Apple Tree Watching

You can observe a lot by just watching.
              -- Yogi Berra

The squirrel walks through the long grass stealthily, gets close to the apple tree, then leaps to the main trunk. It is a small squirrel, so let us presume it is a female. She climbs up the trunk into thicker canopy until she appears on one of the smaller branches as she climbs to the top of the tree. She raises her head and sniffs as she seeks an apple.

(Margo D. Beller)

Nearby, a house wren sings, warning his mate of the potential danger. She is in the nest box hanging in this tree. On this cool, early morning she is sitting on eggs, fed occasionally by her mate. She's not going anywhere unless the squirrel shakes the branches and jostles the nest box while looking for apples. A flicker explores the nooks and crannies of the wooden flood wall at the edge of the yard, and a family of noisy titmice are in the oak trees, following a parent around and begging for food.

The squirrel, meanwhile, has gone up one branch, found nothing and then backtracked to climb another branch. Finally, again near the top, she snares a small apple and climbs down to eat it sitting in the crotch made by two thicker branches. 

2020 crop (Margo D. Beller)

She is hidden from most people (and predators) but I know where she is because I have been sitting in my chair in a corner of my patio and watching her progress. I know what will happen and I am not proved wrong. She finishes her breakfast and drops the core with just enough apple on it to draw the interest of a chipmunk, perhaps a bird, more likely a deer that passes through the yard later. 

That's why I go pick it up and toss it into a corner of the yard to keep deer out of this area so near to my plants.

Now, a second squirrel approaches and climbs. When it is up a ways I walk to the tree and look up. The squirrel freezes. We look at each other, then I step back and the second squirrel jumps down and rushes away. The first one, meanwhile, is so high up I have to walk back somewhat to see it. She seems to know I am not the type to climb trees. She will be looking in this tree a while because there are not many apples in it this year.

Unusual for an apple tree, mine produces fruit in late June going into July. If all things were "normal" the apples would get bigger, redder, sweeter and I'd have three weeks to go out at dawn and dusk to gather them before the squirrels and deer.

Plenty of blossoms earlier this year. (Margo D. Beller)

Last year, we had a bumper crop both of apples and squirrels, sometimes as many as six at a time in the tree, all dropping partially eaten apples.

But in this year of coronavirus, which has changed everything about life as we know it, the apple tree blossomed beautifully in spring but did not put out a lot of fruit. The coronavirus has nothing to do with it, but it seems apt that this year would turn out to be a bust year. 

Many trees go through booms and busts. In my yard that also includes oaks, elms and locusts. Last year was very good for oak acorns. They fell to the lawn continuously as the squirrels climbed along the branches. Some would sound like gunshots when they hit the metal porch roof. I left them alone for a while until I started putting out feeders again in the autumn and it was hard walking on the acorns (or their caps, once the nut was removed). I raked up as many as I could and put them into a corner of the yard behind the compost pile. They are still there.

What the squirrels are dropping nowadays.
(Margo D. Beller)

According to John C. Kricher and Gordon Morrison, authors of the "Peterson Field Guide to Eastern Forests," many types of trees in the temperate zone, which includes New Jersey, have "mast" years when seed production is higher than usual.

Why? "Masting is probably an adaptation to aid the trees in escaping the potential ravages of seed predators. By alternating between occasional bumper crops and more usual poor crops, trees conserve energy, enabling them in a given year to produce more seeds than all seed predators combined could ever hope to eat," they write.

So the apple tree might be taking a breather this year to protect itself.

Unfortunately, it is too easy to underestimate the importance of trees, their ability to clean the air and provide shade and food. About 36 million trees a year are cut down, according to one report. I know I see enough of that destruction in suburbia when a tree that took several decades to grow is taken down, hunk by hunk, in a day. (Was the tree sick, planted in the wrong place or just in the way? Who knows?)

Meanwhile, those that need acorns (or apples) to survive, breed and feed young (squirrels, jays and other birds) are going to have a harder time of it this year, as will the raptors that feed on those animals. When snowy owls or rough-legged hawks can't find their favorite small mammals in their northern breeding territories because the population has "crashed," they fly farther south to find food. That is known as an irruption year. Smaller birds that depend on cone and other seed crops can have irruption years, too, including both types of crossbills, pine grosbeaks and redpolls, to the delight of the bird-watching community. 

Gone for now, but it - or a descendant - will be back next year. (Margo D. Beller_

But that's winter. Right now, in June, I was only able to pick 10 apples this year, but I am happy to be relieved of the annual routine of chasing off deer, picking up chewed apples, trying to find apples I could use and then the long process of cutting off the bad stuff and making apple sauce with the rest. As for the squirrels, they have turned their attention to getting other things to eat, including gathering oak acorns. What is falling so far this year are shrunken and not nearly big enough to feed them, much less a family.  

Most happily, this year I won't be going around the tree smacking ripe apples with an extension pole and agitating the house wrens in the nest box. Once the squirrels get the last few apples from the very top of the tree (where I couldn't get at them anyway), that's it until next year. And next year the nest box is going into another tree.