Exploring Nature Blog

Sometimes you see something in the woods that is hard to believe. This happened to me this week. I saw what looked like a giant bird perched in the very top of a huge cottonwood tree on the edge of the woods by my house. It’s early spring so the leaves are still sparse and that bright vibrant green, so the dark form stood out clearly. I was thinking, wow that must be a great horned owl – its huge!

I grabbed some binoculars and zeroed in on the sucker. I was stunned to discover that it was not a bird at all but a big, fat porcupine. It’s not that I didn’t know porcupines climbed trees. I know they do, but this porcupine was 50 feet off the ground, working his way out to the tippy tip of the smallest branch. It seemed a little risky to me.

Never being one to pass up the opportunity to harass wildlife, I ran out there with my video camera and tried to get a good shot of him. He was just too far up there. It was like trying to shoot a porcupine on the roof of a 3-story building.

This got me to worrying about him. What if he fell? Do porcupines fall? Are they afraid of falling? Do they bounce like cats? Do all those hollow quills make them weightless enough to float to the ground? I mean, they are fairly nocturnal, who knows what they do after dark? (Ok, ok I know that they are not floating around the forest at night… um… right?)

So anyway, that is my latest peculiar porcupine story. They never cease to amaze me. Those adaptable little suckers – the porcupine.

I know what you might expect from a title like that. All the wilderness is being paved over and chopped down and the poor wildlife are losing their habitat to us evil humans. Well, in fact, in my neighborhood, I have the distinct feeling that the wilds are winning.

If the myraid of wildlife that I see passing through my yard is any indication, we are not slowing them down a jot. Perched on a meadow between a mountain forest and an extensive wetland, our land is a wildlife super highway. Black bears, foxes, skunks, flocks of wild turkeys, raccoons and hundreds of white-tailed deer cross through our yard every season making their way from one habitat to the other.

Mostly they pass through at night, nibbling as they go on our baby trees, gardens, cat food, bird feeders, and even the wood siding. We often catch them in our headlights driving in after dark or see their tracks in the mud or snow in the morning. The deer chuff at us if we stumble on them at night, as if to say, “Hey, this yard is only yours in daylight, go inside or be trampled.”

Then every once in a while they meander through in broad daylight. This is just amazing to me. No matter how many times you see it in your life time, nothing makes you jump out of your chair faster than seeing a black bear lumber across your lawn. It is in those moments where I feel like we barely have a toehold in this wilderness. Any day now it is going to drive us out and grow over the house so that you’d never know people tried to carve out a place here.

You might laugh at that, but I came a cross a ‘57 Chevy half buried in the middle of the woods one day and I got to wondering if the guy was still inside and had just parked to take a nap when the woods took over.

I know its not like this everywhere and in most places development has fragmented wilderness and left wildlife perched on the edge of shopping malls. But up here in the Adirondacks, I have to say… we’re just barely keeping ahead of the wilds. I am pretty sure that given half a chance any sign of us would be reclaimed in a decade or two.

You know you are used to winter when 15°F doesn’t make you shudder, slam the door and get back in bed. In fact, after several days that start at -5°, it can feel downright comfortable.

I had that in mind as I pulled on ski gear, eyeing the bright blue sky and the weather report that warned that freezing rain was coming by nightfall to ruin the great snow we had.

We headed up Stacy Brook Trail in Westport, which follows a stream up through a beautiful hemlock forest to the pinnacle. A snowmobiler had been up the trail and made a pretty good track for skiing that we gratefully followed through the woods. Since the onset of 4-wheelers on trails (which make a trail impassable to skiers or snowshoers until the next heavy snow) I have grown downright warm and fuzzy about snowmobiles.

The trail was a gradual climb, which made for a comfortable ski with just enough grade to warm you, but not enough to make you use swear words. After about an hour we reached a cross road and decided to turn back for the long, fun downhill.

That was when I discovered that the grade was a lot steeper than I thought on the way down, especially in the slick snowmobile track. I was skiing with my husband who is a much better skier than I am, so there was no hope that I could keep up on the way down. But there is some comfort in that because no one wants to been seen crawling out of a snowbank.

I started slowly, keeping to the deeper snow outside the tracks to slow my descent. Were all these sharp turns here on the way up? Finally, in frustration, I just let myself go and began to build up speed as the trail meandered down through the woods. Then it got steeper and steeper and words like careening out of control and blinding wreck came to mind. Finally the trail took a 90 degree turn and I did a head plant into a snow drift. I had to roll onto my back to get my skis untangled and so I was a total powdered donut afterward.

I was done with the trail after that. I cut through the woods in the deep snow and kept my speed manageable. I had to make some switchbacks here and there to tackle the descent but the deep snow kept me in control. I also had to do some dodging of trees and got whipped by branches a few times, but over all came out much better than if I’d tried to manage that bobsled run of a trail down.

I tried not to envy my husband’s ability to glide along on the trail below, making perfect telly turns. And shamefully squelched the thought that he might still miss a turn and ski into Stacy Brook.

In the end I came out not too far behind him on the less steep lower trail and we glided out to the car just as the clouds began to build to across the sky.

These are the things I learned…

1) It’s always steeper on the way down than it looks on the way up.

2) Don’t grab at trees to slow your speed, they’ll yank your arm out of joint and that hurts worse than falling.

3) If you get going too fast and a tree is coming at you at blinding speed, sit down, for goodness sake.

4) Don’t be afraid to go off trail if it gets to fast, but make sure you keep the trail in sight or you may end up lost (it wasn’t my fault, I didn’t have a compass).

4) Don’t run into your dog as a way of slowing down (It doesn’t work).

5) Only take off your skies and walk if death is imminent or you are alone and no one will know.

6) If you have to take off your skis and walk, have something to blackmail your ski partner with so they won’t tell (death threats don’t work, I tried it).

7) Have fun!

It’s hard to believe sometimes that there are wild animals walking around out there. They do their best to elude us, and mostly are successful. We see them every once in a while crossing a road or running across a field, but it’s rare. So when it snows and you can see their tracks weaving through the forest it’s almost a relief to know they are out there making their way in the world.

I have never been great at tracking though I know what the tracks look like on paper. I have stared at them in field guides. I have illustrated them for book projects. I have even painted them on the wall in the wildlife classroom at the Adirondack VIC (Science Center). I just have not been able to make out who they are in person. Like bird songs they slip away from me without a picture of who the heck they are.

For a naturalist obsessed with identifying things, this is very frustrating, especially because people expect me to know. You are a naturalist, they say, what made these tracks? You have no idea how many times I have been tempted to just make something up. Look at it thoughtfully and say… why it’s a red fox of course. If I acted really sure it would make them happy and who would know? Well, the answer is, I would know and it would make me crazy.

So when I recently started to be able to identify tracks, I was kind of startled. It was like learning the names of all the kids in your class. I got rather excited. It started on a hike with some girlfriends. It had just snowed the night before and there were animal tracks all over. As usual someone said, Sheri, what is this? I sighed and looked at it. Suddenly this odd feeling came over me. I knew what it was! It’s a snowshoe hare, I said, feeling kind of light headed like all the blood had drained away from my brain in shock.

Then we saw a white-tailed deer, a red squirrel, wild turkey and a deer mouse. I was on a roll.

A few days later I was walking by the river and saw a slippery slide down a snow bank to the river with some very distinct tracks leading away into the woods. It was an otter. I knew it as if it had written its name in the snow.

Then I had a group of boys from Albany doing a photo hike with me at Black Kettle and we came across some tracks in the mud. Raccoon, I said, without any doubt. Wow, this was getting to be fun.

So now I am a little obsessed, looking for tracks everywhere. Nose to the ground like a goofy bloodhound. Well… hobbies are good right?

I just got back from the National Science Teachers Association meeting in Denver and besides for (and including) the sunny, 70° weather, it was a great experience. It was fun and kind of exciting to go to workshops and see what people were doing in science education. It was very entertaining to go through the exhibit hall and see what science manufacturers are making to sell to educators. (You gotta see the foot-long alligator that grows to 7-feet-long overnight when you add a gallon of water.) I noticed that the science teachers where all signing up for these raffles that many of the manufacturers were offering, so I did too. Hey, you never know. Later I got an email that I had won a video ipod. You have to love that. Even though it was from a company that promotes educational awareness of how good fertilizer is for the world… Hmmm…

My lecture went pretty well too. About 50 educators came and they seemed to respond well to what I had to say about developing nature trails for their schools and several stayed afterward to discuss it. It gave me some ideas about how to expand on the Making Tracks Challenge among other things. Now I have to figure out how to get schools to actually make a commitment to work on their nature trails. I have incentives. I have information. I just need to get them on board. Any ideas?

The big science revelation of the trip came at a most unexpected moment. I went to a talk by the The Children’s Book Council and how they judge books to be recommended for the Outstanding Science Trade Books for Students K-12. They had rejected a book because it had listed only 5 Kingdoms of life. They said the reason was that it was now accepted in the scientific community that there were only three kingdoms.

Woah! I sat up in my chair – 3 Kingdoms?! Since when? The speaker showed me an explanation by the Children’s Book Council that said that indeed there are now 3 Kingdoms. That’s crazy, I thought, you can’t lump animals, plants, mushrooms, bacteria and algae into 3 Kingdoms. Had I been asleep through some new major taxonomic revolution? I had to go home and research this.

It turns out that I haven’t been asleep, but clearly some changes have been creeping up in taxonomy in the last five years. This is what I have discovered.

A new Phylogenetic Classification System, called the Woesian three domains is being accepted in classification circles. It does indeed lump animals, plants, mushrooms, bacteria and algae into one group, but not as one Kingdom as the Children’s Book Council speaker mistakenly suggested. They are grouped together as all Eukaryotes, which they are. They are divided from the Prokaryotes, which make up the two other “domains” or “Super-kingdoms.” There is a huge difference here and I will explain how.

Eukaryotes have their genetic material (DNA) confined in a distinct nucleus surrounded by a nuclear membrane inside all our cells. Each organelle, in fact, is a distinct membrane bound unit, carrying out its function in our cells, whether it is respiration or amino acid production.

The more “primitive” organisms, like bacteria, (previously the Kingdom Monera), are the prokaryotes. Prokaryotes do not have a membrane-bound nucleus but carry all their DNA in an area referred to as the nucleoid. Prokaryotes also do not have distinct organelles. Metabolic functions are free floating or bound to the outer wall within the cell. Prokaryotes may be primitive but they can survive in some very hostile environments that existed on early Earth. This makes them amazing survivors.

The change happened when, a few ago, a prokaryotic organism that lived in the extreme temperatures of hot springs and volcanoes (and was formerly thought to be a Monera bacteria) was discovered through genome evaluation to be something quite unique. These were called “Archaea” named for their archaic origins as evolved from the oldest organisms to have lived on earth. At first Archaea was considered a 6th Kingdom, but now a new classification grouping has been adopted as proposed by microbiologist Carl Woese of the University of Illinois.

The new system consists of three “domains” or “Super-Kingdoms” as mentioned above.” The three domains are Eukarya, Eubacteria (true bacteria), and Archaea.

Eukarya Domain (or Super-Kingdom) includes the 4 Kingdoms of eukaryotes – animals, plants, mushrooms, and algae.

Eubacteria Domain or True Bacteria Domain (or Super-Kingdom) includes – bacteria.

Archaea Domain (or Super-Kingdom) includes – archaea.

So there it is, in all its amazing and blinding glory. Well… I thought it was pretty exciting anyway. But remember, I study what’s under rocks for fun…