Painting the Landscape with Fire: Longleaf Pines and Fire Ecology

Quail in a Longleaf Pine Habitat

117 Quail in a Longleaf Pine Habitat “Look at a longleaf savanna that’s seventy or eighty years old. In my mind, there’s nothing prettier.” Barclay McFadden, landowner It was January 29, and South Carolina was in the first cold snap of the winter . At 7:00 a.m. it was six degrees below freezing and windy when I stepped out of the house for a long drive to Scotswood Plantation. There I would meet Judy Barnes, wildlife biologist with South Carolina’s Department of Natural Resource’s Small Game Project, and Craig McFadden, manager of Scotswood, a 3,250-acre tract in the lowcountry. The sky was wintry blue. Ditches along Route 401 were etched with ice, and power lines glistened orange in the sun. Two hours and one cup of gas station cappuccino later, I neared Lane, South Carolina. On either side of the road, loblollies grew in crop rows. The healthier stands were open and showed signs of prescribed burns. The less well-tended were weedy and suffocating , the typical snarl of roadside thickets we often see on drives in the country. I drove over several flat concrete bridges across wetlands and swamps. Several miles outside of Lane, a white fence and two brick pillars announced the entrance to Scotswood. Atop each pillar was a cement Labrador retriever. The drive to the house was gravel and bordered with magnolias and live oaks, some young and newly planted, others old with sprawling, massive limbs. Little resurrection ferns grew on the lower limbs. It must have rained recently; the ferns were green. On the right lay a clear-cut field. The ground was wet and muddy. Farther off stood some pines. A network of deep, waterfilledditchesdrainedtheproperty .Asthedrivecurvedpastahorsepastureand approached the main house, the oaks became even larger and more ancient. I parked in the shade of a live oak near some white pickup trucks, an old sway-roofed shed, and a small house that appeared to be under construction, 118 Painting the Landscape with Fire perhaps as a future guest or caretaker’s house. Wind rattled the shed. Nearby was a green pond with a little cement alligator at the water’s edge. Beyond a vined archway, azaleas, camellias, and lawn stood the main house, single-story, white, and built of wood and brick. Five or more chimneys rose from its green metal roof. The main structure appeared to have been added on to more than once. A circular saw whined. Carpenters were at work remodeling the house. Because of the young live oaks and magnolias and the carpenters, the whole place had the feeling of regeneration, of a plantation being remade. I was early for my meeting. I stepped outside of my Jeep and into the biting wind, shivered, and downed what was left of my coffee before the wind sucked all the heat out of it. After a few minutes a workman exited the house and walked toward a truck. I approached and said that I was there to meet Craig McFadden. He told me that Craig might be at a barn down the road, adding that Craig drove a white truck. After climbing back into my Jeep, I drove down the dirt road, past a fenced pasture where a roan and a gray mare grazed, to several buildings Quail thrive in the longleaf ecosystem. Prescribed fire helps maintain an early successional habitat on the forest floor in the midst of a mature forest. Photograph courtesy of Dr. William Alexander. Quail in a Longleaf Pine Habitat 119 that sheltered tractors, tools, fuel, bags of grass seed, farm equipment, fourwheelers , a bass boat, a horse trailer, and hoppers. Outside the buildings a white truck was parked. No one was around. A couple of deer antlers lay on a bench. One was an eight-point, a rack I would have been proud to hang on my wall. A clutter of more antlers lay on a low-sloping roof. All were sun-bleached. I wondered whether the deer had been shot or had died of natural causes and someone had found the antlers in fields. Behind the sheds was a silo. Hung like a necklace around it were forty gourds drilled with holes for purple martins. Purple martins, believed to be mosquito eaters, more often feed on beetles, butterflies, grasshoppers, and dragonflies. Because I hate mosquitoes, I love dragonflies. Once, camped on the beach at Shired Island in...