PSoTD

They are quite handsome looking reptiles.

I really wonder how bad squirrel damage to buildings will be this winter.

It really is a scientific mystery.

To find out, Simmons and Arlington naturalists began calling around. A naturalist in Maryland found no acorns on an Audubon nature walk there. Ditto for Fairfax, Falls Church, Charles County, even as far away as Pennsylvania. There are no acorns falling from the majestic oaks in Arlington National Cemetery.

"Once I started paying attention, I couldn't find any acorns anywhere. Not from white oaks, red oaks or black oaks, and this was supposed to be their big year," said Greg Zell, a naturalist at Long Branch Nature Center in Arlington. "We're talking zero. Not a single acorn. It's really bizarre."

Zell began to do some research. He found Internet discussion groups, including one on Topix called "No acorns this year," reporting the same thing from as far away as the Midwest up through New England and Nova Scotia. "We live in Glenwood Landing, N.Y., and don't have any acorns this year. Really weird," wrote one. "None in Kansas either! Curiouser and curiouser."

Gonna be a VERY TOUGH winter for squirrels.

I've been taking kids to the bus stop in the morning for five years now. Our bus stop is on a street lined with oak trees, and one of the games we like to play while waiting for the bus is something akin to pitching pennies - trying to get acorns to stay on the manhole cover in the street.

It doesn't look like we'll be playing that game with acorns this year - I see NO acorns on the oaks lining our streets. None on the ground. None in the trees. No remnants. I don't know if this is due to the lack of rain we had for a good chunk of summer, or something else, but...

Gonna be a tough winter for the squirrels.

I keep reading about them in the news, but I'm not seeing many of them outside, and we have a lot of oak trees on our street.

From a tourism survey:

Fifteen percent of respondents have been to a clothing-optional or adults-only resort.

American Suburbia probably will need to take the concept to heart in the next few years...

Green Bay launches its fall leaf pickup schedule Oct. 13, but you could do yourself, the city and the environment a favor by skipping the raking this year. Advertisement

Or at least, if you must rake, take it to your compost pile.

Public Works Director Carl Weber said mulching and composting instead of raking leaves to the curb could save city crews a ton of grief.

"Obviously, I'm trying to cut down on the number of times we've got to drive around the city," Weber said. "So any leaf that's not put out saves us time, fuel and money."

Expect local governments - and state government officials - to press the idea much more vigorously as a cost-saver and good for the environment.

Here's a way for Californians to get an inventory for their residential or commercial property of its flora, fauna, geology, and ecology. Great idea.

I wish I could remember the name of this lake in the White Mountains of California.

It's somewhere southeast of Mount Whitney, but there are lots of lakes that it could be in that region. I suspect it's Long Lake, but I've long lost the topo maps I had of this region where we chose our trail. I've always loved this photo, though, although it's faded considerably with time.

When is the 2008 Annual Insect Field Day?

I think I really noticed them back on Monday... the cicadas.

I saw this in the street yesterday in front of our house and immediately started wondering - what the heck is going on in the tree above that splotch?

I couldn't get a good photo of it, but there's a nest of green herons directly above. The three chicks were all standing on branches when I discovered them, downy and actually pretty big, with their mother on a nearby branch, but once they realized I was continuing to be there, the mother flew to a different tree and the chicks settled back into their nest.

Wow. Just wow.

photo by kaikne

I saw a great show in Dillsburg last night. We were at the Haar's drive-in, it was 20 minutes or so before sunset, the skies were graying considerably to rain (which it did for most of Wall-E, then it stopped and we were able to comfortably sit in lawn chairs for Get Smart). Families and kids getting fully prepped for the movie that was about to begin... and next to us...

Was a field, and we've just entered prime firefly season here, and there were more lightning bugs flying in the field than I've seen in a long long time. And that's a lot, because our neighborhood is loaded with them, too. The entire field looked like it had been heavily laced with Christmas lights, and I realized that this scene, of nature and farm and drive-in theater, couldn't have been more dramatic if Steven Spielberg had set it up himself. I had to stand at the end of the drive-in and just watch the field.

I've had a different thought today. Business has started to realize that the beauty of insects, and our own lack of understanding of insects, can lend itself to opportunity. That's why butterfly gardens, and insect zoos, and vacation tours to watch insects, such as butterflies, exist. There's money in this niche.

It seems to me that somebody could put together a "Firefly Tour" as well, if the businessperson can string together places like Haar's Drive-In. It really was a spectacular show until it rained.

Why not firefly tourism in Pennsylvania? There are actually some activities like this already. Oh, and check this out:

Summer is around the corner but now is the time to begin looking for lightning bugs with at least one location in North Carolina already launching its annual firefly tours, officials in Ohio are still waiting because lightning bugs haven't been seen there yet.

Just outside Asheville, North Carolina there is a Firefly Twilight Tour on Saturday night offered by The Cradle of Forestry in America Historic Site in North Carolina's Pisgah National Forest.

During this guided program people will learn more about the insects as they enjoy the evening woods, forest officials announced Friday.

It's a good place to see the flashing luminous insects because most adult fireflies are found near where larvae hatch and "most firefly larvae are found in rotting wood or other forest litter or on the edges of streams and ponds at night," according to the website of the Museum of Biological Diversity at Ohio State University.

Although fireflies are found in many areas of the United States, only fireflies east of Kansas glow, scientists say they don't know why.

Hey, you Westerners - come east and see the fireflies.

Something chomped my birch tree AND my best growing almond tree, leaving no leaves. I've caged all four of the new trees in, hopefully the attacked will recover.

Maybe I should have thought about the fact that we live in the squirrel and chipmunk capital of the world before planting almond trees.

When I was in high school, I had this great teacher - Mr. Carlson - who taught a one year course, Field Biology. It had lots of benefits, and field trips, including backpacking trips and after school hikes and trips to check out elephant seals and various other kinds of nature studying events. It became so popular in our school that a second year of curriculum was developed, brilliantly named Field Biology II, with more of these kinds of activities and studies.

At that time I discovered birdwatching, or more accurately for me, bird checking. We were given a long list of birds that at that time were known to be in California, either for the year or as part of their migratory trek, and we tried to see as many as we could through the process of all these field trips, and indicate what we saw. What it did for most of us was take us from noticing there were birds all around, to noticing what kinds of birds were around, and what that meant about the ecosystem as far as food and predators and water and botany was concerned.

I've had a trusty Audubon Field Guide to Birds ever since, and it's rubbed off on the kids. I get excited about seeing new types of birds in our neighborhood, and I'll consult the book, and the kids and I will figure it out, and one of them will excitedly tell Mom what we saw at the first chance they get. This usually opens up a discussion as to why they might be around here when we've not seen them much if at all before. Sometimes birds show up around here and are common for a season or two, but then disappear and aren't nearly as visible for a while. This happened a few years ago with Baltimore Orioles - Cal Ripken drove up - scratch that, stupid joke - one summer we saw them in our yard all the time, which was a first, but we haven't seen much of them since. Sometimes they appear and stay - about 5 years ago goldfinches started showing up, and they're here every summer now. This year I've been seeing more blue jays in our part of the neighborhood. And gladly, at least for now, less crows.

Anyway, I just felt like recommending the activity. Central Pennsylvania is rich with places to bird watch, for different kinds of birds - rivers and creeks, "mountains", farmlands, and practically every suburban neighborhood. And with the richness comes the fact that birdwatching is actually very inexpensive, and flexible - you can take five minutes or 3 hours, depending on how much focus you want to give it. Binoculars and a reference for determining on the spot what bird you're actually seeing and you're set. You can build your own PA Bird Checklist to monitor with your kids here or here.

I discovered Saturday morning that we have a downy woodpecker that is chowing down on whatever is living in a dead limb of our lilac bush/tree. I heard the tap tap tapping and went to investigate, and there he was, and he didn't fly away until I was about 4 feet away. I inspected the branch - he's been busy, it's stripped almost all the way down to trunk, and a variety of hole depths. I looked on the ground, and found this stripped off bark - perfed by the woodpecker.