November 2011 – Seabrooke Leckie

PFG to Moths latest, and new posting schedule

Book tour!

Let’s start with the fun stuff! The final set of corrections were sent back to the publisher for the moth guide about a week and a half ago. I believe the last of the changes were made last week, before the US Thanksgiving, and this week the files will be headed off to the printer for the first set of advance review copies. I think that’s where we’re at. In any case, the book continues to move ahead, and we’re still on target for the April 3, 2012 release date.

I’m excited to announce that I’ll be doing a mini book tour in the spring to promote the guide and to hopefully share the mothing experience with folks. I am going to be at the New River Birding and Nature Festival in West Virginia from Wednesday May 2 to Saturday May 5. I’ll be running moth nights in the evenings, and I’ll be participating in at least a couple of nature walks during the day. Though I’ve never been to this festival, I’m very excited about it – I hear great things about it every year from people who have gone, and some of my favourite nature bloggers will be there (you can check out the list of experts here).

The other confirmed date (so far) will be with the Athol Bird and Nature Club in Athol, Massachusetts, on Saturday May 12. The evening will be hosted by David Small, who runs the ABNC’s annual Moth Ball (heehee). I am also looking forward to this stop; people who have attended the moth balls have always had a lot of fun, and David is a really friendly guy.

More info to come regarding these two events. We’re not sure yet if David Beadle will be able to join me on this tour or not, so that info will also follow.

Update: More locations have been confirmed! Columbus, OH on May 1; Shepherdstown, WV on May 7/8; Millersburg, PA on May 8/9; East Brunswick, NJ on May 10; Ithaca, NY on May 13. More details on these to follow.

I’m obviously going to have some nights open between those dates. I’d love to fill them with moth nights in other locations. I’ll also be driving down, and back, and will have the opportunity to make stops along the way.

Before I make arrangements myself anywhere else, I want to throw it open to all of you. If you’d be interested in having me do a night for your local nature club or nature centre, let me know! I can be slightly flexible in where I go and when. Currently, my list of dates(nights)/locations looks like this (click for a larger version):

Dates in red are set. (May 14 is my intended return home.) The green areas are meant only as a guideline as to the rough area I’d be looking to be in on each night. This can definitely be flexible within a day either way – if you’re in the May 8 blob but May 7 or May 9 would be better, I can probably do that. Blobs are just rough guidelines, too – if you’re just outside one but want me to come let me know and I’ll see if it’ll work with the dates on either side.

I will be selling books at these events (for the cover price) – you could buy one there or bring your own, if you’d like to have it signed in person. If David isn’t able to join me, the ones I’ll have with me will hopefully still be signed by him, too. I may also have promotional posters available for sale, but will need to look into this.

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Signed books!

It’s taken me a little while to get myself organized and set this up, but I’m now offering signed books that you can order through my website here. I’m afraid I can’t compete with Amazon’s prices, but if you’d like your copy personalized and signed by David and myself, and don’t mind paying a little extra to cover shipping, you can order here.

Books will be $35 US – this covers the cost of the book as well as the cost of shipping. Strangely, shipping to the US seems to be about the same as to Canada. If you’re overseas, the cost is $40 US and it’ll take a little longer to reach you. You’ll be able to specify who you want the book signed to.

If you’ve already pre-ordered through Amazon or another retailer but would like a signed book instead, you should still be able to cancel your order there since it hasn’t shipped yet.

You can pay by PayPal or by cheque (snail mail). The PayPal button should allow you to put in everything you need there, but I’ll confirm each order and get your personalization from you then if necessary. If you’d like to pay by cheque, contact me with your order and I’ll give you a snail mail address. Books won’t ship till the release date in April, of course.

USA/Canada orders – $35 USD

International orders – $40 USD

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And finally…

Posting schedule

Come January, I will have been running this blog for four years. Hard to believe it’s been that long; it’s amazing how time slips by. Over those years my life has changed a lot. I started the blog while living in Toronto; I’ve since moved twice, once to the lake house and again to our current residence. I started the blog when the moth guide was only a wisp of an idea, if that; it’s now only a few short months from publication. I started the blog when I was still figuring out which way I wanted to take my life; I think I’ve got that mostly nailed down now.

If I’m honest, the novelty has definitely worn off. My many interests and passions pull me in numerous ways, and the blog has to share space in my brain with all the rest. I still discover interesting things while I’m out hiking, but I find my walks becoming more about giving my mind some quiet time to organize itself than about peering closely at things. As often as not, and especially with the colder weather setting in, I find myself leaving the camera at home. When I do take it out, I don’t always come back with photos.

Don’t worry, I’m not shutting down the blog. But I’ve had to take a very honest look at myself and what I want to do with it. I gave myself permission to take these last few weeks off from posting, for the most part, while I figured that out. It’s a lot of work, blogging. And if the passion for the subject isn’t there, it can feel more like a chore than a fun hobby. I’d really like to return to my original posting schedule of three or four times a week, but I find I run out of time or don’t feel motivated by any of the subjects I have. And then I feel guilty when I don’t post. I know now that that posting frequency is optimistic.

But I do have photos I still want to share. I still run into neat things on my walks. So I’m setting myself a new posting schedule: every Wednesday (though it may go up late, so my readers might not see it till Thursday). If I give myself a strict schedule to post to, I’m much more likely to stick to it. If I have time and interest, I’ll also post on weekends.

You can also find posts/updates from me (shorter ones) on the Peterson Field Guides’ Facebook page (I don’t think you need to be on Facebook in order to read it), or on my Twitter account. You can also subscribe to my blog, or the RSS feed in a feed reader such as Google Reader, if it will help make it easier to follow.

Bald-faced Hornet nest

While out walking the other day I discovered a huge paper wasp nest attached to the bottom branches of one of the small bur oak saplings in our meadow. I brought my camera today when I went out to get some photos as I did some investigation.

The nest was gigantic, by my sense of wasp standards. I’m used to the little Polistes nests that hang from the ceiling of your garage and such; they rarely get much bigger than a fist, though some particularly enthusiastic colonies might manage to produce one that’s cantaloupe-sized. But this was huge; bigger even than my head. Half the size of Jack. Probably a good 14 inches (35 cm) top to bottom.

The lower branches and leaves of the sapling had been completely integrated into the structure of the nest. I don’t often see wasp nests in trees, but I’m pretty sure that all the ones I’ve seen previously hung by a peduncle and didn’t incorporate any tree bits.

It seemed funny that I hadn’t noticed this at all during the summer, but the grass gets quite long and it would’ve been well-hidden; I would probably have needed to walk right past the sapling to have seen it before the grass began to die back. Even now, from the main trail it was still hard to detect.

Feeling fairly comfortable in the knowledge that paper wasps don’t overwinter in their nests, I decided to open it up. I still used a stick to do it – I wasn’t feeling that confident – but my suspicions were confirmed: the nest was empty. At the end of the summer, the entire thriving colony dies with the frost. Only the new queens, which have already gone on mating flights and been fertilized, overwinter. Next spring they’ll emerge and start building a new nest, tending the eggs themselves until the first brood of workers are grown and able to start helping out.

It’s interesting to see all the layers of paper around the exterior of the comb. These provide not only protection against the elements but also thermoregulation; all those narrow pockets of air act as insulation, helping to keep the inside of the nest cool even in the summer heat.

I pulled the comb out from the center to have a closer look. It turned out to be two layers thick, with the second layer separated by a gap of about a centimetre (1/2 inch) or so. Each cell was about 3/4 inch (almost 2 cm) deep and perhaps 1/3 inch (8 mm) across. I’m looking at those cells and thinking: these were big wasps, whatever they were. The cells in typical Polistes nests aren’t that big.

All of the cells were empty. The paper that made up the walls of the cells was thin and somewhat brittle, but the two combs seemed to have a reinforcing network of stiff paper arches bracing one comb against the other. You can see a couple here, on the left, looking like swirling flat pieces of paper tucked into the middle of the comb. The ones on the top I don’t think served any purpose yet; I think they were built in preparation for another third comb to be added, but the approach of winter cut short construction.

I love the paper created by paper wasps. It’s so firm, but you can see each layer of pulp that was added to form the wall. The paper is grayish but the tones and hues vary depending on the source of the pulp: some quite pale, some dark, some reddish or yellowish. About 2 mm (1/8 inch) wide and up to an inch (2.5 cm) or more long, each wall is made up of hundreds of trips to scrape wood fibers from dead wood. (This may include your deck or pieces of untreated plywood around your home.)

In the very bottom of the nest I discovered a single dead individual, the only one left, caught in a fold of the paper. The identity of the nestmakers revealed: they were Bald-faced Hornets, Dolichovespula maculata. Actually a type of yellowjacket, I believe it’s the only native North American wasp with the common name “hornet”. True hornets are members of the genus Vespa, of which there is only one in North America, the introduced European Hornet (Vespa crabro).

Most of the yellowjackets do have a lot of yellow on them, but there’s one species that’s mostly dark and commonly called a Blackjacket. So maybe this would more aptly be called the Bald-faced Blackjacket? The “bald-faced” part, of course, refers to the pale forehead and face (bald being an old english term for this, still often used in describing animals, especially horses).

Check out the stinger at the end of the abdomen. I was very careful while I handled it, just in case. ;)

Doe, a deer

A few days ago we had a deer wander through our front yard. Dan noticed her while she was browsing along the side of our driveway and called me down. I took a number of photos as she wandered slowly through, not far from the house, before finally heading off to the forest across the meadow.

I don’t see a lot of deer, but they’re definitely around: I see tracks regularly once the snow falls, and the dogs have made an art out of sniffing out piles of deer droppings to roll in. We’ve startled one or two while out on walks, but for the most part rarely encounter them during the day. The last time I recall seeing a lot of a daytime White-tail on our property was when Joe Buck came to visit a couple of Thanksgivings ago.

Joe Buck was, of course, a buck; this one’s obviously a doe. Around this time of fall deer are starting to enter the annual rut, when the females go into estrus. Males will get so caught up in their pursuit of females that they’ll stop spending much time eating; besides the size of his antlers, Joe Buck was always foraging when we saw him so I knew he was a youngster. The females, however, go about business as usual. I’m not sure, therefore, if this female is old enough to mate. Does don’t reach sexual maturity until their second fall, but I don’t know if their behaviour changes much between their first and second year, the way it does with males.

About 30 subspecies of White-tailed Deer are currently recognized. Ours is Odocoileus virginianus borealis, which ranges from western Ontario to eastern Canada and neighbouring states south to southern Ohio and New Jersey. Like most animals, the subspecies of the north are larger-bodied with smaller extremities. Deer in southern parts of the continent can be noticeably smaller, with larger ears and longer legs. Beyond that, there are some differences in the tone of body colouration or antler size… but for the most part they seem to be subtle and sometimes gradual and indistinctly defined to populations. The only really distinct populations seem to be fairly isolated, such as those on islands. The smallest are the White-tails of the Florida Keys, which only reach a height of 24 to 30 inches at the shoulder (compare to 4 feet for our northern deer).

I find that white throat patch interesting. I wonder if it serves a purpose? I started out checking the subspecies descriptions to see if it was perhaps present in some but not others, but doesn’t seem to be mentioned, as far as I can tell.

She came right up to the garden and nosed around a bit but didn’t seem to find anything to her liking. When Joe Buck was coming around, he’d nibble on my hostas and some of the other plants there. Deer can often be a problem in gardens, but we haven’t had trouble with them here. Maybe I’m just not growing appealing plants.

The very last moths

Last night as Dan was going to bed he told me there were a couple of moths at the front door. It had been a lovely afternoon, very spring-like in its mildness, but it was still quite chilly by the time the sun set. When I went down to check out the moths, the thermometer read 2°C (35°F), which is hardly a temperature that a moth should be out and about at.

But some of my surprise disappeared when I saw which species the two moths were. Both at the front light, and three more individuals at the back light, were Bruce Spanworms (Operophtera bruceata). Up here where I live, these are usually the last species of moth I see flying each fall. They’re particularly cold-hardy and I often see them active at temperatures that would keep most other species from flying (such as last night). They’re frequently seen out and about during the day, too, pale fluttery insects that catch the low autumn sun on mild afternoons.

The appearance of the Bruce Spanworms heralds the end to the mothing season for this year. Now that it’s November (how did that happen?) there may only be a couple more nights where the temperatures are warm enough for stuff to be flying, and like last night, they’ll likely be mostly these spanworms. Time to pack up the lights and the sheet and the jars for another year. They’ll be tucked away in the basement for the next four months, awaiting the first moth of spring on a mild evening in March.