Nature – Page 2 – New Hampshire Green Leaves Blog

Bird Nests

Several months ago, at the end of May, I found myself engaged in a peculiar battle. While puttering around the dining room, I spotted a robin flying low past the window with plant material in its beak. Realizing it was probably nest building, I watched eagerly for its next trip back. When it did fly by, it flew directly into the two-car garage attached to my home. This got a big NOPE from me, as I close the garage door (electric) whenever I am away. So I went out to see where the pair of robins were building.

I have a two-car garage, legacy of when my parents were alive and each owned their own car. Now that they have passed on, I use only one half of the garage for my own car and the other half for storage. Peering around, I spotted the nest being built on top of the garage door-opener mechanism for the storage side. As robins tend to be messy, using mud as part of their construction, and I didn’t like the idea of leaving the garage door open all the time for their convenience, this needed to be discouraged. I really didn’t want other critters getting the idea my garage was prime real estate; like skunks, raccoons, squirrels and the occasional bear.

The simplest tactic was to just keep the garage door closed, opening it only to make grocery trips. This proved to be effective, though I’ll admit they were persistent. When I came back from one trip, one robin flew OUT of the garage when I opened the door, so it must have scooted in when I was backing out to leave. Finally they gave up. I felt bad about it, but you have to put your foot down sometimes. Once they were gone, I used a broom to sweep off what they had accumulated. It was mostly weed stems and dried grass, loosely put together, so the nest building process had only just started.

A garage-door opening mechanism is not the most unusual nesting site for a pair of birds to select. Given that we humans hog a good deal of the scenery, there’s a serious shortage of good spots for our avian neighbors to set up housekeeping. This forces birds to try to adapt to what’s available. In fact, birds will often use considerable ingenuity in picking a nesting spot.

This pair of robins selected a basketball hoop (presumably unused) for their nest.

A wind chime was just the thing for this hummingbird.

And this mallard found a flower pot to be a perfectly ducky place for her nest.

For more eye-opening, not to mention laugh-out-loud, nesting choices, the BoredPanda web site has a long list of unusual nesting sites with accompanying photos. Given how determined our feathered neighbors are, it might be worth our while to create additional sites for them. Bird houses can easily be set up. Small platforms in an area secure from squirrels, cats and other predators will no doubt be greatly appreciated. The reward? Ensuring birds and their progeny will be around for a long time to come.

Hard Freeze: Part 2

Last month I noted the result of an unexpected late season hard freeze. While many trees and flowers shook it off, others were hard hit. While maple trees seemed unaffected, the new growth emerging on oak trees was blasted. Tiger lilies were a mixed bag, probably depending on their location and how mature they were. Some were whacked while others made it through just fine.

Now that just over a month has passed since the freeze, you would hardly know it happened. Oak trees looked pretty sad for a while but then started putting out new growth, most now looking nearly recovered. Too soon to know if the acorn crop will be affected. Other trees which had been hit also have begun sending out new leaves, signaling their recovery as well. My bleeding-heart plant lost its blossoms and upper growth but has put out new leaves showing it survived. Most of the tiger lilies have recovered so now it’s an ongoing battle to keep them free of the ever-hungry scarlet lily beetles and the disgusting grubs they produce.

Many areas all over the state of New Hampshire as well as elsewhere were hit by the May 18^th freeze. Apple orchards and vineyards were devastated in spite of desperate efforts by growers to save their crops. Apples, pears, cherries and much of the peach crop has been severely damaged. The fruit trees will recover but there will be little fruit for local markets this summer, only enough for farm stands.

There will be no locally produced wine as well, since the vines were blasted by the freeze and one local producer of wine reported he had to go as far afield as Pennsylvania to locate the grapes he needed to produce his wine. While orchardists and vintners are planting other crops this year, such as sweet corn and pumpkins, many have no crop insurance. One farmer stated this was the first year in 50 years of farming he had enough damage to make it worth having the insurance in the first place.

Local farmers know there are good years and bad years, so they make an effort to plant diverse crops as a hedge against problematic weather. It’s worth noting that one orchard owner after checking freeze damage, discovered that heirloom varieties such as Red Astrachan seemed to have weathered the freeze better than more recent varieties.

Supermarkets tend to stock fruits and vegetables which have a standard look and will ship well. Flavor is not always a high priority with them, only shipability and eye appeal. But these standardized varieties do not fit all climates zones, so the result is poorer performance under fluctuating climate conditions.

But this is beginning to change now. With weather getting more erratic and unreliable all the time, it might be well to take another look at older varieties of fruits and vegetables. They could very well be our bulwark against future crop failures.

Something to think about, the next time you come to plant your garden.

Happy July 4^th!

Hard Freeze

By mid spring in New Hampshire most trees and shrubs have begun leafing out. Flowers and low plants are well underway with their growth. Frosts can still occur here even as late as the end of May but most plants can tolerate the frost. Things start being a little more problematic if a hard freeze occurs.

Frosts usually happen when temperatures hover or dip below the freezing mark, 32 degrees Fahrenheit or 0 degrees Celsius. But a hard freeze happens when cold air pushes in, dropping temperatures down into the mid 20s fahrenheit. Many plants can tolerate even these frigid blasts but not all can.

Just over a week ago, a freeze warning was put out by the weather service for our area and that night the thermometer dropped to the mid-twenties. Fortunately most of my plants were still in pots so they could be moved inside the garage for protection. What was in the garden already had not yet sprouted and so were protected by the soil. Still many plants were challenged by these icy conditions and not all fared well.

My bleeding heart plant, in the process of blossoming, was bitten badly. The flowers were destroyed but leaves at the base of the plant survived, so I am hopeful the plant will make a full recovery. Tiger Lilies suffered damage with smaller plants getting the worst of it. Many do not look like they will make it. Larger plants, already several feet tall, looked really beat and for a while I wondered if they would pull through. Lower leaves wilted but the tops recovered. It remains to be seen if they will produce flowers.

Many trees and shrubs shrugged off the arctic blast but a few species got hit hard. Oak trees and one or two other species I’m not familiar with got the worst of it.

At this time of year, oaks are just starting to leaf out. The freeze destroyed the new growth, leaving behind withered brown vegetation. When they are touched, they are dry, crumbling under my fingers, so these will not be coming back.

Will trees be able to survive a hit like this? Looking about, I see many larger oak trees with their leaves blasted. Many smaller trees have been devastated as well though a few twigs here and there managed to make it through. As it is so early in the season, chances are good that the trees (many of whom surely have gone through this before) will be able to put out new growth. How acorn production will be affected by this remains to be seen. I have not been able to locate any information online which might tell me this. Many animals rely on acorns, eating them to fatten up for the winter or storing them away for lean times. Bears, turkeys, squirrels, chipmunks and others will all be affected by this if the acorn crop fails.

But nature is nothing, if not resilient. Natural selection will weed out those who cannot tolerate climate extremes, leaving behind the toughest and the hardiest. Northern New Hampshire is a good place for that. Like the old saying; If you don’t like the weather, wait a minute.

Mysterious Beasts

Cryptids or mysterious unidentified creatures are a popular topic for investigation. It doesn’t seem to matter that no actual physical trace of the beasts in question which would allow positive ID has ever been found. Just marveling about their possible existence seems to be enough.

Remember the Abominable Snowman (otherwise called a yeti)? I recall that being quite the thing for a while when I was younger. Books were written about the possibility of an unknown giant anthropoid living in the Himalayan mountains. They were described as being reddish-brown in color and would walk for impossibly long distances. Hollywood leapt on the bandwagon with their own creep-fests starring the strange beast, although for some reason they made them white instead reddish-brown (white fur costumes must have been cheaper).

The craze faded after a time and now the latest on this crytid is a news article reporting a yeti (excuse me, an idiot dressed up as a yeti) robbing a Russian theater. He got quickly arrested (once the Russian cops got through laughing). If there’s a real yeti out there, he must be cringing.

Bigfoot or Sasquach has fared slightly better. He never seems to go out of style. Over the years there has been a steady stream of sightings of the beast. Footprints have been photographed, odd calls reported, blurry pictures showing what’s obviously a chunky guy wearing a gorilla costume,

however no solid evidence such as bones, droppings or hair samples showing that such a being exists has turned up. Samples of hair submitted many years ago turned out to belong to a deer. While it’s still up in the air as to what’s really going on, my own theory is that some First Nation wise guys go out every so often and have a little fun with the dumb whites. After all if we’ll believe space aliens built the pyramids, then we’ll believe guys in monkey suits are really an unknown species of hominid. It’s always possible of course that there are giant ape-like beings roaming about, but if there are, they have enough sense to keep out of sight from us crazy humans.

Loch Ness has been in the news recently with yet another sighting of the mysterious Loch ‘monster’. While the article speaks of a single monster, it looks more to me like several critters, possibly otters cavorting in the water, though it’s difficult to get a sense of scale looking at the video. Unfortunately, CGI is so sophisticated now that you really have to take anything you see on the screen with a large grain of salt, these days.

Tabloids headlines bill the creature (or creatures) as ‘terrifying’ but it’s hard being scared of something which seems to be playing with such relish in the waters. Tourists, obviously unphased, flock every year hoping for a glimpse of the monster. Even if they don’t see anything, the Loch is still a beautiful place to visit, judging from all the photos. Here’s hoping ‘Nessie’ doesn’t get found too soon.

Nessie seems to have many counterparts throughout the world. Argentina’s Lake Nahuel Huapi boasts of a lake monster much like Nessie. Okanagan Lake in British Columbia is reputed to be the residence of a creature named Ogopogo. Chessie is another water creature which may be found in the Chesapeake Bay and it seems to have a cousin living in Lake Champlain called Champ. The darkness of lakes the world over has invited many such tales. Who know what might be lurking under those mysterious looking waves?

Far more intriguing are the stories found throughout the United States of mysterious giant birds. The First Nation tales of the Thunderbirds, spirit beings who protect humans from evil spirits, particularly water spirits. The Algonquins says the Thunderbirds were actually the ancestors of present-day humans and helped create the universe.

Fast forward to modern times and frequent accounts pop up, usually in Texas but also in other places of mysterious outsize birds which startle people. While most are misidentified known birds such as hawks, vultures or eagles, others might be unknown flying avians, not familiar to the witnesses. It’s often easy to misjudge the size of a bird especially when it’s at a distance so the definition of ‘giant’ may be up to debate. But like Sasquatch and Nessie, the reports persist.

So what to make of these stories and why do they continue in spite of no real physical evidence collaborating their reality? Another look at these creatures reveals one common element: they are all based on stories of supernatural beings. The Sasquatch is known to Northwestern Native Americans as sasq’ets, meaning ‘hairy man’ and has been viewed as a shape-shifting supernatural being which protects the forest. Water beast stories, which include those about Nessie, are a world-wide phenomenon based on a belief in water spirits and gods. In fact the Thunderbird itself is said to be the foe of evil water spirits. Like the Sasquatch, it also is a shape-shifter, engaged in a never-ending battle with hostile beings who are a threat to mankind.

Perhaps rather than futilely searching for ‘proof’ of these beings, it might be better to accept that they might really be elusive spirit forms, either beneficial or hostile, who co-exist with us. We’ve never lost our desire to witness beings awesome and inexplicable. While we might marvel at the wonders of other planets, exploding suns, shimmering galaxies and ominous black holes, they are far away, almost abstract. But the mystery beings populating our imagination and possibly our world as well, are much closer to home and lurking just out of the corner of our eyes.

The Saga Of the Cane Toad

The cane toad, native to Central and South America, is a large warty toad, poisonous with big paratoid glands (the round spots located behind the eyes near the neck) which exude bufotoxin as a means of defense. They are prolific breeders, with a female often laying between 8000 to 25000 eggs embedded in long strings of jelly. Most of the tadpoles, which themselves are poisonous, usually die during the time they metamorphose to adults as this is the time when they lose their juvenile toxins and are defenseless until the adult paratoid glands develop. Their main enemies at this critical period are … well ….other young cane toads, who cheerfully devour their brethern.

Their voracious appetites and rapid reproduction caught the eyes of agriculturalists, hoping to find a ‘natural means’ of controlling crop pests. One place they were brought in, was Australia. In 1935, about a hundred toads were introduced, with the hopes they would have an impact on cane beetles, who were attacking sugar cane fields. Needless to say, things did not work out as was hoped.

One would think Australians would have learned their lesson with the debacle of the introduction of rabbits back in the nineteenth century.

But evidently not. As with the European rabbit, with no natural enemies and an ideal environment, the toads did what their predecessors, the rabbits, did, which was reproduce like mad and spread like a bio-tsunami across the landscape. It’s hard to say what the Australians hate more now, rabbits or cane toads.

Efforts to control the exploding numbers of toads, now estimated to be 250,000,000, have been fruitless. The march of the toads seems relentless as they overrun not only ecosystems but human towns and cities, devouring anything smaller than themselves and poisoning inquisitive pets who lick or bite at them. Efforts to control them, ranging from introducing sterile males to compete with fertile males, using cane toad toxin to trigger cannibalism in tadpoles, or just bludgeoning the things to death with a hammer (illegal by the way) have born little fruit.

But a curious thing has been happening while humans have been pulling out their hair over their latest screw-up. It seems the local wildlife has begun a counter-offensive.

Recently white ibises have been observed ‘playing’ with cane toads. The birds are often called ‘bin chickens’ by locals for their habit of foraging in trash cans. But this insulting nickname may get dropped in light of what’s happening. It turns out the birds weren’t playing, they were stressing the toads, forcing them to release their poison, then either wiping them on grass or rinsing them in a nearby water source. Then the ibises would eat the toads without ill effect.

And they are not the only ones who have stumbled on a way to devour the formerly inedible cane toad. A local species of crow has developed the simple expedient of flipping the toad on its back and tearing open the abdomen and eating the non-toxic internal organs. Rakali water rats have also mastered the trick of eating the toad without running afoul of its poison by using the same technique.

If this doesn’t heighten your respect for the intelligence of animals in figuring out how to do all this, then I don’t know what will. There must have been a hefty amount of experimentation, fueled by hunger, by the ibises, ravens and water rats, before hitting on the best method of getting a meal out of these unpleasant invaders. Bird brains indeed!

Food for thought, if you’ll pardon the expression.

Have a happy and peaceful New Year.

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