How Do Late Blooming Flowers Help Pollinators?

by | Sep 21, 2023 | (Sub)Urban Homesteading, Flowers/Grasses, Foraging, Nature

By September our thoughts and actions turn to autumn – fall sports, raking leaves, and cozy weekend campfires. For wildlife, especially pollinators late summer and early autumn are critical times to gather nourishment for migrations or hunkering down for winter’s scarcity.

On our daily walks, often in the early morning to avoid late-season heat, we notice and appreciate late bloomers and nut abundance.  Nectar is an important food supply for pollinators who busily forage among flowers. When the weather cools, pollinators are out later in the day as the sun warms the air. Remember, there is a “night shift” of pollinators, too, who need flowers to feed from.

Here are some late-blooming flowers we have seen on walks or that we nurture in our yard.

 

Bears Beat Salmon to Egegik Fish Camp

by | Jun 22, 2023 | (Sub)Urban Homesteading, Foraging, Mammals, Nature, Pests

Fish Camp Woes

This year a giant bear tore up the Popsie Fish Company’s camp near the remote Egegik River in Southwest Alaska before the salmon arrived. These huge brown bears are smart, hungry, and massively powerful.

Early Work on Salmon

Man with salmon

Good Catch

Early in his career, Rich was a salmon biologist for the Alaska Department of Fish and Game, working near the Egegik River. While there he loved eating the most delicious fish……. Sockeye Salmon.

During the summer millions of wild salmon of five species swarm into Bristol Bay but the sockeye is the most abundant. They are caught by many commercial fishing companies who net them in the bay and along beaches. State biologists ensure that enough fish survive nets to ascend rivers, spawn, and produce plenty of young to keep the runs robust.

Remembering Salmon Dinners

Salmon supper

Fresh salmon is a treat.

Nearly a half-century ago he and Marion, co-owners of Winding Pathways, moved to the Midwest where there are no Sockeye Salmon. But they love grilling salmon fillets they order from the Popsie Fish Company.  It catches, processes, and ships frozen fillets. The Pattersons occasionally order a box. In addition to being delicious and healthy, Alaskan Sockeye salmon are wild fish managed as a sustainable resource.

Bears on the Prowl

This year Popsie Owner Tony Neal had a problem. Like all commercial fishermen, he and his staff arrived well before the salmon run to set up their camp and prepare for fishing. That’s when the trouble arrived.

A brown bear tore its way into their building. Take a look at the photos to see what the bear did. It’s a mess.

There is good news. There’s enough time before the salmon arrive to get everything fixed and ready to catch those delicious fish.  To see Popsie Fish Company staff in action take a look at their website www.popsiefishco.com.

Increasing Occurrences of Bears

Iowans occasionally report a bear sighting, especially in NE Iowa where the woods make great shelter and rivers excellent corridors to travel.

Bears are increasing across the country even in urban areas. Past photos in papers have shown a bear walking down a major road near New York City. A recent newspaper article reported how a bear crashed into an Avon, CT, bakery and gobbled up 60 cupcakes before lumbering off.  At Cedar Lake, Denville, NJ, a mama bear, and three cubs were recently spotted walking along the road.  Actually, that is a fairly common sighting. Residents spread the word so walkers will be alert.

The town police even fondly named one bruin “The Italian Bear.”  Each night just after restaurants closed a fat bear would wander from its den, climb into the local Italian eatery’s dumpster, gorge itself, take a snooze, and come morning, climb out and go back to its secret den. Never hurt anyone.

Bear peering in window.

SRF took this pix of a bear peering in the window.

In rural New Hampshire, friends have had bears visit the yard and peek into the house through the windows frequently.

First Person Story

Broken picket fence

Picket fence was torn apart by a hungry spring-time bear.

Jackie and Peter Hull in Bedford, Virginia, shared this first-person story of the spring adventures with an unruly bear. “Well, I got up bright and early one spring morning, peeked out the bedroom window and what did I see? A smashed six-foot piece of picket fence, a broken spindle on the front porch, and a shepherd’s hook bent to the ground.

“Lucky me I brought the bird feeders in last night. So now I know I can’t feed the birds anymore this year. This is the second year running when on Mother’s Day last year, a bear came and smashed the spindles on the porch railing and a different six-foot piece of fence.

“Later we found bear tracks in the red Virginia clay bordering the flower bed on the outside of the fence. It left its muddy red prints on the fence and the steps going to the side door of the house!

“What to do but repair the fence again, wash the feeders, and put them in the basement? I have decided to store the leftover bird feed in a large bag in the freezer for next winter.

“I will miss my “bird buddies” but I don’t what a 250+ pound bear in my house either. So, words to the wise, the same ones the ranger gave me last year, ‘Bring your feeders in now.'”

Bear in trees

Alaskan Bear.

Back in Alaska, it is common even in suburban Anchorage neighborhoods to see a bear lumbering down a road.  An Alaska-born, former Gazette editor spoke nonchalantly about bears and recess at schools.  “We always had outdoor recess…except when a bear roamed the playground.”

Bears are about that is for sure!

 

 

Sunfish Sex

by | May 25, 2023 | Foraging, Nature

The Guys Do the Work

Some aspects of sunfish sex are bizarre. Here is a huge family of many species of fish where the guys do the hard work caring for their babies. That’s unusual in the animal kingdom, where normally mom cares for the young.

There are many sunfish species. Most are native to the eastern United States but they’ve been stocked all over the world. Bluegills, pumpkinseeds green sunfish, and crappies are abundant, easy to catch, and tasty. That’s why they’re called “panfish.” Largemouth and smallmouth bass also belong to the Centrarchidae, or sunfish, family but most people consider them gamefish.

How It Works

As water warms in the spring, the males of most sunfish species create a round depression in the sand in shallow areas of a lake or pond. Females don’t help a bit with nest building and spend their days cruising the water seeking tasty invertebrates to eat.  They visit a nest only to lay eggs, which are immediately fertilized by the tending male.  She leaves. He stays. Lots of pesky small fish love eating sunfish eggs, so the poor male spends his days chasing them off. Finally, after the eggs hatch and babies leave the nest, he’s free to join the females roaming the pond.

Many sunfish species nest throughout the warm months, while others, like bass and crappies, have one spawning season. One part of sunfish sex is absolutely strange.

Unusual Area

A four-acre pond where Rich fishes has relatively deep water and only one shallow area suitable for sunfish to nest. It is small so round nests are crowded together, forcing the two sunfish species to spawn near each other.

Green Sunfish are smallish but aggressive colorful fish with relatively large mouths.  They usually dwell in rocky areas. Bluegills are one of the largest of the sunfish. When both nest in close proximity hybrids result. They look a little different from each parent species. The strange part is that nearly all the hybrids are males!

Sunfish are amazingly common, fascinating, and often colorful. Males are fun to watch as they patrol their circular nests driving off intruders.

Can You Tell History from Syrup Tap Scars?

by | Mar 9, 2023 | Foraging, Geology/Weather, Maple Syruping

Slice of a box elder tree with healed syruping holes

A slice of history.

Scars in a tree at the Indian Creek Nature Center reveal maple syruping history.

Back in 1979 Rich Patterson and volunteers approached a husky Box Elder tree, armed with a drill, spile, and buckets. It was early March. Nights were cold and frosty, followed by warm sunny days. Syrupin’ weather.

 

Oozing Out the Sap

As soon as the drill’s bit cut through the tree’s bark, clear watery sap oozed out.

Rich gently tapped in a metal spile and hung a bucket under it. By day’s end, two gallons of clear sap nearly filled the pail ready to be boiled into syrup.

If not overdone tapping just harvests a small percentage of a tree’s sap. It’s sort of like a person giving blood. Taking a little does no harm. Healthy trees quickly create a scab over the tap hole, somewhat like a human body heals a scratch. As the tree grows and its trunk diameter swells, wood forms over the old tap hole. It’s fine to tap that tree again next year, the year after, and every following year.

Syruping season ends when night temperatures don’t drop below freezing. That’s when spiles are pulled, leaving the hole for the tree to heal.

Aging Out of Production

That’s what happened to the Nature Center’s tree. Box Elders are true maples capable of producing sap for quality syrup, but they are short-lived. An 80-year-old Box Elder is, well, elder and near life’s end. After being tapped for  40 years in a row the Nature Center’s box elder reached the end of its days converting solar energy into sugar. After its death staff felled it, revealing at least 30 tap scars. The oldest ones are closest to the center of the tree’s trunk.

Syruping is a fun late winter activity.  To learn more visit the Indian Creek Nature Center during syruping season. It holds a fun Maple Syrup Festival in late March each year. For details check out Indian Creek Nature Center’s website.

Thanks, box elder for sharing some of your sap all these years.

Disappearing Ash Trees

by | Feb 2, 2023 | Foraging, Nature, Pests, Trees, Trees/Shrubs

Disappearing Ash Trees

Ash trees are fast disappearing from American forests and towns. It’s tragic.

There are several ash species, including white, green, blue, and black. A Chinese native insect, the Emerald Ash Borer, is killing them all quickly. It’s awful.

Years ago, Dutch Elm Disease cleared cities of American elms, and many homeowners and towns planted green and white ash trees to replace them. Ashes, in general, thrive in the woods and towns. They grow relatively quickly, resist storm damage, and are beautiful. They seemed like an ideal urban tree.

That was true until Emerald Ash Borers were found in Michigan in 2002, although they may have been around at least a decade earlier. Since then, the insect has spread like crazy, killing ashes radiating outward from Michigan.

They reached Iowa years later and have since killed most of the trees in Cedar Rapids, area woodlands, and many other towns.

Salvaging Ash trees

Rich salvages wood from a scrap pile of used pallets. Pallets are made from cheap wood, like cottonwood, poplar, and hackberry, but now he’s finding ones made of ash.

Loggers are salvaging dead and dying ash trees, and the wood is cheap, at least for now. Soon ash lumber will no longer exist.

A Versatile Wood

Sports fans will miss ash wood. It makes the best baseball bats and has been used for gymnastic bars.

Ash also is crafted into gorgeous furniture.

We lost our big ash tree in the August 2020 derecho, but it was already infested with borers with its days numbered. Sadly, we cut the tree up but gave it a second task. It harvested solar energy and used it to make wood. That wood is now being fed, piece by piece, into our woodstove. It’s keeping our home warm, but we’d rather have our tree.

Be Less Tidy in Your Yard! Welcome Wild Fruits

by | Nov 24, 2022 | (Sub)Urban Homesteading, Birds, Bugs, Flowers/Grasses, Foraging, Garden/Yard, Nature

We think of fall as migration time when all the birds leave. And there is a great birdcast website to see in live time the flights. But an autumn walk through a park with wild edges reveals shrubs, bushes, and grasses alive with bird activity. Visit an orchard on a cold winter day and the odds are good for spotting robins pecking on frozen dropped apples, but wild fruits are more common, all just beyond suburbia.

Let’s step back to spring. When Rich worked at the Indian Creek Nature Center his phone would often ring during those first warm days. With excitement callers would announce that the robins had returned. Spring’s here!

Seeing a robin on a spring lawn gives the illusion that they’ve just made a long journey from a faraway wintering ground down south. Robins, bluebirds, and other birds usually just shift where they live and forage as seasons change.

Ecological Survivors

A robin sits in a tree

A robin surveys the area

Robins, in particular, are ecological survivors. They’re adapted to living on lawns and around people during the warm months, where they nest on porch eaves and forage for worms and bugs in mowed grass. The coming of fall’s cold marks the disappearance of robins from suburbia. They don’t go far and make an amazing dietary switcheroo to wild fruits.

Robins and bluebirds shun their summer buggy and wormy diet and shift to fruits and some seeds come winter.

On an October walk, we spotted several wild fruits – berries perhaps – that birds feast on during the cold months. the native plants are great – even the poison ivy – the exotics are problematic.

Here are some common winter weedy and seedy plants:

  • Gray Dogwood. This small native dogwood often forms thickets along trails, parks, woods, and even yards and holds plenty of berries into cold months.
  • Wild grapes. People rarely eat sour and seedy wild grapes, and sometimes birds also leave them alone during summer, but come winter the raison-like grapes make nutritious avian fare.
  • Poke Weed. In late fall this tall purple-stemmed and fruited plant is hard to miss. Birds eat the frozen berries. Note: Poke berries are toxic to people and many mammals but not birds.
  • Poison ivy. Gulp. This bane of allergic people is a beneficial wildlife plant. Deer and rabbits browse on the woody sprouts and birds feast on the berries.
  • Asian Honeysuckle, Japanese Barberry, and Oriental bittersweet are “dirty bird plants.” Actually, birds love the berries and carry them far and wide to poop out the seeds. All three exotic plants are highly invasive and crowd out more desirable native plants. Birds have helped them conquer woodlands and field edges to the detriment of healthy bio-diversity.

Winter Fare Is More Than Fruits

Winter bird fare isn’t just fruit. Many birds glean frozen spiders and insects from crevices in tree bark and dozens of species continue to eat grass and “weed” seeds. That’s a problem with mowed lawns. They produce no seeds, so few birds visit them during the colder months. Taller growing grasses, flowers, and shrubs often hold their seeds into the winter and are bird magnets.

Want to have birds in the yard all winter?  Keeping feeders stocked helps, but better results come when homeowners encourage buffers of native shrubs, vines, and grasses that produce natural winter bird food and habitat. Most people love their tidy lawn, but edging the lawn, usually along a property line, or creating “pocket prairies” with native or desirable tall grasses, wildflowers, and shrubs adds summer color and year-round wildlife appeal. So, we encourage readers to create and leave wilder spaces for the birds!