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Brumation of Box Turtles
Brumation is a bit like hibernation, but warm-blooded animals hibernate while reptiles and amphibians brumate. Somewhat different. Our box turtles that we’re so familiar with dig burrows in soft soil in late autumn as the weather cools. They often return to the same location year after year, often to a site that is covered with…
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Wood Frogs
I’m on the watch for the Wood Frogs (Lithobates sylvaticus) to arrive at my little manmade pond. During the cold of winter Wood Frogs hibernate in the soil under leaf litter where their bodies go through freeze and thaw cycles depending on weather conditions. In mid February they awaken from their hibernation and search for…
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Silvery Checkerspots
About a week ago I noticed a favorite patch of Woodland Sunflower, Helianthus divaricatus, being quickly gobbled up by gregarious, tiny caterpillars. I took pictures of the less than one half inch critters, and started pouring over my many books on butterflies, moths, and caterpillars. I always love a mystery – caterpillars eating beloved plants…
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Red-spotted Newt
I have an adult Red-spotted Newt, Notophthalmus viridescens, in my small pond. Doing research, and learning about this newt has been a fun journey. A type of salamander, they start out their life in a pond, marsh, stream or small lake, as an egg mass that resembles a big wad of cotton, attached to…
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My Winter Birds
Perhaps these are my pets, the birds that come to my feeders. Wild birds that give me comfort just by being there. The bird you see in the picture, above, is a winter bird in my area (the Blue Ridge Mountains of Virginia), a White-throated Sparrow, Zonotrichia albicollis. He has a sweet song that is easy to remember,…
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Toad Lily
Toad lily, Tricyrtis ‘Tojen’ The family of flowers that this hybrid cultivar is from – Tricyrtis – has 18 species. Some of the species are cultivated for their beauty. Looking on the web, at the variety of those cultivars, I think of orchids growing in the garden. They are that beautiful. My cultivars are…
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Black Bear Hibernation
Sleeping through some, or most of the winter, as Black Bears (Ursus americanus) do, has been referred to as winter sleep, carnivorean lethargy, dormancy or torpor. Now leading physiologists simply call this long sleep, hibernation. We humans sometimes get up in the middle of the night for a midnight snack. Black Bears are known to…