Glacier mice revisited! An earlier post in this Nature Rambling blog introduced you to the mystery of these mossy formations. Now the New Scientist has more details about them, plus, their associated glacier fauna: glacier "fleas", glacier worms, and other animals associated with glaciers, including a glacier finch.
Hakai Magazine weekly contents.
Bioluminescence! Two videos of "sea sparkle." I've only seen sea sparkle once. It was on a small, outboard powered boat going to an island off the coast of El Salvador. As the sun set and the sky darkened the wake of the boat came alive with light. I dipped my hand into the ocean and a similar, smaller wake appeared.
This video shows you the organism that causes sea sparkle and this video shows you what Sea Sparkle is like.
Seeing these videos, I'm reminded of a passage from Dylan Thomas' A Child's Christmas in Wales:
"And books which told me everything about the wasp, except why."
My holiday gift to you is magic by British magician Michael Vincent performing at the Magic Castle. Be amazed!
The Werewolf Plant: "It's a warm, moonlit night in the Balkans. The landscape is crisp and dry, the rocks underneath sinuous and jumbled, the product of the ancient Himalayan Orogen and millions of subsequent years of erosion and tectonic activity. The Mediterranean breeze permeates the air, and the sky is a cobalt blue, framing the opalescent corona of the moon. But the moonlight is strangely refracted from a million crystal spheres hidden among the rocks, each visited in turn by moths, expertly navigating the night sky using the azimuth of the moon. This was the scene recently faced by a team of researchers studying the pollination mechanisms of the genus Ephedra, a type of Gymnosperm common in arid environments."
The Ugliest Orchid in the World, plus other new and unusual plants discovered in 2020. Kew Gardens reports on more species described by Kew scientists.
These lizards lost their legs, but don't call them snakes.
The Botanist in The Kitchen: Favorite Christmas Posts from the Past. (If you haven't seen this blog before, you're in for a treat. It deals with edible plants or plant parts and presents the botanical background behind the usage and preparation of food from the plant. Recipes sometimes included.) This is a really cool blog!
I hope each and everyone of you have a wonderful holiday!
See you next year,
Dale
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| Water Moccasin in threat position, exposing the white lining of the mouth. Note the stout body, distinctly narrower tail and the dark cross-bands. Cross banding usually becomes less obvious with age (size). Source: CDC/ Edward J. Wozniak D.V.M., Ph.D., John Willson at the University of Georgia, at the Savannah River Ecology Laboratory (SREL), Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons |
By Tim Homan
From late May to early September of 1984, I worked for the concessionaire at Lake Hotel in Yellowstone National Park (1*). My first two days off, I lit out on a solo backpacking trip tramping the Yellowstone River Trail (2*). I chose the route because it traversed some of the lowest elevations in the park and offered some great views of the Yellowstone as it roughly paralleled the Black Canyon of its namesake river. The snow was completely melted, the ground nearly dry, the grades mostly easy -- a good spring warm-up hike while I was still acclimating to the park's high elevations (3*). The ranger station weather forecast called for warm and sunny both days.
by Tim Homan
During the early 1980s, when small backpacking shops thrived in Atlanta, the manager at one of the stores called me up and asked if I would assist in guiding a beginner's backpacking trip to the Ellicott Rock Wilderness. I would meet the crew, the paying customers and lead guide, along Burrells Ford Road near the Chattooga River on a Saturday morning in mid-spring. From there, we would carry our packs about a mile and a half to the East Fork Chattooga, pitch camp, then hike up the East Fork Trail later on Saturday afternoon. On Sunday, we would follow the Chattooga upstream to Ellicott Rock before doubling back to break camp. The manager offered me a decent sum of money for the weekend's work.
The biggest environmental news is about the Pebble Mine in Alaska.
Many people are interested in raising solitary bees and wasps, not for the honey, but to enhance the pollination of native plants. Early winter is a good time to start learning how to attract solitary bees and this website is a good place to start. It has great basic and practical information on both honey bees and cavity-nesting (solitary) bees. I've included three links to help you get started so you'll be prepared when spring arrives.
It's time to collect stems for bees.
The best mason bee straws ever!
An emergence box for your over-wintering bees.
Surplus and stress control autumn timing of leaf drop.
Increased growing-season productivity drives earlier autumn leaf senescence in temperate trees
Is it a bird? Is it a bee? No, it's a lizard pollinating South Africa's 'hidden flower'. How a chance encounter with a 'weird plant' in the Drakensberg mountains led to a startling discovery
Video and Article.
Can't hurry love: slow worms embrace marathon sessions of lockdown loving. In the UK "Slow worm" is the common name for a legless lizard. Georgia has several species of legless lizards.
Los Angeles is abuzz with insect discoveries - in pictures.
Since 2014, entomologists have sampled millions of insects around the city, identifying 800 species, including 47 new to science. The most striking miniature inhabitants are showcased in photographs taken using a special digital microscope in an online exhibition called Spiky, Hairy, Shiny: Insects of LA.
Look up, look down: experts urge us to take a closer look at the concrete jungle. Plants, birds, moths and bugs are all waiting to be noticed and appreciated - and photographed
The Guardian has as series of posts in their "Wild Cities" subject, some of which I've linked to above. Here's the subject link.
Here's the link to the "Age of Extinction" series from the Guardian.
Super rare deep sea squid spotted in Australian waters for the first time. The Bigfin squid is the size of a hotdog bun, but with tentacles up to 7 meters long.
The story of Snowball Earth. Ancient rocks suggest that ice entirely covered our planet on at least two occasions. This theory may help explain the rise of complex life that followed.
The origin of mud. For most of Earth's history, hardly any of the mucky stuff existed on land. It finally started piling up around 458 million years ago, changing life on the planet forever.
Bent into shape: The rules of tree form.
How do trees find their sense of direction as they grow? Researchers are getting to the root - and the branches - of how the grandest of plants develop.
The silence of the owls. No one knows exactly how the nocturnal hunters manage their whisper-soft flight, yet it is inspiring the design of quieter airplanes, fans and wind turbines
The life that springs from dead leaves in streams.
A crunchy brown leaf may seem like an ending. But the food webs it supplies can be far more expansive than the ones it nourished when it was young, green and in its prime.
How snowflakes grow. The cold, finicky science of ice crystal formation
The following links are from the Mushroom Club of Georgia:
For your Reading enjoyment:
Forest fungi survive wildfires by hiding inside plants.
Vegan leather made from mushrooms.
Why the 2020 foraging season was a bust.
By Tim Homan
A few years ago, an old hiking buddy and I reminisced about our backcountry camps in the Southern Appalachians, some of them shared. We were sitting around the warm and well-lit comfort of a campfire near Beech Creek's headwater springs in the Southern Nantahala Wilderness (North Carolina's northern half of the wilderness), and had plenty of time to remember. Before long, we had compartmentalized noteworthy camps into categories: most memorable, most scenic, hardest-to-reach bushwhack camps, coldest, wettest, worst ever, etc. As is the backpacker's penchant, we named our most memorable camps with short descriptors, then explained and expanded if necessary. The following is the long-form story of the winner in my most memorable camp category: Double Close Call, Double Copperhead.
Charles, David, Steve, and I took parts of three days to complete our hike along a beautiful living stretch of the Chattooga-all of it national wild and scenic river, all of it trout water.** We knew what to expect from our upcoming three-day weekend (early July, 2001) and the weather. We knew the hiking would be hot and sweat soaked; the river corridor would be crowded, and the predicted thunderstorms would provide flash-and-boom- fireworks.
We set the shuttle and began backpacking Section 3 of the Chattooga River Trail (1) under a threatening sky. I was pulling up the rear, pushing a bright, industrial-orange measuring wheel and frequently stopping to take notes (2).
Conditions, both external and internal, quickly imposed a spasmodic momentum: a start-and-stop rhythm alternating between three activities, only one of which moved us up the map. We were unable to mete out breaks by any measurement of our choosing, either minutes or miles hiked. Our breaks came often, unplanned, and at irregular intervals. The first reason for halting was meteorological. Southern Appalachian July sent wave after wave of entrained summer thunderstorms, bottoms bruised and dark blue, rushing overhead. The second, was physiological: our alarm-bell-strong need to cool off in cold water.
We trudged beneath a two-tiered canopy: white pines towering, pagodalike, above all the other trees-hardwoods, hemlock, and other conifers. After managing some segment of a mile, we took quick shelter under the lean-to of a tarp as the next fast-moving formation of storm-dark and water-fat clouds opened their bomb-bay doors right above us. The tarp came back down, our packs came back up, and the sun came back out. We slogged up the rain-sloppy track through a steaming landscape on slow simmer. The lush Southern Highland canopy held the humidity in like a giant green-roofed sauna. Trail banter bet that a snail or some other form of Mollusca would crawl up our legs, slimy with body grease and sweat drench, if we stood in one place too long.
We continued to hike until the smother of sun-bright heat and the fluid heaviness of humidity pressed upon our packs and sweat-sodden clothes, which didn't take long. Then the gathered green water of the Chattooga's pools-over-our-heads deep, soothing to both body and soul-pulled us over as reliably as the offer of free hundred-dollar bills. The four of us shucked down to shorts and swam in the Chattooga's cool water, the perfect antidote to the wilting weather and the week's work stress.
Refreshed and willing to walk again, we shouldered our packs and marched through the heat before ducking under the tarp again. We made day-one camp where the river had flattened the land to narrow floodplain a few tenths of a mile short of Lick Log Falls. Our first day's distance fell short of the minimum we had hoped for, but no matter, we had proceeded as the way opened. We had taken what the day had given us, and now we had a level camp and an entire evening to sit beside the Chattooga.
Close by, a narrow strip of beach offered an open look at a long pool tailing out into the quickening water of a rock-bedded riffle. All around camp and across the river, we were surrounded by the wonderfully diverse Mountain South forest, much of it the rich year-round green of mountain laurel, hemlock, American holly, doghobble, white pine, and rosebay rhododendron, whose corsage-sized flower clusters had already begun whitening the woods.
The next morning we broke camp as daylight spread down into the river bottom. The second day's progress stuttered along like the first's-storm-tarp, slackpack-sweat, shuck-swim-except our opportunities to cool off came at longer intervals where the treadway traversed the side-wall slopes of Rock Gorge. Down there, the small but widening wedge of our view ended at the closed-in horizon of the first ridgeline across the river. Down in the gorge, the dark and roiling storm clouds coasted suddenly overhead, giving us barely enough time to pull the tarp out of its stuff sack before the next short-lived fury of thunder and lightning and torrential rain began. We walked until the two-punch combination of low-nineties heat and super-saturated air slowed our pace to a sweat-soaked and listless plodding, then we jumped into whatever suitable water the route offered.
Where the CRT closely parallels the deeply entrenched river in Rock Gorge, it provides open views of cascades where they pour over high ledges into their plunge pools. The opposite bank is frequently bluffed and bouldered and barricaded with rhododendron. We swam below a 30-foot-long slab of bedrock funneling the stream's entire flow into a powerful, log-wedged chute less than 10 feet wide. David and I knew the river ran through more of these pinch-points, where logs shredded the Chattooga to white foam before letting it pass and pool green again, some even more cinched down and wasp-waisted than the one we had just seen.
The second night out our crew camped close to a wide run of clear glide-water a short distance upstream from Big Bend Falls. Steve staked out his tent; Charles hung his jungle hammock; David and I roped up nylon tarps as our only shelter. We ate our evening meal on shelving rock worn smooth by the long work of the river. Small rainbow trout and light rain occasionally dimpled ripple-rings into the current from opposite sides of the surface. After our simple suppers, we talked, sipped a few shots of ground softener, and watched the seaward slide of the night-darkened water.
David and I told the close-calls story of our canoe trip down "Section 0" (3) of the Chattooga as dusk dissolved the edges of the shadows. On that trip, far more than any other, we had butted our Blue Hole canoes right up against that highly permeable membrane between hardy adventure and foolhardy disaster. To our surprise, Steve picked up the thread and wove his own Section 0 story into ours when we finished.
He and two buddies had braved Rock Gorge and its unknown hazards with a two-man raft and an inflatable canoe a half-dozen years before our near-midnight-long day on the river. They embarked on their trip after the movie Deliverance (4) but before the Chattooga received national wild and scenic river designation, and regulations. After the movie, the Chattooga's swift current became a free-flowing seduction, a siren song beckoning adventurous young men down dangerous rapids. It was a high-death-toll time on the river.
Steve and his friends launched into the movie-famous river blind, sight unseen. They didn't know about Big Bend Falls a little less than 3 miles downstream; they didn't know about the dangerous cascades in Rock Gorge where the topomap's contour lines rise clustered and dark brown up from the river. All they knew for certain was their desire to run the Chattooga, to test their youth and strength and testosterone-laced daring against the primal energy and power of that gloriously wild and rippling river. That and how to squeal like a pig.
Their October paddling trip was progressing smoothly, their confidence rising through the quick water and the easy-to-read inverted Vs of Class 1 and 2 rapids, until … the Chattooga disappeared from sight. Sudden fear slapped them in the face as they focused on the huge bank-to-bank break in the river's horizon line. They could see nothing of the river's downstream run below the drop-off. No standing waves. Not even spray. Sight and sound screamed danger dead ahead: a major cascade or more likely the sharp plunge of an unknown waterfall. Closer now, the rumble muffled all other sounds except their voices, now loud with alarm, as the river swept them toward the brink just like in the adventure movies.
Steve and his bowman paddled with adrenaline's burst of strength and speed to reach dry land, but the Chattooga's grip was too strong and the raft too unwieldy. When it was clear they were going over, they kept their heads and made the best of it by straightening back out and seeking the heaviest water within easy reach. As the raft approached the lip of the first pitch, they saw the river and its rocks at an uncomfortably long angle below. Time slowed to a held breath, stood still to near stalling. Pulse rates jumped up; stomachs clenched to a tight knot of dread. The raft tilted onto the slanting slide of fast water just above the first short drop. Then time, accelerating with an almost audible snap, and nervous resignation flew over the high ledge. The bow rode thin air for a couple of pounding heartbeats before falling with the water's arc-a nosedive down the final descent, a nearly 15-foot drop all at once.
Bam! Sudden deceleration syndrome. The raft's impact slammed Steve into his paddling partner, his motorcycle-helmet headgear punching into the bowman's back. The raft threw them out as it flipped over, remained motionless for a few seconds, then floated downstream, leaving them behind-cold and dazed, but still buzzing with adrenaline-in the plunge pool below Big Bend Falls. Steve was shaken but otherwise uninjured; the bowman's elbow had slammed into rock when he hit the water.
The solo paddler had reached shore in time. He quickly carried around the falls, chased down the runaway raft, then waded it back to its traumatized riders, who had just been chucked into the toughest stretch of the trip.
The expedition regrouped and continued down the wild green river, mostly because there was no way to go back. The bowman's injured elbow left his left arm numb, limp, and useless. Working hard in the stern, Steve steered over short-drop ledges and between boulders as they ran a series of Rock Gorge rapids. The voyageurs regained a small measure of momentum and confidence as they moved downriver and remained upright. But less than a half hour later the Chattooga wiped all their psychological gains away. A curving line of quickening current carried the raft into a sweeper at the base of an outside-bend bluff. The deadfall sweeper caught and held the small raft. Steve and his paddling partner were pinned: rock to the right, sweeper in front, river to the left and below.
Everything happened fast. The river poured over the bow. The water's weight in the front and the current's push from the back drove the bow under. The bowman disappeared below the surface, gone from sight. The biochemical cavalry garrisoned in his adrenal gland charged for air and light. His working arm, the right one, found purchase on an above-water branch. Kicking underwater for all he was worth and hoisting with his one good hand, he pulled his head and shoulders above drowning and death-a real-life deliverance.
After resting and regrouping from their second close call, Steve and his companions continued down the Chattooga hyper-vigilant to the sounds and sights of potential peril. They heard the same dull roar of problematic rapids David and I had heard. They landed and scouted a series of Rock Gorge rapids. The most obvious and immediately dangerous one-the one I still remember vividly-was an absolute skull-and-crossbones suicide run: carry around or die. Rock squeezed the entire river into a 6-foot-wide drop with parts of dead trees wedged and crisscrossed just above waterline.
They made long and rough portages around the most dangerous whitewater-boulders, steep rock, and rhododendron always in the way. They worked their way through the gorge to much safer water and lower banks, but ran out of daylight. The dog-tired paddlers cached their watercraft close to dark, then bushwhacked straight up the steep and brush-tangled slope on river-right until they found an old logging road. The three of them followed the woods road for maybe an hour before seeing flashlight beams and hearing male voices on the single-track near its junction with Hwy 28.
They had found the dozen-strong search party making preparations to look for them. Earlier that morning, the young adventurers had helped make camp with their three girlfriends near Hwy 28. They told their girlfriends where they were putting in, Burrells Ford Road, before they drove toward their long and arduous day on the Chattooga. When their boyfriends had not appeared by dark, the young women became worried and called search and rescue. One of the would-be rescuers told Steve, "When we found out you three were attempting to paddle through Rock Gorge, we wondered if we should go back for body bags."
Next morning, while David and I were eating our morning mush, bloatmeal, we heard Charles call out, "there's two copperheads over here, and they're heading your way." We stood up, took a cautious step or two toward Charles, and looked in the direction he was pointing from the sag of his hammock. Sure enough, a brace of copperheads-both identically slender and a little less than 30 inches long-were weaving their unhurried way through the low vegetation toward the circle of black and bare soil surrounding the fire ring. Giving them leave to roam where they would, we stood by and admired the interlocking patterns of their hourglass-shaped, copper-brown crossbands. Their colors were particularly vibrant and glossy, like they had been freshly dipped in varnish, evidence they both had shed their old scuffed-up and scaly skins recently. The twin copperheads were aesthetically pleasing creatures, wet and glistening in the early morning sun, and not at all harmful from our safe and sensible distance.
Our unworried but watchful tracking of the pair's progress through camp, their sinuous movements a continuous and muscular flowing, suddenly switched to mild alarm. The lead pit viper had just ricocheted off the fire ring and was now crawling directly toward Steve's tent. A night owl far more familiar with midnight than early morning, Steve was somewhat awake and still inside. His front-door flap was down but unzipped. The snake's unwavering trajectory left no doubt its intent; it was going to take cover either under or inside the tent.
We told Steve a copperhead was slithering toward the front of his tent, but all we received in return was an incoherent mumble. He probably thought we were crying wolf to get him up and out of his fart sack. But it didn't matter, there wasn't anymore time for talking. I grabbed my close-to-hand hiking stick-basswood, light and long-then moved parallel to and past the venomous snake. Now set up somewhat like a hockey goalie a long stride outside the net, I leaned over and tapped an L-shaped configuration alongside the first foot of his body then in front of the ophidian's incoming head, gently deflecting the easily wrangled reptile around the tent.
The unaggressive copperhead never came to coil; it just changed course and continued its slow and legless low-crawl though camp. After its twin cleared the downstream edge of our encampment, Charles said he thought both of them had sought shelter from the night's rain under his hammock. He had wrapped his pack in a tarp and stowed it beneath his hammock for the night. And he had just pulled the tarp out from under the hammock when he first spotted the two pit vipers.
I quickly thought of the obvious what-if: what-if the copperheads had cozied up to David or me during the night. But without an actual close call, the what-if was weak and easily dismissed. Half a mile down the trail, what could have happened but didn't was largely forgotten, and what did happen was remembered with gratitude and good cheer. I had quickly come around to my normal way of thinking about nonthreatening venomous snakes.
Highland Dixie is a land tamed of its large carnivores, cougars and wolves. Omnivorous black bears and venomous snakes are remaining proof that we have not entirely neutered all threat and potential danger from the forest, that we have not brought the land to heel so thoroughly that the only remaining danger is falling on our faces.
Like rain and rhododendron, whitewater rivers and brook trout, bears and wildflowers and big trees, rattlesnakes and copperheads come with the country. They are essential components, living symbols, of the Earth's ancient wilderness. They still live largely secret lives beyond our ken and control.
Seen from a safe distance, pit vipers pep up a hike with their beauty and novelty, their potential danger and big-stick physical presence. Their slithering glide makes what is left of the eastern wilderness wilder. They force you to realize that the Southern Appalachian forest still has a few fangs. They make you more alert, more awake.
Notes
The Wild and Scenic Rivers Act became Public Law 90-542 on October 2, 1968. In addition to the "instant eight" rivers designated by the act, the U.S. Congress listed the Chattooga and twenty-six other rivers to be studied for possible inclusion in the National Wild and Scenic Rivers System. The U.S. Forest Service study recommended the river for membership in the system. On May 10, 1974, Public Law 93-279 designated approximately 57 miles of the Chattooga and the West Fork of the Chattooga as a National Wild and Scenic River. A blue-blazed corridor of approximately 15,432 acres helps protect the river. The Chattooga's selection was the first of its kind in the South, and the first addition to the system after the original act.
**Steve is Steve Craven and David is David Brown.
(1) Section 3 of the Chattooga River Trail, 12.8 miles long, roughly parallels its namesake stream on the South Carolina side from Highway 28 near Russell Bridge to Burrells Ford Road (Oconee County, Sumter National Forest, approximately 368,000 acres over three disjunct ranger districts).
(2) Hiking Trails of the Southern Nantahala Wilderness Ellicott Rock Wilderness Chattooga National Wild and Scenic River
(3) Our Section 0 of the Chattooga flowed down the watershed from Burrells Ford Road just south of the Ellicott Rock Wilderness to Russell Bridge (Hwy 28) along the Georgia-South Carolina line. Boating that section was strictly against the rules when David and I paddled and portaged our Blue Hole canoes through Rock Gorge all those years ago. We knew that nearly 11-mile stretch of the Chattooga is dangerous, but like others before and after us, we were young and easily lured by that wild run of forbidden river.
(4) The movie Deliverance, starring Jon Voight and Burt Reynolds, came to life on the big screens in the summer of 1972. The movie was based upon the James Dickey novel (1970) with the same title. Most of the movie's calmer canoeing scenes were filmed on the Chattooga River.
Cultivating the Wild is a video that focuses on six Southerners committed to reclaiming the nature of the South through art, science, and culture. Their inspiration is William Bartram, 18th century naturalist and America's first environmentalist. From 1773 to 1777, a plant-collecting trip took Bartram from the Carolina coast west to the Mississippi. Far more than a botanical catalog, Bartram's 1791 book Travels provides a captivating window into the past and continues to fire the imagination of readers over 200 years later. Despite the passage of time, Bartram's words speak to current issues of critical importance. The film responds to an America hungry to re-connect with the natural world around us, an America increasingly focused on sustaining this planet we call home. Often called "the South's Thoreau," Bartram's reverence for all aspects of nature lies at the heart of these modern environmental movements and in the people we meet in "Cultivating the Wild."
by Tim Homan
During the summer of 2011 I was finishing the manuscript for my Shining Rock and Middle Prong Wildernesses hiking guide. One of the last items on the field-work list was to find Beech Spring, just south of Beech Spring Gap on the upper-elevation segment of the Old Butt Knob Trail. Clearly marked with the customary tiny blue-line circle on the Shining Rock quad sheet, the spring looked prominent and permanent, the kind all you had to do was follow the footworn path to the cold water.
But that had not been the case the first time I went looking for the blue dot. After mapping out the confusing trail junctions in Shining Rock Gap with measuring wheel distances, GPS coordinates, and compass headings, I followed Old Butt across the southeastern shoulder of Shining Rock before descending to Beech Spring Gap. I paced a compass heading toward the blue circle, but found neither beaten path nor an obvious and easily accessible spring within easy reach. It looked so simple on the map. The lack of a recently used fire ring in the gap's clearing suggested the spring was intermittent.
To register, visit this link.
The Georgia Climate Project is a statewide network launched by the University of Georgia, Emory University and Georgia Institute of Technology to help Georgia reduce risks and maximize opportunities related to a changing climate. This webinar is part of an ongoing monthly series discussing climate change impacts across a variety of themes in Georgia. Next month, the topic will be climate change and Georgia’s water resources.
Here are this weeks FINE Things:
Duck-billed platypus fluoresces under UV light: A NYTimes piece here. If you can't get access to the NYT article, you can find better pictures in the original open access paper here.
Harvesting Cranberries and producing juice.
"Monarch butterflies-an iconic flagship species for grassland ecosystems and pollinator conservation-- are widespread, yet both the eastern North American and western United States populations have declined by approximately 80 percent since 2010.
This first item is my pick of the week: The tragedy of swearing parrots.
I'm guessing that many of you have encountered news items in which the word "CRISPER" appeared. In fact, earlier this year a Nobel prize was awarded to two of the discoverers of CRISPER. You might not know what CRISPER is or why its significant, but I've found the answer for you: an understandable explanation of what CRISPER is, how it works and what it's used for.
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| Red Maple leaf Drawing by Linda Chafin |
by Tim Homan
Middle of February, 2003, rural Madison County in Georgia's Piedmont. I stepped out onto our back deck at about ten-thirty in the morning to look at Brushy Creek, to check its depth and speed and color down the sunset slope from our home. The green under gray slope -- mountain laurel beneath winter-stripped oaks, white and northern red -- is steep for Piedmont topography. I stood at the back railing and watched as the South Fork Broad River tributary ran full and fast and red clay orange-brown from last night's heavy rainfall. No chance of spotting a gaudy male Wood Duck cruise by today.
by Tim Homan
Spring 1975, my first canoe trip in the Okefenokee National Wildlife Refuge. I had signed up for a Sierra Club trip to the swamp, an introductory one-nighter from Steven C. Foster State Park to the designated campsite on Cravens Hammock. Our group of five would begin paddling at the park well within the western boundary of the refuge. Our three canoes would glide half the length of Billys Lake, follow the Suwannee River to the dredged canal butted up beside the Suwannee River Sill, a long and low earthen dam. We would turn right onto the canal and head north beside the sill, then follow the North Fork Suwannee River to Cravens Hammock. Ten and a half miles out, the same distance right back in: simple, nearly impossible to become lost, the swamp water deep and tea dark all the way.
This week I'm bringing to you an uncensored collection of things I found this past week. Usually I take a second look and prune from the list items that I think will not appeal to the majority of Nature Ramblers. But, today, I'm letting you decide for yourself. There are a lot of videos on various subjects, some not directly nature related.
Note: I added this link on 10/29 so Ramblers could get information on the upcoming "Micro Blue Moon" on October 31, Halloween.
1. This beetle's stab-proof exoskeleton makes it almost indestructible
2. High-jumping beetle inspires agile robots. Machines could get themselves out of a sticky spot, thanks to an insect that can right itself without using its legs.
by Tim Homan
The forecast for the following two days called for cold and rain, with a chance of sleet or snow showers in the mountains. By the time the next decent day rolled around, I was sick with a sore throat and severe cold. I didn't hike again until mid-December. I read the weather forecasts in the newspaper every day, watched the weather on TV every evening. The mountains were becoming colder and receiving steady precipitation, a bad combination.
Rain fell off and on for two days just before I was well enough for hard hiking, so I opted to walk and work the first half of Section 2 of the Bartram Trail-the segment from Rabun County's Warwoman Road to Sandy Ford Road-rather than risk West Fork's ford at higher water. I left home under starlight, fully expecting to walk nearly 14 miles of empty trail and lonely road. I pulled onto the shoulder of Warwoman Road and started walking in the soft gray and gauzy light of early dawn. Rhododendron leaves drooped down and curled inward against the cold and frost flowers crunched underfoot as I passed through the Warwoman Dell Recreation Area.
1 Why Borneo's trees are the loftiest on Earth
https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-020-02911-3
You might enjoy reading the original research paper, in particular, the abstract and Introduction.
2 Satellites could soon map every tree on Earth
An analysis of satellite images has pinpointed individual tree canopies over a large area of West Africa. The data suggest that it will soon be possible, with certain limitations, to map the location and size of every tree worldwide.
3 Leading scientists say we should rewild to mitigate the climate crisis.
4 Fossil footprints record a fascinating story behind the longest known prehistoric journey.
5 Grapefruit, the weirdest fruit in the world?
6 Digging into the mystery of why covid19 is running amok in some places and not others.
7 Most of us, at one time or another, have attempted to make sourdough bread.
This entertaining virtual discussion looks into what is going on in the sourdough starter. It is fascinating and will encourage you in your attempts to produce sourdough. It was created by Knowable Magazine and Annual Reviews and was available live last week. Now the non-interactive video is available! I highly recommend this one!
Watch The Science of Sourdough for free here.
8 How can trees be so tall? And where do they get the matter to grow?
9 Dying birds and the fires: scientists work to unravel a great mystery
10 Down on the farm that harvests metal from plants. Hyper-accumulating plants thrive in metallic soil that kills other vegetation, and botanists are testing the potential of phytomining.
By Tim Homan
By Thanksgiving of 1980, I had hiked all of the eighty-nine trails or trail sections save one - the longest one, Section 1 of the Appalachian Trail, Springer Mountain to Woody Gap (1) - to complete the field work for my first guide: The Hiking Trails Of North Georgia. In mid-November I had walked the last half of Section 2 of the Bartram Trail, about 10 miles from Sandy Ford Road to Georgia 28. The otherwise easy route forced hikers to ford the West Fork Chattooga River with 0.4 mile remaining (1986 measurement) to its Highway 28 end. On that November 16th the ford had been almost as bad as anticipated: the current pushy, over crotch deep, and painfully cold after the first few steps.
Now, with that last impediment past and rapidly fading from memory, I had only one more weekend's worth of hard hiking. To save Linda from driving her car on dirt-gravel forest service roads, I had agreed to backpack from Amicalola Falls State Park to Woody Gap-about 30 miles in two short-light days. If I started very early on Saturday morning and had decent weather, I could make it to Woody before sunset on Sunday, the last day of November.
1 The real estate economy in Florida is beginning to react to the implications of Climate Change and the numbers show it. And it's not just those with beach front property that will bear the cost. Communities of color will be displaced by gentrification, not the sea.
2 The Arctic is warming at a faster rate than the rest of the world. A geoengineering solution is to use strategically placed glass beads to slow the rate of melting.
3 Blue carbon: the climate change solution you’ve probably never heard of.
4 Remember the Saharan dust that appeared in our skies earlier this summer? Read how it can influence health all the way in Florida.
5 ‘Hyper urban’ coyote genomes are evolving apart from their city and rural cousins
6 Why the hidden world of fungi is essential to life on Earth -- Merlin Sheldrake
7 Atlantic magazine article: The Molecular Biologist Who Exposed the Soviet Union
8 Mending Coastal Marshes; Recycled plastic bottles get a new life as artificial islands.
9 Just for fun: The South Pointing Spoon
10 Barking up the right tree.
11 Can plants actually take care of their offspring?
12 The Lord Howe screw pine is a self-watering island giant.
13 The Amazon Rain Forest is near the tipping point of switching to a savannah.
14 Warning: Don't Touch this hairy-looking caterpillar.
15 The value of Squirrels and Chipmunks in our Garden
(Continued from Part 2)
A few minutes after James' mac and cheese began to boil, a medium-sized man who looked a few years shy of forty entered the shelter, glanced around with contempt, then slung his heavy pack against the wall closest to the sidepath. He didn't bother to return our heys and hellos and started unpacking without a word. James nodded yes to our silent inquiry.
1 Brainiacs, not birdbrains: Crows possess higher intelligence long thought a primarily human attribute
2 Nature Milestones in Vaccines An interactive history of vaccine development. Vaccines have saved more lives than any other medical innovation, says Nature.
3 First Fossil Feather Ever Found Belonged to This Dinosaur
4 White-throated Sparrows in the SF Bay area changed their songs during the pandemic shutdown.
5 When people stay quarantined animals are free to roam.
6 In this video Dr. Scarlet Howard tells how she showed that honey bees could do simple arithmetic -- addition and subtraction
7 Lee Finley recommends this NYT Magazine article: When Invasive Species Become the Meal. If you don't have a subscription to the Times you may not be able to read it -- they allow non-subscribers a few articles per month.
8 Global data shows that 40% of world's plant and fungal species are at risk of extinction.
9 Thursday, Oct. 15, 12 Noon, ET: Webinar on the Science of Sourdough. Details here. You'll need to register; If you can't see the live session, it will be available later to those who registered.
That's it for this week.
1 Starlings were not only introduced to the United States, but also to South Africa and Australia. In each of these areas their numbers rapidly increased. Did they evolve in their new habitats? Are they genetically different from their ancestral populations? Read the answers here.
2 Did Guano Make The Inca The World's First Conservationists?
3 Fall has officially begun and now is the time when streams renew their food supply.
The next morning, our fourth day began with a slow ascent up to and over a Mt. Guyot spur. At Deer Creek Gap, Page heard then pointed out a male Blackburnian Warbler, his orange breast pulsing like a wind-blown ember when he turned toward the mid-morning sun. As the day warmed, a slow drift of white, fair-weather clouds floated single file over the Little Pigeon River drainage to the northwest. Near Ross Knob a Broad-winged Hawk whistled its piercing, high-pitched call while barely tilting a wing as it wheeled higher and higher on the rising, warm-air cushion of a thermal.
Late in the afternoon we turned onto the sidepath leading to Cosby Knob Shelter, home of the "huge bear." As we approached camp we noticed two fresh and highly conspicuous bear scats, exceptionally large bore and less than a hiking stick's length apart. The nearest one, super-sized and heaped high enough to trip small children, was larger than any we had ever seen. The second-piled to the size of a small cairn, enough to fill a child's beach pail-was larger still.
We assumed the crap cairns were the work of one really big bear doubling down on his territorial calling card. They were posted, easy-to-read, no-trespassing signs that said: "This is my territory, this is my shelter. All rights and privileges associated with said territory and shelter, including any and all foods or foodstuffs, are hereby reserved for the sole and exclusive hunger of the proprietor-the one and only mighty maker of these two plop piles. This visual and olfactory document is signed, notary-sealed, and enforced by the megafauna dimensions of these droppings and a size Pleistocene paw upside your head. Get lost or get bloody."
We shrugged our packs off in front of the shelter. As we turned to inspect its cleanliness, we noticed paper scrolled to fit a slot of fence link to the right of the door latch. "WATCH OUT FOR THE BEAR" was boldly printed at the top of the first of three large pages. We retrieved our packs, carried them inside and began to read. A young Texan named Daniel had spent the previous night alone at Cosby. Early in the evening, he hauled his pack with all his food and cooking gear down the open slope in front of the lean-to. He cooked a simple, one-pot supper and enjoyed the low slant of sunshine still clearing the trees. A few moments after he set his pot aside to cool, an "incredibly huge bear" swaggered slowly downslope, woofing and tooth popping, blocking the rookie backpacker's straight-line retreat to safety. The young man made a short, adrenaline-fired run around the bear and back uphill to the shelter. He neglected to grab his pack before the half-circle sprint.
His meal had obviously cooled enough for the "500-pound thief"; the bear wolfed it all down and licked the pot a good 20 feet further downhill. The beans-and-rice dish tasted like more. The bruin immediately turned his appetite to the pack, sniffing and clawing, biting and ripping and rifling until he had devoured all the remaining grub including five big Snickers bars wrappers and all. After both food and bear were gone, Daniel reclaimed his ruined pack and returned to "Fort Cosby." That night the marauder padded back and forth beside the shelter's fenced front at least a half dozen different times, sniffing and pacing and all but growling "more Snickers."
The self-described novice backpacker had planned to hike the AT for another three or four days after exiting the park. But now, with his food supply gone down the bear's gullet, his pack trashed, and his spirits lower than his boot liners, he would walk to Davenport Gap with a light pack and empty stomach … and head home.
By the next morning, his youth had distilled the previous day's ignominy and anger to optimistic reflection. The last two lines of his lengthy post script read: I'll be back next year, smarter and stronger. Daniel L., Beaumont, Texas.
We investigated the crime scene. All that remained were a few scuff marks, some gooey-looking shreds of Snickers wrappers, and a couple of half-chomped baby carrots. We walked back to the bunker, keeping the door open for dignity's sake, and read the shelter journal to gain whatever advantage we could from the bear's habits and temperament. An unlikely pattern quickly emerged. The beast, always alone and very big, "was one seriously bipolar bear." Nearly every day before signing their trail names-Zen Bootist, Heyduke, Hemlock Hank, Hot (herd of turtles), Limp-along Cassidy, and the like-the AT backpackers described the bear they came to call Fat Albert one day, Cosby the next. Fat Albert was always characterized as "big but tentative, unaggressive, nervous, a mild-mannered beggar, an easily run off loiterer." Cosby was consistently described as "a huge King Kong bear, monster-beast bear, mega-beast bear, the biggest bear I've ever seen, a bad-ass alpha male on steroids, 450 to 500 pounds and every ounce a bully, etc."
On Cosby days, which received the lion's share of the ink, the bear was a woofing, false-charging, jaw-popping intimidator, who would quickly misappropriate all unfenced food for his immediate use. No journal writers boasted of driving the Cosby-day bear completely off, not even one of the rock throwers. He left when he was good and ready, after all the food had been forted up for the night behind the chain-link fence. On Fat Albert days, however, loud yells and clanging pots and pans were all that was required to run the big but skittish bear down to the edge of the clearing.
The swinging pendulum good bear-bad bear routine had begun in April. Throughout all of the entries, there was but one bear-alternately docile or demon, one night mousy, the next night mean. The bipolar bear theme occurred so regularly that a few of the contributors began a small war of potshot words, accusation followed by escalating rebuttal. One gadfly upped the ante by suggesting that Cosby nights were caused by Fat Albert campers.
After finishing our day's ration of gorp, we headed down to the nearby spring to filter a gallon of cold cooking and drinking water. Three-quarters through our fourth and final Nalgene bottle, Page grabbed my pump arm and said, "bear" in a voice low but tense. An impressively large male bear stood at the bottom of the clearing-silently watching, head slightly raised, nose working the air. I glanced back at our packs inside the shelter; Page had closed and latched the door on her way out. Good move.
Brown muzzle, skull flat on top between his cupped ears, the bear looked to his right toward the other side of the opening for a second, then quickly returned his gaze to us. His impassive brown eyes, seemingly too small for his bucket-sized head, gave nothing away like a good poker player. But the tilt of his round face and his tensed body and his mind behind those inscrutable eyes were all alert. I stopped pumping and studied our visitor, tried to read his body language for clues to his identity, Cosby or Fat Albert.
"What do you think, Cosby or Fat Albert?"
"That's a big bear," I said, "but he looks a little nervous and tentative to me. I think our mooch for the night might be mousy bear Fat Albert."
"Yeah, I think so too."
The black bear advanced a couple of yards, stopped, looked over his shoulder, tested the breeze again. Eyes firmly fixed on the imposing bear, I finished pumping while Page gathered up the filter bag and full bottles. We decided to postpone supper for half an hour, enough time, we hoped, for him to leave. The bruin we wanted to be Fat Albert shambled forward, but did not closely approach the shelter, and did not pace back and forth in front of the fence demanding power bars in exchange for peace and quiet. If we were reading him right, our bear du jour was Doctor Jekyll, meek and mild and easily run off.
I watched as Al slipped away like a large puff of black smoke blown through dense foliage and dark shadow. We took a half-hour snooze as planned. The bear was still out of sight when we arose from our rest. Less than a minute after we started supper, a large male bear reappeared at the bottom of the clearing, just to the right of center. At first he just stood there, head raised and hesitant, looking about uneasily, drawing large drafts of air through his moist black nostrils. Trying to see what was for supper with his sense of smell. Before we verbalized our thoughts, that our beggar was still mild-mannered Fat Albert, he abruptly scooted to his left along the lower edge of the opening without apparent cause for his skittishness.
We scanned the woods. Down and to the left, still 10 feet in the forest, the shelter's secret loomed large in the double circle-single image of our binoculars. An older male bear-longer, heavier, and higher at the shoulder than the first-shuffled toward the opening and bear number one. He was well upholstered and huge for a Southern Highlands bear, big and burly and black as an obsidian boulder. We didn't need binoculars to read his mood; it was as unequivocal as a cocked pistol. He entered the opening with a slow muscular strut. The exaggerated roll of his shoulders and sway of his massive head declared that he was the real deal, the dominant bear. His size and demeanor guaranteed us he was about to drive off beta bear and take charge of all holdups and handouts the shelter offered. We now knew the source of Fat Albert's uneasiness. It was the journal's "monster-beast" Mr. Hyde, Cosby. He was a physical force. He made us grateful for strong steel.
The two black bears engaged in a territorial skirmish along the bottom of the opening only 25 to 30 paces in front of our see-through shield. They were fighting for the right to ransack our packs if given the split-second chance. We felt like we were participants in one of those public television nature shows: two spawning-run salmon anxiously watching two Kodiaks fight for sole possession of their pool. Winner take all.
The ultimate outcome was never in doubt. Alpha bear's bulk and his slow, cocksure physicality convinced us he would quickly rout beta. But to our surprise, Fat Albert held his ground, unwilling to yield any more turf a second sooner than necessary. Head lowered and swaying in rhythm with his slow, flat-footed strides, Cos narrowed the distance. Albert's feet remained motionless, but his head and heart weren't ready for battle. His body began a sideways wince. Making a great show of woofing, grunting, and jaw chopping-all bluff and bluster-Cosby closed the gap to a little more than his length, then paused, providing Al ample time to play his part in their dance of known dominance. Beta blinked, submitted. He cowered down and further sideways, muscles tightly bunched, ready to spin halfway around and sprint. Alpha male false charged, hurling his bulk and mock ferocity toward the empty space where Fat Albert had been, stopping with little hops on his front paws.
Heavyweight bear number one disappeared into the long darkening shadows of the sheltering forest. Sumo-weight bear number two turned his back on the subordinate bear, possibly an ursine insult, and rumbled back into the middle of the ring, claiming victory for the fatherland of his incessant hunger. And waited to see if he had won a white-towel TKO. But when he finally swiveled around to check the continuance of his success, the contender was back in the lower right corner of the clearing, in the exact same spot as before. Round two. Cosby lowered his head and locked eyes onto his opponent the way a bull signals a charge. He moved in much faster this time and false charged with a laborious gallop as soon as he closed. Al cringed down and sideways again, clearly showing submission and his intent to scram, which he accomplished with an astonishing speed and agility that belied his usual lumbering gait.
King Cos suddenly funneled his anger and frustration into a classic display of displaced aggression: a hard-wired explosion of red-hot ferocity intended to intimidate without actual combat or injury, at least to bears. The dominant male wheeled and charged in quick bursts of fury. He whirled and whacked all the target-appropriate vegetation within range in a stunning exhibition of speed, agility, and big-stick power. He popped shrubs and small saplings like they were speed bags, hammered larger saplings like they were heavy bags. He battered them all into bent or broken submission with surprisingly fast blows thrown in combination from both of his long-clawed front paws. His combustive rage, an innate choreography rehearsed and honed over geologic time, was quickly spent.
Cosby did not strut back to the middle of the ring immediately after his show. This time he stood near the forest's edge, blowing hard from his exertion and staring in Albert's direction. Aggressive mega-beast glared at what we assumed was mild mega-beast for a long moment before slowly moving back to the middle of the lower part of the clearing, once again claiming the shelter and its attendant rights to all the grub he could beg or bully.
Fat Albert had to thumb his nose one last time for dignity's sake; after all, how hard could it be to slap some flimsy and defenseless foliage around. But he fooled no one. He had probably witnessed the same spectacle: an awesome flaunting of assault-weapon firepower. Round three would lead to ripped flesh and blood if Cosby caught him, and he with all his old black bear culture and knowledge knew it.
The challenger nonchalantly shuffled back out into the opening, but not as far out as before. The champion tensed with promised violence. He was through with all courtesies: all tooth-popping posturings, false charges, martial arts attacks against supple flora. He rocked back slightly and took off, legs pumping, without bluff or sound. Fat Albert didn't bother with cringing submission; he hauled freight to save his hide, a rushing black blur, front legs stretching out low to the ground like a chased cat's. Cosby pursued him through the forest's parting green curtain and out of sight. The alpha male's speed reinforced unsettling knowledge: bears are easy to underestimate, impossible to outrun or outfight if one really wants you, an unarmed human, for an easy meal.
After several minutes the victor was back in the lower part of the opening, suddenly appearing-as even large animals so often do-as if he had popped up from the Earth. I tied the horseshoe-shaped latch down with a rope so he couldn't knock it back up, inadvertently or otherwise. He approached the shelter. Our trust in the strength of the wire weakened as he advanced. Bad boy Cos stopped 6 feet from the fence. The reverse zoo effect was now overwhelming. He stood there, a silent and watchful wall of muscle, his emotionless brown eyes concealing his cunning and stealth and proprietary willfulness. He looked right at the cold supper between us, sucked in its bland scent, then turned and walked away, familiar with the futility of the fence.
Up close, King Ursid of Cosby Knob Shelter appeared as big and bulky as the journal accounts claimed. Already familiar with black bear weights provided in various mammal guides, and familiar with fear's exaggeration, my guess was lower than most in the shelter journal. I guessed he weighed between 450 and 475 pounds. But it was just a guess and it was just June. A fall-fat Cos could easily weigh well over 500 pounds by October if the year's berry and hard mast crop were plentiful.
The night now officially belonged to Cosby. Our new larger and far more aggressive raider rumbled into the shadows, but remained in sight. When we looked up from our meal a minute later, he was gone. No movement, no sound. The forest had closed the door behind him. We relaxed, but only slightly. We figured he was still down there in front of us, his nose on high alert and scenting for the slightest hints of new food. But for all we knew, he could be behind us, waiting to bluff the mobile buffets off the backs of late arrivals.
A little before seven, a tall, slender young man pulled up to the shelter and unshouldered his pack. We told him everything he needed to know: the Texan, the journal accounts of the bipolar bear, the territorial dispute. His calm questions and thoughtful comments betrayed only a slight concern, not much more than a realization that his cooking and movements had to be tempered with good judgment.
James, who was section-hiking the AT two weeks per year, told us he had skipped Tricorner Knob Shelter and had passed a heavily loaded northbound hiker-a middle-aged man, immediately unfriendly-about 3 miles back. He asked if the man had stayed with us at Tricorner Knob the night before. We told him everyone we had met, both northbound and southbound, had been friendly, and that we hadn't seen the man he described. The three of us now knew one thing about the surly man: he either came up a sidetrail or was making bootleg camps in the woods along the AT.
(Continued next week)
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| Wheel Bug, a type of Assassin Bug. The semicircular projection on the thorax is characteristic of Wheel Bugs. (photo by Catherine Chastain) |
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| A crop of the photograph above, to show the piercing beak beneath the head. |
Earlier this week (Sept. 26) a Nature Rambler, Catherine Chastain, sent me a photograph of a Wheel Bug (Arilus cristatus), taken on her back door. Her son, Nathan, a budding entomologist, carefully picked it up. Nathan knows that Wheel Bugs can deliver a painful bite with their sharply pointed beak, visible under the head in the enlargement above. It takes a brave and knowledgeable person to handle these creatures. This short video shows many details of the living insect.
A Wheel Bug is a type of Assassin Bug, (family Reduviidae). It is the only Assassin Bug with a semicircular "hump" seen on the top of the thorax. All the Assassin Bugs are predators on other insects.
Click here to view a series of macro photographs by Debbie Roos. She has photos that show the adult, the eggs, the process of hatching and the young nymphs.
The nymphs are black, except for the abdomen, which is a bright orange/red. In animals a prominent red color is often a warning signal that indicates that noxious or otherwise distasteful properties. Some insects with prominent red markings are simply mimicking those that are distasteful or dangerous. Many of the true bugs, including the Wheel Bug, have glands in the thorax that produce foul smelling substances. That is how the Stink Bugs got their name.
I once kept a small jumping spider as a pet, feeding it a variety of small insects that I caught in my backyard. On one occasion I offered it a red and black Wheel Bug nymph and watched as the spider stalked it. The spider crept closer and closer and finally leapt upon the nymph. Almost as soon as it came in contact it jumped away and began grooming, as if it was trying to remove some irritant. The following week I placed another Wheel Bug nymph in the spider's cage. Normally the spider would immediately begin stalking potential food items, but it never showed the slightest interest in this Wheel Bug. That single encounter in the previous week seemed to be sufficient to train the spider not to mess with Wheel Bug nymphs Unfortunately, I couldn't find a non-noxious, red insect to see if the spider was avoiding anything red.
Reference:
University of Florida Entomology Department Featured Creatures.