Our Window on Nature

Kaye still remembers the first time she saw a live tarantula. She was glancing out the front window of our California home when an enormous, hairy spider crawled past the front of the house. It was huge. Conditioned by adventure movies to believe that tarantulas are both deadly and intent upon attacking innocent people, Kaye allowed the critter to continue right on down the road.

Her next tarantula sighting wasn’t until after we’d begun traveling, and by that time we knew enough about spiders to realize that although a chase scene featuring a tarantula may make good theater, it doesn’t represent the facts. These spiders aren’t pretty, but neither are they hostile; they’re simply fascinating.

Even decades after the event, we can make certain assumptions about Kaye’s early tarantula sighting. She probably saw the spider in late summer or early fall; it probably was an adult male on the prowl in search of a mate; and in all likelihood it wasn’t as huge as it appeared. So, since tarantula season is here and since at least some of you who are reading this column will be traveling into the spiders’ territory during the months ahead, we’ve compiled a few facts about these hairy spiders. (Read the rest …)

Just about everybody likes to eat insects - mammals, birds, amphibians, reptiles, spiders, other insects, and even some humans. Over in Great Britain, a scientist with time on his hands calculated that the country’s spiders consume enough insects each year to total the combined weight of the entire human population. And that’s just the spiders. Why, then, are there so many insects left over?

“Bug-ologists” point to several reasons why insects are nature’s most successful creatures. For one thing, insects breed in astronomical numbers. They can afford to lose a high percentage of their population to predation. And for another, insects have highly sophisticated strategies for self-defense. It’s these defense strategies that we’ll be investigating here - house building, chemical warfare, warning coloration, mimicry, and camouflage - because they are strategies that you’ll be able to view first-hand as you travel. First the architects. (Read the rest …)

Last month I lost my keys. That didn’t bother me nearly as much as not having my most-used naturalist’s tool readily available. On my key ring I have a small ten-power magnifying glass.

When I’m outside I usually have my binoculars, I often have a camera, but I always have my keys and a way to examine whatever catches my attention. I think that particular magnifier has probably traveled in my pants pocket for at least 25 years.

What can you do with a magnifying glass? Have you ever seen the delicate hooks that hold a bird’s feather in it’s streamlined shape? Or tried to figure out how a tiny tree frog manages to stick to the outside of a sliding glass door?

From the miniature scales on a butterfly’s wing to the texture of the bark from a trailside tree, the world seen through a magnifying glass will reveal details that most will never see. Try it on your next outing and, like me, you’ll never leave home without one. (My keys were found and returned, magnifier included.)

A rose by any other name looks better without aphids. And eating aphids is the specialty of the ladybird beetle, affectionately known as the ladybug. The ladybug earned its nickname by devouring pests that have been tormenting man ever since the Garden of Eden.

Back in the Middle Ages (and before the Age of Insecticides), these beetles appeared just in time to gobble the bugs infesting Italian vineyards, leading farmers to christen them “The Beetles of Our Lady.” That name caught on (except in France, where they’re considered “The Cows of the Lord” of all things.) Englishmen call them ladybird beetles.

We’re in error when we shorten the name to ladybug, for at least in a technical sense, these insects aren’t bugs, but beetles. But at least the name is a short one, more appropriate for their diminutive size.

Several species of ladybugs exist in this country, their names being descriptive of the patterns of lines on their heads and number of spots on their bodies. Most of the insects possess bright red-orange wings, yet in the Southwest you find some ladybird beetles colored a stylish celadon green. Elsewhere, species wear yellow wings marked with black spots. Still others have their colors reversed — orange or yellow or green spots on shiny black backs. (Read the rest …)

Just how far can a butterfly fly - assuming it has the urge? Down the block? Across town? All the way to the county line? Much, much farther if you happen to be a monarch - up to 3,000 miles.

Like Snowbirds, they fly south, hundreds of millions of wings filling the air. We’ve watched them flutter along the Massachusetts shoreline, and we’ve seen pine trees hung with living lace where they have settled to roost overnight. We’ve accompanied them across the Nevada desert, asking why they couldn’t find a less arid route. It’s little wonder that the monarch migration is one of the world’s great natural events.

Actually, the monarch is the only butterfly to make this massive, species-wide migration. Others may do a certain amount of moving about in search of food, but no one else in the insect world follows as predictable a path to as certain a location. Why do it then?

What follows is still speculation, but it’s informed speculation by lepidopterist Lincoln Brower, zoology professor at the University of Florida. He points out that most butterflies in the subfamily Danaiinae (to which the monarch belongs) are tropical, and cannot survive a cold winter - not as eggs, larvae, pupae, or adults.

On the other hand, monarchs eat only milkweed, and it’s a particularly widespread plant farther north. Brower suggests that back in the glacial epoch monarchs began migrating farther and farther north to take advantage of that food supply, without cutting ties to their southern home. (Read the rest …)