Author: marlenecondon@aol.com

Child’s Play

©Marlene A. Condon
A Carolina Wren uses a large variety of natural materials to construct its dome-shaped nest: dried pine needles and plant stalks, moss, rootlets, twigs, bark strips, and sometimes a cast-off snake skin! Photo: Marlene A. Condon.

Today’s column is especially for children (per a reader suggestion), although adults are certainly welcome to read along too!

Gardening for Wildlife

Just like you, wild critters need a home. For them to live in your yard, they need lots of plants. But it is not necessary to buy trees, shrubs, and flowers to plant around your house.

Ask your parents if you can mark off a sunny area of the yard to call your own. If it’s okay with them, remove most of the grass in your garden patch, and then wait. Be patient, and soon “volunteer” plants will come up.

Although most folks tend to call plants that come into the yard on their own “weeds,” many such plants are pretty as well as helpful to such critters as birds, butterflies, bees, and bunnies. By keeping an eye on your little garden, you can discover which plants are most often visited by wildlife.

You might learn which animals feed on leaves and which go to flowers for pollen and nectar. Later, you might see which animals eat the seeds or fruits that the plants made.

A Place for Life

A bird lays its eggs in a nest made of natural materials that should be easy for it to find, such as moss, lichen, spider webbing, mud, and feathers. Birds also use many kinds of dried plant matter, such as pine needles and leaves, stems, grasses, and twigs from trees.

Can a bird find these things in your yard, or in the yards of your neighbors? People like tidy yards, so they often rake up all the leaves and pull or cut all the plants that have turned brown. Usually they burn this old plant material or send it away to a landfill, which means birds can have trouble getting what they need to build a nest. However, there is a way to help birds as well as other animals and still have a tidy yard.

See if you can find a corner of the yard that people don’t visit often and ask your parents if they could put all plant debris, including woody material, in that one spot. By doing this, you create a brush pile, which is one of the best things you can do for wildlife.

By piling up branches trimmed from trees and bushes with the other yard debris, you make a place where birds can grab nesting material, hide from predators, or sleep at night. Some kinds of birds, along with bunnies, like to nest at the bottom of the pile where they can hide their nests underneath the twigs.

The bottom of the brush pile that is touching the ground will, over time, begin to decay, creating a perfect place for lizard and salamanders to lay their eggs. It even serves as a restaurant for them because they will find many different insects and spiders hanging out there.

Giving Toads A Helping Hand

All animals need water to live. Many people put out a bird bath on a stand for birds to get a drink and to clean themselves. But if you put a bird bath on the ground, it becomes a toad bath, too!

Although toads have dry skin (unlike frogs, which stay moist), they need water to drink. A toad does not drink by using its tongue to slurp up water as many other animals do. Instead, it takes in water through its skin. If no rain falls for a long time, there might not be any puddles for the toad to get into for a drink, but you could provide the water it needs.

The bath should be no more than two inches deep. If you do not own a bird bath, you can use a shallow dish instead. Whichever you use, be sure to put in fresh water every day. If the surface of the bath becomes slimy and turns green or red, algae is starting to grow. Algae are simple plants that do not make flowers. They are related to seaweed. You can clean off the algae with a scrub brush and then rinse the bath out.

Place the toad bath where you can easily watch it as the Sun goes down and toads become active.

Helping Butterflies and Bees

You might also want to make a “puddling bath” for butterflies where these insects can get water and minerals.

Place a glazed ceramic-flowerpot saucer in a sunny area. Make a “mud” by mixing together soil and manure (sold at garden centers), using an equal amount of both materials. Fill the saucer with the mixture to about one-half inch below the rim, then add just enough water to make the mud wet. Keep it moist throughout the summer and watch for butterflies to visit. These lovely insects need salt to reproduce, which they can get from the manure.

You can help bees and other insects to get the nectar and pollen they need for themselves and their young by growing some of their favorite flowers. Zinnias and marigolds are easy to grow from seed and offer you a choice of colors.

Two Important “Rules”

By welcoming wildlife to your yard, you give critters a place to live, which is something you can feel proud about doing. But there are two “rules” you should follow:

Always try not to scare the animals by getting too close, and you should never try to handle them. Although you know you don’t plan to hurt them, they don’t know that.

By keeping your distance from them, you will learn much more about their lives. If they do not know you are watching them, they can go about their business as they usually do. And that is the secret to finding out just what they do all day!

Become A Scientist

A scientist is someone who makes careful observations and writes detailed notes about them. This is the best way to become an expert about nature in your own back yard.

For example, all plants and animals have their own calendars. By keeping track over many years of the dates and temperatures when, for example, you hear different kinds of frogs calling, you will know under what conditions each type of frog will be active. Then you will be well on your way to becoming an expert on frog activities.

Think of a nature-friendly yard as a teacher, showing you how the entire natural world works. There is literally a world of discovery waiting for you just outside your door, because what happens there, happens everywhere! 

Blue Ridge Naturalist: Child’s Play

The Snakes and Lizards of Virginia

©Marlene A. Condon

The faces of three young Northern Copperheads (born just a few weeks earlier) can be seen at the opening of the “maternity” den underneath the author’s carport. The bright greenish yellow tail tip of one of the snakelets is visible to the right of the Field Cricket that seemed to know it had nothing to fear from the little snakes.

The very first snake I saw in my yard after I’d moved in more than three decades ago was a Red Cornsnake. I was thrilled to spot such an absolutely beautiful serpent, especially because it sported a fair bit of my favorite color—red!

For the most part, snakes prefer to stay out of sight, and if they tend to be active at night, your chances of seeing one are not really very high. In my experience, only the Eastern Rat Snake seems unafraid to show itself in the open in broad daylight.

It seems to know that most people are willing to coexist with it, something that other snake species are not often lucky enough to experience. And yet, snakes are hardly the threat to humans that folklore makes them out to be.

For years I have pointed out to people attending my talks that dogs, horses, and even lightning strikes kill many more people every year than venomous snakes do. And, of course, traffic fatalities hugely outnumber deaths from snake bites. Even so, most people would rather get into their vehicle every day than allow a snake to live in close proximity, despite the fact that people are far more likely to get killed on the road than they are ever to be hurt by a snake.

I believe the best way to overcome a fear of snakes is to learn about them. We have only 32 species, and, if you so desire, you need only learn about the lives of the ones that live in your particular area. You can determine this information from the map accompanying each species account in a wonderful guide to the snakes and the lizards of Virginia that has been published by the Department of Game & Inland Fisheries.

The small book is loaded with photos, and in addition to the usual information on habitat and behavior, each account includes a “Did you know?” section. For example, on the Red Corn Snake page, you find that the corn snake may have gotten its name from its habit of hunting rodents around corn fields. I prefer the second answer, which suggests the name could have come from this snake’s belly pattern, which looks like Indian Corn!

It might surprise you to see how many species of colorful snakes we have in Virginia, some of which are quite striking. However, there can be a lot of variation among individuals within a species, such as the Northern Copperhead. Some of these animals are a gorgeous coppery color, while others are a rather bland gray.

Longtime readers of my column may remember that female copperheads sometimes reproduce underneath my carport. You might think this situation would present a big problem, but it simply requires that we pay a bit more attention when walking around the carport during the month or so that the female is around. (There is usually only one female, although one year we had three!)

I’ve learned a great deal about copperheads as a result of inadvertently supplying a maternity ward for them, such as that people can coexist with these snakes. Although one or more females have each given birth to 7-9 young underneath my carport many times, we rarely see these animals around the house other than during their birthing season. Most snakes try to avoid people.

However, since we know they live in the area, we always watch where we step and where we place our hands. Living in agreement with nature means taking precautions, but this is no different than being careful around your fellow human beings. I’ve been able to avoid being bitten by any kind of snake, but I haven’t been able to avoid careless drivers who have plowed into my car, one of whom put me into the hospital and caused me many years of lingering pain.

There is no need to deliberately run over snakes on the roadways, or to chop their heads off if you come across one on the ground. In fact, most people get bitten because they interact with the snake instead of just keeping their distance.  

Learning about the lizards of Virginia is a bit more difficult task than learning about our snakes. A lizard usually makes a brief appearance, quickly running off to hide or to look for a meal of spiders or insects.  

Amazingly, the lizard species (and many other different kinds of animals) living on my property can often be seen lounging around the same carport opening where the female copperheads hang out when waiting to give birth! We’ve spotted broad-headed and five-lined skinks as well as fence lizards in that area.

The funny thing about this is that there are not a lot of spiders or insects to be seen there, and usually when you notice animals again and again in an area, it suggests a nearby food source. However, I suspect these lizards—being cold-blooded—are taking advantage of the warmth of the concrete and nearby bricks at that corner of the carport. The sun hits that area early on summer days, and the lizards (and, in season, a copperhead) show up only after the area has been hit by photons for a while.

Although the DGIF book does not mention it in the Fence Lizard account, these particular reptiles are quite appropriately named as they can often be seen on a fence! There are still a few sections left of an old farm fence that once ran along the front of my property, and I have found this fencing to be a reliable location for spotting a Fence Lizard.

It always brings me great joy and satisfaction to see one there because I know that most people would have long ago gotten rid of that decrepit fence.  I did not, and it has afforded me more views of Fence Lizards than I ever would have experienced otherwise, making it a valuable component of The Nature-friendly Garden.

A Guide to the Snakes and Lizards of Virginia is a good book to own if you want to recognize and learn about these animals. It is available from the DGIF Store (www.shopdgif.com). It is truly a bargain for $10!  

Here We Go Again-Emerald Ash Borer

©Marlene A. Condon

The United States Department of Agriculture started putting up purple boxes throughout Virginia in 2012 to detect the arrival of Emerald Ash Borers, a nonnative insect. These nondiscriminatory sticky boxes needlessly kill hundreds of innocent insects, including butterflies. Photo: Marlene A. Condon.

The Emerald Ash Borer, an Asian insect that was probably brought into the United States via cargo ships and airplanes carrying solid wood packing material, was first discovered in the Detroit area in 2002. From its initial occurrence, it has moved outward to 31 states and is expected to continue spreading throughout the country.

The adult beetle feeds on the foliage of an ash tree without causing any real harm. However, the immature beetle feeds on the inner bark where water and nutrients are transported throughout the tree. If there is an abundance of these larvae, they can kill the tree by interfering with its ability to get these essential liquids where they need to be.

The United States Depart-ment of Agriculture (USDA) has reported that the Emerald Ash Borer has killed hundreds of millions of ash trees in North America. Needless to say, and as is typical when a new foreign animal is found within the country, there is widespread panic. Municipalities, property owners, forest-products industries, and nursery operators are concerned about losing their ash trees.

In the beginning, the USDA behaved rationally, restricting and enforcing quarantines to prevent ash logs and firewood from potentially carrying Emerald Ash Borers into new areas. But as the insect’s spread continued unabated, the agency moved to pesticide usage.

Humans have become so used to the idea of employing poisons throughout the landscape that hardly anyone gives it much thought. Yet the consequences are profound.

A catastrophic result of treating trees with an injected pesticide (the main method of treating ash trees against the Emerald Ash Borer and hemlock trees for the Woolly Adelgid) is that those trees themselves become killing agents of non-targeted species as well as the targeted one. In these times of environmental consciousness, everyone knows that the wanton extermination of non-targeted species is an unsound practice.

Strangely, some environmentalists argue that we cannot afford to lose our native ash trees because they support native insects. However, there is no ecological value to keeping alive a poisoned ash tree that will attract and then snuff the life out of such critters as the caterpillars of Tiger Swallowtail and Hickory Hairstreak butterflies, among many others.

Imidacloprid, one of the commonly used pesticides suggested for use on ash trees, is already implicated in the decline of honeybees, and kills all kinds of insects and other kinds of invertebrates by interfering with the transmission of nerve impulses.

Proponents for the use of this pesticide always point to its safeness for use around people and their pets. But people and their pets are not the organisms that make the environment habitable for the rest of life on Earth, and therefore should not be seen as the only determinant for whether a pesticide is acceptably safe.

Although humans and pets would not, presumably, have much opportunity to eat this pesticide, the probability for other mammals, as well as birds, reptiles, and amphibians, is much higher. Employed systemically (injected into the tree), Imidiclopid moves easily throughout the entire plant, filling roots, leaves, pollen, nectar, and fruit with this toxic substance.

What this means is that any kind of animal making use of any part of a treated tree is susceptible to serious poisoning, whether it is a White-footed Mouse eating an ash seed or a Yellow-bellied Sapsucker getting sap. Does this matter? It certainly does when you consider that both of these species eat Gypsy Moths (an alien species brought to this country deliberately) and thus help to limit their numbers.

Although the United States government has spent millions of dollars trying to eradicate the Gypsy Moth from our forests via the use of pesticides, it is a battle that can never be won because pesticides simply breed resistance into the species, making it more of a problem for humans to deal with. 

It would be far more sensible to preserve ash seeds that could be planted after the borer populations have plummeted. Once large ash trees have been greatly reduced in number, the borers will starve for lack of a food source. A natural buildup of predator populations will take place and that will work to keep borer populations in check.

This scenario has already played out with the Brown Marmorated Stink Bug. Although populations of this nonnative insect (first detected in the US in 1998) were still noticeable in Virginia in 2017, its numbers were substantially reduced from previous years.

You might question my assessment, because for most folks, finding several dozen of these stink bugs around the house still counts as too many. However, just a few years ago there would be hundreds of them in the fall on house siding. In Shenandoah National Park, we couldn’t even exit the car because stink bugs were flying and landing everywhere! It was quite a phenomenon.  

Although my initial assessment of the population decrease was based upon what was happening in my yard throughout the 2017 growing season, I confirmed from bird-sighting and hawk-watch reports throughout the fall season that the population drop had occurred throughout the state. The complaints of stink bugs were very few and far between as compared to previous years! Lastly, a sure sign that numbers were way down was the absence of stink bug media coverage.

It’s strange that when some kinds of critters become problematic, the common and hysterical reaction of folks is, “We’ve got to do something!”, even if that “something” is to employ poisons that are harsh in their effect and non-selective in their action. No one considers that this demand for pesticides demands cruelty from researchers.

All pesticides are tested for toxicity by feeding them to animals and applying these substances directly onto their skin and/or into their eyes. Should people worry more about trees than about the inhumane treatment of animals, such as the bunnies and guinea pigs used in Imidacloprid testing?

If people would open their eyes to the big picture and learn more about all of the unseen but very real impacts of using pesticides, the world would be a much better place for us and the creatures that share it. Animals would no longer be subjected to immense physiological and psychological pain and suffering to test poisons, and our tax burden would be less because we wouldn’t be forced to support pesticide research and applications.

No species of organism has ever been eliminated by pesticides. Please reconsider your options the next time you think pesticides will solve your problems. 

Blue Ridge Naturalist: Here We Go Again— Emerald Ash Borer

Resurrecting Faith Requires Connecting with Nature

©Marlene A. Condon

 

Photo: Marlene A. Condon.

The word “Easter” is not in the original scriptures. It originally referred to a pagan feast day of renewal and rebirth that honored the Saxon goddess Eastre. Because this holiday fell about the same time as the traditional memorial of Christ’s resurrection from the dead, early missionaries merged the two when they converted the Saxons to Christianity.

To disassociate church services that day from pagan ties and the commercialization of the holiday, some Christian churches now refer to Easter as Resurrection Day. It’s an appropriate name, not only for commemorating Christ’s resurrection, but perhaps also for a discussion of resurrecting faith.

The Millennials—those people born between 1980 and 2000—comprise the largest generation in American history, and according to research by the Pew Research Center, they are less likely to say they believe in God. They are also less likely to be affiliated with any religion, and they are not alone.

The Pew Research Center found that adults of all ages have become less attached to religious institutions since the beginning of the 21st century, but Millennials are at the leading edge of this social phenomenon. Why might that be?

Being the first “digital natives” (a term coined by writer Marc Prensky)—the initial generation to grow up with the Internet, mobile technology, and digital social media—they are also the first generation of “nature aliens” (coined by this author)—the first generation to grow up distanced from the natural world.

Millennials, generally speaking, are deprived of a connection to nature. And that deprivation is a direct pathway to a loss of belief in God. Spending an abundance of time within the virtual world of computers—a creation of man, not God—leads to the worship of Man, not God.

Thus, it is not surprising that in the quarter-century that the Pew Research Center has been polling on the topic of religious affiliation, the Millennial level of religious disaffiliation is at or near the highest levels recorded for any generation. But does living in the digital age preclude an attachment to the natural world?

A large part of the problem lies in the ease of mis/disinformation that can be so easily disseminated by way of the Internet. Anyone with a digital device and an Internet connection can post information (whether it be wrong, untrue, or blown all out of proportion to reality), and it is delivered instantaneously to what seems to have become an accepting and non-analytical public.

Thus, for example, we currently live in a world of germaphobes, people who fear so much the thought of getting a germ on them that they behave somewhat irrationally. They use disinfectant wipes on public surfaces, such as shopping cart handles, even though adults are highly unlikely to get sick if they don’t bother to do this (especially if they would just keep their hands away from their faces). The problem with using disinfectant wipes is that they help to breed supergerms.

How did we get to this point? A variety of culprits are responsible, from the engineers who come up with ever-more sensitive devices to tell us things we don’t really need to know, to the scientists who count the microorganisms and then inform the press to get publicity for more funding, to the news organizations that sensationalize their finds.

Unfortunately, no one applies critical thinking to the situation, which would tell them these miniscule creatures have been there all along, will continue to be there forever, and that humans have been able to coexist with them because our bodies are made to deal with them!

Worse, this compulsion to sanitize the manmade world has inevitably led to the idea of sanitizing the natural world. The number of “pest control” companies and the over one billion pounds of pesticides used yearly in the United States attest to this fact.

Additionally, people have a propensity to embrace negative ideas about nature, as if it’s their enemy. Considering that the natural world is literally our life-support system, this nonsensical attitude results from people viewing nature from a skewed perspective.

Consider ticks. These small arachnids are well known, thanks to Lyme Disease, a serious illness caused by a bacterium ticks can transmit to humans. Many people are terrified to go outdoors during the warm months of the year because, with the amount of publicity ticks get, people think the probability of getting Lyme Disease is extremely high. 

But compared to the other activities people engage in without worry, the risk of getting Lyme Disease is relatively low. According to the Centers for Disease Control, 11 people per 100,000 were confirmed to be infected in Virginia in 2013. With a population of about 8 million people, this works out to about 80 cases of Lyme Disease, which is treatable by antibiotics. On the other hand, 740 Virginians died in a car crash that same year.

Should people be more afraid of spending time outdoors than getting into their vehicles to drive the roadways? A rational person can see that, with the number of Lyme Disease cases about 11 percent of the number of vehicular deaths, the answer is, “Obviously not.” And yet they absolutely are. Why?

People tend not to fear the things they are familiar with, especially manmade objects such as cars, which can be quite deadly. Instead, they tend to fear the wildlife they don’t see often and thus are unfamiliar with. Worse, they pay more attention to and believe stories that exaggerate the dangers posed by wildlife.

How do we get people to connect with nature instead of holding onto a distorted view of it? Unfortunately, this situation is extremely difficult to rectify because people are bombarded 24/7 with a huge amount of misinformation, much of which originates with scientists.

Because these professionals tend to look at nature only through the lens of human experience, theirs is a biased view of the natural world in which organisms seem to be either “good” or “bad.” It is a subjective perspective, and thus not accurate.

Humans must learn to recognize the importance of coexisting with other life forms, which means understanding how to live in agreement with nature instead of fighting it. Every creature exists for a reason, and that reason is to assist in perpetuating life on the planet by helping to keep the environment functioning properly.

Yet the war on nature has never before been fought so vigorously, nor more powerfully, to kill all manner of creatures, from insects to mammals to plants. Satan himself could not have devised a more devilishly fiendish scheme to divorce man from God. 

 

Blue Ridge Naturalist: Resurrecting Faith Requires Connecting with Nature

 

Mountain Lake Resort-Always worthy of a Visit

©Marlene A. Condon

February 2, 2018

 

Mountain Lake Lodge, built of native sandstone, is especially lovely as the sun is setting. Its reflection in a small pond surrounded by natural vegetation that attracts wildlife serves to remind us that man and nature can coexist. Photo: Marlene A. Condon.

 

As a student at Virginia Tech, I found visits to nearby Mountain Lake—one of only two natural lakes in the state of Virginia—enchanting. Walking along the trail on the east side of the large freshwater lake required hiking through a rhododendron “hell” that was spectacular when in spring bloom. (A rhododendron hell refers to an area of these plants growing so close together that they are “hell” to get through if a pathway has not already been cleared for you!)

Today, more than 40 years later, the fantastical rhododendrons remain, but sadly, the lake, once covering about 50 acres, is now a ghost of its former self. Although somewhat variable in size throughout its history, the lake seriously suffered from the statewide, long-term drought of 2002, and it has never recovered.

Geologists cannot definitively cite the reason for its continued difficulty in refilling. However, many researchers have studied Mountain Lake, and they are certain about some things. Dr. Chester F. Watts (“Skip”) of Radford University told me that geophysical studies indicate that the lake originally formed as the result of a landslide that clogged a narrow gap in a ridge. The random jumbles of rock blocks created a dam that backed water up into a meadow.

Unfortunately, the disordered rock dam contains spaces in between the rocks. Those openings sometimes allow water to pass through, while at other times they clog with silt that holds water in. Additionally, some deep holes, which leak, lie along the lake floor. Thus over the past four thousand or more years, Mountain Lake has fluctuated in size, depending upon the state of both the dam and the holes.

Jeanne M. Roningen (U.S. Army Corp of Engineers) and Thomas J. Burbey (Virginia Tech) discussed the hydrogeologic factors that influence lake-level changes in a research paper in the 2012 Hydrogeology Journal (20: 1149-1167). They say that historical data suggest that either significant precipitation or artificial intervention to mitigate seepage would be required for lake-level recovery in the near future.

The reduction in lake size has resulted in the loss of over one million dollars per year for the Mountain Lake Conservancy, the non-profit organization founded to manage and protect the resort and the 2600 acres of land surrounding it. (NASL ML FldTrp printed.pdf) Should this drop in income continue, it could perhaps result in the future closing of the Lodge and thus public access to this wonderful property, which would be tragic.

My husband and I visited in August when the Lodge offered a solar eclipse package. We were disheartened to see that only a small pond existed in the deep bowl at the northern end of the lakebed. Yet even without its namesake lake, this resort is still remarkably special.

First, the drive into the mountains of southwestern Virginia is just spectacular. If you have never traveled to this area, you have missed what is perhaps the most beautiful section of our state. The extraordinary views astound me every time I visit, and I feel I could never see it enough!

Arriving at the lodge, you know you have reached your destination because the resort spreads out before you, nestled within the confines of forested mountain slopes. It is the perfect place to escape the woes of the world and experience true serenity, if you so desire. (Of course, to accomplish this state of mind, you should disconnect from your electronic devices, although WiFi is available.)

What makes Mountain Lake especially unique to me is the natural beauty of the grounds in the resort area itself. The aesthetics of today’s populace typically tend towards totally manicured settings that appear, to my eyes at least, as artificial landscapes totally devoid of a connection to reality. But the grounds at Mountain Lake, while ordered and neat, contain natural areas within the grounds themselves that maintain our connection to nature, which is precisely as it should be.

You can hike the many trails running throughout the property, or just observe the variety of plants that have filled the lakebed. They attract numerous kinds of butterflies and other insects (such as dragonflies), and the birds that feed upon them. Early-morning risers can view bats flying around the lodge after a night of feeding.

Spring is a great time to see such migratory birds as thrushes, tanagers, and warblers. During spring and summer, the Lodge maintains hummingbird feeders that host more than a dozen Ruby-throats. Comfortable benches in the shade allow you to relax while the tiny birds constantly chase each other around. And American Goldfinches, in their luminous yellow plumage, seem to be everywhere.

If you enjoy history or just historical buildings, you can find both here. The current lodge dates from 1936. However, visitors started coming to Mountain Lake in the mid-1800s, and many of the original cabins where they stayed still exist today.

For a sense of former times at the resort, you can study the old photographs that line the bedroom hallways of the lodge. In addition to seeing people boating upon the lake, you can see what would now be antique cars and people on horseback, and folks cutting ice blocks from the lake to preserve food during the warmer months of the year.

I see these pictures as a chance to see history in the making.

Over the past decade, the Conservancy has begun to develop recreational activities, such as zip-lines and water slides, for their guests. It saddens me to see those kinds of offerings that people can find elsewhere, as if the lodge minus its namesake lake has nothing special going for it.

But Mountain Lake is an exceptional place, with or without its famous lake! The lakebed has rarely been accessible, as it is now, for walking and exploring. At this time in its history, folks have a chance to view geological features normally underwater, and there have been unexpected surprises.

In 2008 when the lake had dried to almost nothing, Tim Dalton of Ripplemead and his son, Chris, discovered the remains of Samuel Ira “Si” Felder who had drowned there in July of 1921. In 2010, when his great-niece came to Mountain Lake to gather his belongings, she commented that she could “see why he and [his wife] would have come down here. It’s a beautiful place.”

The Mountain Lake Resort is enchanting and may very well cast its spell over you, drawing you back repeatedly to experience its lovely charms.

Blue Ridge Naturalist: Mountain Lake Resort—Always Worthy of A Visit

Have You Thanked a Sapsucker Today?

©Marlene A. Condon

March 2, 2018

 

A Red-naped Sapsucker is an extraordinarily rare bird to see in the eastern half of the United States, but a male found its way to the author’s nature-friendly garden last fall. Photo: Marlene A. Condon

 

A regularly occurring winter visitor to Virginia is the Yellow-bellied Sapsucker, a funny-sounding name to non-birders. But its eponymous name informs us that this northern bird sucks sap.

By making shallow wells on trunks and branches that fill with sap, the sapsucker obtains sugar—a source of carbohydrates that provides energy for the sapsucker and many other animals, such as squirrels, other species of birds, and insects (on warmish winter days) that come to also feed upon it.

Sadly, this species gets a bad rap. People accuse it of seriously injuring or killing trees and shrubs when it makes its sap wells. But this enduring suggestion is utter nonsense.

Because my interest in history is practically equal to my interest in nature, I have been on many estate tours on which I have noticed huge (i.e., old) trees covered in recent and decades-old sap wells. It should go without saying that those trees would not still be alive if sapsucker wells were detrimental to them. The reality is that sapsuckers do no more harm to your plants than do people who install taps into Sugar Maple trees so they can make maple syrup.

The indigenous peoples of the Lake States, southeastern Canada, New England, and the Appalachian Mountains knew and used maple syrup long before the arrival of European settlers. No authenticated information has been handed down explaining how they learned that maple sap could be a food source, but I have absolutely no doubt that nature led the way.

It is not at all unlikely that someone observed a Yellow-bellied Sapsucker making sap wells, just as I have done numerous times while eating my second breakfast (my first is when it’s still dark out) that consists of oatmeal sweetened with pure maple syrup. The person noticed how popular the sap was with a variety of animals, decided to taste it, and voila! A discovery for the ages.

The migration behavior of the Yellow-bellied Sapsucker fits perfectly with my suggestion that this bird played a major role in the origination of maple syrup. These birds start to head north from Virginia by March, and few remain by April. They know when to get “home” for the spring thaw and the rising maple sap!

The Yellow-bellied Sapsucker is an eastern bird with closely related western relatives, one of which is the Red-naped Sapsucker. At one time, scientists considered these two birds to be the same species, even though they have differing field marks and their ranges do not overlap much at all.

On the morning of November 9, 2017, I heard a bird making a “crying” sound (as I described it in my notes) that was very similar to that of a Yellow-bellied Sapsucker, except that it was not quite right. The sound had a sad quality to it, as if something were amiss.

Finding the bird in my Autumn Olive just southeast of my house, I was very surprised to see that it was a sapsucker with an obvious red spot on the back of its head (called the “nape”). It was a Red-naped Sapsucker! This was quite an exciting find because this species breeds in the Rocky Mountain region north to British Columbia and Alberta, Canada, and would not normally be here.

However, at the time of my initial sighting, I had no idea just how rare a visitor this bird was in the East. After announcing its presence in my yard on the Virginia bird-listing Internet site, a birder wrote to tell me that this species had only ever been recorded in this half of the country a few times, and that was around Canton, Ohio. Thus, a Red-naped Sapsucker would be a first for the state of Virginia!

The bird’s most telling feature was the red on the back of the head, but it also had much less black on the breast than a Yellow-bellied Sapsucker, which seems to be very typical of Red-naped Sapsuckers. I discovered this difference by looking at many, many photos online and in books, but surprisingly, I never found mention of it in the literature.

“My” bird was a male because its throat was fully red (the female’s throat is white and red), but it was obviously not an adult because it still showed areas of brownish mottled coloration where an adult male would have more of a white-and-black contrast to its appearance. It showed some adult coloration because the immature Red-naped Sapsucker starts attaining its adult plumage by November of its first year, unlike the immature Yellow-bellied that attains its adult plumage by the following spring.

The bird visited my yard at least 10 times between its first appearance in November and its last in early December, exhibiting interesting behavior that, along with its brownish plumage, corroborated that it was a young bird.

The first few times it was here, it made plaintive sounds—as you would expect from a young bird—as it followed adult Yellow-bellied Sapsuckers around the yard. A couple of times it even landed right next to an adult, a male one time and a female the next, which is not typical adult behavior. Additionally, adult birds would not tolerate this closeness from another adult bird, but would put up with it briefly—as they did—from a young one.

I’ll probably never see a Red-naped Sapsucker in my yard again, and it is highly unlikely anyone in Virginia will ever find one of these birds here. However, it is not hard to spot Yellow-bellied Sapsuckers from fall through early spring, and if you love pure maple syrup as I do, you just might want to quietly thank these birds for the role their species very likely played in bringing you this marvelous natural product!

Blue Ridge Naturalist: Have You Thanked A Sapsucker Today?

 

On the Cutting Edge

©Marlene A. Condon
December 8, 2017
The ragged edges of fibrous yucca leaves (Yucca filamentosa) in the author’s yard bear testament to the desperation of deer during the winter of 2013-14. Photo: Marlene Condon.

 

In October of 2017, a new study asserting the shocking loss of 75% of the total biomass of flying insects in some German nature preserves caught the attention of many news outlets.  Various scientists were quoted as they pointed out the seriousness of this newfound result for our own food supply and that of wildlife.

Faithful followers of my writing know that the loss of insects is not news to me.  In fact, because I regularly bring new information about our environment directly to my readers (thank you for your interest) long before the scientific community is aware of it, you can rest assured that you are on the cutting edge of what is happening “out there.”

For many years I have been writing about the perilous loss of insects in the United States based upon my personal observations—and people have insisted I did not know what I was talking about.

In 2014, for example, I wrote in a column that I was very concerned about insect collecting “because there exist far fewer insects in the world today than 50 years ago.”  I also wrote that, “There’s been such a huge loss of insect populations that I am not at all surprised that so many species of insect-feeding animals are dying out. And I am extremely concerned about the future of mankind in this insect-depleted world.”

Within one day of that column appearing a scientist replied that my “subjective assessment” of insect populations was “flawed” because I had based it upon years of paying attention to the numbers of insects splattered upon car windshields and flying around lights at night.  Scientists often conflate personal observations of the natural world with a lack of objectivity, as if personal observations made in a lab setting somehow automatically guarantees impartiality on the part of the researcher.

He went on to bluntly state that “trillions of insects thrive here”, inferring that the insects of North America were flourishing and I was way off the mark.  But as I’ve always known and written, the best way to learn about nature is by unobtrusively observing it.  When a plethora of insects around lights at night goes to almost none over the decades, only one conclusion is possible.

My way of doing science means that I obtain factual information without needing to injure, kill, or disturb wildlife in any way, whereas the 27-year-long German study killed millions of insects (adding insult to injury) in order to “document” that insects were disappearing.  Unfortunately, scientists simply do not grasp the irony of harming the very wildlife they are trying to understand, and they refuse to believe that simple, unbiased observations can be trusted to yield accurate information.

Back in the 1990s, I noticed that a sentinel crow waited for me to put out birdseed on cold winter mornings.  The moment I appeared, the crow would fly off silently, and then I would hear cawing in the distance. Within a few minutes, several crows would arrive to take my seeds.

I sent a report to an ornithological publication about the obvious intelligence of crows placing a sentinel to watch for me so that it could then alert other crows to the location of a food source, but the scientists at the helm did not seem to believe what I had written.

Shortly thereafter I attended a meeting at which I met an ornithologist.  I told him about my crow experience, which he seemed to believe, but he told me that birds don’t recognize individual humans. He thought I should not try to suggest that the crow actually recognized me as an individual.

I did not believe I was wrong about the crow being able to identify me.  As I later wrote in one of my newspaper columns, “Although I came out every morning, I did not always show up at the same time.  Thus the only way for the crows to take advantage of my generosity was to post a sentry that could alert the others at whatever hour I made an appearance.”

It should be noted that the crow did not wait for me to distribute seeds. It left the moment it saw me, something it did not do if my husband went outside to leave for work before I had gone out to spread seeds.

So-o-o-o, I was not the least bit surprised when, almost two decades later, scientists “discovered” (rather like Columbus discovering America even though native peoples had lived here for many thousands of years) that crows could recognize individual human faces.

Although I try to share my discoveries, scientists can be a skeptical lot.  Non-scientists can be just as cynical.  When a neighbor suggested a few months ago that deer were overpopulated, I told him that was not currently the case.  He and another neighbor treated my statement as utter nonsense.  After all, people still see deer around, and if their plants get eaten, they are especially prone to believing there are too many of these animals.

What they don’t realize is that they cannot determine relative population levels without having paid very close attention over time.  In my case, I had documented deer starving a few years back during two successive years of bitterly cold February months, and I had noticed that they were seen less the rest of that year.  The next two years of hunter-generated numbers of deer taken during hunting season were way down, fully in agreement with what I had already ascertained.

There was more evidence, too.  For many years, ticks were so numerous that it was almost impossible to go outside without getting them on you.  And when you looked at deer with binoculars, they were covered with these deer-dependent arthropods.

But my husband and I, despite spending just as much time as ever in the yard where we’d always gotten ticks, found very few on us the past two summers, and the deer we saw carried few, if any, ticks—both situations independently confirming my assertion.

Perhaps the most convincing proof is that Boneset (Eupatorium perfoliatum) and American Elderberry (Sambucus canadensis)—plants especially favored by deer—have been untouched, or touched very little, by deer in recent years.  In the past, if these species were unprotected (uncaged), they would have been killed by the overabundance of deer feeding upon them.

People wouldn’t doubt me if they realized that the natural world is an open book just waiting to be read by anyone seriously interested in it.  You do not need an advanced degree.

When you observe nature without interfering with it, document carefully what you see, and then employ logic to understand it, you can rest assured that the knowledge you’ve gained is absolutely reliable.

 

Blue Ridge Naturalist: On the Cutting Edge

This Bud’s for You

©Marlene A. Condon

August 3, 2017

 

Gray Squirrels and several species of birds visit my Autumn Olive plants in spring to feed on the nutritious flower and leaf buds. Photo: Marlene A. Condon.

 

This past April, as Autumn Olive (Eleagnus umbellata) shrubs were abundantly blooming around Albemarle County and Charlottesville, the ones in my yard were looking almost lifeless. They were lucky if they sported a few leaves, and there was nary a bloom in sight. The butterflies, bees, and I were sorely disappointed by this turn of events.

I always look forward to the early-spring blooms of Autumn Olive shrubs. I absolutely adore the fragrance of the flowers on these plants, which normally perfume my entire yard. It also delights me to see how much the blossoms help to feed the many species of butterflies and bees out looking for nectar sources.

Yet I was not surprised, nor did I wonder why, my shrubs were not blooming as they usually do. After all, I am always documenting the wildlife activity that takes place daily in my yard, and the explanation for my barren shrubs could be found there.

For the first time that I can remember in the three decades-plus that I have lived here, one or more of the Gray Squirrels that share my property had visited my plants almost daily since the buds had swelled. They had eaten virtually every leaf—and then flower—bud. I was recording their bud-binging activity in my wildlife-food notebook far more often than I had ever done before!

It is not unusual for squirrels—and birds—to eat flower and leaf buds during late winter to early spring (depending on when the buds swell, or start their growing process, due to warming temperatures). I have observed White-throated Sparrows, Dark-eyed Juncos, Northern Cardinals, Pine Siskins, and American Goldfinches heartily eating the buds of Autumn Olive.

Following bud break, when leaves or flowers start to emerge and are quite small, birds and squirrels feed on them as well. Usually they lose interest once the leaves and flowers that had escaped their notice have managed to grow bigger than the animals apparently like. Thus I do not see them in the Autumn Olive shrubs again until another year has passed. This year, however, the birds lost interest, as is typical, but for some unknown reason, one or more squirrels did not.

The hardest time of the year for squirrels to find food is early spring when new seeds have not yet developed on most kinds of plants, and seeds from the previous fall are almost gone. However, I would not have thought these medium-sized rodents would have had much of a problem this year as there was plenty of food around for them. They inhabit The Nature-friendly Garden, after all!

Additionally, they should not have had much trouble getting enough to eat because there were not a lot of squirrels around to compete with each other for food. In the fall of 2013, we had a hard mast (acorn crop) failure. The lack of those nutritious nuts hit White-tailed Deer and Gray Squirrel populations hard. These mammals could not quickly move away to other areas, as another acorn-dependent animal, the Blue Jay, had done.

When we then had a severely cold February in 2014, many of these mammals died of starvation. February of 2015 repeated this same scenario, with a cold, wet spring compounding the difficulty for these animals to find enough food to survive.

The result of two years of die-offs and poor reproduction (recruitment) by the animals that managed to survive means that there were far fewer deer and squirrels in the area this spring. Therefore I would not have thought the squirrels would be so intent upon eating my Autumn Olives to such an extent this year.

Judging by their behavior, I would say that the squirrels were simply enjoying the flavor of those plants. And, since there is no junk food in nature, they were simultaneously getting needed nutrients.

The squirrels worked intensely to reach every-last bud on every Autumn Olive in the yard. After the buds within easy reach were gone, I would often see a squirrel hanging upside down to reach buds at the tips of branches below. Sometimes it would lose its grip and fall to the ground. Other times, it would just chew through the branch altogether, take it in hand and eat the buds off just as we eat an ear of corn!

Autumn Olive, being a plant from Asia, is considered an invasive species—an alien plant that supposedly displaces native plants by crowding them out and “monopolizing essential resources.” I have not found that to be the case.

I planted five of these plants when I moved into my house 31 years ago. They formed a hedge that ran north to south, parallel to my veggie/fruit garden. Despite being only about eight feet away from the garden, Autumn Olive has never “invaded” it, preferring to grow in the nutrient-poor and dry-as-a-bone soil that has been left to its own devices following the clearing of the property.

Inside the garden fence, however, where I have added compost that enriched the soil, trees—such as Tulip Poplar, Chestnut and Red Oak, Red Maple, and American Sycamore—insist upon coming up. Removing them is a rite of spring.

Autumn Olive is an extremely useful plant for creating habitat in areas shunned by native plants, which is exactly why it has filled in areas alongside highways and long-ago-depleted cow fields. Indeed, government agencies brought this plant to this country in the first place to prevent erosion and to rehabilitate degraded areas because they knew native plants would not grow there.

Mysteriously, these agencies have somehow forgotten this fact and now call Autumn Olive “invasive” and a “pest.” But although it is easy to claim that these plants pushed out native plants, that notion is simply a myth perpetuated by people who do not recognize the prior history of the land. That loss of historical knowledge is detrimental to current efforts to create habitat because people are working to get this plant banned from privately owned land.

Yet Autumn Olive is perhaps the most valuable wildlife plant there could be, feeding birds and mammals in spring (buds, leaves, blooms) and late summer (fruits), and numerous species of bees and butterflies in early spring (nectar). More than three decades after planting it in my yard, I can say with the utmost assurance that Autumn Olive is a wonderful plant that has performed its function beautifully. I can also honestly say that it has never behaved in the manner people ascribe to it.

 

The Blue Ridge Naturalist: This Bud’s for You

Birdbrained

©Marlene A. Condon
September 8, 2017
A Northern Cardinal has it all—beauty and brains! (Photo: Marlene A. Condon)

It is almost time for birds from farther north to return to Virginia for the winter. If you are thinking about feeding birds, I want to share the most delightful experience I may have ever had participating in this activity.

Because I have had rheumatoid arthritis for decades, it has finally taken a toll on my hands, making just about anything I do with them terribly painful. As a result, I had to relinquish my role last year as the principal provider of birdseed to my winter visitors. My husband kindly took over for me, although he did alter the protocols.

Whereas I would put some seed on the ground late in the afternoon to make sure all ground-feeding birds were well fed before “going to bed” for the long winter night, he decided that meant too many squirrels were taking the seed. So-o-o, he decided to make the last feeding of the day much later, after the sun had gotten well below the Blue Ridge Mountains just a few miles to our west.

By that time of day, with the light beginning to fade, the only birds usually still active were White-throated Sparrows, Northern Cardinals, and Mourning Doves. Occasionally a lone Dark-eyed Junco would remain, but most of its fellow juncos would have already disappeared for the night.

Often one or more Eastern Cottontail Rabbits would join the birds, and quite surprisingly, a couple of Gray Squirrels would risk staying out much later than their usual bedtime to take advantage of the handouts.

My spouse stuck strictly to his schedule, and after many weeks, the most amazing thing happened. By mid-winter, those birds had learned not only the schedule he kept for feeding them, but also the sound (the unlocking and/or opening of the kitchen door into our carport) that announced he was about to provide them with their food!

My husband had been throwing seeds into the shrubs by the north side of our driveway that offered a measure of protection from predators, such as owls just becoming active at this time of day. He would also throw some seeds into the driveway.

I would watch from my office window from just before he opened the kitchen door to the time he returned to the carport. I was the lucky recipient of a perfectly endearing show.

The minute the door opened, every bird poking around in the plants in the front yard would fly to the shrubs. Many even came out of the brush piles I keep around the yard for them to sleep in or to escape predators or bad weather. It was just an amazing thing to see dozens of sparrows and a cardinal here and there quickly crossing the yard to enter the shrub area where they could await the “birdseed man.”

If the squirrels and bunnies were already in the driveway, they too would take their places inside the shrubbery, albeit on the ground. Remarkably, however, with each passing day, the rabbits got bolder and instead began to just wait for my husband in the driveway!

Just as Pavlov’s dogs learned to associate the sound of a bell with food and thus salivated more in anticipation of eating, our wild critters had learned to associate the sound of our kitchen door with the arrival of food and reacted accordingly.

Some birds, usually a male cardinal and several White-throats, would already be perched in the shrubs, facing the carport, when I first looked out. Mourning Doves would also be waiting patiently, either milling around in the driveway or lying down on their bellies there.

The fact that birds would be facing the carport only in the evening demonstrated that they could tell what time of day they could expect my husband to come out of the house. And, of course, the birds poking around in my gardens and perching in the brush piles probably knew approximately when supper was to be served and were simply killing time in the locations that suited them.

The birds grew ever bolder. At first, those in the bushes would perch close to the driveway and then get scared as my husband threw seeds into the shrubbery. Many of them would originally fly far off and quite possibly did not return.

But, after a while, the birds would simply move up higher into the trees as soon as they heard the kitchen door, where they could wait and watch as my husband approached. They had realized that they would not have seeds bouncing off them if they were higher off the ground, so eventually, many birds would simply wait high up in the first place for his evening appearance.

As he walked back to the carport, the avian creatures would all fly down into the shrubs, and after several moments, a jumble of birds would pour out of the shrubbery as they literally ran out into the driveway. There were always at least five dozen White-throats, five male and four female cardinals, and usually a minimum of six doves. It was the most incredible sight to behold. I couldn’t help but giggle to myself as I watched.

My husband would usually watch the boisterous gathering from the carport. He especially marveled at the White-throated Sparrow chatter that seemed loud enough to get the attention of the whole neighborhood.

The term “birdbrain” refers to a person who is stupid or scatterbrained, yet these birds had shown themselves to be every bit as capable of learning as any mammal—the animals with the largest brains and thus for years thought to be more intelligent than birds, reptiles, amphibians, or fish. Perhaps we need to redefine the word “birdbrained.”

Blue Ridge Naturalist: Birdbrained

The New Ecology

© Marlene A. Condon

A burgeoning human population places serious strain upon natural systems as well as manmade ones. Photo: Marlene A. Condon.

 

There is so much talk these days about sustainability that you are probably tired of hearing that word. However, a recently published book—The New Ecology: Rethinking A Science for The Anthropocene (Princeton University Press, 2017)—provides extremely valuable insight to what sustainability is truly all about and why it matters so much to each and every one of us.

Yale University professor and author Oswald J. Schmitz furnishes us with numerous in-depth examples of how human behavior can alter ecosystems (the communities of living things interacting with their non-living environments) so much that they can no longer support us. He does a superb job of making clear why humans must learn to take into account the natural world when deciding how to live their lives.

For example, codfish off the coast of northern New England and Canada were once so plentiful that they sometimes stopped the progress of ships! When discovered by European explorer John Cabot in 1497, no one could have imagined that the commercial cod fishery that would develop from these stocks would end 500 years later in a devastating collapse that would not be possible to resuscitate.

The story of this fishery provides a historically detailed case study that illustrates how human exploitation of a resource species can lead ultimately to an alteration in the proper functioning of the ecosystem and thus to disastrous consequences for humans. The inability of cod to recover by the end of the twentieth century resulted in serious economic and social consequences for the coastal communities of New England and Eastern Canada, as well as Europe.

Portuguese, French, Spanish, and English fishermen started harvesting cod off Newfoundland in the 1500s, when they mostly caught inshore fish by trawling baited long-lines or by casting small nets from rowing or sailing dories. The cod was salted and dried throughout the summer, and the fishermen would return with the preserved fish to Europe in the fall.

With the building of permanent settlements along the seacoast from Newfoundland to New England, however, fishing became a major enterprise. Larger ships, known as schooners, carried dories to harvest cod in offshore waters as well as inshore. Size-selective fishing began, with the largest fish (90-100-pound range) being valued more highly than middle- (60-90-pound range) or small-sized (less than 60 pounds) fish.

Increasing societal demand meant major American cities as well as European and Caribbean markets received fish, increasing the need to catch ever more cod, preferably the largest ones. With the development of the factory ship that could catch and hold larger quantities of fish, the small-scale 450-year-old inshore fishery was doomed to extinction as cod fishing became an industrialized activity.

Gigantic vessels employed emerging sonar technology (a product of World War II inventiveness) to electronically pinpoint the locations of codfish. The ships trawled huge nets behind them that could capture large amounts of fish in a single sweep.  Factory fishing led to a rapid increase in harvests, which dramatically crashed in the mid-1990s, halting the entire northern cod fishery, probably forever.

The takeaway from this situation is that humans cannot just increase or decrease their “withdrawals” from the environment based solely upon changes in human demands or prices without any regard whatsoever to their effect upon the harvested population. When harvest levels fell, fishermen should have backed off to allow the cod to reproduce and rebuild their numbers. Instead, the fishing effort increased, and people added insult to injury by taking the largest fish.

By taking the largest individuals, people reduced the productivity of the cod because larger fish reproduce better than smaller ones. But it was not just the cod’s inability to reproduce their numbers as quickly as they might have that drove this fishery to extinction. No, it is more complicated than that, which is why understanding the life histories of our fellow creatures is so vital to our ability to sustain their existence as well as our own.

The larger codfish were top predators in their ecosystem. They fed upon mid-sized predators, such as squid, crab, and mackerel that feed upon small-bodied larval and juvenile cod (as well as other kinds of tiny animals).

Larger-sized adult cod are better able than smaller cod to assist their offspring to reach adulthood by limiting these mid-sized predators. In other words, it is now much more difficult for young cod to reach adulthood, which limits the numbers of adults to reproduce, which limits the numbers of young cod, and so on ad infinitum.

Because humans did not recognize cod as part of a system of interdependent species, they created a series of cascading effects that keeps the cod from recovering to harvestable levels, despite the now-decades-long moratorium on fishing. Accepting the reality that species are part of complex food webs that humans need to respect and work within is what sustainability is all about.

Professor Schmitz includes many other such narratives in his book, including a fascinating one explaining the importance of termites to such large animals as zebras, buffaloes, impalas, and wildebeests. (Who knew?) These accounts should probably be required reading for students and adults alike as they make the concept and importance of sustainability easy to grasp and to truly appreciate.

However, I feel the thesis of this book is seriously flawed. Professor Schmitz seems to believe that environmental problems wrought by people can be solved simply by teaching folks about the relationship of organisms with each other and their environment, which will, he hopes, lead to people choosing to live in a more thoughtful (i.e., sustainable) manner.

But even if people got the message and reacted accordingly, a burgeoning human population makes sustainability impossible. All organisms, including humans, must be limited in number because that is the only way in which the environment can function properly. Organisms need space, food, and shelter to live among us, but it is exceedingly difficult to get people to provide habitat for wildlife. Government does not help, what with regulations and tax laws that discourage appropriate landscaping.

Humans have significantly altered the world we live in, which some folks may believe is a good thing. But the diminishing capacities of the Earth’s ecosystems to sustain their proper functioning is cause for concern that must be addressed if we expect human life to persist on Earth.

Blue Ridge Naturalist: The New Ecology