On February 11, the Westmoreland Bird and Nature Club sponsored a winter ecology outing at Keystone State Park, Tom Pearson leading. We almost called it off due to the forecast of heavy snow, but the storm stayed south of us for the duration of the morning hike. On these excursions we identify everything in sight, winter weeds, trees, shrubs, mushrooms, lichens, mosses, birds overhead or in the bush, animal burrows, and tracks if there is snow. We had snow in patches, but not solid ground cover. We also interpret the landscape and try to answer any questions that participants bring up.
We had not gone far along the trail leading from the causeway into the wild east end of the park when we came to a set of tracks that temporarily stumped everyone. Our party of 14 people was strung out and Tom had been staring at those tracks for some time before I arrived. He was saying Mustelidae family, possibly fisher. A fisher is a big dark brown member of the weasel family, almost the size of an otter. They were extirpated from the state by the clearcut logging practices of the 19th and early 20th century and re-introduced a decade ago in the northern tier states by the Game Commission. I have been hoping to sight one. It is the only member of the weasel family I have not seen. Just a few days before this outing I saw what I at first believed to be fisher tracks on my property in Stahlstown and got excited. The prints occurred in twos, as is characteristic of the entire weasel family and they were big. The hind foot alternated and the toes and claws were visible. These traits also fit the fisher. My heart rate shot up a few beats, but after following the tracks for a short distance I slowly realized that I was looking at raccoon tracks that had melted a bit and therefore had enlarged. The coon was also walking at an odd gait, but soon changed to his normal walk which left no doubt of its identity. I had temporarily mistaken this clumsy coon for a fisher.
Consequently, when I heard Tom say fisher, I wasn't going to get fooled again. Raccoons in Keystone Park are far more probable than fishers. The hind foot alternated, the real clincher for a raccoon track pattern, and I said they were coon tracks that had melted. However, I don't see well with my glasses between four and six feet and should have kept my mouth shut. Tim Vechter, another of the club's top naturalist's, who was looking at the tracks from a kneeling position said, "Dick, these tracks show no sign of having melted." That's when I got down to look closer. He was right. There was no melt pattern. The tracks were fresh and had been made the previous night. We were looking at the true size of the tracks and they were too big for raccoon. That's when we got out the tape measure and the field guides. I measured the track size, trail width and the length of the gait. Everything fit within the limits for a fisher. Tom said the tracks were definitely made by a Mustelid and I had to agree. They were also too big for mink, long-tailed or short-tailed weasels. There are no otters in that area. That only leaves the fisher. What else could the prints be? Tom, Tim and I stared at each other in disbelief. None of us had ever seen fisher tracks before except in field guides and photographs. Could we be right? The chances of seeing fisher tracks in Keystone State Park seemed uncanny, but it wasn't an impossibility. The fishers that were introduced in the northern counties could have expanded their range southward. Fishers have been reported periodically in Bedford County and the Laurel Highlands the past two years. Three have been trapped in Somerset County. Those fishers are believed to have come into Pennsylvania on their own from West Virginia. The Laurel Highlands are only one ridge away from Keystone State Park. Last year there was also an incredible gray squirrel population, the fisher's primary prey, so they may have had a good reproductive year. Still, we wanted to have another opinion, particularly from someone who has seen fisher tracks in the snow frequently. I got out my camera and took pictures with a small ruler beside the prints that Tom provided. I'll send those off to someone in the Game Commission or Plateau Audubon Society who have done research on fishers or at least reported signs of the animal. We would be delighted to confirm the presence of fishers in central Westmoreland County.
Those tracks were the find of the morning, but we continued on with the outing. Tom found and identified 130 other species, not bad for a dead winter outing. Lori Montgomery kept the list. Among some of the better species was reindeer lichen, named after the antler-like branching pattern of the stems. Two ravens entertained us with their flight patterns and raucous calls. A decade ago we'd have been flabbergasted by the appearance of ravens beyond the mountains, but they have been expanding their range. Skunk cabbage was in bloom and we found evidence of rabbit sarcophagi. That's the re-ingesting of the fecal pellets to extract more nourishment out of what didn't get digested through the alimentary canal the first time through. This habit of eating their own poop during the winter is a common behavior in the rabbit family. John and Valerie Baker, our two mushroom experts, found quite a few winter species on the logs and tree trunks.
Tim Vechter pulled me aside to show me a stand of honey locust trees about 30 yards off the trail. This is the tree I described in this column a couple of months ago with the huge thorns. It is rare in Westmoreland County represented by only two locations in the Pennsylvania plant atlas. Keystone State Park was not one of them, but here was a stand of about 20 specimens. One was huge, which I assume was the father of all the others. The location of an old foundation with a spring house made me believe that the large honey locust was planted. There was no water in the remains of the spring house, a common situation. There are so many wells today that the water table has fallen far below what it was in the olden days. Many springs have stopped running. A pile of bricks was all that remained of the chimney and two old bank barn foundations were not far away. We figured the place was settled at least 150 years ago and abandoned at the onset of the Great Depression. Most early farmhouse chimneys are made of stone, but the brick chimney could have come later. Tim was trying to figure out where the outhouse was, or outhouses. When one fills up, the settlers would dig another. Tim knew that old outhouses were also the site of trash disposal and could contain old bottles and other historic artifacts. On an earlier visit he had found one of those cure-all medicine bottles sold to people by traveling con-artists. He has read that some historians have a system of locating the first and second outhouse sites on old abandoned farms. They are important places for dating the site and the history of the area. Who knows what a spade could turn up in the right location?
Keystone State Park also harbors a shagbark hickory tree of distinction. We passed it on our way out of the woods and measured it to estimate its age by the base diameter system. The circumference was 107.5 inches which brought the estimate to 256 years. If accurate, the tree was just a seedling in 1750, just 13 years before the Battle of Bushy Run in Pontiac's War. Being a wolf tree, it had seen both full sunlight and shady conditions in its lifetime, so I have reservations on the accuracy of that estimate, but I'd give it no less than 200 years.
It was a fine morning. The weather cooperated beautifully. The snow stayed away and the wind didn't blow making for a relaxing walk in temperatures in the low thirties. We felt sorry for the shopping mall public.
