Explore Outdoors ~ A Wee Pine Tree

This past year was a huge pine cone year! There are cones covering my yard, the road to the hayfield, and edges of the fields. Stepping on soggy white pine cones isn't nearly as dicey as treading on roly-poly acorns, and for the time being I have left them alone. Partly because, on one of my walks, I discovered a few white pine younglings sprouting up.

 I got to wondering who, if any of my wild neighbors, might snack on white pine seeds and cones - or even tender needles. Turns out there are a bunch of local mammals and birds who might, including:

black bears
porcupines
gray squirrels
red squirrels
eastern cottontails
white-footed mice
eastern chipmunks
white-tailed deer
yellow-bellied sapsucker
black-capped chickadee
white-breasted nuthatch
pine warbler
pine grosbeak
red crossbill
white-winged crossbill
evening grosbeak
pine siskin.

In addition to food, White pines provide nesting sites. Here are a few birds who make their homes in the white pines:

sharp-shinned hawks and cooper's hawks (nests on large branches next to the trunk)
broad-winged hawks (nests in a crotch near the top of the tree)
barred owls (nest in trunk cavities and use the tree as a roost)
least flycatchers
blue jays
common ravens

American crows
common grackles

mourning doves
olive-sided flycatchers
yellow-rumped warblers (and other warblers)
evening grosbeaks
purple finches

Even more birds use white pine needles as nesting materials. So I'll be leaving my cones scattered around my yard for a bit longer... 

You can find out more about White pines and how they fit into our ecology here.