Blooms are Opening in my Yard!

My redbud, always one of the last to do its thing. My crabapple, also later than most.

A celandine poppy, transplanted just a week or two ago.

Spring Thoughts on Trees

With redbuds just opening around our area, we are once again threatened with the possibility of an untimely freeze. I'll be anxiously looking each morning for the next couple of days, afraid of seeing damage from the temperature going too low. It does seem to me that some blooms are running later this year, perhaps because of late frosts the last two years.

Spending a day at Bernheim gave me a chance to do a little reconnoitering. I spied the precious catkins of the river birch. I'm reminded that even with so many trees in bloom right now, that so few are even noticed individually. And how pressed even someone who thinks of themselves as a naturalist is to identify a tree by its early bloom. Now is when a guide such as "Trees and Shrubs of Kentucky" by Wharton and Barbour really shines. Color photos of the blooms of many of the trees (and in some cases, photos of the fruits which will come later) precede the black and white photos of the trees that cause many to shun the book.

Some may have heard me yammer on about the color of bark on trees (bark is almost never "just brown"). Wharton and Barbour point out that the bark of young branches on the river birch is "pinkish tan". I must admit that I didn't notice that color, so I'll have to look closer on my next visit. The same book notes that the bark of the tulip tree is gray, though I see younger trees with a distinct pink or rosy cast. Though I don't have a copy, the Audubon guide to trees features a photo of each tree's bark. And I find it difficult to leave the visitor center gift shop without perusing "Tree Bark: A Color Guide".

smell of wild garlic
common blue violets fade
under the twilight

nature neatly trimmed
with everything in its place
sound of a mower

thunder rolls above
sound of rain in the darkness
water runs away

Raining on my Parade

Rain ... and more rain. That has to be the topic for today. I've been keeping a simple weather log just as a way of making myself more aware and also as a way to develop an understanding of how weather can be predicted. Or you can just note the current weather whenever you make an entry in your nature journal. (You do have a nature journal?!) As I write this, the humidity is 98% and the barometer is 29.94 and falling. I can report that this situation makes rain fairly likely. :-)

The forecast for today is rain with possible thunderstorms. I must admit that severe weather can scare me. I've seen the destruction of tornadoes and they can be humbling if not deadly. And lightning can be just as dangerous. But as scary as weather can be, what an interesting thing it can be to study.

Did you know that they've actually assigned genus and species names to clouds now? I'm fascinated by altocumulus mackerel sky (mackerel sky is the specific epithet). A cloud that looks like a fish? Yeah, sort of. It's named for how that cloud pattern resembles the pattern on the side of a mackerel. It can mean that a change in weather is on the way.

I also must admit that Allen and I have sat on the grass in front of the Education Center and just watched clouds together. (I see little lambs, Allen sees wood.) But my own favorite clouds are the ones that are bathed in the pastel colors of sunset. I've been taking many photos of the sunsets (link below) to study them and as a kind of phenology study. Though we've all seen beautiful sunsets before, I think there's a tendency to believe that most of them look pretty much the same. Check out my photos for proof that each sunset is as unique as a fingerprint.

At dinner time, with a break in the rain, I saw a flicker in my yard. No moustache means that it was probably a female. Having seen a male a week or so ago, I'm hopeful now that a pair may be setting up house in the area.

Following up on yesterday's thoughts: all that we know about social insects makes one wonder. Can insects think? Today's essay by Hal Borland (in his Book of Days) suggests that they can't, only depending on instinct. But some new evidence suggests that it might not be that simple. I saw an ant crawling on my kitchen counter this afternoon. I wonder if he thinks the food is good at my place.

To get started:

The Weather:
http://www.weather.com/?from=gn_logo_welcome
http://www.almanac.com/weathercenter/index.php

Rain:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rain
http://www.weatherwizkids.com/Rain.htm

Thunderstorms:http://www.weatherwizkids.com/Rain.htm
http://www.usatoday.com/weather/resources/basics/thunderstorms.htm

Tornadoes:
http://www.nssl.noaa.gov/edu/safety/tornadoguide.html

Lightning:
http://www.nationalgeographic.com/lightning/
http://science.howstuffworks.com/lightning.htm
http://www.exploratorium.edu/ronh/weather/weather.html

Clouds:
http://ww2010.atmos.uiuc.edu/(Gh)/guides/mtr/cld/cldtyp/home.rxml
http://www.weatherwizkids.com/cloud.htm
http://www.cloudappreciationsociety.org/
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Altocumulus_mackerel_sky

Sunsets:
http://thingamabobs.blogspot.com/search/label/Sunset
http://www.soleildujour.com/sunset.html
http://www.nyip.com/ezine/outdoors/sunsets.html
http://www.eternalsunset.net/http://www.scifun.org/HOMEEXPTS/BlueSky.html

Northern Flicker:
http://www.mbr-pwrc.usgs.gov/Infocenter/i4120id.html
http://www.birds.cornell.edu/AllAboutBirds/BirdGuide/Northern_Flicker.html

Thinking Insects?:
http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m1134/is_n8_v106/ai_20148001
http://www.colostate.edu/Depts/Entomology/courses/en570/papers_1998/walter.htm

My friend Kathy Dennis has been honored as volunteer of the year at the Falls of the Ohio. As a way of commemorating the success, Kathy has posted a great essay on her blog about volunteering. Make sure you take a moment to read it:

http://life-birding-etc.blogspot.com/2008/04/why-volunteer.html

Flying Insects Can Drive You Buggy

Yesterday's musings just brought so many new ideas to mind that I just had to research a few connections a bit more.

About insects that fly: some beetles have lost the ability to fly. I just can't imagine for myself a creature that would simply quit doing something as gloriously free as flying because s/he had something better to do. But, I guess that must be just what happened. Not all of a sudden one day, of course; but over eons.

I commented yesterday about the similarity of insect societies and the way that people act. Of course, that got me to thinking. Some of those social ways of organizing are good for both insects and people. But what about the ants that enslave aphids for their honeydew, as we enslave honeybees for their services and honey, as man has enslaved man. That's one thing that I love about nature .... everything is connected, even to us.

Have you ever sat on a sunny day and watched ants stream in and out of their nest? Have you ever tried to count them? It's another great exercise for a naturalist, if a bit overwhelming. But counting a few ants, seeing the small space they are using, and then extrapolating to the size of the world can give you a sense of how utterly massive the total biomass of ants on earth must be. And then all of a sudden you realize that the ants seem so large and we humans seem so small.

I'm a tree nut (nyuk-nyuk) and I'm always looking for a new tree story. Many of you have probably heard me tell about the extinct Carolina Parakeet which once inhabited this area. Paroquet Springs was named after a favorite spot for the bird. They congregated there to take advantage of all the sycamore trees that grew there near the river, as well as to avail themselves of the salt and the canebrakes that may have been necessary to their mating. The fruit of the sycamore was a favorite food (according to Peattie quoting the Long expedition), just as beech nuts were a favorite food of the extinct Passenger Pigeon. Well, today I came upon a bird called the 'Sycamore Warbler'. I thought I knew something about birds, but I'd never heard about that one before, so I did a bit of checking. It turns out that the Sycamore Warbler is a bird more commonly known as the Yellow-Throated Warbler. I see by my old bird checklist that I've never seen that species before. But my Peterson's shows that it should be seen in this area in the warm months. The Sycamore Audubon Society says that the name came from the habit of the bird of nesting in sycamore trees. (Who can argue with them?)

To get started:
Beetles:
http://www.cirrusimage.com/beetles.htm
http://www.earthlife.net/insects/coleopt.html

Ants and Aphids:
http://www.fourmilab.ch/images/animal_magnetism/fourmis_pucerons.html
http://theantroom.blogspot.com/2007/10/ant-aphid-mutualism-gets-weirder.html

Honeybees:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Honeybeehttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Honey
http://www.vegetus.org/honey/honey.htm
(not my thing, but a perspective on the enslavement of bees)

Slaves at Bernheim:
http://www.rootsweb.ancestry.com/~kylgs/newsletter2.htm
(portion about slave cemeteries, including Magruder)

Biomass of Ants:
http://answers.google.com/answers/threadview?id=536123
http://www.uky.edu/Ag/Entomology/ythfacts/allyr/ants.htm
http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9C07E5D6103BF930A25753C1A96E958260

Carolina Parakeets:
http://www.audubon.org/bird/boa/F28_G1a.html
http://www.chattoogariver.org/index.php?quart=Sp2000&req=birds

Paroquet Springs
http://bullittcountyhistory.org/bchistory/paroquetspringsarticle1909.html
http://www.travelbullitt.org/history-paroquet.shtml

Sycamore Trees:
http://www.etsu.edu/arboretum/totw.html
http://www.hackerscreek.com/pringle.htm

Salt in Bullitt County:
http://www.bullittcounty.org/history.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bullitt

Canebrakes:
http://www.dlia.org/atbi/grsmnp_habitats/shrubland/evergreen/CEGL003836.shtml
http://woodlandhabitat.com/articles/RiverCane.doc
(MS Word / Doc file)

Beech Trees:
http://www.kentuckyawake.org/plantsWildlife/lifeHistory.cfm?instanceID=29765
http://www.beechroad.com/beechtre2.html

Passenger Pigeons:
http://www.wbu.com/chipperwoods/photos/passpigeon.htm
http://www.inhs.uiuc.edu/inhsreports/may-jun98/pigeon.html

Sycamore Warblers:
http://sycamoreaudubon.org/
http://www.birdwatchersdigest.com/blog/2007/09/that-bonk-on-window.html

April Will Bee Flowery

April means showers, and showers mean flowers, and flowers mean insects. Insects may account for 90% of the species on earth (beetles being the most prolific with 360,000 species). Some are social (such as ants and bees), being curiously like ourselves in how we often act, yet so remotely related to us. Insects are ancient creatures; dragonflies (and many others, but I especially like dragonflies) may have been around 300 million years ago. Compare that to the 350 million-year-old fossil of Callixylon Newberryi near the Education Center (of Bernheim Forest at Clermont, Kentucky).

Thinking of the bees that will soon fill the air, Hal Borland mentions four kinds of animals that can fly (true powered flight): insects, extinct flying lizards, bats, and birds. I was amazed to find that Wikipedia still agrees with him.(Smart guy!) Of course, people don't count because we didn't evolve flying machines; we invented them as a tool.

On this date in 1961, Harlan Hubbard mentions having seen an "almost full moon last night". I'm reminded that though our calendar makes the seasonal solar events so easily predictable, lunar events just won't cooperate. Full moons don't happen at the same time each month, or year to year. Well ... maybe once in a blue moon. But there was no moon to see last night. Firstly, it was too cloudy. Secondly, it was nearly a new moon. And thirdly, new moons, besides being nearly invisible, are in the sky only in the daytime! A break in the clouds would have shown us a crescent of a moon early this morning. The new moon occurs this month on April 5th and the next full moon is on April 20th; the full pink moon.


To get started:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Insect
http://insects.org/

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beetle
http://waynesword.palomar.edu/ww0502.htm

http://www.uky.edu/Ag/CritterFiles/casefile/insects/wasps/wasps.htm
http://www.fossilmuseum.net/Fossil_Galleries/Insect_Galleries_by_Order/Hymenoptera/hymenoptera_fossil_gallery.htm

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Odonata
http://www.fossilmuseum.net/Fossil_Galleries/Insect_Galleries_by_Order/Odonata/odonata_fossil_gallery.htm
http://www.cirrusimage.com/odonata.htmhttp://www.npwrc.usgs.gov/resource/distr/insects/dfly/ky/toc.htm

http://www.indiana.edu/~librcsd/etext/hoosier/PA-03.html

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flying_and_gliding_animals

http://www.almanac.com/astronomy/index.php
http://www.almanac.com/astronomy/moondays.php
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Full_moon

thunderous shower
the rain is smelling louder
on a spring evening

Why Do They Call It a Redbud Tree?

It's April first, and as the month changes so has the season. In fact, changes are happening all around us all the time. In the spring, changes seem to happen especially fast. The study of changes in nature over time, especially from the influence of climate, is called phenology. This has long been a favorite study of naturalists and a focus of nature journaling.

Did you know that Bernheim Arboretum in Clermont, Kentucky offers a special tool for studying phenology? Three picture posts are located in the arboretum that allow you to take photographs of a 360 degree view. By using the posts regularly you can look at the photos to get a really good sense of the seasonal changes, even when your memory isn't perfect. You can learn more about Bernheim's picture posts here:

http://bernheim.org/picpost.htm

Right now, plants have invested most of their energy in the swelling buds. I think this idea is summed up nicely in this haiku from Issa:

with a yogi's self-denial
they've bloomed ...
camellias at my gate

My redbud tree in the front yard is singing its own name today. The buds are growing bright red and can't be held back too long. Of course, this all or nothing investment doesn't always pay off. I see only barely enough buds to create leaves to sustain my Shumard Oak, having suffered the loss of all of its buds in last spring's late frost. It's old branches are bare of new growth, but are now becoming the home of a new species of lichen.

As I was inspecting my yard, a pair of Killdeer loudly proclaimed that I should follow them. I'm guessing that they don't want me to see a nesting site they are protecting in my neighbor's garden. Looking for rocks to camouflage their eggs, they'll more commonly choose a driveway that doesn't seem busy. I didn't get close enough to cause any 'broken wings'. Not all creatures are such diligent parents, but love is surely in the spring air.

To get started:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eastern_Redbud
http://www.uky.edu/Ag/Horticulture/kytreewebsite/commonnamefiles/ccanadensiscommon.htm

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shumard_Oak

http://www.lichen.com/

http://www.birds.cornell.edu/AllAboutBirds/BirdGuide/Killdeer.html
http://www.birdwatching.com/stories/killdeer.html