Two twitchers

It’s the season of the twitchers, the fledgling birds that seem to get so excited at the prospect of food that their bodies shimmy and shake with excitement.

Most of our songbirds are altricial – like humans, they are born helpless and need to be waited on, break and foot, by their parents. To be fed, the youngest simply hold open mouths so wide, they seem to dwarf their bodies. As they grow older, they add voices to their food demands. And by the time they leave the nest, they twitch for attention – standing on a branch, wildly wiggling their bodies and their slightly open wings as a parent approaches with dinner.

This behavior may have inspired the British word, twitcher, which means a fanatic bird-watcher: It is said that true twitchers go into uncontrollable spasms of excitement at the sighting of a new species. So the next time you see a young sparrow or robin twitching for its lunch, think of an otherwise staid Englishman in his tweeds, binoculars raised, posterior all a-wiggle at the joy of spotting a Long-tailed Tit.

June snow

The air in parts of town has been full of fluff, white fuzzies drifting in the breezes like impossible June snowflakes. It’s the season for the cottonwood to cast its future to the wind and, like the lowly dandelion, to set countless cotton-covered seeds adrift to find new home sites, often covering the ground with white.

The Eastern Cottonwood is a wetland-loving poplar, a group of trees with more than usual ties to the wind. The leaves and their stems are shaped in a way that makes them move in even the slightest breeze. They shake – or quake, as in the Quaking Aspen, another poplar.

No one is quite sure why they wiggle, but the creative minds of the past devised reasons. Legend has it, for instance, that Christ’s cross was hewn from a poplar and that ever after, the tree has trembled with fear at the awful deed to which it was a party. Perhaps that explains why today, its lumber is considered so poor that it is used mostly for packing crates and pallets.

The weed wars

The airwaves have been bursting with commercials warning of ugly invaders called dandelion, chickweed, and crabgrass. Chemical answers are offered, and Americans will spend billions in the war against weeds.

Why bother? What's so bad about having a few wildflowers mixed in with your grass? Why must all the lawn's greens looking monotonously alike? Why shouldn't a lawn, like a garden, have variety of color and shape?

Think of the advantages of a natural lawn: Less expensive (no chemicals to buy), less work (no weeding), fewer worries (buttercups won't bug you), fewer potential health hazards (that's poison you're pouring on those dandelions), more color and form (natural lawns are interesting, have variety, offer surprises), and more wildlife (songbirds love weed seeds).

The disadvantages? Well, you’ll still have to mow every week or two. And maybe it's a little tougher to practice your putting.

Zap the cracklers

Snap. Crackle. Pop.

The sound is not cereal but the death knell of the 71 billion insects killed annually in ``bug zappers.''

“Great,” you say. “The only good bug is a dead bug.”

The fact is, however, that most insects killed in zappers are beneficial or, at the least, not harmful or even annoying. Many are food for wildlife such as birds and fish. Others, like ladybugs and tiny wasps, attack and control harmful insects. Still others, including moths, are flower pollinators.

The mosquitoes and biting flies that owners think they’re killing aren’t even attracted to the device’s ultraviolet light. One scientific study of the contents of bug zappers found that of 13,789 bodies, only 31 were biting insects. That’s less than one-quarter of one percent and an incredible waste of not only life, but electricity.

The irony, the researchers said, is that bug zappers destroy many of the insects that kill and control mosquitoes and flies.

Do the world a favor and zap your zapper.

Dead meat

Some of our simplest-looking wildflowers offer some of the most sophisticated tricks for survival. Take the Red Trillium, for instance.

A handsome plant found in our open woods, Red Trillium bears big, three-petaled purple flowers in spring. The flowers are pretty, but they don’t mean to be. In fact, they mimic dead meat. The petals wear the color of carrion and the flower itself reeks with an odor among the most foul in nature.

The fakery is the trillium’s way of drawing flies. Unlike the many bee-oriented flowers, trillium uses flies for pollination. These are the same flies that explore the recently thawed forest floor, feeding on the carcasses of creatures that died over the winter. To a fly, a trillium looks and smells just like another spring corpse.

Unfortunately for trillium, the burgeoning numbers of White-tailed Deer have significantly cut its numbers in many areas.

It takes more than bad breath to offend a hungry deer.

Deadly balloons

Just when you think you’ve heard all the ways we’re messing up nature comes news of yet another problem: balloons.

Yes, those symbols of childhood festivities are killing fish, birds, and even sea turtles. A full-page feature in the latest issue of Connecticut Wildlife points out that helium-filled balloons can travel miles, frequently ending up in the ocean. Fish and sea turtles see a popped balloon, think its food, and eat it. The result is a blocked digestive system and death.

Birds often grab the washed-ashore strings as nesting material, but these strings too often get wound around the birds – both parents and nestlings – resulting in strangulation or starvation. Swimming waterfowl can become entangled in the floating strings.

The problem is serious enough that Connecticut passed a law, making it illegal to launch 10 or more helium balloons in a 24-hour period.

So the next time you throw a birthday party, keep the balloons, as well as the kids, under control.

A pink potato

Some wildflowers, like hepatica, anemone, and trillium, wear fancy Greek or Latin names. Others, like cohosh and poke, bear colorful American Indian labels. However, often the prettiest and most appropriate names are simple American English.

Such is Spring-beauty, whose name tells its story. In early spring groves of these small, pink flowers welcome the winter-weary, who head for the woods in search of the season of new life. The flowers seem so delicate – and in a sense, are, since they will quickly wilt if picked. Yet they are able to withstand freezing nights and raw days.

The Indians’ interest in Spring-beauty was more practical than esthetic. They knew that down below, the plant’s little round corm offered food, sweet and a bit nutlike, and wearing a skin like a potato. Indeed, they have been called wild potatoes. But an even better name, so typical of wonderful old English-language folk names for wildflowers, is fairy-spuds.