beech trees

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Inland Seas Education Association presents Beech Trees & Passenger Pigeons: A Love Story

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Join Jess Piskor and Inland Seas Education Association on Tuesday, March 3, at 10 am, for a presentation and discussion of his work on Passenger Pigeons and Beech Trees. Piskor will offer a one-of-a-kind love letter to these two surprisingly interrelated species. One hundred and fifty years ago, Northern Michigan’s hardwood forests were full of Beech Trees, and the skies darkened with Passenger Pigeons. Now the birds are extinct, and the beeches are threatened with disease. Learn about their connection to each other, and come away with a greater appreciation for the great trees still in our midst.

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Like a pile of dead elephants: On the loss of our great beech trees

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It feels inviting to approach a beech maple forest on an early spring day when the snow is just thinning. Each beech tree has a ring of open forest floor around it, as the trees radiate the sun’s heat—islands of open earth in a snowy landscape. The forest floor is newly exposed and gives off the faintest scent of life returning, writes Jess Piskor in this second in a two-part series about Northern Michigan beech trees and the now extinct passenger pigeon. Part of the forest is actively dying now, full of disease. There are the obvious fallen giants. The dead beeches rest in shattered grey tangled masses, like a pile of dead elephants. A few healthy-looking crowns have snapped off, 30 feet up—trunks weakened with disease. The branches show swollen pointed buds, as if the tree would leaf out one last time. It won’t. Many still stand, but are holed by woodpeckers. Shelf fungus grows up the sides, dropped limbs catch the foot. Here and there a few giants still look, dare I say, okay? At least one more year then, old friends. Let me gather your nuts.

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Once more unto the Beech: Beech trees, Passenger pigeons and the struggle to survive in Northern Michigan

When the last big passenger pigeon flock flew to Northern Michigan in 1880, they sought refuge where they best knew they could find it—the beech and maple forests where they’d been before, writes Jess Piskor in the first of a two-part series about beech trees and passenger pigeons, once prominent along our lakeshore. Killed nonstop for centuries, they were hunted out of the East Coast, had fled the Appalachians and found no succor in the Plains. Deep in our hardwood forests they made nests in numbers so thick their weight broke branches. They sought beechnuts along Lake Michigan, amidst the dunes and the lakes. Thrice daily—twice the males and once the females—would fly across the county in sky darkening flights for food, taking turns sitting on the nest of their typically singular egg. Crop full they’d return to a 40-square-mile forest along the Platte River, where they sought to raise a last brood.

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