IT'S SNOUT SEASON HERE IN SOUTH TEXAS

Snouts here, snouts there, American snouts are everywhere! The invasion is on!  

I remember this happening the fall of our first year here.  Driving back from work at the Wildlife Rehab there were hundreds of these smallish brown and orange butterflies crossing the highway at such dangerous levels.  Usually the draft off the windshield just shot them into the air and I wasn’t accumulating bodies all over the car but it was stunning! So many of them, and which butterfly were they?

I remember stopping the car at a light and finding some on the ground and here was this comically large nosed butterfly appropriately named the American Snout (perfect name for these Jimmy Durante look-alikes) (note to younger people- he was a comedian who made fun of his very large “snochz-nose”).  It turns out, when conditions are right the Snouts have population “eruptions” and as they fill the sky, it looks like a migration but it really isn’t. They do seem to be all heading in the same direction yet they say they are just in search of new food sources.  Whatever it is, it is spectacular to watch and it happened again this year.

What sets us up for snout-filled skies is a dry summer, check, followed by huge rains, check, which kills off the parasites that love to emerge before the snouts have exited their pupa and eat them all.

  Well, HA! Snout pupas must be fine with heavy rains, so out they come with no predator in sight.  Plus, the icing on the cake is their host plant, the Spiny Hackberry, a desert Hackberry, puts out new leaves when it rains.  The newly mated adults lay their eggs, the larva munches and, voila, soon the sky is full of snouts! Cool!

It lasts for about two weeks and we are now coming to its end in my neighborhood but it was a true spectacle and I personally LOVED it!  So many people were complaining and wanting to kill them! Can you imagine?!  Birds wanting to eat them I can understand but people feeling murderous towards them is beyond my comprehension. 

They weren’t the only butterflies filling the skies; so many varieties of Sulphur butterflies have been zigzagging through my yard, plus the omnipresent Pipevine swallowtails. They are brilliant and newly emerged.  However, the place that feels like we are filming a Mother Nature commercial is in my growing patch of blue  Easily 20 -30 butterflies at a time are sipping on this ambrosia of the butterfly gods. 

mist flowers which call to the Beauty butterflies like a siren song.

But what am I doing writing about Snouts and butterflies when my daughter’s wedding is only 9 days away!  Next blog will be on the other side of that.  Going to MD where perhaps by October it feels a bit like fall and I can regain my seasonal bearings.  Until then, for some the skies are full of falling leaves and for others flitting snouts, both lovely in their own way.  Enjoy!

A WHALE OF A BACHELORETTE PARTY

 

In just a few weeks, my youngest daughter will be getting married.  Two weeks ago we were all on Cape Cod for her bachelorette party, which I must stress was more showing off the beautiful Cape were she spent most of her formative days, than wild parties with questionable entertainment. 

One of the most spectacular parts of the weekend was a whale watch that ranked in the top three of whale watches I have ever been on, and I have been on a few.  Over 40, not counting the whale watches I led in San Diego watching the California Gray whale.  Those whales were at the end of a 6,000 mile migration, many of the females were pregnant so there was no grandstanding with these whales just, “Please are we there yet!”

But the humpbacks, they are the ones who could support their own whale Olympics!  They breach, they flipper-flap, they lob tail and often they are happy to do so right by your boat.  Early on in the trip we happened upon a pair of whales, one maybe the coach, for it didn’t do any of these behaviors but stayed with the grandstanding whale through the whole time. The other, you would have sworn had Olympic fever and was out to do each and every whale behavior till it got 10’s from its audience. 

Two behaviors we saw that day, I had never witnessed before. One was, rather than the usual tail lobbying where they arch their backs and slap their flukes on the water, this whale hung vertically in the water in a aquatic headstand and slapped her flukes both forward and backward.  She was so far out of the water that we were able to tell she WAS a she.  The female and the males, genitalia is internal, however in the female, there is a lobe called, for those who care, a hemispherical lobe that separates their anus from their genitals.  Barnacles often, as it was with this one, surround it.  

No one knows why they do these things; play, perhaps an attempt to knock of parasites, maybe a way to communicate for the slapping sound would carry a long way under water.  Who knows, but it is fabulous to watch.    

Her other unique behavior, was swimming on her back with both huge white flippers extended in the air just as though she were doing a back stroke. Whales are unable to rotate their flippers as we do our arms, so she was powering her backstroke with her flukes.  Again, the other whale just swam placidly alongside.  We finally had to leave this pair because huge breaching splashes were off in the distance and the Captain wanted to get to those whales too.

The boat did come upon the other whales, allowing us to see even more spectacular breaches, more flipper flapping and tail lobbing. 

This night the ocean seemed alive with exuberant whales.  These girls who had never been to the Cape or whale watching had the most amazing beginners luck.  A trip they will talk about far longer than had it been some other kind of entertainment!

IF you find yourself on Cape Cod, between the months of April and October, then please, please, forgo a beach day and head to Provincetown and the Dolphin Fleet, part of the Center for Coastal Studies, one of the most reputable whale watching trips you will find.  The naturalist on board will give a very thorough talk on these whales and the uniqueness of Stellwagons Bank where they congregate to feed each summer. I have always favored the sunset trip for you come back with the glory of a sunset on the waters, and the lights of Provincetown gearing up for their always festive evenings. 

Now, for the wedding, which surely will prove as memorable!

What Trumps Blogging? A Daughter's Wedding!

It hasn’t happened yet- Oct 9, 34 days and counting but it does mean that other things are taking precedence over this blog site.  It presently is September and that means the beginning of all volunteer things.  Most of my activities are tied to the school year; the nature center, my work at the church, it is all with elementary students and because Texas schools start in August it means everything is pretty full tilt by the time September rolls around. 

I love it though; I always say that September is the true emotional New Year when no matter what my age I am driven like a lemming to the stores to buy new pens, new notebooks etc.  Wise financial sense, spiral notebooks are17 cents now!  How I love that fresh page, that spiral wire that isn’t twisted out of shape yet, the colors that will get divvied up to this blog, or Faith formation or Master Naturalist.  It’s just all so inspirationally new.

Added to this layer of September excitement, I have my daughter’s wedding in early October, plus her bachelorette weekend this coming weekend on Cape Cod.  She has graciously invited me for she knows I miss it as palpably as she does.  She has planned a tour of all her favorite places so her Maryland friends can see the rock or sand from which she was hewn.  We were a military family, but of all three children Laura spent most of her years, 5^th grade on, in this one heavenly spot on the Cape.

These twelve friends deserve our prayers for they are about to embark on a weekend, Gonser-style, where one gallops from favorite beaches to favorite hikes, to whale watching, pond swimming, forest jogging etc.  They are young, lets hope they can keep up.   For me it also means, incredibly, I am back home at a time when I may have a chance to see that “tornado of swallows” that happens from August to Oct as the tree swallows mass at Sandy Neck, a seven mile barrier dune beach, eating every bayberry in sight before they start their barrier beach hopping to their winter homes in the south. 

If I were really lucky, an early gannet or two might be diving off the coast in that pencil-nose dive that hurtles them into the water like some naval fish-seeking missile.   And whale watching.  I must have gone 40 times off the Cape to see the humpbacks but never in September.  Again, the birder in me wonders what might be zipping past on their way south. Or those northern birds that head to CapeCod claiming it to be their idea of a Florida wintering spot, thousands of Eiders, Scoters etc.  I bet they are arriving now. Yippee.  So bless the daughter that chose the fall to marry, and was willing to invite her mom on this bachelorette tour of home. 

There still is one more Iceland related blog clogging a corner of my mind.  It will be about the puffins.  Prepare yourself that clown face masks a pretty sad story these days.  I suppose that is why I haven’t rushed to write it.  I keep thinking of some old 70’s song, “The face of the Clown when there is no one around”.  The cheerful faced puffins, Arctic terns, murres and many other shorebirds that nest on the multiple rocky cliffs of Iceland, are all suffering from a change in water temperature.  But lets not sully this happy almost-wedding-day, blog with those facts.

There are a couple of weeks between my return from the Cape and my leaving again for MD where the wedding will be held but who knows, if there is a break in the space time continuum, maybe I shall find a moment to blog here. 

Happy Fall to you all and may fresh notebooks and new pens make you feel you can tackle anything this coming year.  The real 2017 may start Jan 1 but mine starts now. Right now.

WATERFALLS OF ICELAND NIAGARA WITHOUT THE KITSCH

 

They say, if you were to count every waterfall in Iceland from the smaller cascades over rocks to Dettifoss, the waterfall with the highest volume of water in all of Europe, the number would reach over a thousand!  This in a country that could easily fit into central Texas!  If I were to show you all the waterfall pictures I took, you would practically feel like you were being water-boarded!  I promise I won’t do that but oh, what an impressive sight they are. 

I had gone with pre-knowledge of the tectonic sites there, that there would be rifts, and bubbling mud pots and steaming rivers, but the number of waterfalls and how spectacular they were took me by surprise.  We took a 10 mile, round trip, hike up a river bed that included, and I am sure I missed some, 26 waterfalls in the span of 5 miles!  Why don’t our local rivers do that? Why is it we may hike 5 miles, or more to see one waterfall?  Ah, because of the different geology in our countries.

I was ready for rifts; Iceland is the above water view of the Mid-Atlantic Ridge.  Here you can see what it looks like to have two huge continental plates pulling apart from one another. Iceland owes its existence to the fact that for millions of years the North American plate has been pulling apart from the Eurasian plate, creating new land from the magma oozing up through the rift.  Consequently you have spreading valleys, erupting volcanoes, rivers that boil, and, as it turns out, tons of waterfalls.

Picture a river peacefully going along when it encounters a rift valley. The water will plummet over the rift creating a waterfall, and if that river keeps crisscrossing that rift, as it does along this hike, then you can be treated to 26 waterfalls in the space of 5 miles! 

No two are exactly alike either, some are wider, some are at right angles to each other, many make rainbows, some allow you to climb behind them but what they all have in common is none of them have accompanying souvenir stands. Yay!  No waterfalls in a snow globe, (maybe that would be hard to do!) but they are simply unfettered by commercialism and one can hope that will continue.  Perhaps this delights me because my husband is  from Buffalo and I have probably been to Niagara some 30 times and commercialism is its middle name.

Iceland, interestingly, is new to tourism.  Ever since the 2010 eruption of that unpronounceable (as are most places) volcano, Eyjafjallajokull, which disrupted air travel to and from Europe for weeks, tourism has increased.  It put Iceland on the map and I guess the thrill of not knowing if your tour bus would be swallowed up by lava drew the tourists like lemmings.  Add a pretty unstable Europe at the moment and it seems to be the “go to” country at the moment.  Hopefully “waterfalls in a snow globe” won’t be a thing of the future and it will stay as Eden-like in it’s beauty as it is now.

About those unpronounceable destinations, you would be surprised how hard that makes it for your memory to put a name on where you have been.  “Foss” at the end of a word means waterfall, so that helps a bit, but still, I couldn’t tell you which “foss” was which for the 17 letters with only a vowel here or there before it easily confuses a mind like mine.

Bottom line, a country whose land is lifting in some areas, pulling apart in others makes for unforgettable scenery.  Next time, we can talk about how geology is the explanation behind what I thought was unusual.  Gulls and other sea birds were often inland and not by the sea at all and it turns out geology can explain that too. 

Till then, earth scientists, think about your own area and there will be some geologic reason why it looks that way it does.  I always say, if I had only come to Texas some 250 million years earlier I would have still been at the beach! 

A trip north to Maine ends up in Iceland!

iceland image

When I said I was heading north to see my family, I had no idea HOW north it would end up being!  Just shy of the Arctic Circle kind of north!! It is, of course, a long story.  So long in fact that let’s consider this to be a series- the “Iceland Series” for I could never capture the wonder and non-stop superlatives that Iceland is in one essay.

Consider this then as Part 1- How the Trip Came To Be

My middle daughter is presently teaching at West Point and she had a few weeks leave coming to her before she had to prepare for the incoming class.  Never one to stay at home, or be content with something local she decided she would hove off to Iceland and anyone that wanted to join her was welcome.  I was at first trying to be the good Nona who offered to watch grandchildren back in Maine while the sisters and their Dad went, but in the end the oldest daughter preferred to stay in Maine. She had been travelling and hosting me for the last several weeks AND the bountiful raspberry bushes in her garden were coming due so, ”Thanks, but no thanks.” 

At first that threw us all, “You would rather pick raspberries than come to Iceland?!“ But in the end it made sense, and it turns out, she was reacting just like an Icelander.  We took one of those free tours of the city while we were in Reykjavik and the guides explained that after such long winters they revel in the time that they CAN be out so, no meetings are planned in the summer, no theater presentations, nothing that is inside is offered for no one would come!  They would concur with Kristina that she should stay and enjoy the beauty of her summer in Maine, which, in some regards, is a little like Iceland. Cold and they have puffins!

Consequently, I got to withdraw my offer of a stint as Mary Poppins and go myself.  Yippee!  I used to do slide shows, school auditorium programs, on different topics and one was on Plate Tectonics. I had always said the only place to see the Mid-Atlantic Ridge above ground was in Iceland.  So to actually see it first hand was a major excitement for me!  And it lived up to its billing; bubbling mud pots, rivers that steamed, rifts in the earth, lava flows that went on endlessly, a geologists dream!

So, the lucky participants were: my husband, my other two daughters, one, soon to be son-in-law and myself.  We flew in from different quarters, met in Reykjavik airport , rented a 4 wheel car and set off on a 10 day adventure around what would be one of the most jaw-dropping, heart-stopping, Glory-of-God at every turn, countries I have ever seen.  AND the cleanest!   Having all geothermal and hydropower means zero hazy pollution. 

Plus a country with more sheep than people means no billboards (sheep can’t read) no strip malls, (sheep don’t shop) no trash (sheep don’t buy coffee and toss the cups out later) no real crime (sheep don’t carry guns-well even the police here don’t carry guns). You get the picture, the utopian society we might have if only we had more sheep than peeps!

That then is how a person escaping the heat of Texas had her wish for cooler temperatures fulfilled.  A high of 63 in August!  Swimming, picnicking, eating out at café’s, this is as good as it’s going to get.  Icelanders are hearty people, Viking stock and they live up to it!  Of course there are the omnipresent hot pools and hot pots so it’s not a hardship to dawn a suit in jump in. In Iceland there is more danger of boiling than freezing.  That part is definitely not Maine-like.  My father-in-law once saw jellyfish in the ocean at Maine and mistook them for iceberg pieces!

Let that be Part 1.When time permits (I am still on the road heading back to Texas, where 105 temps await me) I shall return for Part2 whose title is yet to be chosen. Here is  a travelers tip: if you go to Iceland bring some device that will keep your jaw in place for jaw-dropping scenery is the order of the day.  But that will be a tale for another day.  Now I have miles to go before I sleep, and after two days of car breakdowns and needing to be towed and 7 hours in a Pep Boy lounge in Nashville, I am a bit behind schedule.  

Till then, pretend you are an Icelander and get out and play!

In Defense of "Burger King trees"

As a naturalist who lives to take students for nature hikes in the woods, I have a few catch phrases I always seem to use. One is “Burger King trees” to mean any old snag that is riddled with holes, either by insects or woodpeckers.  The implication is that a dead tree is “fast food” to these animals, a quick place to pick up a lunch of carpenter ants, termites, bark beetles etc.  Trying to let people know how important these old lifeless trees are to wildlife is probably a fact all you wise readers already know.

 In this blog though I would like to talk about what you can glean from the different kind of holes you see, who hammered what and why.  The reason this topic came to mind is when I was in ME with my grandchildren I would walk the dog in the woods across the way each morning before anyone was up.  There were so many wonderful examples of “BK” trees that I took these pictures with the intent to share the knowledge with all of you, so lets look at them now.

A dead tree may still have some bark on or it may be stripped away.  If you see perfectly circular holes in either bark or the deadwood underneath you are looking at the work of an insect; possibly, a beetle or some ants.  Carpenter ants leave a lot of sawdust behind but smaller ants, not so much.  Their jaws have strong mandibles for chewing through the wood but I couldn’t find any explanation anywhere of why the holes are soooo perfect.  

Bark beetles, who lay their eggs under the bark of trees, leave a circle in the bark, but, if the bark is peeled away, what you will see are a series of carved tracks.  They always remind me of Indian carvings, where the separate larvae went their separate ways eating the wood as they went.  Those tracks dead end into a more circular spot where the now-fattened grub went into a pupa and then ,after weeks, wham, flew out through another hole in the bark as an adult beetle.  Different species of different bark beetles leave different tracks, some very wide from larger grubs, some almost spidery from minute ones.  Either way they are very cool to see.

If you come upon a more hammered hole, than I bet you can guess, THAT is the work of a woodpecker.  The spectacular, practically prehistoric,

 Pileated Woodpecker lives in Maine and leaves huge rectangular shapes where he has been dining on carpenter ants.  It is THE largest forest bird on our continent with an impressive bill for hammering away, a neck long enough to let him get a distance from the tree before he whams it and  a tail and feet that anchor him in place while he is doing the whamming. 

  And why he doesn’t suffer the same fate as football players do from “one to many hits to the head “is because he is adapted for this sort of abuse.  The skull bone at his front and at his nape is riddled with air pockets that help absorb the shock.  Someone calculated that the Pileated woodpecker hits the tree at about 15mph and does so up to 12,000X a day! 

His beak has a longer top than bottom but the bottom is very strong and they say it takes the blow and redirects that energy towards its lower jaw and not the brain.  Amazing.  Smaller woodpeckers make smaller holes but in general their hammering produces a jagged hole than the perfect circle left by an insect. 

So get out there and check out your dead trees.  Of course they could also be the equivalent of Air B&B’s for the likes of raccoon and opossum, owls and wood ducks and even flying squirrels. Flying squirrels often chew around their opening where the other animals do not. If you really want to know if you have a flying squirrel, and how exciting would that be! then look around the ground for nuts that have been chewed on opposite sides, also in a perfect circle.

Have we ever talked about “nuts and chews” and who eats which nut which way?  Not sure, but many other topics to cover first. I have been traveling and time to write has been hard to come by but topics are surely backing up in my mind.  I think the next one will have to be about the morning commute, bird commute that is, that I witnessed each sunrise at my friends house in Rhode Island.  Till then, if the tree isn’t threatening your house, please let a dead tree lie!