Blog Archives

Magic in every tree

10/31/2020

Did you know that there are stars hidden in every cottonwood tree?

When I was a little girl, my grandfather showed me how to find the stars in the twigs of cottonwoods. Little things like that stuck with me and encouraged me to look for all the hidden wonders in nature.

To find a star, look for the joint in a cottonwood twig - the area where it is wrinkled and resembles the accordion-shaped part of a bendy straw. Cut it or snap it in the middle of the joint. If the twig is too green or too rotten, the star will not be visible. It might take several attempts, but fairly quickly you'll find several that are the right age. That star is the pith and that tissue is responsible for storing and transporting nutrients.

Head outside, spend a few minutes with a young person, and open their eyes to the natural world. Show them a Sunday Squee today - a cute, fun, or fascinating thing that makes the child squeal with delight. Something like finding a hidden star in a twig may seem trivial to you, but it might have a lasting impact that will affect the way the child looks at everything around them.

Eek! It's a Vulture!

10/29/2020

Vultures are often depicted as the harbinger of death by Hollywood. Captive vultures are placed in a dead tree looking on as the protagonist is crawling across the desert or having a dramatic flashback. Vultures don't tend to care about the living; they prefer to dine on things that already died.

However, not all vultures are equally skilled at finding their meals. The turkey vulture outshines them all! A turkey vulture (Cathartes aura) can detect the smell of rotting flesh in concentrations of just a few parts per billion in the air. How can they process and detect something so faint? They have an extremely large olfactory bulb and a huge number of mitral cells.

The olfactory bulb is the area of the brain that processes odors. A recent study found that the turkey vulture's olfactory bulb is four times larger than that of the black vulture (Coragyps atratus). In addition, even though they have smaller brains than black vultures, the turkey vultures have twice the number of mitral cells. Those cells transmit information about smell to the brain. That sense of smell allows them to find something as small as a dead rat under a pile of leaves while the vulture is flying high in the air.

Thank goodness vultures can detect such things! Humans have relatively weak immune systems, so we depend on vultures to keep diseases under control. They eat carcasses that have botulism, anthrax, cholera, or salmonella before those diseases can spread further. Rather than harbingers of death, vultures are really saving us from certain doom.

How can you help vultures? When hunting, do not use lead bullets or shells, but if you do, make sure you retrieve your prey. Vultures are immune to almost everything except lead, and they do not have the ability to avoid the lead in the animal that you shot. Also, slow down when you're driving. Vultures eat a lot of road kill, but they are slow to take off when you approach. Hit the brakes. Trust me, they're worth five seconds of your time.

Woolly Bear!

10/18/2020

For the Sunday Squee I bring you a lovely family portrait of a Woolly Bear (Family Erebidae) and the Isabella Tiger Moth (Pyrrharctia isabella). There are many different kinds of caterpillars that are often called Woolly Bears, but this particular weather predictor is my favorite.

According to folklore, you can predict the weather by looking at the bands on these caterpillars. If the brown band is wide, the winter will be mild. If there is more black, the winter will be cold and snowy. As a skiing and snowboarding enthusiast, I was hoping to find a Woolly Bear with very little brown. I want a lot of snow this year! ❄️

Is the Woolly Bear as skillful a prognosticator as Punxsutawney Phil? Dr. Howard C. Curran, curator of insects at the American Museum of Natural History in New York City, studied them for 9 years beginning in 1948. The first year, he noticed a definite correlation and his study was published and widely circulated. In the following years, however, his results were inconclusive but the folklore remains. Modern scientists will try to tell you that the coloration is due to habitat conditions, age, region, molting, or natural color variation, but don't listen to all the party poopers. These caterpillars are skilled forecasters, by golly! If a large rodent can predict the weather, so can they! 😆

Even if they can't tell us what the weather will bring, they are fully prepared for any winter weather conditions. They take shelter to protect themselves somewhat, but their ultimate protection from the cold is a type of antifreeze (cryoprotectant) they produce that will allow them to survive subzero temperatures down to -90F. Yes, that's 90 degrees below zero. They may appear to freeze solid, but when spring arrives, they'll thaw and go on about their business of becoming a beautiful moth.

Orchids!

10/15/2020

I am rarely successful at finding wild orchids, so I was thrilled when I came across this small patch of Spiranthes while hiking. As you can see, wild orchids don't often resemble the ones you buy at the store. The flowers are usually much smaller but they're no less beautiful. Given the spiral shape of this plant, it's easy to see how it got its name. Spiranthes is derived from the Greek words "speira" (coiled or spiral) and "anthos" (flower).