A Winter Trek in Taghkanic Community Forest
By Kendrick Fowler
Earlier this week, I tagged along with Josie, Laura, Conrad, and Gretchen Stevens on an excursion to Taghkanic Community Forest, a newly-created nature preserve owned by the Columbia Land Conservancy that is set to open to the public this summer. The preserve protects over 500 acres of woodlands, including some areas that we believed might be ancient forest, and we strapped on snowshoes and trekked into the woods in order to make a start at surveying these special habitats.
Ancient forests are forests that have never been cleared for agriculture. However, they are not necessarily old-growth forests: many forests that we identify as “ancient” have been logged in the past. This has certainly been the case at Taghkanic Community Forest, as evidenced by the presence of wide, easy to follow logging trails running through the property. These will make excellent hiking trails when the preserve is opened to the public!
Animal tracks and signs are a common sight in the snow, and we came across a multitude of them as we trekked through the woods. This squiggly trail without obvious footprints looked like no trail I had ever seen before, and we spent a few minutes puzzling over it. Pairs of footprints that looked like they had been made by a jumping animal led away from one end of the trail, which led us to conclude that it had been created by a Deer Mouse (Peromyscus maniculatus) or White-footed Mouse (P. leucopus).
Mouse footprints were the most abundant animal sign we saw during our outing, and along one section of the trail, we found ourselves completely surrounded by crisscrossing paths of mouse tracks. The snow in that part of the woods was also littered with the bracts of birch (Betula sp.) catkins, and I wondered whether the mice there might have been foraging on birch seeds.
The surface of the snow is a dangerous place for a mouse to be, and we were reminded of that when Conrad spied a mouse that had appeared to have frozen to death in the middle of the trail.
Although the frozen mouse was a saddening sight, it was fascinating to get a close-up look at a creature that normally is very challenging to observe.
As mentioned previously, this mouse belongs to a species in the genus Peromyscus; it is either a Deer Mouse (P. maniculatus) or White-footed Mouse (P. leucopus). However, these two species resemble each other so closely that they cannot be reliably distinguished by sight, so I'm not certain which of them this individual belonged to.
Mice and other small mammals spend much of their time in winter beneath the surface of the snow, and this seasonal, temporary habitat is called the "subnivean zone." Snow cover acts as a layer of insulation over the forest floor, and as a result, the subnivean zone maintains a stable temperature that helps to protect small mammals from the winter's bitterest cold. If you look closely at animal tracks, you can sometimes find them leading to gaps or tunnels accessing the subnivean zone, especially near the bases of trees or other objects rising out from the snow. When I stopped to adjust my snowshoes, I spotted a path that appeared to me to lead to such an entrance. This path seemed much too large to have been created by a mouse or similar-sized animal, however Red Squirrels (Tamiasciurus hudsonicus) are also known to tunnel beneath the snow, and so if I have correctly identified this as an entrance to the subnivean zone, perhaps a squirrel was the creature that made it.
Mammal tracks weren't the only animal signs we found during our outing: the woods also were littered with old Spongy Moth (Lymantria dispar) pupae, and Josie found this old cocoon—which I believe was probably created by some other kind of moth—attached to the bark of a tree.
We also encountered sign that didn't appear to be animal in origin: not far from the cocoon, a Chestnut Oak (Quercus montana) and a hickory (Carya sp.) both had extensive patterns of healed-over cankers in their bark. It's not clear to me what might have caused these injuries, although a fungal infection or trauma of some kind seems like the most probable explanation. If you recognize these patterns and know what caused them, please reach out—we would be curious to learn more!
It is exciting to have a new nature preserve so close to home, and I'm grateful to have had the opportunity to join my colleagues in exploring it on a wintry day. I hope you enjoyed reading along with this adventure, and be sure to give Taghkanic Community Forest a visit when it opens later this year!
