Hawthorn and the Loggerhead Shrike

[dogghr]

You never know sometimes just what our management choices affects. We choose plants and trees and animals to fit our agenda at times. Yes deer are our primary focus but I'd say most on this type forum have an outlook of a landscape that ultimately nature prefers.

The Hawthorn tree, we can hate its thorns that can puncture eye or tire equally. Sometimes working hard with its eradication. Yes it provides food and nesting for birds. Yes it makes a good rot free fence post. But most of us don't care much for it and with loss of anything we don't like, their can be ramifications. The Loggerhead Shrike, one of many of this family, is a unique carnivorous songbird. With a hooked beak to capture prey, but missing the strong talons of many hawk type birds, it impales its prey on the thorn of the Hawthorn, or barbed wire fencing. With clean farming of eliminating such trees and brush free fence rows, the Shrike family is becoming extinct. There is thot to be only 500 pair of the Loggerhead in the world, and my land is home of a few of these birds.

My point? Not so much of the demise of a species, but that it is important to sit back and take evaluation of how any of our choices of something not needed in the grand scheme of things can indeed have significant actions of plant or animal. So when you complain of too many rodents chewing your tree plantings, maybe it is not the rodents problem, but the choice we have made in management of the land. Before eliminating anything, study its need as you fix that thorn punctured flat tire.
Just your Monday morning thot for the day from the rambling mountain man.

 

[THE LLC]

You talking Hawthorn or Black Locust. Never heard of fence posts being made out of hawthorn.

 

[dogghr]

You talking Hawthorn or Black Locust. Never heard of fence posts being made out of hawthorn.

I certainly have the locust, but if you have large enough hawthorne, which I do, they are a very resistant wood. You just can't get as much post our of them. But the go to tree for fence posts of course is locust.

 

[Fish]

You never know sometimes just what our management choices affects. We choose plants and trees and animals to fit our agenda at times. Yes deer are our primary focus but I'd say most on this type forum have an outlook of a landscape that ultimately nature prefers.

The Hawthorn tree, we can hate its thorns that can puncture eye or tire equally. Sometimes working hard with its eradication. Yes it provides food and nesting for birds. Yes it makes a good rot free fence post. But most of us don't care much for it and with loss of anything we don't like, their can be ramifications. The Loggerhead Shrike, one of many of this family, is a unique carnivorous songbird. With a hooked beak to capture prey, but missing the strong talons of many hawk type birds, it impales its prey on the thorn of the Hawthorn, or barbed wire fencing. With clean farming of eliminating such trees and brush free fence rows, the Shrike family is becoming extinct. There is thot to be only 500 pair of the Loggerhead in the world, and my land is home of a few of these birds.

My point? Not so much of the demise of a species, but that it is important to sit back and take evaluation of how any of our choices of something not needed in the grand scheme of things can indeed have significant actions of plant or animal. So when you complain of too many rodents chewing your tree plantings, maybe it is not the rodents problem, but the choice we have made in management of the land. Before eliminating anything, study its need as you fix that thorn punctured flat tire.
Just your Monday morning thot for the day from the rambling mountain man.

I found grasshoppers late fall one year..... all impaled on crabapple thorns! (not a true thorn i reckon) I had no idea and thought it was some kind of grasshopper suicide. Later learned about the shrike. Very cool.

 

[THE LLC]

I certainly have the locust, but if you have large enough hawthorne, which I do, they are a very resistant wood. You just can't get as much post our of them. But the go to tree for fence posts of course is locust.

Gotcha. Hawthornes here are more like native crabapple trees in size. Shrikes are cool, too. I see a few at the farm from time to time, but still see a lot in south Georgia.

 

[Murdog]

I read on old forum that it was possible to graft pear onto hawthorn. Since I have a boatload of them I thought I would try it this past spring. I had 7 out of 10 bark grafts make it! Kieffer and Ayers pear

 

[dogghr]

I read on old forum that it was possible to graft pear onto hawthorn. Since I have a boatload of them I thought I would try it this past spring. I had 7 out of 10 bark grafts make it! Kieffer and Ayers pear

Yea there is a lot of literature of using them for that. Pretty awesome you did that. Funny mine always look like they are ready to die but bloom and leaf no matter drought or heat or late freeze.

I found grasshoppers late fall one year..... all impaled on crabapple thorns! (not a true thorn i reckon) I had no idea and thought it was some kind of grasshopper suicide. Later learned about the shrike. Very cool.

Grasshopper suicide, could only read that on forum such as this. Bet that was a sight.