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!
Digging the natural history content?
Please consider supporting Crow’s Path on Patreon.
Be sure to check the archives for back issues.
And shoot me an email if you have an idea for a future blog post, newsletter issue, or podcast episode!
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.
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.
How To Change Colors
Oh, but isn't the fall bittersweet. I can feel the warm glow of summer fading as the sun keeps setting earlier and earlier and the first frost curl back the dying Norway maple leaves. The plants are expressing their preparations for the impending end to the growing season and the pale yellows of striped maple and purplish reds of staghorn sumac are now the dominant colors. With each passing year I feel like I get a little more cued into the timing of fall foliage, the color palette of each species, and the pattern of how trees change colors.
How trees cope with parasites
I try to keep the newsletter in tune with the changing seasons, but with my focus on Lymantria dispar moths I felt like I couldn't quite keep up, like they had come and gone so quickly that by the time I was starting to see their patterns and how they fit into the larger picture, all the doom and gloom of a leafless July canopy already seemed like a distant memory. To the keen-eyed naturalist, evidence of their early summer binge fest still peppers the land, from clusters of egg masses on the underside of branches to the rotting corpses of mated adults littered at the base of trees (see image below). So how did we get here, from bearing witness to the apocalyptic demise of our oaks to a seeming return to baseline? Read on!
Burlington Free Press Archives
I went back to St Marks in Burlington last week to rephotograph the once defoliated, now green trees and get a couple detailed photos of the egg masses with the fuzz removed - interestingly someone had already scraped away most of the fuzz on the egg masses. As I was taking the photos an older fellow came up to me and told me about growing up in Burlington in the 50s when there was another Lymantria dispar outbreak. His father had encouraged him to gather up the caterpillars, douse them in gasoline and light them on fire. He also told me that there was about an outbreak back in the 50s and the city of Burlington paid to spray trees to control the moths. I was curious for details on past outbreaks so I did a search through the Burlington Free Press Archives and found some fascinating details.
Adult Lymantria dispar moths
I often return to Martin Prechtel's idea of each species having its own eloquence that manifests at some peak moment during the year. It's a pretty anthropocentric way of viewing the life histories of other organisms, but it captures quite nicely those incredible moments during the year when the staghorn sumacs turn a brilliant purple, the barred owls singing in the dark winter skies, sap staff flowing, amphibians migrate to their breeding grounds and so on. Well, for Lymantria, the time is August when the caterpillars pupate and the adults emerge in a torrent of fluttery reproductive frenzy. Here we look at adult Lymantria dispar moths.
Thoughts on Invasive Species
During the height of the Lymantria dispar outbreak this summer, I was out at our Hobbit-themed summer camp playing games, singing songs, eating blackberries, and looking at the parasitic plant, pinesap (Monotropa hypopitys) with happy kiddos. The "fuzzy nibbler" moths are particularly abundant at our base camp, which is shaded by a canopy composed mostly of mature red oaks (with a few big-toothed and quaking aspens sprinkled in along the edges). For those kids unfamiliar with the moths at the start of camp, by day 2 they had already forged strong opinions. And it broke my heart to hear the way many of them were talking about the "heartbreaker" moths, such strident malice directed towards the fluttering males, stoic females, and bristly caterpillars coming from 8 and 9 year-olds.
Contest: Renaming Lymantria dispar
As part of the Better Names Project, the Entomological Society of America is actively working to rename insects with names that are offensive. Let's help them out by coming up with our own name for the moth, Lymantria dispar
The Lymantria dispar moth
A couple weeks I was teaching a professional development course on Vermont’s Natural History based out of St Mark’s church here in Burlington. On our first day, we were outside working with compasses when someone pointed out all the dead oaks in the parking lot. When I looked up, I was shocked at the barren canopy. The surrounding neighborhood seemed totally oblivious to whatever had plagued the dozen or so white and red oaks lining the property.
Big Night!
In like a lion, eh, Spring? The weather has been totally fantastic here in Burlington. We've got garlic shoots coming, grackles moving through in big numbers, house finches with nesting material see image below), and buds starting to green up on our lilacs. But of all the spring phenology events, my favorite is amphibian migration. My friend Ian sent me photos from some Eastern newts and spotted salamanders moving last night by North Beach. And it looks like we could be in for another early Big Night this year. The weather looks perfect at this point for a big movement of amphibians tomorrow night (Friday, March 26)!! Read on for more.
