Site Discussions

What a great post - you should submit it to a bicycling magazine.

Anyone who has an issue with ordinary citizens hunting deer is insane.  Just like with “free markets”, let hunters naturally hunt and stop trying to impede them with these crazy pseudo-scientific models.  As the article says, cars kill 18,000 deer per year in one state and, a friend of a friend in the insurance business said that 95% of their claims in PA are due to deer strikes.  Hello, people!  It’s reached a point where the deer are killing people!

Let the hunters hunt.

As for what’s happening on the Paglia farm in VT, that’s just horrible.  Same is true in NH, like 5 deer/sq mile.  In my area in MA the deer and yotes are all over the place, 20-30/sq mile in some areas.

Best wishes,
Sam

On this site and elsewhere I read: According to some plate-tectonics geologists, New Hampshire is “exotic terrain”—a former slice of the continental crust that once belonged to what is now Africa. It became stuck to the edge of the North American continent during the creation of Pangaea and, like all immigrants, became modified in the process.

How can a lay person figure out which theory is likely to be correct?

A nest the size of a regular orange with the hole the size of nickel in the side. There is a bird flying in and out but too small to see.  The pictures here are too big . This nest is all enclosed.  Thank you

Judith Harding.

Thank you for helping solve this mystery for me.  I found this plant just yesterday growing near a log in upstate NY in a semi mature forest.  I had no idea what it was but am thrilled to have this information. 

Love your story. Wild blackberry patches surround our cabin and each August I enjoy the bloody sport of picking as many as possible for my wife’s jam making… wading thru the bramble, finding the hidden ones, I emerge with scratched arms and a crop which has ranged from 4 to 20 quarts.  Beetles, blue jays and an occasional bear compete for these jewels. The scratches take some explaining but the jam is delicious.

INSTEAD OF SPRAYING FUNGICIDES ON APPLES, WHICH MAKES THEM UNMARKETABLE TO HEALTH CONSCIOUS, ORGANIC PEOPLE, PLEASE FORCE SUPERFICIAL, AESTHETIC FANATICAL CONSUMERS TO ACCEPT THE HARMLESS SCAB AND BUY YOUR HEALTHY, UNSPRAYED APPLES. Please educate them that the scab is harmless and the apple is perfectly fine to eat with the scab. WE don’t pick good looking fruit because its toxic from spraying!  WHO SAYS SCABBED APPLES ARE UNMARKETABLE? -THE PESTICIDE INDUSTRY?

Dave, I read your piece on skulls with more than average interest.  I wrote an article for Northern Woodlands in the summer 2006 issue titled, “Skull Session”, about this bony subject.  I used to teach a high school biology class in which preparing animal skulls was a lab activity, and the kids absolutely loved it!  Back then, we primarily used the “pick and grin then boil” technique and had great success.  I must admit, though, that most of the odoriferous boiling was done at home in my garage over a Coleman stove.

I have used dermistid beetles for shrews and small birds.  They do a very fine job but the odor is something to get used to or not.  My next colony might just have an air vent system that uses nice active dirt as the filter… Set up a little computer fan that turns on a couple of minutes an hour.

Are the apple seeds toxic for animals? I know they give dogs seizures.

Will green cut canes sprout roots?
Thanks.

My father said when he was a kid (1920s), the old-timers called Swallowtails “piss” butterflies because they were often seen puddling around urine puddles in the pastures.

Thanks Rachel.  My family referred to “blackcaps” and as I recall that was the black raspberries, not the true blackberries.  When I was a kid and after our dairy herd was sold, our “night pasture”, about 100 acres, was solid blackberries for a number of years.  One year my father (I guess needing something to do) literally filled a chest freezer with blackberries.  I can’t even guess how many pies we had that year!

I have tied a lot of different methods including the ones you mention, and by far the best I found was what I’ve heard called maceration. It involves a bucket of water with floating bits of yuck sitting under the sink for several months, so it’s not for the faint of heart.  But it works well for the smaller, more delicate skulls.  It is a middle step between manual de-fleshing and the finishing process with the hydrogen peroxide (which also works well). But soaking the skulls ensure that no animal walks off with littler bits, and that the bone doesn’t weaken (like it can with boiling and bleach). The flesh eases off the bone and is largely eaten by bacteria, even in the brain case.  And it gets very, very clean…eventually.  It takes patience and warmish water.

I bury my skulls or a year or two and that takes care of all but bones

Way back in college I earned extra credit in a wildlife course by providing skulls for the college teaching collection. Our method for cleaning was using a mixture of bleach and water and boiling for hours and hours. If memory serves it took most of weekend day to get them cleaned up. Stunk up the entire biology hall but the finished product was nice. Still have a couple that I cleaned for myself.

Dave,

It seems there is so much to say, yet I’m speechless. Fascinating!

Ed

Russell, even better if we can get people to stop planting lawns and put in meadows with nectar sources and larval food plants- then more butterflies

I found a fairly good sized nest under the hood of my propane tank with 5 blue eggs in it today.  The nest is made of straw and feathers.  Do you have any idea what it might be?

Laura, thank you very much for this comment. In response to your post, we followed up with some dragonfly/damselfly experts, and discovered that we had a detail wrong (yikes) - though it’s not quite as you describe. We’ve corrected the essay above, but here’s more detail on what typically happens: the male inserts sperm into the female, they disconnect, and then she lays the eggs. The eggs are fertilized with the stored sperm as they are laid. But fatherhood isn’t a sure thing. If a second male mates with the female before the egg laying, the sperm of the previous male is replaced.