Happy Thanksgiving!
Here’s a quick Show-and-Tell of the week’s nearby nature.
My challenge is to Tell each in only one sentence…
2) Frost-flower “blooms” on winged stems of White Crownbeard:
Continue reading “Thanksgiving Show ‘n’ Tell”Today’s Sidewalk Nature:
White Pine Leaf-Drop.
I expected it in October, but it’s here now.
Continue reading “White Pine Leaf-Drop”You’ve heard of shrinking violets? Well, like many introverts, violets can go ballistic.
Nashville yard violets are violet again, and are “shooting” seeds at the same time.
Today was a different kind of June Bug Day: an upside-down kind.
Instead of glossy, green grownups flying over grass, these June beetles are weird, white grubs crawling over streets.
But the weirdest thing is how they crawl. Despite having six serviceable little legs, these larvae travel on their backs, upside down.
“Crawl” is too weak a word. Squoonch is better. The grubs squoonch, undulate, and wriggle forward while their feet point at the sky.
The sky, meanwhile, is raining, which is why these teenagers leave their underground homes to squoonch somewhere less wet.
How do they do it?
With “ambulatory bristles.”
Isn’t that a wonderful phrase?
Stiff hairs on the outside, plus strong muscles on the inside get the grubs where they wish to go.
But why do they do it?
Why not walk on . . . ambulatory legs?
No other grubs choose bristles over feet.
Please click the Play symbol to watch 5 seconds of Squoonching:
Continue reading “June Bug Day, Upside-Down”
(A Cautionary Tale in Second Person)
Here’s what you wonder:
if Kousa (Japanese) dogwoods evolved in East Asia with wildlife there, what eats Kousa fruit here?
Because you already know that Nashville butterflies and moths can’t use Kousa leaves as caterpillar food.
And because you now suspect that the fruit piling up under neighborhood Kousa trees will keep piling up, uneaten.
The fruits looks like round, warty raspberries but with long, cherry stems.
So, you watch and learn that:
*squirrels ignore them,
and
*birds ignore them.
So, you ask the Internet and learn that:
*monkeys were the main disperser in the native range,
and
*people can also eat the fruit.
Do you hear what I hear?
Cicadas: morning, noon, and (almost) night.
These are the Dog Day cicadas: the annual species who show up every year.
Their little husks in the yard and their big songs in the trees are signs of high summer, and to me, of Home.
But more importantly, they are a sign that one bit of our world is working as it should.
If you don’t hear what I hear, can you go out and try? Listen for the buzzes and grindings and trills where the trees are: mature, native trees like Sugar maples, elms, red-cedars.
For maximum effect, listen at dusk on a Greenway or near some woods, or under fat hackberries in a shady neighborhood, where the combined cicada volume can almost rattle your bones. We’re talking Spinal Tap “eleven.”
Yesterday was another June bug Day!
Every year, our neighbor’s treeless lawn proves good for something: June bugs. Hundreds of dark blurs zoom around us in bright sun, just a foot or two above the grass. They fly too fast to ID or catch, but when they land, they’ll crawl on a finger and take a ride.
Continue reading “June Bug Day”
I found the first skink hanging by his tail, twisting and paddling an inch above the floor. He was caught in a spiderweb underneath a chair, and he was just a baby.
Two days later, I found another baby skink under another chair. This one was still ambulatory but slow, with legs and tail wrapped in fluffs of webbing.
Both chairs sit inside my screened porch: where spiders are expected, but where skinks are not.
Skink #1, I thought, was a fluke.
But after skink #2, I started looking in earnest for ways to prevent a skink #3.
Because—and let me paraphrase a line from The Importance of Being Earnest:
To lose one skink to a spiderweb is unfortunate: to lose two looks like carelessness.
So, I took care.
Continue reading “Fishing for Skink”
Are you hearing awkward screams lately? From the sky, I mean. These are the screams I’ve been waiting for. Awkward hawk screams are a Sign of the Season.
Every summer, the Red-tailed Hawks who hunt the neighborhood train at least one baby to hunt. And even though the baby is already the size of his parents, his call is not.
Mom and Dad do the Scary Hawk Scream familiar from movie soundtracks: the raspy but piercing KEEEEEEEEE-ARR that fills the sky for about two seconds. This, I hear year-round when Red-tails soar overhead.
Here’s a quick sample:
Keeled scales! Finally, in real life and not just in pictures, I meet snake scales so up-close-and-personal, I not only see them, I feel them.
The snake let me touch, and then run a forefinger down the curving keyboard of scales.
Not smooth, not rough.
Pebbly.
Dry.
Warm from the sun.
SIDEWALK NATURE 