This week in the woods, we found a young spring peeper – perhaps two centimeters wide – crossing a trail by a wetlands. If you’re out at twilight, you may hear peepers now, although not in the thousand-voice choruses that fill the wetlands with sound on April nights. The reason for their autumnal calls – known as the “fall echo” – aren’t fully understood, but they’re likely a side effect of male peepers’ bodies preparing for spring, so that they can emerge from hibernation ready to mate. Here’s an article about the fall echo by Michael Caduto from our Outside Story archive.
Many red maples are showing fall foliage, and if you inspect their leaves, you’ll see that the color starts at the tips and works inward to the stem. The reason for the retreating green is that the trees are pulling back nutrients into their stems, and as part of that seasonal change, ending their production of chlorophyll. However, the reason for the red pigmentation, which the trees actively produce this time of year, is less well understood.
Have you noticed that many late-season monarch butterflies tend to look especially red? An example is this just-emerged male monarch, which we found still drying his wings. As Rachel Sargent Mirus notes in this Outside Story essay, intense red coloration appears to be an indicator of the monarch’s health. “Redder butterflies, in addition to being stronger flyers, live longer, have more fat reserves, and attract more mates,” Mirus writes. These seem like especially valuable qualities for the generation of monarchs that are leaving our region now and starting the long, perilous flight to Mexico.
Finally, although red-breasted nuthatches are year-round residents of our region, we rarely see them except in fall and winter, when they’ve joined mixed flocks with other birds such as chickadees. If you look closely at this photo, you’ll see the nuthatch has snagged a seed – or maybe it’s an insect cocoon?
What have you noticed in the woods this week? Submit a recent photo for possible inclusion in our monthly online Reader Photo Gallery.