Then, pop over to Pacific Horticulture to find my inquiry research on "Where Are the Butterflies?" Plus, tips on how to make your garden butterfly-friendly with these Eight Essential Elements.
Enjoy
Eleanor Lutz, of Tabletop Whale, created this animated butterfly chart in 2014. I think she is brilliant, and love her application of art and digital technology to science illustration. Be sure to click the link to watch the butterflies in motion! Then, pop over to Pacific Horticulture to find my inquiry research on "Where Are the Butterflies?" Plus, tips on how to make your garden butterfly-friendly with these Eight Essential Elements. Enjoy ~illustration by Roger La Borde
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This year we have spunky Bewick's Wrens nesting in the side of our garden shed (they totally ignored the birdhouses we have installed for them), a reclusive pair of Spotted Towhees nesting in the hedgerow underbrush, and some riotous Stellar Jays have built their nest in a neighbor's conifer. We are enjoying getting to know these three bird couples. It's been fun to observe their quirky personalities and how they interact with all the other songbirds who visit throughout the day. Since I recently donated my cameras and lenses to Peter Pearsall, wildlife photographer, I was compelled to go looking for images of these avian parents. I am very pleased to have discovered Whatbird.com. It is a nice compliment to my favorite site :the Cornell Lab's All About Birds. Bewick's Wren
Back in my new/old house, I am enjoying baking and brewing in my updated kitchen. These last two weeks I’ve been nurturing three different sourdough starters, as well as taking my SCOBY out of hibernation and brewing my own continuous green tea Kombucha. I have to say that all my experiments have been tasty and successful. My ferments are as happy as me to inhabit this lovely new space.
My sourdough pancakes have been getting a kick out of the daily feedings and these have been the lightest and most complex pancakes in quite some time. Whiskey=Irish coffee...also a quarantine-blues buster. My stay-at-home project this spring is to join Rob Dunn and his crew in their Wild Sourdough Project and also to participate in Michelle Jewel's 20 minute Fermentology Seminars to learn about "the applied ecology, evolution, history and culture of cultured foods". Both of these activities have open invitations from North Carolina State Public Science Lab.
As a Wild Sourdough participant, I will be comparing ferments from three types of flour. I mixed my pastes today and in two weeks will be posting photos and data to the site. Meanwhile...meet the new babies in our fermenting lab (joining our kefir, kombucha, sauerkraut, and my Seattle sourdough). Want to join me in a Zoom seminar every Thursday afternoon through August? See you there! I am excited to share the link to my article, published Spring 2019 in Pacific Horticulture.
With everyone quarantined and staying at home, this is a wonderful opportunity to dig into your soil and to nourish your relationship with the flora and fauna in the neighborhood. Now, get outside and enjoy that spring sunshine! Valentine's Day Bird Count began with two black-capped chickadees at my feeder.
Join me in getting out and counting birds this weekend? Cornell Lab of Ornithology and E-bird make it easy! I love waking up and finding evidence that wild animals have been exploring our backyard while we are not looking. This fresh dusting of snow let us see how the local raccoons circumnavigated our house and also that they were hoping to dip their paws in the birdbath.
Do you ever wonder about how these wild animals survive in the city? First, why is this animal called raccoon (wikipedia): The word "raccoon" was adopted into English from the native Powhatan term, as used in the Colony of Virginia. It was recorded on John Smith's list of Powhatan words as aroughcun, and on that of William Strachey as arathkone. It has also been identified as a reflex of a Proto-Algonquian root *ahrah-koon-em, meaning "[the] one who rubs, scrubs and scratches with its hands". Hill Raccoons are more than Bandits, 10/15 Brendan McGarry: REPOST from CHS blog "Despite their nocturnal tendencies, we know they are around, scampering across intersections when we come home late at night or when they blunder beneath our tires. The main reason they’ve become so common in our urban world is that they’re incredibly intelligent and this is very adaptive for the variety of nuances they face in the city. Their common name is merely an english settler mangled Powhatan word for the animal; their latin binomial is telling. The genus designates them as before, “Pro,” dog, “cyon,” intimating that raccoons are indeed carnivores (though more closely related to bears than dogs). The second notes a common behavior, as lotor literally means “washer,” and raccoons are well known for their habit of “washing” their food using dextrous forelimbs. Unlike us, raccoons don’t have very good long distance vision but instead rely on a suite of other senses. Based on their anatomy, raccoons do see better than us at night, because they possess tapetum lucida, tissues behind their retina contributing to superior light gathering, which many mammals have. You’ve seen this before in your dog or cat when at night a beam of light reflects in their eyes. Despite this nocturnal augmentation, both a sense of smell and hearing, much more acute than ours top vision in importance to raccoons. However, one trumps them all, and that’s their sense of touch. Though raccoons don’t have opposable thumbs on their forepaws like primates, they are only slightly less dextrous. raccoons have one of the most highly developed senses of touch for a vertebrate, with an inordinate amount of brain power devoted to the tactile. Their habit of “washing” is not related to a desire for clean food but instead related to the fact that they can feel more when wetting their paws, softening their footpads. I’ve routinely seen raccoons search about in the water with their paws (they love frogs, fish, clams, and all manner of invertebrates that habituate them to habitats with nearby water), and upon finding something, manipulate it throughly as a blindfolded person would an object handed to them for inspection. This is a prime way they see the world, so different than how most of us see things." Thanks for your interest in our backyard visitors. Cheers, and enjoy the wild side. Two new birds to end my year: an unusually marked sapsucker and a Belted Kingfisher.
We spotted these on Christmas Eve, near Duck Pond at the northern end of the Arboretum. It was a handy coincidence that Union Bay Watch was on hand to take photos, and then to do a bit of research. According to Larry: "It seems to me that this 2019 bird is most likely a hybrid between a Red-breasted and a Red-naped Sapsucker. However, the black mask surrounding the eye is rather puzzling. None of the four species of sapsuckers in North America have such a complete mask of black around the eyes. Three of the four have a black eye stripe running between white highlights, similar to the Red-naped Sapsucker. The Red-breasted Sapsucker is the exception. This 2019 bird appears to be a unique individual. The black mask around the eye appears to be personal variation. Maybe this is how a new species begins. If this bird's unique DNA is passed on maybe someday its progeny will form another species. They might even be called, Black-masked Sapsuckers." How cool is that? Happy Bird Year 2020! this lovely card was created by Artist Gennine D. Zlatkis |
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