Site Discussions

The rapidly shrinking hours of daylight announce the change as much as the sights, sounds, and smells, and critter behavior. But often the weather can be the nicest of the year for enjoying time outdoors.

We also have it here in Washington State.

It’s mid September here in western PA and we’ve had a long stretch of nights in the 40’s. I have four pods each 24"x6” with fairly large numbers of tadpoles (mostly Hyla versicolor, possibly some Lithobates sylvaticus) & a large food supply they’ve been living well on since hatching. They’re taking longer to morph this year than others. My two concerns are that I don’t know if these 2 species can cycle through winter as others can & if so what water temp range is optimum for the process? Any help would be greatly appreciated.

My wife and I have three chipmunks that we feed…thought it might be nice to share comments with others that do the same…

I’m noticing the same thing in southern Vermont with pretty much every tree species. Bitternut hickory, beech, maple, apple, hawthorn, are all loaded with seed and that’s just what i can see looking out my office window. We had some significant drought conditions down here last summer, too.

From mild experience, about a decade, landscaping or logging firewood in winter. Chopping/chipping across grain, lowering stump, removing roots… I always used a sharp low weight axe. Splitting firewood using a maul. This being said, there’re many different variables that will make ummm… 1 man = 2 cords/day or I should have stayed in bed today. Questions: 1 what species of wood? 2 time of year?(temp and season) 3 how fat are the trunks? 4 how far transport? 5 is the wood seasoned? and my favorite… knots/bench cuts? Sometimes you may get angry at said pieces/round of wood. Fear not… that round of wood, that may contribute to a whopping 4 pieces of firewood, may not know it yet but it’s going to split. Sure I could chainsaw it a little more but where is the release of anger that I enjoy? Like driving golfballs, have you ever found yourself talking to the ball you’re about to hit? I’m just kindy reminding the jagged/slowly becoming toothpicks round what’s going to happen. The talking part is a joke until 80 or so cords. Other plusses: after splitting for a month you will definitely be stronger. Also, like in boxing, don’t punch your object right in their face… punch then to the back of their head. Continue through the firewood. Who cares if you hit your maul tip off some rocks? (Wear safety goggles)

Beautiful description of one of my favorite months. Oh, and don’t you think the leaves sound just a little different as September moves in? They sound a bit crisper with a little edge in their voice. I often think it must be some kind of signal to wildlife to get ready for the harsher season ahead.

Saw Giant Swallowtail on Labor Day in Erie, PA.

Last summer was one of the driest we’ve seen in quite a while.  This year the cedars are LOADED down with seed pods.  The branches sag with the weight as they would after a liberal dumping of snow.  Spruce, pine and hemlock trees crowns are heavy with more cones than I can remember ever seeing before.  I thought this was a portent of a nasty winter ahead, but maybe this is a result of last seasons drought. we’ll just have to wait and see.  Hmm, time to check the wood shed.

Elise, you should be writing! Write Childrens’ books, nature books more ‘zine articles, but write!

Thank you for this “on September”.

I’ve lived in New England all my life.  This is spot on and makes me remember all the seasons and the joys in each.

Informative and amusing. I shall now seek out a cliff that would have a surface area of 1/4 of an acre but have an acreage footprint of maybe 1/20 of an acre. It would a great place to grow my lichen and moss crops.

I was shed hunting mid Feb ‘15 & wind hitting me in the face. I caught movement to my left & with only a pocket knife in my pocket, I ducked & hoped I wasnt seen by this jammer coyote on roids. Joker was as big as German Shepherd, at least. Freaked me out & some google action proved it was a coy-wolf. Neighbor of mine, who hunts too, seen it last year & scared him good. Funny cause he thought I was bs’in him

I must be missing something.  I read “Because greenheads emerge only from saltmarshes, we know they travel up to two miles in search of blood.”  As far as I know no part of the Winooski River is within two miles of any salt marsh.

Deer flies are strongly attracted to some shades of blue (New Holland Tractor blue, or the blue on a plastic disposable Solo drinking cup are a couple of good examples). For this reason, all of my blue shirts get put away during deer fly season.

They are also attracted to motion, 10 feet or less from ground level. They will go for the high point on their target first - which is why they are constantly buzzing around your head, getting in your hair and biting your head and neck. (So put away that blue baseball cap during deer fly season)

A University of Florida professor has made a study of their behavior, which resulted in some deer fly trap recommendations. One of these involved attaching a blue Solo cup your your hat and coating it in sticky goo (Tanglefoot is one recommendation). The flies are so attracted to the blue cup that they leave you alone. See the article here:
http://entomology.ifas.ufl.edu/pestalert/deerfly.htm

The article did not mention specifically that deer and horse flies are ambush predators that respond to visual cues.Unlike mosquitoes, they do not follow scent plumes. The population of deer flies at any one location is relatively low, although it does not seem that way when they are attacking. Go to Youtube videos to learn of research on effective control strategies.

I am not an expert on the topic, but a Discovery Science TV programme tonight reminded me of something that could be worth investigating.

The programme was about the stone structures in New England that might be 1,500 +/- years old remains of structures build by Irish monks that had crossed the Atlantic. Might be = not proven by any means.

As I recall, in about 1960, as a schoolboy, I found in A. S. Romer’s book Man and the Vertebrates a reference to the indigenous people of what is now the eastern US having blood groups that are more usually found among Europeans than among the Native Americans from further west.

This puzzled me until much later when I learned about the Viking colonists of Greenland and their (brief?) visits to the North American coastal areas. It occurred me that if Romer is correct about the blood groups, that could evidence that is at least some sort of support for the Irish monks theory.

I am writing, as a layman in this field, to ask if anyone has analysed Native American blood groups to check Romer’s observation.

Better still, has anyone brought the study up to date by doing the necessary genetic tracing to try to figure out who, if anybody, might have come from other parts of the world and left their descendants behind?

OK, so the current focus is on Irish monks who were supposed to be celibate, but don’t tell me that we can assume that they would not have left any descendants. Nor would proof of the ancient presence of Irish monks rule out other arrivals from across the Atlantic.  But it does seem to me to be an obvious line of enquiry, whatever it might yield.

Now is somebody going to tell me that this has already been done and my query is old hat?

Brian,

That’s genius.  I’ll certainly give it a try.  Looks like someone makes a commercial version http://getyourbug.com/

But your instructions are more than enough for me to crank out a few for the lab.

Thanks

Declan

I have these wasps on my maples trees and now all my maples are showing signs of dying what could I use to eliminate these wasps?

Thanks you for this delightful account. It reminds me of my experience with Monarch caterpillars in Massachusetts in the the 1950s:  late one summer I brought one Monarch caterpillar from Keene Valley, NY home to Essex MA in a quart jar with daily freshened milkweed to bring to the school where I taught natural science to grades 1 - 5. I kept water in the bottom of the jar, protected from the wandering caterpillar by a layer of smooth 1” pebbles so s’he couldn’t drown.  Of course i had to change the water almost daily.  the caterpillar grew rapidly and soon hung from its hind “feet” from this was miraculous to watch it climb out of its caterpillar skin as it hung upside down from the twig, and the miraculous moment when it crawled out of its striped skin and incredibly quickly released its new body uno its new chrysalis and hung from the twig. The curled up caterpillar inside is now visible for a very short time as a dark body, and its shrugged off wrinkled old skin is hanging from the twig. The caterpillar-becoming-chrysalis now has to get rid of its old skin without letting go of the twig. The move takes a millisecond so quick that the human eye can’t comprehend it, and there is the chrysalis miraculously still hanging from the milkweed twig. Now it’s time to move it to a hatching jar which has already been prepared with water and pebbles at the bottom for moisture in the air. Then a piece of fine mesh wire goes across the top of the jar to be fastened with a couple of rubber bands.

This should be kept in a quiet place (no sunlight) for a couple of weeks (I can’t remember whether it’s 2 or 3) and one day the kids will notice that the transparent chrysalis shows the folded dark wings of he new butterfly, with black ribs and dark skin showing through the now transparent skin. Very soon the skin will split and the emergent butterfly slowly climbs out and hangs there with its wet, crumpled wings. This ay take quite a while; the jar can be put outside and the if you are lucky enough to have a kids class to watch this, everyone can go outside, sit on the grass in a circle and watch the new butterfly with its newly smooth wings flutter away into the sky.  The children’s s;spontaneous chorus “Good bye!”  brings tears to my eyes.

A year or two later I learned that a caterpillar or chrysalis should NEVER be moved from where it was found for any distance;  I moved the one I found in the Adirondacks 3 states away to Massachusetts:  a No-No;  You are playing God by moving genes across country much faster that nature would allow.