The Whitneys may have settled the area in the 1700s. It was not until 1922 that Miriam and Elsie Bisbee's parents purchased this property from that family.

Farm use dominated the front of the property along the road. The old building was a brooder house. A hole was dug in the wet area to collect ground water for the chickens. When she was little, Miriam fell into the pool while chasing a frog. The worst part was having her hair washed for the second time in one day.

Two kinds of apple trees were present: the Wealthy apples which were juicy and the Ben Davis apples which were an ancestor of the Cortland.

Signs of past agriculture use to look for:

• Brooder house
• Stone walls
• Boulder that was quarried for building stone
• Ditch to lower water level in vernal pool
• Invasive plants including multiflora rose and honeysuckle
• Old varieties of apple trees including the Wealthy and Ben Davis
• Asparagus that probably escaped from an old garden
• Sugar maple that probably originated from trees planted for syrup
• Scotch pine and ornamental tree near entrance
• The pine stand on the old field

Signs of forestry:

• Stumps from former harvests
• White pine pruned by SWOAM to increase their value for lumber
• The log landing that doubles as a group parking area
• Skid trails that provide recreation access

The vernal pool located 100 feet behind this sign is known to provide habitat for four-toed salamanders, spotted salamanders, and wood frogs. The pool could support other pool-breeding amphibians such as blue-spotted salamanders.

Vernal pools derive their name from vernalis, the Latin word for spring. They are filled by snow melt and spring rains and generally dry up in late summer. Vernal pools provide habitat for a unique community of animals that cannot survive in permanent waters with predatory fish.

The best pools are those that hold water for two and one-half months or more during the spring which is the minimum period required for larval amphibians to mature into terrestrial adults.

Outside of their brief breeding season, vernal amphibians live most of their lives unseen and unheard on the forest floor, often hundreds of feet from their breeding pool.

Maine's Forestry Habitat Management Guidelines for vernal pools recommend maintaining at least partial canopy shade within a 400-foot radius around the pool depression. Within the first 100 feet at least 75% shade is recommended, and from 100-400 feet 50-60% shade is recommended and small openings are allowed.

Further Reading (PDF)

Here is a list of trees that may be found on the Whitney woodlot and some ways to identify them:

Conifers or evergreen trees:

Balsam fir soft needles and pitch blisters on stem

Cedar flattened scale like leaves, cones smaller than hemlock

Hemlock needles and cones less than 1 inch long, terminal leader bent

Red spruce yellow-green needles, cones 1 ¾ inches long

Black spruce blue-green needles, cones 1 inch long

Scotch pineforeign species with lighter tan color upper stem and 2 needles

White pine 5 soft needles in a cluster, cones 4-8 inches

Deciduous or trees with leaves to rake:

American beech leaves serrated with points, buds really long and pointed

American elm leaves uneven-serrated with points, terminal bud skewed

Aspen quaking leave triangular flutter in wind, buds big and sticky

Basswood leaves oval with uneven base, buds large with 2 scales

Black ash 7-13 leaflets, buds nearly black

White ash 5-9 leaflets, buds more brown, bark soft

Black gum leaves wide near the tip, bark blocky

Black oakleaves with 5-7 points, buds over ¼ inch and pointed

Red oak leaves with 7-11 lobes, buds ¼ inch round less pointed

Gray birch light bark with black triangles at limbs, leaves triangular

White birch white bark exfoliated leaves more oval

Yellow birch bronze bark with papery strips, twigs aromatic

Red Maple leaves 3 lobed, round terminal buds with red scales

Sugar Maple leaves 5 lobed, pointed terminal buds with brown scales

1/18/05

Harvesting is a tool for improving forest conditions while providing benefits to landowners.

The first step is a forest management plan that inventories woodlot conditions and make recommendations based on landowner objectives. Woodlot owners tend to favor some combination of plants that produce useful products, attract wildlife, and just look nice. Letting nature take its course is an option. But nature may not make the choices a landowner prefers.

This relatively small woodlot contains a fairly wide variety of tree species. In some areas they are mixed. In other areas you will find a natural concentration of one species due to the particular soil or ground moisture in that location.

4/12/05

This area was a cornfield 60 years ago. When the cornfield was abandoned, pine seeded in by the thousands. Nature's thinning process reduces the number of trees through competition. When crowded, pine put more growth into their canopy than into their root system. This can make the trees susceptible to drought.

In the last 10 years, many pine stands in southern Maine were struck by a phenomenon called pine decline. Large numbers of trees in young pine stands died. Scientists recommend commercial thinning of young pine to reduce crowding.

Much of this pine stand has been thinned to keep trees healthy and vigorous. A small section of the crowded pine was left for nature to take its course.

1/18/05

Most of the woodlot is a mix of hemlock, maple, pine, and oak with scattered beech, birch, fir, and spruce. Both thinning and regeneration cuts have been made:

• Thinning was done over much of the stand to improve the growth on the desired trees.
• A shelterwood cut was made here to regenerate oak and pine. Under the shelterwood system, the canopy is opened enough to allow scattered sunlight to reach the ground. Partial sun helps pine and oak seedlings to out grow other species.
• Two group openings were made elsewhere to regenerate young hardwoods for timber and wildlife. Group opening are generally made ½ to 2 acre in size to allow full sunlight to reach the ground.

4/23/05

Deer beds have been observed at this location during the winter. The high ground blocks the north wind and the morning sun warms the area.

Location is important to wildlife. The combination of climate and vegetation found in Southern Maine influences the wildlife that might be found here.

Land use history also affects wildlife. Much of southern Maine was cleared for agriculture. Woodland species were replaced by open land species as the landscape was cleared. As farms were abandoned during the last century, woodland species have returned.

Woodlot owners have a variety of choices in the types of wildlife habitat they provide. Each choice, from harvesting to preservation, benefits some wildlife and is detrimental to others.

Management choices:

1. Provide different forest cover habitats
2. Provide food producing mast trees
3. Provide housing in dead and living cavity trees

Application of Maine Audubon's Focused Species approach:
Rather than trying to manage or monitor all species it is possible to focus on a few species that represents the larger community.

• Vernal pool habitat:
  Spotted salamanders require a cool forest floor
• Oak-Pine habitat:
  Ruffed Grouse uses three age classes of hardwoods and prefers aspen
  Wood thrush like mature mixed forests with a shrub layer

Further Reading

8/2/05

All the trees were cut here to encourage aspen regeneration for ruffed grouse. Ruffed grouse are attracted to young hardwood stands especially those with aspen. A Forester's Guide to Managing Wildlife Habitats in Maine, Edited by Catherine Elliott indicates grouse use thick young trees for cover, drumming, breeding, and brood habitats.> The flower buds of mature aspen provide important winter food.

7/29/05

Portable bridge used by Ron Kimball and Sons to log the property

Slash helps protect soil during logging

Portable bridge in place

1/18/05

This linear opening was made along the red maple wetland to add another age class for wildlife and to encourage regeneration by yellow birch and alder.

Red maple is utilized by a large number of wildlife species.

Yellow birch canopies attract a large number of insects during the summer which is a good food source for birds. During the winter yellow birch drops its seeds on the snow. This provides a good food source when other seeds are under the snow.

Speckled Alder is a nitrogen fixing shrub. Woodcock prefer to feed in young hardwood/alder stands. This habitat is lacking in the area.

The adjacent hemlock stand is a low density shelterwood cut. The cut was made in the hemlock stand to encourage regeneration in yellow birch, red oak, and white pine. More trees were cut than normal for shelterwood. This may favor yellow birch more than red oak or white pine.

7/26/05

This area was covered with a dense growth of beech sprouts. The multiple stem sprouting indicated little potential for even productive mast trees. All the stems were mowed off and the stumps treated with an herbicide similar to what is used on urban lawns. Control of sprouting should allow regeneration of mixed hardwoods.

5/12/05

Beech bark disease was introduced from Europe around 1890. The disease is caused when the beech scale damages the bark. The wounds allow the nectria fungus to enter the bark. It is the fungus that came with the scale that kills trees.

The scale is a soft bodied insect 0.5-1.0 millimeters long with reddish brown eyes. It has numerous glands that secrete a white woollike wax.

Some trees appear to resist the disease. Retaining beech with smooth bark may increase the number of disease resistant trees over time.

For further information online: http://na.fs.fed.us/spfo/pubs/fidls/beechbark/fidl-beech.htm