Thanks to Naturalist's Notebooker Jowill Woodman for passing along this fun, snowy-day-appropriate link. I don't dare show it to Wooster.
Just Follow the Arrows
Who says wild turkeys are stupid? They leave footprints that serve as directional arrows pointing predators in the opposite direction. Those prints in the photo above are on our driveway. Because our flock of 26 wild turkeys is still thriving, the driveway is an artwork of arrows. Each footprint, frozen in about an inch of snow or in the gravel, looks like an archaeological discovery—a dinosaur track.
Perhaps that shouldn't be surprising, given that scientific evidence shows that birds evolved from dinosaurs. At any major natural history museum you're likely to find a cast made from the 150-million-year-old fossil of an archaeopterix—a transitional species usually described as the first bird—that was unearthed in Germany in the 1870s. Or perhaps from one of the other fossils that have been found since then. We saw one most recently at the World Center for Birds of Prey in Boise, Idaho.
Here's the archaeopteryx cast we saw in Boise.
If you're interested in a detailed (if sometimes technical) description of the research being done on the structure and even color of feathers on certain dinosaurs, check out http://scienceblogs.com/notrocketscience/2010/01/what_colours_were_dinosaur_feathers.php.
In addition to the backwards arrow tracks they leave, wild turkeys can of course also fly to escape predators. Each day at 4 p.m. Pamelia and I watch the members of our flock take off (with a running start), one by one. They are ungainly flyers whose wings make a loud whooshing. The turkeys usually whack a few branches on the way up but always find a perch on which to roost for the night. It is very strange to walk outside at dusk and see more than two dozen of these huge birds snoozing in your leafless oak trees.
A reminder: The Naturalist's Notebook is open today, Saturday, Dec. 11, from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m.
This is what we saw when we woke up yesterday morning. That's Cadillac Mountain on the left and Sargeant Mountain on the right.
Light Show
Perhaps to complement the recent moon ring (see earlier post), a phenomenon known as a light pillar greeted us moments before sunrise yesterday. A few thousand years ago such a beam might have caused people to exclaim that a supernatural force or deity was sending a message (i.e., "You're all doomed" or "Hey, I finally found the flashlight!"). Nowadays we know it's just ice crystals in the atmosphere refracting sunlight. I wonder if the course of modern human history might have been different if we'd known that for the last 5,000 years.
At first, Pamelia and I wondered if this might be the light phenomenon known as a "sun dog," which we had heard about. But sun dogs are bright spots that look like additional suns on a halo of light that (again thanks to ice crystals) appears around our sun. In any case, it's just a matter of time before ballpark concessionaires steal the name sun dog and use it for solar-grilled wieners.
They're back! The playful foxes, that is. Perhaps interpreting the light pillar as the signal to resume their series of wrestling matches, they put on another show in the snow.
The fox on the right is rolling around, kicking his feet in the air like Snoopy after writing a funny line on his doghouse typewriter.
The fox on the left is doing a Flying Wallenda and is about to land on top of his bushy-tailed opponent.
SWAN SONG FOR LAME DUCKS?
The above headline appeared the other day on an AOL story about outgoing members of Congress gathering for the final time. Like the famous New York Post headline about the discovery of a murder victim ("Headless Body In Topless Bar"), this one used humor to lure readers into a grisly subject (politics). But it also made the naturalist and writer in me wonder: Where exactly did the terms "swan song" and "lame duck" come from?
Baseball fans might also refer to these as "ducks on the pond." Though those are usually limited to three at a time.
Turns out there was once a belief that a type of swan called the mute swan remained silent until it was dying, at which point it sang (cooed? honked? rapped?) a song. Sort of an avian version of the opera-and-sports cliché, "It ain't over until the fat lady sings." Of course, mute swans don't remain silent all their lives—they grunt, whistle and snort at their young, much like the fathers portrayed in Fox TV sitcoms. And they don't shuffle off this mortal coil with a closing number.
As for the term "lame duck," it was coined in Britain the 1700s to describe brokers who couldn't pay their debts. Not until the next century was it applied to politicians who have been voted out of office.
And only this fall has it described politicians voted out of office in part because brokers (and bankers) couldn't pay their debts.
One final thought: Did anyone in the audience at an opera (I'm envisioning an unshaven ex-linebacker type who snuck a beer into the theater) ever lean over to his seat mate (similar description) at a critical juncture in the performance and whisper, "It ain't over until the fat lady sings"? Or is that just a New Yorker cartoon waiting to happen?
Foxes in the Snow
As a former high-school wrestler who has also covered the sport at the Olympics, I've always appreciated good grappling—no matter what species is involved (and with a couple of my opponents, I had to wonder). Our two late cats, Hedda and Hopper, regularly engaged in what Pamelia and I called Wrestlemania: a crazed, tumbling wrestle-brawl that would begin when one would leap unannounced upon the other. The bouts were complete with body throws, kitty half-nelsons and seemingly illegal rapid-fire kicking with the back paws. The friendly bouts would be punctuated by comical, momentary timeouts in which the two cats would stop, pretend nothing had just happened, not even look at each other—and then suddenly leap into wilder action than I ever saw on an Olympic mat.
This morning, looking out through our first real snowstorm of the winter, Pamelia and I saw two young foxes doing the same thing. They seemed exhilarated to be in the snow. One would occasionally jump straight up, as if he'd just stepped onto a hot griddle. Alas, their match ended when a neighbor's huge dog came bounding and barking in their direction. He too looked as though he just wanted to have fun.
Future snow permitting, we will again open The Naturalist's Notebook this Saturday, Dec. 11, from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. We had another enjoyable day at the Notebook this past Saturday. Our giant stuffed-toy elephant, like one of Hannibal's pachyderms crossing the Alps, walked out the door into winter, accompanied by his new family. Our polar bear, however, is still chilling in the Arctic gallery with Ralph Fahringer's breathtaking photographs, and the Bengal tiger continues to hang out upstairs in our save-the-tigers display, pondering whether Russia's Vladimir Putin (http://news.in.msn.com/international/article.aspx?cp-documentid=4666275) really is serious about saving the big cats from extinction.
The Notebook at closing time last Saturday; we'll again be open this Saturday, from 10 to 5.
Ready for December
Our experiment worked. A surprisingly large number of visitors came to the Notebook to shop last Friday and Saturday. Opening for at least part of the holiday season might have to become a new tradition. If you're around this Saturday between 10 and 5, stop in.
Last week's moon ring (visible over our house) did indeed herald snow and sleet, as folk wisdom would have told you. Moon rings are caused by ice crystals in thin clouds about 20,000 feet off the ground. The rings are made of refracted moonlight, or perhaps I should say reflected and refracted sunlight—after all, what do you think lights up the moon?
Now that we've reached December and the days are getting colder and the hours of sunlight fewer (the sun here is already setting before 4 p.m.), it's worth noting that the Romans used to leave about 60 days of winter off their calendar. A tempting idea, eh? The early Roman calendar consisted of only 10 months. That's why our 12th month has a name that means "tenth" (it's derived from the Latin decem, or ten). The lengths of months were linked to cycles of nature and agriculture, and December seems to have been 29 or 30 days rather than 31.
We've been getting a nice pre-dawn view of Venus, that little white dot at the top of the photo, and a good look each clear evening at Jupiter, which has been exceptionally close to the Earth this fall and extra bright.
As for the month's biggest holiday, that too has roots in the cycles of nature. To quote the website Christianity Today, discussing the debate among ancient Christian scholars as to when (and whether) a birthday festival ought to be held for Jesus (whose birth date was unknown): "The eventual choice of December 25, made perhaps as early as 273, reflects a convergence of Origen's concern about pagan gods and the church's identification of God's son with the celestial sun. December 25 already hosted two other related festivals: natalis solis invicti (the Roman "birth of the unconquered sun"), and the birthday of Mithras, the Iranian "Sun of Righteousness" whose worship was popular with Roman soldiers. The winter solstice, another celebration of the sun, fell just a few days earlier. Seeing that pagans were already exalting deities with some parallels to the [Christian church's] deity, church leaders decided to commandeer the date and introduce a new festival."
What about New Year's Eve, if December 31 didn't even exist? Early Romans and some other ancient civilizations would have celebrated that around the time of the spring solstice, in March, when the new crops were planted and the new year officially began. Thus it appears that even before there was college basketball, there was March Madness.