senseless injury

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I am senior naturalist at Ijams Nature Center, a nature/ environmental education center. But we have also been a wildlife sanctuary since the 1920s. It is their home and we protect it and them.

Yesterday morning we found in the woods one of our prized wild Eastern box turtles with a bashed in top shell (carapace). It appears to be caused by a rock or hammer. He is a wild animal that lives outside year-round in the vicinity of the Visitor Center.

We have seen him from time-to-time for years. His markings are very distinctive.

Our in-house veterinarian, Dr. Louise Conrad, hopes the shell will heal. It's like a broken bone but like any injury, infection can set in.

Dr. Louise took him to the University of Tennessee Veterinary Hospital. X-rays will determine if there is any internal damage. I will keep you posted.
 
Thousands of people visit Ijams every year. We love that. Rarely do we find one of our wild animals injured. Over the years we have found a couple of our wild snakes bludgeoned to death. Senseless.

Remember, Ijams is their home. Please respect them. Look but don't touch. And certainly don't bash one with a rock.

Who would do such a thing?

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froggy welcome home

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Such a pleasure being back and helping Ijams new naturalist/educator Christie Collins host a Family Froggy Night Hike.

The smallest tadpoles—and they were tiny—were probably the Cope's gray treefrogs we netted in the Secret Pond, while the largest tadpole found was probably a bullfrog netted in the Reflecting Pool. It was just beginning to go through metamorphosis. It had short back legs.  

Spring Peeper

 
In all we visited six ponds. We spotted very young bullfrogs in the Plaza Pond plus we heard Cope's and green frogs calling near the Lotus Pond and the first wood thrush singing in 2017. Half the group even saw a barred owl. Yet, even though it was hot today and late in the season for them, the spring peepers stole the evening. They were calling everywhere, mostly from the trees above our heads.

Great family nocturnal fun! 

Click your ruby slippers together. There's no place like home.

Cope's gray treefrog

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Yakima Valley College

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Yakima Valley with Antanum Ridge in background. Wiki media

Lewis and Clark were the first non-natives to visit the Yakima Valley in 1805. Their Corps of Discovery was searching for easy passage to the Pacific Ocean (it doesn't exist) and perhaps a living Jefferson giant ground sloth (they only found fossils). What they did find at this high mountain plateau was rich fertile basaltic soil and the Yakama people. 

The valley itself marks the beginning of arid flatland formed 14 to 17 million years ago by continuous lava flows from the Columbia River Basalt Group of volcanoes that make up the Cascade Mountains to the west. Basalt is a key word here, practically everywhere you look you find the aged volcanic rock still erect in columns, crumbling or weathered into soil.

Almost 212 years after Lewis and Clark, I had been invited to Yakima Valley College (founded in 1928 as Yakima Valley Community College) to present a series of lectures and talks about writing, nature journaling and natural history wonders shared by both Washington state and Tennessee. I also spoke of my second book Ghost Birds and its creation which is more than a book about a single endangered species. 

Ghost Birds captures an era, the 1930s, when the conservation paradigm was changing. The overriding question of the day: If we can save a vanishing species, shouldn't we? My visit was part of their YVC Reads celebration of Aldo Leopold and his seminal work: A Sand County Almanac and the college's Earth Day observance.

The student body at YVC is widely diverse, something I relished. My one-on-one conversations at their Earth Fest were heartwarming given the political climate we find ourselves in today. In the parlance of a paleontologist, as the modern day Age of pallid male Dinosaurs gives way to the Age of Mammals. In nature, change, growth and evolution are the natural order. You can resist and deny it but you simply cannot stop it. Roadblocks can be erected or threatened, but like the Berlin Wall, they cannot be sustained. Humanity is a molten entity. Just ask anthropology professor Eric Anderson who invited me in the first place.

Yakima Valley College is going through something of a rebirth itself. Many of the art-laden buildings are new. They surround a nascent circular courtyard or commons where I often sat during breaks to watch birds.

While in Yakima, I was the house guest of Anderson and his teacher wife Chandra. They were exceedingly gracious. Early every morning I had my coffee gazing through a wall of glass across the valley at Antanum Ridge and sometimes, if it chose to present itself, 12,276 foot tall snow-capped Mt. Adams (known by Native Americans as Pahto). Mount Ranier (Tacoma) and what's left of Mt. Saint Helens (Lawetlat'la) are within the same general vicinity.

In addition to the Andersons, I also thank the other professors I met who welcomed me warmly: Mark Fuzie, Dr. Heidi Shaw, Dr. Meghan Fitzgerald and Dr. Ken Zontek. 

And thank you Wilma Dulin and Amber Cliett for the behind the scenes arraignments that made my trip possible.

Peace to you, Yakima.   

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Thank you, Yakima

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Thank you to my new friends in Yakima, Washington and at Yakima Valley College.

I thoroughly enjoyed my time on your lovely campus and all of the people I met. Thank you for your kindness.

And thank you professor Eric Anderson for arranging my visit, my lecture series and the gracious hospitality of your lovely family.

I am back home again, safe and sound in the vernal lushness of Tennessee.

More to follow as memories bubble to the surface. 

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Science more than matters

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It was raining, but gallant they marched undaunted.

I take my soggy wet Pacific Northwest hat off to my dear East Tennessee friends who attended the soggy wet March for Science in Washington DC while I was across the country in the state also named in honor of our first president. (Does anyone honestly think there will be anything named in honor of our current ineffectual president? They are actually taking his name off buildings in his home state.)

I am hugely proud of two of the young marchers who have attended so many of my "ology" classes—many more than once—at Ijams Nature Center that they could step in and teach them. Proud of you, Asha who knows her owls and Judah, a future wetland ecologist, who caught a record 25 red-spotted newts at my last Froggy-ology.

And to all of our befuddled elected legislators from Tennessee who somehow think this ire is going to go away, you are sadly mistaken. President of an university where science is taught, what were we thinking?

Yes. Science more than matters. It is the one thing that is testable. Provable. Concrete. And as Newton's Third Law of Physics clearly states, "For every action, there is an equal (in force) and opposite (in direction) reaction."

And science is the only thing that can save this Pale Blue Dot* we call home.

* My homage to my science hero Carl Edward Sagan.

Notice the red-spotted newt in Judah's poster! His homage to me. 

"The oceans are rising and so are we!" Indeed.

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silken birdfeeders

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The Eastern tent caterpillar is the larva stage of a rather nondescript small brown moth. (Trust me. It’s small and brown. You’d hardly notice it, would have difficulty describing it to anyone. That's nondescript.)

Early last summer, the female adult moths laid her varnish-coated egg masses—hundreds of eggs—in the crotches of trees. The females were very particular. They only laid their eggs on the trees with leaves her young would eat. Cherries, apples and crab apples are their most common host plants.

The eggs remain there for over nine months. In early spring the tiny larvae hatch and begin spinning a small silken tent where they live protected during the day. At night the caterpillars venture out to eat leaves; their sole purpose in life is to eat a lot and grow.

The caterpillars return to their nests each morning and because they've grown—which tends to happen if you eat all night—they add to their nest to accommodate their new bulk.

People often panic when they see these tents in their trees. They want to attack them with kerosene and fire. Napalm is no longer available for household use. But relax. These silken tents are really just natural birdfeeders. Only a small percentage of the caterpillars survive, the birds eat most of them. The other day I watched a blue jay standing on top of one of the nests tossing down caterpillars as fast as it could like they were shrimp from an Aussie's barbie. Ga-day mate.

I wonder what they taste like? A bit hairy, I would imagine.

Eastern tent caterpillars, a.k.a. bird food

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sharp's morning

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Black-throated green warbler from Wiki media

Visited Sharp's Ridge this morning looking for migrants with Starbuck, a.k.a. Rachael—I have the day off from UT and let's go birding—Eliot.

The "winter" birds were still present: yellow-rumped warblers now in breeding plumage and a pair of ruby-crowned kinglets jousting. Pine warblers, an early migrator were also there. But with keen ears and due diligence, Starbuck located multiple black-throated green warblers by their persistent "zoo-zee, zoo-zoo-zees." And I spotted a lone worm-eating warbler moving through the canopy. Ergo: still early in the spring migration.

There are a total of 53 species of wood warbler that migrate to North America from Central and South America, well 52 if you leave out Bachman's warbler, which is probably extinct. Of the 52, 14 are western species and 38 are eastern that fly in and out of our sphere of awareness with the seasons. Starbuck and I had a fleeting few seconds, mere glimpses of four species this morning. Fleeting. But oh the rapture therein. I write about their ephemerality in my new book to be published by the University of Tennessee Press this summer.  

View from Sharp's Ridge this morning

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big spotted

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It's amphibian season at Ijams. Late last month I hosted three classes of EdVenture@Ijams for homeschool students and their parent/teachers.

One student named Jacob, who can catch anything, caught the biggest amphibians we found all month, a pair of spotted salamanders (Ambystoma maculatum). 

These large amphibians are black with yellow spots. They are one of the mole salamanders that spend most of their lives burrowing through the top layer of soil searching for earthworms and beetle grubs. 

For more photos go to: EdVentures@Ijams.

- Supplied photos by teacher/mom Cheri Hall

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froggy-ology is Sunday

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Sunday, April 9, 2 p.m.

Froggy-ology 101 at Ijams

 

(Youthful) Our “ology” classes are for kids, young families and the young-at-heart. 

Next up? The ectothermic vertebrate animals that are born in water but generally grow up to leave it—the amphibians (from the Greek amphibios, meaning living a double life). 

We’ll have a short class indoors, enjoy some froggy snacks and then go outside exploring with dip nets. The ponds at Ijams Nature Center will be full of frogs, tadpoles and newts...yes, newts. 

Join me for some great family fun on a Sunday afternoon. The forecast looks great for both weather and newts.

Preregistration is required. Go online to ijams.org/events/

American toad (Anaxyrus americanus)

Will we find a toad?

My first book, Natural Histories: Stories of Nature from the Tennessee Valley, published by the University of Tennessee Press in 2007 has a chapter about my long affection with frogs and toads—the anurans. And oh...the call of the American toad (Anaxyrus americanus), is such a sweet song crooned by remarkably bumpy, lumpy, Jabba the Hutt like creature. 

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the hum is back

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Saturday, April 8, 10:30 a.m.

Birding & Brunch at Ijams

Where are the hummingbirds? 

Well, my first two of the season appeared at my feeder on the back deck last evening just ahead of the thunderstorm.

(All Ages) Join me for this fun and lighthearted look into the world of everyone’s favorite avian pixie: the ruby-throated hummingbird. (They are about the size as the end of my thumb. See above.) We’ll also enjoy a light brunch and learn about the avian pixie’s biology and ways to make your yard hummingbird friendly. Preregistration is required. Go online to ijams.org/events/

My new book, Ephemeral by Nature, will be published this summer by the University of Tennessee Press. There's an entire chapter about the ephemerality—here one minute, gone the next—nature of hummingbirds. 

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tigers appear

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I first posted this, nine years ago on April 2. Today I watched the same.
 
"After overwintering inside chrysalids, the first generation of adult tiger swallowtails was seen fluttering through the treetops today. And after the males and females find each other and mate, the she-tigers spend the rest of their lives laying spherical green eggs on the top of leaves of certain host plants: cottonwood, tulip tree (a.k.a. tulip poplar), sweet bay, spicebush, ash and wild cherry.

[Today it was a wild cherry just beginning to leaf out.]

The adults live only a matter of days, after which, all the tiger swallowtails in our area will exist as eggs that hatch into larvae that eat, grow, molt; eat, grow, molt; eat, grow, molt until they molt one last time and form chrysalises that in time metamorphose into a new wave of adults that we will see fluttering about in several weeks.
 
In the South, tiger swallowtails go though two or three broods between early spring and winter. The arrival of each new generation produces a natural pulse of the spectacular yellow and black adults.


In memory of Rikki Hall who took so much joy in noticing such as this.

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hummers here?

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Red buckeye (Aesculus pavia)

Like most early spring bloomers, the red buckeye, a.k.a. firecracker plant in my yard is beginning to flower.

The ruby-throated hummingbird migration northward every spring follows the flowering of this native tree. And as you can see, they have red tubular blossoms to lure the fast-flying hummers. The flowers are narrow, their sweet nectar tucked away deep inside so that only the long-billed birds can partake. Zipping about—a sip here, a sip there—benefits the buckeyes by spreading the sticky pollen from tree to tree.

In an example of co-evolution, this relationship was forged long before man-made sugar-water feeders were invented. Could the hummers survive without the buckeyes? Probably, the ruby-throats would just migrate later when other plants with tubular flowers bloomed. Could the buckeyes exist without the hummers? Perhaps not. But yet, for the tiny birds, pollinating the plants with blossoms especially designed for their bills—form follows function after all—is their raison d'être.

And we all need a reason to exist.

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