goodbye chlorophyll

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In spring and summer, leaves are green because of the pigment chlorophyll, but it doesn’t last. Chlorophyll also absorbs light energy from the sun and through a magical process called photosynthesis converts it to stored chemical energy.  

In deciduous trees it is seasonal, mirroring the major league baseball season. The green of chlorophyll also masks the orange and yellow pigments, carotenes and xanthophyll, that lie underneath in each leaf all along. 

Carotene is an orange-to-red pigment and xanthophyll is a yellow-to-brown pigment that occurs widely in nature. Carotene is also what gives carrots their color while beta-carotene gives many plants their health benefits.

Here in the temperate zone it's more efficient for broad-leafed trees to shut down photosynthesis in the winter to avoid freezing and moisture loss through the leaves. As October flows into November, chlorophyll breaks down revealing the brighter pigments beneath. That’s what we see in the leaves as they reach senescence and fall from the trees.

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big day at Wild Birds

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Wild Birds Unlimited would like to thank everyone who stopped by last Saturday to learn about the species of birds that only spend their winters here in the Tennessee Valley.

Species that will be showing up soon like winter wren, hermit thrush, yellow-bellied sapsucker, golden-crowned kinglet, dark-eyed junco, white-throated sparrow and red-breasted nuthatch. The group also learned about the different things you can do to attract these shy birds to your backyard: heated birdbath and Bark Butter are at the top of that “let’s get ready for winter” list.

Wild Birds is one of the sponsors of the Hummingbird Festival at Ijams Nature Center every August.

And as if on cue, a red-breasted nuthatch showed up at the home feeders of Wild Birds Assistant Manager Tiffiny Hamlin the very next day. Plus what appears to be a late-season migrant, a young Cape May Warbler in winter plumage.

What a day, Tiffiny! A backyard two-fer!

Ijams thanks Liz & Tony Cutrone for inviting us. 

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one tough towhee

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There it lay. In the road, flailing about. 

I slowed to look, stopped and got out of the car to see what was going on. An adult male eastern towhee had been hit and lay there panting. Birds pant when they are hurt or stressed or scared.

Picking it up, I soon realized this was not its first brush with trouble. The towhee was missing his left foot. An old wound, the leg had healed. But now it had a new trauma. 

Sitting him on the passenger seat I drove home hoping to assess the damage. Still its mouth was agape. Still it panted, looking around.  I spoke to it softly. 

“That a boy. You’ll be OK.” 

What was he thinking as he surveyed the inside of my car?

“Is this guy Charon? Ferrying me across the River Styx?” 

Do birds think such thoughts? Does Charon drive a Ford?

Parking in my driveway, I opened my door and reached for the towhee. But he would have none of that. The towhee had returned to his senses. He started flying around the inside of my car, finally landing in my lap. Then hopped to the floorboard between my legs and swish, he was out my open door. 

Now. I am looking out for a one-footed male towhee. I hope he likes his new home. 

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shower mate

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Generally, I expect to take my morning shower alone...well, who are we kidding? I always expect to take my morning shower alone. 

Yet, this morning after I stepped in and began to adjust the shower head I noticed I was indeed not alone. First glance, with water streaming down my face, I thought it was some sort of pale green moth. But as I reached for it, it hopped away. Moths don't hope, they fly.

Therefore, this morning I took my shower with a Cope's gray tree frog (Hyla chrysoscelis) named in 1880 by its discoverer Edward Drinker Cope. And this year's model did not seem the least bit interested in me but I suspect it enjoyed the misty shower environment. 

But, oh, did I marvel at it. First thing you will notice is that this gray tree frog is not gray. But they can modify their colors a bit to better blend into their surroundings and luckily my bathroom is painted a pleasing shade of fern green, a hue my bathing buddy seemed to like.

After our shower ended, I caught Copey to move her outside where she belonged.

Best guess. Copey found her way inside recently through an open bedroom window. It was storming that night and I wanted to hear and smell the rain.

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Natural Histories: osage orange

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This time of the year, the hedge apples are falling. 

UT Press writes, Natural Histories "illuminates in surprising ways the complicated and often vexed relationships between humans and their neighbors in the natural world."

Perhaps the most vexing encounter in the book between humans and the natural world occurred when the boys in gray engaged a simple hedge planted due west of the Harpeth River n Middle Tennessee.

On November 30, 1864—153 years ago this month—the horrific Battle of Franklin was fought south of Nashville. An osage orange hedge row played a key role in the outcome stopping one division of the advancing Southern army "dead" in their tracks. When the smoke cleared, the Confederate Army of Tennessee had lost almost 7,000 men in just five hours. (The Union army's dead and wounded numbered significantly less: only 2,326.) Here's a snippet from my book:

"The almost forgotten Battle of Franklin was a death knell. “This is where the Old South died,” says activist Robert Hicks, “and we were reborn as a nation.”

I visited the site on this date in 2004. It was a rainy day much like today. Here's another passage from the book:

"Leaving Lewisburg Pike, I walked along the rain soaked streets and soon found the two aged osage orange trees still growing in the vicinity of the railroad line. Historian Cartwright had told me about the old trees just an hour before. Both were perhaps descendants of the hedgerow that stopped Loring and, as such, were living monuments. It was a circuitous chain of events that moved osage orange from its native Red River home to this historic point of all out chaos; turn back the clock and replay the era, day by day, and it would not have unfolded in exactly the same way. I paused just long enough to admire the towering presence of the elderly trees; and as the rain began to fall heavy once again, I zipped up my coat, turned and walked away."

Excerpts from my book Natural Histories published by the University of Tennessee Press.

The fruit of an osage orange looks like a green brain

and probably tastes like one too,

although, I must admit, I've sampled neither.

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thank you, villagers

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Many thanks to Claire Manzo president of the Tellico Village Birders Club for inviting me to speak to their group recently about some of the species of birds that migrate south or downslope from the Smokies to spend their winters here in the Tennessee Valley.

We all look forward to seeing species like the winter wren, hermit thrush, golden-crowed kinglet and dark-eyed junco. The Tellico Villagers routinely have common loons and brown-headed nuthatches, which was a bit of a surprise to me. 

After the rains pass, it will be a beautiful time to go birding. 

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Monarch Days 2

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Not a huge fan of multitasking, living in a digital world with a 1970s 8-track brain and all. One track at a time is my modus operandi. 

But sometimes the need arises. Working on the manuscript for my fourth book for the University of Tennessee Press AND monarch butterfly chrysalis-watching for Jen, Wayne and Sara Cate Roder who are out of town.

Call me an adoptive papa.  

Luckily, the new born emerging on my desk while I was writing. A lovely female and after six hours of wing-drying, ZEE540 was released before the rains sweep through. Good thing, she's flying to Mexico.

Thank you, Clare for showing me the way. 

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Queen of the Night

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Call it a big night. 

Monarch butterfly chrysalises ready to emerge on the north side of the house and Grandma Pearl's Night-Blooming Cereus, a plant also known as the Queen of the Night (Epiphyllum oxypetalum), produced a double bloom on the south side of the house. 

Two ephemeral moments, so who could sleep?

The Queen is native to Southern Mexico and into South America. Mine is a plant that grew from cuttings from my Grandmother Pearl's plant, she had a fondness for unusual house plants. The cereus is a ceroid cacti that only blooms rarely. Each blossom is also only open a few hours one night and then it wilts. Either you are there to witness it, or you are not.  

Obviously, I parked myself in front of it with thoughts of my grandmother. 

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Monarch Days

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Yesterday, another big monarch butterfly day. Two more emerged from their chrysalises, both males.

Numbers XYM152 and XYM153 were tagged and sent on their way to the mountaintops of Mexico.

Godspeed, John Glenn.

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migrating monarch season

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Been busy of late. It's migrating monarch butterfly season.

Under the tutelage of naturalist, monarch maven and friend Clare Dattilo and her three children, I have taken up the cause. I have been hand-raising monarch butterfly caterpillars and watching over mine and other's chrysalises. When the adult butterflies emerge. I tag them with a number and let them fly away. This time of the year, they migrate to Mexico. Oh yes! 


In my third book, Ephemeral by Nature, I tell their complete story and how, beginning in the 1930s, a husband and wife team, Frederick & Norah Urquhart dedicated 40-years of their lives, piecing together their migration story.

Why do you hand-raise monarchs? Their population is in decline and they need help and to protect them from the hazards of being a caterpillar that include parasitoids insects—12 species of tachinid flies and at least one braconid wasp—that seek them out to lay eggs inside them that results in the death of the late-instar larvae or pupae. And it is not a pretty way to die.

And it is all so fascinating to watch the entire process of metamorphosis. 

Thank you, Clare!

For more photos go to: ephemeral monarchs.

Adult monarch tagged with the number ZEE530 about to fly for the first time over the meadows at Cherokee Farm and begin her trip to Mexico. 

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