Blackflies, Blue Mountain, and Bicknell's Thrush

On a beautiful Wednesday in June we set out from Cortland on a 3 ½ hour drive to Blue Mountain in the Adirondack Park. Unlike most visitors, we stopped at the entrance because we wanted to photograph the sign that welcomes visitors to the Adirondack Park. Visitors who don't want a photo of the welcome sign have no reason to stop at the park entrance because there is no gate, no uniformed park employees collecting entrance fees, and no list of rules and regulations to read about on a sign or pamphlet. With an estimated 10 million visitors a year, not halting the flow of vehicles into the Park makes sense, but given the 55 MPH speed limit on Rte. 28 and the fact that the brown and yellow sign is designed, like all official Adirondack Park signage, to blend in with natural surroundings, it is not surprising that a lot of visitors to the Adirondack's don't even realize they are staying in the largest park in the contiguous U.S.

We tested the notion that many Adirondack Park visitors don't know they are visiting a park by conducting the following not-very-scientific experiment. We drove to Old Forge, a small village located several miles inside Park's boundaries, and asked the first five people we encountered walking through the parking lot of the Enchanted Forest Water Safari theme park if they could tell us where the Adirondack Park was. The response we got in each case was a variation of the following: "I'm sorry. I don't know where it is. I'm not from around here." Taking the experiment a little further we asked the same question of the young woman inside a glass booth who was selling admission tickets to Enchanted Forest. She did know that we were "inside the Adirondack Park," but when we faked puzzled looks in response to that piece of information, she had a hard time explaining further. "It's this county," she told us. "Well, it’s a lot of counties. It's…" Her voice trailed off and we nodded our thanks and walked away.

It is not surprising that many Adirondack Park visitors don't realize they are in a park, since homes, businesses, schools, churches, and crowded shopping districts regularly dot, and sometimes crowd, the landscape amidst the vast stretches of natural scenery. Unlike other parks in the United States, the Adirondack Park combines public and private land in a manner similar to some European parks, but on a much larger scale. Its six million acres of public and private land take up approximately the same area as the state of Vermont, and the 45% of the park that is publicly-owned protects more untrammeled land than any other national, state, or local park in the contiguous United States. The trail we climbed up Blue Mountain in search of Bicknell's Thrush illustrates this blending of public and private land by starting at the base of the mountain on private land owned by the Finch Pruyne Paper Company, then moving without notice onto public land on the way to the summit. Hikers that fail to register, or fail to read the brochure that is available at the trail head, will be unaware that they are experiencing this essential aspect of the Adirondack Park.

Many of the Adirondack Park's approximately 250,000 permanent and seasonal residents find its marriage of public and private land to be a stormy one, mostly because development on private land is regulated by the Adirondack Park Agency (APA). The APA uses density zoning, compatible uses, and agency review of significant new construction to regulate development, and its decisions are often controversial. Environmental groups are frequently critical of APA decisions as well and, as a result, the Park is as much home to heated politics as it is to serene landscapes. After our hike up Blue, for example, we stopped for breakfast in Indian Lake and came across a woman wearing this t-shirt that read "Adirondack Porn Agency: Screwing the Little Guy Since 1972."

It is the mixture of public and private land that makes lessons gleaned from the Adirondack Park so valuable. It is clear that merely setting aside land in public parks and preserves will not be sufficient to protect natural ecosystems from careless development and environmental degradation. Studying the Adirondack Park may help us learn how to preserve wilderness and protect natural ecosystems through land use planning on a regional scale, and Steve and I intend to look for, and try to learn from, its successes and failures as we explore the Adirondacks in the future.

Re Blackflies. We thought we'd experience the discomfort of blackfly season in the Adirondacks, but it turns out that warm spring temperatures arrived both late and suddenly, and that combination severely diminished the blackfly population. Having made a trip to the emergency room to cope with the aftereffects of a previous visit to the Adirondacks in early June, I can't say I'm sorry we missed them.

Ascent of Blue Mountain - 14 June 2007 - Part II

Bicknell’s thrush is a habitat specialist. It nests in spruce fir forests near the top of mountains in the Northeastern United States. The species is fairly secretive, preferring dense conifer foliage. It sings infrequently and then again only in the early morning hours. Today was no different than my two previous early morning trips up Blue Mountain in 2005 and 2006. No singing Bicknell’s. We did hear four birds calling to one another from a short line of firs. Their gentle “breeer” notes varied slightly in frequency, but they were clearly the Bicknell call. Tom watched patiently for several minutes, but no bird showed itself. Thirty seconds of calling was all we earned on June 14.

Before our descent, we studied the chain of lakes in front of us from Blue Mountain, Utowana, Raquette and Eighth lakes. Each tells a different story of geological and human history. Raquette bears the scars of a glacial ice scour that moved from the northeast to the southwest creating the lake basin many millennia ago. Changes in Adirondack lake chemistry have followed the industrial revolution which deposited acidic aerosols and heavy metals on northeastern mountains. Changes in soil and water chemistry forms a powerful selective force and is currently at work on the algae, fish, bird, tree, and insect populations of the Adirondacks.

Solar light illuminated our path down the mountain. Swainson’s thrush, blackpoll warbler, winter wren and white-throated sparrow blessed the mountain air that was full of fresh balsam. Bunchberry, blue bead, and starflower were in full bloom near the top. I relished this observation as I usually see the fruits during my three week August stint at Raquette Lake.
As we end our first Adirondack excursion as a team, the songs of the early morning birds have been replaced with black-throated blue warblers, red-eyed vireo, and American robin. The dull roar of automobiles traveling at double nickel speed signals the end of the trail. It is 7:30 A.M., time for breakfast and a shower. In three hours of hiking, I have begun the outline for the scientific issues that are shaped by the unique features of the Adirondacks: geological history, ecology, and the human environment. Adventure one is complete.

Ascent of Blue Mountain on June 14, 2007

January 14th began a little early. At 3:56 A.M., Tom began rustling a backpack and a wind breaker to break the silence in our borrowed pink room. A flip of the lights, a rub on Cory’s back and we are off to the kitchen for a fast coffee. At 4:15 A.M. we are in the Town & Country rolling down highway 28 a half mile to head north on highway 30 to the Blue Mountain trailhead. After turning twice in the darkness, we find the gravel parking lot awaiting our anxious bodies. Flashlights working, trail log signed, and we are off on an Adirondack adventure.

The Adirondacks showcase many lessons in ecology, earth science, and a legacy of the human impact. Some 18,000 years B.P. glaciers had moved across this wilderness we recognize as Adirondack Park. One glacier excavated bowl-shaped cuts in the side of Whiteface Mountain. Another glacier from the north shoveled sand and gravel from an area now know as Potsdam, trucked it 30 miles south and deposited at a higher elevation on the north slope of Whiteface. Another glacier is responsible for the boulders thrown in front of my walk up Blue Mountain at 4:30 A.M. These boulders have seen life from somewhere in Canada, survived the migration of entire ecosystems over their surface, and now they serve as a refuge for insects, the beginning of life for mosses, rock ferns, and a yellow birch or two.

Fifteen minutes into the walk, the morning chorus begins with a Swainson’s thrush, and then a second, and a third. Their bubbly crescendo introduces our ears to a new day. It is still dark and our flashlights are illuminating the rock strewn trail. Shortly after the Swainson’s started, the smooth clear notes of the white-throated sparrow introduce themselves to the new day. It has been reported that the larger birds with big eyes begin the morning chorus followed by the singing of successively smaller bird species. This trend continued with the Blackpoll warbler, Tenneessee warbler, and the winter wren on our ascent.

The change in eleveation along the trail shows another interaction between earth science and biological ecology. Trees typical of a temperature deciduous forest (American beech, eastern hemlock, yellow birch, and sugar maple) throughout New York are observed at 2000 ft where the trailhead begins. Somewhere around 2800 feet balsam fir and paper birch become more common. The forest is shorter here and the trees are sculptured by the wind, long winters, and drier conditions. In terms of appearance, the higher elevation fir-birch forest looks like the impoverished neighborhood on the mountain. Thin soil, dry conditions, and severe winters keeps these trees from reaching their full potential.

At 5:15 we reach the peak of Blue Mountain at 3200 ft. are greeted to a brisk breeze and temperatures that most certainly are no higher than 40°F. The sun breaks about the ridges and mountains to the east and casts an orange glow over the balsam fir near the top of Blue. The steps on the fire tower have small puddles of water. Tom believes the steps were frost covered just moments earlier.

Aside from the breeze, the top of Blue is silent except for a dark-eyed junco singing somewhere on the tree line. We skirt around the rock escarpment carefully listening for another, much rarer thrush called Bicknell’s. This bird is the sole reason I encouraged my son, Cory, and my friend Tom to the top of Blue so early in the morning.