Discovering the world around me.
White-Tailed Deer (Odocoileus virginianus) He stands beside the highway, uncomprehending, as predators flash past at unbelievable speeds. The predators’ eyes are huge and brilliant, shining into the crepuscular darkness, confusing him. 50, 60, 70 miles an hour—a meaningless datum. He has evolved over ten thousand years or more to run and leap, to avoid or […]
Continue reading Wildlife Management?
It’s a sunny day in late October. There’s no breeze to speak of, and most of the leaves have fallen from the trees. A flock of several hundred black birds have landed in the trees in the woods on Owl Acres, and are chattering in a cacophony of sounds. They’re working on the bare twigs, […]
Continue reading A Plague of Visitors
Poison Ivy (Toxicodendron radicans) As we walked through the woods on a cold January day, we came upon a cedar tree with a huge vine taking over one side of the tree. The gray, four-inch thick woody vine climbed up the tree, supporting itself on hairy, dark-brown holdfast growths that anchored it to the cedar. […]
Continue reading Pretty Poison
Brown Marmorated Stink Bug (Halyomorpha halys) Harvest is underway, and the nights are getting colder. All the little creatures, including stink bugs, are looking for someplace to spend the winter. A few have managed to get into the space between the windows and the screens, and one or two have made it all the way […]
Continue reading This Stinks!
Eastern Chipmunks Tamias Striatus We have a bumper crop of black walnuts, and Bryan has cleaned the hulls off two five-gallon buckets full. The shells are very hard, so I crack them on the front porch with a specially made walnut cracker. It works pretty well, but it flings bits of shell and nutmeat all […]
Continue reading Cheeky Little Critters
Red Maple (Acer rubrum) It’s a perfect fall for color this year. The nights have been in the 30s and 40s, the days have been sunny, and it hasn’t rained much. These are ideal conditions for our Autumn Blaze red maple to give us a spectacular show. What makes the leaves turn red, though? Why […]
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White-throated Sparrow (Zonotrichia albicollis) It was an unusually cold, wet spring last May when the white-throated sparrows sailed through on their way to the Canadian woods. The clear whistled song calling “O sweet Canada Canada Canada” if you’re Canadian, or “Sam Peabody Peabody Peabody” if you’re not, rang through the trees, announcing their visit. They […]
Continue reading O Sweet Canada
Tomato Hornworms, Hawkmoths and Parasitic Wasps Early last spring, my sister gave me an heirloom grape tomato plant. I hadn’t done anything about a real garden by then, but had a space next to the front porch that I thought would do. I planted it, and it began to stretch and grow in all directions. […]
Continue reading Monsters in the Garden
Beggar lice. It sticks to everything! Dave’s coat; my hair; my socks, jeans, jacket and sweatshirt, even the strap on my hiking stick. We’ve gone for a walk in the woods on a beautiful autumn day looking for hickory nuts. What we got was 13 hickory nuts and bazillions of beggar lice. The term “beggar […]
Continue reading Aggravation
Coyotes The neighbor’s dog begins barking and howling. What’s up with that? And then we hear it—a jumble of high-pitched yips, barks, cries, snarls. And it sounds fairly close by. Clearly it’s not a pack of dogs. It’s not raccoons fighting. It sounds like coyotes making a kill. Or fighting among themselves. Or whatever coyotes […]
Continue reading The Trickster