blackberry season

Right about now, your tomato vines need you to pick their first fruit so they will grow a dozen more. It is tempting to wait for the first red fruit, but foolish. A green tomato harvest is a must for a bountiful year. Do not succumb to red's seduction.

Instead, harvest a handful or two of the ripest blackberries you can find, toss them in oil with a chopped onion or leek, salt and a dose of dry spices. Cook to submission, then toss a layer of basil and other fresh herbs onto the pile and smother with green tomato chunks. Cook it down to a sauce. When the blackberry seeds are cooked, your sauce is done. They like it if you share your wine.

Serve the resulting sauce over pasta, fish, rice, tofu, tempeh, vegetables or meat, which you can toss into the pan if the sauce refuses to thicken. Happy green tomato season!

nest update

This morning the blue-headed vireos were vigorously defending their territory from a blue jay. Though it was much higher up in the trees than their nest, the pair was scolding and dive-bombing the jay, hoping to drive it off.

Unfortunately they may be protecting a young cowbird. The noise overhead roused a hungry nestling, just one, its eyes still closed. It seems too large already. Cowbird nestlings eject their nestmates, so seeing just one head is a bad sign. I checked the ground beneath the nest for evidence and found nothing, but such a morsel probably would have been found by a possum or raccoon on its nightly prowl. I fear my guests may be raising a chick that is not their own.

science for the fishies

If you've read anything about commercial fishing in the past decade or two, you know that industrial fishing practices range from irresponsible to appalling. The worst practices cause major seafloor destruction and grotesque slaughter of "by-catch," marine life ranging from rough fish to sea turtles. Over the past century, countless fisheries have collapsed under the strain of unsustainable harvest, leaving regional economies in ruins while the global industry trudges blithely to its next victim.

The anonymous fish flesh that you buy frozen and breaded in the supermarket or fast-food restaurant is the product of a shadowy industry where breaches of treaties, boundaries and quotas are routine. Even when a seller makes promises about the origin of a fish, their claims are unreliable and unverifiable, until now.

The Economist reports that a European consortium has developed a DNA-sampling procedure that can ascertain not only which species of fish a fillet came from, but which ocean and population. Right now the technology only covers four major commercial species: cod, hake, herring and sole, but its scope will expand.

The device is not intended for consumers at the end of the supply chain, but for those who buy in quantity. As a consumer, you can help by being curious about fish you buy and responsive to labeling or the lack thereof. This new technology is a welcome development that should bring some honesty to a market that has thrived on obscuring links between products and the sometimes horrendous practices used in harvest.

new yard nester

Red-eyed vireos nest in my yard every year. They are wonderful birds and welcome guests, but this year a different vireo seemed to be settling in the yard. I had heard it singing for a week, longer than migrants stick around, but I still did not tell anyone for fear of jinxing it. I thought a blue-headed vireo might be taking up residence!

Both species are common in the eastern U.S., but red-eyed vireos are more widely distributed. Blue-headed vireos prefer higher elevations and deeper forests. When I first came to the South, it was to study neotropical migrants in Nantahala National Forest, and blue-headed vireos were abundant in that rare place.

Aside from reminding me of a special time and place, they are charming in their own right. They used to be called solitary vireos, a terrible misnomer since they almost always occur in pairs, chattering at each other like an old married couple. The only reason I can imagine for their former name is the melancholy tone of their song. That same endearing expressiveness comes through in all their vocalizations.

Also, they look like they are wearing spectacles.

Today I saw their nest just a few yards from my front porch in the lowest limb of a white oak.

most courageous scientist ever

History is full of scientists who are heroes: savers of lives, solvers of mysteries, builders of the future. They are, however, a pretty nerdy lot, achieving great feats of the mind like wrestling with mathematical equations, dismembering molecules and exploding paradigms, but rarely performing physical acts of courage and strength. Then there is Ken Sims, volcanologist from the University of Wyoming:

"He didn't have a hammer, so with a hard slam of his fist he broke off a piece of fresh lava. It was shiny, iridescent black, and so hot that, even wearing thermal gloves, he juggled it from hand to hand.

But he had it. The zero-age sample. Through a war zone, up a mountain, down a crater, to the edge of a lava lake, he had it. Now the science, at long last, could begin."

Read the whole shoe-melting tale of Congo's Nyiragongo volcano at National Geographic.

successful journey

The white spot near the center of this photo is proof of a successful journey. It is an egg. The female that laid it flew some 1500 miles to get to the meadow behind my house, where she and at least one other monarch butterfly have been fluttering around for a week or two depositing eggs, one at a time, on butterfly weed and common milkweed plants.

Their earliest eggs have already hatched. This weekend I saw caterpillars so small they must have just hatched and a couple that looked like they've had a few good meals. They will eat for several weeks, molt several times, and eventually attach themselves to a leaf or stem with silk, form a hard shell over their bodies and begin metamorphosis into a gorgeous orange, black and white butterfly.

The monarchs flitting about my meadow right now are not so gorgeous. The wear and tear of their flight to and from the mountains of Mexico clearly shows.



Not only are the wing edges tattered, the scales are worn or absent, leaving dull colors. Though monarchs are talented enough flyers to glide on a breeze, she has undoubtedly flapped those wings millions of times. Her abdomen is bare. Despite her appearance, her attitude is pure butterfly: exuberant, whimsical and sunny.

Here she is laying the egg pictured above:



Her offspring with be beautiful and richly colored, and they will seek mates in the meadows of Blount county, lay eggs on the same milkweed plants, and their offspring will grow big, pupate, emerge gorgeous and undertake the journey to Mexico before freezing temperatures arrive. One or two will return next spring, as they have for millions of years.

It all starts with an egg and a tiny caterpillar that will probably never wander from its natal milkweed until it grows wings.

spare the tent caterpillars

Don't hate me because I infest your cherry trees. Don't hate me because I may eat every leaf on the tree. I will not touch a single flower, you watch.

The tree will grow a new batch of leaves and produce a full crop of fruits all the birds will love. Some of those birds will even eat me after bashing me to death on a twig to knock off my hairs.

If you burn my tents, everyone suffers, especially the guilty. Me and the cherry trees made a pact a long time ago; who the hell are you?

post-flood spider web update

My friend Andrei noticed a link under one of the National Geographic photos that I had overlooked. It described a similar phenomenon at a park in Texas in 2007. During a wet period and an outbreak of midges and other aquatic and semi-aquatic insects, a tree near Lake Tawakoni became completely enmeshed in spider silk.

An arachnologist collected about 100 spiders from the webbing and identified species from 11 different families. The dominant species was Tetragnatha guatemalensis, a fairly common spider distributed throughout the Americas. This family, common name being long-jawed orb weavers, is riparian, typically building horizontal orb webs over water. They exhibit colonial behavior, tolerating neighbors to the extent of sharing thick, foundational silk strands within which they build their daily orb web. None are truly social. Their typical web looks nothing like the sheet webs covering these trees.

Research has shown that spiders' aggressiveness diminishes when food is plentiful. In flush times, it's common for a web-building spider to catch more prey than it can consume. What may have happened in Texas and Pakistan is floodwaters drove spiders whose normal habitat is edges of streams and rivers to refuge in trees. When rains subsided and the spiders began to seek places to build webs, flying insects were in such abundance that simple drag lines served as adequate traps. Instead of going to the trouble of constructing orbs, they just wandered around, leaving silk lines as all spiders do, too sated to bother with risky, aggressive interactions with other, similarly situated spiders.

The end result was a huge, disordered mass of silk covering entire trees and shrubs.

post-flood spider webs

National Geographic published this photo of trees covered in spider silk in Pakistan. This area was ravaged by major floods last year, and as waters receded, these trees became one giant web.

According to the article, floodwaters "drove millions of spiders into the trees," but this is highly unlikely. For starters, most spiders are not at all social. Another spider is just something to attack and eat. A tree full of stranded spiders would be a scene of carnage. Secondly, spiders build many different types of webs, but each species builds in a distinct style. These trees are almost surely colonized by a single species, not a collection of flood refugees.

There are a few species of social spiders, even one that occurs locally. I've seen their webs along Third Creek. They build a messy glob of silk most spiders would be ashamed of on branch tips over water. They look like the work of caterpillars, and these photos look like cherry trees infested with tent caterpillars.

The article includes no photos of the spiders, but I'm sure NatGeo is reliable on that account. My guess is these webs were built by social, riparian spiders. Rather than being driven to the trees by the flood, colonies probably experienced a population boom feasting on flies that feasted on the detritus of the flood.

luxury jets

I've long suspected that exhaust from airplanes, by virtue of being released high in the atmosphere, is more problematic than exhaust from cars and trucks. A new study in the prestigious journal Nature confirms that air travel causes more climate disruption, but not for the reason I imagined.

It turns out that condensation trails, or contrails, trigger formation of cirrus clouds much like those which form naturally. Cirrus clouds are high, thin and wispy, and they appear when moist air meets temperatures cold enough for ice formation. These clouds trap heat in the atmosphere, and the authors estimate that short-term warming from contrails is about equal to long-term warming from the plane's release of carbon dioxide. The climate footprint of air travel, therefore, is double what you'd calculate looking only at fuel consumption.

More study is needed to fully understand the climate impacts of jets, but it's safe to say that we need to view air travel as a luxury, not a convenience. In a gluttonous age, routine air travel may be our biggest indulgence.

pinkish gray

Though spring has just arrived, winged elms are already in seed. Orangish when they flowered in February, elms are now encased in a vaguely pinkish gray. When the seeds mature, they will dry and grow brittle enough to break from the twig in a wind. A shape not unlike a boat's propeller makes the oval seeds spin as they descend, keeping them aloft good distances from the parent tree.

Elm seeds also drift into piles like snow.

Redbuds are at the height of color, oaks dripping yellow with flowers. Tuliptrees are bringing an exuberant green to hillsides. Right now you can tell almost every species of local tree at a glance from its color and stage of growth. Maples, like elms, are growing seeds.

Most native trees flower first then leaf out, but a few grow leaves first. Every species has unique timing and sequence, and once you learn to notice, you can learn which is which. Some grow seeds right after the flowers fall off, others spend months growing fruits or nuts that mature in summer or fall.

Two of the main groups that have not yet broken bud are hickories and ashes. Both are about to go. They leaf and flower simultaneously.

bringer of butterflies

When cutleaf toothwort pokes through the leaves, falcate orangetip butterflies are not far behind. They are the primary native pollinator, a small white butterfly whose orange is but a blur. Falcate orangetips rarely spread their wings while perched, showing only the mottled grey underwings.

A glimpse of their orange is a treat, and sitting amid toothworts for a few minutes is your best approach. When they perch, their weight is enough to jostle the flower. They flutter while regaining balance, and occasionally the wings don't fold up all the way, leaving the orange exposed.

I thought I would see one last weekend, but I only saw a mourning cloak and a question mark. I had to dig up a falcate orangetip photo from 2008.

These butterflies are close relatives of sulfur, cabbage and white butterflies, Pierids. One of the more speciose local families, more than a dozen species may be seen in Southern Applachia, most are a good bit larger than toothwort's friend.

they're here

Toothworts sprouted today. Most have a good bit of growing left before they flower, but that will not take long while the days are as warm and bright as today. Soon our woods will be sprinkled with a pinkish white that is the starter's pistol on the wildflower bloom, cutleaf toothwort.

Sure, bloodroot and hepatica can emerge earlier, but their appearance does not foretell spring like Dentaria laciniata. Bloodroot and hepatica are hard to find, whereas toothwort is all over the place. It is the uncurling of their stalks that defines the start of spring, and it was today.