Site Discussions

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.

Currently dealing with my first full blown Lyme’s infection that medication didn’t help and now doing naturopath, herbs and nutrition, but also wondering…didn’t the early Native American’s burn to rid the land of pestilence and weeds? Isn’t there more we could do to manage our land for ticks? Vaccine would be a blessing for all, but too late for me. Not feeling so great about this right of passage, so to speak. It’s tough. But I will never stop being a woodswoman (unless a tick takes me down).

I have wrens in my yard and the male had started nests in 4-5 boxes before the couple decided on one near my back patio.  They have chased out a chickadee family that started there first, which is sad too, but they are so fun to watch. On the rainy evening all 6 babies fledged was just so cute, they were hiding from the rain under our BBQ grill cover; it was adorable.  Wrens can be very aggressive, but they are so active and I enjoy watching how hard they work.

Very well-written and informative article. While working at the Army Cold Regions Lab in Hanover, Doug Hardy and I installed two pea stone nesting pads on the last remaining stone-covered roof at the facility.  I am not sure if the nighthawks ever visited the pads since we put them in in 2008 as nobody is monitoring them.

Enjoyed your article Carolyn.  I’ve persuaded house wrens to choose one of the other dummy nests too.  One year they nested in a front yard box on a suburban neighborhood road.  Not only are they clever, territorial and darn industrious but they are also operatic musical and loud.  I had neighbors commenting on how loud…needless to say, those dummy nests get removed each year too.

Nice story!

I learned that the “white cottony material” is likely spider egg cases.

Coming home from dinner we encountered a strange looking animal in our neighborhood standing still in the road.  It was completely hairless and long and thin.  I took a cellphone photo of it and waited until it ran off into a neighbors yard.  I google the information and found out this strange creature was actually a red fox suffering from Mange.  It’s probably living under someone’s close to ground deck and comes out late at night looking for food.

Very informative.  Thank you!

I have found some downed trees that are thought to be Eastern Red Cedar in North Georgia Mountains at elevation of 3000 ft.. How can I determine how long they have been laying there on the forest floor?

I can only speculate, Charles—too many unknowns, the biggest being just how efficient the house really is. But if the house really is tight, you might get away with 3 cords of wood a year? (This guess is based on the idea that most people I know who heat with a woodstove burn about 6 cords in a year, and maybe your house is 50 percent more efficient.) Based on the author’s math that three, 15-year-old coppiced trees make a face cord, you can probably assume 9 make a cord. That would be 27 trees a year.  Other readers might have a more sophisticated guess.

I discovered this some years ago in our own yard when I caught a little wren dropping a “bomb” that hit a limb in a pine tree. I investigated and soon discovered the magic of how birds deal with kids bedroom messes. And you’re right about seeing them everywhere once discovered.