First bees

Today’s nature calendar task:

Watch for the first bees in search of nectar.

We have seen a few insects on warmer days, and we saw bees on our visit to the garden centre. Our crocuses are out, I should take a closer look to see if there are any bees.

Mourning cloak butterfly

Today's nature calendar task:

Have you seen the mourning cloak butterfly?

I have seen this butterfly on warm spring days in the forest near our house in past years. Today is going to be rainy, so we will look for them on a different day. We'll probably plant our tomatosphere seeds today, from the March 21st nature task.

The mourning cloak is a neat butterfly, because it overwinters as an adult. It has some type of antifreeze in its body. It crawls behind a piece of bark for the winter. Since it is already an adult, it is one of the first butterflies you can see in the spring.

Tent caterpillar eggs

Today's nature calendar task:

Place a twig bearing tent caterpillar eggs in water.

I don't know how to do today's task. I only know what the adult, summer tent caterpillar webs look like. I'm not sure that we have tent caterpillars in our area. This is one of those tasks where you return to the tree that had been covered in tent caterpillars last fall, and look for the eggs.

A few minutes of internet research has turned up a few sites. I should be looking for the eastern tent caterpillar. Wikipedia had a good article, and the University of Kentucky entomology department also has a good article. They have pictures of the egg mass.

So, I'm looking for a black, oval mass around a twig on a wild cherry or a crabapple tree. At this point, I don't think I can identify a wild cherry without its leaves, but I do know where there is an abandoned apple orchard. Perhaps we'll look there today. I wonder if I could find the remnants of one of last year's webs, and look in that area.

One of my summer jobs was at a park that had lots of fall webworms. Tons of people would show up at the visitor centre asking about the tent caterpillars and I would have to explain endlessly that they were actually harmless fall webworms. I wish I had learned more.

I love how these nature calendar tasks lead you in all different directions. It is really expanding my nature knowledge, and I consider myself fairly nature savvy. The kids are also following rabbit trails of their own.

Woodland Mystery

There is a small wooded area near our house where I like to take the kids for walks. This week we noticed some rather mysterious happenings in our little forest. Follow the clues with us and see if you come to the same conclusions.

Clue #1 First we have some of the trees painted with orange dots near the base of the tree. Perhaps it is some graffiti, although why anyone wants to paint one orange dot at the base of some of the trees is odd.

Clue #2 Then we have a log that has been burnt. Explaining this was easier, the wood is located next to two high schools, I'm sure that the students might occasionally build a small fire in the woods. Except the ground around the log was not burnt at all...hmm.

There were lots of burnt logs in the forest. A fire by high school students could be explained by one log, but many logs all through the forest? Again, there is no trace of the fire on the ground, and only the bark has been burnt off.

Clue #3 Another tree with the orange dot on the bottom. Notice the odd angle of the trunk, it has a slight lean to it.

Clue #4 More graffiti. This is on the trunk of the leaning tree.

Clue #5 Many of the trees in the forest have been cut down with chainsaws. This trunk has been eaten through by an insect infestation.

Clue #6 Here's a freshly felled tree. They've stripped of the bark but haven't had a chance to burn it yet.

You can see the damage caused by the insects just underneath the bark.

We figure that the forest has been infected by either the Emerald Ash Borer or the Asian Longhorn Beetle. The parks and forestry department must be cutting down and burning the trees in an attempt to contain the insects. I had my suspicions in March when so many trees seemed to be damaged. The orange dots mark the infected trees. The "BTU" probably means that they will burn that tree. We still haven't figured out how they burn the trees without catching the rest of the forest on fire.

Ominous signs

This morning we were walking in the small forest near our house, looking for signs of spring (we didn't find any, they are all covered with snow). The kids found another hollow tree and called me over to take a look.

To a child, a hollow tree is fascinating. It looks like a great place for animals and insects to hide, for birds to build nests. It has lots of possibilities. All of these things are true, however, I am starting to see a different story unfold.

All forests have trees in various stages of growth, some are brand new saplings, others are dead stumps rotting back to the earth. You expect to see some dead trees in a forest. What is becoming worrisome though is the number of trees like the one in the above photo. They have been eaten from the inside out by insects.

There are two main culprits that come to mind, the Asian Longhorn Beetle and the Emerald Ash Borer. Last summer when I was walking through this forest I noticed some unusual contraptions hanging in the trees. When I looked closer, they had a note attached to them stating they were insect traps for a scientific study. I suspect it is the Emerald Ash Borer. I haven't identified the trees we are finding, next time I'm out I'll look a little closer to see if they are ash trees. It's hard without the leaves.

I am wondering what the little forest will look like this spring. If it is the Emerald Ash Borer, they will come in and remove the dead trees. The forest will look very different this year if that is the case.