Small trees and brush have grown up along the edges of many of the ravines in the cleared fields in and surrounding the preserve. Many of the trees are oaks, but beech and hard maple also occur, a few of them being relics from the original forest. Considerable brush is present, formed by a large variety of species. A few other small patches, especially in ravine bottoms and on flood-plains have been allowed to grow up to brush and small trees. In nearly every case these areas are heavily pastured.
The conditions here included in the second-growth forest and scrub habitat are not homogeneous, but differ in each different location where the habitat is found, tree and shrub species abundant in one situation not being present in another. The habitat is usually narrow in extent, being often confined to the width of the steep ravine wall.
Owing to its poor development and uncertain characteristics no intensive trapping was done in this type of habitat. A weasel was trapped in open beech-maple-oak forest at the edge of a cleared ravine, and a woodchuck was shot in the same type of habitat. Another woodchuck and a skunk were trapped at different times in low willow brush on the banks of the river just north of the woods. Northern white-footed mice, Pennsylvania voles, and a house mouse were trapped in thick oak brush and trees alongside a road north of the woods. A red squirrel was shot in second-growth oak and aspen woods in the north part of the preserve, and they were seen in open woods along ravines. Cottontails were noted a few times in blackberry thickets, in brush in ravines, in clearings along the river, and in beech-maple-oak forest along ravines.
Cleared-ravine sedge habitat:
Blarina brevicauda talpoides. Short-tailed shrew. 1.
Peromyscus leucopus noveboracensis. Northern white-footed mouse. 3.
Microtus pennsylvanicus pennsylvanicus. Pennsylvania vole. 5.
A large ravine south of the river had been cleared of trees evidently several years previously, and it has now grown up mostly to sedges, grass, and iris in its more moist parts. Along the little brook which flows through the ravine there is a fringe of willows, and among the sedges a number of shrubs and small trees occur, mostly thorns and a few young sycamores and black walnuts.
Fifty mouse traps set in this habitat took on the first day, August 16, three northern white-footed mice and three Pennsylvania voles. More voles and a short-tailed shrew were taken on later days.
Cleared-upland rush habitat: