Our Window on Nature

Sitting on our desktop there’s a weathered twist of wood that we like to think is American chestnut. We found it near the top of a North Carolina peak and carried it, sodden and heavy with the remnants of winter, all the way down to the motorhome. In spite of the fact that one of us was jabbed in the back every step of the way by a wooden elbow, you could legitimately call our botanical artifact a ghost — the ghost of a race of trees that once covered the Blue Ridge Mountains.

A few old folks remember seeing trees like this one, whose uppermost leaves fluttered more than 100 feet in the air. They speak of tree trunks measuring more than four feet around, and of branches so heavy with nuts that you could gather them up by the wagonload. They talk of the lumber turned into houses and fences and railroad ties, and of bark stripped off and sold for tanning hides. They recall when chestnuts roasting over an open fire was more than the words of a song sung around Christmas time.

Walk in the forests of the Blue Ridge Mountains today and you find only a few half-hidden trunks moldering into soil, and a few defiant saplings tilting like Don Quixote against impossible odds. (Read the rest …)

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 …)

Vision at night is difficult at best, whether you are watching wildlife or searching the sky for meteor showers. But it always seems you need just a bit more light to check the settings on your camera. Or to find the position of a constellation on your star map.

The problem is that flipping on a flashlight ruins your night vision. It takes about 15 minutes for your eyes to adapt to the dark and see detail, and only a second or so of bright light to undo the process. Fortunately there is a solution.

Dim red light has only a minor effect on our vision at night, so a red flashlight allows you to check what you just wrote in your notebook and still look up to see the animals that have better night vision than we do. And the animals are less disturbed by red light.

I’ve seen advertisements for red flashlights, but a less expensive solution is to cover a light source with red cellophane or plastic. When I couldn’t find any locally, I bought a transparent reddish-pink file folder at a stationary store. Two layers did the trick. Enough light to see, but not enough to ruin my night vision.

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.)