It is always fascinating to see that the collateral changes that we get alongside a planned environmental change are invariably unexpected. Ella Davies in the BBC Earth News today reports on the re-introduction of beavers in Poland. Now we have known, from the work of University of Alberta scientists carried out several years ago, that beavers are good for frogs. Beaver ponds are good homes for tadpoles and I’m sure that over a glass of wine in a bar, I would have been rash enough to predict that. But that beavers are good for bats would not have been on my list. I’m sure it was a surprise to the researchers at the University of Gdansk who spotted it.
Of course we have to climb the causal tree to find out why. Water of course is good for insect populations, so that might be it. But, surprise, the bats that hunt over water (such as Daubenton’s bat) aren’t favored. The reason? These bats use the water surface to reflect their hunting sonar to light up insects and the still water of the beaver ponds get a duckweed blanket giving a stealth surface that hides the insects. The favored bats are those that hunt high up among the trees. The thinning of the trees means fewer small branches and twigs making it easier for these species of bat to locate and catch insects.
It is a little over eighteen months since beavers were re-introduced to Knapdale in Scotland, so it is too early to see wildlife synergies, but a fine time to look to see if they develop. The UK’s bat population is in a pretty dire state and an army of beaver conservation volunteers would be a very cheap way to give them a hand up without increasing the tax rate. Also I’m sure that the current citizenship of Inverness wouldn’t do what their 17th century ancestors did – namely to hunt the beavers for their fur and eat their tails as a substitute for fish
( http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/scotland/glasgow_and_west/8187637.stm ).
After taking my morning cup of Assam tea over to the computer to drink while I checked out the news items online, I picked up a BBC news item from the 12th of January on the careless use of pesticides around some of the Assam tea gardens just outside the beautiful Kaziranga National Park. Assam nestles between Bhutan and Burma in northeast India and produces a large amount of tea, which I for one find essential to my daily wellbeing. Kaziranga is home to an abundance of wildlife. However, two pregnant elephants had left the park to sample the greener grass over the hill and had then died from pesticide poisoning. It takes a lot of pesticide to kill an elephant and even more to kill two. Many cows had already succumbed, as had the vultures that started to tidy up.
Why was such death and destruction sown around the tea gardens? Apparently to kill the ants. The local red weaver ants (Oecophylla), also known as fire ants, of using their larva as glue-guns to stick the edges of leaves together – they don’t bother with neat stitching. They’re upwardly mobile, living in the trees and not in nondescript holes in the ground. This tends to keep the trees free of other pests and they are used as front-line bio-control troopers in mango and citrus orchards with considerable success.
It is clear that glued up tender leaves would not be desirable for my morning tea, but neither would pesticide loads that would kill an elephant! Some of the tea gardens have gone organic and others may well do so or at least support a pesticide ban. But maybe there could be a lesson from the Asian super-ant (Lasius neglectus). It is a black ant, not a red one, and is less aggressive but has an interesting proclivity as outlined in an old BBC report from last August. Then they reported from Hidcote Manor, a National Trust house in the UK, that this variety of Asian ants had a passion for electricity that exceeded their desire for food and drink. They caused some little havoc by forming huge clusters in fuse and junction boxes causing an unreliable electrical supply as they got a big charge out of there rave. Maybe solar panels connected to electrified collection boxes could tempt the fire ants away from the first flush tea bush tips. Who knows but maybe the collected ants could be re-settled in fruit orchards if the voltages were set at the correct level.
Footnote:
I would love to hear the etymology of the entomological name Lasius neglectus. It can't be as comical as I think!
Another damp day. The sky is like a steel-grey cloud-umbrella with lighter, more hopeful colors showing on every horizon. The ponds are generally quiet and still, save for a group of three geese, necks arched and honking like the last trump in an attempt to discourage the landing of a fourth goose on their island. The inflow to the pond is still fast and the level is rising so maybe the geese are planning ahead. The rapid influx of river water has resulted in this end of the ponds being brown and cloudy. Maybe this is why my heron is sitting, hunched and looking thoroughly teed-off and hungry.
Further up, the ponds are clear as the particulates have sedimented out. Here a flotilla of Buffleheads are diving in unison and popping up still in formation. Very nice and tidy, as are their outfits. They will easily succeed in the audition for ‘Pond Cheerleaders’. No one else comes near to this display of synchronized swimming, if their beaks were flexible, they would be wearing fixed smiles. The other groups of ducks that stick together are more difficult to identify. The males and females have coloring like Ruddies but the males have Merganser-like crests. They migrated here at same time as the Buffleheads but to me they remain mysterious and in disguise.
Our adventurous slugs are out again, but today they have eschewed their unidirectional travel. Their headings appears much more random, with many bending round to head home to follow those who have already made that wise decision as the allure of the excitement on the blacktop fades in comparison with cozy plenty of the grassy herbage of home.
A day of sun and showers lures me to check out the pond albeit a little later than usual this morning. It has a very peaceful look today, with only a few ducks leaving nice vee-wakes as they rush from the bank at my approach. There is a cluster of one-legged geese on an island relaxing in close unison. If one falls off its leg, the others will go down like dominos. However, there is no mischief-maker there to give one a push.
Even the heron seems to have had her breakfast as she sits on a downed tree on the bank preening her untidy and long gray feathers. As she spots me, the preening goes to hell in a hand basket and her neck gets very long. But as I continue my walk, it gets shorter with each step until she’s lost it completely as I draw level. I wink but she gives me the brush off as usual and gets back to trying to decide between fish and frogs for lunch.
Suddenly I notice that a dozen or two hardy, but foolhardy, small slugs have forsaken the grass and herb shelter of the verge, lured away by the promised delights of the blacktop just five feet away across the moist concrete. Just like the last time I saw them, they are all on parallel courses to the road but not taking the shortest route. If the sun wasn’t hiding behind the skirts of a large motherly cloud, they would have been lined up with the sun’s rays on their back providing them with the maximum warmth. With no sun having been visible for a little while, they seem to be taking this all on trust.
Leaving the bookstore on my return journey the light shower turns nasty and my pace becomes ‘with purpose’. The slugs have clearly thought better of their foolishness and my thoughts turn to the question of was a thunderstorm forecast. Not a nice thought to linger on as the ground is flat and open. Whilst bolts of lightning are bad enough prospects, the recent news from the Fermi-lab that thunderstorms spew out streams of anti-matter make dawdling even more unattractive than the water running of my coat onto the back of my trouser legs. Might some jogger find just a pair of smoking shoes on the sidewalk and wonder how could someone spontaneously combust in a rainstorm?
There have been reports in the news of several flocks of birds mysteriously dying in different countries around the world. The UK papers today (the Guardian, Telegraph and Mail) all focus on the Romanian starling flock drop. The autopsies indicated that the cause of the drop was a drop too much. The birds had gorged themselves on the crushed grape–yeast feast discarded by a local vintner as being of no further interest to him. The starlings clearly disagreed with this conjecture and set out to prove their case, and in doing so, drunk themselves to death. There is no indication that the birds in the other incidents in Sweden and the US had been partying.
It is interesting to note that just across the Black Sea from Romania lies Armenia, and the BBC reported that the earliest archeological evidence of wine making was recently discovered in a cave there. This means that the danger to local birdlife of overindulgence has been around for about 6,000 years. Even more apposite to the problem is the fact that burial mounds surrounded the archeological winemaking kit. The sober archeologists suggested that indicates that the wine was purely for ceremonial purposes. One is left to wonder if perhaps it was the quality of the wine that left a lot to be desired. In any case the local starlings need to activate their Twitter accounts as their tweets have clearly been ineffective to date in spreading the word of the dangers of alcohol abuse and where they can join a 12-hop program.
It’s a chill, foggy day with the sun showing as a pale disc surrounded by a diffuse glow as its rays try and bite through the mist. Fog droplets condense on the bare tree branches and give a constant patter of drips onto the fallen leaves as an accompaniment to my steps. The pond level has been allowed to drop and everyone is very sedate this morning. Maybe the ducks and geese are finding it easier to reach choice morsels below the surface as they upend, so everyone is replete and in a good mood. The cormorants are in their proper positions, surveying the scene like lords of the ponds, unchallenged by belligerent goosey usurpers.
Further on, more than a dozen volunteers from the local Lion’s Club are at work on a sub-pond. They are cleaning up the fringe and planting the bank. Chilly work that requires that lots of coffee is drunk. A long table has been prepared with large pots, paper cups, sugar and cream. Temptation is strong, but I press on.
By the time that I reach the pet store with its auto-doors that snap voraciously at me as I hurry past, my scarf and hat are moist with condensed fog; my one and a half miles to my morning coffee is almost over.
There at last, I settle at a table and notice that the bookstore is ready for the population’s effort to keep their New Year’s resolutions. A large table is set out with ‘dieting tools’ – self help books, calorie tables and personal logs. We’re ready to move into an austerity phase after the indulgencies of the holidays. Feast, then famine is the traditional rollercoaster that we’re all stuck with.
Have you pondered and lost sleep over what happens to a leaf cutter ant when her teeth get worn down and she can’t cut it anymore? Is she reduced to bringing smaller and smaller bits of leaf back home until she gets laid off, or does she get left out there on her leaf, gumming away the rest of her days?
A collaborative etymological project from guys at the U of Oregon and Oregon State U – the Ducks and the Beavers for the sporting types amongst us – have settled the issue. She changes her job. She takes up carrying leaf parts for the young blades who can slash with abandon, thus improving the efficiency of the whole operation and getting more leaf bits back to grow the fungi that the stay-at-homes are farming. A nice laid-back approach to career progression, no hanging onto jobs to avoid loss in status there.
Another exciting snippet from the insect world comes from the scientists at Yale who have been checking out the amorous behavior of the Squinting Bush Brown butterfly. Flashing each other is their preferred approach to getting together. Males like to do their flashing in the moist weather, leaving the females to get their own back by flashing at the males in the dry season. They have white centered spots on their wings that reflect ultraviolet light for effective flashing, maybe that’s why they are reduced to squinting.
A clear, crisp, sunny day and an expedition snowshoeing into see Salt Creek Falls is called for. The snow base here is about four feet and our snowshoes sink in about a foot. The water flow over the 286-foot drop is spectacular. Ice is hiding the columnar basalt producing the drop. The spray has colored the ice with a green-yellow tinge and there are strong blue shadows. The coloration is possibly due to many fragments of moss or lichens of that color that are abundant here. The salt content of the tributary streams is high and may also contribute to the color.
Upstream of the falls, the creek is running fast with the occasional still pools. Here the stillness of the forest is near absolute with only the smallest rare disturbance from a clump of snow falling from the high branches and being returned to its original powder crystals as it falls. Colors are stark. A black and white palette would almost be adequate to paint the scene with the water black, the trees black and the snow white, with the only color from a strand of pale yellow-green moss or a blue tinge in the depths of the holes in the snow made by walking poles.
Coming out with a short detour brings us to Diamond Creek. The stark winter palette is relieved in the view up the creek as the gap in the forest allows us to see the sun reflecting from the distant treetops. The pale green is a welcome contrast.
Returning home alongside the river that alternately rushes over shallow rocks and then slows to regions of deeper pools, we see cormorants taking advantage of these fish rest stops. We pass a colony perched individually on rocks waiting for the next dinner bell. A particularly large individual occupies one rock, bigger than the rest, with its flat top decorated in a random white pattern. This is clearly the favored viewing point. A little farther on, a small herd of elk were lolloping through the birch trees completing our winter scenic and wildlife fixes.
Whale Tail from freenaturepictures.com
New Years day and we’re off to the coast to watch the whales go by on their way to their maternity and nursery ward at Baja California. With an estimated sixteen hundred gray whales due to parade past in the last week of December through the first week of the New year, we should have a chance of seeing one every thirteen minutes (on average). Of course, averages aren’t too kind when you’re standing, staring out to sea, with a brisk offshore wind and an air temperature around freezing. A large pod might have passed just before we set up or just after we packed up. Life can be a gamble at times.
The strong swell and offshore breeze, gave the sea a corduroy texture. With our binoculars we saw lots of birds fishing just in front of the glassy faces of the waves and further out, we saw the occasional suspicious vee-shape spray. Could they have been whales blowing? Or might they have been spray from a breaking wave way out to sea? H’mm, this is definitely a case for the willing suspension of disbelief if the numbness in our fingers is to be brushed aside as worthwhile inconvenience.
Waves on New Year's Day
The ponds have quieted down with the higher water levels after the increase in the height of the river. The geese have opted for large flock, grass feed events in the sunshine that we are currently enjoying. The peace can’t last too long. We await developments.
Stuck inside with the rain, wind and the promise of snow means that the observations of the pond life are drive-by shots. Some of the birds are trying to make the best of it, but many are spending time on the banks negotiating with each other for early options on nest sites, none of which are binding at this stage of course. The logs have been left with solitary cormorant sentries that are sitting stoically wet as it’s no use hanging their wings out to dry in driving rain.
However, a quick look at the weather elsewhere in the world makes it clear how fortunate we are in this spot as we see floods in Australia, Europe frozen and even the south-east US getting frigid; why even the manatees in Florida are eschewing their seagrass beds for the warm outflows from a large power plant. Going hungry to spend time in a hot tub sounds a little like one of the celebrity diets that are hitting the magazines as we edge our big toe up to the cusp of the next decade. Lots of warnings against unhealthy diets abound and this seems to have been a longstanding tradition. Recent research indicates that the Neanderthalers ate their veggies cooked – I can hear it now – “You don’t get down from this rock until you eat all your veggies; do you hear me!” It seems that the old theory that they died out because they relied solely on a meat diet is no longer valid. Fanatical vegans will no longer be able to comment about my eating habits by blaming my Neanderthal lineage.
The next few days are traditionally stressful as New Year resolutions are made, broken, remade and finally abandoned. They are best summed up by this quote from Oscar Wilde: “New Year resolutions go in one year and out the other.”
‘Release Your Inner Tortoise’ is a quote that I heard today from the founder of the Slow Movement website (http://www.slowmovement.com/). This struck a strong chord as I sat watching the rain clouds gradually parting to let the sun squeeze ever so slowly through. My enthusiasm for the Release becoming the mainstay of my plan for the New Year waned a little as the idea drifted into the realms of was my Inner Sloth crying more loudly for release? However, by the time the Inner Sloth got its act together, the rain clouds had made a comeback. My expedition to check to see if the birdlife on the ponds are behaving in a manner that is seemly for a Sunday morning had to be delayed. Sloth is too slow. A Racing Tortoise is the way to go for the year ahead.
Some recent neurological research by Dr. Barrett and her colleagues at Mass. Gen. (http://www.nature.com/neuro/journal/vaop/ncurrent/full/nn.2724.html) ties the size of the amygdala to the size of a person’s social circle. A new question for next year is ‘will the size of my social circle increase?’ If it does, my amygdala might enlarge and will this be a good thing? A smaller amygdala is associated with a less worried or fearful nature, so a tortoise approach to the year is to be recommended. It will give time for my amygdala to adjust and thus regulate my optimum circle size.
While armchair cruising with the Holiday Spirit and in between opportunities for overindulgence, I began to ponder on the importance of epigenetics in our lives. The subject has been active for about twenty years, although the origins go back to the 1890s. What is so fascinating is that things that we do today can affect our gene behavior, and we can pass that on down to our grandchildren without changing our basic gene make-up. The original study (turn of the nineteenth century stuff when people took meticulous notes) showed that a winter of Norwegian gluttony shortened the lifespan of the kids and grandkids. Now there’s a powerful message! The phrase ‘digging your grave with your teeth’ is probably one that those of us who are comfortably padded have heard in one form or another when cowering before the dreaded white coat at our annual medical inspection.
How does this work? Sections of our DNA can be de-activated either chemically or physically without altering its underlying structure. These aren’t mutations so the effects wear off over time, but I might not be able to wait long enough to outlast the effects of this season’s gluttony. In terms of short-term natural advantage, this ability to turn the dimmer switch up or down on parts of our gene messaging activity can help us cope with short-term changes in our environment. I should note that by ‘short-term’, I’m referring to geological time, not TV advertising time.
With the New Year about to start and the opportunity for resolutions around self-control, we should remember that the damage of those extra ten pounds of fat may last longer than the six-months of gym-time that it takes to remove them – our children born next Fall may have to live with the effects as well. That’s a scarier thought than most Christmas ghost stories.
Life is back to normal on the ponds now that the survey is finished. The cormorants are back in charge of their logs, and the ducks and geese are sailing sedately around in circles, practicing for a Christmas pageant perhaps, as is appropriate for the spacious, genteel living on the Ponds. Not at all like the high-density log-life on the pond at the back of Fern Ridge Dam with eight cormorants to a log – no room to stretch a wing there.
The news media appears to be buzzing with the DNA results from the Denisovanian finger bone and wisdom tooth. Apparently the hominin trek north from Africa half a million years ago resulted in the usual macho male discussion about directions. The westward bound turned into Neanderthalers whilst those that went towards the sunrise became Denisovans. Both groups were successful and spread over large areas of the landmass. The Denisovans covered an area from Siberia to New Guinea. There is a 4.6% match of the modern New Guinea people with that from the wisdom tooth. This means that there was some canoodling going on with the modern humans who left Africa much later. Similar mixing occurred with the Neanderthals and modern humans in the west. These exciting results lead us to the idea that these mixes are to be found most strongly in the genes of the World’s politicos who are still arguing over whether East or West is best. Folk memories fade very slowly apparently.
Winter solstice and a total lunar eclipse – we’re spoilt this year. It has been 370 years since we last had this combination. But now we can huddle down for winter; as Blake said: ‘winter is the time to endure’. If Emperor penguins can do it, we can surely handle a few flakes of snow and ice.
A plant survey has interrupted the pond excitement with the waterfowl moving away to the far side of the ponds. The geese are the least fazed and now seemed to have settled into formal pairs. No disputes apparent, the season of goodwill is here.
While trawling through the outer reaches of the news machine today, I read about research on a new treatment for coughs using theobromine to calm that recalcitrant vagus nerve responsible for chronic coughs. The problem that I have with this is that the theobromine is found in chocolate, but it will be extracted so there won’t even be a flavor of chocolate left.
I plan to reject this solution completely. When my next cold and cough strike, I will be prepared to stay at home, all wrapped up in front of the TV with a large box of chocolates. When chewed slowly, I’m sure my vagus nerve will get the benefit of the theobromine with the bonus of molten chocolate. An additional source of theobromine is black tea, so this will complete my cold cure program – warmth, lots of hot tea, chocolates and daytime TV. The TV is there to drive me back to work at the earliest opportunity, otherwise I might turn into a pneumo-viral hypochondriac. A warning note here though, chocolate has had an age-old reputation as an aphrodisiac, so warn your significant other of your plan.
An idle glance through world news items indicates that snails are getting a deal of attention. Todays feast of gastropodial news features the water snail, Hinea brasiliana, and its bioluminescent behavior; see the link for details:
It gives off flashes of fluorescent green light, that are amplified by its shell, when threatened by hungry denizens of the 'hood'. Now I know that many teenagers these days won’t eat anything that’s green in case it might turn out to be broccoli, but giving the green light to predators seems a little perverse. Apparently the shells don’t amplify red light so how are they going to flash out a welcome to amorous neighbors?
The image of the lonely polar bear on an ice float has had good use as a global warning awareness advertisement, but we need to think about the bear interface. City University of New York scientists have seen grizzly bears in polar bear habitat in northern Manitoba. The bear facts of life become interesting as one hybrid has already been shot. Both species are federally listed. Does the concern carry over to a Grolar; does it halve or does it double the federal concern? This is a question that should be sent to
for the lawyers to answer. It would seem to me to be of as much a matter of moment as whether Superman’s x-ray vision violates a person’s right to privacy when judged in the light of current modifications to airport security screening.
