Field Notes: Recent Episodes
Annie Garde
Throughout history, people have been captivated by owls. There are 260 species of owls across the planet. They can be found on every continent except Antarctica.
I’ve always been fascinated by ruffed grouse. For such a small, skittish-seeming bird, they have a hugely outsized presence in the soundscape of the forest.
It’s easy to see how the nighthawks’ idiosyncrasies make them a crowd favorite, but what I love most about them are the cherished memories they resurrect.
A lone Sandhill Crane stood at the edge of the marsh feeding, its bill dipping repeatedly through the mud with a series of rapid, steady bursts reminiscent of a sewing machine’s insistent motion.
Earthworms use their entire body to breathe. Burrowed deep in the ground — slow moving, slow metabolizing — their long frames tighten and relax and pull the air they need from soil.
They looked like bulging stockings decorating a mantle at Christmastime. They were certainly gifts of a sort for our winter-weary senses. These were the unique nests of Bullock's Orioles.
In the natural world, how to persist—how, even, to improve—in the face of limits and uncertainty can be a punishing question.
As I drove home from Missoula, I was alarmed to see wildfire smoke across the freeway from my house in Frenchtown. Even more concerning was the convoy of pickups pulling stock trailers.
We have three species of garter snakes in Montana. The snake couple I saw were the terrestrial species, Thamnophis elegans, who can lack the colorful markings of the other two.
In late 2020 I’m spending mornings masked, working in a lab in the University of Montana Zoological Museum. The museum houses research collections of natural artifacts like skins and skeletons. But behind the scenes museum staff tend a single living collection: a colony of dermestid beetles, the meticulous scavengers that scour flesh from bones before a skeleton can be installed in the museum.
Why are they so feared and misunderstood? If a bird popularity contest were held, Turkey Vultures would not fare very well. A spooky bird contest, on the other hand? Dead winner.
First one, buzzing and bumping into the living room window, who was soon joined by a few sisters. Within an hour, there were more than 40 sinisterly striped yellow jackets (Vespula alascensis) zooming from one window to another in pursuit of light, and I was outnumbered.
As I watched Rob Domenech, executive director of the Raptor View Research Institute, and his research biologist Brian Busby carefully load the three chicks onto the lift, and heard Harriet’s chirps of protest from above, I considered the importance of this work.
At Lee Metcalf National Wildlife Refuge, I saw an Osprey dive into the deepest section of white water and emerge with nothing to show for its effort, and then retreat to a cottonwood branch to watch for another opportunity in the dark, boiling water.
A small spot of orange in the middle of the trail caught my eye. It wasn't a leaf or a berry; it was tiny and moving! As I neared the curious sight, I discovered it was a fuzzy caterpillar.
Despite the harsh and stark appearance, all is not lost after a wildfire. In fact, there is much to be found when you look about.
Let me take you on a journey. It’s just a few miles, but over that short distance we’ll be transported not only to a dramatically different landscape, but also back through hundreds of millions of years of Earth’s history.
The first sound we hear these early summer mornings is the prehistoric, other-worldly call of Sandhill Cranes. It rises deep from their impossibly long necks, climbs into the sky, and stretches for miles across the countryside.
We’re wandering around the mostly evergreen woods nearby the ghost town of Garnet, Montana. we reach a sunlit clearing: a bright green patch with just a handful of trees.
Usually, pronghorn will dash away when they see a truck coming. However, at times they race toward me, accelerating, seemingly intent on crossing the road ahead of me.
My sister and I struggle to keep up with our mother. Today, we carry gallon-sized Ziploc bags, rolling the nearly-black berries from their stems to our palms to our bags.
This Montana prairie holds a secret. This is coulee country, a landscape peppered with gullies waiting to be explored.
A visitor to the Yellowstone National Park helped with a calf struggling to cross a river. After, the calf began approaching people and cars, hazardous for all concerned.
Wind has a way of blowing in and cutting short an adventure. It can ruin a picnic. It can wreak havoc on the best-laid plans. At its worst, it can be dangerous and even deadly. But it also creates the breeze that shakes the leaves of quaking aspen. It carries the seeds of black cottonwood and the wings of Red-tailed Hawks to new destinations.
Most plants conduct photosynthesis and make their own food from sunlight, carbon dioxide and water. Fungus flowers, however, cannot conduct photosynthesis, making them not only look bizarre but function in a bizarre manner.
Tyrell’s tufted, along with most jumping spider species, is not aggressive. Jumping spiders actively hunt their food using their speed, the hunters of the arachnid world.
We continue walking, giving the shoreline a wide berth to avoid scaring any loons that might be around. Now we're on the opposite side of the lake and—we see them. Two adult Common Loons. Oh, they're lovely: streamlined, low-slung bodies, perfect for diving. Sleek black heads, red eyes, and characteristic black-and-white coloration that makes it easy to identify them.
It’s June and I’m in a dreamy meadow deep in the backcountry of Mount Rainier National Park, looking for toads. My mission: find the toads, count the toads, save the toads—in that order.
Crawdads have specialized cells in their exoskeletons that allow them to change color to adapt to their surroundings. The cells, called chromatophores, work to either concentrate or disperse pigment. Similar cells in chameleons and octopuses allow for a quick color change. But, for crawdads, the process is slower.
Northern Harriers are considered one of the most elusive raptors, and some of the most accomplished wildlife photographers admit how difficult they are to photograph. Male Harriers, with their white underside and opaque gray-back plumage, seem to be even more challenging to photograph than the brown and much larger females. For that reason, many birders and photographers call male Harriers “Gray Ghosts.”. One moment they’re in your viewfinder, the next, they’re gone.
I was delighted to observe such an unusual visitor, but he had a bigger surprise for me. As I watched him forage through my yard he did something unique I had never seen, heard of, nor even imagined!
Tufted evening primrose is one of the loveliest native plants found in dry climates across western and central North America. Its botanical name translates to “wine seeker, densely clumped,” which is apt for a low-growing, mounded plant with very fragrant, citrus-scented flowers.
I could not articulate what pulled me off the trail, but I followed the urge all the way to the base of the towering tree, a western redcedar. I stood, neck bent back to take in its shading canopy of soft, scaly leaves. We greeted one another in an exchange that predates my ancestors taking human form: the mammalian exhale of carbon dioxide and inhale of oxygen from the trees.
On this lazy Sunday just outside Missoula, I can hear only two cranes from the former flock. Perhaps these are the late sleepers, the teenagers, left by the wayside as the larger family group launched back to the migratory grind and headed north to their breeding grounds. Spring is the season of courtship, and what I’m listening to may well be the first pairing of lovers who will mate for life.
Found in the eastern portion of the United States, deathwatch beetles typically inhabit the hardwood timbers of old buildings or the decaying wood of very old trees. The larvae bore into the wood, feeding for anywhere from one to ten years before pupating and emerging as an adult. And while their wood-boring lifestyle can weaken the structural integrity of some infested buildings, if you believe the superstition, that’s the least of your worries.
I’ll never forget the first time I heard the call of a Sandhill Crane. It was early June, and I was halfway through an eight-day backpacking trip in the Sapphire Mountains. Sitting in a meadow one evening and refilling my bottle at the oxbow of a quiet creek, I began to hear a sound unlike anything I’d ever heard. It was part elephant, part jackhammer, and part squeaky door hinge. One thing seemed clear: no way had that sound been made by a modern animal, and certainly not by a bird.
I noticed a wide flat tail propelling the shadowy animal forward, and suddenly its head popped up above the water. Two large black eyes considered its surroundings as it meandered upstream. I watched excitedly through my binoculars as it dove smoothly under willow roots and resurfaced near a boulder. After two years of living along this creek, I had finally seen the ever-elusive beaver! I hadn’t really known what beaver signs to look for though as just a novice beaver enthusiast.
I love paddling my kayak, to get away even for just an hour or two. Sitting in my kayak one morning on a detention pond close to home, I watched a small, tan spider hopping on my paddle. I quickly took a picture, hoping to identify it later. Before I could enjoy watching this new-to-me spider too much, however, another spider—large, black, and hairy—emerged from under my paddle, ran up to the smaller spider, bit it, and started dragging it off!
Then, it happens. A pine squirrel wakes up. First one, then another, then three hundred, then five thousand, and before long the evergreen canopy is buzzing with their banter. From that moment forward, my pre-dawn slyness is a distant memory. There is no unwatched, uncriticized movement in these woods anymore. Any step I take is met with angry feedback from above.
We pause our berry gathering to more closely examine the kinnikinnick. On many parts of the shrub, the smooth, leathery green leaf margins are accented by bulbous, yellow-red growths. Unmistakably, these are galls, tumor-like growths of the leaf tissue. Each gall was induced by a manzanita leaf-gall aphid (Tamalia coweni), a female aphid who probes along the leaf to form a tiny home.
The cottonwoods and alders on the left and ponderosas and perennial grasses on the right framed the trail as if it were the subject of a painting, drawing our eyes up the valley. Mary was celebrating the variety and vigor of the riparian understory when I saw Iris sidestep a stick ahead of us. Iris leaves no stick unturned, so my curiosity was piqued. As we approached, I could see it was a rubber boa!
As a teenage boy on the farm in Iowa, I experienced a horde of grasshoppers while unloading a wagon of oats. The surface was covered with grasshoppers! It was not difficult to grab one, and when I did, it would “spit tobacco.” I have since learned that spitting a dark liquid is a defense mechanism. Memories like this one have stuck with me, and in part fueled my interest in the mass of grasshoppers that somehow ended up in Rocky Mountain glaciers.
You’ve probably seen it before, even if you didn’t know exactly what you were looking at: some black, woody growth on cherry or plum trees. Black knot fungus, or Apiosporina morbosa, is a fungal agent that invades young trees of the Prunus genus, including most hard-pitted, fruit-bearing trees like cherries, plums, apricots, and peaches.
For seven years, I pursued the jay-sized birds on Rattlesnake Creek in Missoula, Montana. That quest to observe a nesting pair turned out to be challenging. Belted kingfishers are loners, skittish, and fiendish to study. However, the rewards of a difficult journey are many—like finding something never recorded before.
Straightening the quilt on one of the cots, I glimpsed movement through a window and rushed - barefoot - to the narrow deck to see what it was: a herd of 200 elk galloping along each rise and dip of the valley below the treehouse.
Spending time in nature with its wild creatures has always been a way for me to rejuvenate my creativity, to fill my soul with happiness, tranquility, and relaxation. A way to let go of stress and worries, even for just a little bit. Recently I wondered how I could give back to the wildlife that makes itself at home around our five acres, to help it co-exist and thrive. Wanting to keep this little ecosystem as natural as possible, I came across the web page of the National Wildlife Federation’s Garden For Wildlife.
Mountain goats, which aren’t actually goats but are considered “goat-antelopes” and whose closest relatives live in the Himalayas, prefer to live above the treeline and in high alpine meadows, beyond the usual range of predators like mountain lions. Beyond the range of many humans, too. They are one of the least-studied large mammals in North America.
I was ahead of my husband when I spotted a bear standing in clear view, close by on the gentle slope that led away from the trail. I stopped and smiled as my brain tried to make sense of why the bear was so short and broad…and why were its legs and back darker than its tawny sides? My jaw dropped when the synapses connected. It wasn’t a bear. It was a wolverine!
One June about seven years ago, my husband brought home a bitterroot plant. It was stuck to his irrigation shovel by the clay soil from the hay fields near our house in the Helmville Valley. I marveled at the beautiful hot pink blooms and planted them in the flower bed, where they rarely reappeared.
Early in April, I had just spied a fox squirrel eating pine seeds from a ground cache when I felt a shadow gliding overhead on silent wings. I looked up yet saw nothing. When I looked back, there was an indistinct gray form, an apparition, in the shadows where the squirrel had been. The apparition turned its head toward me and peered with two large golden eyes. Tufted horns now held erect confirmed it was a Great Horned Owl.
What do tree swallows, starlings, pigeons, hummingbirds, and mallard ducks all have in common? Besides being birds, of course, each of these species sports iridescent feathers that glimmer and shine when the light hits them.
As spring rains tame the dust of the Montana plains and rinse the grasses briefly to green, spadefoot toads (Spea bombifrons) will stir for the first time in a year and clamber from burrows beneath the soil’s frostline to the surface. There they will congregate in pools of snowmelt and rainwater, and they will sing.
After several long moments the bird erupted out of the water, landing on its stone while droplets rolled off its tightly woven feathers, a look of nonchalance twinkling in its chocolate-brown eye. I blinked. A diving songbird? I thought I knew water birds: ducks, ospreys, bald eagles, kingfishers. But here was a robin-sized bird using river stones as diving boards, doing who knows what in currents too strong for me to cross.
One warm, sunny day I saw a crow squatting low on a large ant hill, head high, wingtips outstretched and fluttering softly on the ground. I had never seen this behavior before and I wondered if she might be injured. I watched her with concern before she stood up, briefly picked at her feathers, and flew away.
One afternoon while balcony-bird-watching, my attention was captured by a tiny black speck aggressively pursuing much larger birds, undeterred by the threat of sharp beaks and deadly talons. With equal measure, he intimidated crows, Osprey, eagles, vultures, and herons away from his territorial claim along the riverbank. With my binoculars and guidebook in hand, I identified him as a male Red-winged Blackbird after he flashed the telltale red and yellow striped epaulets on his shoulders, and loudly sang, “CONK-LA-REEEEE!” when he settled on a shoreline tree branch.
Many little creatures are decomposers and their lives depend on the death of others; such is the cycle of life. Recycling in its truest form!
Bird surveys in my backyard. I look forward to doing them every morning when I wake up. What species will I get today?
Whenever you walk out your door into your yard, alley, or front stoop you will likely see them: little brown birds in raucous groups of up to 200 individuals. Many see them as pests and because they are small, brown, nondescript, and everywhere they are often overlooked. They are House Sparrows (Passer domesticus).
The Lakota call it the tree of life, due to the star, and use its branches in their Sun Dance ceremony. Dakota Native Americans tell a story of a little star who wanted to hear the sounds and songs of humans and hid in the cottonwood so as not to disturb the people as they worked.
A La Niña event typically lasts from 9 to 12 months, and occurs roughly once every three to five years, often following its counterpart, El Niño. Both events influence weather throughout North America and beyond, though these changes manifest in different ways throughout various regions.
What began as a hike to enjoy an early autumn afternoon transformed into a mission to sow and grow a stand of Pinus ponderosa from seed. I had become enthralled by this possibility as I traversed miles of trails shaded by canopies of pine in Missoula’s Rattlesnake Valley.
When air warms unevenly near the surface of the earth, it rises in giant bubbles toward colder layers in the atmosphere. Some birds seek out these rising masses of air, riding them like elevators while looking for prey.
On a warmish day the first spring we were here, I was out walking the dogs and as I passed the birch my eye was caught by the reddish-orange forewing band of dozens of red admiral butterflies lined up along a seam running down the side of the trunk.
We gripped the ice-covered railings of the large pool and submerged ourselves in the warm, welcome embrace of the 110° mineral-rich water. The cold air over the hot pools was thick with fog. Before the warm water lulled us into a floating slumber, we jumped out into the ice-cold air, our bodies steaming, to freeze a little before returning to the comfort of the pool.
Smaller than a beaver, bigger than the common rat, these curious rodents are actually aquatic voles.
"Soil creep" is the gradual movement of the substrate downhill over time. It’s a slow process, but all the soil on a slope is moving. Importantly for trees, the soil moves more quickly on the surface than deeper down.
I am always surprised to see moss exposed in wintertime. Hiking on trails or backcountry roads, I encounter moss-covered rocks, or mossy ledges that crop out on the slope, like a bed where the quilt has been pulled back part way and you can see the sheets peeking out underneath.
A flutter of striking black, white, and grey outside the window caught my attention, and as I walked closer I saw a dozen large-bodied, sharp-beaked birds hopping around on the treed hillside. The Clark’s Nutcrackers are here again!
The moon lit up my yard that morning, when I went out with the dogs at 6:30. Recently fallen snow in the surrounding Sapphire foothills reflected the full moon’s light. I could see almost as well as during the day. The horses in the pasture watched us, as I’m sure they do each morning, though we usually can’t see them. The trees and shrubs glowed in the bluish predawn.
In my estimation, the Black-capped Chickadee deserves the ornithology award as the ultimate prepper for the long, cold Montana winter. These songbirds must survive on stored seeds until the spring when they can again enjoy a more robust omnivorous diet. Weighing about the same as a AAA battery, Black- capped Chickadees spend the shortening days canvassing for seeds to store in hundreds of tiny hiding places embedded in their ten-mile territory.
The change in my cat’s fur reminds me of a larger-scale transition undergone by the snowshoe hare. This hare sheds her brown summer coat at the end of autumn while growing new fur that is not only thicker, but another color altogether to help stay aligned with the change in seasons.
Imagine being on the shore of the Western Interior Seaway, 73 million years ago, near what is now Fort Peck Lake and the Charles M. Russell National Wildlife Refuge. (Yes, Montana once had beachfront property along a huge, warm, shallow inland sea!) You spy elasmosaurid Nakonanectes bradti as she comes up for air, showing teeth the size of a great white shark’s.
I have the greatest opportunity to observe the phenology of the ever-present white-tailed deer. White-tailed deer are delightful to watch as they graze in the meadow in spring and summer, gather around a fallen spruce to munch on sweet lichens, or leap over fallen logs, their white fluffy tails waving like flags.
I looked up into the starry night and a flood of emotions came over me as I thought about my T̓at̓áyaqn (Bitterroot Salish) ancestors who hunted this way for thousands of years. All of a sudden, snčlčlép (coyotes) began howling and I felt this strong connection to my ancestors and the bison. This hunt helped me realize the sacred significance of bison to my people and I wanted to find out more about these glorious animals.
Tail feathers, and tails in general, provide a variety of functions for different animal species. The prehensile tails of monkeys in Central and South America are the ultimate fifth appendage. These tails can be used for grasping and hanging from branches and manipulating objects. Curiously, while African monkey species often have similar tails, none have grasping prehensile tails.
Visitors to Montana’s Jim Girard Memorial Tamaracks Grove near Seeley Lake have differing reactions when viewing Gus for the first time. I was awed by the 163-foot height, craning my neck to see the very tippy top and then tilting back even further to view the additional 10 feet of dead tree top.
The beach in question is characteristic of beaches everywhere there have been glaciers: covered in well-sorted, multi-hued pebbles. There’s a rock on this beach for every personality.
They’re in my yard, in a yard two blocks away, or on someone’s front porch chewing pumpkins. It’s rare that I take my daily four-mile trek without seeing these white-tailed wonders, often grazing near the sidewalk, seemingly unafraid.
There I was, calmly taking a shower, when I realized I was not alone. Sitting on top of a bottle of shampoo waving its antennae and staring at me with its red eyes was a Boisea trivittata. Despite their scientific label, there is nothing trivial about these ubiquitous pests known to us by their common name: boxelder bugs.
As we entered a conifer thicket, we happened upon an animal I was not expecting on dry land – a snail – creeping along the curved trunk of a young fir tree.
For millennia mosses have been used as insulation, diapers, and in many other ways that require absorption. I had to know more.
Their height and orange-brown bark, scaly and large-patterned, drew me to them, but I knew little else about them.
Historically, Trumpeter Swans covered much of North America, but by 1932, a National Park Service survey found only 69 trumpeters in the entire contiguous United States. This spurred a conservation effort that included a feeding program in the Red Rocks National Wildlife Refuge near Dillon, Montana.
An angry phoenix, the new bird appeared stretching its wings, repeatedly slapping the surface as it kept launching its body upright, almost leaping out of the water. All the while, it called out, the trembling sound of a woodwind instrument bouncing off the dense bowl of that valley.
Where initially the herd was scattered throughout the sage along the forest edge, they had now moved toward the road and were gathered together in a tight cluster. They were nervous, gazing toward the trees, ears cocked forward. They paced anxiously, some spinning in circles. I could hear a lot of mewing and a few barked alarms. These are clear signs a predator was near, probably the grizzly bear and cubs I had spotted in the area the day before.
In murder mysteries, the protagonist is often surprised to find a crime. A national park was the last place we expected one.
The canopy opens where a shallow stream crosses the path, revealing two small, silvery blue butterflies flitting about in slow and bouncy patterns. As I find my footing rock-by-rock across the stream, I recall an unusual aspect of the life cycle of these butterflies.
On a warm June day, at our farm in the Mission Valley, I was watching my husband and son play in the yard, honeybees from our two colonies buzzing nearby. Suddenly, my attention was captured by a steady increase in the number of bees on the air, catching and refracting sunlight with their golden bodies.
Sage is suddenly everywhere—everywhere, that is, where it’s not too parched even for this hardiest of dryland flora. Low, vertical cliffs of tan sandstone have replaced the steep, evergreen-covered mountains as the dominant landform. We have just entered another world: the Bighorn Basin.
While we łoqʷm t sox̣ʷép (cleaned the roots), I listened to them reminisce on old stories, told with our Indian humor. The day was full of laughter and joy and connecting to our culture.
There’s not much that brings me more pure joy in springtime than a hillside full of yellow bouquets of arrowleaf balsamroot (Balsamorhiza sagittata).
For two weekends in May, I visited a pale yellow goldenrod crab spider living on a bright gold heart-leaved arnica flower outside my family’s cabin on Flathead Lake.
Riparian zones are found along the banks of a river, stream, or other moving water source, surrounded by vegetation that relies on water. These habitats are home to a wide range of flora and fauna that meet birds’ survival needs.
In its quiet presence my anguish receded until I had calmed, feeling drained and open to the world again. Since that experience I have wondered—was that real? Are Blue Jays capable of empathy?
The American Dipper is one of my favorite birds. I love the movement they make standing in shallow water or on a rock, the bend in the ankle and rhythm of their bouncing reminiscent of a dance. Mostly, though, I love that they are one of the only birds that stays in southwestern Montana through the winter.
Walking along the bicycle path in Polson one April afternoon, I was surprised to see a thumb-sized lump of coal lumbering with great purpose across the pavement. Insect-starved just as much as I was sun-starved from a long winter, I rushed over and squatted down to find a black insect with an iridescent-blue sheen, its head and thorax built like a husky ant, and its abdomen fat yet sleek like a huge, black clove of garlic.
Humans’ age-old habits of building houses and infrastructure and digging up food have created ideal habitat for dandelions for thousands of years. But they haven’t always been hated and dubbed “weeds.” The plant originated in Europe and Asia, where people valued dandelions for medicine, food, and wine.
By the end of the 19th century, and in less than a generation, Chief Plenty Coups and his people had shifted from being nomadic buffalo hunters to living a more individualized, agriculture- based existence. Today, Chief Plenty Coups State Park south of Billings near Pryor, Montana, chronicles the unimaginably swift changes his people underwent and adapted to.
Alpenglow. Those fleeting moments of purple mountain majesty. That time of day when the snow-capped peaks seem almost ethereal as they are awash in violets, pinks, oranges, and reds. But what actually is it?
What is so lovely and reassuring, somehow, is that the migratory birds, from Montana and elsewhere, turn up on cue, as they have been doing for thousands of years.
Today, I stand in the same early morning sunlight but on dry ground, looking up and west at what the Blackfeet call the “Backbone of the World,” the Rocky Mountain Front. I tip my head all the way back to look way up at this reef, now transformed by time.
Cedar basket trees are an example of culturally modified trees, or CMTs, in this case identified by the large scars or strips of missing bark that the Salish peoples used to make their cedar bark baskets. CMTs reveal the behavior of Indigenous peoples and their gathering routines. Studying when and where CMT scars appeared helps uncover the Salish ecological knowledge systems and culture.
What I have learned is that, despite the obvious difference in weight between human brains (tipping the scale at about three pounds) and chickadee brains (similar in weight to a raisin), there are commonalities in structure and function between the two species.
Near Butte, Montana we found ourselves traveling through a boulder field. It was a wonder to behold! Seeing these boulders for the first time I had to ask myself, "What happened here?"
The binoculars revealed a silver-gray owl close to two feet in height, with patches of brownish-gray barring throughout. Its facial disc was broad with a black patch under its muted yellow beak. Just below the black patch were two horizontal white patches, which looked like a butler’s bow tie. Two whitish feather mounds created an X pattern between its eyes.
Bright red berries. Glossy red berries that gleamed like a beacon in the shade. Berries that whispered “eat me” in a hue of red so vivid it promised death. I stopped and stared. That red. Into my mind, suddenly blank of everything except those berries, a word dropped like a pebble into a still pool: tantalizing.
The chemistry professor in me can’t watch that shift from wood to ash without asking questions. Why is heat leaving the burning wood? Was the heat there all along, just waiting for me to strike a match?
Recently, I have been thinking about the food chain that sustains the wildlife here. Where does it begin? When did it begin? What if I looked more deeply than what I can see with my eye? I want to learn about the microbiome of this wonderful area.
When the queen-to-be hatches, worker bees will feed her a strict diet of rich royal jelly. After another five and a half days the larva changes into a pupa, and seven days later the new queen's cell is sealed shut to hide her from my prying eyes.
Two-dimensional sheets of transparent muscovite, a mineral in the mica family that once formed in layers on the ocean floor, adorn the cliffs and peaks of the mountains and the rocks of the Bass Creek drainage. Iron-stained schist, a coarse-grained rock made of potassium feldspar and quartz, delightedly flaunted the sheets of muscovite on its orange surface, as if they were diamonds.
It was a beautiful day for birding. There were broken clouds allowing the March sun to peek through, taking away the morning chill. A gentle breeze blew, keeping temperatures comfortable as the day progressed.
I often feel that new words come to me at the exact right moment. This fall, I had one of those moments of synchronicity, when I began to see the word "irruption" in various places - a word that until then was unfamiliar to me. (Rather than “eruption” like a volcano, "irruption" is spelled with an i and two rs.) Typically used in conjunction with the word "event," an irruption event describes birds that move southward when there is a shortage of food in their home range.
With the joy of birding comes the fear of getting dropped on. Recently, my seven-year-old daughter carefully watched a pair of Canada geese sitting on an old ponderosa pine snag. She was looking for an owl’s nest below, turned to me and wondered: “Why is bird poop white?” Wanting to make this a memorable homeschool experience during our pandemic times, I found fascinating answers and unearthed a recent, surprising revolution in the world of bird poop research.
My eyes open at 5:00 a.m. I see my breath billow towards the top of my tent as I sigh at the blaring intrusion of a battery-operated alarm clock. I must hustle if I want any shot at boiling the pot of water necessary for a hot breakfast. Fumbling around for my least stench-ridden set of clothes, the reality slowly creeps into my head: I am a field biologist.
Moon dogs have many names: lunar halos, moon rings, or winter rings. Their scientific name is “paraselenae” and they are made visible by a combination of specific circumstances.
A couple of weekends ago, some friends and I got up early to drive into the Flint Creek Range near Anaconda. We planned to hike through an area that we’d been told was home to some 800 elk, 150 big horn sheep, 30 mountain goats, black bear, and moose. We walked up the trail with great anticipation for a day of spectacular wildlife viewing.
This summer, while watching white-crowned sparrows, pine siskins and Cassin's finches feeding on the sunflower seeds we’d scattered on the rail of the cabin porch, I had the experience of a black-capped chickadee eating out of my hand as I sat, statue-like, palm out, lifted and flat.
I've seen white-tailed does and fawns in my yard all spring and summer. But just last week I saw two bucks. Why would bucks show up now, when it seemed that only does and fawns lived in the area? Well, if spring is for the birds, then fall would have to be the season for ungulates.
A small dark blur upslope materialized into a loping wolverine, coming straight toward us! Afraid this wolverine wanted to share our lunch, we left our backpacks where they lay, and hurried out of its path.High on the west side of Logan Pass in Glacier National Park, bloated marmots grazed and pikas chirped, darting over rocks with mouths full of grass and flowers. My family and I were enjoying lunch, noting our luck in relative seclusion from the crowds often drawn to this popular pass.
Lichens are a combination of fungi and algae living together in a symbiotic relationship. In this symbiosis, the fungi and algae benefit from each other. This evolutionary adaptation allows lichens to grow in some incredibly harsh environments: in deserts and in the Arctic, on barren tundra and on bare rock. Lichens grow in such rugged environments that some early naturalists thought they existed on nothing but air and sunlight.
Thirty-plus years ago when I was studying wildlife management at Oregon State University, we learned that Ceanothus was a highly preferred forage plant for deer and elk during the winter. I knew that Ceanothus was the genus name of a large group of western shrubs and I even knew enough to recognize a few of the individual species back then.
How devastating are wildfires to deer and elk? Can most of them outrun or outflank a rapidly spreading fire? And what about the survivors when they return to a burned forest? Isn’t their habitat destroyed?
When most people think of the threatened or endangered species of Montana, they tend to focus on the iconic animals of the West: the grizzly bear, the wolf or the Canadian lynx. But there's far less attention placed on the rarest Montana mammal and the only ferret species endemic to North America.
Braving horseflies the size of quarters and the searing afternoon sun, I ramble on a steep hillside like a bear, gorging for her long winter's nap. What could inspire such action? Huckleberries, of course. A recent trip to Glacier Park proved I wasn't alone in my obsession.
Bats are wonderful, mysterious creatures: they swoop gracefully through the night, and sometimes through our nightmares. We fear what we don't understand, and most of us know little about bats. They behave in strange ways: only breeding when it's rainy, giving birth upside down, and sharing as a group the responsibility of nursing young. However, these seemingly unusual activities make them very interesting creatures as well.
Last summer I was helping teach a geology field camp near Dillon. On our way back to the Birch Creek Outdoor Education Center each day, after long hours in the August sun spent identifying and mapping incredible exposures of rock, we would drive past a few crumbling cabins beneath an unweathered cliff face footed by large piles of scree.
If you take a walk through fields this time of year, you can't help but notice what looks like gobs of frothy white spit on the stems of grasses and weeds. If you brush away the spit, you'll find a bright green froghopper or spit bug with shiny black eyes. In a few weeks it'll have wings and hind legs that can propel it great distances - hence the name frog hopper. But at this stage of its life, all it can do is crawl. And since its body is soft and subject to drying out, it needs a way to protect itself from enemies and the sun. It does so with spit. But the spit doesn't come from the bug's mouth.
August had just begun when a friend delivered my first hand-me-down squash of the summer: a round, green variegated giant that had reached the size of a jack-o-lantern seemingly overnight, just the way squash like to do.
In the summer, folks come home from work at their jobs and hang out in their yards - they mow the lawn or weed the garden or have barbecues. I don't cook much, but just before dark I like to have a couple of friends over. We get out the beach chairs, face them toward the garden and get ready for my favorite summer evening entertainment. We watch my evening primroses open. It's positively thrilling. They’re yellow evening primroses – oenotherea flava. During the day, the flower buds are tightly closed, forming little cones, but each evening the buds burst and four beautiful pale yellow petals unfurl in about sixty seconds. It's like watching Disney time-lapse photography. The flowers then stay open all night, but are closed up again before noon the next day. Why are the flowers opening at night and how do they know when it's getting dark?