Honeycrisp Mystery

 We’d just caught the bear in our yard, again. 

This time, he was gazing at the Asian pear tree—and presumably, the ripe, fragrant pears that were only 10 feet and one fence away from him.

After more than 5 months of bear “visits” this latest appearance was getting to be old hat! Still, John and I went into the orchard to investigate how the bear had gotten in this time. 

Well, it was the usual way: the bear had found a weak spot in our deer fence, and simply pushed right through the wire. I found an extra length of steer wire, and held it in place as John strung it all along that side of the orchard. 

Ready to go back to the main yard, I saw an odd sight. Our Honeycrisp apple tree was missing a whole bunch of leaves on this year’s growth. As in, entire branches were bare of intact, healthy leaves. 

Though the stems remained, the leaf remnants were ragged, like they’d been eaten.

My first thought was caterpillars—the demoralizing sight of our defoliated orchard trees during our 2013 and 2014 tent caterpillar plagues is burned into my memory. But caterpillars would devour the leaves in the spring, not fall. 

Other insects? Some kind of destructive beetle, maybe?

I carefully inspected the apple tree—up, down and sideways. But there wasn’t a bug on it. Not a caterpillar, beetle, or worm. 

Naturally, I circled back to the bear. With all my recent bear research, I knew they do eat leaves. But that’s in the springtime too, when leaves are freshly unfurled, bright green and full of nutrients. In the fall, bears are all about fruit and other high calorie food. They wouldn’t bother with tough autumn foliage like these apple leaves.

Besides, the bear would have had to climb the tree—leaving broken limbs in his wake. And this tree was intact—unlike the other apple trees the bear had molested this summer!

Anyway, I wasn’t unduly disturbed about the leaves…until one evening, close to dusk, I noticed the tree was getting more and more bare. Every time I looked, more branches were defoliated. Something was systematically hitting this tree!

Then I heard it. The beating of wings, and a shape flew out of the tree. A bird? 

A game bird, by the sound of it.

It seemed completely unlikely. What kind of bird would eat leaves? And keep eating them, night after night? Neither John nor I had the faintest clue—so we just let it go.

But many an evening, if I approached the orchard, I’d hear that same rush of wings. 

Now, John is a great believer in the philosophical notion, Occam’s Razor: to simplify, it means the simplest and most logical explanation is usually the correct one. “I think it’s the bird,” John said, after yet another view of our rapidly deteriorating tree. But I was skeptical.

Anyway, the bear was a far bigger problem. 

We recently had a state Fish & Wildlife officer, Tucker, out to our place to consult about this darn bear—the story, The Bear Strikes Again, is in my November newsletter, just out! When Tucker was ready to leave, John showed him our by now bare Honeycrisp tree—about 75% of the leaves were gone. “What do you think ate the leaves?”

Tucker, who knew everything there was to know about bears, had never heard of a critter that devoured apple leaves in the fall. So John and I were still stumped. 

And now our second Honeycrisp tree was getting defoliated too!

I didn’t know if losing leaves the hard way would hurt the trees—but it seemed it was just one of those Little Farm mysteries. 

Then last week, I was in the orchard, where I was storing chicken manure compost. I heard the rush of wings again—and this time, I caught it in the act! 

A large bird of variegated brown flew out of the second Honeycrisp tree. I clearly saw the ruff of short feathers around its neck.

Photo thanks to John!

A Ruffed Grouse. Mystery solved! 

We’ve had grouse around our place for years and years. Why one of them would start devouring so many of our apple leaves after all this time is still another mystery. 

But with all our years here in the boonies, John and I have learned to “expect the unexpected”! 

For our full bear saga, you’ll find it in my Little Farm Writer newsletter!

Bear vs Strawberries & International Fairy Day

Bear just outside our fence

International Fairy Day, June 24, was exactly the day I expected to be in the peak of strawberry season.

Last summer, all our strawberry beds were on their last legs…but there was one vigorous plant that was shooting out runners like crazy. Hoping to create home-grown berry crowns, I set the runners into pots—and ended up with a couple of dozen!

Last fall, I transplanted the crowns, and ended up with four new strawberry beds, filled with robust plants. And as this month rolled around, I anticipated a veritable berry feast.

Then along came the scourge of our summer: a bear.

This young black bear has snuck through our fences numerous times, hitting all four berry beds. The first time, it tore into the earliest-fruiting bed that I had netted early, ate all the ripe ones, whomping one plant right out of the ground, and mangling the fencing around the bed.

It hit the other three beds, swiping at barely-pink strawberries. While John and I double-fenced and re-netted the one seriously invaded bed, the other, larger beds would be far more difficult to protect.

Well, I could see the writing on the wall.

With a heavy heart, I cut all the berry clusters from the plants in those three beds. The bear has trampled all over our garden, so I didn’t want to risk further damage--and I was sure it would attack my strawberries again.

A couple of days ago, the bear tried to get back into that now double-reinforced bed—but didn’t get any berries. Instead, it mangled the outer fence, and gotten the netting seriously awry.

Viewing the limited damage, I breathed a sigh of relief. Which only lasted until I heard a distressed, “Cheep, cheep.”

“There’s a bird in the net,” John said, low.

I looked on the other side of the bed and there was a female towhee, entwined in the net. Towhees are cheeky birds, and have often gone where other, wiser birds have feared to tread: they’ll try to get into even heavily-netted berry beds.

This bird had managed to worm its way through the disarrayed netting, and actually ate two of the biggest, reddest berries. As soon as we came over, it had tried to escape, and gotten tangled up in the nets.

John is our bird rescuer around here, and he gently lifted up the bird in the net, and tried to extricate it, as its cheep, cheeps intensified.

I ran to get the garden scissors, and though it took him about ten minutes, he was able to cut the little bird out. He set it carefully on the ground, then this plucky little girl crawled over to a protected spot among some stones, tucked herself up in a little roll, and just sat there. Barely breathing by the looks of it.

The next day, John and I found the bird a little ways from its hidey-hole, dead. I imagine it died from a combination of a broken wing, and shock.

 With this casualty of a little innocent bird, this young bear has been even more destructive than simply wreaking havoc in the garden.

Our nearest neighbors are having their share of problems from the bear too—earlier this week, it destroyed their bird feeder. Like, killed the feeder. We four are having a confab this weekend to see if we can figure out a solution.

The marionberries will be ready soon, and then the blueberries—without more preventative measures, I shudder to think of what the bear could do to all our fruit and infrastructure! 

On a happier note: Happy International Fairy Day! The day is loosely connected to the June 23 tradition of St. John’s Eve, the celebration of midsummer, celebrated in many Scandinavian countries and Ireland too.

Now, if you’ve been following this blog, you’ll know I’m big on fairies—especially Irish fairies—and International Fairy Day always lightens my heart. If you have a whimsical side too, and haven’t completely discounted the idea that there may be more mysteries in nature than we will ever understand, maybe you’ll be celebrating fairies tomorrow too!

The fairies in our house!

A quick note: I’ve been posting weekly here at the Little Farm in the Foothills blog the last couple of years, with only a few misses—and one of them was last week. This bear has increased out workload in so many ways, and this summer, John and I have to re-do as well as rebuild a number of sections of our fencing all over the property.

We've already started redoing our north orchard fencing--a portion of destroyed fence that another, bigger bear did getting to our apple trees last year.

And trying to keep up with the rest of our garden is going to be a challenge! I’m still planning to post here each week, generally Thursday or Friday, if I can. But if I'm not able to post weekly, I'll aim to share my Little Farm news every other week. 

There’s lots more about our bear invasion in my June newsletter—it’s free, and you don't have to subscribe to read it! I’ll be sharing this continuing bear saga in the next monthly newsletter, out July 10.

Maybe tomorrow, on International Fairy Day, I can fit in communing with our Little Farm fairies for a little positive energy. Which I think I'll need, to keep dealing with our bear invader!