Category: Conservation

Dark Skies

©Marlene A. Condon

April 5, 2019

 

Lights burning in broad daylight waste not only natural resources and your money, but also add pollution to the atmosphere that contributes to global warming. Photo: Marlene A. Condon.

I started my journey to Charlottesville when I was seven. Living in a neighborhood not yet blighted by street lamps, I could spot on clear nights the steady glow of the nearby planets of the Solar System, as well as the moon that had not yet been visited by man. I was able to peer into deep space, observing in the black sky the dense band of stars making up the disk of our own galaxy (the Milky Way), as well as scintillating distant galaxies and nearby stars. These celestial objects so thoroughly enthralled me that I decided at this young age to become an astronomer.

About eighteen years later, as I was working towards my physics degree, I learned of the Summer Student Research Program offered by the National Radio Astronomy Observatory in Charlottesville. Although there were very few assistantships available, I applied. Happily, I was chosen to come here to do research with an astronomer that summer, and the rest—as they say—is history!

The ability to view the night sky when I was very young determined my direction in life. Today the night sky is, for most children, an exercise in futility. They may know it’s out there somewhere, but they are highly unlikely to see much of it from their own back yards, as I was able to do. For them, the night sky exists only in theory.

I moved permanently to the Charlottes-ville area 40 years ago, and over that time I’ve witnessed the decline in one’s ability to view the night sky, thanks to more and more lights sending their rays skyward. From my home in a rural area northwest of Crozet, I see—especially on cloudy nights—a tremendous glow when I look east towards Charlottesville. To the northwest, Harrisonburg can now be located by its glow on the other side of the Blue Ridge Mountains, and the same is true of Waynesboro to the southwest.

The intensity of lights from highly developed areas not only obliterates the sky; it has also made the night itself less dark. I can look out the window, even on moonless nights, and see my husband’s truck in the driveway, as well as the driveway itself! Does any of this matter? Yes, it does, and not only to astronomers trying to view the universe. Night-flying migrating birds need to see the stars in order to navigate to their destinations.

We’ve evolved within a 24-hour rhythm of light and darkness. Mess up that rhythm, and you mess up your bodily life functions right along with it. It’s the reason we have problems adjusting our sleep/wake cycle to other locations when we travel long distances by plane. 

Animals (and plants) are affected by the number of hours of light they get each day. Birds that should be sleeping (all organisms must rest their bodies) stay awake most of the night if they reside in an area with bright lights. I’d always been perplexed by reports of mockingbirds and robins singing all night in developed areas, as this situation didn’t make sense and didn’t agree with my decades of relatively quiet, dark country nights.

Then, one evening many years ago, we visited my father-in-law who had taken ill and was at Augusta Medical Center in Fishersville. As we walked towards the entrance, we had the very strange experience of hearing birds chattering away in the tress that lined the brightly lit sidewalk!

Such birds probably have shortened life spans, just as humans do who spend their lives shortchanged of the requisite number of hours of rest. For night-flying insects, the problem is more severe, with death coming much sooner because of the lights that attract them.

I’ve been writing for years about insects disappearing, and now scientists have found this to be true around the world. They may feel unsure of the cause, but there is no doubt in my mind that the biggest factor is manmade lighting. [See a map of city night lights of the United States, taken from space, at www.flickr.com/photos/wwworks/2712986388]

Abundant night lighting is ubiquitous in the developed world and people don’t think about its consequences, nor do they often care even when they are told how deadly it is to insects—the animals that play the biggest roles in making the Earth habitable for us. The worst aspect of this situation is that so much lighting is excessive and unnecessary.

Parking lots often have at least twice as many light poles than needed for safety. Immensely bright lights at gas stations, and outside restaurants and other businesses, add to the killing glow. Small towns emulate the bigger ones; drive through Crozet at night and the main thoroughfare is bright as day.

And then there are the lights left on all night around homes, and sometimes even barns! Leaving a light on at home occasionally because someone will be arriving after dark makes sense, but often, lights simply burn all night long, night after night.

Insect and spider numbers have dropped precipitously over the past few years. The rainy 2018 season didn’t help. Many insects died and those that didn’t had trouble reproducing.

Consequently, many species of birds last year were not able to nest as many times as usual, and some nestlings died due to a lack of protein and fat they can get only from arthropods. If birds are struggling, you can bet that lizards and salamanders are struggling, along with the animals dependent upon all of these creatures for sustenance.

We cannot afford to treat the dearth of insects and other wildlife the way we have climate change—by not acknowledging it until we face serious crises, such as food shortages. We must start shutting the lights off now.

The obscuration of the night sky by light pollution makes folks lose their perspective, distorting their sense of place in the universe. Perhaps that explains the focus nowadays on everything human.

My book, The Nature-friendly Garden, explained the necessity and benefits of having wildlife in our gardens. The same goes for this country and the entire Earth, the most significant object in the whole universe—that is, until enough wildlife disappears. Because then, we, too, disappear. 

 

Blue Ridge Naturalist: Dark Skies

In Month of Giving, Give to Nature

©Marlene A. Condon

December 7, 2018
Don’t worry about the sap wells that Yellow-bellied Sapsuckers make on your woody plants. It’s a myth that the shallow holes will kill your trees and shrubs. These winter visitors have been feeding on my plants for almost 33 years! Photo: Marlene A. Condon.

Although I stopped participating long ago in the frenzied, commercialized commotion of holiday gift-giving, I think this is a good month in which to suggest that folks consider offering a present to nature. Humans can’t help impacting the natural world as they go about their lives, but folks can certainly adjust many of their activities to impact it less—and that would be a gift to all of us!

It’s crucial to be kind to the planet upon which we live. There’s a lot of talk these days about living on Mars, but does anyone really want to reside where he is a prisoner? You would need to remain inside the “living” quarters, or you would need to inhabit a spacesuit. No fresh air to freely breathe, nor fresh water to drink—it would be recycled from fuel cells, urine, personal hygiene, and by condensing each person’s breath and sweat from the air. 

When you give some thought to how perfectly the Earth is suited to providing us with everything we need to exist, and that it is the only planet available to do that, you can more easily understand why we should take care of it in the best manner possible. To keep the environment working properly, it is imperative that everyone make his property as nature-friendly as possible. 

It’s not difficult to provide wildlife with the same things we need for life: food, water, and shelter. However, you need to look at your landscape as wildlife habitat instead of as a showcase of plants.

Start by considering the amount of lawn you maintain around your home. If you had to stay “out there” 24/7 as our critters do, would it provide you with shelter from the weather, a place to reproduce, food, and water? If it won’t do that for you, it won’t do much for wildlife either. It’s simple to minimize lawn area.

Keep the amount of lawn you use for recreation and as a pathway to walk around the yard, but start considering where you can plant shrubs, trees, and flowers. You do not need to rip out the lawn; you simply need to replace some areas of grass with different kinds of plants, and you can do this at whatever pace suits your available time, abilities, and pocketbook.

Let’s say you want to grow flowers, but you don’t have much experience with gardening. Start with a small area, just a few feet square or a bit larger, and grow “failproof” plants, such as zinnias, marigolds, or cosmos.

These plants sprout easily from seed in sunny areas, are not particularly fussy about soil, and will grow until frost if provided with water (by you or Mother Nature) once a week. All of them are attractive to butterflies and other insect pollinators that fertilize the blooms so they can make seeds for birds (especially American Gold-finches) to eat. 

Ignore the advice often given to “deadhead” (remove the seeds of) these plants to prolong blooming. Plants exist to feed animals, and annuals (plants that live only one growing season) are quite capable of continuing to bloom while in the process of making seeds.

Deadheading wastes your time and partially defeats the whole purpose of growing the plants in the first place, which is to help your local critters. Just be sure to leave the plants standing after frost kills them so that the seeds are available to birds and small mammals throughout the cold months. The plants will also then be able to reseed themselves so you don’t need to make the effort next spring!

Many kinds of shrubs are useful to wildlife and easy to grow and care for. Although there is a big push nowadays for folks to grow only native plants, the reality is that a mix of non-native and native flowers and shrubs works best in today’s changing climate. And when deer numbers are high, it can be almost impossible for most short native plants to accomplish their “mission” of providing for any wildlife other than those hoofed browsers!

I highly recommend native viburnum shrubs because they produce flowers for insects, and fruits for birds and small mammals. However, you will need to protect them from deer with a wire cage if these animals are numerous in your area.

Another, albeit non-native, wonderfully useful shrub for hummingbirds and pollinators of numerous kinds is the Glossy Abelia (Abelia x grandiflora). Drought-tolerant and evergreen, it also provides shelter year-around for a variety of critters.

Trees, on the other hand, should always be native species because there are so many kinds to choose from, and they can be bought at a size that makes them resistant to the ill effects of deer. They are important for butterfly, and especially moth, caterpillars and other kinds of insects that feed upon foliage. It’s best not to plant these trees too close to your house to avoid problems with leaves in the gutter and branches (or even the entire tree) falling on your house when it gets tall.

If your yard is small, stick with trees that are less than, or do not get much more than, 30-40 feet tall. Common Shadbush (Amelanchier arborea) blooms are hugely attractive to bees, with the resulting fruits fed upon by a variety of birds and mammals.

A favorite small-medium tree of mine is the Sourwood (Oxydendrum arboretum). Its spring flowers provide nectar for bees and other insects, as well as hummingbirds. The seeds are taken readily by both Gray Squirrels and American Goldfinches, and in the fall, its leaves turn a bright red (which I love!) or burgundy.

Shrubs and trees of any size are useful for sheltering animals from weather and avian predators (hawks and owls), and they provide nesting sites for mammals and birds.

Lastly, you can provide water for wildlife by simply placing a shallow pan of fresh water on the ground daily, or putting in a little pond. Your wildlife haven is now complete! 

Blue Ridge Naturalist: In Month of Giving, Give to Nature

Peter Brask, My Tribute to a Friend of Nature

©Marlene A. Condon

Three Little Brown Bats (Myotis lucifugus) sleep the day away in (the late) Peter Brask’s living room. Photo: Marlene A. Condon.

Peter Brask, a decades-long Batesville resident, passed away this September. He had been a close friend as he shared my love of nature in its entirety, although he may have been most fond of birds.

Peter lived as I imagine some folks might think that I live—with doors literally wide open to the out-of-doors and the critters that inhabit it. As a result, he experienced nature as most of us will never experience it, with an intimacy that was hard to imagine.

For example, he knew how much I enjoy observing the Carolina Wrens around my home, so he made sure to invite me over to see the ones nesting in his kitchen. Yes, you read that right. A pair of Carolina Wrens had built their dome-shaped nest inside his kitchen. The female had laid her eggs and the two birds went about their business as if there was nothing unusual about the location of their nest, and in a way, there wasn’t.

Carolina Wrens are fairly comfortable around humans, and often make their nests somewhere around houses, albeit on the outside! There’s a good reason they do this. Wrens and their chicks are more sensitive than most birds to chilly and wet weather, and several spots around houses often provide better shelter from the elements than more-natural locations. If you have a garage and you leave the door open, you may well come home to find this species either trying to nest there during the warm months or sleep overnight during the cold months.

I once made the mistake of leaving my shed door open for just a few minutes on a very cold winter day after getting seeds out of there to fill a bird feeder. My male wren flew inside almost immediately, and it took me many minutes to get him out! Luckily for him, I had already provided shelter boxes on my porch where he and his mate could sleep together (Carolina Wrens stay together year-round).

I found the thought of wrens nesting in Peter’s kitchen to be incredible, but a telephone call from him a few days after I’d visited was even more unbelievable—a Black Rat Snake had come into the house and eaten the wren eggs! The snake had slithered right into Peter’s living quarters and found itself a meal.

You’ve probably seen those signs that some people have placed outside their houses proclaiming that no matter where you have come from, you are welcome in the community. Well, Peter didn’t need one of those signs in his yard. Actions speak louder than words, and his nondiscriminatory welcome extended to all kinds of critters as well as people, which is just as it should be.

Being Peter’s friend meant sharing many more wildlife encounters. One August day he called me up to say he had bats in his living room. No, they were not in the rafters above the living-room ceiling; they were in a corner at the ceiling! He wondered if I could come over to identify them, and of course, I grabbed my camera and drove over there as fast as I legally could.

I got to Peter’s at 12:30 in the afternoon. Sure enough, there were three Little Brown Bats resting at the ceiling in the corner of the room. Peter told me the bats had been entering the room every night for the previous three weeks, and they had started sleeping there during the day about a week prior to my visit. He said he heard them flying around in the darkness the past night, and they settled in for the day about 3:30 a.m. This man knew how I loved details, and he had paid attention so he could report them to me! That is what I call a dear friend, indeed.

Apparently, the bats were content to roost there, because they stayed for several days, going out each evening and coming back early the next morning. Common roosting sites for the Little Brown Bat around and near human structures are more typically on the outside of buildings, often behind shutters, and perhaps most often, inside tree cavities. I suppose Peter’s living room just seemed like a super-sized tree cavity!

You may be thinking Peter must have been a real kook. Obviously his open-door (and window) policy was highly unusual and didn’t follow the norms of societal behavior. And yet, so long as he was happy with living as he did, why should it matter to anyone else?

I personally found his nonconforming behavior a delight. Here was someone who lived in a house (though he often slept outside in a small open shed), but who enjoyed the out-of-doors so much that he didn’t let the boundaries of his home restrict him. Peter Brask lived his life as he saw fit, and you have to admire him for that.

But there was much more to appreciate than his degree of independence. He was every bit as kind to people as he was to wildlife, being quite willing to assist anyone in need of help.

Peter deeply loved and cared about the natural world, and it saddens me greatly that he is gone. There don’t seem to be too many of us left with such an abiding and sincere affection for nature. I certainly feel more alone in this regard with each passing day.

But Peter will always hold a place in my heart, and every summer I will think of him when I see my Touch-me-nots growing. He called them Jewelweed, but I prefer the name that references the manner in which they disperse their seeds—propelling them outwards several feet when the seed pod is touched, whether by a person, an animal, or a nearby plant swaying in the breeze.

After Peter had finished putting in a pond (almost 30 years ago now) at my house, he brought a few Touch-me-not plants (Impatiens capensis) to place near it. Every year more and more plants shot their seeds out, and now, Touch-me-nots surround my home. Their hundreds of late-season blooms feed migrating hummingbirds and late-season insect pollinators.

I’m sure Peter never imagined how much those plants would spread and how much they would help the wildlife I care so very much about. Nor would he have ever realized how much his legacy of Jewelweed would mean to me at his passing, serving as a heart-touching remembrance of a special person who befriended nature and me during his life, and who continues to do so following his death. 

 

Blue Ridge Naturalist: Peter Brask, My Tribute to a Friend of Nature

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

Everyone Should Practice Environmental Libertarianism

©Marlene A. Condon

This stream ran red into the Moormans River of western Albemarle following logging upon the adjacent mountain. The dirt-laden water pouring into the river was unfortunate not only for aquatic wildlife, but also for the future growth of trees on the mountain. Photo: Marlene Condon.

Flowering plants (angiosperms that make up more than 80 percent of green plants in the world) depend upon wildlife for their continued existence. Conversely, wildlife depends upon plants for its existence. It is a form of quid pro quo, in which both entities benefit from each other’s activities.

Humans, just like plants, also depend upon wildlife for their continued existence.  When people provide habitat for pollinators and numerous other kinds of critters, the animals provide people with the perpetuation of plants that provide oxygen and food, as well as great beauty in the form of flowers, birds, butterflies, dragonflies, and oh, so very many creatures!

Yet it can be very difficult to get folks to do what is proper for the environment, which in the end, is also going to benefit neighbors near and far as well as wildlife nearby and down the road. The situation with the Chesapeake Bay is a prime example.

Although people are aware of the causes of the bay’s problems, many refuse to change their ways to help the Chesapeake Bay to recover. Their inaction has brought great harm to the people whose livelihoods were dependent upon a healthy bay chock full of sea life. Environmental libertarianism would never have allowed this to happen.

A right-to-the-point summation of the political philosophy of libertarianism is that it advocates allowing folks to do pretty much whatever they wish, especially on their own property, so long as they do not bring harm to others. The idea is that state intervention in the lives of citizens should be minimal. Therefore, so long as people are not causing difficulties for other people, there should be a minimum number of government regulations for citizens to abide by.

Indeed, if everyone practiced libertarian ideals with respect to the environment, we certainly would not need so much government interference in our lives. For example, the Environmental Protection Agency came into being only because people refused to take proper care of the environment that all of us depend upon for our own health and wellbeing.

When too many people will not act of their own accord to do what is right for the natural world—and thus their fellow citizens—there is absolutely no choice but to rein in their behavior with threats of fines, or jail, or whatever it takes. More recently, government had to step in to demand that companies manufacture more-energy-efficient light bulbs because people would rather leave lights unnecessarily burning than to flick a switch to turn them off.

And while some farmers have put up fencing to keep their cows and cow waste out of our waterways, others continue to allow their animals to enter streams at will, the Chesapeake Bay and the people dependent upon it for jobs be damned (please excuse the language). I have heard straight from farmers’ mouths that they do not believe waste from their cows is a major contributing factor of bay pollution that harms sea life, but chemistry proves these farmers to be in denial of the truth.

Of course, home and business owners, as well as government, are equally guilty, if not more so, of polluting the bay. On many of their properties, laborers mow and weed-whack every last plant to such an extent that the soil often becomes exposed and then dries out. If you come by as they are working, you can see soil dust-clouds created by their machines. The dirt settles out on roads, eventually washing into drains and streams that feed the Bay.

In our forests, loggers may not feel obliged to take adequate precautionary measures to limit erosion if the logging takes place high up on a mountain hidden from view.  However, a steady rain alerts those of us paying attention to the error of their ways.

I have seen more than one local stream run red with local clay during logging operations well out of eyesight, but not out of earshot. All that dirt ends up settling out eventually to smother aquatic habitat and wildlife.

Some folks leave trashcans out 24/7, creating a hazard for our wildlife. When people neglect to secure their trashcans so that animals cannot get into them, critters may eat plastic wrap because it smells like food, and die a horrible death due to intestinal obstruction. Bottles that were not cleaned up can lure and trap small animals.

The world would be a much nicer place in which to live if folks would just consider whether the things they do on their own land impact not only wildlife, but other people as well. On many a lovely day I have had to close my windows to keep the house from filling with smoke from neighbors burning yard debris (and sometimes plastic-laden trash, the fumes of which can cause cancer).

On those occasions, it is very upsetting that I am not able to bring fresh air inside, but it is also troubling to know that these folks are not letting their yard debris decay naturally. They would not be polluting the air, and they would be recycling organic matter while creating habitat for many different kinds of animals, such as lizards, salamanders, insects, and spiders.

We have so many environmental regulations because far too many people do not take proper care of the environment. Yet it is our moral duty to nurture it, and if everyone behaved morally in the first place, we would not need laws to make us behave appropriately.

I am not particularly political by nature, but I think it would be extremely worthwhile for people to start practicing environmental libertarianism, no matter what their political stripes may be. After all, a better world always begins at home.

Blue Ridge Naturalist: Everyone Should Practice Environmental Libertarianism

In your garden nurture a treasure trove of life

Marlene A. Condon, June 17, 2014

http://www.bayjournal.com/article/in_your_garden_nurture_a_treasure_trove_of_life

IMG_4132_1
A Milkweed Beetle on a Common Milkweed inflorescence. Photo by Marlene A. Condon.

One day, my mother-in-law was strolling around the yard with me when we came to a large milkweed plant in the middle of what little lawn I have. She asked me, with much surprise, “Are you keeping this?”

I didn’t know whether it was the placement of the plant (coming up in the grass) or whether it was the type of plant (a “weed” to most folks) that made her think I shouldn’t want the milkweed there, but it didn’t matter. I knew that particular milkweed held a tiny treasure that I was delighted to have in my yard. I would never consider destroying such a valuable plant!

A minuscule (less than 4 mm long) monarch caterpillar was eating its way toward adulthood on that 4-foot-tall plant. It belonged to the last generation of the season and would fly to Mexico before freezing weather set in. I felt proud that my milkweed was helping to sustain the population of this tropical butterfly that can’t survive the winter in our area.

Common milkweed (Asclepias syriaca) is an early-summer flowering plant that comes up in dry fields and along roadsides, usually growing 3–5 feet tall. While the overall impression you might have of these plants from a distance is one of coarseness, a closer look reveals beautiful, goblet-shaped, pink flowers that perfume the air with a wonderful scent.

The blooms hold lots of nectar, which is especially alluring to bees and butterflies. Silver-spotted skippers, great spangled fritillaries, zebra swallowtails, American ladies, tiger swallowtails, Eastern tailed blues, and spicebush swallowtails are some of the butterfly species that you might see visiting.

You may even spot an unfamiliar species that you have not seen in your yard before. On June 18, 1999, I saw my first-ever variegated fritillary nectaring at common milkweed. This lovely butterfly spent the afternoon feeding in my milkweed patch before moving on. And, of course, milkweed will bring in the monarch butterfly whose caterpillar can eat only milkweed plants to survive.

The monarch has suffered very serious declines over the last several years, with 2013 being catastrophic. The clearing of the Mexican fir forests where these insects overwinter, in combination with the continued displacement of “weedy” habitat in this country, have made their prospects dim.

Gardeners can help save this disappearing species by growing milkweeds, especially the widespread common milkweed. These plants come up in spring, just in time for northward-migrating monarchs to lay eggs on them.

It should take about 13 days for the eggs to hatch, but that may vary, depending upon the weather. The teeny-tiny, colorful caterpillars are striped in black, yellow and white.

But monarchs are not the only interesting insects to be found on common milkweed. Orange-and-black insects known as large milkweed bugs may appear by the time that the green seedpods have begun to form. Or you may see small milkweed bugs that are red and black. Both insects pierce the pods to suck the juices from the developing seeds inside.

After you have seen milkweed bugs mating, you can keep an eye on the seed pods where the immature ones will appear. They will stay there for quite some time, which means you can check every day or so to watch them develop.

I usually see one or more adult large milkweed bugs with their nymphs (the immature milkweed bugs) until well into fall. The adults appear to be watching over the young ones, which is extremely unusual behavior in the insect world.

An interesting phenomenon associated with the common milkweed is that many of the creatures feeding on these plants are orange, including a species of aphid. A few organisms are red—the color which is closest to orange on the color spectrum.

Milkweed sap contains alkaloids that make monarchs that feed upon it somewhat poisonous to predators.

The fertilization process in common milkweed is so complex that very few flowers ever get fertilized. From each cluster of up to 75 blooms, only two seed pods will normally develop.

I highly recommend that you grow common milkweed. Then perhaps a monarch laying eggs will alert you to the plants emerging from the ground and soon, you too, could be able to enjoy seeing “tiny treasures.”

Distributed by Bay Journal News Service.

 

 

“Pests” are powerful allies in effort for healthy waters

By Marlene A. Condon. Text from article that appeared in the Bay Journal on July 14, 2015

http://www.bayjournal.com/article/pests_are_powerful_allies_in_effort_for_healthy_waters

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The immature form of the Japanese Beetle is a grub that consumes (recycles) dead plant roots.

Soil constitutes the foundation that supports plant and animal life on Earth. Consisting of broken-down rock and the remains of organisms that once existed, it brings forth new life and takes back the old.

Soil is worth more than its weight in gold, yet humans tend to treat it as if it has little value and as if its loss is neither important nor consequential.

As a result, we don’t give much thought to soil erosion during rain storms, even though it can be quite visible.

In Charlottesville, Va., for example, the Rivanna River that runs smack through the city appears red during and after every rain storm. That obvious red coloring represents clay soil leaving the area, and it’s a serious problem for the local backyards and farmlands from which it came, as well as for the Chesapeake Bay to which it flows.

The loss of soil and nutrients negatively affects the landscape by reducing its productivity. When runoff from throughout the watershed reaches the Chesapeake Bay, it causes the die-off of underwater grasses that are needed by water-dwelling organisms to survive.

Excess nutrients cause algal blooms that cloud the water and starve it of oxygen while suspended soil blocks sunlight necessary to plants. Without access to sunlight, grasses can’t photosynthesize, or make food—and they die.

The loss of these plants affects the survivability of animals, such as young striped bass (Morone saxatilis) and blue crabs (Callinectes sapidus)—two economically important Bay species—that are dependent on underwater grasses for shelter from predation.

The grasses also oxygenate water, which benefits most aquatic animal life. And, well-established areas of grasses reduce erosion along shorelines during storms that roil the water.

There’s a simple, common-sense solution to help save the Chesapeake Bay as well as our yards and farmland from the movement of sediment: We should save the pests!

When burrowing animals, such as moles, voles, mice, ground hogs, chipmunks, ants, termites, grubs and cicadas—animals usually thought of as pests—make openings at the surface of the ground, and tunnels or burrows underground, they create air spaces into which rainwater can quickly disappear.

By accepting these critters and allowing them to coexist with us, we and the Bay receive immediate assistance limiting water run-off that carries away our priceless soil.

As an added bonus, plants are naturally irrigated and groundwater supplies are naturally recharged. But there’s more: Every single one of these “pests” plays a vital role in keeping the environment functioning properly.

Consider moles and grubs, which people love to hate. Moles are disliked because of the upraised tunnels they make when traveling through the soil to eat soil-dwelling creatures, such as grubs.

People don’t want mole tunnels in their yards because lawnmowers scalp the upraised earth and their feet sink into it as they walk. But we should feel grateful instead of aggravated.

First of all, tunnels provides natural aeration in a yard so the homeowner doesn’t need to pay for man-made aeration services to allow air to reach the roots of their plants.

Second, the mole that made the tunnel is announcing that there’s an overpopulation of soil creatures and that it’s going to reduce their populations—free of charge—before they cause problems for healthy plants.

Take, for example, grubs. The function of a grub is to recycle dead plant roots so they don’t sit there forever taking up precious space that could instead be used by a living plant. But if someone doesn’t allow the mole to do its job of limiting the numbers of grubs, these beetle larvae will become overpopulated.

When that happens, the grubs will eventually run out of their preferred food—dead plant roots—and start eating what’s left—the roots of healthy plants—to survive.

Therefore, the root cause of people’s dislike of both grubs and moles can be traced to their intolerance of mole tunnels. Yet these tunnels can be easily fixed by simply tamping them down. During the next rain, water will seep into the air spaces of the squished tunnel and it’ll be difficult to tell it had ever been there.

Your acceptance of a mole will have helped your yard and the Chesapeake Bay.

 

If you break it, you pay for it

Commentary from The Baltimore Sun

Marlene Condon

August 21, 2014

Some years ago, a colleague told me how, when he was a boy, he would vacation each summer with his parents in Ocean City. He and his mom always looked forward to crossing the Chesapeake Bay Bridge in Annapolis, where the sea breezes carried the very essence of this estuary — the smells associated with the vast array of organisms that live and die along the shoreline or in the saltwater.

But by the 1980s, Rick noticed that the air surrounding the bridge no longer brought to mind visions of the beach with its myriad periwinkles, sea stars, crabs, shorebirds and seaweed. The tell-tale aura of the sea had disappeared, and the family’s much anticipated arrival at the bridge had lost its magic.

The “magic” died because the bay was dying. And as the bay’s health declined, so did the once-bustling fishing industry that employed numerous workers, on and off the water. Only a remnant of what was once a thriving economy exists today.

The bay workers did not lose their jobs due to technological innovation, as happened when Henry Ford invented the assembly-line production of cars, thereby putting carriage and harness makers out of business.

No, these people lost their livelihoods because of the apathy and inaction of their fellow Americans upstream. Despite decades of media attention and scientific literature that rang again and again the alarm bell, society responded with a virtual yawn. The result has been devastating to the folks who have lived, worked, played and died in concert with the bay.

It’s not yet too late to restore the bay to health; the natural world has a remarkable ability to rebound as long as the needed variety of organisms still exists.

But people need to own up to their obligation to help the bay instead of railing against the “rain tax,” the derisive name given to fees that are supposed to be used to address deteriorating storm water infrastructure that local politicians have long neglected.

However, paying fees and pointing fingers at farms, factories and waste-water treatment plants — easy-to-identify and certainly undeniable sources of bay pollution — is not enough. We must also restrict pollutants that originate in our own backyards and end up in the Chesapeake Bay: chemicals (fertilizers and pesticides), soil and small-engine exhaust (from lawn mowers and weed trimmers).

The big problem is the American obsession with lawns around homes and businesses: Lawn and turf grass together are now considered the largest crop grown within the 64,000-square-mile Chesapeake Bay watershed.

Although seen as natural and water-absorbing, lawns actually function much as pavement does. The soil, compacted by lawn mowers, allows little penetration of water. Indeed, that is the reason lawn-care companies offer aeration services — they know lawns require man-made holes punched into the ground in order for water to penetrate the soil.

With ever increasing development in the bay watershed, there has been ever increasing lawn acreage. These green swards should be greatly minimized with encouragement from government. Homeowners and business owners who create nature-friendly (and thus bay-friendly) landscapes — lawn mostly replaced by flowers, shrubs, and trees — should be given reduced property tax rates.

Streams through properties should be required by law to be protected by natural vegetation. Current regulations often allow lawn to be grown right up to the stream edges.

And lastly, wildlife should be encouraged to live among us so that the environment can function as it’s supposed to do. People must learn to live in agreement with nature; living without it is not an option.

Unfortunately, most of the measures that have been taken over the past 50 years to address bay problems have involved trying to repair the bay itself (i.e., fix what was broken), rather than addressing the ongoing sources of the problems (i.e., the impaired state of the waterways flowing in).

Millions of dollars and much time and energy have been spent, for example, on growing a diverse assemblage of underwater plants and rearing oysters, as if these plants and animals could just be placed into a degraded system and survive. Needless to say, such efforts can only meet with minimal success.

It’s time for all citizens to recognize and take responsibility for their personal decisions in and around their homes and businesses that do, indeed, affect the Chesapeake Bay and those who live along its shores.

As signs in the fine-china shop declare, “If you break it, you pay for it.”

http://www.baltimoresun.com/news/opinion/oped/bs-ed-chesapeake-bay-20140821-story.html

Bats Endangered; The Crozet Tunnel Should Remain Closed

 Marlene A. Condon

April 2013

Many years ago, when I first heard that people were interested in opening the Crozet Tunnel on Afton Mountain to hikers, I e-mailed a Nelson County supervisor. I was concerned about bats that might be using the tunnel to hibernate or roost.

I’d hoped those flying mammals would be taken into consideration and would not be disturbed at all during hibernation and minimally bothered during the rest of the year.

With animal populations crashing all around us, I recognized the value of preserving healthy populations of whatever critters had managed thus far to survive the increasingly disruptive impact upon wildlife by humans.

The supervisor responded to me as if I were a naïve little girl. He assured me that there were plenty of bats around and that there was nothing to worry about. He ignored my pleas to avoid harming these animals.

But within just a few years of that correspondence, a disease called White-nose Syndrome (WNS) was discovered in a cave near Albany, New York. It gets its name from the white fungus that is often visible on the muzzles and bodies of infected bats.

The fungus is deadly, killing bats by weakening them when it invades their body tissue and disrupts their hibernation. According to the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, a minimum of 5.5 million bats have since died in four Canadian provinces and 19 states, including Virginia.

Many species of bats have been affected, including the Little Brown Bat (Myotis lucifugus) and the Tri-colored Bat, which was formerly known as the Eastern Pipistrelle (Perimyotis subflavis). The Little Brown used to be the most common bat in North America, but it’s now threatened with extinction.

Research has shown that populations of the Little Brown Bat and the Tri-colored Bat have declined by more than 90 percent. Both of these species have been found in the Crozet Tunnel by game biologists from the Virginia Department of Game and Inland Fisheries.

Our neighbor state to the north, Pennsylvania, has lost approximately 99 percent of its Little Brown, Tri-colored, and Northern Long-eared Bats (Myotis septentrionalis) since 2008, illustrating the speed with which almost entire populations of species can be wiped out. The probability for a rebound of populations is practically nonexistent.

Bats usually live for two to three decades and typically give birth to only one pup per year. Thus even if WNS could be stopped right now, it could take hundreds of years for populations to come back to pre-WNS levels. And that’s assuming there are no other assaults upon these mammals.

All organisms have important roles to play. The role of bats is to feed upon night-flying insects, limiting their numbers to sustainable levels. Bats themselves are fed upon by other animals, such as snakes and owls, and even humans in some parts of the world.

As species disappear, the environment comes ever closer to being unable to function properly. Mother Nature is no fool and has built into the system back-up creatures to fulfill roles played by other critters that may temporarily disappear or be in short supply.  But that back-up system is becoming more and more depleted, threatening the existence of our own species.

The cause of WNS is a European fungus that somehow found its way to the United States, perhaps upon the sole of a traveler’s shoe.  The spores from the fungus (Gomyces destructans) have been discovered now in 21 states.

If people pick up spores on their shoes or clothes and then go into caves or tunnels with roosting or hibernating bats, they can help to spread this infectious disease that, as of now, no one knows how to cure. (Humans are not affected by White-nose Syndrome.)

I myself would love to walk through Claudius Crozet’s engineering marvel. But the Crozet Tunnel needs to remain closed to the public. WNS is such a devastating disease that the U. S. Fish and Wildlife Service suggests that people stay out of places where bats are known—or suspected—to hibernate (hibernacula) in all [emphasis mine] states.

Right now, this is a voluntary moratorium, but people must ask themselves whether it’s more important for folks to be able to visit this site than it is to help bats that have rapidly become endangered and may disappear in our lifetime.

Some might argue that humans created this tunnel and therefore it’s theirs to do with as they wish. However, it’s virtually assured that the deadly fungus wiping out our bats was introduced to this country by humans and that they have helped to spread it. Thus it’s incumbent upon us to try to limit further harm.

Many environmental problems have been caused by human ignorance and carelessness. But in this case, Nelson County officials can’t feign ignorance. If they choose to open the tunnel, they are knowingly inflicting harm and demonstrating mankind’s continuing disdain for the natural world that sustains us.

Man can do extraordinary things; the Crozet Tunnel is proof of that. Unfortunately, man’s extraordinary conceit often causes him to believe that other life forms aren’t important. But they are. We do not live in a vacuum. Opening the tunnel now is clearly not environmentally prudent.

Blue Ridge Naturalist: Bats Endangered; The Crozet Tunnel Should Remain Closed

You Shouldn’t Need Honey Bees for Pollination

 

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The European (more accurately known as the “Western”) Honey Bee (Apis mellifera) was brought to America in hives by European settlers. It escaped domestication and can now be found in feral colonies. This one helped to pollinate the author’s peach tree, but many native pollinator species also assisted. (Photo credit: Marlene A. Condon)

By Marlene A. Condon –
December 4, 2015

At Cornell Orchards in Ithaca, New York, the scientists and managers of this 37-acre research and outreach facility decided this past spring to take, as they put it, “a leap of faith.” They chose to forego the assistance of commercial honey bees (hives of European bees trucked from growing area to growing area to ensure crop pollination) to see if their apple trees might still get adequately pollinated. To their surprise, they got a great crop of apples.

This news release astonished me. I’ve been to Ithaca, where there are many natural areas that include deep forests, wetlands and waterfalls, and dense brushy habitat for wildlife. How could resident researchers from the Horticulture Section of the School of Integrative Plant Science and the Department of Entomology at Cornell be surprised that there would be plenty of native pollinators in the area?

It might be because nowadays people think that they must personally orchestrate the workings of the natural world. But an orchard would only require the assistance of non-native honey bees if people had destroyed the biodiversity of the area—the incredible numbers of species that exist to perform such tasks as pollination.

Indeed, such eradication is taking place around the world, thanks to an increase in pesticide usage and development of the landscape, along with a decrease in natural-area preservation. A natural area un-trampled by humans maintains a reservoir of organisms for the future, should people ever again recognize the value of nature to their lives. Until they do, honey bees will continue to be needed to pollinate about a third of commercial food plants world-wide.

I’ve written hundreds of articles, and even a book, about nature-friendly gardening. Yet folks are still resistant to the main tenet of my thesis, which is that in order to be a successful gardener or farmer, you must blend your garden or cropland into the environment.

In other words, your food-growing areas must meld with the larger landscape around it so as to become one with it. This means you must allow native and naturalized plants (normally viewed as “weeds”) to grow among and in the vicinity of the plants you transplanted or started from seed.

When you follow this natural mandate, you don’t encounter the usual problems with insects and other invertebrates that most home and commercial gardeners believe are inevitable. Unfortunately, people doubt this truism, especially because scientists and extension agents talk about “pests” as if they are, indeed, a given when growing plants.

But the scientists, extension agents, garden writers and talk-show hosts are wrong. The problem for gardeners is not that certain organisms exist solely to kill their plants, but rather that gardeners haven’t provided habitat for the predators needed to keep plant-eating organisms in check.

Logic and common sense should tell us that no animal is supposed to eat itself out of house and home by killing the very plants it is dependent upon. If an organism destroys its food source, how will it survive to reproduce? And should it manage to reproduce, how will its progeny survive if there’s no food for them?

Thus when predators keep populations of plant-eating organisms limited to a population level that doesn’t seriously harm or kill the food plants of those organisms, the predators are aiding those creatures to keep their kind from going extinct. They are also allowing the food grower the ability to grow food without the use of pesticides that poison his world.

In order to invite predators to any property—large or small, commercial or private—you can’t treat it as a room inside a house that needs to be kept perfectly neat and sanitized. The overly ordered appearance of a property signifies ignorance of how the natural world works and how to garden or farm in agreement with nature.

Don’t get caught up in today’s societal standards that dictate a manicured look instead of a natural one. Garden cleanliness is definitely not next to godliness. It results in the need for pesticides to try to do the job predators could have done free of charge and much more safely, without effort on the part of the grower.

Instead, go wild! And don’t apologize for it.

My yard teems with numerous kinds of trees, shrubs, flowers, and wild grasses. Best of all, it’s absolutely alive with a variety of critters. A landscape teeming with wildlife is a landscape that is healthy.

To be a successful gardener or farmer, keep or create a variety of habitats to provide food, water, shelter, and nesting sites for a mix of wildlife. Accept that all wildlife is providing services so don’t be prejudiced against particular organisms.

There’s no harm in moving along critters that have taken up residence right around your house or farm buildings where you might experience an unpleasant or unsafe interaction with them. But you should never attempt to rid an entire property of particular kinds of animals.

Consider wasps: They limit the numbers of insects and spiders in addition to pollinating plants, which are all vital to the proper functioning of the environment. But if wasps start to build nests on or right by your house, you can tend to it in an environmentally friendly way.

Check every day all spring to very early summer to discover where nests have been started. As long as morning temperatures are still in the 40s, you can easily knock down nests without getting stung. There will be very few wasps per nest at this time of year and they can’t fly or even move much when it’s chilly. Therefore they will drop to the ground when you hit the nest.

But you must check carefully almost every day to get all the nests down before morning temperatures reach 50 degrees or above. By that time, very few wasps are still trying to start a nest. Vigilance is the key to avoiding or dealing with possible wildlife problems.

You needn’t take action at all if the location of a wasp nest poses no danger to you because, for example, it’s so high on the house that no one will ever be close enough to it to get stung. And don’t just turn to pesticides or poisons. It’s your responsibility to do your best to avoid serious problems with wildlife, and I’ve found that where there’s a will, there’s a way to deal with difficulties in a safe manner for you and the environment.

Why not make your New Year’s resolution the resolve to create a nature-friendly garden that’s safe for everyone—people, pets, wildlife, and the environment. It’s the only way to live.

Blue Ridge Naturalist: You Shouldn’t Need Honey Bees for Pollination