For the past two mornings I’ve heard wild things screaming in my backyard at 5am. It’s two hours before sunrise. What are those weird sounds?
Raccoons! And they’re fighting!
I didn’t go outdoors to record them but I found two videos that include the sounds — above in Toronto, below on someone’s roof.
Why are raccoons fighting in my backyard? I believe it’s the watering hole effect. It’s been very dry in Pittsburgh so my birdbath is one of the few sources of water. All the animals come for a drink before their bedtime and BAM!
A word to the wise: Don’t go outdoors to visit the raccoons. They may have rabies.
(videos from YouTube; click on the YouTube logo on each one to see its original)
Yellow garden spider female with prey, Virginia Beach, 5 Sept 2017 (photo by Kate St.John)
Last week in Virginia Beach my mother said, “Come see my spider.” We stepped out the front door and there she was, an impressive yellow garden spider with a zig zag web.
Yellow garden spiders (Argiope aurantia) are very common orb weavers but we rarely notice them until late summer when the females have reached full size, about an inch long. At this point their webs are also large with conspicuous vertical zig zags(*) giving them this alternate name in Virginia: the sewing machine spider.
My mother’s spider hid behind her web which in turn was camouflaged by the light colored brick behind it. (Click here to see a more obvious zig zag.) In these photos the spider is packaging prey in gauze or perhaps eating it.
Yellow garden spider with prey (photo by Kate St.John)
My mother pointed out a smaller web nearby with a smaller spider in it, only 0.2 to 0.3 inches. It was the male who will eventually come courting, but he has to be very careful and quick. His goal is to deliver both sperm packages without being attacked. After delivering the second one he dies a natural death. Then the female eats him.
Soon the female will lay 500 to 1,000 eggs in a small brown sac which will overwinter and hatch in early spring. The tiny spiderlings are cannibals, too, but those who survive will play out the same story next year.
If you find a yellow garden spider you can enjoy it in peace. Even though the females are large, they won’t bite unless you grab them (egads!) and their venom is harmless to humans.
Visualization of Hurricane Irma wind, 10 Sept 2017, 5am (screenshot from the “earth” wind map)
10 September 2017
On Friday afternoon I checked in with my brother while he and his wife prepared for Hurricane Irma at their home in Boca Raton. Located west of I-95, his neighborhood wasn’t part of the mandatory evacuation order but everyone was getting ready and planning to throw a “good luck” party Friday night. They expected to hide indoors until the storm is over — probably midday Monday. All were hoping Irma would go west and so far that’s what she is doing.
Concerned for my friends and relatives in Florida I’ve been monitoring Hurricane Irma on the National Hurricane Center’s website at www.nhc.noaa.gov. My brother suggested watching the wind at windy.com and that reminded me of the similar “earth” website.
Watch the wind at these links, centered on Marco Island, Florida along the path of the storm.
Move the map around and you’ll see strong wind blowing onshore toward Georgia. That’s why there’s a storm surge warning in Savannah.
There’s one thing these maps can’t show. Hurricanes spawn many tornadoes but they don’t appear on the wind maps. Right now there’s a tornado watch in Boca Raton until noon on Monday. Yikes!
(screenshot from earth.nullshool.net on 10 Sept 2017, 5am. Click on the image to see the current wind map)
UPDATE at 11:30pm on Sept 10: My brother reports that they are OK at home in Boca Raton. The power went out for eight hours but came on around 11pm. They’ll go outside Monday morning to see what happened to the landscape.
You may not have noticed but the blog underwent a subtle change yesterday. My address now uses https instead of plain http.
The S means that browsers now show my website with a green lock icon and the word “Secure.” What does this mean?
https uses SSL security to encrypt data transmission so the Internet can’t intercept site logins and passwords. SSL doesn’t mean the website can’t be hacked. It just means that hackers can’t read logins and passwords as they pass through the wires. Your email, Facebook, Twitter, and bank accounts all use SSL because people login there.
This change doesn’t make your access to my blog more secure because you never login to see it. I’m the only person who logs in so I’m the only one who has gained more security out of this. Unfortunately you may notice that SSL is slower so my blog may pause longer before you see it in your browser.
So why did I make the change?
I’ve wanted to secure my login for many years but I procrastinated. Google pushed me to get it done when they sent me a message in August saying that, unless I switched to https, Chrome would show security warnings on my website beginning in October 2017. Besides, Google gives search engine preference to https sites over plain http.
I was afraid I’d break my blog if I tried this alone. Thankfully, Jay Volk stepped in to assist. There are a few loose ends to tie up this weekend but most of it’s done. Yay!
Many of us are watching with morbid fascination as Hurricane Irma churns through the Caribbean on its way to Florida. Even if we aren’t in Irma’s path, we know people who are and we’re worried.
After Irma passed over the U.S. Virgin Islands (USVI) I searched the Internet for footage of St. John, USVI, where I visited in January 2015. I found information in this USA Today article with links to the USVI Hurricane Irma Alert Facebook page. Beyond the obvious human suffering, I am struck by how brown the landscape is now. All the leaves were blown off the trees.
Where are the birds? What did they do during the storm?
Fortunately birds have strategies for coping with bad weather including:
Shelter in Place
Like us, birds hide out of the wind and rain and wait for the storm to end. They use man-made structures, thickets, and deep valleys where the wind is less intense. Their strategies are described here in Shelter From The Storm.
Pigeons sheltering from heavy rain (photo from Wikimedia Commons)
Evacuate
Birds can sense when a storm is coming and often evacuate before it strikes. A study of golden-winged warblers found that they left Tennessee a day ahead of a tornado: Warblers Fled Tornado One Day Ahead. Land birds in Florida can move northwest as Irma approaches but the birds on Caribbean islands had nowhere to go.
Fly In the Eye of the Storm
Sea birds have a third option. As they fly in search of a calm spot, they end up in the eye of the hurricane where they travel with the storm until the winds die down. This NASA image shows that the eye of Irma on Sept 5 was larger than both Anguilla and St. Martin so it was probably a relatively safe place. However, the hurricane won’t lose power until it’s over land so the sea birds may be exhausted when they finally stop far inland.
The eye of Hurricane Irma passing over Anguilla and St. Martin, 5 Sept 2017 (image from NASA Sport)
People and birds in the path of Hurricane Irma are all getting ready. I think of my friends and family in Florida.
(photo credits: Hurricane Irma satellite animation from NOAA, photo of pigeons sheltering from Wikimedia Commons, photo of tornado from Wikimedia Commons, Eye of Hurricane Irma from NASA Sport. Click on the images to see the originals.)
Growing up in Switzerland Melanie Barboni had a dream: She wanted to see a hummingbird. When she arrived at UCLA three years ago as an Assistant Researcher in Earth, Planetary and Space Sciences, she placed a hummingbird feeder outside her office window. She now hosts more than 200 of these tiny jewels every day.
Melanie’s relationship with the hummingbirds has grown so much that she now recognizes about 50 individuals and has given them names. And though her research involves volcanoes and rocks, her nickname is the “hummingbird whisperer.”
Why watch hummingbirds?
As Melanie says, “I mean, look at them. It just makes you happy!”
Leaves in distress: defoliant (photo by Kate St.John)
Early in June I noticed curled leaves on all the trees and bushes by a road in my neighborhood. Though I suspected it was caused by herbicide I was puzzled that other plants were not brown and dead. Why would someone use an herbicide that maimed but didn’t kill? I forgot about it until I saw a photo of soybeans that looked the same way.
This summer, farmers from Arkansas to Ohio and North Dakota have experienced crop loss from a new formulation of the herbicide dicamba. Dicamba has been used for a long time but this spring Monsanto, BASF and DuPont reformulated it for use with new genetically engineered dicamba-resistant soybeans.
The problem is this: If your neighbor plants the new soybeans your fields could be affected. The new dicamba volatilizes (evaporates) from the soil and leaves where it’s applied and drifts as much as half a mile causing crop loss and low yield in everything else including non-resistant soybeans, tomatoes, watermelons, grapes, pumpkins and other vegetables.
On Labor Day let’s take a look at some working birds.
Chickens were first domesticated about 9,000 years ago in both China and India but the idea didn’t really take off for another 2,000 to 4,000 years. Then it spread slowly westward to Persia (Iran), Egypt, Europe and Africa. Chickens are now the most numerous bird species on Earth because humans like to eat them and their eggs.
Because of our close relationship to chickens we tend to forget that they are birds and we can learn from their behavior.
What does a hen do when she wants to lay an egg? This video answers the question among a flock of free range chickens.
