Nature Notes
Hive Mind
A friend and I were wondering a week or so ago what happens to yellow jacket nests in the winter (as he tried to decide what to do about one in the wall of his home.) We both went home and did a little research and discovered that only the queen overwinters while the remainder of the hive dies off. This is not always true, it turns out. In Alabama this season come reports of nests that survived last winter, and apparently have multiple queens, and these paper nests (usually no bigger than a basketball) are large enough to fill the interior of abandoned cars! This is puzzling, because it means that the carnivorous workers were able to find food (other insects mostly) all winter long, where usually they either starve or freeze in winter. Climate change or a random fluctuation? We'll see.
Dead Ringer
I feel terrible. I killed a harmless, yea a beneficial snake the other day, and I should be ashamed. But it took me by surprise and I over-reacted. I was moving wood from the stack down beyond the garden into the truck to bring up to the house for the winter, and when I lifted a flat piece of oak, underneath was coiled a patterned snake that immediately attempted to escape to a hiding place deeper in the pile. I slammed the piece of oak down on him, thinking it must be a copperhead--like the ones I'd just heard about from a patient who lives in our county.
I should have held back such a knee-jerk and senseless reaction, but I guess the fear of finding what might be a little poisonous snake in the woodstacks a half-truckload later just took precedence over my biological curiosity. Turns out, it was a corn snake (a beautiful form of rat snake seen in the lower image) and one of the most docile snakes in North America. To my defense, this smallish snake was shedding and its pattern obscured. But my unthinking over-reaction ruined my day, I tell ya.
Web World
Sorry no pix: the gray smears of webs you see in the outer branches of trees these past weeks are NOT the same as the ones you might have observed in the spring and early summer. There are indeed at least two kinds of caterpillars who live in protective webs while they defoliate their host trees. The earlier ones are Tent Caterpillars, and they tend to build in the crotches of small trees--the latter, Fall Web Worms that build on the outermost ends of branches. These two larval moths are different in appearance, too, if you take the time to dig down into their ikky webs and tease out a few for inspection. But I rather imagine you won't be doing that. So use your favorite search engine to find pix, if you're interested.
Comments
all i have to say is i hope i never come across one of those nests! that's crazy! i'll have to ask my sis in alabama if she's come across any- she's working on her master's in biology at auburn.
Posted by: amy f. | September 13, 2006 10:55 AM
That photo of the massive yellow jacket nest in the abandoned car is wrong on so many levels. This summer in Franklin County was much thicker with hornets and wasps than last summer. This summer, we've got a massive european hornet nest SOMEWHERE near the house, a paper wasp nest 80' from the house, and various underground nests just outside the house underneath hedges. Several paper wasp nests around the barns and countless little nests with three to four wasps apiece throughout the barns. I've only gotten stung twice this year though. Last year I was nailed a dozen times, at least. But one sting this year was from a paper wasp, on my ankle, and my damn foot swelled up so bad I had trouble getting a boot over it. The other was from a european hornet under my big toe. There was no swelling but I'll be damned if that sting didn't feel like a nail being driven through my foot!
Don't feel bad about the corn snake, it happens. But, as an fyi, if it was a copperhead, you would have gotten tagged before you even knew what happened. Copperheads don't try to evade or posture defensively - they strike without any warning whatsoever. Sometimes they strike multiple times. North Carolina has the highest reported incidence of snake bites in the country and we're just next door. I'd wager a goodly number of those bites occur on or around stacks of firewood :)
Sean
Posted by: Sean Pecor | September 13, 2006 2:47 PM
You can be forgiven for that bit of misidentification, Fred. Copperhead coloration can vary significantly, and at first glance they do seem similar in patterning. The dead giveaway, as I'm sure you know, is the shape of the head...the pronounced arrowhead shape is common to all the viperids.
Incidentally, did you know that the typical venomous snakebite victim (see slide #7) is a drunk, unemployed male in his 20s who got bit while handling his pet rattlesnake? Not your demographic at all, old friend. ;-)
Posted by: Curt | September 13, 2006 4:02 PM
The greatest frequency of snakes per day I ever experienced was at the Eno River State Park in Durham, NC. I literally saw at least one snake during every visit. Like all animals, snakes need access to water, and the habitat must be just right for them around the temperate regions. Conversely, I hardly ever see a snake (one or two I think) since I have been in the Northeast.
Posted by: Jim | September 13, 2006 8:20 PM
Pica did the exact same thing a few years ago and felt just the way you did. But you of all people, a PT--how can you blame your very natural reflex? Big silly.
Posted by: Doc Rock | September 14, 2006 5:59 PM
Too bad about the corn snake. I feel your pain. But a wood pile or a rock pile or any debris pile outside, one should expect to find some snake there and being prepared is just one way to spare a snake, even a venomous one. Wherever there might be good cover or food for rodents, would be great places for snakes. It took me a while to train myself to not "react" to a snake ignoring the reptilian part of my brain.
Posted by: Julia | September 15, 2006 4:38 PM