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  1. moss

    Red-tailed hawks like to nest in the tops of white pine

    …therefore some percentage of these nests with young get blown to the ground during storms. I’ve been attacked twice working on high red-tailed nests in white pines. It has definitely got into my head. This one was fine. -AJ
  2. moss

    Is cat rescue tree work?

    The answer is a qualified yes: there's no saws buzzing, wood swinging, or chippers roaring. Did two rescues last Monday. Turned out to be a very long day. It is in part working in trees so yep it is "tree work" ;-) For the second rescue there was pulling poison ivy vine off a dying green ash in...
  3. moss

    Nabbing a cat from under a curved leaner oak

    I like to set my line well above a stuck cat so I can get above them and prevent them from moving up. Problem on a tree like this is I won't have good position with feet on the tree to work. The cat made a move face down onto steeper trunk and was going to fall. I made a quick grab without the...
  4. moss

    Tis the season, my second great horned owl nest project for 2026

    Great horned owl young are well known to be very resilient even when they're on the ground before they might want to be. This guy went out of the nest too early, was found bruised, weak, and starving on the ground. A raptor rehabber I work with buffed him up (stuffed with pinkie mice) and I put...
  5. moss

    Life in the slow lane - screech owl nest box install

    In the last couple months I've hung 3 squirrel boxes and 2 screech owl boxes. The squirrel boxes are for a customer's backyard entertainment in a semi-urban neighborhood. They put out a lot of quality food for "their squirrels" and wanted to complete the picture with free housing. The local...
  6. moss

    Life in cold slow lane, cat rescue, new climber on rope

    Got a text 4 AM last Sunday, “Can you get my cat down?”. Turns out it was 2 brothers, young men early twenties who shared the cat responsibilities. One of them had been researching climbing technique all night, wanted to do it himself. After the cat was down he started talking about Blake’s...
  7. moss

    Hung white pine dropped and trailer build

    A white pine failed and was hung suspended over my outdoor wood work/milling area for too long. Every time I put my small trailer under it I looked up and was unhappy. Took it out in two short sessions after work. In both cases I was up against sunset. First session I got up into a tangled mess...
  8. moss

    A love letter to climbing trees for the serious fun of it...

    Sitting up in a tree with friends leads to great conversations. One thing leads to another, the experience is fully 3-dimensional in thought, time and space ;-) -AJ
  9. moss

    Tom Wessels on coevolution, efficiency, and mutualism in stable forest ecosystems

    This is a great and informative intro to Tom Wessel's work on forested ecosystems... -AJ
  10. moss

    Working on putting great horned owl young back up in trees April, 2025

    It's pretty well known among raptor experts that great horned owl young can do quite well being fed on the ground after falling out of a nest. They typically fall in the northeast U.S. during early spring storm events. If they don't suffer fractures on ground impact (many do) they can be fed by...
  11. moss

    Temporary rope cable to climb above a bad codom in a catalpa

    Situation where I'm batting clean-up after a town DPW bucket crew and an arborist climber can't reach the cat. Climber before me had a good reason to not go further. Climbing with @oceans many moons ago I saw him "cable" a small double top on a 125' white pine with his secondary lanyard. I'd...
  12. moss

    Building cat bridges

    This one is actually interesting ;-) Dead tree, dynamic log bridge, 19th barge canal etc. -AJ
  13. moss

    Hook traversing to get on a leaner black oak

    Coincidentally I was wearing a red shirt similar to @Peter_bomen in his recent beech appreciation video. In this vid I'm not appreciating dealing with all the small branch/sucker/epicormic growth typical on Quercus velutina in my area eastern Massachusetts/U.S.. Makes working with a DMM Captain...
  14. moss

    There's no end to the fun, cats dammit

    This was a wild day. Second rescue of the same day, the first rescue on the edge of the same town a little more than a quarter mile away as the crow flies. Divided into 2 parts, I wanted to show some details of tree entry and trapping in a tree. So many "civilians" ask, "How the hell do you get...
  15. moss

    Thrashing around in multiflora rose/bittersweet BS, a cat.

    The lawn chairs were set up, the attendees did not realize they were going to watch a sweaty brush clearing show as first act. Getting the cat was the second act. Cutting and dragging an entanglement of fun vines and thorns through poison ivy so I could set rope and climb became interesting. I...
  16. moss

    Speaking of Norway maples, when cats roam the tree tops instead of coming down

    A city fire department pushed a truck mounted ladder into the end of this row of Norway maples trying to get a cat down. It could've worked but once they fired up a chain saw to clear the way cat said "I'll see ya in the tops, bye!" I wish I had that footage ;-) I came in when I was called two...
  17. moss

    Cats are back up after very cold late winter

    For the first time in many years very few cat rescues over the winter. Stayed cold here in the Northeast U.S. right into the end of March. Then all hell broke lose as it started warming up beginning of April, getting a lot of calls on stuck cats ever since. I've had one "piece-of-cake" rescue...
  18. moss

    Oak wilt disease documented in northeastern Massachusetts?

    I've got a customer with one red oak after another dying quickly. The first 3 started 3 years ago and were stone dead within 6 months. 4 more are now either totally dead (fall foliage still attached on one) or showing the beginning of upper crown die-off. What the dead or dying trees have in...
  19. moss

    ART BlackBird for "MRT and SRT"

    Interesting mechanical multi-technique device from ART! The friction modulation lever low on the device is definitely a new thing. I like "MRT and SRT" ha, awesome. Smooth style by climber Viktor Magnus, love it. -AJ
  20. moss

    Unknown owner stuck cat, community comes through

    This approximately 8 month-old female cat was up for 3 days. I was tagged on social media, next morning I established contact with a person onsite and headed out. Tree covered with bittersweet for first 25-30' and was icy so climbing was slow. Cat was in a sketchy partially uprooted elm, the...

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