Mimic Makers
Biomimicry, which refers to innovations by humans that are inspired by nature, happens to be one of my favorite topics, and I particularly love introducing the concept to children. Occasionally I come across a natural history book which is so compelling that I want to share it with Naturally Curious readers, especially at a gift-giving time of year. Mimic Makers: Biomimicry Inventors Inspired by Nature by Kristen Nordstrom is one of these books.
Written for elementary school readers, it engagingly presents ten “mimic makers” who come up with technological inventions based on the natural world (leaf-inspired solar panels, beetle-inspired water collectors, maple seed-inspired drones, etc.). It’s biomimicry at its very best, guaranteed to captivate young (and not so young), inquisitive minds. (Photo: Red Maple seeds/samaras)
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Buck Rubs: Bright Beacons Of Scent Communication and Visual Signals
As fall unfolds and the breeding season approaches for White-tailed Deer, testosterone increases in bucks, triggering the drying and shedding of velvet from their antlers. Bucks rub their antlers against shrubs and trees in order to remove the dried velvet, a process which is normally completed within 24 hours. Generally small-trunked, smooth-barked trees and shrubs ½ to 4 inches in diameter and without lower branches are preferred (Staghorn Sumac is often chosen, as depicted). Research shows on healthy habitat, rub densities can vary from a few hundred to nearly 4,000 rubs per square mile.
Rubs are far more than just a velvet-removal site, however. They serve as billboards posted for deer of both genders. Through specialized forehead skin glands, a buck deposits pheromones that convey social status, suppress the sex drives of younger bucks and stimulate does. Aggressive rubbing as well as increased testosterone strengthen neck and shoulder muscles, equipping them for battle with another buck should it vie for the same doe.
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Everything Affects Everything
When you see Herb Robert (Geranium robertianum) flowering and pussy willow buds opening in November, you know climate change is affecting life in your own back yard. How do late-blooming flowers in the fall as well as increasingly early flowering in the spring affect our ecosystem?
For one, think about the timing involved when it comes to pollination. Insects have synchronized their pollination activity to take place when their sources of pollen and nectar are available. Climate change may increase the chance of plants and pollinators becoming out of sync, with plants using up energy flowering in the fall after pollinators have disappeared, and flowering too early in the year for the insects that pollinate them. And then there are the migrating insect-eating songbirds whose return is coordinated with the presence of food on their breeding grounds…It really boils down to this: that all life is interrelated. We are all caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied into a single garment of destiny. Whatever affects one directly, affects us all indirectly. – Martin Luther King, Jr.
Eastern Chipmunks Soon To Retire Underground
Unless global warming extends the normal activity of Eastern Chipmunks, most have or will shortly disappear into their tunnels where they have gathered and stored their winter food supply underground in a special chamber, or larder. Up to half a bushel of nuts and seeds can be stored here. They will visit this chamber every two or three weeks throughout the winter, grabbing a bite to eat between their long naps.
In order to minimize the number of trips taken to fill their storage chamber, chipmunks cram their cheek pouches as full as possible. The contents that researchers have found in one chipmunk’s two pouches include the following (each entry represents the contents of one chipmunk’s pouches): 31 kernels of corn, 13 prune pits, 70 sunflower seeds, 32 beechnuts, 6 acorns.
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Ravenel’s Stinkhorn Spores Dispersing
A group of fungi known as “stinkhorns” generate a lot of interest, mostly because of their appearance and their odor. These fungi vary in color, shape and size, but they all share two characteristics. All stinkhorns begin producing fruiting bodies by sprouting an “egg” from which they erupt, often as quickly as overnight, and a portion of their fruiting body is covered with slime (gleba) which contains spores.
Many species of stinkhorns have a phallic form, including Ravenel’s Stinkhorn (Phallus ravenelii). Brown, foul-smelling, spore-laden slime is located at the tip of this fungus. Attracted by the odor, insects (mostly flies) land and feed on the slime. With bellies full and feet covered with spores, the flies depart, serving as efficient spore dispersers.
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Blue Feathers
The colors in the feathers of a bird are formed in two different ways, from either pigments or from light refraction caused by the structure of the feather. Red and yellow feathers get their color from actual pigments (carotenoids) that come from the bird’s diet. Blue, however, is a structural color, created by the way light waves interact with the feathers and their arrangement of protein molecules, called keratin.
Thus, no birds have blue feathers made from pigments – they are blue strictly from the structure of the feathers. Different keratin structures reflect light in subtly different ways to produce different shades of what our eyes perceive as the color blue.
If you observe the blue feather of an Eastern Bluebird, Blue Jay or Indigo Bunting in normal lighting conditions you will see the expected blue color. However, if the feather is back-lit, and the light is transmitted through the feather, it will look brown. The blues are lost because the light is no longer being reflected back and the brown shows up because of the melanin in the feathers.
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Witches’ Brooms
If you’ve ever seen a tree or shrub that looks like its growth has gone haywire in one particular spot, you may have come across a phenomenon called Witches’ Broom. Witches’ Broom is defined as an “abnormal brush-like cluster of dwarfed, weak shoots arising at or near the same point.” This deformed mass of twigs and branches occurs in response to pathogens and insect pests (mites, aphids, nematodes, fungi, viruses, bacteria and phytoplasmas (parasitical bacteria)) as well as stressful environmental conditions.
Susceptible plants include alder, serviceberry, birch, cherry, elm, fir, hackberry, honey locust, juniper, red cedar, mulberry, oak, ash, willow and spruce, among others. Often Witches’ Brooms are relatively small — a foot or so in diameter. The one pictured required multiple years of growth to reach its current size. Most Witches’ Brooms are not fatal, just disfiguring.
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Snow Geese Migrating
The Snow Goose (Anser caerulescens) is one of the most abundant species of waterfowl in the world. The eastern population of Snow Geese migrate in very large flocks from their high Arctic breeding grounds to their wintering grounds along the Atlantic coast during October and November. Birds from the same breeding population use many of the same stopover sites, or staging areas, where they rest and refuel each year. Here they forage and eat the stems, seeds, leaves, tubers and roots of grasses, sedges and rushes in addition to waste grains such as wheat and corn in fields where crops have been cut.
Snow Geese are dimorphic – they have two color morphs, light-morph (white) and dark-morph (blue). Most of the blue-morph Snow Geese breed and winter in central U.S., however, they are present in the East, just not as common as the white-morph. Until 1983, the 2 color morphs were considered separate species.
Those of us lucky enough to live near a staging area keep our eyes out for clouds of white “snowflakes” swirling in the sky at this time of year, and our ears tuned for the sound of baying hounds, for that is what an approaching flock of thousands of Snow Geese sounds like. (Photo: Blue-morph Snow Geese circled in red.)
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Rough-legged Hawks Returning
It’s time to keep an eye out for Rough-legged Hawks (Buteo lagopus) which are currently migrating south from their breeding grounds on the arctic tundra to spend the winter in northern states. They look for habitat similar to the open habitat they left – agricultural fields, meadows, and airports fit the bill well. In Vermont, the Champlain Valley is a known winter destination. You see them on the ground, perched on fence posts, telephone poles and tree tops, as well as hovering in the air as they forage for small rodents below.
As to their common name, the “rough-legged” refers to the feathers that grow down their legs to the base of their toes, a clever adaptation for the cold climates they inhabit. Rough-legged Hawks come in two color morphs, light and dark. North America is the only place where the dark morph is found, and it is more common in the East than the light morph. The dark belly of the light morph Rough-legged Hawk pictured indicates that it is a female.
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Oak Apple Galls
Galls are abnormal plant growths that are caused primarily by insects, but also by fungi, mites, nematodes and bacteria. Each gall insect has a specific plant host which produces a distinctive-looking gall. Of the 2,000 gall-producing insects in the United States, 1,500 of them are gall wasps or gall gnats. Of the over 800 different gall-makers on oaks, over 700 are gall wasps.
The pictured golf ball-size gall is referred to as an oak apple gall, specifically the Larger Empty Oak Apple Gall. (There are over 50 species of gall wasps that are known to produce oak apple galls in North America.) This particular gall is called “empty” due to the fact that the inner fibers disintegrate with age, leaving much of the interior empty. It housed the larva of a tiny gall wasp (Amphibolips quercusinanis) through the summer. An adult gall wasp laid an egg in a growing part of the plant (in this case a leaf bud) in the spring. The oak reacted to either a chemical secretion, the egg or the burrowing of the hatched larva (it is not known which of these agents is responsible) by forming a growth around it. This growth, or gall, provided the wasp larva with both shelter and food as the larva developed in a tiny chamber in the center of the gall. As the larva fed on the nutritious tissue in the walls of the chamber, it (the tissue) was constantly replenished by the oak tree. Eventually the larva pupated and the adult wasp, having emerged from its pupal case within the gall, chewed the tiny round exit hole you see in the gall before flying off to seek a mate.
As with the vast majority of plant galls, oak apple galls cause little harm to the overall health of their oak hosts.
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Hidden Treasures Under Rotting Logs
Eight out of ten logs that I lifted up (and replaced in the position I found them) this week had tiny pearl-like eggs in clusters about one inch in diameter underneath them. Roughly 30 eggs were in each cluster. Whether these were slug or snail eggs I could not say, but mature slugs do deposit their eggs in the fall, often after mid-October, so one might assume these eggs were deposited by slugs. To see the hatching of slug eggs, which can take place in just a few weeks if conditions are right, go to https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MsKtCZ99Hcw.
If a reader knows categorically how to distinguish snail from slug eggs, please enlighten those of us who are naturally curious with a comment!
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Porcupines Mating
It’s doubtful that there is a female human that would want to change places with a female porcupine. She (female porcupine) may only copulate once a year. When that momentous occasion occurs, she is sprayed by her mate with urine from head to toe as part of the mating process. And finally, she spends 11 months a year, every year, either pregnant or lactating.
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Needle Ice
Most of us have seen “needle ice” but are unsure of how it is formed. James Carter, former professor of geology and geography at Illinois State University, describes its formation in the following way. “On cold nights at the beginning of winter, when temperatures just barely sink below freezing, the ground will stay slightly warmer than the air above. That means that any water in the ground… will remain liquid. In certain soils, though, water that’s in the ground gets sucked upward rather than sinking down. This is a result of capillary action: the adhesion of water molecules to the walls of a very narrow tube will cause the liquid to be drawn upward despite the pull of gravity.“
Certain soil contains particular kinds of pebbles that contain pores just wide enough to allow capillary action to occur. Water in the ground is drawn upward through the pores until it hits the air. Then it freezes. As more water is drawn up, it freezes as it hits the air and pushes the newly formed needle of ice outward, resulting in the curls of ice growing out of the ground at this time of year.
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Northern White-cedar
Northern White-cedars (Thuja occidentalis), also known as American Arborvitae, are often found in coniferous swamps and along lake shores. These conifers have a number of distinctive attributes: they are long lived, their bark is nearly fireproof, and their wood is very tough and can repel both the elements as well as insect pests.
Northern White-cedars have a life expectancy of 200 to 300 years (hence, one of its common names – “tree of life” or Arborvitae), but there are records of them exceeding 1,000 years. And cedar wood can withstand a great deal of stress. According to botanist and author Donald Peattie, “…a mere shaving from a carpenter’s plane may be laid on an anvil, folded, and struck repeatedly with a hammer, yet not break.”
It did not take humans long to appreciate the qualities of this wood. Its toughness, along with its being the lightest wood in the Northeast, made it ideal for the canoe frames of Native Americans. Lumber camps of the North Woods had cedar shingles because the wood resists decay practically forever. Today its durability lends itself to a number of outdoor uses, including fences, decks, boats and furniture.
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Northern Shrikes Arriving
The Northeast loses a lot of songbirds to migration in the fall, but it gains a few as well, one of which is the Northern Shrike (Lanius excubitor). As days shorten and temperatures drop, this tundra-nesting bird migrates southward into southern parts of Canada and northern U.S., arriving in October and November on its wintering grounds. In some areas Northern Shrike movements and winter numbers have been associated with the movements of Snowy Owls and Rough-legged Hawks.
The Northern Shrike is highly unusual in that it is a predatory songbird. Birds, mammals and insects are preferred over nectar, nuts and seeds. During the winter it preys mainly on small mammals (voles, mice, shrews) and birds. The Northern Shrike often kills more prey than it can immediately eat or feed its young, storing the excess food to eat later when available living prey may be scarce. The manner in which it stores this extra food is what gave it the name “butcher bird;” it often impales prey on a thorn, broken branch or even barbed wire, or it wedges prey into narrow V-shaped forks of branches, where they hang until reclaimed by the shrike. (Photo by Mary Sue Henszey)
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Gypsy Egg Moths Prolific
The Gypsy Moth (Lymantria dispar dispar) was introduced to North America from France by E.L Trouvelot in 1869 who had hopes of breeding a silk-spinning caterpillar that was more resistant to disease than the domesticated silkworm. Unfortunately, the caterpillars escaped into his backyard. About 10 years later, they began to appear in large swarms, and by the late 1880s they were causing severe defoliation in the area. Since then the Gypsy Moth has become one of the most destructive pests of hardwood trees in the eastern U.S.
The adult female moths emerged from their pupae this summer. With a life span of one week, the adults do not feed; they do, however, mate and lay eggs. Although the female moth has fully formed wings, she cannot fly. She emits pheromones that attract males, mates and then lays a cluster of 75-1,000 eggs close to where she pupated. She then covers them with buff-colored, hairlike setae from her abdomen, which serve as protection from predators and parasites. The eggs overwinter and hatch in the spring. The larvae have a voracious appetite and feed on more than 300 species of trees and shrubs.
Gypsy Moth egg masses appear to be prolific this fall, perhaps because there has been no significant wet weather to fuel the fungus (Entomophaga maimaiga) that feeds on the Gypsy Moth. While there are other natural controls for Gypsy Moths (birds, squirrels, mice, etc.) they don’t prevent infestations. If you wish to rid your woodlot of these caterpillars, you can remove the egg masses and pour boiling water over them. Scraping the eggs onto the ground is less effective as they can survive temperatures of 20°- 30°F. degrees below zero.
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Bald Eagles Year-Round Residents In Much Of The Northeast
Most immature Bald Eagles migrate, but if adults have nested in an area where water remains open year-round, they are more likely to remain in or near their breeding territories all year, defending their nest site. The risks that migrating pose are not worth it if they can get all the food they need (1/2 – 1 ½ pounds/day) to survive the winter, which they can in much of the Northeast. In the past few decades, the number of overwintering eagles has been increasing in New England to the point where it is not unusual to see adult eagles near and even at their nests any month of the year. (The accompanying photo taken in Vermont on 11-14-20.)
Eagles do make changes in order to adapt to winter conditions. While they continue to feed on fish, they also do a fair amount of scavenging in the winter, feeding on roadkills and animals such as deer that may have wandered onto the ice, fallen and not been able to get back up.
Another behavioral change that occurs is the tendency to gather in large numbers, clustering close together on branches at overnight roost sites. Often stands of white pine provide the birds with some protection from the cold wind, thus allowing them to conserve energy. An additional advantage of this communal life style is that they get cues from each other as to where sources of food may be by watching the direction in which the first birds take flight in the morning (those with a known source of food often are the first to leave the roost).
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Black-and-Yellow Argiope Spiderlings Hatching
Some species of spiders (including wolf and jumping spiders) overwinter as young adults and mate/lay eggs in the spring. Many spiders, however, mate in the fall, after which they lay eggs and die. Their white or tan egg sacs are a familiar sight at this time of year. One might assume that these species overwinter as eggs inside their silken sacs, but this is rarely the case as spider eggs can’t survive being frozen. Spider eggs laid in the fall hatch shortly thereafter and the young spiders spend the winter inside their egg sac.
Although egg sacs provide a degree of shelter (the interior is packed with very fine, very soft silken threads), the newly-hatched spiderlings do have to undergo a process of “cold hardening” in the fall in order to survive the winter. On nights that go down into the 40’s and high 30’s, these young spiders start producing antifreeze compounds, which lower the temperature at which they freeze. By the time freezing temperatures occur, the spiders are equipped to survive the winter inside their egg sac – as spiderlings, not eggs. (Photos: Black-and-Yellow Argiope egg sac and spiderlings – egg sac had been pecked open by a bird)
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Northern Cardinal Nests: Safety in Numbers
This is the time of year to keep an eye out for bird nests that were hidden by leaves all summer. Their location can reveal more than one might guess. As with many bird species, the female Northern Cardinal does most of the nest-building herself, usually selecting a site that is in dense shrubbery, often in a tangle of vines. Frequently there are two broods, but rarely is a nest reused. Instead, a new nest is built for the second clutch of eggs, and it can intentionally be located quite close to the first nest.
The two pictured Cardinal nests were both built this year, only four feet apart in a grape vine-covered stand of Staghorn Sumac. Two different birds would not have nested so close to each other due to territoriality; thus, the same bird most likely built both nests. Ornithologists feel that the presence of old nests may function as protection against predation. They found that when they placed an empty Cardinal nest adjacent to a Cardinal nest containing plastic eggs, there was significantly less predation than with single Cardinal nests. (Thanks to Jody Crosby for photo opportunity.)
(NB: Even though most songbirds only use their nest once and then abandon it, one needs a federal permit to collect bird nests.)
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Northern Cardinal Nests: Safety In Numbers
This is the time of year to keep an eye out for bird nests that were hidden by leaves all summer. Their location can reveal more than one might guess. As with many bird species, the female Northern Cardinal does most of the nest-building herself, usually selecting a site that is in dense shrubbery, often in a tangle of vines. Frequently there are two broods, but rarely is a nest reused. Instead, a new nest is built for the second clutch of eggs, and it can intentionally be located quite close to the first nest.
The two pictured Cardinal nests were both built this year, only four feet apart in a grape vine-covered stand of Staghorn Sumac. Two different birds would not have nested so close to each other due to territoriality; thus, the same bird most likely built both nests. Ornithologists feel that the presence of old nests may function as protection against predation. They found that when they placed an empty Cardinal nest adjacent to a Cardinal nest containing plastic eggs, there was significantly less predation than with single Cardinal nests. (Thanks to Jody Crosby for photo opportunity.)
(NB: Even though most songbirds only use their nest once and then abandon it, one needs a federal permit to collect bird nests.)
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Raccoons Preparing For Winter
Much like black bears, raccoons develop a voracious appetite in the fall and accumulate a life-sustaining layer of fat as a result (which comprises 50% of their weight). Although raccoons are opportunists and will eat just about anything (except tomatoes), nuts (acorns, beechnuts, hickory nuts and hazelnuts, especially) and corn are the food of choice at this time of year.
When the temperature consistently drops to 26-28° F. raccoons typically seek shelter in dens (hollow trees, woodchuck and fox burrows). They are not true hibernators, but do enter a state of torpor for weeks and even months at a time when the temperature is low, the snow is deep and the wind is blowing. It’s not unusual for several raccoons, usually relatives, to den together.
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Wattles, Caruncles & Snoods
Wild tom turkeys have a number of ways of impressing hens in addition to displays involving their feathers. Among them are wattles, caruncles and snoods — fleshy protuberances that adorn their throats and beaks.
A large wattle, or dewlap, is a flap of skin on the throat of a male turkey. The bulbous, fleshy growths at the bottom of the turkey’s throat are major caruncles. Large wattles and caruncles have been shown to correlate with high testosterone levels, good nutrition and the ability to evade predators, which makes the genes of a tom turkey with them very desirable to a female.
The snood, another fleshy outgrowth which hangs down over the male’s beak, is normally pale and not very long. When he starts strutting and courting a hen, the tom’s snood (and caruncles) becomes engorged with blood, making it redder and longer. This impresses both male and female turkeys –the males avoid or defer to him and the females’ interest in him is heightened. A longer snood has also been correlated with a lack of internal parasites, making toms with large snoods even more irresistible to hens.
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Mystery Photo
What do you think made this six-inch-long impression in the snow? Please enter guesses under “Comments” on the Naturally Curious blog (scroll down). Answer will be revealed on Monday, November 25.
(Photo by artist Susan Bull Riley – http://susanbullriley.com/ )
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Bird Nests Revealed
Deciduous leaves have fallen, revealing bird nests that were right under our noses all summer without our even knowing it. In addition to building in specific habitats and constructing different sized nests, each species of bird uses a combination of building material that is slightly different from every other species. Because of this, the material a bird uses to construct its nest can be diagnostic as far as determining what species built the nest. Is the nest lined with rootlets? Are grape vines incorporated into the nest? Is moss covering the outside of the nest? Is there a shed snake skin woven into the nest? The answer to these questions and others can help narrow down the list of possible builders.
This is the time of year to look for nests and try to determine, with the help of a good field guide such as Peterson’s Field Guide to Bird Nests, the identity of the birds that built them. (Be aware that possession of a bird nest, egg or feather of most migratory birds, even for scientific research or education, is illegal if you do not have a Federal Migratory Bird Scientific Collecting Permit.)
Sometimes you’ll find material in nests that surprise you — some contain man-made, as well as natural, materials. Among the most unusual examples of this are a nest built solely out of barbed wire by a Chihuahuan raven in Texas and the pictured clothes hanger nest built by a crow near Tokyo and photographed by Goetz Kluge.
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