my feet, but most of them were extremely difficult to identify. Small rodents seldom show themselves for more than a split second, a testimonial to the inherent dangers of life on the forest floor. If a mouse lingers too long in one spot, an avian predator will catch a meal. The rodents that I did see long enough to ID were deer mice -- apparently a boom cycle for that species, which would indicate other tiny rodents did well, too.

Right around New Year's Day, that heavy, warm rain on frozen ground must have drowned a jillion mice in central Maine because excess water did not sink into the earth. Rather, it puddled in low places, where the little critters slept. Invertebrates that chose to spend winter beneath hoarfrost must have perished, too. I suspect sitting on deer trails in November 2005 will have far fewer, rodent distractions.

This winter, slate-colored juncos have been constant visitors to my feeders. In the previous two winters, no juncos have come to my feeders. Period. Apparently, breeding conditions in mid-March through May 2004 were perfect for flocks in the Belgrade Lakes area, and now, we are seeing the results.

Heinrich's boom-bust quote reminds me of a favorite topic among my friends and acquaintances involved in blood sports. Many of us with fishing rods or firearms are looking at the whole outdoors experience, which often puts us in close proximity with flora and fauna that have nothing to do with the fish and game we seek.

A black-throated green warbler with its delightful zoo-zee-zoo-zoo-zee call offers a perfect example. It is not a frequent visitor to feeders, and in fact, if it were not for fishing, I would never have met this somewhat secretive bird that lives in the upper branches of mixed-growth forests.

My first encounter with this warbler occurred a few years ago. I was poking along on top of a steep, nearly 90-degree bank above a narrow floodplain on the Pleasant River in Windham, where I was eye level with the top of an ancient, monarch hemlock. In one of the upper-most limbs, a warbler with a bright-yellow face caught my eye -- a memorable meeting. (Photos and drawings in guidebooks do the warbler no justice because this is a striking bird.

Suddenly, the warbler made its sing-song zoo-zee-zoo-zoo-zee call that sounds like a child's rhyme, written in a trochaic foot. I recognized it immediately, a big part of river and stream fishing. Until that moment, though, I did not know which bird made it. So, without sounding too corny, just let me say a fly rod introduced us, proving once again that there is far more to fishing (and hunting) than blood.

Correspondent Ken Allen, of Belgrade Lakes, writes outdoors columns for the Morning Sentinel and Kennebec Journal