Tag Archives: biodiversity

A Favorite Roadside Wildflower

Communities, Home Landscapes, Neighborhoods, Wildlife & Plants, , ,

One of my frequent walking routes happens to be up and down the road on which we live here in Upstate New York. We live on a well-traveled, but country road in Albany County.

So, I usually take 4-5 walks on the road every day to stretch my legs. This gives me a chance to watch the changing seasons and the comings and goings of numerous species of plants and animals.

After spending the long months of winter when most things are covered in snow, it is great to see the changing of colors during the spring, summer and fall periods.

One of my favorite plants that I see alongside the road is Black-Eyed Susan.

While the Black-Eyed Susan is considered a hallmark of prairies and meadows the wide-spread plant is a biennial that blooms and completes its life cycle in its second year with a showy floral display and is a native plant to a large region of the Eastern United States.

Exceptionally showy and easy to grow, Black-Eyed Susan has a prolonged floral display that attracts butterflies and other beneficial insects. The late-season seedheads attract finches and other birds. A hardy plant that is very drought tolerant, the Black-Eyed Susan will tolerate heat, drought and a wide range of soil types, but does not like poorly drained wet soils.

What is your favorite wildflower?

Name This Tree

Home Landscapes, Wildlife & Plants, , , ,

The tree in these pictures is located in my front yard here in Albany County, New York.

It is a deciduous tree and they typically grow 40–60 ft tall and 20–40 ft wide. A 10-year-old sapling stands about 20 ft tall. They can be recognized by their large, heart-shaped to three-lobed leaves, showy white or yellow flowers in broad panicles. In the autumn they bear 8–20-inch-long fruits that resemble a slender bean pod full of small flat seeds, each with two thin wings to aid in wind dispersal. Because of the leaves, they are sometimes confused with the Tung tree in the southern U.S., or the invasive Paulownia tomentosa from China.

Due to their large leaf size, this tree is a popular habitat for many birds, providing them good shelter from rain and wind. These trees have few limb droppage but drop large dark-brown bean pods during late summer. The wood of this tree is quite soft.

They begin flowering after roughly 3 years and produce seed pods after approximately 5 years.

There are two North American species and have been widely planted outside their natural ranges as ornamental trees for their showy flowers and attractive shape, or growing habit. Northern and southern varieties are very similar in appearance, but the northern species has slightly larger leaves, flowers, and bean pods. Flowering starts after 275 growing degree days.

The tree is the sole source of food for an interesting and important moth, as the leaves are eaten by the caterpillars. When caterpillars are numerous, infested trees may be completely defoliated. Defoliated trees produce new leaves readily, but with multiple generations occurring, new foliage may be consumed by subsequent broods. Severe defoliation over several consecutive years can cause the death of trees. Because the caterpillars are an excellent live bait for fishing, some dedicated anglers’ plant mini-orchards of this tree for their own private source of fish bait, particularly in the southern states.

Can you name this tree species? Do you have one or more near where you live?

 

A Glimpse of a Bobcat and the Sound of a Raven

Wildlife & Plants, , , ,

I recently saw in a social media post by a friend that Spring is in the air. I responded that it doesn’t feel that way up here in the North Woods! We are still getting a few snow squalls daily and the cold and wind make it seem like the middle of winter to me.

None the less, I decided to take a few short walks on the country road where we live today because the sun was shining at least. Although it was crisp, I was rewarded twice today with unique wildlife sightings.

On my first walk, I happened to see a Bobcat cross the road in front of me about 25 yards and move into a shrubby field toward the south. I picked up my pace a bit and was able to catch a clear view of the cat and his “bobbed” tail before he/she vanished into the brush. Although we regularly hear and see all sorts of critters in the fields and woods around our home, the sighting of a Bobcat here was a first for me. Interestingly just a few years ago but well into warmer Spring weather I was walking in pretty much the same location when a black bear stepped out of the woods and crossed the road heading north. I not only didn’t speed up my walking pace at that time but came to a dead stop!

The Bobcat is a North American cat with two recognized subspecies, it ranges from southern Canada to central Mexico, including most of the contiguous United States. The bobcat is an adaptable predator that inhabits wooded areas, as well as semi-desert, urban edge, forest edge, and swampland environments. It remains in some of its original range, but populations are vulnerable to local extinction by coyotes and domestic animals. (We have loads of coyotes around here.) With a gray to brown coat, whiskered face, and black-tufted ears, the bobcat resembles the other species of the midsized genus Lynx. It is smaller on average than the Canada lynx, with which it shares parts of its range, but is about twice as large as the domestic cat. It has distinctive black bars on its forelegs and a black-tipped, stubby (or “bobbed”) tail, from which it derives its name.

Though the bobcat prefers rabbits and hares, it hunts insects, chickens, geese and other birds, small rodents, and deer. Prey selection depends on location and habitat, season, and abundance. Like most cats, the bobcat is territorial and largely solitary, although with some overlap in home ranges. It uses several methods to mark its territorial boundaries, including claw marks and deposits of urine or feces. The bobcat breeds from winter into spring and has a gestation period of about two months.

As I was finishing another short walk and about the enter our front door, I heard the low gurgling call of a Common Raven. Although the Raven isn’t all that uncommon in our area, we don’t see or hear them nearly as much as we see and hear crows.

The Common Raven, also known as the Northern Raven, is a large all-black passerine bird. Found across the Northern Hemisphere, it is the most widely distributed of all corvids. There are at least eight subspecies with little variation in appearance, although recent research has demonstrated significant genetic differences among populations from various regions. It is one of the two largest corvids, alongside the thick-billed raven, and is possibly the heaviest passerine bird; at maturity, the common raven averages 25 inches in length and 2 1/2 pounds) in mass. Common ravens can live up to 21 years in the wild, a lifespan surpassed among passerines by only a few species. Young birds may travel in flocks but later mate for life, with each mated pair defending a territory.

So, windy and cold or not…I enjoyed the brief encounter with a couple of unique north woods species.

Kentucky’s Red River Gorge

Parks & Sanctuaries, ,

Watching the television show Sunday Morning on CBS recently, brought back memories of working to help save the Red River Gorge area of Kentucky. We moved to Henderson, Kentucky in the early 1970s, but the efforts to dam up the Red River of Kentucky and flood the gorge had started in earnest in the mid-1960s.

Years of downstream flooding was a clarion call to the Army Corp of Engineers. They simply love to build dams!  Don’t get me wrong, there are often some big benefits associated with the building of dams, but there are also often huge ecological outcomes as well. And often those outcomes are very bad.

I have always been a proponent of sustainable resource management. To me, that means that we must use natural resources in ways that benefit the present generation, but also leave resources in conditions that will allow future generations to meet their own needs. However, it is also my opinion that there are places of such ecological, historical or cultural significance that humans should simply keep their hands off!

It was my opinion back in my younger days that the Red River Gorge region of Kentucky was such an area. The short “Moment of Nature” piece on Sunday Morning made me feel happy to see that the Red River Gorge is still just as beautiful today as it was several decades ago. It took a long time and lots of meetings, but it was a good day when President Clinton signed the papers making the Red River Gorge part of the National Wild and Scenic Rivers System of the United States.

Enjoy the video below to see for yourself.