Nowhere to Hide



The weather has turned dry and pond level has dropped by about a foot and all is still peaceful and the cloudiness of the water is reducing. Our heron is back in business, stalking the denizens of the shallows. Beautifully camouflaged amongst the tree branches and twigs, she treads slowly and gently along the edge of the water, a study in concentration, her focus is lunch.


For the first time in a long while, a nutria swims into view. He sees me and stops paddling, but poses for a snapshot while refusing to smile or even say ‘cheese’. An immigrant from South America, where it is called a coypu, it isn’t very popular in most places where it has taken up residence. Even the fact that it has nice fur and that its meat is low in Cholesterol hasn’t lifted it from nuisance status to game worth hunting.

Getting top billing today for its fifteen minutes of fame is the Egyptian jackal who had us all taken in with the idea that it was a relative of the Golden Jackal. His genes have caught him in his subterfuge. He is in fact related to the grey wolf; a much less fancy image. With the cost of DNA analysis falling like a stone in the pond, the ripples will be far-reaching. Soon we will have our genome on our passports, our driving licenses, and probably most important of all for our future wellbeing, our Facebook ™ page. 

A Bats Eye View of the Pitcher


My observation of an Oregon Grape coming into flower early in a sheltered spot behind a public toilet pales beside those made by Dr. Grafe whilst working in Borneo.

Last year, Drs. Clarke and Moran of Monash and Royal Roads University respectively, observed that the largest pitcher plant (N.rajah) was set up as a complete restaurant facility for tree shrews. It serves nectar to the hungry shrews and while there the diners make use of the large pitcher as a bathroom facility. N.rajah is content to be paid in nitrogen rich deposits, which they conveniently re-cycle. Dr. Grafe was interested in a different pitcher plant, N.rafflesiana elongata, which has an entirely different shape being much longer than N.rajah. This one doesn’t serve a breakfast of nectar but does provide a bedroom for wooly bats, with en suite facilities of course. Again payment of the daily rate is in the same currency. The bats however get a bonus for staying. The plant takes care of some of the parasites living in the bats fur. No fear of bed bugs if your bed is carnivorous.

Another interesting report in the latest BBC News e-zine was on the chirality of life. If we synthesize the amino acids that make up DNA, we have an equal mixture of right and left hand twists. Are bodies are very picky and will only accept the left-handed forms. Now roaring around the cosmos are meteorites with the ingredients for the amino acids mixed in a frozen form, which react under the influence of ultra violet light that has been circularly polarized. This results in a small preponderance of the left-handed molecules. However, I wouldn’t wish to jump to the extraterrestrial conclusion that ‘Men are from Mars & Women are from Venus’.

Late Latte


It is another beautiful day with blue skies and the temperature rushing into the 50s. I am taking my morning coffee later that usual today and I notice that the dog walkers are different. Maybe it’s due the weather, but they are predominantly male – the walkers that is, not the animals of the canine persuasion. The female walkers that I normally encounter usually smile and say ‘Hi’ but not today. The dogs universally rush up to give my hand a welcoming lick but not so the guys on the other end of the leashes who won’t even make eye contact let alone lick my hand!



The ponds have risen by at least another six inches judging from the guards around recently planted saplings, which have now almost, disappear under the surface. Small islands are getting even smaller and the nesting sites are becoming sought after waterfront properties.



The geese have settled to a more sedate life and have come to a tentative agreement with the cormorants on the two-bird log. At least so it seems as there is a happy mixed occupancy this morning. It is to be hoped for that this avian detente will outlast the current spell of nice weather that is lulling us into a false sense of spring. I note that an Oregon Grape has a plethora of buds that are showing bright yellow. This is much too early, even if it is in a sheltered position behind the 'Portapotty'.

Literary Feast


Within Scottish enclaves around the globe there will be the traditional Burn’s Night celebration of the poet with the eating of haggis along with tatties and neeps and the drinking of good Scotch. With luck, there will be a piper to provide the music. The authentic beast is on the banned list for importation into the US, so we will have to make do with a pale imitation. Somehow a dish of lamb sausage with potatoes and rutabagas, eaten whilst a CD of the Band of the Scot’s Guards is in full flow, doesn’t evoke pictures of the highlands and the lochs even if the good Scotch is authentic and in liberal supply.

While Scotland is in the grip of its literary celebration, the good citizens of South Wales are getting organized and planning for a Spring rush of lustful toads in April. They are putting up road signs to warn passing motorists. I do hope that won’t result in motorists trying to avert their eyes. The locals are working out a rota where volunteers will go out with buckets to help the toads across the roads, but it can’t be a 24/7 effort so some toads will be rushing off to give their all for nothing. In mid-Wales they built toad-tunnels for last years rush and these were a considerable success. Why not in south Wales? Perhaps the economic crunch would mean that they would have to be toll tunnels for Mr.Tod.

Toads rushing around over south Wales looking for love are making epic journeys, but none are quite as remarkable as that reported for a female polar bear in the Beaufort Sea (http://news.bbc.co.uk/earth/hi/earth_news/newsid_9369000/9369317.stm). She swam for nine days looking for a suitable dining establishment. To cover 460 miles, non-stop in very cold water, is a remarkable feat. Her radio collar didn’t tell her followers if she had managed to pick up a snack on the way or what she thought of the new ice flow, though. Hopefully the Ringed Seals were plump.

Its Monday Again


A promise of blue sky in the west provides a bouncy feel to the morning. The mood has clearly spread to the ponds. A large group of geese are displaying their version of fratboy behavior, with a deal of splashing, preening and honking going on. A group of five ducks had taken over the two-bird log with no sign of its cormorant guardians anywhere. A playful goose tries to join them, but finds himself alone. Clearly that’s no fun, so he launches himself into the air. With no runway, he blows it and splashes and honks for a few yards before he can retract his undercarriage. 

On my return from the coffee pot I see that he has managed to find a friend and they have taken up residence on the log. Meanwhile one of the cormorants on the three-bird log has taken to the water and is circling around making the geese back off. This is clearly not a log that is up for grabs!

There are two herons at the ponds today, both hunched up and scraggly with their long neck feathers flapping in the light breeze. The ponds are still too cloudy for easy fishing.

With the jockeying for real estate on the ponds increasing as nesting time comes rushing to meet us, I wonder if the birds should take note of Dr. Sergio’s study from the Donana Biological Station in Spain. He has been studying black kites and their housekeeping habits. They build rather nice looking nests of twig and moss but then litter it up with our litter. Strips of white plastic bags are a favorite, but bits of paper or cloth will do in a pinch. Other black kites steer away from becoming neighbors rather like most of us are reluctant to move in next to a yard decorated with rusty old cars and dead kitchen appliances.  ‘Don’t Mess with Bubba’ is a message that seems to work in the avian world too.

A Fair Day in January


The Lane County Home and Garden Show had an encouraging emphasis of eco-friendliness and sustainability about the exhibits, along with a nice selection of arts and crafts. Not being in the market for home improvements, the best I could do was to purchase a pair of Alpaca-wool socks after communing with the delightful creature in today’s picture. 

Alpacas and Vicunas score very high on the cute scale. I would estimate at least a 5-Oooh rating. However, neither can quite hit the high of grey seal pups though. Those big winsome eyes are always  winner, and then that white furry coat settles it for most of us.

A heart-warming story this week was the report of three young seal pups from the Farne Islands on the northwest coast of England who went on a vacation to the Netherlands. With one only three weeks old, this seems rather precocious if not a tad rash. The trip was 350 miles and the North Sea in winter can be a little harsh even if you can dodge the constant stream of ships wandering up and down this nautical freeway. However go they did and no sooner were they sunbathing on the beaches of the Netherlands than they were sent home. Freedom of movement within the EU may have some age limitations attached or maybe they just needed their parents seal of approval.

Return to the Ponds

The sun was in a teasing mood and inviting us locals to try a restorative walk. Before I had traveled two hundred yards, it was back in hiding and remained there for the rest of the afternoon. I did the polite thing and pretended not to notice. First, I checked the river. It was higher than ever and running very fast. One of the benches along the bank had disappeared; either it is hiding underwater or has been swept away.
Although the pond level is still high, and may still be rising slowly, the cloudiness has fallen. The birdlife now seems to be returning with pairs of geese occupying prime sites on the banks and islands. The cormorants are back in place and drying out after fishing activity. The heron may not have done so well though as it has taken to a log instead of the bank. Contemplating the benefits of a vegan diet perhaps. 

Maybe though, he is feeling more fortunate than Gena from Dnipropetrovsk in the Ukraine. Poor Gena, while posing for a photo-shoot, yawned on being asked to smile, and then accidently swallowed a cell-phone dropped into her mouth by the would-be photographer, a Mrs. Golovko. Gena, an immigrant crocodile from Africa, is refusing to answer any more calls and is complaining that the ringing in her stomach is quite putting her off her food. Gena is currently eschewing favorites like live quail as they have been injected with laxatives. She is convinced that the photographer’s (Ms. Golovko) hurry to get her sim card returned with her contact list is just a passing fancy.
(Source: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-12257335 )



Micro-farming


There was a plethora of items in the media this morning on communication and cooperation in various species of wildlife. Very humbling for us humans as we usually assume that we invented everything. The most unexpected gem shining from the spoil was the letter to Nature (1) by Brock et al. They have been up to their armpits in the social amoebas known as slime mold. These characters live on bacteria and when the local supply and demand has gone critical, they gather together into a fruiting body – somewhat like their version of the Mayflower – and sail off on the prevailing currents to pastures new. BUT (and note that it is a big ‘but’) a third of the immigrants are farming specialists and carry enough bacteria with them to start new gardens and so prosper in their new world. One is left to wonder if the other two-thirds are lawyers.

Further up the food chain were items on communication of information within a group. Prairie dogs, for example, have a high-pitched squeak and thanks to NPR, I learnt that there is richness in those squeaks that we humans miss. Not surprising, as I have never learnt prairie dog and most foreign languages come across as a sonic blur to my untutored ear. Computers with microphones are much more adept at analyzing the noise. Prairie dogs apparently tell their friends and family the difference between a triangle and a circle. More exciting than that though is that they described people by their shape, or at least height and width, as well as by the color of the tee shirt that they were wearing as they paraded through the colony. There was no translation of the bulk of the chatter though so we don't know what they thought of the designs.

We were also reminded from a different station, that capuchin monkeys get teed-off and refuse to cooperate in monkey psychology tests if they get consistently short changed. Also that crows have great face recognition and ill pass on to their kids which nasty guy is likely to mess with their nests. There were items about chimps and baboons and one about sharks probably being color-blind (so they won’t be put off by the sight of blood?), but I wonder why there is such an element of surprise when these observations are published – shark items apart of course. Cooperation and communication are vital characteristics for species survival. Even animals that prefer to live alone get together for a good time occasionally, just like the rest of us.

Ref:
1. http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v469/n7330/full/nature09668.html

Pondering the Depths


Bufflehead Flotilla

The morning chill is making my eyes water as I hike to the coffee pot this morning. The pond level is at the highest that I’ve seen it so far. The connective routes from sub-pond to sub-pond are now much broader. The islands have shrunk and some trees have their lower half submerged. A very turbulent inflow has turned the water universally brown with fine particulates carried in from the river.

The wildlife are very quiet this morning with a few disconsolate looking geese staring out across the water. The odd one finds the energy to honk in a half-hearted manner as I walk past. A small flotilla of Buffleheads are continuing to tough it out, but otherwise most of the ducks, geese, heron et al have moved off. Where to? The river is very high and turbulent and even more cloudy, so that wouldn’t be good. As I watch and wonder, a sole cormorant swoops in to waterski to a halt; the call of her home log being too strong to ignore for long, perhaps. With a drier spell of weather predicted, the river level should drop and maybe the ponds will have more excitement to offer.

Designer Genes


An interesting result of a genetic study carried out by Prof. Fowler and colleagues, which is published in PNAS (1), indicates that our genes influence our relationships. Assortative mating so that we tend towards the same set of genes doesn’t sound to surprising but taking it to the extent that we like to share genotypes with our friends seems surprising, at least to me. DRD2 is the beasty that sorts us out apparently. When I read that this is the one that is also associated with a tendency towards alcoholism, I began to see that the popularity of bars takes on a deeper meaning and singles bars must have an even deeper significance. The CYP2A6 genotype was shown to exhibit heterophilly, that is these are people that we wouldn’t like to hang out and drink with.

We need an iPhone App that stores our genotype information and can compare this with others in the same space. Bluetooth technology has a 30-foot radius and would be ideal. Think of the time and money that this would save, we would just have to give the bar a quick scan and our App would give us the probability of having an interesting evening. It would rate the bar on the percentage of the denizens that were boozy soul mates compared to the percentage that were going to tell us boring stories about work or their brother in law’s sister’s dog. Until the App is here, I guess I’ll have to rely on my old standbys of pheromones and non-verbal communication.

A real challenge comes with our Facebook friends. Should we publish some genotype information along with our favorite films and music? Would prospective employers want to compare your genotypes with others that would be in the same team as a compatibility check? Setting up ‘tiger teams’ in the workplace is well established, but are we going to see ‘metagenomic teams’, or better still ‘metagenomic tiger teams’, as the newest fad from the business consulting world?

Whilst sitting here, comfortably in my metagenomic world, I begin to worry about how epigenetics can play into this. If environmental factors can cause genes to become inactive/unavailable due to say modification of a histone tail or the addition of a methoxy group, and this reduction in activity can be passed on for a generation or two, is it possible that I could suddenly end up in a feud with my metagenomic group which could last through to my grandkids time?

Reference:
 1.  http://www.pnas.org/content/early/2011/01/07/1011687108

Collateral Gain


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 ).

Tea with Your Ant


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!

More of the Same



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.

Matter of Moment


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?

Wine and Starlings


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.