Dog Day Update

The Dog Days are well underway and the news so far is pretty good.

A hand-me-down from ancient times, the Dog Days extend from July 3 through Aug. 11. The Greeks and Romans knew that Sirius, the Dog Star, rose simultaneously with the sun during this period. They believed that since it was such a strong star, Sirius added to the sun’s heat, making the Dog Days the hottest time of the year.

English countrymen said that if it rained on the first Dog Day, the rain would continue for 40 days. Those who’ve inspected their lawns lately know well that, after a wet spring, the sun has been doing a lot of shining these dog days – except maybe for last Monday.

But that’s good, say the English, who also believed:

Dog days bright and clear

indicate a happy year.

But when accompanied by rain,

for better times our hope’s in vain.

Alien threats

Illegal immigrants are much in the news lately, but immigrants of a different sort are sneaking across our borders and causing havoc.

The Emerald Ash Borer, a beetle from Asia discovered here in 2002, has killed countless ash trees – more than 20 million in Michigan, Ohio and Indiana alone. It has cost towns, property owners, nurseries, and forest products industries – even baseball bat makers – tens of millions of dollars. It’s just one of a passel of insect and plant pests that have entered our country hidden in packaging or produce. Some problem plants, such as Purple Loosestrife, Japanese Knotweed and Yellow Flag Iris, were imported deliberately because of their beauty, only to become bulls in an environmental china shop.

Without natural controls, some alien plants spread wildly, pushing out native plants and in the process destroying ecologies that support many native birds, fishes, reptiles, amphibians, and insects.

What can we do? Know and destroy invasive plants. And insist that legislators support not only better surveillance of our ports of entry, but also research into combating imported pests that have already arrived.

Our leaders must understand that not all alien threats to our nation come from terrorists.

Does your furniture click?

Behold the beetle, perhaps the most successful of all life forms. One in every five species on Earth – including plants – is a kind of beetle. More than 24,000 different beetles live in North America alone.

Many are well-known. In July, for instance, we find lady bugs, fireflies, and – despite their name – June bugs. Most share a common trait: Their first pair of wings has hardened into plates that provide protection. When the beetle needs to fly, these plates, called elytra, are raised to unveil the flight wings.

Most beetles are harmless. Some are pests, however, and a few annoy in odd ways.

Take the Death-watch Beetle, which bores its way into wood, including furniture. To communicate, males and females rap their heads against the tunnel walls, producing a clicking sound. To folks generations ago, clicking furniture meant a death in the family was imminent.

Then there is the Drugstore Beetle. “Virtually nothing organic is off-limits to this insect, including leather, flour, dried beans, and cayenne pepper,” write Eric Eaton and Kenn Kaufman in the Kaufman Field Guild to Insects of North America. “It will even bore through plastic vials to get to a meal.”

Or how about the Cigarette Beetle, which loves dried vegetable matter, but is especially fond of tobacco. It favors chewing, though. “So far, it has not been observed smoking,” report Eaton and Kaufman.

July’s power

July is the month when the sun is strongest. In our neighborhood, high temperatures average 84, five degrees warmer than in June and three higher than in August.

Because the sun shows so much power in July, Mark Anthony had the month Quintilis changed to honor his late friend, Julius Caesar, a man of great power. The change also eliminated the nasty problem of the seventh month being named five, its old position in the Roman year.

The ancient Saxons were more down to earth about naming their months. July was Hay Monath, when they mowed and harvested hay, or sometimes Maed Monath, supposedly because the meads – the meadows – were in bloom then. However, mead is also an ancient alcoholic beverage made from fermented honey.

And since it’s said that mead imbues the drinker with wisdom, courage and strength, perhaps Maed Monath is the time to sit back, sip some mead, and quietly seek these admirable qualities.

A bird’s blessing

The American Goldfinch is a patient bird, at least when it comes to building a home and raising a family.

Each season, goldfinches are among the last of our birds to establish nests. Most others already have fledglings – you can hear them now, squeaking and whining at their parents to feed them. But goldfinches are just getting their nest work underway.

Why? The goldfinch seems to time its domestic duties to the season of the thistles, those prickly wildflowers most people hate. Early thistles are just now going to seed, producing the super-soft down that is so opposite the thorns that bedeck the plants. Goldfinches love thistle down as a material for lining their nests.

After the eggs have hatched, thistles provide their second benefit: Food. Goldfinches are mostly seed-eaters and they delay raising a family – with a bunch of hungry mouths to feed – until mid-summer when the season of seeds is well underway. Probably their favorite seed is the thistle.

“Cursed is the ground because of you,” God told Adam in the Garden of Eden. “Thorns and thistles it shall bring forth for you.” Clearly, a man’s curse can be a bird’s blessing.

Sound of the Veery

I heard a Veery on Sunday. That may not sound like a big deal, but it’s the first one I’ve heard locally in more than five years.

And hearing them is often all you do, for these brown thrushes are somewhat secretive and stick to woodlands where they can be hard to spot.

However, their song is one of the most distinctive and easy to recognize of any of our migrants. It’s a flutelike cascade of notes, seeming to echo as if they were sung through a long open pipe. Once you’ve heard the song, you never forget it.

Time was when the song of the Veery was a sure sign that spring had settled in. It was something to listen for. But Veeries are in what the Cornell Lab of Ornithology calls a “slow decline” throughout their range.

In winter, that range includes a large area of central and northern South America, much of it rain forest, which, as we all know by now, is being cut down. Ornithologists suspect that this “rapid habitat conversion” is reducing the Veery population.

Up north, these birds may also be suffering from the deer overpopulation. Veeries nest on or near the ground and thus prefer woods with dense understory that provides a degree of camouflage and protection. Overpopulating deer have stripped so much of the understory of our woods that Veeries may be having difficulty finding suitable nesting sites. (However, the latest statistics from the state of Connecticut indicate the state’s deer population may be in decline from a peak of 75,000 a few years ago to a current estimate of 62,000.)

Veeries have also suffered from nest parasitism by Brown-headed Cowbirds, but the latest studies on cowbirds are finding that these birds may also in decline. So it’s likely that the habitat destruction, in both winter and summer ranges, have been affecting the Veery numbers in our neighborhood.

Are deer down?

Connecticut’ deer population has been stabilizing, maybe even declining. So says the Wildlife Division of the Connecticut Department of Environmental, which in February completed its latest aerial population survey.

Officials put many qualifiers on their numbers, including the fact that the aerial survey looks at only one percent of the state’s total deer habitat. Nonetheless, from 1993 to 2003, the estimated winter deer population rose from 49,472 to 75,771. Last winter, the estimate was 62,163. If the state’s system of surveying is reasonably accurate, that would be a noteworthy decline.

We are still in the most deer dense part of the state. Fairfield County has an estimated 29.4 deer per square mile, the highest density of any of the 12 state zones. The statewide average is 17.

Wildlife officials also watch data on hunter kills, deer-vehicle collisions, and even “homeowner concerns,” and all also seem to indicate the population is at least stabilizing.

Why? The state has “adjusted deer seasons, modified bag limits, and encouraged the harvest of antlerless deer in high deer density areas,” DEP said. “Wise deer management results in healthy deer populations and productive wildlife habitat.”

In a word, the state seems to be saying, hunting.