The incredible shrinking Pamelia? No, just an optical illusion created when the two of us stepped into an Ames room in Edinburgh’s Camera Obscura museum. If we could just find enough space to build one of these rooms at The Naturalist’s Notebook, we would.
Can you find the hidden tiger in this photo? It’s also a visual trick from the Camera Obscura.
What’s the old Kipling line about keeping your head when all those around you are losing theirs? Pamelia seems to be keeping her head even after she’s lost it. Don’t worry; she’s fine.
We're still on the road, heading for the Scottish Highlands. More soon...
It's no revelation that house sparrows congregate in large numbers outside the cathedral of Notre Dame in Paris. Or that tourists feed them. But watching birds flutter and land on the hand of a wide-eyed child (or grownup) is cool indeed. Here are a few shots from our visit to Notre Dame this week, part of our ongoing road trip:
Lots to catch up on here in the blog as Pamelia and I (now joined by my mom and dad) continue our journey. More will be coming soon!
First stop: Concord, the capital of New Hampshire and, if you’re interested in science, home to both the Christa McAuliffe Planetarium (named for the Concord schoolteacher who died in the Challenger space shuttle explosion) and the McAuliffe-Shepard Discovery Center, an air-and-space museum named for McAuliffe and astronaut Alan Shepherd, another New Hampshire native. Pamelia and I were on our way to visit artist, writer and turtle expert David Carroll, who lives north of the city.
Pamelia and I are taking several trips over the next few months to visit naturalists, scientists and artists with whom we either already collaborate or would like to work. We left Maine this week for the first of those journeys. Here's a glimpse of the opening days of what will be a three-week trip that will take us to a total of four states as well as England and Scotland (for a family vacation):
CONCORD, NEW HAMPSHIRE We arrived in early evening after a beautiful drive south through the slanting fall sunshine. There is something distinctive about autumn light. The Sun is lower in the sky and closer to the Earth than in summer. Perhaps that's why the roadside fields glowed an especially bright yellow-green. Maybe the sunlight was illuminating the grass from behind, like stained glass.
Concord has an old, quaint downtown centered on the State House building. As we walked its streets in search of a dinner spot, we felt as though we'd gone back in time a few decades. There was even a record store still in operation. We had never been to this Concord, as opposed to the Concord in Massachusetts, the one of Lexington-and-Concord fame. I wondered how the two cities got their names. I learned that Concord, N.H., was originally called Rumford until the governor renamed it Concord (as in the word meaning harmony and agreement) to symbolize the end of a nasty boundary dispute between it and a neighboring town. The naming of the other Concord is uncertain, though it too probably arose from some sense of peaceful accord involved in its settling. This much is certain: The Concord grape is so named because it was developed by Ephraim Wales Bull in Concord, Mass.
Pamelia and I ended up venturing into Concord's former police station, which has been converted into a Mexican restaurant. And thus, in our only night in New Hampshire's capital, we ate our fish tacos and skillet enchiladas while sitting in a onetime jail cell.
We were up early the next day for a 7 a.m. appointment at the 1790 home of David Carroll, the renowned naturalist-writer-artist and 2006 recipient of a MacArthur fellowship, the so-called genius grant that is bestowed upon a small number of extraordinary Americans each year. Besides being a gifted painter, David is among the world's foremost experts on freshwater turtles, and is a lyrical and observant writer. His wife, Laurette, is a talented painter as well, and the two of them welcomed us for a "quick" visit that lasted five hours.
David’s lifelong observation of turtles and wetland environments has brought him worldwide respect, a John Burroughs medal for distinguished natural-history writing, and a McArthur fellowship. Most important, his efforts have helped us understand and learn how to protect turtles, the amazing creatures whose habitats humans continue to destroy.
I will be writing more about David in the future, because he will be helping us with an installation and we will be featuring some of his work at The Naturalist's Notebook next year. But I'm first going to let David tell you in his own words about himself and his approach to combining art and nature:
David and Laurette took us to their detached studio, where we got to see some of their original work.
"The watercolors and pen and ink drawings I produce to illustrate my published books and other written work are of a more specifically natural-history mode and mood. In most cases they include specific plants or other details and ambient settings that relate directly to the turtles' habitats and thereby their ecology.
"As I look over the art work I have done for my five books, one of my most personally satisfying realizations is that with but three or four pieces out of the entire collection, all watercolors and drawings represent something I have seen myself over the course of my swampwalking. Some I observed many times over, others only once in over five decades. Occasionally I make very rough field sketches.
Pamelia and David in the studio.
"When I am in the swamps or along streams and rivers my focus is on my searching for turtles and observing and analyzing, their surroundings. I take photos now and then, and more frequently write background descriptions and details in my swamp notebooks, which I later use in my art and writing, ninety per cent or more of which is done during the time of the turtles' hibernating—my 'indoor season.' The weather conditions and at times biting-insect status of the habitats I wander are rarely conducive to prolonged drawing sessions; and my focus is certainly more on the natural landscape through I am ever-so-slowly moving, in seeing and documenting what I come upon. And I am always keenly bent on finding turtles.
We talked with David and Laurette talked about art, ecology, turtles, David’s McArthur fellowship and much more, including the beautiful wild asters growing in their dooryard.
"My art, which I do at my indoor drawing and writing tables, comes from sketchbooks in which I have drawn from natural specimens, from turtles I bring home for a day, plants I collect, a red-winged blackbird unfortunately killed when it flew into a window, and so on; plus photos and the occasional field sketches, and my memory and imagination."
As I say, we'll be getting back to David and Laurette in future blogs, but consider this an introduction if you haven't had a chance to read any of David's books. For now, Pamelia and I must return to the road. We'll tell you in the next post about more adventures that will include dinosaurs, dioramas, dancers and danger (to wildlife)...but I hope no more jail cells.
This is Concord’s McAuliffe-Shepherd Discovery Center.
Here’s the jail cell in which we enjoyed a fine, if confined, dinner in Concord.
Today's Puzzler The statue below of a U.S. president stands in front of the New Hampshire capitol building. Which president is it?
a) Martin Van Buren b) Calvin Coolidge c) Franklin Pierce
Jane Naliboff took this photo on Minnehonk Lake in Mount Vernon, Maine, in early September. The loon’s story soon took a sad turn.
Notebook friend Jane Naliboff is a writer, photographer and naturalist from Vienna, Maine, a town in the foothills of the state's western mountains. She is a photo contributor for the dailybulldog.com, which covers news from Franklin County. Jane recently contacted us with a story about one of the animals she follows closely and photographs regularly: the common loon. This magnificent bird is regularly a victim of lead sinkers used by anglers fishing in lakes. Jane writes:
"According to the [Maine] Department of Inland Fisheries & Wildlife, 30 percent of dead loons autopsied have evidence of lead poisoning, and death can occur within 5 to 10 days of ingestion. Buying or selling lead-based sinkers weighing one-half ounce or less has been illegal in Maine since 2002, but there is still a lot of lead in fly vests and tackle boxes. Think about all the split shot lost nymphing and the lead wire people still wrap streamers with and the effects on the ecosystem. Please, get rid of all of that old lead."
Jane noticed that the loon’s foot was an odd color (it’s lifted out of the water here and looks reddish rather than black), that the bird was missing some flying feathers, and that its left wing didn’t cover its side. She sent photos to Inland Fisheries and Wildlife, whose biologists said the loon appeared to have a broken wing and could be in danger when the lake froze next winter and it needed to fly elsewhere. Jane contacted a bird-rehabilitation group, Avian Haven, in Freedom, Maine, which sent Shearon Murphy to kayak to the loon and try to help.
According to a story last year in the New Hampshire Sentinel Source, "Loons typically ingest fishing tackle in one of three ways, said Harry S. Vogel, executive director and senior biologist for the [N.H.-based] Loon Preservation Committee. When an angler trolls a lead-headed jig through the water, loons will often strike at it out of instinct, he said. They also eat fish that have broken away from fishing line with a piece of lead tackle still hooked to them.
"Loons also routinely scoop and swallow small pebbles off the bottom of the lake to aid their digestion, often ingesting lead tackle by accident in the process, Vogel said."
Shearon paddled to the loon, picked it up (the bird remained calm) and took it to Avian Haven, where Jane says the owners and a vet determined that the wing was all right but that the bird had a lead sinker stuck in its gizzard and had an elevated lead level. Through a procedure called lavage—pouring water into the gizzard—they were able to flush out the sinker. The bird was put on chelation therapy to try to remove some of the lead from its system.
Jane was optimistic after the lead sinker was removed but says the loon "survived only a few more hours before succumbing to lead poisoning. Everyone did all they could, and we are all heartbroken."
Like Jane, we were saddened by the news. Pamelia and I watch and listen to loons all the time in the waters in front of our house. When we were married by her late mother's Maine cottage in 1995, a loon watched from surprisingly close range—a good omen, we figured. Just last Friday I saw a segment about loons on Maine Watch, a weekly public-affairs show on Maine Public Broadcasting. I learned, among other things, that loons are a bellwether for the presence of toxins such as mercury and lead in water and that if a loon ever bites you (an extremely improbable occurrence unless you're a scientist trying to catch and band one), don't try to pull your fingers out of its bill or you're likely to get cut to the bone; they have sharp, serrated projections on the roof of their mouth and their tongue to prevent prey from escaping.
At the same time, notes Jane, who was able to pet the loon that Avian Haven tried to save, "Their heads are like velvet. And such sweet, sweet faces." It haunts her that, a week after the loon died, she says, "the mate continues to call."
Smart Birds We've talked quite a bit about ravens this summer because of Bernd Heinrich's visit. The other night Notebook friend John Clark passed along this interesting photo:
John saved this clipping from an old copy of a Maine newspaper, The Quoddy Times. As the caption notes, the raven seems to be trying to get the eagle to fly.
Our Sustainable Food Friends Need a New Engine
We got an e-mail this week from Justin Cutter. He's a leader of the Compass Green sustainable-farming team that drove its mobile greenhouse—a truck converted to run on vegetable oil, as you'll see if you click on the short video above—to The Naturalist's Notebook last summer. As many of you recall, Justin gave a fascinating talk on bio-intensive agriculture and how to build healthier soil. Here's Justin's update:
"I don't know if you've gotten our newsletters, but things have been going pretty well since we saw you last. After a great spring tour with Compass Green in which we were able to teach almost 2,000 at-risk youth from low-income schools in California and the Midwest, we headed into our summer months with great excitement, as we were booked by Lollapalooza, one of the biggest music festivals in the country, to be one of their featured non-profit partners. At the beginning of August we had a bit of disaster strike us. We were on our way to Chicago for Lollapalooza, and our engine burned up. After towing it to a garage, getting it checked out and worked on, they thought they'd finally fixed the problem but when I drove away after 5 pm and it broke down again. I got it back to the shop and spent a crazy 13 hours assembling a huge container garden of vegetables, fruits, and herbs, and drove through the night in time to set up in Chicago for the festival. We ended up doing really well at the festival and teaching many people from our beautiful garden booth, despite the fact that our truck didn't make it, so we were really happy to fulfill our commitment there. Since then though, I've been dealing with the truck and have finally started cancelling portions of our fall tour. It turns out that we need a new engine, and for a truck of that size it will cost almost $14,000. Whew.
The Compass Green team on its visit to The Naturalist’s Notebook last year to give a workshop on bio-intensive agriculture and sustainable food systems.
"We are having an emergency fundraiser to get our truck back in action (right now we are short about $10,00)," Justin continued, "and we're contacting everybody that has taking an interest in Compass Green to see if they'd be able to make a donation."
The Naturalist's Notebook is going to chip in, and we're spreading the word in case any of you also wish to help the Mobile Greenhouse and get this important educational initiative rolling again. To donate money, go to: http://www.compassgreenproject.org/donate
All the Buzz Somehow the video setting on one of our cameras got set so that videos come out partly in color and partly in black-and-white—a very odd effect. I happened to have that camera with me yesterday when I filmed this really loud bee working away in a rugosa rose blossom. Here's the video:
This is what the bee and the flower actually looked like:
One Mystery Solved That unidentified, hippo-faced caterpillar we showed you in the last blog post—and are showing you again, below—is no longer unidentified. As you may have seen in the comments section, blog follower Janice found it in the excellent book Caterpillars of Eastern North America, by David L. Wagner, and it is a white-blotched heterocampa (Heterocampa umbrata). Wagner writes that the caterpillar can have "a confusing array of patterns," which makes me feel better about not knowing what it was.
Another shot of our white-bloched heterocampa. That was a really huge acorn, but the way.
Mystery-Bone Update
Back to solving our bone mystery. Thanks to Virginia and Eli’s research, we now think that this bone Betsy found on the shore might be the occipital bone of an as yet undetermined animal. The occipital bone is at the back of the skull, and that large hole is where the spinal cord connects to the head. More details as they become available…
Lost Toupee? No, Just A Hair-like Fungus
This has been growing for weeks beneath one of our thistle feeders. At first I thought it might be part of an animal’s tail, ripped off in a vicious turf war. But I think I’ve determined that it’s a fungus called Phycomyces nitens, and though the species hasn’t been that thoroughly studied, it grows on feces. In our case, it has sprouted on the site of droppings of either raccoon, fox, wild turkeys or bear—or all of the above. I read some warnings that its spores might be harmful to humans, so I’m not touching it. Perhaps if I leave it long enough it will grow into Cousin It of Addams Family fame.
A Northern goshawk flew in and perched near one of our feeders yesterday, presumably on the hunt. The small birds all flew off, and in time, so did the goshawk.
Don’t know if you saw this Canon camera ad about the endangered saiga. It ran in National Geographic and deserves highlighting because it’s both beautiful and substantive. Don’t you love the snout of the saiga? I think Eli’s nose is feeling like a saiga schnoz today because of early fall allergies.
Cuttlefish and Clothing One of the most amazing disguise artists in the animal world is the cuttlefish, which can transform its appearance almost instantly in a stunning variety of ways. Could that be the future of the clothing humans wear? Read on:
http://www.bbc.com/future/story/20120907-smart-fashion-tips-by-cuttlefish
A cuttlefish
The Naturalist’s Notebook late last evening as we did some after-hours work. Eli, Virginia and Julie will continue taking care of business in Seal Harbor when we head off this week to meet with naturalists and artists in New England and then travel to Great Britain for more bloggable adventures.
The postcard view earlier last evening in Bar Harbor.
Answers to the Last Puzzlers
1) The insect in the photo is a two-striped grasshopper.
2) (The five-year-old's riddle):
Q. What do you call the time in history when dinosaurs were eating candy?
A. The PEZ-a-zoic Era
Today's Puzzler A math quiz: How many nines are there between 1 and 100?
On our TEDx scouting trip to Bates College, we watched this osprey circle over the duck-filled lake and land high in a white pine.
Pamelia woke me from a deep sleep at 4 a.m. "Sorry," she said. "But we have to drive to Bates." I was too groggy to process this unexpected announcement, but an hour (and two cups of coffee) later, as we began the 150-mile drive south to Bates College, in Lewiston, Maine, to scout the location of our upcoming TEDx conference outdoor installation, I knew we were off on a worthwhile adventure.
Pamelia and I studied the outdoor amphitheater and Lake Andrews—a small, man-made body that Bates students often call the Puddle—to figure out how best to present the Notebook’s outdoor 13.7-billion-year, history-of-the-universe walk during the TEDx conference in October.
Bates is a small school (1,700 students) that has been recognized as one of America's greenest colleges. I had never been there, but immediately liked the feel of the compact campus and the brick buildings. The TEDx conference will be held at the Olin Arts Center, which sits next to a stone-and-grass outdoor amphitheater and pond-sized Lake Andrews. Between sessions at the conference (which will focus on the theme of villages and will feature a variety of compelling speakers), attendees will go out onto a stone terrace overlooking the amphitheater and the lake. We hope that many of them will be drawn to our fun, color-coded, lakeside walk through the history of the universe.
The quarter-mile walk around the scenic lake took us past not only the osprey but also glowing spider webs, a flock of black ducks, assorted leaf-munching caterpillars and a splendorous mix of trees, grasses and flowering plants.
About a dozen of these white hickory tussock moth caterpillars were on the trunk of an oak tree. This type of caterpillar has been growing in number in Maine. Be forewarned if you see one: Touching its hairs can cause an allergic reaction.
We should have brought some of our Notebook brain-bogglers to work on at this lakeside sitting spot.
Whether or not you attend the TEDx conference, you should try to take in this show of astrophotography, which will run at Bates through the end of the year.
We hope to see some of you at the TEDx Dirigo event at Bates. The group's slogan is Maine Ideas Worth Sharing, but the talks and conversations will reach far beyond the Pine Tree State in their insights and importance. Even the walk around the lake will (we hope) be memorable.
Wildlife Back Home We've had many distractions lately—pretty much anytime we step out the door or look out the window. Our house and its surroundings are a hub for black bears, raccoons, skunks, foxes, migrating birds, frenetic fish, butterflies, dragonflies and a flock of wild turkeys that is growing in number, as it does at this time each year. A few pictures:
This morning we looked outside at 6:30 and saw a pair of young foxes. We’ve seen fox kits here in mid-September for several years.
Doesn’t this caterpillar look a bit like a hippo? Pamelia and I found it marching across our dirt road. I couldn’t find it in my caterpillar field guide. Any thoughts on what type it is? It has evolved a wonderful camouflage to hide in leaves.
A top view of the same caterpillar. The design itself looks like an insect.
We found this beautiful dragonfly on the road. Don’t know what happened to it, but it had expired. Scientists have long studied dragonfly wings for insights into building strong, lightweight, aerodynamic structures.
Cute animal face? No, a bone found on the shore near us by our friend Betsy. What is it? We’re trying to find out.
Here’s a bottom view of the same bone. Or maybe this is the top view.
Caterpillars have been carving meandering paths on these leaves. Each leaf has a different pattern.
The waters at our house were alive with swarming fish yesterday afternoon. We guessed that they might be mackerel, but couldn’t tell. They were literally jumping into the air—perhaps to escape a hungry seal?
Back to those foxes. Julie, who's living with us, had the wits scared out of her the other night by a screaming red fox when she got out of her car in our driveway. You laugh? Listen to what a fox scream sounds like:
Birding Tips from the Cornell Ornithology Lab The lab e-mailed me this video link the other day about the methods it uses to track the small birds we find in our backyards:
Worrisome Words From a story in last week's Ellsworth (Maine) American on the lack of cod and other groundfish in the eastern Gulf of Maine—an area that MacArthur Fellow Ted Ames, a longtime Maine fisherman and historical fisheries ecology researcher, calls "a depleted suite of fisheries":
James "Howdy" Houghton, a Bar Harbor lobsterman, said the bottom temperature around that Frenchman Bay harbor had been "45 degrees forever," but has increased significantly over the past few years. Five years ago, he said, the temperature had risen to 50 degrees.
"Now it's up to 60. We're seeing all kinds of squid around we never see."
Bat Watching
The U.S. Forest Service sent me a press release this week saying that it will be co-sponsoring a live educational webcast about bats on Tuesday, September 18, from Bracken Cave near San Antonio. Twenty percent of the world's known mammal species are bats, and if you'd like to learn more about them, tune in (or tell your local school to tune in) by going to http://www.batslive.pwnet.org. The webcast will take you on a field trip to view millions of Mexican free-tailed bats and find out the latest on the white-nose syndrome that has killed off more than 6 million bats, mostly in the eastern U.S.
Bats leaving Bracken Cave in Texas.
Here's a link to a very good Q-and-A about bats:
http://www.batslive.pwnet.org/pdf/Q&A.pdf
Bottle Cap Art Anne, our Russian correspondent, sent along this link to a story about a woman who has taken recycling in a different direction. She has covered her house with art she has made from plastic bottle caps. The piece is written in Russian, but you can get the basic idea from the photos:
http://www.ridus.ru/news/45059/
Answers to the Last Puzzlers
1) How much salt is in the average human body? Answer: c) enough to fill two salt shakers
2) What is the name for that crown-like, five-pointed star on top of a blueberry? Answer: b) calyx (from a Latin word meaning outer covering)
Today's Puzzler
We saw this creature at the side of the road.
1) What is the insect shown above? a) a two-striped grasshopper b) an Eastern locust c) a yellowback katydid
2) A very smart five-year-old girl visited The Naturalist's Notebook and told us a joke she had made up:
What do you call the time in history when dinosaurs were eating candy?
Can you guess the answer?
My camera wasn’t light-sensitive enough to take a usable photo of the glowing phytoplankton along our shore last night, but this shot gives you an idea of the show we witnessed every time we stepped into the water or on a patch of seaweed. It was like an aerial view of city lights.
Our friends Lisa and Alex came in from the dark, electrified. They had just walked a bowl of post-dinner lobster shells down to the low-tide line to dump them into the water. With every step they had seen the rock weed beneath their feet flash as if filled with fireflies.
So began an amazing experience for Pamelia, me and three of our guests.
We stumbled through the darkness and down a short hill (some of us sliding down a slippery rock face on our butts) to the low-tide zone. And then: Wow. Imagine if every piece of seaweed were wired with dozens—or hundreds—of tiny white lights that popped on whenever you put your foot down. That was what we witnessed. Some of us walked out farther and saw the same spectacle when we stepped in the water. Sometimes the flashes looked like shooting stars or flying sparks. We wished every kid in the world could have been with us to experience this thrilling display of science and nature.
Two of our night explorers, Lisa and Pamelia, illuminated by flashlight, not phytoplankton.
We were watching the phenomenon of bioluminiscence—a light-emitting chemical reaction produced by many forms of sea life for any number of purposes, from defense to communication to mate-attracting. In our case, we were seeing tiny marine plants called phytoplankton, which are an essential link in the ocean food chain. Their blinks of bioluminescence are thought to unsettle potential predators.
This is a more extreme illustration of phytoplankton bioluminescence, photographed along the New Jersey coast.
Pamelia and I had never before seen bioluminescence in our low-tide zone, but then again, we had rarely walked there in total darkness. Two of the College of the Atlantic graduates and Naturalist's Notebook team members who live with us said they had learned in their marine studies that the conditions at this time of year in this section of the Maine coast are conducive to bioluminescence displays. With that in mind, we'll have to return to the water's edge over the next few nights to see if the sparks are still flying.
Looked What Washed Ashore The Maine coastline has been filled with cool surprises lately. The other day a Notebook friend from Seal Harbor e-mailed us the photo below with a note: "Sarah and I came upon this ocean creature on the beach! About 2ft long! What do you suppose it is!!????"
What is this two-foot-long thing?
I passed the query along to one of the sharpest naturalists we know, Lynn Havsall, who had just returned from giving a butterfly lecture in Vermont. Lynn (who loves solving mysteries like this) said it was a bit hard to tell from the small photo but that "I think what your friends found is a bouquet of squid eggs [http://njscuba.net/zzz_uw/mohawk_squid_eggs.jpg].
"They are laid in clusters and look like white sausages filled with tiny eggs—baby squidlets! The Atlantic squid found around here is loligo pealei [http://www.freewebs.com/andrej_gajic/Marine%20Biology/Loligo%20Opalescens.jpg]. They recently have been seen in tide pools in Blue Hill and photographed by my friend Leslie Clapp.
This is what the eggs will become when they hatch.
"Here's some info: http://www.fao.org/fishery/species/2714/en. I love how this article calls the egg clusters 'sea mops,' for that is exactly what the photo you sent looks like!"
Squid are relatively plentiful in the Gulf of Maine, and I've read that they have been unusually abundant near the coast lately. There is a theory that the 50-ton male sperm whale found dead (of as yet undetermined causes) in the waters off Mount Desert Island a couple of weeks ago might have been following a large school of squid close to shore.
Many types of squid display bioluminescence, by the way.
The Banjo Player
A rainy Maine morning brought this two-inch-long amphibian onto our stone walkway. It's a species known as a green frog. Some green frogs have more green on them, I guess you could include Kermit in that group. If you live near wetlands you may have heard the song of this lovable leaper, which sounds like the plucking of a banjo string.
Click below to hear that familiar sound:
This Morning's Notebook To-Do List (Partial)
1. Finish (finally) unpacking from the London Olympics (currently down to just paperwork).
2. Pull out paintbrushes, primer, drills and screwdrivers and start creating a prototype for the 13.7-billion-year interactive outdoor installation we're making with Eli, Virginia and Julie for the TEDx conference at Bates College in October.
3. Try to minimize interruptions for Pamelia as she continues her tireless (and amazing) design work on some of our Big Plans for 2013 and beyond.
4. Make sure Eli and Virginia bring leftover varietal honeys from our Sweet 16 tournament to the Notebook for sampling by the Honey Man. This connoisseur visits us every year and is as passionate and knowledgeable about honey as a sommelier is about wine. He still speaks rapturously about the pumpkin-blossom honey he tasted at the Notebook last year.
5. Check for bear scat. Two nights ago Eli and Virginia were walking Bashi in the driveway at our house when they heard a crash in the woods and (with a flashlight) saw our newest outdoor regular, a small black bear, climbing down from a tree.
6. Prepare to (at last) get back to those of you who have inquired about purchasing signed, never-before-available prints of naturalist Bernd Heinrich's illustrations, which are on display through mid-October at the Notebook.
7. Print out the forms to apply for Russian visas for an early November SI trip to Sochi for the 2014 Winter Olympic world press briefing.
8. Continue planning a late September family getaway (a belated 60th-anniversary gift to my parents) to Britain. Our Notebook-related stops will include the Glasgow Science Centre, Our Dynamic Earth in Edinburgh, the Natural History Museum in London and some good sites for watching birds. The blog will report on our discoveries.
9. Get outside.
Giving the Birds Their Due As past visitors to The Naturalist's Notebook know, we are home to the Natural League. We have a homemade, Green Monster-like standings board that shows the current standings of the nine major league baseball teams with names taken from the world of nature, such as Tigers and Marlins.
This summer, because we needed room for a display on Olympian naturalists, I benched the Natural League standings board. That move left a recent visitor highly disappointed. He is fan of the Baltimore Orioles, who have languished near the bottom of the Natural League since its inception in 2009. I feel it is only fair to share with you all today's standings in the Natural League, even if they aren't displayed on our board:
1-BALTIMORE ORIOLES (76-60)
2-Tampa Rays (75-62)
3-St. Louis Cardinals (74-63)
4-Detroit Tigers (73-63)
5-Arizona Diamondbacks (68-70)
6-Toronto Blue Jays (61-75)
7-Miami Marlins (60-77)
8-Colorado Rockies (56-79)
9-Chicago Cubs (51-85)
As I’ve noted before, the Notebook deck attracts many insect specimens. In trying to figure out what type of caterpillar this is, I should have first asked myself why the caterpillar was on the deck. The answer was the large ash tree that grows up through the deck. This is a banded tussock moth caterpillar, which likes to feed on ash leaves.
The caterpillar will metamorphose into this—a banded tussock moth, sometimes called a pale tiger moth.
I meant to put in this in an earlier post, but here’s a shot of a Northern saw-whet owl that’s being rehabbed at the Birdsacre sanctuary in Ellsworth. He’s only eight inches tall. Birdsacre is a wonderful oasis of nature in an area that has been rapidly getting paved over.
These clouds at our house—which you may have seen on our Facebook page—are a type called undulatus, because of their undulating, wave-like appearance. They form when the air above and below the cloud layer is moving at different speeds or in different directions. I’ve mentioned this before, but you ought to pick up a copy of The Cloud Collector’s Handbook if you’d like to better understand what you see when you look at the sky.
We hosted a signing for the new book Loupette and the Moon, by Nancy Andrews (far left, in the background), and drew a rapt audience. Besides teaching at College of the Atlantic, Nancy is working on a number of new creative projects, including a feature film, another book and an international show combining art and medical issues.
The signing also drew a canine crowd, including this seven-and-a-half-week-old puppy named Max.
Bashi, Eli and Virginia’s five-month-old puppy, remains the chief resident of the Notebook deck.
Today's Puzzlers
1) How much salt is in the average human body?
a) a pinch
b) a tablespoon
c) enough to fill two salt shakers
2) What is the name for that crown-like, five-pointed star on top of a blueberry?
a) collar
b) calyx
c) crown
