Squirrels can teach us a lot about science. Who knew?!

Today I want to take a look at a photograph that I've shared a couple of times in the past and actually explain what is happening in the photograph.

This picture of a Fox Squirrel (Sciurus niger) seems simple enough.  A squirrel lying flat on a branch.  

It must be tired, right?

Maybe, but that is not why it is stretched out flat on that branch.

This squirrel is keeping cool, but not just by being inactive. 

While inactivity does help, it is often not enough.

All mammals have sweat glands that help them cool, but many animals such as squirrels have too few of these glands to help them cool effectively.  (I on the other hand have lots of sweat glands that at times seem to work almost too well.)

So if an animal such as squirrel lacks sufficient sweat glands, how can it lower its body temperature enough to prevent overheating?  Some animals pant heavily (like dogs), expelling excess heat through their mouths and nasal passages.  Squirrels will sometimes pant to reduce heat, but this individual is using a more effective method.

This squirrel is using a technique know as conductive cooling.  Squirrels (and most other mammals) have less insulating fur on their chest and bellies than on their backs.  The skin of their chests/bellies also contains a complex network of small blood vessels called capillaries that carry blood from the core of the body to the surface.  When a body heats up it automatically pushed more blood to the surface  in an attempt to cool the core - this is why people look red when they overheat.

Some of this heat is carried away by the process of convection - air moving across the surface of the skin pulls heat from the blood near the surface, when the blood returns to the core of the body it is cooler than it was seconds before.  This is why fans feel so good on hot days.

Unfortunately for the squirrel, it didn't have a fan available for cooling and there was no cool breeze to pull heat away from its body.  Instead the squirrel places the hot skin of its body directly on a cool surface (the bark of the tree).  Heat is transferred directly from the squirrels skin into the tree bark; the blood leaving the surface is cooled by this heat loss and the squirrel prevents its core from overheating.  This principle of conduction (direct heat transfer) enables the squirrel to cool down rapidly and resume its normal activities.

You can try this principle.  If you have to be active outdoors on a really hot day, wet down a bandana (or rag) and tie it loosely around your neck.  Your neck contains many blood vessels.  These vessels will transfer heat into the cool bandana, reducing your core temperature when your now cooled blood circulates back to the interior of your body.

Queen Anne's Lace Against an Azure Sky

Queen Anne's Lace against a clear sky

Just a photograph for today. 

This Queen Anne's Lace seed head was photographed this morning behind the Conservation District office.  Also known as Wild Carrot, Queen Anne's Lace (Daucus carota) is native to Eurasia but is naturalized across much of North America.  It gets along well in the landscape and rarely out-competes native plants.

Photographs from Forest Hill Nature Area (09 August 2015)

Yesterday afternoon, Shara and I stopped at Forest Hill Nature Area on our way home from Mt. Pleasant.  Forest Hill Nature Area is located at 11297 Rich Rd., Alma, MI.  The property is owned by the Gratiot County Conservation District and managed as an educational facility by the Gratiot-Isabella Regional Education Service District.  The Nature Area is approximately 90 acres and is composed of wetlands, woodlands, and old field habitats.  One of the old fields has been planted as a prairie restoration.

We stopped at Forest Hill for a couple of reasons: first, Shara just got a new camera over the weekend and wanted the opportunity to test it out; second, we wanted to search for Monarch caterpillars in the restored prairie and old field habitats.

We didn't find any Monarch caterpillars, but we did get some good photographs during our search.  Here are a few of mine.

Purple Coneflower

Viceroy on Purple Coneflower

Bumblebee and Bee Balm

Skipper on Mountain mint

Grey-headed Coneflower

False Sunflower and Bee Balm

Big Bluestem Grass

Fritillary butterfly (and assassin bug) on Purple Coneflower

Yellow-collared Scape Moth on Mountain Mint

Viceroy on goldenrod

Purple Coneflower

Leopard Frog

The Bee Hotel - Rooms are Filling Fast!

In 2013, I shared a post about some native bee nesting boxes that I constructed for my yard.  Installing bee nesting boxes is a great way to increase the number of pollinators in your yard or garden.

Two years later, one of the boxes is seeing heavy use by both mason and leafcutter bees (as well as several varieties of wasps). 

A native bee enters a bamboo stem in the nesting box

A small wasp checking out the nesting holes

Full holes are capped with mud or circles cut from leaves

Sometimes Nature Come to You...

Tuesday evening, Shara and I were sitting on our porch swing when she noticed this dragonfly hanging out on the porch ceiling.

Shadow Darner (Aeshna umbrosa) - dorsal view

Shadow Darner (Aeshna umbrosa) - lateral view

After much consulting of field guides and the internet,  I decided that this was probably a Shadow Darner (Aeshna umbrosa) - this was later confirmed by a local expert (Thanks, Stan!)  This species is common across much of North America.  This is the first darner that I have found at our house.  We commonly have meadowhawk dragonflies and several species of damselflies, but no large odonates.

Our neighbors probably already think that we are a bit odd, a viewpoint that we confirmed by bringing a stepstool out onto the porch to take photographs of this dragonfly perched on the ceiling.  Personally, I prefer to think of myself not as odd, but rather as "eccentric". 

Upcoming Event - Mt. Pleasant Area Native Plant Garden Walk (Monday 10 AUG 2015)

Saginaw Chippewa Academy Native Pollinator Garden (31 July 2015)

If you read this blog on a regular basis then you have probably seen posts about the native pollinator gardens that I have helped establish and maintain.  Three of the garden are located on school grounds and the fourth is at the Mt. Pleasant Discovery Museum.  Because these garden are all in public spaces they are potentially seen by hundreds of people every day (especially during the school year).

Next Monday (10 August 2015), I will be leading a tour of these gardens for the Mid-Mitten Chapter of Wild Ones.  Wild Ones is a national organization that teaches people about the benefits of growing native wildflowers in yards and public spaces.  The Mid-Mitten Chapter regularly meets in Midland at the Chippewa Nature Center.

This tour will begin at 6:00PM at the Mt. Pleasant Discovery Museum (5093 E. Remus Road, Mt. Pleasant) with stops at the Saginaw Chippewa Academy, Morey Public School Academy, and Winn Elementary to follow.

At each stop I will be talking about the history of the garden, the challenges (and opportunities) that each site possesses, the plants that can be found in each garden, what has worked out, and what hasn't worked so well.

The public is welcome to attend this walk.  If you are interested in attending please send me an email so I know about how many people to expect.

More information on the gardens and my "gardening philosophy" can be found in this post from 2013 or for all the posts about gardens, type "gardens" in the search box to the right of this page.

Ladies and Gentlemen... The Beetles!

My wife like to joke about my love of beetles.  The insect, not the rock band.  The band spelled its name Beatles (with an EA replacing the double E).

I like the band's music, but it only had four members.  The Order Coleoptera (beetles) has over 450,000 identified species!  This makes beetles the most diverse order of animal on Earth.

That means that there are always new species to discover.

Last Friday (31 July), I stopped at the Saginaw Chippewa Academy to photograph some of the flowers in the Native Pollinator Garden.  As I was walking around, I noticed several tiger beetles running along the sidewalk.  This is not something new,  the tiger beetles moved in several years ago. In the past, I have only seen Six-spotted Tiger Beetles (Cicindella sexguttata) in this location, but at least one of these beetles lacked the bright metallic green coloring and the distinctive white spots on its elytra (hard outer wing coverings that protect the fragile inner wings).

This beetle was more of a brown/gray color and had fainter spots on its elytra.  Tiger beetles are known for being very fast.  This means they can be very difficult to photograph. I managed to get only one photograph, but it was enough to make an identification.

Without further ado, the new-to-me beetle in the garden was a Backroad Tiger Beetle (Cicindella punctata).  The species is also known as the Punctured Tiger Beetle (hence punctata) and the Sidewalk Tiger Beetle.  The species is found across much of the United States east of the Rockies and into southern Canada.

Backroad Tiger Beetle (Cincidella punctata)

This cropped picture shows the faint markings on the elytra that helped me make the identification; however, color and markings are highly variable among individuals.  If I had seen a different individual, I may not have been able to come up with an ID.

Backroad Tiger Beetle (Cincidella punctata) - cropped image

Finding this species was exciting to me for a couple of reasons.  First of all simply because of the fact that it was a new species for me.  Second, finding predators such as tiger beetles in the garden means that there are other invertebrates present for them to prey upon and this means the garden is doing its job as a habitat.