Site Discussions

Keep planting seeds, especially from trees that show no sighs of disease.
I’m a landscape/forester and encourage people to plant Butternuts when ever they can. They are a fast grower and some die young, the disease rarely kills them, but simply shortens their lifespan. We (and wildlife) can still harvest the nuts a good many years before they do die.
It’s a beautiful tree even if short lived… KEEP PLANTING THEM!

Have two red foxes in the neighborhood with terminal mange. Feel so sorry for them the article said they will soon die. I’m used to helping the wildlife that have been coming into our city, but after reading all the comments from others around the USA, I feel so helpless in the face of this scourge.

Twice now I have dug into some piles of old logs and other debris left over from land clearing.  After I spread the dirt and decaying wood, etc.  I have gone out after dark and saw my lawn glowing. Is this probably the Oyster fungi? And can I keep it alive for awhile to show my grandkids?

I found a dead Wood Thrush on the edge of our driveway. It looked like it had just fallen over dead (feet up and pristine). I’m so sad. It is so beautiful and I love hearing them. It didn’t look injured or old. We have lots of slugs and snails on our property. We are surrounded by trees and bushes. Do they mate for life? Could it have had some disease? I hope this won’t be the last we see or hear of them.

A good example of how area is measured. I met a forester who had just graduated. His first job was to slash alder within a cut block. His bid was based on $/acre. He won the bid but later realized that all the land was in very steep terrain and was effectively a substantially larger and more difficult area to work in.

It’s hard to say, John. They’re opportunistic nomads, so if they find the habitat around your house amenable in winter, they might be back. Of course their diet will change in fall and then again in winter, so it’s probably more likely that they’ll have a separate winter range. And the birds will be bigger, which might make those particular trees less desirable.

I have a family of turkeys spending the night in my trees nightly for about the last three weeks. Will this continue into the winter? They are locust trees, but there are also scrub pines around. Just wondering if they’re around for the winter- I have three fish ponds and they probably drink out of them in the morning before I get up because I find feathers around the yard.

We observed that the deerflies chase our car down the driveway (wooded) and attack the side view mirrors.

Effective solution - tape a glue pot to each mirror and drive up and down three times.  They nose dive into the glue and are stuck.

Record haul for one day was over 100 flies. 

Why do they attack the mirrors? My theory is they look like big ears.

I’m interested in introducing American bullfrogs into my small farm pond.  I see there are many places online to buy bullfrog tadpoles.  Would these be successful in my pond? What time of year would be best to release them into the pond?
Thanks!

How interesting to find this. In 1932 Christine Magoon bought a house out in Worcester with my husband’s great grandfather, Carl Stridsberg. They worked together at the Hotel Barre, not sure if that is where they met. They sold the house and Carl bought property in Berlin. I believe they were still together until at least the mid 60’s but not really sure. He died in 1971. I would be interested in her obituary which I haven’t been able to find, a photo of her from during the time they were together, and any other information as I’m working on the family history and clearly she was an important part of his life.

I watched two cecropia caterpillars in my yard on a native plum for almost a month, I think. It got huge and then in the past week started getting oozy at head and tail. The next day, there were flies and such on it. This morning it was dead on the ground. I haven’t yet had the time to read the article above, but it sounds like parasites then, huh? I have photo from a few different stages if you want me to send them somehow. Thank you.

My mother planted parsley and dill in pots on our back deck to find the parsley FULL of swallowtail caterpillars. We had seen the adults flitting in the butterfly garden and I was pleased as punch to give up the parsley for these little babes.

Would a Tananger in Nepa, PA begin molting in August?

It is a little frustrating to find no answers, really, to these astonishing cairns. We have a great many in our area, partially collapsed but with petroglyphs, effigies, wall carvings you can’t believe,  and some amazing stone masonry. There’s also some painted images (no, really). What is so crazy is a baffling refusal to acknowledge anything is here at all. Early settlers they were not.

No professionals here, we’ve just been looking at someone’s veritable ghost town- and their tools, for over a decade. A large civilization had to have been responsible for so much evidence to have been left but nope- can’t convince anyone to look, much less research. Seems to us we’re missing a hugely valuable piece of history.

Climate change is warming up the planet. In turn, this is affecting the estrus cycles of deer. Unfortunately, drought causes less food to be available.
Less than 4% of the Earth’s s wild animal herds, counted in 1900 are alive today.
We are in an age of extinction.

We are raising Monarch caterpillars. They kept disappearing from our milkweed so we decided to bring them in to be safe. So glad we did. One emerged and it was an amazing experience.  We currently have three chrsysalis and five about to j shape any moment. We also found the leaf rollers or European Skipper infesting our Canna Lillie’s. We are waiting to watch this turn as it’s in chrysalis now.  If that all wasn’t enough, we found four woolly bears and are raising them. We homeschool our kids and this has turned out to be the best summer science project.

I am very fortunate to have found this webpage!  On July 29, 2018, my wife and I (and hundreds of others) witnessed a dragonfly migration on the beach in Truro, Cape Cod. Truly an amazing experience!  In this instance, they were flying parallel to the shoreline in a northwestward direction.

I’m glad you enjoyed the article, Ethan and Susan. And I agree that house wrens are a pleasure to watch and hear, despite their sometimes-surly behavior.

What a wonderful article. Thank you for posting this!

Very informative. Thank you. Just wish there was some mention of the predators of the little rodents that are killed with such reckless abandon. They DO play a role.