Bluegills, Satellites, and Sneakers

Ask any angler what was their first catch and, nine times out of ten, the answer will be "bluegill". Bluegills are perfect pan fish. Small enough for a kid to handle, aggressive enough to bite on any bait, and abundant as anything that swims. They are also very scrappy at the other end of the line. There is a whole subculture of fly-fishers whose art is devoted to the deception of bluegills. The local sporting goods shop sells more artificial flies designed for bluegills than for trout. Trout in this area are fading aristocrats; the last local population of native brook trout vanished when the town of Reston was constructed and the last self-sustaining population of brown trout is in danger from a planned highway. Bluegills and their many cousins, however, proliferate in any body of water bigger than a a wading pool. I have netted bluegills from a golf course pond no bigger than an average suburban bathroom.



Bluegills are are related to the perches and are members of the family Centrarchidae, which includes large- and small-mouth bass. Centrarchids are an ancient North American speciality; found coast-to-coast and from Mexico to above the Arctic Circle. They have survived the dinosaurs and have been transplanted by humans to all parts of the globe. Bluegills (and their cousins the basses) are native to the Mississippi River drainage system and were brought to the Atlantic rivers in the late 19th century. Bass were taken to California in the water tenders of steam locomotives almost as soon as the Golden Spike was driven. Now that the Potomac has been cleaned up, thanks to gazillions of your tax dollars (thanks!)and the introduction of an aquatic weed that thrives in polluted water, it has become a major stop on the Pro Bass Fishing Tour. Yes, there are professional bass anglers. One of the cable channels carries pro-bassin' programs. I guess it's entertainment, but watching someone else fish is slightly more boring than watching paint dry.

Bluegills are colonial breeders, meaning all the bluegills in the pond will be nesting at the same time. From about late June until now, if you haunt ponds, lakes, slow moving creeks, and other assorted wetland areas, you will see what looks like a series of small bomb craters lining the banks in water about a foot or so deep and going out into deeper water. These are bluegill nests. Given the limited area for nesting, competition is fierce. Males stake out hexagonal territories, build a round depression in the bottom, and stand guard with all their breeding colors showing. A bluegill in breeding fettle is as pretty as any exotic fish from the rain forests that you may see in the local aquarium store. Males build and guard their nests fiercely; they will attack anything encroaching into their territory and a small lure trolled near the surface is sure to get a strike. Females flit from nest to nest, sizing up the males and deigning to lay a few eggs in whatever nest whose male strikes their fancy. One female can produce up to 50,000 eggs, but she will distribute them around several nests, mating with several males. A single nest can hold up to the same number of eggs produced by a single female, so the numbers even out. Eggs hatch in about a week, and the young spend their first year or so hiding in weeds or submerged brush. Two- and three-year olds begin breeding and five-year old bluegills are rare. Nests near the center of the colony are preferred and males compete for them, the bigger guys ousting the smaller ones. Nests on the edges are more heavily preyed upon by catfish and surprisingly, snails, which may account for up to half the egg losses. A closely related sunfish, the pumkinseed, is a solitary nester. Pumkinseeds feed on snails and may cruise around the bluegill colony hoping to pick up a quick snack.

It may seem that the big alpha males have all the advantages in colonial nesting, but they are not alone in the sweepstakes to get their genes out to the next generation. Aside from other alpha males constantly patrolling the colony, hoping to take over an established nest(any male you catch will be almost instantly replaced), two other male types; satellites and sneakers, also lurk the shallows. Satellites are males, but with female coloration and some their behaviors. When a couple begin to go into their breeding behavior, a satellite will come into the nest and join in, mimicking the female. This is the stuff of Penthouse Letters for the alpha male and he happily and blindly sets forth. When the real female releases her eggs and the alpha male begins to fertilize them, the satellite also releases a cloud of milt to mix in. Up to half the eggs in a nest may be fathered by satellites. Unless the sneakers get into the act as well. Sneakers are dwarf males, hanging around the edges of territories, looking inconspicuous, and staying out of trouble. At the right moment, a sneaker will dash in upon the happy couple, release his milt, and be gone before the alpha male realizes what's happening.

Bluegill population genetics are such that neither satellites nor sneakers will ever get too abundant; both populations are dependent, almost parasitic on a good number of territorial alpha males who stake out territories and defend the nests, eggs, and young. Even so, next time you take a kid fishing, don't forget to ask your catch "Who's your daddy?"

Happy Birthday, Carl Linnaeus, the Man Who Saved the Loch Ness Monster

This year (June actually) marks the 300th anniversary of the birth of Carl Linnaeus, the Swedish botanist who invented the system of biological nomenclature. An excellent article by David Quammen on the man and his achievement (Quammen calls him the first "information architect") may be found in the June, 2007 National Geographic.

Without going into the detail so well described in the Geographic article, let me present, for your amusement, a couple of stories told me by a taxonomist and member of the Linnean Society.

It seems that Carl was either a) possessed of an extremely dry wit, or b) a cranky old fusspot. The Norway rat (actually from the steppes of central Asia) was named Rattus norvegicus by Linnaeus because, as a Swede, he despised Norwegians. He must really have had it in for Germans since the German cockroach (Blatella germanicus) is really from tropical west Africa.

Linnaeus named both the house mouse (Mus musculus) and the blue whale (Balaenoptera musculus). Here we have one of the smallest of mammals and the largest creature who ever lived, both sharing a name. One wonders why...perhaps a joke? "Hey Sven, go get me a musculus"; leaving poor Sven to wonder if he needs a jar or a harpoon.

Linnaeus' legacy is the orderly system of naming living things (he tried it for minerals, but gave it up as way too complex). The foundation of the system is the genus and species. All living things must be named according to the rules set forth by the rules of nomenclature. Plants must be described in a scholarly journal in Latin, and a specimen, called the type specimen, must be deposited in an accredited institution. The type and associated description ultimately are what all members of that species are measured against when taxonomists try to determine what ever it is they may have in hand. The rules for animals are pretty much the same with the exceptions that the description need not be in Latin, and the type specimen may be a part or even a photograph of the animal. If you discover a new species, you get to name it. Linnaeus described and named us; Homo sapiens. Guess who he named as the type specimen? Himself. We are all held comparable to a middle-aged Swedish man. Go figure.

On to the Loch Ness Monster. In the 1970's, a plan was hatched to depth-charge Loch Ness in an effort to bring some closure (dead or alive) to the myth of the Loch Ness Monster. To thwart this, Sir Peter Scott (son of Captain Robert Falcon Scott, of Antarctic fame, and a founder of the World Wildlife Fund) and Robert Rimes co-published a paper in the journal Nature, describing the beast. They named it Nessiteras rhombopteryx (Greek for "the wonder of Ness with the diamond shaped fin"), "affinities uncertain". As a type specimen, the authors used a pair of blurry photos, purported to be of the Nessie, one showing what could be imagined as a squarish fin, the other just a blob. Under the rules of zoological nomenclature, the photos counted as a type specimen. Nessie was placed on the British list of endangered species and saved from a cruel fate. Some skeptics have noted Nessiteras rhombopteryx is an anagram for "Monster hoax by Sir Peter S." Robert Rines responded to these critics with his own anagram: "Yes, both pix are monsters, R."

Plan B

"If we had a Plan B, it would have been Plan A"
--Unforgettable line from an unremembered movie


A catbird has claimed the overgrown corner of the yard by the swing set. A Chinese wisteria has been climbing the framework for a couple of years now, despite my best efforts to tame it. It has attracted hangers on as well, including a blackberry. The bramble attracted the catbird who drives off any other birds remotely in the area. Blackberries are among the early- to mid-summer ripening fruits that drive the birds nuts. When I say "ripen", I mean turn red. Red blackberries are to this palate, slightly sour and insipid. It's only when they become that deep purple-black with the intoxicating fruity aroma that I get interested. I used to eat myself sick on them when I was a kid. Little did I know that I was just part of Plan B for the plant to scatter its seeds.

Red fruits are hugely attractive to birds. Hence, cherries, dogwood, magnolia, and holly berries. These trees produce large numbers all at once and the birds swarm to them. I have seen a cherry, red fruits glowing in the woods like Christmas ornaments, filled with orioles, grackles, robins, and who knows what, all gorging together. Dogwood, magnolia, and holly, their berries loaded with high-energy lipids, ripen just in time for the south-bound migrants and I have seen the trees in my front yard striped in only a few short hours by hordes of robins and cedar waxwings.

Blackberries go a slightly different path; only a few berries ripen each day, keeping the catbird coming back for more, ensuring a steady customer. The catbird inspects all parts of the vine, looking for the telltale red berries. Finding one, it gobbles it down and keeps looking for more. In places where blackberries are abundant, like in the woods where I grew up (along the creek by the old leaky buried sewage line...who knew?), birds just can't keep up with the sheer poundage of fruit. This is where Plan B comes in. If the red berries are not eaten, they just keep ripening until they drop off the vine or a mammal, a raccoon, deer, opossum, or ten-year old kid, happens by. Purple, loaded with sugar and smelling vaguely like strawberries, they are definitely a come-hither treat. Enough of the seeds pass through the gut without being chewed (or stuck between molars) to ensure deposition some ways off. Even if the berries drop off the vine, they are sought out by box turtles who have a surprisingly sweet tooth (actually, they have no teeth at all, but you get the picture).

If you can find a trove of blackberries that the birds couldn't keep up with, and the turtles haven't beaten you to, pick a pint or so to take home (what you eat on the spot doesn't count), crush lightly to get the juices going and serve over vanilla ice cream. Better yet, pick two pints and freeze one for later; Summer in January never tasted so good.

The Eternal Dance

Every member of a prey species can take it as given that they will never die of old age. Something faster, more clever, or just luckier will find them first. Every gazelle knows, deep down in its DNA, that it needs to outrun the fastest cheetah it encounters today, and every cheetah knows it needs to outrun the slowest gazelle. The slow genes are remorselessly weeded out of the population, resulting in ever faster animals - predator and prey drive each other's evolution. Case in point, the American pronghorn. This elegant creature can hit speeds of close to 70 miles per hour, a leftover trait from 15,000 years ago when the American cheetah stalked the Great Plains. The cheetah is extinct (probably due to the advent of humans crossing the land bridge from Asia), but the pronghorn's speed abides.

Prey species have a whole bag of tricks to keep from becoming dinner. Fish school, birds flock, mammals herd. The idea is that a predator needs to pick out one individual to concentrate on in order to maximize success. Most predators make a kill only about one in ten tries at best. So, if you are bunched up and moving at top speed, the predator you are trying to avoid will lose you in the crowd. At least that's the theory. But predators have tricks up their proverbial sleeves as well. School of fish crowding into a tight ball so any individual is lost? Attack the whole ball like swordfish and marlin do. Lash about in a crowd and you are certain to hit something which can be eaten at leisure. Humpback whales go one better; they swim below the packed school of fish, and blow a stream of bubbles while circling the base. This "bubble net" serves to pack the school even more densely and the whale comes up from below, mouth open, to engulf the whole shebang.

I was beach combing at Bethany last fall when I saw a flock of sanderlings swirling up in a tight spiral. At first, I thought it was smoke until my eyes made out the individual birds. Sanderlings are those tiny sandpipers everyone sees at the beach but no one really notices. One of several related species of small sandpipers, known to birders as "peeps", they run up and down the beach, always staying just out of the wash of the surf. Running like clockwork toys, they examine each new swatch of wet sand for any tiny mole crab or other crustacean exposed by the receding wave. In fall, they form small flocks, some of which stay along the mid Atlantic, others travel to points south. The flock I was watching spiraled even tighter when a peregrine falcon appeared from out of nowhere. The sanderlings had seen it and recognized it for what it was and were taking the only defense they knew -keep moving, keep shifting. They seemingly moved in precise unison. Ornithologists originally thought flocking birds were telepathic by the way they seem to move as a single unit. Researchers, using high speed movies, were able to notice how one bird begins the move with the nearest neighbors mirroring it. The movement ripples across the flock too fast for the unaided human eye to see.



A peregrine can outfly any bird in the sky, so fleeing was not an option. The peregrine dove through the spiral, splitting it in two. The two smaller flocks, still spiralling, separated and the falcon dove through the smaller of the two. The birds veered as one and kept the tight spiral. All but one - too old keep up, too young to recognize the signals,or just plain out of luck. One sanderling found itself alone. The Japanese have a saying: "the lone nail gets hammered down". The falcon knew this and now had a single individual on which to concentrate. While the rest of the flock, knowing they were safe, sped down the beach, the lone peep, in a final defensive maneuver, dropped like a rock onto the water. The peregrine hovered over the hapless sanderling floating on the surface, and with all the grace and precision of a dinner party guest picking up a canape, plucked the peep from the surface and quenched it in one great yellow talon. The falcon flew up-beach to pluck and devour its meal. The sanderlings settled back down on the beach to continue their clockwork minuet with the waves, searching for tidbits.



Everybody eats. Everybody dances.

Silent Sentinels

They march, in an irregularly spaced line, from Fenwick Island, to the entrance of Delaware Bay at Cape Henlopen, in the north. The casual tourist may be forgiven for mistaking them for lighthouses for they share the same tall windswept, somewhat foreboding isolation. Closer inspection, however, shows bricked-up doors and windows, ending in a steel-railed parapet 40 to 75 feet on the topmost deck. These are coastal watch towers, their usefulness almost 70 years past, and abandoned to the elements, with the occasional historical plaque to tell half-interested readers exactly what they are and why they are there.

By 1942, the Battle of the Atlantic was going badly for the Allies; German U-boats, operating seemingly at will off the East and Gulf coasts, sunk an ever higher toll of shipping each month. While U.S. shipyards were building replacement ships at an accelerated pace and would soon catch up with and surpass the losses, the toll extracted by the wolf packs was fearful and went largely unanswered. U-boats lay in wait off coastal and resort towns, torpedoing ships as they passed silhouetted by the city lights. Burning tankers drew curious crowds of boardwalk spectators in much the same way a traffic accident would at rush hour. Bodies of merchant seamen regularly washed ashore along the Eastern Seaboard.

Delaware's coastal defenses construction began in 1939 and lasted for three years. Fort Miles, built at Cape Henlopen, was essentially a land-locked battleship sporting two 16-inch guns (the same as carried on the USS Iowa), two 12-inch guns, and a battery of four 6-inchers. The 16-inch battery could fire one-ton projectiles nearly 25 miles. Fort Miles also controlled a minefield, which could be turned off electronically for ships to pass, and stretched the width of Delaware Bay. Thirteen towers; eleven in Delaware and two near Cape May, New Jersey, manned by troops from the US Army's 261 Coast Artillery Regiment, were the spotters for the formidable guns at Fort Miles. Equipped with radios, fire control radar units, and various optics including azimuth sighting range finders, the soldiers kept vigil over the approaches to Delaware Bay. Azimuth sighting range finders visually determine a target's position using the measure along the horizon of the angle between the object and a fixed reference point. Sightings from two towers were triangulated and sent to the the fort to position the guns. At least that was the theory; the guns were never fired at a target.

Tower 7, located in Henlopen State Park has been restored and is open to the public. If you don't have a head for heights, don't visit, even though the steel ladder was replaced by a steel circular stair.

The towers were built on creosoted pilings hammered into the sand and a concrete base was laid on top. The towers themselves were constructed from reinforced concrete, strengthened by wire mesh and steel rebar. The concrete was poured into a hollow 16-foot diameter form, with walls a foot thick, in a singe 24-hour pour. After the concrete cured for about a month, steel ladders and wooden decks were added, and the tower was open for business. Beach sand was used to cut costs and the towers had a life expectancy of 20 years or less.

The towers continue to keep vigil after nearly 70 years, weatherng nor'easter storms and hurricanes, their footings washed by high tides. Pigeons roost on the rusted steel railings and rise in clouds when the odd falcon passes in migration. Pink at dawn and sunset, the Delaware towers have become as much a part of the landscape as the beaches themselves over which they loom.

What Money Can't Buy (Almost)

"Only two things money can't buy;

True love and home-grown tomatoes"

- Old Song


Fresh tomato season has snuck up upon us. I'm not talking about those spheroids that are hard as baseballs, flavored weak as water, imported from foreign lands like California and Florida, and available year-round in the local Safeway; oh no, I'm talking the meaty, red as first-water rubies, off the vine delicacies I get at my local hardware store (light bulbs, chain saw oil,local vegetables). These are early-maturing varieties, trucked down from the Amish farmers in Hanover County, Pennsylvania, and taste like the essence of summer. Attack one armed with a salt shaker - the juices run down your chin and the flavor pops on your tongue.

Grocery store tomatoes are picked green for better shipping and turn red by the application of ethylene gas which breaks down the chlorophyll. Unfortunately, the gas does not affect insoluble calcium pectinate, which in real tomatoes, breaks down into soluble pectin, allowing that satisfying chomp.

We take our tomatoes seriously around here. A crab cake sandwich just doesn't taste right without a slice of ripe tomato. Better yet, make a crab salad and fill a hollowed out tomato. Add a crisp white wine and lunch does not get any better.

The great Earl Weaver, manager of the Baltimore Orioles back in their glory days at Memorial Stadium, had a tomato patch out near the bullpen and woe betide any grounds keepers who interfered with his crop. He is said to have handed out fresh tomatoes like game balls to his star players. I'm sure Cal Ripken must have become sick of them.

If you want to be really decadent, try sauteing an onion in good olive oil until it caramelizes; add a stick of pepperoni, sliced thin; and a good ripe diced tomato. Let it cook on high heat until the tomato just starts to break down and add a half cup of sour cream. Meanwhile, the prudent chef will have boiled a pound of rigatoni, taking care to remember that this particular pasta always takes longer than originally thought. Drain the pasta and pour into the pot of sauce. Toss to mix and eat. This is a very rich, old Venetian recipe my grandmother taught me (even thought she was a Triestina to the core). Enjoy.

Botanically speaking, tomatoes are true berries. The ancestral form, found in the Andean foothills are tiny and mostly eaten by birds which disperse their indigestible seeds. The seeds are indigestible to us as well and many a sewage treatment plant has tomato vines growing riot around the periphery.

Tomatoes were taken to Europe by the Spanish with the other spoils of the Aztec and Inca conquests: gold, jade, corn, and chilis. When they reached southern Europe, tomatoes were greeted as Mana from Heaven, and become an integral part of the cuisine. Thomas Jefferson brought tomatoes to North America after serving as Ambassador to France and travelling widely through Europe. He experimented with various cultivars and ate them regularly to the great alarm of his friends. At the time, tomatoes were called "love apples", grown as ornamental plants only, and were widely believed to be poisonous. This is only partly true; the leaves, vines, and raw green fruit contain alkaloids such as solanum, scopalamine, and various other nasty things which act as natural insecticides. Tomatoes are in the same botanical family, Solanacae, and related to peppers, potatoes, and tobacco; all of which produce various witches' brews of defensive chemicals.

Another Solanacae, Jimsonweed, contains a powerful hallucinogen, and was originally called Jamestown Weed after the first English settlement in Virginia. It seems several settlers during one of the regular food shortages tried eating this particular weed. They were out of it for several days and the practice soon caught on among their bored and hungry neighbors and had to be suppressed by the authorities. The settlers soon switched to growing and using tobacco, which, as we all know, is completely harmless. Interestingly, the tobacco they originally obtained from the Indians and grew as a cash crop is not the same one may find in the average pack of Luckies today. John Rolf, of Pocahontas fame, imported a different species for the plantations from Central America. The early form is still grown in parts of Europe where it is used for insecticides.

The tomatoes from the hardware store don't quite measure up to home-grown. I haven't planted any this year, but neighbors have. Tomatoes are prolific enough that I expect to see a bag or two left on the doorstep before long.

Graduations and Transitions

When we spaced our kids four years apart (only semi by design), it never occurred to Pat and me that, off in the distant mists of the future, there might be a problem with scheduling graduations. Ariel is a newly-minted graduate of Randolph Macon College, BA in English and minor in Women's Studies, and Alec has graduated from James Madison High School here in Vienna. He will be going to James Madison University in the fall.


By the luck of the draw, the graduation ceremonies were not on the same day, but Alec's prom fell on the evening of Ariel's graduation. This entailed his cadging a ride to Ashland from his cousins and hightailing it out of town as soon as the events were over. He needed to: pick up his suit from the cleaners, a task which had been put off for weeks; pick up flowers for Allison, his date; get something to eat; and show up at the appointed spot with his friends and their dates for the obligatory pre-prom photos by the parents. After which, they caravaned to Centerville, about 20 miles down the road to assemble at the limos for transport to the actual prom. All of this logistical block and tackle work would have presented little problem but for the fact that Ariel had been involved in a fender-bender the week earlier. Her car was still in the shop in Ashland. Since her car was hors-de-combat, I had to drive my truck down because all graduates had to be out of their dorms by 5 p.m. that day. We (Pat and I with my mom) drove down the night before to avoid I-95 Saturday gridlock and spent the night in a nearby hotel. Up early so Pat could take my truck to campus, picking up a bouquet of pink roses and daisies on the way, parking the truck at the body shop three blocks away. Ariel's dorm is on the main drag of campus and the street in front was closed for the graduation which was taking place next door on the fountain plaza "under the oaks", as we like to say here in the South. Everything went off without a hitch; Alec showed up on time to process with his sister for the robing (he put the stole over her shoulders). The obligatory speeches were delivered, and the soon to be alumni (we already received fund raiser mail) marched across the stage ("don't trip, don't trip") and picked up their sheepskins.


Luncheon under tents and a veritable orgy of picture taking followed. Hugs, high fives, tears and promises to keep in touch were the order of the afternoon. Except for me...I trudged to get the truck and negotiated with a campus police officer to thread the barricade and park in front of the dorm. Ariel and her roommate had made a rudimentary attempt at packing up their stuff and a couple of hours and discoveries of long-lost objects ("I thought I lost that last March"), vehicles were loaded and the trek back up I-95 resumed.


We met at home, dropped off the truck and sped off to the pre-prom photo op. We got there with minutes to spare, and, along with the other parents, shot endless pix of very grown-up looking young ladies and gentlemen. We didn't see Alec until the next morning when his answers to any and all prom-related questions consisted of monosyllabic grunts. I take it he had a good time. One final piece of shrapnel for this temporal hand-grenade was everyone had to be at church that morning for a "recognition of the graduates". I'm sure everybody recognized Ariel and Alec, even though they were half asleep and moving like zombies.


This past Wednesday, high school graduation took place. Ariel drove to get grandma, growing increasingly panicky in the afternoon beltway gridlock, with two hours head start, they just made it back to grab a bite and then off to the biggest high school in Fairfax County for the ceremony. Skies glowering, we followed the herd into the parking lot and as the rain began to pelt down, jumped the curb and parked on the median strip. Into the cavernous field house and up into a set of very shaky bleachers to watch the ceremonies.



I guess all graduations are at heart about the same. Substitute the names of the schools, the speakers, and the students and you pretty much have a repeat of the last one. Except this is your kid who stayed up nights writing term papers on the influence of Shakespeare on Saul Bellow or sweating through calculus homework or any of a dozen traumatic events which now seem kind of trivial. Milestone achieved, diploma in hand, future by the throat, world their oyster, here they come, ready or not.



It seems like just a couple of weeks ago Pat and I were discussing daycare.