Invisible Tripwires

 by Tim Homan

        Early morning mid-May, 1990.  Cohutta Wilderness.  I started walking East Cowpen Trail * from its southern, Three Forks Mountain end in gray-out conditions, the sky thick and cool with blowing mist.  I carried my measuring wheel and a small, moving pocket of visibility with me as I hiked hard and fast toward Panther Creek Trail **, my work for the day.

FINE Things No. 26

With the arrival of winter weather roosting cavities become important for bird survival. Find out more about the birds that use them in this article by Terry Johnson.

 

Martha Walker, a Nature Rambler from the very beginning, but now a vicarious Rambler,  recommended this article:

The Serviceberry: An Economy of Abundance by Robin Wall Kimmerer, author of Braiding Sweetgrass and Gathering Moss, books you should read if you haven't already.

 

The  Problem With Honey Bees.

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    

Chitin-covered Warlords

by Tim Homan

        Because I have often walked slowly and pushed a clicking measuring wheel in front of me, giving the chitin-covered warlords -- yellowjackets and hornets -- a little more time to sound their silent alarms and release their safeties, and because I have frequently stood stock still taking notes, giving them plenty of time to launch a sortie against a stationary target, I have been stung far more than most hikers per walked mile.  The following story recounts my most painful experience with the hardwired warriors of the hymenoptera tribe.

FINE Things No. 25

I've missed the weekly readings we used to have at the start of each Ramble. You may not have had a reading since early March, either, so I'm happy that Jan Coyne sent me this link to a poem by Robyn Schiff titled: Oak Gall Wasp. (There is also a link on that page to the author reading the poem herself.) While you're there you could explore a little and find some other, worthy, nature-related poems and send the link to me.

Dan Williams is back! Many of you will remember Dan. For several years before he retired he conducted free tree identification classes at the Oconee forest (Lake Herrick) on the UGA campus. He also presented geology courses for OLLI and the State Botanical Garden. Now he is back with a You Tube series: "The Geologic History of Georgia." This is a series of short (~15 min) videos that, in Dan's own words: "Begins with Rodinia's rifting and will cover all 3 major mountain building events affecting Ga. and the eastern U. S. Brevard fault zone mystery is explained and the diagnostic stages of mountain building. It's quite informal, with a few old man burps, but should be informative to rock fans." 

 

"A World of Plants" symposium sponsored by the National Geographic Society is now available in a special issue of Plants, People, Planet journal from New Phytologist Foundation. You can find the full special issue, at this link.

How You Can Help Count and Conserve Native Bees. Honeybees and their problems get the most attention, but scientists are using tactics learned from bird conservation to protect American bees.

Many good stories are to be found in this week's Hakai Magazine; the highlights are:
1)      On the Trail of the Giant Squid. Advances in genetic research are creating new ways to hunt for this most mysterious of creatures. 950 words / 4 mins
2)      Gods of the Storm  Two books offer perspectives on how humans shape the fate of whales and influence the weather. 1,300 words / 6 mins
3)      Who Will Save the Slender Yoke-Moss? In the crush of conservation priorities, scientists grapple with how to help an endangered species with no obvious value. 1,000 words / 5 mins
4)      The Military Wants to Hide Covert Messages in Marine Mammal Sounds. The human fascination with hiding military messages in whale and dolphin sounds has led to US military Cold War experiments and modern Chinese research. 1,200 words / 6 mins
5)      Sunflower Stars Now Critically Endangered. Though sunflower star numbers have plummeted, scientists are holding out hope for these once-common denizens of the Pacific.  2 min 40 sec
6)      Plus six more links to articles from The Conversation, Washington Post, National Observer, The Intercept and New York Times .

Video: Fire and the Future of Pinyon-Juniper Woodlands; presentation by Dr. Lisa Floyd-Hanna. Dr. Floyd-Hanna has done extensive research on the impact of fire in the Mesa Verde region of SW Colorado. Presentation begins at 9:44; duration 1:13:44, including Question & Answer at end.

By now almost everyone has heard of the wildfires that have swept across California this year, threatening beloved ecosystems like the redwood and giant sequoia forests. Other, less iconic, areas in the arid southwest are also threatened by fire. This video discusses the effect of fire and its frequency on the widespread pinyon-juniper woodlands. (The P-J woodland covers much of the 4 corners states: Colorado, New Mexico, Arizona and Utah, as well as Nevada and Oregon.)

 

How Non-Native Plants Are Contributing to a Global Insect Decline.
The impact of introduced plants on native biodiversity has emerged as a hot-button issue in ecology. But recent research provides new evidence that the displacement of native plant communities is a key cause of a collapse in insect populations and is affecting birds as well.

Natural Debate: Do Forests Grow Better With Our Help or Without?
Nations around the world are pledging to plant billions of trees to grow new forests. But a new study shows that the potential for natural forest regrowth to absorb carbon from the atmosphere and fight climate change is far greater than has previously been estimated.

The Missouri Prairie Foundation has recorded 3 webinars that may be of interest to Nature Ramblers. This link will take you to their You Tube channel where you can view all their webinars. The most recent are on Growing native plants, Gardening for beneficial insects, and Identifying winter sparrows.

Bill and the Water Moccasin

by Dale Hoyt

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

 

In the late 1950's I was an undergraduate at The University of Kansas and worked as a curatorial assistant in the division of reptiles and amphibians. This gave me the opportunity to meet a lot of herpetologists who visited the museum. One of my professors told me this story about a herpetologist I'll call Bill.

Bill was originally from West Virginia and would often return home to visit his family and hang out with old friends. On one of these occasions Bill and a friend were fishing from a boat in a lake in the mountains of West Virginia. Suddenly, his friend spotted a snake swimming in the water near the boat.

"Watch out Bill! There's a moccasin right in front of you!"

Water moccasins are a coastal plain snake and are not found in the mountains. Also, non-venomous water snakes are often misidentified as moccasins. Plus, as a herpetologist, Bill knew how to tell a harmless water snake from a moccasin. So, he tells his friend, "That's not a moccasin; it's just a common water snake."

His friend insists that it's a moccasin.

To prove his point, Bill reaches over the side of the boat and grabs the water snake. Water snakes, although not venomous, have a nasty disposition and will bite viciously when caught, as this one does. Bill holds up his hand which the snake is busy chewing on and turns to his friend, "See, it's harmless."

He then detaches the snake from his hand and throws it back into the water. His friend is stunned into silence. Bill is feeling smug. He's vividly demonstrated his superior knowledge of snakes and taught his friend a lesson as well.

The two men continue to fish in silence. Fifteen or twenty minutes pass and Bill's friend finally breaks the silence:

"Bill, if that moccasin had been sunning itself before it bit you, you'd be dead by now."

-------------------------

Here is a website that will help you learn how to tell the difference between Water Moccasins and harmless water snakes.
https://ufwildlife.ifas.ufl.edu/water_moccasin_watersnake_comparison.shtml

 

Night Fear in Grizzly Country

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.

FINE Things No. 24

The Most Beautiful Experiment. If you've ever taken a biology course within the last 60 years you've been exposed to an experiment that showed how the DNA molecule is replicated. The famous, among biologists, "Meselson-Stahl" experiment. Those of you who only vaguely remember how DNA is replicated will enjoy this video in which Matthew Meselson and Frank Stahl, reminisce about how they met and how their "most beautiful" experiment came to be.

Field Tests

 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.

FINE Things No. 23

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.

When Rubber Hits the Road-and Washes Away; A stealthy source of pollution leaves the highway in astonishing amounts and heads to sea, toxic chemicals and all.

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.