Newsletters
October 2009 - Wooly Bear , Asian Long-horned Beetle
WELCOME TO GREEN FUTURES!
OCTOBER, 2009
"O wild West Wind, thou breath of Autumn's being.
Thou, from whose unseen presence the leaves dead
Are driven, like ghosts from an enchanter fleeing."
- Percy Bysshe Shelley
"November always seemed to me the Norway of the year."
- Emily Dickinson
"No warmth, no cheerfulness, no healthful ease,
No comfortable feel in any member -
No shade, no shine, no butterflies, no bees,
No fruits, no flowers, no leaves, no birds -
November!"
- Thomas Hood
GOOD BUG –
Have you seen a wooly bear this autumn? No, not a shaggy bruin living in the forest …we mean the wooly bear caterpillar that makes its appearance every fall here in New England. It is often seen walking down wooded lanes and rural roads, but is also encountered perambulating along suburban sidewalks or crossing busy roads and highways at this time of the year.
Wooly bears are black …fore and aft …and have a reddish-brown middle. Wooly bears were used by early colonial farmers to predict the severity of the coming winter. If the reddish-brown band is wide, the winter will easy. A narrow band forecasts a severe winter with lots of cold and snow.
Most wooly bears are rather shy. Should you see one and pick it up, most will curl their body into a circle and play possum. Bolder wooly bears will crawl around on your hand searching for a way to escape to continue their journey.
The Wooly Bear walk-abouts will stop as soon as they find a sheltered nook or cranny where they can curl up in a bed of dried leaves and sleep away the winter.
Come spring they will awaken from hibernation, feed for a short time on a wide variety of weeds and grasses and then spin their cocoon. No longer a wooly bear, they soon emerge as an attractive Isabella tiger moth.
Some of us have been checking area wooly bears to see how severe the 2009-2010 winter will be, here in our neck of the woods.
Local wooly bears from Freetown, Dartmouth, Rehoboth, Middleborough and Lakeville seem to indicate a mild winter. We’ll soon know if their prognostications prove true.
If you spot a wooly bear out on a sunny, November, Indian summer day …be sure to check the width of the middle band and email us your findings and the town in which you discovered your wooly bear.
Some communities go all out to celebrate their wooly bears. Vermillion, Ohio has been holding a fall wooly bear festival for 37 years.
The following is from their festival website:
Vermilion’s Wooly bear Parade is one of the largest parades in the state of Ohio. It starts at 1:30 pm and lasts approximately 2 hours. It features many radio and television personalities including Dick Goddard and the Fox8 News Team. Parade participants include:
Wooly bear kids and pets riding hay wagons and over 15 marching bands with nearly 2,000 musicians, radio and TV personalities, vintage automobiles, floats, animals, festival queens, clowns, and much more!
The Wooly bear Festival areas consist of entertainment, food booths, craft booths, and merchant sales. Wooly bear T-shirts, Wooly bear sweatshirts, and Wooly bear hats will be available at the Vermilion Chamber of Commerce stand. Various entertainers are at the main stage throughout the day.
Down south the wooly bear is better known as the “wooly worm.” Since 1987, during the third weekend in October, Beattyville, Kentucky has hosted an annual Wooly Worm Festival.
It is a three day event with a Wooly Worm Parade down Beattyville’s Main Street and two stages set up for musical performances.
They also hold a Wooly Worm Race with cash prizes. Wooly worms are placed at the bottom of a string and the first one to climb to the top of the string wins. Here’s the Wooly Worm Festival press release:
Some changes and additions to this year’s festival will be, opening the gates at 9:00 a.m. on both Saturday and Sunday and the expansion of the kid’s area in the park. There will be special music on Sunday by the John Schuffler Band and for local family pricing as well on Sunday look for a coupon in the Wooly Worm Gazette the week of the event.
The added time at the festival will give festival goers more time to take in the over 140 food and craft vendors with their handcrafted items, plus rides, musicians and dance teams.
We will have many returning vendors who make worm houses and pins, face painting and also include artists who do photography, pottery, stained glass and much more. “It’s a great festival, as it has something for everyone,” says Roy Krege, also known as Mr. Wooly Worm, one of the many volunteers helping to organize the event and add to its success.
Participants wishing to race their worm may register at 9:00 a.m., and shortly after that races begin. 25 worms are in each heat. Winning Wooly Worm holds the esteemed honor of predicting the winter weather season and the Wooly Worm wins prize monies of $1000, which we hope the winning worm shares with its owner. Sunday’s winning Wooly Worm $500.
The official Wooly Worm Festival mascot is Wooly the Wooly Worm.
Banner Elk, North Carolina also holds a Wooly Worm Festival.
Here’s part of their festival blurb:
The 2009 Festival is the 32nd Annual Festival
For the 32nd year the town of Banner Elk has welcomed both old and new friends to the annual Wooly Worm Festival. This family event co-hosted by the Avery County Chamber of Commerce and the Kiwanis Organization of Banner Elk welcomes more than 23,000 people to the community to make family memories and also to win the $1000.00 bounty.
Come enjoy the camaraderie of the day and cheer on your favorite Wooly.
Here’s a wooly bear forecast from the Hagerstown, Maryland, Town and Country Almanack.
The Almanack has been publishing weather forecasts and weather lore for 211 years. The Almanack sponsors an annual wooly bear caterpillar event, where local school children in Hagerstown collect wooly bears. A panel of judges examines the collected specimens and issues a wooly bear forecast for the upcoming winter. The results of this show a mild winter for 2009-10.
There are three (3) bands of which the front band (representing the first half of winter and black in color) was shorter in length and normal. The back band (representing the second half of winter) was very small, thus indicating the mild winter prediction. As a result of those markings, which were similar in all wooly bears, the sponsors were able to make the predictions."
Our final famous wooly bear community is Oil City, Pennsylvania.
They have a wooly bear named, Oil Valley Vick.
It appears Vick does for the winter what Punxsutawney Phil, just down the road in Punxsutawney, Pennsylvania, does for spring. Vick crawls from his den every October during the Oil City Pumpkin Bumpkin Festival and predicts the coming winter for Oil City and the rest of northwestern Pennsylvania.
From the above, you can see many people still consult the wooly bear each fall season.
BAD BUG -
Have you seen an Asian longhorned beetle this autumn?
We hope not!
The Asian longhorned beetle is a major threat to New England’s hardwood forests and urban street trees should it become established here.
Like the gypsy moth, wooly adelgid, Dutch elm fungus, chestnut blight, etc., etc., …it is one more foreign invasive species that has the potential to change our local environment in a major way.
When foreign species escape …or are released …into habitat areas that lack the predators that kept them under control in their native land, the newcomers usually thrive and in a short time dominate their new home at the expense of native species and the shared environment.
The Asian longhorned beetle (Anoplophora glabripennis) is believed to have entered this country, in wood packing material from China, in the late 1980s. It was first identified as an alien invasive species in Brooklyn, New York.
There is an extensive federal, state and local effort underway to stop the spread of this tree eating insect. The closest this beetle has been found to our south coast area is Worcester.
Can the Asian longhorned beetle invasion be stopped? We doubt it …but that doesn’t mean we’re willing to surrender our maples and other hardwood tree species without a fight.
If you should see this rather large …up to an inch and a half long…beetle, with long swept back antennae, please email us immediately.
AUTUMN WINDING DOWN -
Before winter creeps in, take the time to get outdoors exploring your natural environment. Go look for a wooly bear. There is at least one publicly accessible open space parcel within a few miles of where you are. Take a late fall hike and explore that area. What trees and shrubs grow there? Can you identify them now that they’ve lost most of their leaves? What critters call that area home? Summer resident birds have long gone, but new arrivals from way up north have taken their place. Can you identify the winter birds in your area?
If you’d like an introduction to local winter birds,
the birding group is still holding bird walks in the Southeastern Massachusetts Bioreserve every Tuesday morning at 8:30 a.m
. They meet at Fighting Rock Corner …the intersection of Wilson, Bell Rock, and Blossom Roads, Fall River, MA. All welcome.
Click on our
for other natural fun things to do.
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