Worth the 17 year wait

Okay, first an addendum on the Hen-and-Chicks of 15 June. About a week later our paths converged again! The chicks were about half again as large, and flying by then (sort of)-- short bursts, and not too high, but then again Spruce Grouse are not exactly a tree-top flier anyways. And then about a week after that there they were again. The chicks were now twice the size of the initial encounter, quite a bit more confident and spread out quite a bit over a larger area, and flying quite well. I only saw about a half-dozen, but am not sure if there has been attrition or if I just didn't see all of them (quite likely since they were in thick undergrowth).

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In 1993 (give or take a year) I got a pair of tiny Styrax japonica (Japanese Snowbell Tree, or Japanese Silverbell) tissue-culture starts through the Rhododendron Society of NS. They were rated as marginally hardy for NS, but at the price of the tissue culture plants it was worth trying out new things and pushing the envelope regularily. Along with the rest of that year's tissue culture plants they were eventually planted out in a nursery bed back in the woods, where I checked on them from time to time as they continued to grow slowly. One of the pair, meant to be pink-flowered if I recall, was lost one winter after surviving several years, the other just kept growing slowly but didn't flower that I can recall, although I have a vague recollection of a carpet of petals one year when I made a rare visit to that area. Early in June this year I noticed that it was covered with what looked like either buds or fertilized ovaries, I couldn't tell and hadn't been past that way earlier in the spring. Over a few weeks they remained stalled as far as size and apparent development were concerned.

This weekend I remembered to go back and check on the tree (it's now about 20 feet tall, having shot up with the wetter summers and milder winters of the last few years). Surprise, absolutely full of flowers, with an enchanting fragrance easily discernable from 20metres away. Stunning to most of the senses. So here's some photos; they're not great, it's hard to get the level of detail needed to appreciate the more distant views.

Oh yeah, in the first photo it is NOT the foreground grey stick with the pileated woodpecker excavations... but you knew that...

Hen-and-Chicks

Not your plant of that name, the Sempervirens species.

A couple of mornings ago when headed towards the woods to do some overdue weeding I created a huge upset amongst the local wildlife. Walking by the bark/sawdust pile the morning exploded into a great commotion consisting of a Spruce Grouse hen running noisily across my feet (almost) and about a dozen chicks (I had never seen more than a half dozen in previous years, but then I had never encountered them on open ground before either) going silently the other way and disappearing into the undergrowth. The hen of course did not disappear, but continued with the noisy fake broken-wing flapping thing, along with squawking away at me. When I wouldn't take the bait of following her, she then changed the vocal repertoire to mewing and crying, sounding for all the world like a lost kitten or puppy. Weird. So I allowed myself to be chased out of the area so the family could regather itself and move on; they seem to be fairly mobile and I've never found them in the same place twice in a row-- not that I go looking for them, just that I stumble across them in different places. This lot had been quite a bit deeper in the woods the previous day.

So once they had moved on, I noticed a curious depression about a foot across, in the bark and sawdust, from which all the big chunks of bark and wood scraps had been removed (the picture below). I'm guessing they had been taking a mid-morning nap in the sun. Looking closely, I could see a number of individual smaller depressions in the main one, I suppose where some of the chicks had gone for extra comfort; unfortunately they don't show up all that well in the photo since the sun was close to overhead: but they are there!
A couple of breast feathers got left behind in the rush of departure.