The Fox and the Weasel
I think a lot of people believe that nature can be predictable, on a regular schedule, or completely understandable. An experience that I had yesterday shows that nature can never be predictable or understandable. I am writing to you from cold and snowy Yellowstone, where I am in the middle of leading two groups of photographers on a winter wildlife photography adventure. Yesterday, while in a very remote part of the park, accessible only by large snow coaches, think monster truck, that it is, very comfortable for traveling long distances in snowy conditions. We spotted a Red Fox (Vulpes vulpes) on a distant snowy ridge. It was clearly hunting because it stopped often to cock his head from side to side while listening to small mammals under the snow. This looked like it might turn out to be a good photographic opportunity, so we climbed out of the snow coach and started to set up our tripods and cameras in anticipation of capturing some hunting action. One of the major goals of these photo adventures is to capture images showing the winter environment and how the animals interact and survive in harsh weather conditions. The fox clearly saw my small group and paused to look at us before it went to a wind-blown snowy ridge and sat down and curled up to rest. Of course, we were all disappointed, but I figured it was worth waiting around to see what transpired. After 45 minutes, the fox got up and stretched. The fox started moving towards us, and I thought we might get lucky, but instead it turned and disappeared behind a short snowy ridge. After a few minutes, we could see the fox pouncing on the snow surface, like a Polar Bear does when trying to break through sea ice to catch marine Seals. What happened next was the hard to understand and totally unpredictable part. The fox came up from the snow with a Long-tailed Weasel (Neogale fermata) in its mouth. I was shocked. I have heard about this happening but never witnessed it myself. The Long-tailed weasel is a slender, carnivorous predator that makes a living by eating small mammals such as mice and voles. They are a fierce predator that has brown fur in summer and changes to bright white in winter. They are super active hunters moving across the snowy surface, then burrowing into the snow to find their prey. They hunt both day and night to find their prey in burrows underground or in trees. They range from southern Canada down across most of the United States and into Mexico. They are one of the larger weasels and appear hyperactive when out actively hunting. The point is, the Long-tailed Weasel is a predator and an efficient killer. So, it’s difficult to understand a predator killing another predator but yet right in front of us, this happened. I am continually amazed at the complexity of Mother Nature and how it finds ways to survive in the most surprising ways. All of this took place over 300 yards away on a bright sunny winter day, so unfortunately, the images I was able to capture and not of very high quality. In fact, they are terrible images, but I did manage to process one of the images to illustrate this story and show you what happened. You can see the long white tail with a black tip, clearly showing that it is a Long-tailed Weasel. It doesn’t happen often, but predators do kill other predators, and here is just one more example of how it goes in the wilds of Yellowstone. Stan Tekiela is an author, naturalist, and wildlife photographer who travels extensively to study and photograph wildlife. He can be followed on Instagram and Facebook. He can be contacted via his website at naturesmart.com.
Dark-eyed Junco
There is a small and common bird that is often described as “bland” that visits your yard each winter, and perhaps you don’t even know it. It is charcoal gray in color with a white belly. The males are darker than the females. They have a small pink bill, which is really the only splash of color on this bird. They have a pair of white outer tail feathers that stand out strikingly against the dark tail, but are only seen when the bird is in flight. So, what is this common and unnoticed bird? It is the Dark-eyed Junco (Junco hyemalis). The Dark-eyed Junco is a type of New World sparrow. This means it is not related to the sparrows found in Europe, Asia, or Africa. They are unique to the Americas. In summer, it is found in the northern reaches of Canada, well into the Arctic, and in several of the northern tier states, where conifer forests can be found. Its genus name, “Junco” is from the Latin word for rush or reed and refers to the grass-like plants. The species name “hyemalis” is also Latin and means winter. So together its scientific name means “a winter bird that lives in reeds”. Well, they got part of it right. They are a winter bird, but it’s not usually seen in reeds or cattails. In summer, they live in conifer forests, and in winter, they are found in open areas. The Dark-eyed Junco shows up in most backyards in late fall or early winter. They are found in each and every state in the nation during winter and even parts of northern Mexico. To say they are widespread and in everyone’s backyards would be an understatement. They are highly migratory, with the females moving further south than the males. The males tend to stay in the northern states, which gives them a head start when returning in the spring to the breeding grounds. Every study shows that the males who return to the breeding grounds first obtain the best territories. These birds can look highly variable depending upon where you live. There are around 15 subspecies of the Dark-eyed Junco, and this is the very thing that drives a lot of people crazy, me included. So, let’s just say that no matter what your Junco looks like, it is still a Dark-eyed Junco. For the past 50 or more years, it was believed that small songbirds like the Dark-eyed Junco had no or very limited ability to smell anything. It was thought that the olfactory system in these birds was underdeveloped to the point of being non-functional. However, recent studies done with Dark-eyed Juncos show just the opposite. They do have the ability to smell and even identify individual family members by their unique odor. Now the most recent studies show that the Dark-eyed Junco have cryptochrome molecules located in the retinas if their eyes. These molecules create light-activated chemical reactions that are sensitive to the Earth’s Magnetic field. In other words, the birds can see the magnetic poles, allowing the birds to determine which way is north or south. To add to this amazing superpower, the Juncos have a strong sense of smell that helps the birds use the odor of the land to help them determine their exact location. It is thought that the birds can smell the landscape as they move about during migration. Experiments are showing the birds can smell the chemicals in the soil, lakes, streams, and other habitats. These two amazing senses help the birds to navigate across unfamiliar territory when migrating. Combining these senses helps determine how far they need to fly during migration and when and if they have reached their final destination. As you can see, we are just starting to understand the superpowers that many birds possess. The next time you look out your window and see one of these Juncos, think about how these birds eyed and smelled their way to visit your backyard. Until next time… Stan Tekiela is an author, naturalist, and wildlife photographer who travels extensively to study and photograph wildlife. He can be followed on Instagram and Facebook. He can be contacted via his website at naturesmart.com.
Snowy Owl Christmas Bird Count
Every year, within a two-week window around Christmas Day, I participate in a long-time traditional bird count, called the Christmas Bird Count or (CBC). This is a worldwide effort by volunteers to take one day to go out and count all the birds they can find within a pre-defined area. To understand this better, let’s look back in history. In the late 1800’s, it was a Christmas holiday tradition to go out with your family or friends and participate in “Side Hunts”. This was a contest to see which group could shoot as many birds and small animals as possible, including songbirds. In the year 1900, an Ornithologist named Frank Chapman, an officer in the fledgling Audubon Society, which would later be incorporated into the official Audubon organization in 1905. He suggested that instead of killing birds at Christmas, we should count or take a census of the birds. In the first year, 27 bird watchers went out and counted birds in 25 different locations in Toronto, Ontario, and Pacific Grove, California. And with those humble beginnings, the Christmas Bird Count began. Today, nearly 100,000 volunteers participate in the CBC annually, making the CBC one of the world’s largest citizen science projects. It takes place mainly in the western hemisphere from Canada through the United States, down through Central America, and into the Caribbean. Europe has a similar, yet much smaller, CBC that is run by several different groups. So, is the CBC important, or is it just a reason for nerdy bird watchers to get together and see some birds? The data collected and compiled by Audubon Society provides solid evidence-based data that helps researchers, wildlife agencies, and ornithologists that study birds and their long-term population trends, health, and declines, all across America. It’s key data when it comes to making decisions for the protection of individual species, habitats, environmental issues, and more. The data found in the CBC has been used in many landmark environmental policies and laws. Now it is being used to help track the effects that climate change has on bird populations and so much more. For my CBC, I am assigned a unique area that includes a large metropolitan airport and the surrounding area. It was a very sunny but cold and windy day. The wind is never a friend when trying to see birds, especially when the temperatures are well below freezing. Over a 6.5-hourday (the days are short at this time of year), I saw hundreds of birds, most of which are common and widespread. But every now and then, you come across a species of bird that makes all the effort worth it. I was searching for an open, wind-swept area with my binoculars. Just before sunrise, we received a light dusting of snow. Now with the clear skies and winds over 20 mph, it looked like we were having a mini ground blizzard. I searched and searched and eventually saw a shape standing out against the white snow. From a distance, I studied the shape, trying to make it into a Snowy Owl, but the longer I looked, the more it appeared like a mound of snow. I moved a little closer and took another look. Then, just as I was going to give up and move on to another area, I saw the pile of snow swivel its head, and a pair of squinted yellow eyes appeared. It was indeed an adult male Snowy Owl trying to take shelter behind a large pile of snow. I was able to grab a couple of images without disturbing the owl or causing it to fly. It was another memorable CBC. To consider volunteering to be a CBC’er yourself, check your local bird clubs or Audubon Society. It will be well worth your time. Until next time… Stan Tekiela is an author, naturalist, and wildlife photographer who travels extensively to study and photograph wildlife. He can be followed on Instagram and Facebook. He can be contacted via his website at naturesmart.com.
Unusual Bird Behavior
To the casual observer of nature, you may not notice some strange things going on in the natural world at this time of year. For example, the other day I was passing by a large pond and noticed a small flock of Hooded Mergansers. These are small duck-like diving birds. The males have a set of black and white feathers on their head that they can raise and lower, like a hood, hence their common name, to flash a bright white patch of feathers to the females during the mating season. What I observed was that the males were actively raising and lowering their hoods, trying to impress the females. Normally, this wouldn’t be notable, but this is happening in late November. Definitely NOT the breeding season. As you can imagine, I like to attract different species of birds to my yard, so it should come as no surprise that I scatter some whole and cracked corn occasionally on the ground to feed my local flock of Eastern Wild Turkey. A small group of adult male turkeys, called a Tom, stops by every couple of days, and a slightly larger group of females also stops by. One day, I looked out my office window, and I could see one of the male turkeys in full display, with his tail fanned, his wings drooping to the ground. He was working very hard to impress the females. Of course, the females were not impressed and completely ignored him. Once again, normally this wouldn’t be very notable, but it’s the time of year that makes it stand out and unusual. Turkeys breed in spring, not fall. I could add to this list of interesting nature oddities, but I think you got the idea. So, what’s up with this out-of-season behavior? This is a well-known biological condition that happens each autumn or early winter. Technically, it is called gonadal recrudescence. Yep, if you read that correctly, you might understand that it is a condition where the gonads in males wake up and start to produce testosterone and push the male back into breeding condition. So, let’s back up a minute and take a look at what goes on during the “normal” breeding season. Each spring, the amount of daylight increases each day. The time from sunrise to sunset is called the photoperiod. Each day, the photo period grows longer and longer. It’s the duration of daylight that kicks off the breeding season in birds, reptiles, and more. In the fall, the photo period is getting shorter each day, but at some point, the total amount of daylight in the fall will match the photo period that occurred in the spring breeding season. So, when this happens, the males perceive the daylight as the same as spring and are tricked. The reproductive organs are also tricked and start to recrudescence or become active. When this happens, the male starts to move into breeding condition. For the amphibians like frogs, the male will start to call. For turkeys, the males start to display for the females. If you are a Hooded Merganser, you swim in front of females and display your bright white hood, and so on and so on. But as the days become shorter and shorter, the recrudescence subsides, and the male moves away from the false breeding conditions. All of the males’ displaying and calling fades away. He won’t return to these conditions until the length of daylight increases again in spring. To the keen nature observer, these kinds of unusual behaviors are interesting and notable. I, for one, love to see these kinds of behaviors because it helps me to more fully understand what is happening in the natural world. Until next time… Stan Tekiela is an author, naturalist, and wildlife photographer who travels extensively to study and photograph wildlife. He can be followed on Instagram and Facebook. He can be contacted via his website at naturesmart.com.
White-tailed Deer
Walking through the autumn woods on a carpet of fallen leaves is a wonderful experience. The air is filled with the scent of decaying leaves, combined with the bitter bite of winter weather. Each footstep is muffled by the carpet of leaves except for the occasional small stick or twig that snaps underfoot. Because the leaves have fallen, you can see great distances in all directions. During the summer, this same walk would be much different. The view would be restricted by the thick, dense green leaves, and the sounds and smells would be much different. So, a walk in the autumn woods is like no other time of year. It is one of my favorite times to be out and about. I was recently thinking about this while I was out walking in the woods the other day. I was out looking to capture some video and/or images of White-tailed Deer buck in the rut. The rut is a term used to describe when the male White-tails deer are out seeking females for breeding opportunities. For the White-tailed Deer, the entire spring and summer have been building up to this time. The bucks have been growing antlers and putting on weight all in preparation for the mating season. Starting in Oct of each year, the male White-tailed Deer slowly move into breeding condition. This means they are more focused on finding females for breeding. As the days and weeks go into autumn, the male has physiological and behavioral changes to its body to accommodate the season of breeding. A surge of testosterone will trigger the shedding of the velvet that once covered the antlers during the growing season. Their neck thickens, and the fur on the neck becomes bristly. The bucks will start rubbing their antlers on small sapling trees, stripping off the bark and then rubbing their scent glands, which are located on their face and head, on the newly rubbed trees. Males will also make a scrape by pawing at the ground, clearing leaves and sticks from a small round area, about 2 feet in diameter. The males then urinate in the newly exposed soil. Directly above the scrape is often a low-hanging branch from a tree. The males will chew or lick this stick, which also leaves a scent behind. All of these activities by the male serve to attract females and to announce that the male is ready for breeding. It is often said that the males will stop eating during the rut. While the males can and will lose weight during the mating season, they continue to eat during the mating season. The amount of eating is reduced, since they have been feeding heavily all summer to prepare for this time of year. Bucks will also take a mid-morning break and sit down and chew their cud while resting for a couple of hours. Each autumn, female White-tailed Deer are receptive for mating for just a short period of time of about 24 to 72 hours. This means that the window of time that the female can become pregnant is very narrow. Timing is everything in the reproduction department of the White-tailed Deer. This means that males need to follow around females for several days who are close to estrus before having an opportunity to mate. If she doesn’t become pregnant the first time, she will come back into estrus again later in approximately 28 days. Each autumn, the rut shows up in the forests and fields, just like clockwork, and we are the beneficiaries of all this effort by ensuring that we have a healthy White-tailed Deer population. Until next time… Stan Tekiela is an author, naturalist, and wildlife photographer who travels extensively to study and photograph wildlife. He can be followed on Instagram and Facebook. He can be contacted via his website at naturesmart.com.
Black Squirrels
Even the most common critters in nature can have aspects, behaviors, or characteristics about them that I find amazing, and I am hoping you might also. The Eastern Gray Squirrel (Sciurus carolinensis) has got to be one of the most common and overlooked critters in America. They are found throughout the entire eastern half of the country, and a nearly identical cousin is found in the western half. So, the other day, when I was driving back from a presentation I had given about nature to a large group at a college, I spotted an Eastern Gray Squirrel black morph, and I thought, here is an extremely common critter with so many cool stories to tell. Black Squirrels are the melanistic variation of the Eastern Gray Squirrel. In other words, they are just a regular old Eastern Gray Squirrel, but happen to have extra melanin in their fur that makes them black. Melanin is just a pigment in the fur. So, the question is, why are they black? While we may never know why, there are some observations that we biologists can make. Black Squirrels can be found throughout the range of the Eastern Gray Squirrel, but the Black Morphs tend to be more frequent in the northern portions of its range, especially around the Great Lakes Basin. For example, the Black Morph forms the majority of the population in the Canadian province of Ontario and the state of Michigan. During the 19th and 20th centuries, the Black Morphs were introduced to many places across the eastern half of the country because people liked the way they looked. Many cities, municipalities, schools, and parks have adopted the Black Squirrel as their mascot as a symbol for their community, and some have even passed ordinances that protect the Black Squirrels. The dark fur is believed to come from a variant pigment gene. A study in 2014 showed how the pigment gene can be the determining factor in whether the squirrel will be gray or black. Another study points out that the variant pigment gene was originally found in dark morph Fox Squirrels. Fox Squirrels (Sciurus niger) are another tree squirrel found in much of North America. The pigment gene jumped from the Fox Squirrel to the Gray Squirrel after an interspecies mating occurred centuries ago. Some research shows there are some benefits to the Gray Squirrel having black fur (melanistic). One theory is that Gray Squirrels have an advantage of better concealment in deciduous (trees with leaves) forests, while Black Squirrels have the advantage of concealment in conifer (trees with needles) forests, which are found in more northern states. In addition, another study in 1989 showed that the gray morph had better concealment while sitting still, while the black morph had better concealment while in motion. The second theory for dark fur is thermoregulation. Studies show that black furred squirrels had an 18 percent lower heat loss when the outside temperatures fell below 14° F, along with a 20 percent lower metabolic rate. So, this suggests that the black coat gives an advantage in northern regions. So, what determines if a mating pair of squirrels produces black offspring? Gray Squirrels have two copies of the gray pigment gene, and Black Squirrels have either one or two copies of the black pigment gene. If a Black Squirrel has two copies of the black gene, the offspring will be jet black in color; if it has one copy, it will be a brownish-black. Only around 10 percent of the Eastern Gray Squirrel is believed to be jet black. In areas with many Black Squirrels, litters of mixed colored offspring, being gray, grayish black, and jet black are common. As you can see, there are so many interesting things to consider in even the most common of our wild critters. Now multiply this by the number of cool critters on the planet, and you can see we are surrounded by amazing and fascinating behaviors and characteristics of even the most common animals. Until next time… Stan Tekiela is an author, naturalist, and wildlife photographer who travels extensively to study and photograph wildlife. He can be followed on Instagram and Facebook. He can be contacted via his website at naturesmart.com.
American Bison
The American Bison (Bison bison) is one of those animals that doesn’t seem to get the admiration or respect that other large animals command. Brown Bears, Moose, and Elk are adored by the masses. White-tailed Deer are prized, and Black Bears are respected, and yet it seems the Bison is just tolerated, kind of like you might tolerate your strange uncle that comes to a family gathering. Bison are the national mammal of America, and it seems rather fitting. The Bison has a significant historical, cultural, and ecological importance and does a great job at representing the strength of America. This critter has gone from being one of the most numerous animals in America in pre-settlement times, to being at the brink of extinction, and is now rebounding. It has an important conservation success story to tell and a good lesson to learn. The American Bison is the largest land mammal in North America. This was painfully obvious to me while I was recently filming and taking pictures of some Bison in Teddy Roosevelt National Park in North Dakota. The males were rutting and tending very closely to some females. Looking through my camera lens brings the animal up close and personal and really drives home the fact that the males are absolutely huge. An adult male can stand over 6 feet tall at the shoulder and is 10 to 11 feet in length. Females and young males are much smaller, but an adult male can weigh over 2,000 pounds (one ton). The record heaviest bison weighed over 3,800 pounds. Despite their massive size, they are super-fast and can even outrun a horse, reaching 35 mph and jumping over six feet high. This is definitely not an animal to trifle with. I was following one particular large bull when I noticed he wanted to cross a road. The sides of the highway had the standard metal guard rail, which is only about 3 feet tall, but this bull didn’t even break stride and cleared the rail in one clean jump and kept going. Bison are considered ecosystem engineers, similar to the Prairie Dog that I wrote about last time. The bison don’t just graze; they shape the environment around the areas where they roam. Moving around the Bison encourages a wide variety of plants to grow by grazing for a short time before moving onto another area. They are one of the few species where both the males and females have horns. Just a reminder, horns are different from antlers. Horns are permanent structures on the animal’s head and are composed of keratin, compared to antlers, which are made mostly of calcium and are regrown each year. I was out filming a herd of Bison, which contained several very large males, all of who were rutting. During the breeding season, the males go around and check in with females. They smell the female to determine if she is near the optimal time to be bred. As the males wander around, they sound off with a deep and resounding bellow. These bellows are very loud and sound like a cross between a lion’s roar and a Black Bear’s growl. The low wave frequency of the bellows travels well across the open ground. I happen to notice the sides of the Bison vibrating with each bellowing call, just where the ribs are located, so much that the dirt and dust in the male’s fur vibrated right out into the air. It was a truly impressive sight to see and something I would never have known about or understood if I wasn’t spending so much time observing and filming. We should celebrate our American Bison because it’s truly a unique American animal. By the way, I hope you noticed that I never called them Buffalo. This is because they are not a type of Buffalo. Also, Saturday, November 1st, is National Bison Day and Awareness Day. This day of celebration is the first Saturday in November each year. Until next time… Stan Tekiela is an author, naturalist, and wildlife photographer who travels extensively to study and photograph wildlife. He can be followed on Instagram and Facebook. He can be contacted via his website at naturesmart.com.
Prairie Dogs
Diversity is the key to the strength and resilience of Mother Nature. Diversity in the plant world ranges from single-celled plants, known as algae, to giant sequoia trees. The diversity of insects is almost too much to even fathom. Birds are wonderful examples of the diversity of nature. Over 11,000 different species of birds flit around the world in so many vibrant colors, shapes, and sizes. The mammals of the world are no exception to the marvels of diversity. Over 6,600 distinct species of mammals add to the diversity of Mother Nature. There are mammals that swim in the deepest oceans, live underground, in the deserts, forests, and wetlands. We even have mammals that fly. Each one of these species plays an important role in the health and diversity of our natural world. You can think of each and every species of plant, insect, fungi, bird, or mammal as an individual rivet on an airplane. This metaphor was first developed by Paul Ehrlich and is known as the Rivet Popper metaphor. The metaphor is used to explain the importance of biodiversity and the consequences of species extinction on the stability of our ecosystems. Thousands of rivets hold the plane together, just as thousands of species hold our ecosystems together. Some rivets are more vital than others to the plane’s ability to fly. If you lose a couple of rivets, the plane can continue to fly, but at what point and how many rivets are too many and cause the plane to crash? Depending upon where on the plane a rivet is lost will determine the viability of the plane. The important ones are considered keystone species. The Rivet Popper illustrates that while the extinction of one species might not cause the plane to crash, the cumulative loss of biodiversity, especially the loss of a keystone species, increases the chances of the eventual collapse of the ecosystem, or the plane to crash. Keystone species are so important to a given ecosystem. Often these keystone species are small, unnoticed, and seemingly unimportant. Some people may even question, “What good are they?”. The Black-tailed Prairie Dog (Cynomys ludovicianus) is one of these species that plays an integral part in the grassland ecosystem. I was thinking about this last week while capturing some images and video of these marvelous creatures while photographing in western North Dakota. Prairie Dogs are “ecosystem engineers” of the grassland habitat. The list of benefits of their existence will be too much to include in this column, but let me highlight a few. Dozens of other species literally depend upon prairie dogs. The complex burrows that the dogs dig create homes for many other species, such as Burrowing Owls and the endangered Black-footed Ferret. Other critters, such as snakes, beetles, mice, voles, and others, also use their burrows. Their digging also improves the soil health by aerating the soil, turning over the soil to recycle nutrients and helping rainwater recharge the aquifers, and preventing flooding and excess runoff. Their constant grazing on the vegetation that surrounds the prairie dog towns promotes new growth that benefits other grazers such as Bison and Pronghorn. Dozens of other animals depend upon Prairie Dogs for food. Predators such as hawks, eagles, foxes, and coyotes often depend upon Prairie Dogs for food. The American Badger and Black-footed Ferrets almost exclusively feed on Prairie Dogs. Bobcats and Swift Foxes spend a lot of time hunting them also. The diversity of life surrounding a Prairie Dog town is undeniable. Outside the Prairie Dog town, you just don’t see the wide variety of plants and animals, especially the predators. A healthy Prairie Dog town is the heart and soul of a healthy and productive ecosystem. Every time I visit a Prairie Dog town, I am reminded of just how important diversity is for a healthy environment. Until next time… Stan Tekiela is an author, naturalist, and wildlife photographer who travels extensively to study and photograph wildlife. He can be followed on Instagram and Facebook. He can be contacted via his website at naturesmart.com.
Hummingbird Migration
Bird migration is still one of nature’s most interesting and yet mysterious events. On the surface, migration seems rather simple and straight-forward, but if you stop and take a detailed look, you will see every shade of complexity possible. There are over 11,000 species of birds, and about 40 percent partake in some form of migration. Migrations range from simple elevational changes for species that live in the mountains, to short, distant movements to avoid unfavorable weather, to long, distant trips to warm climates to escape winter, to the granddaddy of them all, migration from one end of the earth to the other. Right away, you can see there is more to migration than perhaps you thought. In the 1800’s we didn’t understand much about migration. We thought it was impossible for a tiny bird to navigate over great distances and endure huge physical demands, so we said it was impossible and we “made up facts” such as hummingbirds had to migrate on the backs of geese, in order for them to escape winter. We also said that some birds dove down to the bottom of ponds and overwintered in the mud for the winter. The thoughts of these kinds of theories now seem preposterous and outlandish. Yet at the time, it was accepted as fact because someone didn’t understand, so they made up something that could explain the unexplainable. In the 1900s, we started to develop new ways to study birds. Some of the earliest attempts to track migration involved catching a bird and tying a brightly colored ribbon on their wing in hopes of being able to find this bird again during winter. This wasn’t very efficient, and you had to have an idea where they stayed for the winter already to make this work. When transistors were invented in the 1940s, it was the breakthrough that made small electronics possible, and by the end of the 1900s, small tracking devices were used to track the migration of free-flying birds. This was the beginning of our better understanding of bird migration, but just the tip of the migration iceberg. In just the past few decades, so much new and almost unbelievable information about bird migration has completely turned our understanding of migration upside down. Today, there are many ways to track migrating birds. One of these migration tracking tools is a website called Bird Cast from Cornell Lab. All you need to do is put in your county and state, and each day during the migration season, you can see how many birds passed over your county on the previous night. There is a ton of information available to anyone who is curious about what is going on with migration. In addition to the tally of the birds migrating through your county, there is also information about what time they migrated, the timing of each nightly flight, along with flight direction and altitude. They also have a list of the expected species that are migrating. For example, as I write this, 97,400 birds passed over my county last night, and at one given moment last night, 36,400 birds were in flight, traveling SSW at 14 mph, at an altitude of 600 feet, all at one time. In order to gather all this data, Bird Cast uses data from the national network of weather surveillance radars (NEXRAD). Sophisticated algorithms and machine learning models are applied to the radar data to separate weather, such as precipitation, from biological signals (the birds). It then analyzes the strength of the radar signals to estimate the number of birds that are flying. Just like the weather, they are able to give migration forecasts to predict the nocturnal bird migration for the next few nights. We sure have come a long way in the understanding of bird migration, unlocking some of the most mysterious natural events of nature. However, no doubt there is so much more we don’t understand about bird migration, and we will understand more in the years to come. Until next time… Stan Tekiela is an author, naturalist, and wildlife photographer who travels extensively to study and photograph wildlife. He can be followed on Instagram and Facebook. He can be contacted via his website at naturesmart.com.
Katydid
I really enjoy these late summer evenings and nights. But not for the warmth but rather for the sounds that fill the night air. I am not sure if you have noticed, but the sounds you can hear outside at night cannot be heard at any other time of year. The spring and summer months have a nice, pleasant sound from the few insects that are calling, but it doesn’t even come close to the soothing sounds of late summer. The sounds of late summer kind of creep up on us without us noticing. Each evening, a few more insect species join the orchestra of evening sounds. To understand why the night sounds are so loud, you need to understand the life cycle of many of our insects. In the northern states, most insects will spend the winter as an egg. With the warmth of spring, the insect eggs start to hatch. Most insects go through several different life stages as they develop into reproductive adults. For example, it may take 2 weeks for the eggs to hatch into a larva form. The larva form, or worm-like stage, can take another 4 weeks or longer. Then they go into the metamorphosis stage, where the insect rests for a week or two before emerging as the adult form of the insect. It is the adult form that is able to sexually reproduce. This often involves the males singing or calling for females, and it took most of the summer to get to this stage of life. So, what you hear outside at night are the adults calling to attract mates so they can lay eggs that will survive until next spring. And it took all spring and summer to get to this point. One of these night-time songsters is the Conehead Katydid. They are a group of large, green insects that all look and sound similar. They are easily recognized by the unique cone-shaped foreheads, extremely long antennae, and very long angular legs. The cone-shaped head really gives them a distinctive look. No one knows why the head is uniquely shaped or what function it performs. But as soon as you see one of these insects, you will notice the cone-shaped head. Most of these katydids are two to three inches long, which makes them one of the larger insects. They are bright green in color, which allows them to blend into their environment. Some species of Coneheads are brown. As you might imagine, a large, juicy insect like this would be a good meal for many other critters. In fact, the Conehead Katydids are a favorite insect for parasitic wasps. The adult wasps capture and sting the katydid to paralyze it. The wasp flies back to its underground chambers, where it leaves the helpless katydid as a fresh meal when the wasp eggs hatch and need to eat. Coneheads have large, powerful jaws that they use to eat both other insects and fruit and seeds. They are fastidious cleaners, using their mouths to clean their feet all the time. They have extremely long antennae, which are sometimes longer than the body. The females have long, straw-like appendages coming out of their abdomen. This is called the ovipositor and is used to deposit eggs into plant tissue or into the ground. They are found in weedy fields, native prairies, wetlands, and along forest edges. They can be very common in rural and suburban areas. It is the male that is the songster. In fact, this is how they received their name from the sound produced by rubbing their wings together. They rub the sharp edge of one wing over the file-like ridge on the other wing to produce a sound like “katy-did-katy-did, katy-didn’t”. Combine hundreds of these calls along with a myriad of other insects, and you have the wonderful sounds of the late summer nights. Until next time… Stan Tekiela is an author, naturalist, and wildlife photographer who travels extensively to study and photograph wildlife. He can be followed on Instagram and Facebook. He can be contacted via his website at naturesmart.com.