Yellow-bellied Sapsucker

The Perfect Climbing Tree

Many years ago I would spend much vacation time at a wonderful home in southeastern Pennsylvania. There my best friends who happen to also be my cousins, Judie and Beverly, taught me that apple trees are the preeminent climbing trees. Perfect climbing trees for children.

Apple trees are also great climbing trees for hungry bears. Bears that love my selection of apple varieties. Or perhaps they don’t even care about the variety. Maybe to bears apples are apples, whether McIntosh or Jonathan. To this baker though varieties of apples make a great difference. One variety or another can make or break a pie.

There’s another creature that regularly visits this apple tree climbing up and down its branches and trunk, the Yellow-bellied Sapsucker. Drilling sap wells to provide themselves and many other animals with phloem sap which carries the sustenance produced in the leaves to other parts of the tree. In the picture above you can see the small round holes, or sap wells, carved by the Sapsucker. The larger slashes in the bark have been made by a bear climbing the tree.

And here, something that pleases me beyond words. The Little One discovering that an apple tree is indeed, the perfect climbing tree.

Apple Blossoms

Apple blossoms. What a fragrant delight. And they bring in a host of visitors that provide great entertainment just to sit and watch. It’s been really breezy today. Petals have been flying like snow. Apple blossom season won’t last much longer.

Tiger Swallowtails (Papilio glaucus) are one of the many species of butterflies that make the apple tree seem alive with action. Both nectar and pollen lure the insects in.

Another of the insects that answer the apple blossoms call are moths. This one, a Nessus Sphinx Moth (Amphion floridensis).

Birds get the call too. This is a female or juvenile Ruby-throated Hummingbird (Archilochus colubris) that uses the branches of the apple tree as a resting spot. In this image it’s sitting on a grapevine with the apple blossoms in the background. I’m wondering, if I’ll find a hummingbird nest in the apple tree if I search carefully.

This a Cedar Waxwing (Bombycilla cedrorum). What a surprise I had to see these birds eating the blossom petals. Amazing to find that they enjoy eating the petals.

A Yellow-bellied Sapsucker (Sphyrapicus varius) is making sap wells in the apple tree’s bark. This enables them to consume both the sap that collects and insects that are also attracted. The sap wells are the very small round holes in the bark. If you look closely you can see claw marks from bears climbing the tree.

After the blooms come the apples and the bears. I guess this critter thinks that the apples are his to be taken. This is a yearly tradition. I sure appreciate the bear coming by for a photo op.

Black Walnut Bark

So many trees out there! Summer provides us with leaves to look at to recognize species, often right away. When winter arrives we’re left with very little hint as to what species of tree we might be looking at. Along with limb character, the tips and buds on branches, and the look of leaf scars, there is also the bark of the tree. The tree above is a Black Walnut (Juglans nigra).

Black Walnut is a tree that is plentiful here in the Blue Ridge Mountains, giving me an opportunity to really get acquainted with all its traits. In the image above a White-breasted Nuthatch is checking out the bark of a Black Walnut tree by going down the trunk in its amusing way, going down head-first. Check out the pattern that the bark has presented to you.

From time to time the bark of the Black Walnut will remind me of a work of macrame or some other fiber artwork. Weaving maybe?

In this photo you’ll see a couple perfectly round holes in the Black Walnut bark. These are created by a Yellow-bellied Sapsucker. The Sapsucker will hammer out a series of holes, drink the sap and eat the insects that get trapped in the sticky liquid.

The bark of Black Walnut, is communicating to you. Speaking to you in its limited winter way. Trying to tell you its identity.