Welcome to the Wild Burlington Newsletter
The (mostly) weekly newsletter covers a wide range of natural history topics. You’ll discover the wild world around you with the help of professional naturalist, Teage O’Connor. So if you’re interested in tracking the changing seasons, connecting to your local landscape, and learning more than you ever wanted to know about twigs, then this is the newsletter for you!
Plus, you’ll also get nature quizzes, notes on upcoming events (like the Wild Burlington Lecture series), contests, and awareness activities that will engage you with the wild world. And it’s all delivered right to your inbox.
The newsletter is the perfect learning tool for naturalists of all abilities!
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The Wild Burlington Archives
You can also check out the blog for more natural history and the natural history section for field guides, essays, and other explorations of Vermont’s natural history.
That’s a lot of fur
A friend game me a challenge a bunch of years ago of finding any spot in the woods, sitting down, and not getting up until a I found a wild animal hair’s within arm’s reach. It was a great challenge, and on my first attempt took me about an hour to complete (it’s possible that the hair I found may have been one of my own). I often think about the ubiquity of lost hairs when out tracking animals in the woods, especially in the spring when some fur bearers molt. This weekend I came across a trail of deer tracks littered with fur and wondered just how hard this challenge is. So this week I’ll describe your odds of finding a deer hair in the woods and next week I’ll describe why deer hair is amazing.
Should You Pee When You’re Cold?
I felt cold yesterday while out at the Field School. It was a different kind of cold from today’s cold, wetter, less biting, but cold nonetheless. We were talking with the kids about ways to stay warm in the cold, and one of the suggestions that came up was that peeing would help you stay warm. This made me curious about the relationship between pee and cold weather and other creative ways I might be able to stay warm.
Orange Balls On Powerlines
Everytime I drive I-89, I notice those bright orange balls attached to the power lines that cross the interstate to the Bolton Falls Hydro Station (map). It seems an odd marker as there are plenty of other places where power lines cross the interstate or other major roads but aren’t adorned with these plastic orange ornaments. Not surprisingly, the visually obvious orange balls, called power line marker balls, are intended to make power lines visually obvious to pilots, particularly in places where airplanes and helicopters tend to fly at low altitudes (like around airports, mountain passes, deep valleys, or even on larger bodies of water where a float planes might land). The balls were invented in the early 1970s by Arkansas governor, Winthrop Rockefeller, who noticed their potential danger during the landing of a flight with Arkansas’ head of the Department of Aeronautics.
Wren Kitz album review
Identification is a most powerful skill. It illuminates, reveals, unlocking a secret world just beyond the edge of our tongue. There was magic in my early days as a naturalist, endless lost hours spent pouring over the intricacies of the various species of Atriplex that licked the salty scrub coast of California. As my ID skills developed I began to see patterns in the land, to appreciate the nuance of a slope's aspect, the soil's affinity for water, the lingering influence of land use on vegetative communities. I also came to understand that identification isn't a language, it isn't even the syntax, only the barest tracings of what the world is, a necessary foundation to reveal deeper truths about the world we inhabit. E.E. Cummings' words strolled through the arid chaparral with me: since feeling is first who pays any attention to the syntax of things will never wholly kiss you; I was again reminded of this poem while listening to Burlington musician Wren Kitz's new album, Natural History vol.1.
The Natural Community concept needs to go
As many Americans celebrated Thanksgiving last week, indigenous peoples from across the country and their allies gathered at Cole's Hill near Plymouth Rock for a National Day of Mourning. The first gathering was organized by Wamsutta (Frank James) in 1970 on the 350th anniversary of the Mayflower's landing and continues to this day. From this year's flyer: "many Native people do not celebrate the arrival of the Pilgrims & other European settlers. Thanksgiving Day is a reminder of the genocide of millions of Native people, the theft of Native lands and the erasure of Native cultures" (link). And it is the last point that has been gnawing at me as I wrap up my unit on natural communities in my natural history class.
UVM’s Rifle Range
A good mystery is a fine companion to carry with you through the years. It nags like a pair wet socks, a constant reminder of an itch that needs scratching, to not to let go of your curiosity. I've had just such an itch for about 15 years now. Recently, and sort of haphazardly I stumbled upon a satisfactory answer! It feels good, but also a bit like I've lost an old friend.
Abortion in the Natural World: Humans
This is the third and last post in this series on abortion in the natural world. Humans are wild animals, special only in that we typically don't consider ourselves wild animals. As animals, it's no surprise that we share many life history characteristics, adaptations, and reproductive strategies with other animals. Here we conclude our discussion of abortion in the natural world with an ethnobotanical look at how females in indigenous cultures in North America have made choices about pregnancy for millennia.
Myths: Behind the name serviceberry
I'd heard the origin of the name serviceberry (Amelanchier spp.) well before I even knew what the tree looked like. It goes something like this: when Europeans were first colonizing New England, the strange land was a fierce, unrelenting, and unforgiving environment, so troublingly reflected in the mortality rates (about 1 of every 5 babies born died in their first year, over 1/3 died before adulthood). In the all-too-common case that someone died during the long cold winter months, their body was stored anywhere it would be exposed to cold temperatures but protected from snow and rain: barns, sheds, caves. In more populous, established villages, the town and/or churches had a dead house (or mort or sometimes charnel houses) for temporary storage of bodies/bones before burial. It was only when the weather warmed and the ground softened that the dead could be buried.
Origins And Meanings Of Tree Names
Over the past 3 years I've been slowly plodding towards a completed book about the trees of Vermont. The book started as a short, quick reference to help with tree ID, but in its current state is a 600 page tome on all things trees. Somewhere along the way I seem to have sacrificed readability and accessibility for thoroughness. I'll definitely pare down the final product to a more manageable and useful size. As part of my research, I looked into the origins and meanings of the names of trees. I've long been interested in the history of names and as I'd already translated all the Vermont vertebrates (Etymology of Vermont Vertebrates), I thought I'd put together a booklet on the names of Vermont's trees.
Easy Peasy Plant ID-Zee
I never liked the colloquial Vermont term for late fall. Stick Season just seems so pejorative, like after a beautiful fall we're just waiting in purgatory before we can throw on those more useful sticks and ski down fluffy white mountains. Maybe I get so ruffled because in my book there's nothing better than a stick! They're endlessly fascinating - lenticels, prickles, and pith, oh my! - each feature a clue into the clever adaptations trees have for fending off predators, desiccating winds, and deadly cold. Twigs are also useful - as spiles (sumac), whistles (boxelder), snares, baskets (willows), teeth whitening (dogwood) - and they're even tasty! A few plants out there are reluctant to give up on fall and hold their leaves much longer.
