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Quiz Winners Announced

Editors Dave Mance and Patrick White are holed up in their offices this week, working away on final drafts for the Northern Woodlands spring issue. So now seemed a good time to stage a blog coup, and report the winners of our autumn “Woods Savvy” multiple choice quiz. You can read the questions here.

We had a lot of fun cooking up wrong answers for this quiz. It was also amusing to read the returned quizzes, and all the notes that came along with them. My favorite of these was a quiz filled out in pencil, with an answer corrected in pen, along with this note in the margin: “spousal disagreement – wife prerogative.” She was right.

In the end, just four people got perfect scores. Of these, our contest consultant (see picture) carefully considered penmanship and selected Russell Seaman of Rougemont, North Carolina as our grand prize winner. Congratulations, Russell!  As for the other three with perfect scores – Tom Seeley, William Wunder and Carroll York – we decided to give them prizes as well. All four will be receiving their very own “Season’s Main Events” calendar, plus bragging rights.

So what are the correct answers? Take the quiz link above, before you read further:

  1. (C) Wood frogs don’t share body heat in winter. As described in an “Outside Story” article here, wood frogs produce a kind of natural antifreeze. As for the other creatures: skunks will sometimes den up together, bluebirds huddle together on cold nights, honeybees form tight clusters inside their hives (check out this fun essay on the subject) and beaver families share body warmth inside their insulated lodges.
  2. (D) Peregrine falcons can dive over 200 mph. Hard as it is to believe, these raptors can swoop down on prey at a velocity rivaling a much ballyhooed new high-speed rail project. (And they don’t need $68 billion to do it). See this encouraging article about these feathered speed demons’ recovery from near extinction.
  3. (C) The old logging term “hair pounder” refers to a person in charge of a horse team. As several of you pointed out, one of the wrong answers (A) could reasonably be described as a “widow maker.”
  4. (C) Virginia opossums don’t hoot like owls. One reader observed that opossums make other noises, such as clicking, but too bad, so sad, that doesn’t count. These strange and fascinating creatures are on the rise in the Northeast. See this article to learn more about them.
  5. (D) If a friendly stranger appears on your doorstep offering to “clean up your woods,” close the door. The verbatim answer was “all of the above.” Bottom line, it’s almost always a smart move to talk to a forester before you agree to a timber harvest.
  6. (A) A decline in the number of mature bucks is unlikely to have an impact on fawn populations. Although it may result in happier immature bucks.
  7. (B) White oak produces more BTUs. Oak produces more heat energy when burned than alder, eastern white pine, or black cherry.
  8. (D) Butterflies gather on roads to feed on salt and other nutrients. See this article to learn about butterfly “puddling” behavior.
  9. (B) Alpine bilberry. This pretty little shrub tends to grow in higher elevation locations, as the name implies. It’s therefore the odd plant out, as compared to painted trillium, pink moccasin ladyslippers, and Canada mayflowers.
  10. (C) High-grading a woodlot means cutting the best trees and leaving the low value ones. Essentially, it means cashing out, without consideration for a forest’s long-term health. What was tricky about this question is that the word sounds so positive, i.e. achieving a high grade.

Thanks to everyone who played. Based on the response, I expect we’ll include another quiz in the fall issue.

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