Search results

  1. moss

    Black cat, black oak (real cat rescue for a change)

    No interesting bore cuts or quirky hinge mods in punky wood but... this is an unintended tutorial on approaching the kind of cat that won't jump in your lap when you reach it. This Quercus velutina is a fantastic tree, the cat has good taste for sure. The Boston neighborhood where this...
  2. moss

    First time rope and harness tree climber shows the best attitude

    Through the month of July I ran two weekends of guided climbs at a retreat center in the White Mountains near Conway, New Hampshire. This climber is not "sighted" but was amazing to coach from the ground up to a high anchor in a big white pine. The climber is an impressive person in her own...
  3. moss

    When things go super smoothly and when they don't

    I took a chance yesterday after work and drove into Boston to get a cat down that was up too long. I got there at 7 PM and got started. It could have been very difficult but I nailed my first throw in a tight alleyway and the cat was cooperative. Rescue went like clockwork, to the ground and...
  4. moss

    Nesting birds and tree workers

    For tree workers active bird nests are a tricky situation. The Federal Migratory Bird Act makes it illegal to disturb most species of actively nesting birds in the United States. Enforcement is very low but the law is enforceable by state and federal environmental police. Like a lot of laws on...
  5. 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
  6. 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...
  7. 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...
  8. 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...
  9. 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...
  10. 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...
  11. 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...
  12. 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
  13. 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
  14. 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...
  15. 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...
  16. moss

    Building cat bridges

    This one is actually interesting ;-) Dead tree, dynamic log bridge, 19th barge canal etc. -AJ
  17. 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...
  18. 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...
  19. 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...
  20. 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...

New threads New posts

Back
Top Bottom