being good shepherds

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Ijams Outreach recently visited the VBS at the Church of the Good Shepherd in Fountain City with a menagerie of animals both real and pretend. (The live millipedes and rat snake were a big hit and the snail puppet is adorable.)

It must have been my many years of study under the esteemed grandfatherly educator Captain Kangaroo. He taught me how to relate to children through the use of animals and puppets.  

Our topic at Good Shepherd was recycling. All life on Earth is carbon-based and carbon is cycled around over and over from plant to animal and back to plant. We exhale carbon and trees inhale it.

Millipedes and snails eat dead leaves freeing the stored carbon and turning it into the dark organic humus that young growing plants need.

The VBS kids also learned about everyday items like soft drink cans, plastic bottles and even paper that can be recycled over and over and reused ad infinitum.

Thank you, Mary and Ruth Anne for inviting us.

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Cope's ephemeral froglet

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"I'm never at a loss for things to study or topics to write about: everything in the natural world is fair game," writes Thor Hanson in his wonderful book Feathers. "If I'm not intrigued and excited every time I step outside, it just means I'm not paying attention."

Case in point: I was outside of my studio early this morning inspecting two night-blooming cerecus plants looking for any sign they might be attempting to bloom this summer when I noticed something even smaller than a cactus flower bud. So small it almost defies description, as small as a garden pea but since I did not have one single pea, I used a Roosevelt dime.

I know the species. Lustful male Cope's gray tree frogs (recently reclassified as Dryophytes chrysoscelis) have been calling every night especially since we have had several days of passing rain. But where this little one was conceived, hatched from its egg and swam as a tadpole until it went through metamorphosis is a mystery to me. I have no ponds but probably oodles of temporary pools. 

Life on planet Earth is indeed preciously ephemeral.

And then it hopped away.

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awaiting Messalina's progeny

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Messalina, the black widow spider (Latrodectus mactans) Ijams has in their Exhibit Hall, created a rather large egg sac two weeks ago. She is on display at the nature center so that visitors can see what a black widow actually looks like.

The egg sac we do not need or want. But as to the number of spiderlings that will ultimately hatch, we were unsure.

Chris, who welcomes visitors at the front desk on Saturdays, looked it up online. Get this: from 200 to 900 baby spiders. Amazed, our senior naturalist, who is a gray-haired 10-year-old, took it home to attempt a census. I am currently waiting for the blessed event that may come in two more weeks.

Should you read in the Knoxville News-Sentinel or see on WBIR 10 that I died suddenly of mysterious causes...perhaps they were not so mysterious after all.

(Post script: Messalina was the third wife of the Roman Emperor Claudius. She was a powerful and influential woman with a reputation for promiscuity and treachery, she allegedly conspired against her husband and was executed on the discovery of the plot.)

Photo by Chris Forsythe.

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waxy wings

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Cedar waxwings are one of the last species to nest in the calendar year. Why? They are frugivores...they primarily eat fruit. And fruits begin to appear in early summer. They will also eat some seeds and insects because they do need protein.

Cedar waxwing nesting begins in late May and runs into August. And as the name suggests, they eat berries from eastern red cedar trees which are actually small blue cones.

And the wax wings? Adults develop waxy red secretions at the tips of their secondary feathers. For lack of a better term, I call them "dollops." The older the bird, the bigger the red dollops and females tend to choose a mate with dollops the same size as her own, so size matters. She's not a cougar, she wants a partner as mature as she is. Perhaps they have similar life experiences.

Although you primarily see waxwings in flocks, during nesting season individual mated pairs claim and defend small territories.

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First Saturday Hikers

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And a super thank you to the Ijams First Saturday Hikers who went with us on the July hike. Our goal is to hike all 50 miles (plus or minus) of the Knoxville Urban Wilderness: South Loop in a calendar year. 

The July hike was our seventh of 2018.

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Songbirds and Sangria

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Wiki Media

Join Ijams education director Jen Roder and me for tonight's 

Taste of Nature: Songbirds and Sangria.

Each month Taste of Nature makes bold pairings of cocktails and natural history! For July the focus is on Songbirds and Sangria. We will be exploring what makes songbirds sing so beautifully and many of the different songbirds that call East Tennessee home. By the end, even those of us with tin ears will be able to enjoy our songbirds’ symphony on a walk around the Universal Trail. Refreshments and libations will be served indoors. 

The fee for this program is $20 per person. Everyone must have a ticket. Must be over 21 years old!

To register go online to: Songbirds and Sangria


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