Wednesday, April 8, 2015 The Nugget Newspaper, Sisters, Oregon
Tales from a
Sisters
Naturalist
by Jim Anderson
The Ponderosa
Pine Brewery
The welfare of the wild-
life community is tied
directly to dead trees.
Pine chipmunks can’t
make it without dead trees
to forage on, live in, and
hide from predators. It’s
the same story for northern
flying squirrels, and ALL
the woodpeckers and other
birds, bats, a wide variety of
arthropods, mushrooms and
the essential building blocks
of a healthy forest ecosystem
— they’re found in wildlife
trees (WLT).
Not enough can be said
about the values of WLT in
a forest community. I have
a photo showing a northern
flying squirrel peering out
at me from its home in an
abandoned woodpecker cav-
ity, checking out the WLT
sign I was attaching to an old
dead tree some designate as
a “snag” — only good for
firewood.
Back in the glory days
of logging, timber fallers of
the Brooks-Scanlon Timber
Company — who once had
a magnificent lumber mill in
Bend, and a sizable camp in
Sisters — were paid 50 cents
each to fall them, as they
were considered a threat to
timber operations and a fire
hazard.
Today we know that sev-
eral species of migratory
bats use abandoned wood-
pecker nest cavities and the
loose bark on a WLT for a
day roost. Native small owls,
such as the northern pygmy,
western screech, northern
saw-whet and the wander-
ing flammulated owl (which
travels between Panama and
Central Oregon annually) use
the tree cavities for a place to
hide and for nesting.
Douglas’s squirrels, yel-
low pine chipmunks, and tree
voles will also use empty
cavities for their homes. And
the species of woodpeckers
that utilize tree cavities in
WLTs cover our smallest —
the downy — to the largest
— pileated — woodpeck-
ers, along with the signature
woodpecker of the Deschutes
National Forest — the white-
headed. Birders from all over
the world come to Sisters to
place that woodpecker on
their Life List of Birds.
Take a look at that bunch
of pine chipmunks all over
the big, old ponderosa WLT.
I found that tree back in
the mid-’70s while I was
employed with the Forest
Service as a seasonal wild-
life tech. Part of my job
was identifying and mark-
ing WLTs on the Fort Rock
District of the Deschutes
National Forest.
The soon-to-be-a-snag
came to my attention as I
was slowly driving through
an old-growth ponderosa
stand way down in the south-
east end of the district. What
caught my eye was the abun-
dance of wildlife running all
over it and when I looked up,
the dead branches way up
near the top. The tree was,
from my guess, post-clear-
cut days of the ’20s and ’30s,
shot-to-death by someone
who was using the silvicul-
turist tag for a target.
There were at least 50
pine chipmunks running all
over the tree, and as I got
out of the pickup for a closer
look, five or six red-napped
sapsuckers flew off (and I
thought a Williamson’s was
among them). On the back
side of the tree a white-
headed and two downy
woodpeckers flew off, and as
I continued around the tree, a
northern flicker yelled at me
as it flew off.
“What’s the big attrac-
tion?” I asked myself. As
I got closer, I saw it. There
was a light yellowish fluid
slowly seeping from sap-
sucker wells, and the pine
chipmunks were going nuts
over it. Being curious, I went
over for a closer look. Even
though I was only inches
away, it wasn’t until I put my
nose an inch from the last
chipmunk before it scam-
pered that I got a hint.
A familiar scent wafted
into my nostrils as I went
for a closer look, and upon
impulse, I stuck out my
tongue and got a small slurp
of the fluid. It tasted just like
White Lightnin’! No wonder
everyone was so happy and
so bold to be visiting that
tree, it was the Ponderosa
Brewery of the Fort Rock
District.
My theory was the tree
was dying, and as it did so,
19
photo by Jim anderson
of all the breweries popping up in Central oregon, this is the only “natural”
one I know of, with yellow pine chipmunks living it up on the squeezins’.
photosynthesis was slowing
down and all the fluid the
tree took up was now slowly
obeying gravity. However,
sap going back into the soil
was a slow process, and as
the fluids seeped down they
mixed with natural sugars
and other elements — and
perhaps began to ferment in
the heat of day and cold of
night into a very tasty brew.
In any event — how-
ever the cocktail got into
the tree — everyone that
came into contact with it not
only quenched their thirst,
but found another value of
a WLT in the Deschutes
National Forest.
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