This past Thursday afternoon nine students and an intrepid staff member (thanks, Jim!) joined me out on the campus nature trail for a clean-up event. It was a great way to mark the 40th anniversary of Earth Day. I want to thank everyone who helped and also wanted to let everyone know that the trail is now in great shape! The fallen and leaning trees have been cut and hauled to the log pile, and the multiflora rose stems and the raspberry canes (the "jaggers" we have all known (and hated) since our childhoods!) have been cut back from the trail passage so hiking without tearing and rending of either clothes or flesh is now possible. Please, come out and enjoy the quiet and the richness of our trail!

The Todd Nature Reserve (formerly called "Todd Sanctuary") is a rocky, stream crossed, 176 acre site owned and maintained by the Audubon Society of Western Pennsylvania. It is in Sarver in southeastern Butler County and has been, for all of the twenty-seven years we have lived in this area, one of our favorite places to hike. There are five miles of crisscrossing hiking trails in the reserve. A two mile "Loop Trail" encircles the site's perimeter and takes you from stream beds to ridge tops and back again through young to middle-aged hemlock stands and a variety of mixed hardwood forests. Shorter trails (with evocative names like "Hemlock," "Indian Pipe," "Pond," "Warbler," and "Polypody") interconnect fern capped rock cities with densely vegetated copses with the human constructed pond (built in 1969). The pond is a great place to view bull frogs, Canadian geese, bluegills, and northern water snakes.

We headed out this morning to do one of our favorite, local hikes: the six mile, "Up and Over" around Roaring Run in Kiski Township, Armstrong County. I have written a long description of a July hike along this trail and published it on our "Between Stones and Trees" web site (http://www.psu.edu/dept/nkbiology/hike/roaringrun.html) under the title "Roaring Run." Check out the full narrative some time! Here are, though, a few things we saw today.

This second week of March has been an active time of transition into Spring.  On Monday, the silver maple tree (Acer saccharinum)at the bottom of my field opened its flowers. On Tuesday, the red maple (Acer rubrum)  by my house did the same. Flocks of robins (Turdus migratorius) are arriving every day, and they are feasting on the earthworms that are rising up out of the thawing soil. On Friday a group of eastern bluebirds (Sialia sialis) joined the robins at the edge of the receding snow pack out in my field to join in the earthworm feast. The crocuses have started blooming. The first ones opened in the flowerbed on the south side of my house, and, as the week went on, they were joined by a riot of colorful blooms progressively further and further away from the heat radiating bricks of the house.

Deborah and I walked out to the Nature Trail this afternoon. After three weeks of snow and very cold weather, today's moderate temperatures (upper 30's) and abundant sunshine are irresistible calls to get out into the woods!

There are a few tracks in the snow cover. A couple of hikers (and at least one dog) have recently walked the upper trail. These hikers avoided the steep down-slope trail sections, though. Walking down into the ravine we only see deer tracks ahead of us.

A few days later we return to the junction of Route 210 and the Baker Trail and set up a car shuttle to the South Branch of Plum Creek. The trail guide and map are very specific in their description of the continuation of the trail on the other side of Route 210, but that description doesn't seem to match signs and marking that we see along the road. There is a wooden sign with "Baker Trail" written on it but it isn't where the trail guide says it should be.
We decide to try the sign and push into the woods. There is a piped spring just off the road and what seems to be a continuation of a trail that runs off to the left. We walk up the trail, but it quickly shrinks down to an old deer path and we retreat back to the road.

We start the second part of our Baker Trail hike back at the car pull-out near Cochran's Mills after leaving our second car at the trail crossing on Rte 210 about nine miles away. Driving over the bewilderingly interconnected back roads of Southbend Township to get to Cochran's Mills, we were stunned by the number of robins we saw. Hundreds (maybe thousands?) of robins were perching on tree branches, hopping across fields and lawns, and swooping across the road in front of the car. We had seen very few robins around our yard and field over the past month or so (the robins seem to fade away in mid to late summer after their second clutches have fledged). But, the flocks of robins were here! Were they gathering up for their migration flights? Was the habitat quality out here so high that they were drawn to these woods and hollows in huge numbers? Why were they here? How long would they stay? We pondered these questions as we pulled on our day packs and sprayed on insect repellant.

The Baker Trail was established in 1950 under the sponsorship of the Pittsburgh Council of the American Youth Hostels. Named for Pittsburgh attorney Horace Forbes Baker, the trail originally began in Aspinwall on the north shore of the Allegheny River and, after crossing the Allegheny at Freeport, wound its way over 133 miles through farmland and woods to Cook Forest State Park. The Aspinwall to Freeport section, though, was lost due to development and irreparable fragmentation, so in its present form the Baker Trail begins on the hilly bluffs over the east shore of the Allegheny River just past the base of the Freeport Bridge. A northern extension added in 1971 took the trail past the Cook Forest Fire Tower terminus and extended it into the Allegheny National Forest and, eventually, connected it to the North Country Trail. Different web sites state that the present length of the Baker Trail is 132 miles, or 140 miles, or 141 miles.

My Front Yard:
My front yard is a wood-fenced rectangle about 20 by 24 feet. It has been a multi-use part of my property serving as the "dog yard," "bird feeding area," and general buffer between the house and street. I am not a compulsive lawn manager and only reluctantly give in to the need to mow. This front yard area, though, always had a thick, green grass cover and was visibly healthier and more robust than any other lawn on my street. I attributed this to moderate applications of dog urine from two very gentle, very urinarily healthy dogs, Shiga (a golden retriever) and Danny (a schnauzer mix).