Tree of the Week

Downy Serviceberry, Amelanchier arborea (Michx.) Fern.

DISTINGUISHING CHARACTERISTICS: Leaves simple, alternate, ovate to slightly obovate, 2 to 4 inches long with petioles 1/2 to 1 1/2 inches long, toothed, slightly heart-shaped at base; surfaces densely white-hairy when unfolding in spring but eventually glabrous or only slightly hairy beneath; veins branching freely and forming a network near the margin. Winter twigs slender, glabrous, red-brown to gray; leaf scars linear or crescent-shaped, very small, with 3 bundle scars. Buds elongate, the terminal 1/4 to 1/2 inch long and the laterals often nearly equal in size; scales commonly 4 to 6 in number, either red or yellow-green tinged with red. Flowers perfect, regular, in showy racemes, appearing when the leaves are beginning to expand in early spring; petals 5, white, linear to narrowly oblong. Fruit a reddish purple pome about 1/4 inch in diameter, ripening in early to midsummer. Bark light gray and very smooth, becoming darker and shallowly furrowed at the base of older stems.

SIMILAR TREES: Easily distinguished from other small flowering trees by its narrow petals and in summer by its small, early-ripening fruits and elongated buds. In winter, hornbeam has much shorter buds and muscled trunks.

IOWA DISTRIBUTION: Native throughout eastern, southern, and central Iowa, also occurring though uncommon in the natural lakes area and the Des Moines River valley in northwestern Iowa.


Forest and Shade Trees of Iowa: Third Edition, by Peter J. van der Linden and Donald R. Farrar

Winter Bird

Ruby-crowned Kinglet

Regulus calendula

Kinglets return to my area in early to mid September. By early November, the last bird has flown south. In fall, I hear mostly the chattering calls, but once in awhile a partial song, as though from a youngster trying out its voice, rings through the woods. At this time of year, both the ruby-crown and its cousin, the golden-crowned kinglet, often forage with other small birds, such as chickadees, titmice, nuthatches, vireos, and warblers.

Fifty Common Birds of the Upper Midwest, watercolors by Dana Gardner, text by Nancy Overcott

Winter Sport

The ring-necked pheasant is a very tough bird, in body and spirit. It adapts better to man and his doings than do any of the native prairie grouse, and is more tolerant of cultivation and heavy land use—up to a point. But the pheasant cannot make use of deep, soft snow as do native grouse that burrow into drifts where the temperature may be forty degrees warmer than the outer air. The pheasant takes potluck and simply roosts or huddles in what grassy cover it can find, and such prairie cover is a snowtrap, a drift-builder. Often, in the wake of a blizzard, food is not the pheasant's greatest problem. The scouring winds may blow fields free of snow and expose wet grain—but those same winds may bury roosting cover beneath towering drifts. And when the blizzard brings heavy snow that blankets the feeder fields as well, the hardy ringneck is forced into desperate actions.

Such evicted pheasants may move into feedlots with cattle, or into barnyards with chickens. Or they may just strike out cross-country, moving as far as ten miles to better cover. This is a fantastic journey for a ring-necked pheasant that may normally live out its sedentary life on one section of land, and reflects the desperation of these birds. In a few cases, the moving pheasants do find cover. In most cases they do not, and they die, as 90 percent of the pheasants in southern Minnesota died in the winter of 1968-69.


Out Home by John Madson