This scene is pretty generic; we’ve seen it scores of times—in Dr. No, an early James Bond movie, one of the evil Doctor’s henchmen releases a Mexican redknee tarantula on the slumbering Bond’s bed. Cue ominous music as the hairy monster creeps ever so slowly up towards the blissful dreaming victim. Bond awakens in the (ta-da!) nick of time, flings back the covers, and mashes the hapless spider with several well-aimed whacks from his elegant, handmade, rich Corinthian leather, Gucci loafer; the music climaxing discordantly with each strike.
Too bad neither the henchman nor Cmdr. Bond was able to stay awake during biology class. They would have learned that Mexican redknee tarantulas, for all their nasty looks, are really quite docile. This despite the fact that Sean Connery insisted upon a pane of glass to separate him (or his stunt double) from the creepy-crawly itself. Due to their size and conspicuous coloration, Mexican redknees are movie stars, also appearing in Raiders of the Lost Ark (in the opening scenes) and as the title role in Tarantula, a late 50’s horror film, wherein a giant mutant redknee develops a taste for pickup trucks.
In the wild, Mexican redknee tarantulas mate in the summer, shortly after the male sheds his exoskeleton for the final time and becomes fully mature, usually by the start of the rainy season (July and August). Mating occurs in or near the female's burrow, where the male uses his pedipalps (front limbs) to transfer sperm to openings on the underside of the female's abdomen. After mating, some females will try to eat the male, although this has never been observed in the wild (usually they just smoke a cigarette and cuddle). The sperm and eggs are stored in the female's body and not deposited until spring. In the spring, the female deposits hundreds of eggs and the sperm onto a silk mat she has made and then fashions into a ball or egg sack. Fertilization takes place in the sack within minutes and the spiderlings hatch in 3 months but remain in the egg sack for 3 more weeks. Once out of the egg sack, they spend 2 weeks in the burrow with mommy before they disperse out into the big wide world on their own. Males mature at about 4 years, females 2 to 3 years later. They are a long-lived species with females reaching 25 to 30 years; longer in captivity. Males only live about a year after maturity. Adult females are sedentary, with permanent borrows, but males wander the country side in search of mates, making them vulnerable to predators. (Sounds familiar.)
A nocturnal ambush hunter, the Mexican redknee tarantula is what ecologists call a “sit and wait” predator, preferring prey (insects, small frogs, small lizards, and mice) to come to it. The tip of each leg is sensitive to smells, tastes, and vibrations, and the spider uses it to detect prey or to avoid predators. The spider holds its prey with its pedipalps (front limbs) and injects it with venom delivered via two hollow fangs. This venom has a double component; a neurotoxin and a toxin which degrades proteins. The neurotoxin paralyzes the prey and the other toxin fraction begins digestion. Once the venom has acted, the tarantula is able to suck up the liquefied proteins and fats of its prey, leaving just a small ball of undigested bits.
The usually docile Mexican redknee tarantula has an unusual defense: when threatened, it flicks hairs off its abdomen with the hind legs. Known as urticating (irritating) hairs, they may cause a skin rash in humans. In rare cases, Mexican redknees may bite, producing results comparable to a wasp sting—there are no known human fatalities from the bite of a redknee. Mexican redknee tarantulas make popular class pets in elementary schools—you can get one from biological supply houses—beats the hell out of a hamster.
Tarantulas are surprisingly delicate—a friend who grew up in the Canal Zone once told me about stepping on one in the bathroom—“it felt like stepping on a banana”. I leave the rest to your imagination. Books on keeping redknees as pets mention that they are terrified of heights and can die from falling only a foot or two onto a hard surface.
Unless he was planning on tickling 007 to death, the henchman should have chosen something a bit more lethal; perhaps the rabbit from Monty Python’s Holy Grail. Bond, for his part, should have suavely thanked the evil Doctor for the new pet and mentioned that he was planning on donating it to the local orphan’s home as a cute and cuddly companion animal. But alas, when he threw back the covers, dashing the spider to the floor, the fall probably killed the poor creature outright and James didn’t need to get spider guts all over his hand-tooled, pabulum-fed, kidskin bedroom slipper, with the expensive tassels on the top. “Hello, front desk? Could you send someone to clean up a large squished spider? Oh, and maybe polish my shoes?”
Tuesday, April 29, 2008
Sunday, April 27, 2008
Backyard Stuff
Friday night, spring finally came home. I was on my back deck shortly after dusk, enjoying the first rain-free evening in a week. The spring peepers were calling up a storm from down the road. Next door, the grey tree frogs were in fine voice, building to a crescendo in the unused swimming pool with the flooded liner. The perfume of lilacs and a half-dozen other flowers spiced the evening air. I watched a big brown bat hawking for insects over the roof line. The bat had just finished a wing-over Immelman turn to grab a particularly tasty morsel when movement caught my eye on the silver maple in the corner of the yard. Glancing over, I saw a quick shadow flit from the maple to the old tulip poplar at the other end of the yard and heard the scrabble of tiny claws on bark. A small silhouette scampered up the trunk and launched into the air, for the next tree down the block. A flying squirrel; I always knew they were here but that was my first yard sighting. All we need now are a few exotic migrants from the Amazon and spring will be official.
Tuesday, March 11, 2008
A Pirate Looks at 300
Old Dampier, a rough sailor, but a man of exquisite mind
—Samuel Taylor Coleridge
Everybody loves pirates, or at least the romantic notion of pirates. In reality, pirates, all the way back to Antiquity, were universally reviled as the worst sort of sea scum--to be exterminated without mercy. Julius Caesar was captured and ransomed by pirates as a young man. Years later, he returned to their lair and executed the lot. To this day Venetians celebrate the Feast of the Seven Virgins, commemorating the victory of the Cabinetmakers Guild in 1433 over sea rovers from Trieste who abducted a group of young brides and their dowries. The Cabinetmakers hunted the pirates down, killed them all, and retrieved the dowries (no mention is made of the erstwhile brides). My dad, in researching family history, found Triestini pirates (hopefully not hanging) on several branches of the Giraldi family tree. One presumes they called in sick for the Venetian job.
William Dampier always took pains to call himself a privateer. There was often a thin line between the two; privateers were hired men o’ war, with a warrant from the king or colonial governor to harass the enemy (usually the Spanish and later, the French). Pirates were out-and-out brigands, preying on any ship they happened across, regardless of nationality, including their own—that’s what got Blackbeard in trouble.
Born in 1651 and soon orphaned, Dampier received a good basic education in mathematics and literature, including Latin. With bleak prospects ashore, he shipped out as a sailor in the Royal Navy, learning navigation and gunnery. While still in his teens, he managed a plantation in Jamaica and worked as a logwood cutter in Yucatan. Logwood was used for textile dyes and made many a man wealthy; but not Dampier. He shipped out once again from Jamaica as mate on a merchant vessel and was the last to leave when the entire crew jumped ship in the Bay of Campeche, joining a privateer off to harass the Spanish and gather plunder in the bargain. Dampier was the first person to circumnavigate the world three times and was a keen observer of exotic places, people, and events. Unique among his fellows, he kept a journal of his voyages and published them upon each return to England.
I mentioned him to Pat around Christmas time, hinting for a copy of A Pirate of Exquisite Mind, a recent biography of the old scoundrel. Instead she found me a Dover reprint of his Third Voyage Around the World in 1692. This is infinitely superior to any biography; Dampier’s voice comes through, unfiltered, across 300 years. The Dover edition keeps the syntax and spelling of the original; Dampier talks about Indian canoas (canoes) and guanoes (iguanas). His matter-of-fact descriptions of breadfruit, bananas, and “avogado pears” were their first introductions to the English-speaking world. Dampier sailed the West Indies as well as the East Indies and cruised the Galapagos Islands, writing extensively about the giant tortoises and marine iguanas he encountered. He ends each description of an exotic plant or animal with a comment on its culinary qualities. “Most sweet and wholesome a meat” when describing what is today an endangered species makes me cringe a bit, but perhaps we shouldn’t judge too harshly. These fellows were living on the edge and in one chapter, Dampier describes his timely acquisition of several sea turtles for provisions, thereby quelling an incipient mutiny. Had he been unsuccessful, he writes, the starving crew would have eaten the ship’s officers, including him.
Dampier always kept his journals with him, tucking them into a hollowed-out bamboo sealed with wax, when he was ashore trekking across the isthmus of Darien or hobnobbing with the locals on Guam or the Philippines. Dampier was the first Englishman to explore and write about Australia (New Holland). He gave the English language the word “typhoon” and, having survived a West Indian hurricane, was the first to figure out that these storms are giant whirlwinds.
The narrative of his first voyage was a huge best seller and brought him to the attention of Samuel Peppys and the Royal Society. An adventure-hungry public snapped up his books as soon as they were printed and clamored for more. Dampier became something of a cottage industry—anyone having any vague association with him published books of their travels under his “authorship” or just mentioned his name (“Sailed with Dampier against the Spanish”) in the title.
Jonathan Swift, in Gulliver’s Travels, calls him “Cousin Dampier” in the first chapter and uses Dampier’s voyage to Australia as the model for the Land of the Talking Horses in Gulliver’s fourth voyage. Daniel Defoe modeled Robinson Crusoe on Alexander Selkirk, the sailing master of a ship sailing in company with one captained by Dampier. Selkirk had grave doubts about the seaworthiness of the Cinque Ports, and asked to be put ashore. He was marooned for four years until Dampier, on his next round-the-world voyage and serving as navigator under another captain, remembered to stop and pick him up. (It turns out that Selkirk was correct in his assessment; the Cinque Ports sailed off, never to be seen again.) Defoe also borrowed from Dampier’s account of a “Moskito Indian” picked up from another island where he was five years marooned. Samuel Taylor Coleridge based the nautical bits of his Rime of the Ancient Mariner, as well as the description of the albatross, on Dampier’s observations. A century after their publication, Captain James Cook used Dampier’s books as a pilot’s guide for anchorages and prevailing currents during his own historic voyages throughout the Pacific. A half-century after Cook, Charles Darwin read Dampier for information on the natural history of South America and the Galapagos Islands. Dampier’s observations of prevailing winds in the South Seas were included the British Admiralty’s “Sailing Instructions” until the 1930 edition.
Dampier was the first modern travel writer, giving first-hand accounts of his experiences and carefully pointing out any hearsay as such. Writer, traveler, navigator, hydrographer, naturalist, and buccaneer—how cool is that.
—Samuel Taylor Coleridge
Everybody loves pirates, or at least the romantic notion of pirates. In reality, pirates, all the way back to Antiquity, were universally reviled as the worst sort of sea scum--to be exterminated without mercy. Julius Caesar was captured and ransomed by pirates as a young man. Years later, he returned to their lair and executed the lot. To this day Venetians celebrate the Feast of the Seven Virgins, commemorating the victory of the Cabinetmakers Guild in 1433 over sea rovers from Trieste who abducted a group of young brides and their dowries. The Cabinetmakers hunted the pirates down, killed them all, and retrieved the dowries (no mention is made of the erstwhile brides). My dad, in researching family history, found Triestini pirates (hopefully not hanging) on several branches of the Giraldi family tree. One presumes they called in sick for the Venetian job.
William Dampier always took pains to call himself a privateer. There was often a thin line between the two; privateers were hired men o’ war, with a warrant from the king or colonial governor to harass the enemy (usually the Spanish and later, the French). Pirates were out-and-out brigands, preying on any ship they happened across, regardless of nationality, including their own—that’s what got Blackbeard in trouble.
Born in 1651 and soon orphaned, Dampier received a good basic education in mathematics and literature, including Latin. With bleak prospects ashore, he shipped out as a sailor in the Royal Navy, learning navigation and gunnery. While still in his teens, he managed a plantation in Jamaica and worked as a logwood cutter in Yucatan. Logwood was used for textile dyes and made many a man wealthy; but not Dampier. He shipped out once again from Jamaica as mate on a merchant vessel and was the last to leave when the entire crew jumped ship in the Bay of Campeche, joining a privateer off to harass the Spanish and gather plunder in the bargain. Dampier was the first person to circumnavigate the world three times and was a keen observer of exotic places, people, and events. Unique among his fellows, he kept a journal of his voyages and published them upon each return to England.
I mentioned him to Pat around Christmas time, hinting for a copy of A Pirate of Exquisite Mind, a recent biography of the old scoundrel. Instead she found me a Dover reprint of his Third Voyage Around the World in 1692. This is infinitely superior to any biography; Dampier’s voice comes through, unfiltered, across 300 years. The Dover edition keeps the syntax and spelling of the original; Dampier talks about Indian canoas (canoes) and guanoes (iguanas). His matter-of-fact descriptions of breadfruit, bananas, and “avogado pears” were their first introductions to the English-speaking world. Dampier sailed the West Indies as well as the East Indies and cruised the Galapagos Islands, writing extensively about the giant tortoises and marine iguanas he encountered. He ends each description of an exotic plant or animal with a comment on its culinary qualities. “Most sweet and wholesome a meat” when describing what is today an endangered species makes me cringe a bit, but perhaps we shouldn’t judge too harshly. These fellows were living on the edge and in one chapter, Dampier describes his timely acquisition of several sea turtles for provisions, thereby quelling an incipient mutiny. Had he been unsuccessful, he writes, the starving crew would have eaten the ship’s officers, including him.
Dampier always kept his journals with him, tucking them into a hollowed-out bamboo sealed with wax, when he was ashore trekking across the isthmus of Darien or hobnobbing with the locals on Guam or the Philippines. Dampier was the first Englishman to explore and write about Australia (New Holland). He gave the English language the word “typhoon” and, having survived a West Indian hurricane, was the first to figure out that these storms are giant whirlwinds.
The narrative of his first voyage was a huge best seller and brought him to the attention of Samuel Peppys and the Royal Society. An adventure-hungry public snapped up his books as soon as they were printed and clamored for more. Dampier became something of a cottage industry—anyone having any vague association with him published books of their travels under his “authorship” or just mentioned his name (“Sailed with Dampier against the Spanish”) in the title.
Jonathan Swift, in Gulliver’s Travels, calls him “Cousin Dampier” in the first chapter and uses Dampier’s voyage to Australia as the model for the Land of the Talking Horses in Gulliver’s fourth voyage. Daniel Defoe modeled Robinson Crusoe on Alexander Selkirk, the sailing master of a ship sailing in company with one captained by Dampier. Selkirk had grave doubts about the seaworthiness of the Cinque Ports, and asked to be put ashore. He was marooned for four years until Dampier, on his next round-the-world voyage and serving as navigator under another captain, remembered to stop and pick him up. (It turns out that Selkirk was correct in his assessment; the Cinque Ports sailed off, never to be seen again.) Defoe also borrowed from Dampier’s account of a “Moskito Indian” picked up from another island where he was five years marooned. Samuel Taylor Coleridge based the nautical bits of his Rime of the Ancient Mariner, as well as the description of the albatross, on Dampier’s observations. A century after their publication, Captain James Cook used Dampier’s books as a pilot’s guide for anchorages and prevailing currents during his own historic voyages throughout the Pacific. A half-century after Cook, Charles Darwin read Dampier for information on the natural history of South America and the Galapagos Islands. Dampier’s observations of prevailing winds in the South Seas were included the British Admiralty’s “Sailing Instructions” until the 1930 edition.
Dampier was the first modern travel writer, giving first-hand accounts of his experiences and carefully pointing out any hearsay as such. Writer, traveler, navigator, hydrographer, naturalist, and buccaneer—how cool is that.
Sunday, March 2, 2008
Fairydiddles
It’s dark, it’s cold, and the wind is howling through the trees like a choir of banshees. I’m standing with feet slowly going numb, on the back porch of the Long Branch Nature Center in deepest darkest suburban Arlington, Virginia, waiting on the appearance of wood sprites.
Although they are real creatures, as serious about making a living as any Internet tycoon, fairydiddles or flying squirrels have contributed to enough ghost lore in North America to qualify as semi-mythical. Readily entering houses, flying squirrels get into small spaces in search of food. Attics are a favorite haunt. Stories about spinning wheels turning without human assistance may be laid at the furry feet of these wee beasties who like nothing better than an exercise wheel, no matter what the original purpose.
About a third the size of their more familiar cousins, flying squirrels come out about an hour after dusk. They are actually more common in the mid Atlantic than grey squirrels, their bigger cousins. Being small, quick, and above all, nocturnal, they are usually seen, if at all, as a pale flash in the night woods or a dark shape against a full moon. Of the fifteen or so species world-wide (mostly in Asia including the four-foot long woolly flying squirrel), we have two; the southern and northern species. Northern flying squirrels are found in the mid Atlantic in the mountains in pockets of boreal forest left over from the glacial days and stranded on mountain tops like Dolly Sods in West Virginia. Their southern kin are everywhere else.
Flying squirrels rely mostly on nuts as winter food. Since they have small mouths and can’t stuff their cheeks like chipmunks; they must gnaw a hole in the nut to be able to grasp it while they scamper and fly. They also have a unique way of dining. Grey squirrels chew an acorn to bits while eating it; you find a pile of shell fragments. Mice leave a jagged edge as they gnaw through the shell, bisecting it like you would a soft-boiled egg. Flying squirrels will chew a round hole in the nut and extract the meat. The nut shell looks like an olive minus the pimento. While they will eat peanuts (everything is attracted to peanuts from mice to grizzly bears), flying squirrels prefer hickory nuts and hazelnuts are at the top of their culinary chart. Food not eaten on the spot is cached in scatter hordes, a few nuts here a few there, in hidden locations throughout the forest canopy. In spring and summer, flying squirrels become ravenous carnivores, feeding on large insects like grasshoppers, katydids, and moth larvae and adults. They will eat bird eggs and nestlings and the young of other squirrels, including those of their own species.
Until the babies are about three weeks old, their mothers cannot tell them from other baby flying squirrels and will care for and adopt anything cute and cuddly that they happen across. Researchers at VA Tech discovered this when a family of flying squirrels moved out of their damaged tree hole nest. The mother took a baby in her mouth and sailed off to new digs and came back for the next. The researchers would add a new baby to the nest every time she left. Twenty or so babies later, they came to the conclusion that: a) flying squirrels can’t tell their own babies from others, and b) flying squirrels can’t count.
Not only are they lacking in mathematical skills, flying squirrels can’t really fly, either. Among the mammals, only bats are capable of true powered, flap-your-wings to get where you are going flight. Flying squirrels, however, are champion gliders. They possess a specialized flap of skin, the patagium, stretching from the front legs to the back legs. This flap gives them an enormous (relative to their size) area to act as an air foil. The furry tail spreads out flat for additional airfoil area. Contrary to belief, the tail is not a rudder—flying squirrels steer by swooping and banking, much like a paper airplane. When they get to the target, they use their momentum to scoot 180 degrees to the opposite side of the tree trunk in a singe movement. This disappearing act is an anti-owl maneuver--owls are the flying squirrels’ major predator but owls must learn to counter the flip-around-the-trunk move by flying past and snatching backwards with their talons as they sweep by. In some areas where the owls have figured this move out, flying squirrels numbers are kept low. In areas with less adept owls, flying squirrel populations boom.
Flying squirrels will sometimes crash-land. They have extremely long whiskers which they point forward as they glide. The whiskers act as an early warning system; if they touch a surface first, indicating an incipient crash, the squirrel is quick enough to adjust and land more or less correctly. Flying squirrels are very noisy little beasts; they chatter constantly, even in the air. These vocalizations are so high-pitched as to be inaudible to adult people, and it was once thought that they served as a form of echo location. Up stepped our friends from VA Tech once again with another experiment. They set up a maze and let flying squirrels traverse it in low light conditions. With their outsized eyes exquisitely adapted to dim light, the squirrels had no problems navigating the maze to the reward (you guessed it, peanut butter). When the lights were fully off, leaving the maze in complete darkness, the squirrels crashed into the walls with happy abandon. The conclusion--flying squirrels don’t echo locate (at least not well) although they are very chatty.
A pale flash in the dark and the scrabbling of small claws on bark announces the arrival to the bait of the first customer of the evening. As if by magic, a small face appears on top of the squirrel roosting box, grabs a peanut, and vanishes. The flying squirrel gnaws a small hole in the nut shell to carry it away. I can hear rapid munching noises from the other side of the trunk, moving higher up into the canopy. Flying squirrels need at least a foot of elevation for every two feet they soar. The squirrel climbs to the top of the old oak and launches; we follow the flight with the beams of our flashlights, watching it hit the air brakes and flip upwards for landing on a hickory down the valley. A flip of the tail and the fairydiddle is on the far side of the tree and gone to hide the peanut for future meals.
Although they are real creatures, as serious about making a living as any Internet tycoon, fairydiddles or flying squirrels have contributed to enough ghost lore in North America to qualify as semi-mythical. Readily entering houses, flying squirrels get into small spaces in search of food. Attics are a favorite haunt. Stories about spinning wheels turning without human assistance may be laid at the furry feet of these wee beasties who like nothing better than an exercise wheel, no matter what the original purpose.
About a third the size of their more familiar cousins, flying squirrels come out about an hour after dusk. They are actually more common in the mid Atlantic than grey squirrels, their bigger cousins. Being small, quick, and above all, nocturnal, they are usually seen, if at all, as a pale flash in the night woods or a dark shape against a full moon. Of the fifteen or so species world-wide (mostly in Asia including the four-foot long woolly flying squirrel), we have two; the southern and northern species. Northern flying squirrels are found in the mid Atlantic in the mountains in pockets of boreal forest left over from the glacial days and stranded on mountain tops like Dolly Sods in West Virginia. Their southern kin are everywhere else.
Flying squirrels rely mostly on nuts as winter food. Since they have small mouths and can’t stuff their cheeks like chipmunks; they must gnaw a hole in the nut to be able to grasp it while they scamper and fly. They also have a unique way of dining. Grey squirrels chew an acorn to bits while eating it; you find a pile of shell fragments. Mice leave a jagged edge as they gnaw through the shell, bisecting it like you would a soft-boiled egg. Flying squirrels will chew a round hole in the nut and extract the meat. The nut shell looks like an olive minus the pimento. While they will eat peanuts (everything is attracted to peanuts from mice to grizzly bears), flying squirrels prefer hickory nuts and hazelnuts are at the top of their culinary chart. Food not eaten on the spot is cached in scatter hordes, a few nuts here a few there, in hidden locations throughout the forest canopy. In spring and summer, flying squirrels become ravenous carnivores, feeding on large insects like grasshoppers, katydids, and moth larvae and adults. They will eat bird eggs and nestlings and the young of other squirrels, including those of their own species.
Until the babies are about three weeks old, their mothers cannot tell them from other baby flying squirrels and will care for and adopt anything cute and cuddly that they happen across. Researchers at VA Tech discovered this when a family of flying squirrels moved out of their damaged tree hole nest. The mother took a baby in her mouth and sailed off to new digs and came back for the next. The researchers would add a new baby to the nest every time she left. Twenty or so babies later, they came to the conclusion that: a) flying squirrels can’t tell their own babies from others, and b) flying squirrels can’t count.
Not only are they lacking in mathematical skills, flying squirrels can’t really fly, either. Among the mammals, only bats are capable of true powered, flap-your-wings to get where you are going flight. Flying squirrels, however, are champion gliders. They possess a specialized flap of skin, the patagium, stretching from the front legs to the back legs. This flap gives them an enormous (relative to their size) area to act as an air foil. The furry tail spreads out flat for additional airfoil area. Contrary to belief, the tail is not a rudder—flying squirrels steer by swooping and banking, much like a paper airplane. When they get to the target, they use their momentum to scoot 180 degrees to the opposite side of the tree trunk in a singe movement. This disappearing act is an anti-owl maneuver--owls are the flying squirrels’ major predator but owls must learn to counter the flip-around-the-trunk move by flying past and snatching backwards with their talons as they sweep by. In some areas where the owls have figured this move out, flying squirrels numbers are kept low. In areas with less adept owls, flying squirrel populations boom.
Flying squirrels will sometimes crash-land. They have extremely long whiskers which they point forward as they glide. The whiskers act as an early warning system; if they touch a surface first, indicating an incipient crash, the squirrel is quick enough to adjust and land more or less correctly. Flying squirrels are very noisy little beasts; they chatter constantly, even in the air. These vocalizations are so high-pitched as to be inaudible to adult people, and it was once thought that they served as a form of echo location. Up stepped our friends from VA Tech once again with another experiment. They set up a maze and let flying squirrels traverse it in low light conditions. With their outsized eyes exquisitely adapted to dim light, the squirrels had no problems navigating the maze to the reward (you guessed it, peanut butter). When the lights were fully off, leaving the maze in complete darkness, the squirrels crashed into the walls with happy abandon. The conclusion--flying squirrels don’t echo locate (at least not well) although they are very chatty.
A pale flash in the dark and the scrabbling of small claws on bark announces the arrival to the bait of the first customer of the evening. As if by magic, a small face appears on top of the squirrel roosting box, grabs a peanut, and vanishes. The flying squirrel gnaws a small hole in the nut shell to carry it away. I can hear rapid munching noises from the other side of the trunk, moving higher up into the canopy. Flying squirrels need at least a foot of elevation for every two feet they soar. The squirrel climbs to the top of the old oak and launches; we follow the flight with the beams of our flashlights, watching it hit the air brakes and flip upwards for landing on a hickory down the valley. A flip of the tail and the fairydiddle is on the far side of the tree and gone to hide the peanut for future meals.
Thursday, February 21, 2008
Snows Fall
Folks on the Delmarva Peninsula have a delightful term for the seemingly out-of-nowhere arrival of tundra swans each autumn. They call it ‘swan fall’. Arriving from their breeding grounds in the upper reaches of the western Arctic, swans stage every December in the Dakotas and Lower Canada. They wait for the first strong Northwesterly winds and ride them all the way to the Atlantic coast. Overnight, baylets and creeks of the Chesapeake are graced by their elegant beauty. A line of swans, honking and laughing their way south, backlit by the full moon, is one of the more unforgettable sights you can witness in nature.
Snow geese are poor man’s swans. Slightly smaller than Canada geese, they are gleaming white with black wing tips. Moving in family groups of up to half a dozen, they form large flocks to feed on marsh grasses and newly sprouted winter rye in farm fields. Geese are birds trying to be sheep and will graze happily on anything green.
The snow geese in this area are almost exclusively Greater Snow Geese.(Chen caerulescens atlantica) as opposed to their smaller and more abundant Lesser Snow Goose (Chen caerulescens caerulescens) cousins. Lesser Snow Geese are rarely seen along the Atlantic, but very common along the Mississippi and Central flyways in the heart of North America.
Any flock of snow geese, Greater or Lesser, will contain a proportion of blue geese. Blue geese, with white heads and blue-gray bodies, were once thought to be a closely-related species and given the poetic scientific name Chen hyperborenis, meaning “goose from beyond the north wind”--this was before hardy explorers with an ornithological bent journeyed north to above the Arctic Circle and actually observed the birds on their nesting grounds. Blue and snow geese paired indiscriminately and broods had both snow and blue goslings. Blue geese were determined to be a genetic color variant or morph and the species name was retired. Blues and snows vary in relative proportions, depending on environmental factors favoring one morph or the other. Currently, snows seem to be in the ascendancy, with over 90% of the birds being the white morph.
Snow geese, due to their resemblance to swans, have been protected from hunting (nobody wants to shoot an angel by mistake), and populations, especially in the Lesser Snow Goose, have exploded to the point where over-grazing orgies (called eat-outs) at the nesting grounds are destroying the sparse vegetation, endangering the goose population as well as other species using the same tundra habitat. Increased bag limits and longer seasons for hunters seem causing some leveling-off in the population.
Greater Snow Geese are the farthest-north breeding waterfowl in North America. Summer breeding grounds range north from the Foxe Basin (the northern arm of Hudson Bay) to Elsmere Island, the farthest north of the Canadian Archipelago. Their wintering range is the mid-Atlantic Coast from New Jersey to the Carolinas. While Greater Snow Geese on most of the Delmarva come from Hudson Bay north, birds wintering along salt water come from a separate breeding population in western Greenland. Snow Geese have serrated edges to their bills, allowing for greater traction in pulling plant roots and tubers, their main diet. In the past few years, snow geese have been moving into farm fields to graze on waste grains and green cover crops such as rye or winter wheat. Watching a flock move across a field covered in sprouted rye reminds me of a party, groups come and go, aggregating and breaking up like conversation groups at a cocktail party and there is an overall background conversation buzz of honks and gabbles. Snow geese mate for life; young unattached adults meet and court their new mates on the wintering grounds. Adults who have lost mates do the same. Mixing and mingling on the wintering grounds serves to keep the population genetics mixed up—geese return to the females’ nesting areas. This may be a party in more than just metaphor.
Snow geese are poor man’s swans. Slightly smaller than Canada geese, they are gleaming white with black wing tips. Moving in family groups of up to half a dozen, they form large flocks to feed on marsh grasses and newly sprouted winter rye in farm fields. Geese are birds trying to be sheep and will graze happily on anything green.
The snow geese in this area are almost exclusively Greater Snow Geese.(Chen caerulescens atlantica) as opposed to their smaller and more abundant Lesser Snow Goose (Chen caerulescens caerulescens) cousins. Lesser Snow Geese are rarely seen along the Atlantic, but very common along the Mississippi and Central flyways in the heart of North America.
Any flock of snow geese, Greater or Lesser, will contain a proportion of blue geese. Blue geese, with white heads and blue-gray bodies, were once thought to be a closely-related species and given the poetic scientific name Chen hyperborenis, meaning “goose from beyond the north wind”--this was before hardy explorers with an ornithological bent journeyed north to above the Arctic Circle and actually observed the birds on their nesting grounds. Blue and snow geese paired indiscriminately and broods had both snow and blue goslings. Blue geese were determined to be a genetic color variant or morph and the species name was retired. Blues and snows vary in relative proportions, depending on environmental factors favoring one morph or the other. Currently, snows seem to be in the ascendancy, with over 90% of the birds being the white morph.
Snow geese, due to their resemblance to swans, have been protected from hunting (nobody wants to shoot an angel by mistake), and populations, especially in the Lesser Snow Goose, have exploded to the point where over-grazing orgies (called eat-outs) at the nesting grounds are destroying the sparse vegetation, endangering the goose population as well as other species using the same tundra habitat. Increased bag limits and longer seasons for hunters seem causing some leveling-off in the population.
Greater Snow Geese are the farthest-north breeding waterfowl in North America. Summer breeding grounds range north from the Foxe Basin (the northern arm of Hudson Bay) to Elsmere Island, the farthest north of the Canadian Archipelago. Their wintering range is the mid-Atlantic Coast from New Jersey to the Carolinas. While Greater Snow Geese on most of the Delmarva come from Hudson Bay north, birds wintering along salt water come from a separate breeding population in western Greenland. Snow Geese have serrated edges to their bills, allowing for greater traction in pulling plant roots and tubers, their main diet. In the past few years, snow geese have been moving into farm fields to graze on waste grains and green cover crops such as rye or winter wheat. Watching a flock move across a field covered in sprouted rye reminds me of a party, groups come and go, aggregating and breaking up like conversation groups at a cocktail party and there is an overall background conversation buzz of honks and gabbles. Snow geese mate for life; young unattached adults meet and court their new mates on the wintering grounds. Adults who have lost mates do the same. Mixing and mingling on the wintering grounds serves to keep the population genetics mixed up—geese return to the females’ nesting areas. This may be a party in more than just metaphor.
Guest Spot
The following is an email from Alec. I post it without comment save to say that most of the people on the Titanic did not drown; they succumbed to hypothermia.
Tuesday 11:27 PM February 19, 2008
I would like to fly.
This phrase popped in my head just now, and I decided to write it down. I went swimming in the lake outside my dorm the other night. I asked Tim to borrow his soccer ball to go practice my penalty kicks, and on the way to the field the ball got away from me and fell into the lake. I had some premonition that it would, seeing as how every time I pass the lake I imagine the day I would have to go in it. So it didn’t take twenty seconds for me to take off all my shirts and jump into the freezing water to retrieve the ball. It was after that I remembered why the lake is there. The power plant (a trash incinerator) for JMU is on the top of the hill that ends in this lake. It isn’t a stretch of the imagination to say that some…unwanted things…end up in the lake. When I got out of the water I stayed squatting for a few minutes to drip dry and stay out of the harsh February wind (wind chill on Sunday was in the 20s). I put on my dry shirts, and with my soaking gym shorts and running shoes I went to the soccer field and tried my best to hit the upper 90. I suppose my inspiration of flying could come from this jaunt in a possibly radioactive lake, and I might be feeling the hints of a super power. I would not object to flying, because as I have already said:
I would like to fly.
Tuesday 11:27 PM February 19, 2008
I would like to fly.
This phrase popped in my head just now, and I decided to write it down. I went swimming in the lake outside my dorm the other night. I asked Tim to borrow his soccer ball to go practice my penalty kicks, and on the way to the field the ball got away from me and fell into the lake. I had some premonition that it would, seeing as how every time I pass the lake I imagine the day I would have to go in it. So it didn’t take twenty seconds for me to take off all my shirts and jump into the freezing water to retrieve the ball. It was after that I remembered why the lake is there. The power plant (a trash incinerator) for JMU is on the top of the hill that ends in this lake. It isn’t a stretch of the imagination to say that some…unwanted things…end up in the lake. When I got out of the water I stayed squatting for a few minutes to drip dry and stay out of the harsh February wind (wind chill on Sunday was in the 20s). I put on my dry shirts, and with my soaking gym shorts and running shoes I went to the soccer field and tried my best to hit the upper 90. I suppose my inspiration of flying could come from this jaunt in a possibly radioactive lake, and I might be feeling the hints of a super power. I would not object to flying, because as I have already said:
I would like to fly.
Thursday, January 3, 2008
Highland Light
Cape Cod is, in geological terms, a recessional moraine - where the glacier paused for breath on its retreat north 15,000 years ago. The terminal moraine - the point marking the ice’s farthest advance south, more or less parallels the Pennsylvania Turnpike.
The Cape Cod cliffs (technically a glacial scarp)form a bulwark against the pounding Atlantic. Highland Lighthouse sits atop the highest cliff on the Cape, about 130 feet above the beach. This boost gives the 50-foot tower an overall height above sea level of 180 feet, only about 20 feet shorter than Cape Hatteras Light,the tallest lighthouse in the U.S. Of course, the beach Hatteras is as flat as a board so its tower has to go it alone. Highland is the official name since 1976, locals, including the Park Rangers, still call it Cape Cod light.
Highland Lighthouse sits on the seventh fairway of the Highland Links Golf Course. Locals joke that all they need is the windmill from Eastham to make Highland Links the world’s only full-sized miniature golf course. Windows in the tower, including those up in the lamp room, have been struck and broken by errant golf balls. I wonder how many penalty strokes are invoked for hitting a lighthouse. Talk about hitting the broad side of a barn. Maybe the embarrassment is enough.
Highland light stands on the Cape Cod National Seashore and is jointly operated by the National Park Service and the Friends of Highland Light. The Friends run the light 24/7 as a “private aid to navigation”. Mariners use the light for a day mark, as a GPS reference point, and to tell them when they are near the offshore shoals, reputed to be the most dangerous on the Cape and which have claimed many a vessel over the years. The light is open to the public and manned by volunteer guides who sit up in the lamp room. To get there, you have to negotiate a cast iron winding stairway bolted to the brick walls. I felt like Alice through the Rabbit Hole as the steps became progressively narrower and steeper. There were no fat lighthouse keepers ever on duty at Cape Cod Lighthouse. I overheard one visitor (of a certain age) comment that climbing the stairs was like “re-enacting the birth process.” When you pop out at the top, the view is worth the climb - impressive vistas over the Atlantic and the moorland behind the lighthouse and helpful signs point out landmarks and landfalls (Portugal, due east 2500 miles; Nova Scotia, due north 700 miles).
Highland Lighthouse is one of the oldest in the U.S., dating from 1797, authorized by George Washington himself and is the first lighthouse using a revolving light. The light was originally fueled by lard, then whale oil, then kerosene, and now runs on electricity. The original lighthouse had its feet cut out from under it by constant wave erosion and toppled over the cliff in 1853, to be replaced a year later. The cliff continued to be eaten away by the waves until, in 1996, with only 50 feet to spare, the lighthouse was moved part and parcel 100 yards inland on the same day as Nauset Lighthouse and by the same outfit. Highland Light now sits well back from the cliff edge, waiting for the Atlantic to catch up.
You can walk from the light to the edge of the sheer cliff and gaze out over the ocean. The view is impressive; just you and the most ferocious mosquitoes on the planet. I don’t know how the golfers can stand it; they must bathe in repellent or have skins tough as rhinoceros hide. The Park Service probably sends out a daily cart to gather up the bodies of exsanguinated golfers just to keep the putting greens from getting too cluttered.
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