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Whoa Baby!

5/15/2018

Now I know you know the basics like a baby sheep is a lamb and a baby cow is a calf but do you know what a baby alpaca is called? An alpacapette? An alpacapup? An alpaclette?
Well the proper term is actually, cria, which comes from the Spanish word for baby. Llamas, vicunas, and guanacos, types of camelids, are all called crias when they are babies. Alpacas are native to the Andes mountains in countries like Peru, Chile, Ecuador, and Chile. Alpaca wool is some of the best around, its warm, smooth, fine and soft, what more could you want?

Have you ever been in the woods and seen a tiny spiky creature running along the forest floor? Well be careful because those little porcupettes will grow into a porcupine! Porcupines can’t actually shoot their quills so if you stay a safe distance away and leave them be you should be fine. If you hear a porcupine stomping its feet, much like a child during a tantrum, they feel threatened and they could come after you with those quills!

Opossums are the only marsupial found in North America so just like other marsupials, like kangaroos and wallabies, their babies are called joeys. Marsupials are a group of mammals in which the babies are born prematurely and develop outside of the womb with access to milk most of the time in a pouch. Opossums are special in another way as well: teeth! They have the most teeth of any land mammal, ringing in at 50 teeth.

Another interesting mammal is the platypus whose babies are called puggles! They have a duck bill and feet, beaver tail, and otter body, oh and they lay eggs too! Females lay their eggs in a burrow and keep them warm between their tail and body but even after they hatch there is a lot of parental care to be done. The males have an additional adaptation as well: venom. On the inside of its ankle males have a venomous spur to protect themselves from any arising danger.

Back to Kindergarten: Butterfly Basics

5/7/2018

These past few weeks NRT naturalists have been visiting Easton's kindergarteners to teach them about butterflies! Students learn not only how butterflies sense the world around them but also how they transform from a tiny egg to a beautiful creature. A touch of acting is required from students as well! However, the interesting part about an adult teaching a seemingly simple lesson on butterflies is the amount of new information the adult learns just by brushing up on their butterfly facts.

For instance, did you know butterflies taste with their feet? Unlike humans, whose taste buds are on their tongues, butterfly taste buds are on their legs, which enables them to taste the plants they stand on. Also, not only will they use their taste buds to figure out what is food and what isn’t, but these sensors will let them know whether or not they are on a suitable leaf to lay their eggs. Who knew being able to taste with your feet could be so important!

Also, when most of us think of butterflies, we tend to picture these graceful and beautifully colored insects. However, those wonderful colors and patterns we are seeing are not actually there. Butterfly wings are clear! The colors we see come from light reflecting off their scaly wings. And they aren’t necessarily fluttering around all lazily neither. While most butterflies only reach speeds between 5 and 12 miles per hour, there are some butterflies that can move faster than a running horse! These fast butterflies are known as skippers and can fly up to 30 mph or faster!

So yes, heading back to kindergarten might not seem like a big deal because as adults we assume we learned everything there was to learn during that time. However, don’t be surprised when you do learn something new, like where butterfly taste buds are or how fast different species can fly. It is never too late to get in touch with that inner student and expand your knowledge!

In-tree-guing Trees

4/26/2018

Tomorrow isn’t just the last Friday of the month. It also happens to be Arbor Day! For most, Arbor Day comes and goes each year without so much as a second thought. However, Arbor Day is an important holiday with an impressive backstory. The very first Arbor Day was celebrated on April 10, 1874, when a Nebraska pioneer named J. Sterling Morton used his prominent position as editor of Nebraska’s most popular newspaper and spread his enthusiasm for trees. When Morton became secretary of the Nebraska territory, he proposed a tree-planting holiday called “Arbor Day,” and prizes would be awarded to individuals who planted the most on their properties. It is estimated that over one million trees were planted on our nation’s very first Arbor Day. So in honor of this year’s Arbor Day, we decided to share some of the coolest trees our Earth has to offer.

The Giant Baobabs of Madagascar
The baobab trees of Madagascar are famously known for being located in a place called the Avenue of Baobabs, which is a dirt road stretching between two different regions in western Madagascar and lined by these trees. These baobabs are some of the only remaining ones left in this region, seeing as many surrounding forests have been cleared to support the growing populations. However, these particular trees are held in high esteem amongs the locals, who treasure the baobabs. There is even a local legend of two entwined baobab trees that have grown together throughout the centuries to represent the love between a young man and woman from two different villages. The couple, who could never be together, had asked the gods for some way to let their love live on and the entwined baobab trees was the answer to their prayers.

The Aptly Named Rainbow Eucalyptus
Perhaps the most colorful tree you can find is the mind blowing rainbow eucalyptus, named for its special bark that bears the colors of the rainbow! To find these trees you could travel to their native regions of the Philippines, New Guinea, and Indonesia where the rainbows will be growing in the tropical forests. The rainbow eucalyptus is incredibly fast growing; it has the ability to double its height every year and can reach a whopping 250 feet in no time! Obviously the most outstanding feature is the rainbow bark itself, but how does that even happen? Well, the bark from the previous season peels away, revealing colorful parts of the tree underneath. This leaves the trunk with streaks of grays, reds, oranges, greens, and blues!

The Otherworldly Joshua Tree
If you drive to 74485 National Park Drive in Twentynine Palms, California, you will find yourself entering the land of Joshua Tree National Park, which of course is home to the peculiar Joshua tree. The Joshua tree, which is part of the yucca family, grows only in the Mojave Desert and can live up to 150 years old. The tree is said to have been named by Mormon travelers who, during the mid-19th century, thought the tree’s unusual shape looked like the biblical Joshua raising his hand towards the sky and waving them in the direction of their promised land. Of course the tree had long been known to Native American tribes, who would use the leaves for making baskets and footwear while eating the buds and seeds.

To read more about J. Sterling Morton and history of Arbor Day, visit the link below!
https://www.arborday.org/celebrate/documents/history.pdf

Protect the Planet from Plastic!

4/17/2018

Every year Earth Day has a theme that helps protect our planet, this year the theme is to prevent plastic pollution.

Plastic can be very useful, it’s durable and versatile making it a very popular material. Currently there is 300 million tons of plastics produced each year and by 2050 that will grow to 900 million. Most if not all of the plastic ever produced is still around today in one shape or another. But where does this plastic go? Only 10% of plastic is properly recycle and the rest will end up in landfills and the ocean.

When plastic lands in the ocean it can negatively affect many species from birds to fish. Shearwaters are a seabird that pick up floating plastic from the ocean and bring it to their chicks to eat. That plastic will just sit in their stomach until there is no more room for anything, even food. One 90-day old chick had 276 pieces of plastic in their stomach, the equivalent for a human would be 12 large pizzas in our stomach that would never digest.

One of the biggest single use plastics is the straw. They are just thrown away never to be seen again but they have a huge impact on many marine life including sea turtles. Sea turtles can get the straws stuck in their nostrils and stop breathing. If you weighed all the plastic in the ocean by 2050 it would be the same weight as all the fish in the ocean.

Now I know I just told you some pretty grim facts but there are ways that you can help that are very easy.

Use reusable bags when shopping! Many stores give a discount when you use a reusable bag!
Switch to reusable coffee pods with your own coffee!
Take a #refusethestraw pledge! Ask your server for no straw please! Or buy paper and reusable ones!
Instead of using plastic wrap or sandwich bags find reusable containers!
Take a reusable water bottle with you wherever you go!

With these easy ways you can help reduce plastic in our world!
The Shearwaters and Sea Turtles thank you!

No Buts, No Cuts, No Coconuts

4/9/2018

In honor of this week’s seeds program with Easton’s 2nd Grade, we wanted to address a certain hot button issue that came up last year. The coconut...is it a fruit, a seed, or a nut?

Most of us would assume the coconut is a fruit because of the delicious, sweet insides that many of us enjoy eating, and we would be right to call coconuts fruits because they are! Technically, a coconut is classified as a fibrous, one-seeded drupe, which is a type of fruit. Other examples of drupes are more familiar fruits, including mangos, peaches, plums and cherries. To be classified as a drupe, there must be three layers: an outermost hardened layer called the exocarp; a ‘fleshy,’ usually inedible middle layer called the mesocarp; and a hard, woody layer surrounding the seed called the endocarp. A coconut certainly has all three layers but when you buy one at the grocery, the exocarp and mesocarp have already been removed and you are left with the endocarp. So the coconut is most definitely a fruit and more specifically a drupe.

A germinating coconut on a Hawaiian beach.

Did you catch the fact that the innermost hard, woody endocarp layer surrounds a seed? Reproductively speaking, the seed is the part of the plant that houses the “baby” or embryo plant inside. When you look at the coconut, you may notice three pores located at the end of the shell, and this is where the new shoots will emerge once the coconut seed inside the endocarp germinates. And that white, delicious stuff we love so much...well that is called the endosperm, which is what the embryo seed uses for food and energy. So yes, the coconut also qualifies as a seed.

What about the coconut being a nut? After all, it does have the word ‘nut’ right there in the name. Loosely defined, all a nut really is is a one-seeded fruit, which certainly fits the description of the coconut. However, the coconut is not considered a ‘true nut’ because true nuts only release their seeds when the fruit wall breaks down naturally, which is not the case for the coconut seed. Coconut seeds will sprout and split open their shells when they have fully ripened. So even though coconuts are not true nuts, when you take the basic definition of a nut (one-seeded fruit), you could technically call a coconut a nut.

So there you have it! A coconut can be a fruit, a seed, and a nut all at once, and the next time you get into a debate about coconuts, hopefully you will feel more prepared to explain how we classify them. So bring it on second graders and ask all the coconut questions you want!

Funny Fungi

4/3/2018

Eastern North American Destroying Angel, Black Witches Butter, and Bleeding Fairy Helmet.

What do these seemingly unrelated words have in common? They are all different types of fungi!

The Eastern North American Destroying Angel or just destroying angel is found all over the U.S. and are more common in areas where oaks and other hardwoods are prominent. It really is destroying too, it is deadly poisonous! It’s one of the most toxic mushrooms in North American and causes cellular necrosis.

Black Witches Butter sounds like something out of Hansel and Gretel but it’s actually a very common jelly fungus. This squishy jelly fungi is commonly found on fallen branches of oaks and other hardwoods and can be seen throughout the fall and winter.

Bleeding Fairy Helmet is common all over Europe and North America and is usually found around beech trees! When they are cut they “bleed” out a thick dark red substance!

Devil’s Fingers or Octopus Fingers can be found all over the world and smells like rotting flesh! They start out inside a mushroom egg and then up to 7 fingers burst out. Some scientist in Britain suspect as global temperatures rise so will the population of this fungi.

Turquoise Elfcup can be found all over Europe and North America and is also referred to as Green Cup fungus. The cup-like structures are hard to find but this fungus often stains the wood blue-green. The stained wood can still has been used in decorative woodworking since the 14th century!

Udderly Amazing Cows

3/26/2018

If you have ever visited the farm animals here at Sheep Pasture, then you probably know our popular and lovable bovine Simba. Born in April 2011, Simba loves his visitors and is regularly seen munching on hay or hanging with his best goat friend, Fauna. You might even say he is a local celebrity here in Easton, which begs the question, who are some other famous cows? After some digging, we have uncovered a few well known cows that have graced our history pages.

THE CHICAGO ARSONIST
The first famous, or more infamous, story is of Mrs. O’Leary’s cow. If you are not familiar with that name, maybe you have heard of the Great Chicago Fire of 1871 that destroyed practically the entire city, killed hundreds of people, and left another 100,000 homeless. The story goes that Mrs. Catherine O’Leary owned a barn in Chicago, and while she was milking her cow one windy night, the cow reportedly kicked over a kerosene lantern and the great fire began. Mrs. O’Leary and her cow were the city culprits for years when this story was published in the Chicago Republic. Even though the reporter later admitted he lied about the whole story, it wasn’t until 1997 did the Chicago City Council officially clear Catherine O’Leary and her cow of all responsibility for the fire. Listen to her great-great-grandaughter tell the story!

Click the picture to watch the story!

THE FLYING QUEEN
Dubbed the “Sky Queen,” Elm Farm Ollie became the first flying dairy cow when she boarded an airplane on February 18, 1930. What made this event amazing was while the 1,000 pound cow was in the air, a man named Elsworth W. Bunch milked 6 gallons from Ollie! Even crazier, the milk was then put in separate paper cartons and parachuted over St. Louis!!! Even though this whole stunt was an elaborate attention grabber for an air show, it did begin the new method of successfully transporting livestock - via airplane.

THE PRESIDENTIAL PET
As it turns out, the White House was just as interesting more than 100 years ago as it is now and it’s all because of a cow! Miss Pauline Wayne was a 1,500 pound Holstein and was the pet of President Taft from 1910-1913. Miss Wayne was brought in to satisfy the dairy loving appetite of Taft and his family, and boy was she able to get the job done! What brought so much fame to Miss Wayne was her coverage by the Washington Post. Within two years the Post mentioned her more than 20 times and even gave her a voice. Miss Pauline Wayne certainly had the media mesmerized in her day! If only she could have had her own Twitter account.

Pauline Wayne posing in front of the State, War, and Navy building provided by the Library of Congress.

Don't Go Chasing Waterfalls

3/20/2018

Don’t go chasing waterfalls, please stick to the rivers and the lakes that you’re used to. Unless you visit these really cool waterfalls all over the world!

The first one on our tour today can be found in the forests of Venezuela and is the highest waterfall in the world. Angel Falls are 3,212 feet tall and 500 feet wide and is best seen from the air due to the dense forest surrounding it. They were named after one of the first non-native people to see them in the 1930’s, a pilot named James Angel. Unlike other waterfalls it is not fed by a river or lake but all of the rainfall that comes off of its plateau, Devil’s Mountain (or Auyan-Tepui).

Next on our tour will be a little bit more north in Quebec City! The Montmorency Falls, fed by the Montmorency River, come in at 276 feet tall and are higher than Niagara Falls (but not as wide). They can be found just about 20 minutes outside of Old Quebec and can be seen from boats on the St. Lawrence River. There are so many things to do at these falls throughout the year; in the summer you can enjoy ziplining in front of the falls, walking across the falls on a pedestrian-only footbridge and you can even play a round of golf up at the top! But don’t worry if you find yourself in Quebec City in the winter you can ice climb and sometimes even skate around the falls!

Last but not least is a collection of waterfalls and lakes in Croatia! Plitvice Lakes National Park is one of Croatia’s oldest parks and is home to 16 lakes that have a wide variety of water colors. Because of how the water flows over the limestone, deposits have formed travertine barriers, creating a vast number of waterfalls. This national park is home to a wide variety of wildlife and is even included on the United Nations World Heritage List.

Tracking 101

3/12/2018

March is that funny time of year where the possibility of snow is still a real threat but spring is rounding the corner and temperatures are warming up. The ground starts to unfreeze and the rains come leaving us with slush and mud. It’s not necessarily the most enjoyable time of year to be outside for us nature lovers. However, we are out there because we need the fresh air and are sick of winter; but you may be wondering what is there to do? Well, while you are trudging down muddy trails, one thing you could look for are animal tracks! This might be the best time of year to practice those tracking skills with the leftover snow and mud covering the ground.

The art of tracking dates back ages from hunters looking for game to the curious naturalist attempting to learn more about an animal’s habits. There is so much to learn from tracking and there is more to find than actual “footprints” too. Larger signs you could first look for are as simple as crushed, broken, or battered vegetation, which could indicate a commonly used trail or sleeping area. You could even look on vegetation, such as trees or stumps, for gnaw or scratch markings. For example, maybe you have come across a typical scratching post for a deer!

Another fun sign track to always look for is scat! Just from the size and shape, you can easily figure out what type of animal was there! Watch the video below to learn more!

Now back to those actual footprint tracks you’ll find in that soft, muddy soil. Only about 5% of the time will you come across a perfectly preserved track with all the details of the paw clearly left, so you’ll need to use those detective skills for those more commonly harder tracks to identify. To get started, you will first need a good tracking guide. MassWildife provides a free pocket guide here!
If you want to get real serious, you’ll also be needing a magnifying glass, tape measurers, popsicle sticks and string. This way you will really be able to analyze those tracks, and from then, you can learn what kind of animal, how big, where it was going, what it was doing, and so much more!

So get out there and get practicing! You never know what you’ll find, especially here at Sheep Pasture! For more tracking resources and information, click here!

Wild Weather Words

3/6/2018

We all watch the weather and hear their terminology, cold and warm fronts, thunderstorms, snow but every now and then a new word comes up during the forecast that makes us do a double take. Some of those words could be thundersnow or bombogenesis/bomb cyclone but their are some even weirder ones as well like derecho and haboob. There are also some weather words that we’ve experienced before but might not have had a name for it like petrichor.

Since there have been some this winter we’ll start with thundersnow! A thundersnow is pretty much what it sounds like, a thunder and lighting while its snowing. They can develop when the air near the ground is below 32°F and goes up to a snow cloud’s shallow layer. As the air rises it creates bumps that become unstable creating thunder and lightning. They usually occur during a blizzard and can produce 2-4 inches of snow per hour!

Another wintery weather word is a bombogenesis which popped up during the first snowstorm of 2018. According to the National Ocean and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) the process of bombogenesis occurs when a midlatitude cyclone rapidly intensifies. This can happen with cold air masses collide with warm air masses. This weather system can form quickly and can create a bomb cyclone. It’s hard to imagine a cyclone combined with a blizzard but we ended up with two snow days worth of snow!

Derechos are strong powerful winds that have similar power to tornados. While the damage from a tornado can come from the circular motion of the winds a derecho (straight in Spanish) is when the winds come down forcefully in a straight line from the sky and cause damage when they hit the ground. To be considered a derecho winds must be at least 58 mph and its perimeter must be at least 240 miles. These winds can have devastating damage to people in rural and urban areas because of the intense structural damage they can cause. Some scientists are worried that with warmer temperatures due to climate change the frequency of derechos but only time will tell.

The next weather word is very fun to say: haboob. Go on try it: haboob. Well other than being fun to say haboobs can have quite the impact on an area. In Arabic haboob means ‘blasting’ and that’s exactly what they do. Occurring all over the world they are a very powerful dust storm that can happen very quickly. Forty mile an hour winds can start up in just a few minutes! A lot of the damage that happens during a haboob are because people drive through them or breathe in too much of the sand. So if you ever find yourself caught in a haboob stop driving, find shelter inside and cover your nose and mouth. A transportation department in Arizona even uses haikus to promote haboob safety!

Last but certainly not least is a weather words that you might haveexperienced but not have had the words to describe it. Have you ever been outside right before or after a spring shower? Have you taken a deep breath only to smell something you can’t quite put a name to but always reminds you of rain? Well if you answered yes then you know exactly what I am talking about: petrichor! Weird word, right? Sound very scientific but is actually quite simple. Petrichor is the smell of airborne molecules of decomposing plants and animals rising up from mineral and clay surfaces after a rain shower. The next time it rains you now know that that smell has a name!

In the future while you sit on the couch looking at the forecast pay attention to those weird weather words and you might just learn something new!