Fourth-generation forester and wildlife researcher Susan Morse poked her hiking pole at the yellow stain in the snow. Bringing the tip of the pole to her mouth, she breathed out to activate the scent molecules.

Morse sniffed and said, “If the urine smells like a skunk, it’s a fox.”

A fox it was. There, in the snow were delicate nail lines of the print to prove it. As the group huddled to examine the track, she gave us another clue. She drew an “x” between the foot and the toe pads to distinguish this canine track from the “m” shape of a feline.

A NOTE FROM THECOORDINATORHappy spring to you all! I hope everyone is fully thawed out and ready to enjoy some warm weather.

This past season was a busy one for the Quiet Corner Initiative. Two winter workshops went off without a hitch (well, plenty of hitches by Sam Rich’s Grand Champion Farm Team percherons). The third installment of the portable bandsaw and draft powered logging workshop had excellent attendance despite the pouring icy rain. I thought the weather, or at least snow conditions, would be challenging for the tracking workshop with Sue Morse, but we had high turnout for that as well and it was a very educational day.

The students in the management plans course worked hard to write six high quality plans for Quiet Corner properties in the Bigelow Brook watershed.

Know that we’re looking to line up landowners in the Still River watershed for next fall. If you, or someone you know, are interested in a forest management plan for your property, please let us know!

Please keep an eye out for our Summer Seminar Series announcements. I hope to see you at camp this summer.

Cheers,

Julius Pasay Forest Manager

KEEPING TRACK WITH SUE MORSESara Rose Tannenbaum, Master of Environmental Management ‘16

Susan Morse, of Keeping Track, speaks about the ideal bobcat habitat hidden in the boulders of Kinney Road during a QCI workshop in February. (photo by Sara Rose Tannenbaum)

continued on page 2

NEWS from the QUIET CORNER

ISSUE 6 - SPRING 2015

The QCI creates partnerships that expand educational and research opportunities for students and faculty at the Yale School of Forestry and Environmental Studies, while supporting the work of private landowners, natural resource managers, and forest industry professionals in and around the Yale-Myers Forest. The QCI supports strengthened local livelihoods, increased forest health, and rural economic development for the long-term benefit of the land and those that live on it by providing knowledge, energy, and expertise

to our partnering landowners and organizations.

This February the Quiet Corner Initiative partnered with Yale students to invite Susan Morse of Keeping Track to teach about the life histories of local wildlife—like black bears, bobcat, red fox, gray fox, and white-tailed deer—in the field.

Founded by Morse in 1994, Keeping Track is a Vermont-based organization that helps conserve key wildlife habitats in North American through outreach, research, and education.

Despite the bitter cold, Morse and her two interns led two half-day Quiet Corner Initiative workshops. During the morning workshop at Bigelow Hollow State Park, we saw playful otter slides and deer scrapes.

A Keeping Track intern even got down on all fours to demonstrate the cadence of different animal strides.

Later, in the afternoon workshop we drove down Boston Hollow Road to visit an ideal bobcat habitat in the boulders of the Yale-Myers Forest. In between the two workshops, we

warmed up over lunch inside the Union Town Hall. There we saw amazing slides of Morse’s wildlife photography.

We left with a heightened appreciation for how to track and manage for the creatures living in the woods around us. As Morse says, “Good forestry is good for wildlife.”

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Alex Barrett and and young sprout Rowan greet one of Sam and Erika’s oxen. (photo by Danielle Lehle)

BACK OF BLAIR’S TRUCK CHILI RECIPEIngredients:

• 1 lb ground venison, ground beef, or ground turkey

• 2 onions, diced • 1 green pepper, diced • 1 tablespoon jalapeño, finely

chopped • 1 (14 ounce) can Mexican-

style tomatoes (like Rotel) • 2 (8 ounce) cans tomato sauce • 2 tablespoons cumin • 2 tablespoons chili powder • 1 teaspoon salt • 1⁄2 teaspoon cayenne pepper • 1⁄2 teaspoon paprika (smoked

if you can find it) • 1 (14 ounce) can kidney beans,

drained and rinsed • 1 (14 ounce) can black beans,

drained and rinsed • 1 cup water

Directions:1. Cook ground meat, onions

and peppers in dutch oven.2. Drain excess grease then add

tomatoes, seasonings, and water. Bring to a boil.

3. Add beans, cover and simmer 1-2 hours.

4. Serve with sour cream, cheese and chips out of the back of Blair’s truck.

The 3rd annual QCI horse logging workshop upheld well established traditions of years past. Sam Rich and Erika Marczak returned to Yale-Myers with their horse and oxen teams to harvest white pine in a stand marked for a crown thinning. Denis Day hauled up his Woodmizer bandsaw mill and made quick work of converting low-grade pine logs into boards.

The weather, notoriously bad on whatever day we choose to schedule the workshop, was even worse. A consistent downpour of rain, just above the freezing mark, turned the already icy roads into a skating rink. Thankfully, the standard, copious quantity of hot chili, coffee, and a

stubborn fire kept the participants reasonably warm.

This year’s logs were harvested to supply timber for a new outdoor classroom. The Yale School of Forestry’s Class of 1980 made a donation funding the construction of a timber frame open-air auditorium to be raised this fall. Most of the timber milled during the workshop will go towards laying the roof.

As always, we appreciate having local instructors as capable as Sam, Erika and Denis that are willing to demonstrate the merits of small scale, locally-sourced forestry operations. And we thank all those that braved the weather to take part.

TEAMING UP: AN ANNUAL TRADITION Blair Rynearson, Master of Forestry ‘15

Modified from content published on the Yale F&ES blog titled «Tracking Wildlife in the Yale Woods» by Sara Rose Tannenbaum and Hale Morrell.

If you’ve ever dreamed of becoming a character in a book, to participate in a field exercise with Tom Wessels is to become exactly that—it is a walk into living literature, and the living history of landscapes.

Tom Wessels is an esteemed ecologist noted for his books, “Forest Forensics” and “Reading the Forested Landscape”.

On December 14th, 2015 Wessels came to Yale-Myers forest with his long, white beard and bright red hat to teach us the nuances of his trade.

For those who might have missed the workshop, we’ve included some of our favorite Tom Wessels clues for solving the riddles of the forest.

Happy landscape mystery solving!

READING THE FORESTED LANDSCAPE

This wonderful crew explored the forests of Yale-Myers with the master himself. (photo by Gloria Lorusso)

TOM WESSELS’ FOREST CLUES Tip-up Mounds— Suggest strong wind events that are fierce enough to blow a tree over. The direction of the fallen tree can indicate hurri-canes or easterlies.

Whorls— Are useful for aging white pine and some-times for finding the date of field abandonment.

Stone Walls— Indicate past land use. They can be telling of whether the old homestead used the land for pasture, crops, or hay fields.

Basal Scars— Found on tree trunks, these scars clue to disturbance by fire or logging, either by collision (when a skidder comes through) or when bark is removed by burning.

Charcoal— Is a problema-tic clue because it is often hidden or mixed up with black fungus; learn how to distinguish this!

Wolf trees— Low branches and growth form suggests that these trees were open grown. Trees grown in the open are outward branching vs. trees grown in forest which race for the sky.

“Weird Apples”— Indicate repetitive mowing. Refer to a gnarly mess of branches typically at the base of the trunk from repeated injury as a youth.

Stumps— How many disturbances, which species, and why can all be answered through careful inspection of residual stumps.

Vinh Lang, Master of Forestry ‘15

ENVIRONMENTAL FILM SCREENINGS

• Tuesday, July 14th: The Big Burn (60 min) & The Fire Next Time (10 min)

• Tuesday, July 28th: TBD

Come enjoy the summer weather at the Yale-Myers Forest with our annual summer traditions!

SUMMER RESEARCH SEMINARS

Please stay tuned for a poster with more details and get ready to learn about frogs, bees and bats!

• June 11th and 25th*• July 9th and 23rd*

*Begin at 7pm with refreshments. This program is accredited to deliver Continuous Education Units.

SAVE THE DATES THIS SUMMER!

Tom Wessels and birches. (photo by Sara Rose)

Issue 6 / Spring 2015The QCI Newsletter is brought to you by the Yale School Forests / 360 Prospect Street, Yale University, New Haven, CT 06511

Words by Vinh Lang, Blair Rynearson, Paula Coughlin, Julius Pasay and Sara Rose Tanennbaum / Layout by Sara Rose Tannenbaum / Pictures by Danielle Lehle, Gloria Lorusso and Sara Rose Tannenbaum

YALE SCHOOL FORESTS360 PROSPECT STREETNEW HAVEN CT-06511

CITIZEN SCIENCE WILDLIFE TRACKING AND MONITORING

Contact Paula or check the Connecticut Audobon Society

website for more information about how to get involved:

www.ctaudubon.org

Paula Coughlin Citizen Science Coordinator

Connecticut Audobon Societypaulacoughlin@charter.net

860-974-0383

Want to learn more about your wildlife neighbors?

The Connecticut Audubon Society (CAS) Center in Pomfret Center invites you to learn tracking skills with the Citizen Science Wildlife Tracking and Monitoring Program, coordinated by Paula Coughlin.

In the program, trained monitors document signs of bobcat, black bear, river otter, fisher, mink and moose—large mammals that require diverse habitats. Data is collected at three study sites (Woodstock, Willington, Canterbury), quarterly, using Susan

Morse’s Keeping Track, Inc. protocol.

This data has been used in grant applications for the New Roxbury Land Trust and The Nature Conservancy that resulted in land conservation in the towns of Woodstock and Eastford.

Training hikes are scheduled throughout the year with a special emphasis on snow tracking. In April and May, our citizen science volunteers are busy counting wood frog and spotted salamander egg masses as evidence of species that breed in vernal pools. Lots of fun!

Interested in getting a Management Plan or a Harvest Plan for your property this fall? Don’t hesitate to contact Julius Pasay at julius.pasay@yale.edu with inquiries.

Paula Coughlin, Connecticut Audobon Society