Martian seeks audience with Earth elders

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Rumor has it that Lord Roch Vole-Téck, supreme ruler of Mars, visited Ijams' summer Monster! Monster! Nature Day Camp earlier this month. He wanted to speak to the Earth Elders, the really old, old ancient ones.

And just who are these elders? 

They are the unassuming, slow-moving millipedes who have roamed this planet for over 420 million years.  These "thousand legged" creatures (none actually have 1,000 legs, but they do have hundreds) are lowly detritivores. They consume detritius, the organic material — dead leaves and plants — that fall to the forest floor, helping to convert it into soil. 

The campers learned the difference between millipedes, harmless vegetarians, and centipedes, carnivores that can sting, sworn enemy of all millipedes.

 
FYI: The scientific study of millipedes is known as diplopodology, and a scientist who studies them is called a diplopodologist. Just so you know.

The future diplopodologists — that would be the camp kids — were able to find several handsome Tootsie Roll-sized millipedes, docile creatures to converse with and study. 

And the Earth was saved once again for the thousand-legged meek to inherit.

Not everything in nature that seems like a monster, be it spider, snake, wolf, bat, hawk, crawdad, vulture or creepy, crawly millipede, is a monster. Monster! Monster! Nature Day Camp is designed to separate the fact from the fiction.

Vole-Téck's young apprentice holds tub full of millipedes.

Future supreme rulers of Mars

don't let me be misunderstood

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Dr. Frankenstein and his monster were created by young Mary Shelley on a dark and stormy night in 1816. (She was still a teenager.) 

Born in lightning, the creature was switched together from various stolen body parts. An inanimate body brought to life. A good example of science overextending its reach.

But as we know from the story, the cobbled together creature was no monster. He became an outcast, the village pariah. Too ugly, too much a freak to be around polite society. 

Ijams' very own Frankenstein stopped by Monster! Monster! Nature Day Camp last week. And as it turned out, was only looking for a friend and, of course, acceptance of who he was, the big green-faced lug, fully formed yet new to all around him.

"The world to me was a secret, which I desired to discover," wrote Mary Shelley.

The day-campers decided to befriend him and gave the poor thing a more user-friendly sobriquet than "Frankenstein's monster." They called him "Bob," and promptly took him exploring on a nature walk, showing him some of the things they had learned about...dragonflies, milkweed, metamorphosis.

Bob was pleased.

Not everything in nature that seems like a monster, be it spider, snake, wolf, bat, hawk, crawdad, vulture or creepy, crawly millipede, is a monster.
 
FYI: The original movie Frankenstein starring Boris Karloff was the number one box office hit of 1931.

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The wolf in us all

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Unmasking the truth about nature's monsters.

Possible wolfman sighting by Jill Sublett

Time for some summer fun. 

Ijams summer camps began last week, and wouldn't you know, it was on a full moon. This brought out Max, the Southside Where-Wolf, who made a guest, albeit in chains, appearance at the Monster! Nature Day Camp.

The second, third and fourth graders, got to interview a werewolf, an unfortunate monster. For 28 days, Max is a normal man, a mechanic who specializes in vintage MG repair. Then on the night of the 29th day — every full moon — he becomes a werewolf and pitches a super bad temper tantrum. He goes berserk!

This time, after his hissy fit, the wolfman broke from his chains and raced into the forest, but the camp kids were able to track him. They found Max waking from his delirium in the woods by the river, somewhat embarrassed by his lycanthropic conniption.

Max warned all the campers that learning to control their tempers was hard but they could do it, because you often hurt someone you love with your beastly outbursts. 

Not everything in nature that seems like a monster, be it spider, snake, wolf, bat, hawk, crawdad, vulture or creepy, crawly millipede, is a monster. But these animals are not pernicious, they have their role in the natural world. Monster! Nature Day Camp is designed to separate the fact from the fiction and to have a little fun doing it.

- Photos by Augusta. Monster wranglers, Chloe and Fireball.

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On top of Old Smoky

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Did someone say "Nevermore"?

While I pondered weak and weary...

Join me for another Birding & Brunch @ Ijams this Saturday, June 6, at 10 in the a.m.

Our topic? On Top of Old Smoky: The Birds of the Higher Elevations, above 4,000 feet. It's heating up in the valley but on top of the mountains it's cooler and pleasant, a most comfortable place to look for interesting birds. We're talking peregrine falcons, saw-whet owls, red-breasted nuthatches, red crossbills (good luck on that), black-capped chickadees, blackburnian warblers and those throaty, Poe-inspiring Corvids, the ravens. Nevermore.

Fee: Ijams members $5, non-members $8 with Ijams providing the brunch. Call (865) 577-4717, ext. 110 to register. Seating is limited.

Now, back to Poe...While I nodded, nearly napping, suddenly there came a tapping. As of some one gently rapping, rapping at my chamber door.

Is that someone at my door? Surely it's UPS, and nothing more. 

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Smokies Life: winter wren

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In May and June, if you park your car along Newfound Gap Road at the Alum Cave Bluff trailhead and begin to climb the steep southern flank of Mt. LeConte, you pass through an old northern hardwood forest that features buckeye, beech and birch, towering giants still. If you listen closely above the roar of Walker Camp Prong that flows into the West Prong of the Little Pigeon River, you’ll hear an avian chorus that features the chit-chatty red-eyed vireos, flute-like wood thrushes, the hollow swirling song of veery and the high buzzy thin notes of blackburnian and black-throated blue warblers, zoo, zoo, zoo, zoo, zee. All add a lithe sweetness to the damp vernal air.

The understory here is thick, often sodden, with rosebay rhododendron, blooming dog-hobble, primordial looking ferns and moss. It’s lush with life; in the spring it’s wet and fecund.

Still you climb, past Arch Rock, past the rock hugging heath balds, past Alum Cave Bluffs and the screaming peregrine falcons, kak, kak, kak, that dominant the rocky spur, the Eye of the Needle, that points west to the cove hardwoods far below and Sugarland Mountain beyond. 

Yet, still you climb higher, passing through the zone of Eastern hemlocks and above 5,000 feet you’ll find a taste of the Canadian woodlands pushed south by the last Ice Age. You are now in remnants of spruce-fir forests long since left clinging to the tops of the Smokies like castaways on isolated isles.  

Here in the high country it gets quiet, almost spookily so. Yes, occasionally you hear the deep-voiced gurgling croak of a raven as it flies overhead and if your ears are so attuned they grasp the high-pitched whistled three-notes of the black-capped chickadee, hey, sweet-ee and the barely audible kinglets, tsee, tsee, tsee. But, beyond this, if you are lucky, you soon hear one of the longest, most melodious songs, as spiritual and zealous as any Gregorian chant ever quavered by any Benedictine monk. Yet the songs are not solemn or mournful, their joyousness is unmistakable. It’s life affirming and sweet. Dr. Fred Alsop calls it a “musical series of bubbling warbles and trills that may last five seconds or more.” You are in what Alsop calls “the dark haunts of the spruce-fir forests,” the high domain and lofty cathedral of the winter wren...

For the rest of my article about the winter wrens of the Smokies, check out the current issue of Smokies Life magazine. 

Thanks to editor Steve Kemp, Lisa Hortsman and all the rest!

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Broadwing Farm

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Broadwing Farm in Hot Springs, North Carolina

Just perfect.

A special thank you to Mary and Pete Dixon. We rented one of the cabins on their organic Broadwing Farm in Hot Springs, North Carolina the past several days and as the name suggests, it's a wonderful place to watch migrating broad-winged hawks pass on their spring and fall migrations, albeit we got there a little late this year.

Karen Sue and I enjoyed the quiet, solitude and peace of the most secluded cabin. A wonderful place to get away from it all and recharge, watching the clouds pass overhead. Last night we listened to the spring peepers by the pond and a lone enthusiastic whip-poor-will calling from the hillside.

Oh, did I mention every cabin comes with fresh produce from the garden, a dozen eggs from, well...the chickens, and a hot tub filled with 85-degree mineral water pumped straight from the ground. Hot water from the ground, imagine that.

Good luck with your purple martins, Pete!

5 Stars (Well, actually I counted more than that drift over the hot tub in the dark.)

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attention span?

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This story made the rounds last week. 

It seems that the average goldfish (Carassius auratus) a relatively small member of the carp family native to East Asia, has an attention span of 9 seconds. But a recent Microsoft survey discovered that because of smart phones, the Internet and other quick electronic ways of keeping in touch and informed, the average well-connected human's attention span has dropped to 8 seconds. 

This is such an insul 

(I've already moved on to something else.)

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Return to Tremont

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Going to Tremont is like a trip back home.

For a time, my ancestors lived in the next watershed over at Elkmont on Jake's Creek. Heck, they lived with Jake. (Jacob Houser's second wife was my great, great, great grandmother Anna Bales who begot Caleb, who begot Jim, who begot Homer, who begot Russell, who begot me. That's a lot of begetting.)

Great Smoky Mountains Institute at Tremont is so comfortable it IS like going home. Thank you, citizen science coordinator Tiffany Beachy for inviting me to speak to your birding class about the "Secrets of Backyard Birds." It's always great fun. Courtship, territory selection, choice of mate, divorce, all that avian amour (pair bonding), angst and aggression. Backyards can be lively places; sometimes even "Peyton Places." So, who knew? 

And yet, they still have time to make a lot of baby birds, multiple clutches even. That's a lot of begetting.

See you next year, Tremonsters!

Tiffany Beachy speaks to the group

Tremont is so cozy, even the speaker gets to go barefoot.

 
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Birding & Brunch

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Thanks to all who attended my May Birding & Brunch @ Ijams program this morning.

Eastern kingbird

This is a monthly series. Today's topic was Summer Birds or the birds found at the nature center and Knox County only from late spring through summer. 

They also nest here in local environs but choose to spend their winters farther south. Most are insectivores. The eastern kingbird specializes in eating bees. That's quite a niche. (Perhaps that's why their Latin name is Tyrannus tyrannus! Long live the king!)

Great crested flycatcher

The great crested flycatcher likes to decorate its nesting cavity with a shed snakeskin. A wood thrush sings with dual vocal cords. Other spectacular summer species we looked at were the indigo bunting, common yellowthroat, white-eyed vireo, green heron, yellow-breasted chat and the diminutive blue-gray gnatcatcher. 

Thanks Kodie, for preparing the brunch!

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barn as art

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This reminded me of the work of British sculptor and environmental artist Andy Goldsworthy. You could call it, "Tennessee barn floating in yellow."

That's Bluff Mountain in the background.

- Photo taken in Sevier County

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place of peace

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Ijams staff members Dr. Louise Conrad and Rex McDaniel

Thank you to all who joined me for a sunset picnic at Chota, the Cherokee Peace Town. The site is sacrosanct and spiritual. It remains as it was to the Native Americans so long ago, a place of peace.

We visited the Chota Memorial and paid our respects at the grave of Oconastota, the great Cherokee Warrior Chief who died of old age at Chota in 1783.

Our group also hoped to hear male Chuck-will's-widows and whip-poor-wills calling in the twilight. Both are possible. I write about it in my book Natural Histories.

In the end, we heard only Chucks, and ironically the closest was in the parking lot where our picnic began.

In the dark, Jason made an audio recording of that one greeting us as we arrived back at our cars guided by our flashlights. Click: Jason's chuck. 

Thank you, Amy and Jimmy for providing the picnic!

 

 

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dark energy??

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Dark matter, represented by blue, pulled things together.

This blog focuses on nature's minutia, the small, trifling, yet, fascinating little things; the strands in the overall web.

But occasionally it's nice to look at the web itself and have our minds blown—a term originating in 1966 when a lot of minds were being blown. Let's spend a little time looking up at the big picture.

In the January issue of National Geographic, Timothy Ferris writes, "After decades of research involving new and better telescopes, light detectors, and computers, cosmologists can now state with some assurance that the universe was born 13 billion, 820 million years ago, most likely as a bubble of space smaller than an atom...

"But they have also concluded that all the stars and galaxies they see in the sky make up only 5 percent of the observable universe. The invisible majority consists of 27 percent dark matter and 68 percent dark energy. Both of them are mysteries." 

Dark matter is an unseeable force that pulls matter together through gravity into stars, galaxies, clusters. It slowed the initial expansion of the universe. Then roughly 9 billion years ago a force dubbed "dark energy" appeared, essentially anti-gravity, and the expansion accelerated again. So much so that in time, everything not in our own galaxy may be too distant to see, flying off into the darkness.

So, from a cosmologist's point of view, dark matter pulls bodies together, dark energy drives them apart. And where did the dark energy come from since it wasn't there in the beginning? 

Good question.

If I could answer that I'd win the Nobel Prize in Physics.

There are days that I feel like I am being controlled by dark energy and I am flying apart.

Listen carefully. KAPOW! 

That's the sound of my mind being blown. 

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yes, we have da newts

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Thank you to those who attended my nature walk last Saturday at 3 o'clock, part of Outdoor KnoxFest at Ijams. It was great fun. We searched for tadpoles, newts and owls, finding 2/3's of them.

I promised the kids beforehand that we'd find a newt, since they had never seen one. A real amphibious newt, not a political Newt. Yes, long before a Newt (real name: Newton Leroy) patrolled the halls of congress, spotted newts patrolled the ponds of Ijams.

We found several.  

But shucks, no snakes. Must be too early in the season.

Red-spotted newt

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hidden white-eyes

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"A small and secretive bird of shrubby areas of the eastern and southern United States, the white-eyed Vireo is more noticeable for its explosive song than its looks," writes Cornell. 

They got that right.

This bird's white eyes and song mnemonic that describes its explosive song—"Quick with the beer check!"—are its most memorable features.

Take the time to learn it if you do not already know the song, it will serve you well anytime your near appropriate habitat.  

These sprites stay so sequestered in the shadowy shrubbery they do not even venture forth to bathe in open puddles and pools, instead preferring to rub themselves against damp foliage after a rain.

I heard the song this afternoon in dense shrubs near the river at the nature center's lower overlook. But actually seeing its white eyes? 

I didn't get close.

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taking w/ the red-eye

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Red-eyed vireo photo by John Benson

We're old friends really. And even though you hardly ever see them or their tiny red eyes, you know they're there in the canopy endlessly singing...or chattering short phrases.

Walking out to the mailbox this morning I heard one over the driveway. Chattering. Back from its winter in South America. Back to my woods.

This olive drab passerine with grayish noggin may sing for long periods, endlessly repeating the same quandary, the same back and forth. A tireless songster, the red-eyed vireo holds the record for most songs given in a single day among bird species. More than 20,000 phrases in a day. Day after day after day. 140,000 in a week. For me the chatter began today:

"Look at me...I'm up here...Really I am...Way up high...Oh, see me...How can you not?...Give me a look." 

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sneezy hooded

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There it was. Passing through. On its way to nesting grounds farther to the north or in the Smokies, the hooded warbler or as the early French explorers would say, "Paruline à capuchon."

I didn't see it although I tried. It was tucked away in the understory of the neighbors bushes but I heard it singing ""ta-wit ta-wit ta-wit TEE-YO" which always reminds me of sneezing: "Ahcha-ahcha-ahcha-ACHOO!"

They like to stay hidden. In the Smokies they nest in rhododendron thickets but not here, not in the foothills. My sneezy bird was only passing through on a morning after a rain with everything sodden and dripping. Perhaps that's why it was sneezing. 

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a burst of winged sunshine

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Prothonotary warbler

If you see but one bird. Yes, gaze upon just one bird over the next few weeks. Then truly you should make it a prothonotary warbler.

If you look up the word exquisite in the dictionary, I think there will be an illustration of a prothonotary beside the entry. Sunflower yellow, gray-green wings, it is indeed exquisite and blithe—a burst of winged sunshine.

The name "Prothonotary" honors the color of the bright yellow robes worn by the clerks in the Roman Catholic church.

They spend the bulk of the year like most warblers far to the south in the tropics: Central America and just a brush with the northern countries of South America, primarily Columbia, Venezuela, Guyana, Suriname and French Guiana.  

In late spring and summer, this wood-warbler haunts our wetlands, swamps and river shorelines and they nest in hollow tree cavities or even bluebird boxes near the water. To my ear, their high-pitched songs rotate like a squeaky wheel.

A good place to begin your search is along the River Trail at Ijams, but you have to stay sharp, they're lively splashes of yellow like a Van Gogh canvas dripping with saffron.

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hummers back?

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Red buckeye (Aesculus pavia)

Like most early spring bloomers, the red buckeye, a.k.a. firecracker plant is flowering. This means the hummers are probably back as well, although I have yet to see one but my feeders are out.

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.

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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it has begun

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Northern parula warbler

It's April and it has begun! The migratory birds are starting to arrive. The neotropical migrants that spent the last six months in Central and South America. 

Tuesday, on a walk to the mailbox after a rain, I heard a rose-breasted grosbeak and the first wood thrush in the woods that surround my house.

At Ijams, Sammi heard Northern parulas around the parking lot at the Visitor Center. There's also reports of a prothonotary warbler checking out a nest box and ruby-throated hummingbirds in the county, so get those feeders out.

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Eighth trip to Panther Nation

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Powell High School AP Environmental Science class spring 2015

Today, I once again visited with the AP Environmental Science class taught by Coach Will Roberts at Powell High School, a.k.a. Panther Nation. It's become a biannual tradition.

We talked about conservation, environmental studies, urban wildlife, book writing and my job at Ijams Nature Center. Each student had been assigned to read a portion of my two books: Natural Histories and Ghost Birds.

Topics we visited included the biology of freshwater mussels, the Native American uses of passionflower, the marsupial opossum and the recovery of bald eagles. Also of interest were my love of hawks and the new hiking and biking trails in the Knoxville Urban Wilderness: South Loop adjacent to the nature center. Click here for: map.

Eastern coywolf

We also discussed the canids: dogs (Canis familiaris), coyotes (Canis latrans), gray wolves (Canis lupus) and the failed attempt to reintroduce red wolves (Canis rufus) into the Southeast. AND the surprising success of "Eastern" coyotes and their interbreeding with their once sworn enemies—gray wolves. A union that produces hybrids called coywolves (Canis anybody'sguessus)

Nature abhors a vacuum and rushes to fill it. Coywolves are becoming the midsized predator the east has lost through human persecution and a means for nature to control the soaring population of raccoons. 

Best of luck to all of you! Thanks, Coach Roberts. 

Thanks, Karen Suzy.

Click these links for a look back at past visits:

Fall 2014

Spring 2014

Fall 2013

School year 2012-2013 

School year 2011-2012

School year 2010-2011

School year 2009-2010

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