July 30 Fuzzy Owl Feather

There's no way for me to know for sure, but I think this is a feather from a barred owl, judging by it fluff content, the white and brown stripes, and the length of 5 inches. If it's a downy feather, meaning the short warmer feathers close to a bird's body, then I suppose it could be from a hawk. But, I have heard young barred owls screeching to each on several nights recently (which sounds terrifying, like a screaming cat, if cat's could scream, or a demon maybe) and I heard an adult hooting this morning very close to this spot close to Lake Mendota in the Lakeshore Preserve. Other birds I heard this morning were an indigo bunting, serenading in the open to a female nearby; a wood thrush, still stinging the last few phrases of its morning song, and a few raucous goldfinches. Without a cloud in the sky, the lake was shimmering with sun, and the shimmer reflected up on sugar maple leaves as I ran back out to the lakeshore path.  

July 29 Rosinweed Moon

We were out harvesting vegetables from our garden tonight when the moon suddenly appeared, 99% full. With a little sunlight left, I thought a view of the moon through flowers might be nice. The tallest ones around were these rosinweeds (Silphium integrifolium) which are another close cousin of cup plants and compass plants. They grow on tall stalks with opposite leaves that are smaller than cup plant leaves but still 4 or 5 inches long. A favorite wildlife plant, rosinweed flowers are good for bees, flies, butterflies, sparrows, redpolls, and the two goldfinches I saw balancing on these breezy stalks a few minutes before. This moon wasn't quite full and rose about an hour before sunset, so over the next few days, watch for a big moon rising at or just after dark.

July 28 Darting Dashers

At the end of the afternoon, I found myself at Vilas Park and went down to the edge of Lake Wingra to watch summer. The sun was blinding, but I tried to look out with bare eyes at dragonflies making their rounds over the lily pads, and watch for birds calling from the cattails. A dragonfly landed on this piece of sedge for just a second before darting off. I waited. After some (many) minutes of research, I can confidently say this is a male blue dasher dragonfly. AKA Pachydiplax longipennis, this skimmer family dragonfly has touching green eyes, is only 2 inches long, and has a powder blue tail with black tip at the very end. While the more common darner family almost never seem to stop and rest, it is common for skimmer dragonflies to perch frequently. However, the blue dasher does mate in midair.

July 27 Osprey and Nest on Mysterious Tower

Today I was again exploring South Madison and heard a far away chirping noise that I figured for a bird. I looked around for a minute and to my surprise saw a large raptor near the top of a tower I have never seen before. When I zoomed in with the camera, I found the second bird, and then realized they are nesting on the platform. These are excellent fisherbirds, the osprey (Pandion haliaetus). At 22 inches long and a 5-6 foot wingspan, osprey are almost the size of bald eagles. They fly with their wings slightly bent at the middle, which gives them the distinct shape of the letter "m" when airborne. As I mentioned, they are great at fishing and will dive underwater to catch live fish. Then they fly with the fish pointed straight ahead to reduce wind drag. Smart! This mysterious tower is somewhere a quarter mile northwest of the St. Vinny's on Park Street, so if it's not actually in the Arboretum, it's very close. I'll have to go and see if there are young with these parents later. So many cool birds on tall human-made structures.

July 26 Michigan Lilies

The prairie continues to shine at the Nature Center, but today I took a look at these michigan lilies (Lilium michiganense). Not to be confused with the turk's cap lily (Lilium superbum), which is a different species, these tall orange flowers with 6 maroon-spotted tepals and 6 long curling stamens with dark oblong anthers will grow in small patches in wet prairie and moist hardwood openings. You can easily tell it apart from the wood lily, which has upright flowers. More difficult is knowing it from turk's cap lily, which has stamens that drop more straight down from the center of the flower and dark anthers at the ends which are longer than a half inch. Finally, superbum is very rare in Wisconsin, only growing in places where it has been introduced.

July 25 Slender Spreadwing Soiree

After a very successful work party this morning clearing invasive shrubs at the Arboretum, about a dozen of us team leaders went in search of dragonflies at Teal Pond. We saw plenty of twelve-spotted skimmers, both perching and buzzing the lake, and male and female white-faced meadowhawks soaking up the sun close to shore. We were just about to head to the marsh when we noticed this pair of damselflies hanging off the cattails. While they look an awful lot like dragonflies, one key difference is that the wings are only spread to a 45 degree angle, not straight across like a dragonfly at rest. Most damselflies hold their wings over their back at rest, except for the spreadwing family. These are slender spreadwings (Lestes rectangularis) with long abdomen, big bright blue eyes, and a disconnected yellow stripe across the back. So what's going on here? The male has four appendages at the end of his tail that he will grasp the female with at her mesothoracic plates. This is a courting stage, and she is deciding whether he is worth copulating with, by the feel and size of those four appendages. If she says yes, she will signal with a bend and then curve here abdomen up to his second abdominal to receive sperm. That move is called the wheel position. The male will then accompany her to lay the eggs either into a plant stem or directly into the water. An exciting dance for sure, head to your nearest small body of water to see damsels and dragons finding summer romance.

July 24 Prairie Fireworks

The prairie danced in the breeze today at the Nature Center under mostly blue skies. I found a small patch of four purple coneflowers, with those perfect orange domes atop their whorl of purple florets. I wanted a view with a lot of sky and so looked from the ground up. I saw queen anne's lace swaying gently at several heights, yellow coneflowers twirling above, and black-eyed susans and daisy flebanes rounding out the understory. All of these are small explosions of color in the sky, curving and bending with the light, singing and breathing with the wind.

July 23 A House Wren Scolding

Today at the Nature Center, I walked close to a nesting box and looked and listened for young birds inside. Then I heard a loud rattling call the was a clear warning sign from this most tiny bird. It's the mother house wren (Troglodytes aedon). At the Eagle Heights gardens, there are many very small basket birdhouses that are meant to fit these four and a half inch birds. I never saw them in my hometown in Illinois growing up but this year in Madison I see or hear them most days in front yards as I bike through town in the mornings. These 11 gram birds are impressively widespread, living from Buenos Aires to Calgary. Their songs are also incredible, with several notes and dozens of individual pulses in a rattling, chattering, ramble that they will sometimes sing on repeat. I have certainly learned how aggressive they can be in defending their nest cavities. Even in the forested areas of the Lakeshore Preserve, I have seen a female wren come out of her cavity fifty feet above me and yell for me to keep walking. This mother continued scolding me until I was around the corner and out of sight. 

July 22 Prairie Bursting

It was a clear blue sky without clouds for the first time in as long as I can remember today at the Nature Center. The cup plants have all put out flowers which are the tallest colors on the horizon. Yellow coneflowers are everywhere, twirling in the wind like ladies dancing with long skirts. There is bee balm in the photo, and the first grass seeds have set out, getting ready to let go onto the wind. The prairie has definitely come a long way since it was burned off in the middle of March. Three months, ample rain, and mostly average temperatures have worked to grow this incredible landscape, with just as much underground biomass in its root systems and groundhogs as you can see here above ground. Excellent.

July 21 Stinkhorn Sprouts

After a good dose of rain and a weekend free of trampling feet, the lawn at Aldo Leopold Nature Center has burst with mushrooms of all sorts. Perhaps the most eye-catching are these stinkhorns, with their orange stalks and caps covered with brown slime. Though I’m no mushroom expert, I think these stinkhorns are devil’s stinkhorns (Phallus rubicundus) because they have a distinguishable cap, unlike the similar-looking elegant stinkhorns (Mutinus elegansi). Both have a slimy brown spore mass on the top, which is dispersed by feasting flies. The range of devil’s stinkhorn in the United States used to be limited to the south, but it has made its way to the northeast and midwest in transported mulch. Indeed, these individuals were sprouting near a pile of wood chips. Apparently many gardeners lament the arrival of such sprouting specimens, but I think they’ll provide a good look into the world of fascinating fungi for visitors to the nature center.

July 20 Rainbow in the Rain

Tonight I again traveled to south Madison for a meeting and just after arriving at my destination, the sky opened up for fifteen minutes of heavy downpour. The sun peered out from behind the storm but the rain kept falling and shimmered in the light as a low rainbow appeared over the eastern horizon. This was magical and ephemeral, the crystals of water and bow of colors fading away in what felt like minutes to me, but was probably forty-five seconds. For those of us living in humid continental climates, moments like these are our reward for bearing the heat.

July 19 Bee on Bee Balm

At Aldo Leopold Nature Center, we call these pizza flowers. Squeeze one, then smell your hand, and you will get a great whiff of oregano. If you're a tea drinker, maybe you'll smell Earl Grey. Either way, this plant is called Bee Balm and Wild Bergamot. Always covered in bumblebees, patches of these showy lavender flowers brighten up the prairie with a buzz of activity. Monarda fistulosa has opposite leaves and square, hollow stems, which are common features of mint family plants. After going to seed in the fall, the heads darken and remain vertical through the winter, helping keep texture for the prairie landscape in the dormant season. These spread vigorously through slender rhizome roots, so if you plant them in your yard, expect them to multiply.

July 18 Sunny Wingra Creek

This is a view of Wingra Creek from the bridge on Park Street. The creek looked beautiful today with the greens of lilypads and cottonwood leaves set against the deep blue of sky and water. Before the 1920s, Wingra Creek didn't really exist. Lake Wingra slowly drained through a wide series of wetlands, including Gardner Marsh in the Arboretum, on its way to Monona Lake. Then in the 1920s the Lake Forest Land Company built the levee - now Arboretum Drive - and dredged the creek channel, effectively directing most of Lake Wingra's flow into the newly dug creek. Before 1800, there were 1500 acres of wetland in the Lake's watershed and now there are 210 left. As south Madison became more developed, the need for the dam at the head of the creek arose to control flooding of the artificial channel. This year, the City of Madison completed a three part project to naturalize Wingra Creek's channel and restore native vegetation to its banks. It looks pretty good, and next the City and the Friends of Lake Wingra are working to begin reducing the major contaminants that have killed the waters of the lake and creek. These are road salt, phosphorous from plants, and sediment, all of which get to the lake from stormwater sewer outflow.  

July 17 Sidewalk Cicada

This is a dogday cicada, aka Tibicen canicularis. I found this one on the sidewalk, not moving, and not singing the high-pitched droning note that males have begun singing now that the July heat has settled on Madison and the afternoon light is waning every so slightly. These cicadas, when adult, emerge every year and in late summer will insert eggs directly into tree twigs. The nymphs though will hatch and then burrow into the ground where they live for four to eight years before returning to the light as an adult cicada. They produce the high electrical hum sound by vibrating tymbals on the sides of their abdomen which resonate into a cavity and amplify sound outward. The sound is impressive and tells that the dogdays of summer are here.

July 16 Imptatiens Flowers

On our way up the garden today we saw that orange jewelweed plants have started flowering in the Lakeshore Preserve. Impatiens capensis seedlings carpeted the forest floor during the weeks right after spring ephemerals returned to dormancy, and since then many jewelweeds have grown to four and five feet tall. Now there are just a few yellow flowers scattered between many plants, but soon each plant is likely to have an array of flowers, and forest areas with wet soils and lakeshores and marshes will have dense yellow and green where impatiens abounds. Later in September when the seeds are formed, go and touch a few of them to learn why these plants are in the touch-me-not family! It's safe, don't worry.

July 15 Quick Pickling Swiss Chard

With our swiss chard plants ever-growing, we decided to start testing the pickling tradition, first with the refrigerator variety. We packed stems into the jars and added garlic and black pepper, then filled the jars with equal parts water and white vinegar. This is a very loose recipe and we did not so much as cook the stems for a few minutes, which would probably improve the pickle texture and flavor. But those serious pickling skills, with hot water baths and sterile lids and such, will come later. I got to wondering is swiss chard is even from Switzerland and it turns out that it's not. Beta vulgaris was given that scientific name by Swiss botanist and it has taken the name of swiss chard even though it originated in Sicily. It was revered by the ancient Greeks for its health effects, and prized by Mediterranean cooks for the flavor it can bring to soups. Over the years, English speakers have referred to it as white beet, strawberry spinach, sea kale beet, spinach beet, Sicilian beet, Chilian beet, Roman kale, and silverbeet. Hopefully these chard pickles turn out tasty, which would be good news since they'll likely be the worst pickles of the season.  

July 14 Life Abounds in Milkweed Patch

I was riding home from South Madison this evening when I stopped to admire these beauties out in front of the Catholic Multicultural Center. There are three different insects enjoying these milkweed flowers all at once. Monarch butterfly, red milkweed beetles (Tetraopes tetrophthalmus), and a small dark fly at bottom right that I can't identify from the picture. In the surrounding half mile from this plant, there are many native plantings, but all are very tiny compared to prairie and savanna habitat that existed here before European conquest. Nevertheless, this small group of a dozen milkweeds and other plants is playing its role as pollinator habitat and ecosystem connection for these important insects, which play the role of important food source for larger animals. Native plantings on private property is one of the foundation stones of Leopold's land ethic, and this is an example of its potential success.

July 13 Lake Wingra Under Clouds

I was out bicycling tonight and thought I may get caught in a big storm as huge clouds moved across the northern sky. I bought some groceries and on my way home past Lake Wingra, the storm clouds unfurled in my direction and began consuming the horizon. This is the view at just 6:05 PM, so the clouds were heavy and dark. It has been an interesting few weeks to watch clouds and seems like almost every day brings the threat of a thunderstorm. I rode home and a little rain fell for a while, but no thunder or lightning followed. Drat! Just missed a good storm tonight.

July 12 Labor Fruits (& Vegetables)

What an exciting day at the Eagle Heights garden. We lifted out carrots and radishes and one potato plant worth of potatoes. Our three swiss chard plants are completely unphased by the sun and heat, and a few onions and beets were big enough to eat this week. We also found our squash plants had grown by 50% and are trying to take over space from some pepper plants and the garden plants. Had to slice off a few stems and flowers to keep them under control. Digging root vegetables out of the ground is like finding gold. It's exciting to pull a quarter pound carrot out not having any idea of its size. We are first time vegetable growers this year and are quickly realizing how much food we can grown in 400 square feet. With many green beans and beets and more radishes and chard to come, it seems as though we better learn to preserve food soon or much of it will go uneaten.

July 11 Mama Bluebird

One bluebird pair has an active nest with at least two hatched chicks and maybe one more to come. After many months of house sparrow nest removal from most of the nest boxes at the Nature Center, it's nice to see a bluebird pair finally move in. The parents seem to stay hidden most of the time but today I caught the mom gathering grubs for feeding time. The nestlings will fledge after just three weeks, so they grow fast. Bluebirds will typically have multiple broods per year, and the first set of offspring are off on their own once  they leave the nest. But if this mom lays more eggs in August those chicks will likely stay with the parents during migration and then over the winter. I think the blue in the female's tail is one of the best colors of summer.

July 10 Blue Jay Fluff

I was teaching a class on insects today at the Nature Center when my class found this deceased blue jay (Cyanocitta cristata) on the path in a forest of maple, ash, and basswood. It must have been a very recent death because the jay still has all of its meat and there was a reported coyote sighting here just a few days ago. However, there were already a mouthful of maggots shifting around morbidly in this bird's beak. Perhaps it died of an illness or infection. I have tried to take many pictures of blue jays and usually they fly far away as soon as they know I am watching them. As members of the Corvid family they are intelligent birds and will cache a variety of nuts, especially their favorite acorns, in tree cracks and crevices. They have a wide variety of vocalizations, including their mating call which sounds like a water pump handle moving up and down. They are also excellent at mimicking other birds and will flock up for spring and fall migrations. We hear blue jays at the Nature Center year round and their noisy chatter is a warm sound on a dark January afternoon. 

July 9 Goslings Grown Up

From their small beginnings in April, the canada geese family at the Leopold Nature Center have now grown their adult plumage and are very nearly full size. The 13 goslings seen back on June 6 have now diminished to 10, which to me seems like a great success for these two geese parents. Back in the early 1900s, canada geese in central North America were almost hunted to extirpation, but with outlawed hunting and their ability to thrive in human-made environments, their are now over 5 million canada geese in North America, with several subspecies in various regions of Canada and the U.S. The Nature Center geese are the kind that can eat domesticated grasses right off the lawn, as well as duckweed on the top of the pond. Is there any vegetation they can't eat? They're great to have around since kids can see them from just a few feet away, but without many predators and so many safe lawn spaces to live on, how many geese will we have in another twenty years?

July 8 Cranes in the Tree Museum

I was at the Arboretum this afternoon for a meeting and on my bike ride north towards Mills Street I stopped and watched as a sandhill crane pair stalked through the edge of Longenecker Gardens looking for insects and toads to eat. Sandhills have been inconspicuous lately, off raising their colts who are likely almost ready to practice flying now. This pair did not have any young, but I noticed their feathers are a tawny red now, as opposed to the solid grey color they were back in April. Or maybe some cranes are always red and I just didn't notice back in spring. It was funny to see the cranes marching right through Longenecker doing their best turkey impression. Then again they don't seem to be afraid of human presence, as long as you move slowly and stay about thirty feet away.

July 7 Moth on Creeper

I was on a slow extended adventure in the Lakeshore Preserve this afternoon and spent a long time admiring the compass plants and butterfly weed and coneflowers in the Biocore Prairie. I stepped off trail for a moment towards the forest for a look around, and noticed this inch-wide moth on a chewed up virginia creeper leaf. The moth sat stone still, not outwardly bothered by my picture taking. Most moths are noctural so it is likely that this one was "sleeping" the afternoon away. A fast search in my insects of the northwoods guide tells me this is a large lace-border moth (Scopula limboundata), recognized by the lacy border pattern on the hindwings and the three wavy tan lines running through the wings. Wavy lines are a marker of the inchworm family, the Geometridae. 

July 6 Rain Garden Beauties

Today I was traveling in South Madison and noticed a small native planting at the edge of the Village Mall parking lot. Closer inspection revealed these prairie blazing stars, also known as thick-spike gay-feather and Liatris pyncostachya. With dozens of purple flowers growing in from the top down on a long spike, blazing stars are one of the most recognizable late summer flowers on our prairie. But in this instance, they have been planted alongside sedges in a low island, intended to soak up rainwater from a parking lot of 300 spaces. An incredibly beautiful addition to any garden or small urban space, blazing stars are also loved by bees, flies, and other pollinating insects.

July 5 Full Size Hickory Nuts

From Illinois to Wisconsin, hickory nuts have grown to their full size. Shagbark hickory (Carya ovata) is a common native to southern Wisconsin and has played an important role on savanna ecosystems for a long time. You can recognize the tree by large leaves which are usually 5 and sometimes 7 per leaflet. Also its shaggy bark that curls away from the tree is a dead giveaway. If you still can't identify, then look for two or three green fruits in midsummer, and nutshells in fall as squirrels feast on the ripe nuts. In winter, look for a tree with curvy alternate branches and extremely large buds. The nuts are edible and supposedly taste a whole lot better than acorns, so maybe try making a hickory nut snack this September if you have some in your yard or nearby.

July 4 Inside the Compass

I stopped while walking through the prairie today to peer deep inside a compass plant flower. Silphium laciniatum typically grows to 7 feet tall, which this one has already achieved. The basal leaves are gigantic, at least a foot long, and have deep cuts between long lobes. Basal and midstem leaves are coarse like sandpaper, and tend to orient themselves vertically in a north-south direction, which helps them avoid the heat of the midday sun. Story goes that this is why the European conquerors named it compass plant. I looked at several compass leaves and saw that today they are oriented every which way, but the majority are standing almost straight up, not intending to capture full sun any longer. Today's bright sun illuminated the flower disk with all of those five-pointed disk florets with the windy stigmas reaching out for pollination. 

July 3 Cup Plants at Ten Feet

The prairie at Aldo Leopold Nature Center continues to grow and add more colors. Cup plants are still stretching towards the sky but have not opened their flowers yet. Next to them are the yellows of the compass plants, which are also rapidly gaining heights over my head. This week bee balm is in bloom along with a small patch of michigan lilies, many brown-eyed susans, and the first yellow coneflowers are growing petals. Also, some of the shorter grasses are  starting to seed.

July 2 Peregrine Falcon

Look! It's the fastest animal above earth! Did you know? There are peregrine falcons in Madison, and they live on the smokestacks on the MG&E plant just east of the capitol on the isthmus. This is the second time I have seen these birds this year and this time both were very active. I assume it is a mating pair of falcons and I am not sure but it looks like they have a nesting box at the top of a platform near the middle of the four stacks. Peregrine falcons (Falco peregrinus) are indeed earth's fastest animal, flying at speeds of up to 220 miles per hour in a direct dive while hunting for their only prey, other birds. What does this mean for the daydreaming pigeon or mourning dove? Haha. Peregrines ball up their flexible feet and deliver a knockout blow to a bird in flight, then grab it out of midair and take it to the highest nearby perch (cliff, skyscraper, smokestack) and use its curved beak to tear and swallow. The name peregrine means wanderer, as this falcon can be found on every continent in the world. How lucky we are to have them right here in Madison. 

July 1 Half Summer Moon

Tonight we spent another night in the garden, tending to weeds and harvests of greens. Just as we were getting ready to leave, we noticed the full moon rising over a line of pine trees. This month's moon is known by many as the half-summer moon, which seems like a warning to us that the cold is approaching soon. But we won't worry, since the summer solstice was a mere 11 days ago, and school-goers still have a solid 2 months of summer vacation! As the next 2 weeks pass, we'll watch this moon wane, with darkness slowly gaining from right to left. After a night of a new moon, we then get to see next month's wild ricing moon wax for 2 weeks, with light gaining from right to left until that moon is full. By then, we'll still be tending to weeds and harvests!

June 30 Venus and Jupiter

I'm amazed at the ability of astronomers to predict celestial happenings, which always seem to surprise me. We had noticed Jupiter and Venus sharing the same patch of sky for at least a month now but paid less attention to the fact that they were getting closer and closer to each other. Tonight, the planets were in their closest conjunction until August of next year. A conjunction describes what we observe from Earth to be the close approach of other celestial objects to each other. Of course, Jupiter and Venus are not actually close to each other in the sky at all, and they're traveling through space at much different rates. Though we missed the time of closest conjunction tonight (right after sunset), we were still happy to remember to head outside and look to the sky to see Jupiter and Venus in (almost) the same place.

June 29 Storm Winds

Tonight after dinner we noticed the wind picking up and large cumulus anvils towering over the street. I went out to see and noticed this patch of yard flowers heaving back and forth. I saw the impressions of the flowers and then wondered what these plants are. Turns out that it's creeping bellflower, a vigorous invasive species that in Wisconsin is listed as a "restricted invasive plant." It grows quickly and one plant produces 15,000 seeds a year. Campanula rapunculoides is a perennial and it can regrow from even the tiniest piece of root, which are usually 18 inches long. Like many grasses, they grow rhizomatically, meaning it can grow a new plant by sprouting from its roots. While this is a gorgeous flower that adds a lot of nice color in early summer, its best to pull of the flower heads before they go to seed, probably by late August.

June 28 First Monarchs Fade

I was leading a tour of the Arboretum's Grady Tract today and a light rain fell as our small group admired flowers and grasses on our way to Greene Prairie. An eastern towhee said hello during our return walk and then we almost stepped on this monarch that was positioned sideways on a leaf in the middle of the trail. It did not fly out of the way and as I moved in for a picture, I could tell it was not going to move anymore. It's orange fading to gray, it's the end of the first generation of Wisconsin monarchs this summer. Or perhaps this butterfly hatched somewhere in Arkansas and once fully grown finished its parents' migration route and ended up here. Either way I hope it laid eggs to add to the next generation that will be flitting around later in the summer.

June 27 Leadplant Flowering

Another member of the pea family, leadplant (Amorpha canescens), has bloomed in local prairies, joining its cousins like lupine and indigo in the parade of flowers. Its soft compound leaves set this plant apart from many others this time of year, even before the bright purple flowers arrive. Today leadplant is indicative of a quality prairie. However, to the southwestern Wisconsin miners who named this plant, it was suggested to mark the presence of lead ore deposits. I haven’t heard any stories of how accurate that turned out to be. But as we appreciate the leadplant’s flowers today, it’s fun to imaging the excitement that might have arisen over the discovery of a leadplant many years ago.

June 26 A Curious Caterpillar

This is the white-marked tussock moth caterpillar! of the Lymantridae family, cousin of the infamous gypsy moth. Orgyia leucostigma is about two inches long from fuzzy tan tail to fuzzy black antennae hairs, with the four light-colored puffs on its back followed by two red dots with an amazing array of side hairs sprouting all over. There are many reports that the hairs may cause a reaction if touched by humans, but I didn't try touching this one. The adult moth of this species is extremely bland, just a tan and brown, and they don't have mouth parts and so don't eat anything. The females don't even have wings: they simply climb on their cocoons, send out pheromones, mate shortly, and lay their eggs right on the empty cocoon before dying. The caterpillars are lively though, and their curious colors are a lot of fun if you can find one.

June 25 Insect Trails

Riding my bike past the WARF building tonight I noticed this interesting light display on one of the gigantic spotlights that lights up this 14 story building. As Madison grows, the intensity of light pollution in the city is likely to grow as well. There are several of these lights pointed directly up at the WARF building, which means a lot of the light is going directly into our night sky. Anyway, it's a cool spot to watch moths zooming around, and in reading about why insects are attracted to and will continuously fly into artificial (and fire) light for hours, I found that insect scientists' best theories all have holes. I do appreciate the artwork that comes from the insect-to-light attraction, but have also read that when city lights are on all night, thousands upon thousands of moths and other insects die from burning, crashing into the light repeatedly, or exhaustion from circling it. Does the rest of nature gorge on the dead moths and get the nutrients it would have eaten over a longer period of time anyway? Or have moths declined in urban areas over the past fifty years to the point where the food chain has shifted and some moth-eating species are gone from our cities? 

June 24 New Trail in D.C.

Our project in Washington D.C. this week was to reroute just under 200 feet of the Cabin John trail up on the hillside out of the floodplain, where it is beginning to erode dangerously. At first, we considered moving the tree in the top picture to make way for the trail, and started cutting 5 feet from the top with a crosscut saw. But as we moved stones and sand from the root ball above the stump, we saw there was just enough space to put the trail cozily between the down tree and the pile of stone above. The stones closer to the camera in the top photo nearly begged us to rearrange them into two easy steps, and so we did just that. In five days we cut in the new trail and disguised the old one enough that it is not only no longer walkable, but also not recognizable either. 

June 23 Sunning Snake

I am in Washington, D.C. this week to train more SCA crew leaders and working in a county park called Cabin John. Walking along the Cabin John Creek this morning we saw this snake sunning just off the trail and got wildly excited about possibly seeing a new species! Looking at pictures later was a disappointment: turns out this is most likely just an eastern garter snake (Thamnophis sirtalis). Just an eastern garter snake! OK yes they are very common but if you catch them during mating season between March and May, you might just see a breeding ball of several hundred snakes, all slithering around wildly. I'd like to see that someday. Also worth noting, above this snake is an odd bamboo forest about 20 feet tall and 100 feet long down the trail. We thought that someone living uphill from the creek planted bamboo and it has made its way down to its present wet floodplain where it is thriving.