Newsletters
February 2016 -Repellants, White Oak, Banded Sunfish
WELCOME TO GREEN FUTURES !
FEBRUARY, 2016
“I have no special talent. I am only passionately curious.”
-Albert Einstein
“The most common way people give up their power is by thinking they don't have any.”
-Alice Walker
DON'T FEAR THE TICK – You are considerably larger and hopefully smarter
Signs such as these two at dysfunctional DCR's West Island State Reservation scare people away. “Infested,” in bold letters, absolutely “INFESTED WITH TICKS.”
We hear from people all the time who refuse to walk in the woods because they've heard and/or read too much media hype and fear contracting some horrible disease from ticks and/or mosquitoes.
Not that a few tick and mosquito diseases are not horrible, but your chances of contracting one are remote if you take a few simple precautions. Most ticks and mosquitoes are not carrying diseases. Most tick and mosquito bites are not serious and there are widely available repellents that can keep these critters from thinking of you as food.
With climate change and warmer winters ticks, especially the occasional Lyme disease carrying black-legged deer tick, may be out and about and hungry throughout the year and you want to be out and about in your natural environment too. So, what to do?
One thing you don't have to do is stay home or encase yourself in clothing to take a walk in the woods. We've lead hikes and conducted other outdoor activities, in July with the temperature in the nineties, where some participants have arrived swaddled in so much overlapping clothing ...wool socks pulled up over their pants up to their knees, gloves, neck scarves, etc. to prevent a tick or mosquito from taking a nibble ...that they are more likely to die from heat prostration than from Lyme disease or West Nile virus.
Stop it! Take simple precautions. Use DEET (diethyltoluamide) on exposed skin to repel mosquitoes, ticks and other lesser biting insects. Use repellents and take a hike. Repellents containing at least 25 to 30% DEET keep mosquitoes at bay for at least a few hours. One application of 100% DEET has kept us mosquito free for up to 6 hours in a mosquito's favorite place, white cedar bogs and red maple swamps.
Obviously you don't want to slather any chemical, DEET included, all over your body. Use it on exposed skin only. When used as directed DEET has been found by the American Academy of Pediatrics to be safe for use on adults and children older than two months of age. DEET has been classified by the U. S. Environmental Protection Agency as “not classifiable as a human carcinogen.”
So, when going for a walk in the forest or by the seashore use DEET on exposed skin to repel mosquitoes and ticks. When you get home after your outdoor activity, simply shower and wash it off.
For ticks, the best repellent is permethrin. When hiking in ticky places use DEET on exposed skin to repelmosquitoes and wear permethrin treated clothing you've reserved for your outdoor adventures. Permethrin kills ticks on contact. Permethrin should not be applied to your skin, that’s where the DEET goes. Permethrin is solely for clothing. According to permethrin manufacturers an application lasts for six weeks and/or through six washings. Good stuff and does its job keeping us tick free.
Although you've made yourself tick proof it is still a good idea to quickly check your clothing for ticks when you arrive back home and also check your body when showering or before retiring for the night. Use a hand held mirror to view all areas. If your children have accompanied you on your hike, carefully check them too.
Ticks normally attach where tight clothing limits further progress or in your body’s nooks and crannies. Check sock line at ankles, underwear/pant line at thighs and at waist, behind the knees, behind the arms, inside belly button folds, behind or just inside edge of ear, in hair.
If you've applied your DEET and permethrin correctly we doubt you'll find a tick. If you do, don’t freak out. Most ticks are disease free and an infected black legged tick needs to be attached at least 24 hours before it can inject you with Lyme. If you find a tick merely crawling around on you, it means you have a tick crawling around on you. Pick it up and toss it.
To attach and poke a hole in your hide for feeding, ticks have specialized organs in their mouth and a barbed hypostoma which holds the ticks feeding apparatus firmly in place. The tick doesn't imbed itself completely under the skin. It only imbeds its hypostoma and mouth.
More on how to remove ticks and on the difficulties of diagnosing Lyme disease ...and some stuff on mosquito diseases too ...in next month's e- newsletter.
Applied correctly all you need to stay tick and mosquito free. No brand preference, these happened to be available for the photo.
SOME ITEMS OF INTEREST RECEIVED FROM READERS
Great Old Broads for Wilderness. “Wild places, once destroyed, are gone forever.” We need some Great Old Broads here in southeastern Massachusetts.
http://www.greatoldbroads.org/
Sierra Club says Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) fails to protect the environment.
.https://www.sierraclub.org/sites/www.sierraclub.org/files/uploads-wysiwig/tpp-analysis-updated.pdf
Big Oil – LA Times. http://graphics.latimes.com/oil-operations/
Iceland dilemma. http://www.csmonitor.com/World/Europe/2015/1230/Green-power-or-green-countryside-Iceland-s-energetic-debate
Wind power generation exceeds consumption. Where's this?
http://www.macauhub.com.mo/en/2015/12/31/wind-power-generation-in-portugal-exceeds-electricity-consumption/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+Macauhub+%28Macauhub%29
Fungi from The New Yorker. http://www.newyorker.com/tech/elements/the-year-in-fungi-2015
From The Wall Street Journal, kindergarten in the forest.
http://www.wsj.com/articles/german-kindergarten-campouts-test-helicopter-parents-1451338940
Although cool and damp New England has few species of native reptiles and amphibians, compared to warmer areas of the globe, those that we do have are varied in appearance and many are beautifully colored. Unfortunately, fungal diseases may eliminate these unique species.
NO RESPONSE - LOST IN THE BUREAUCRATIC MAZE OR IGNORED BY JUST ANOTHER SELF-SERVING PUBLIC SERVANT?
After three years of the Massachusetts Department of Conservation and Recreation (DCR) failing to repair horrendous land damage caused by their negligence, one of our directors wrote a personal letter to the Secretary of the Executive Office of Energy and Environmental Affairs (EOEEA), Matthew Beaton, to apprise him of the issue here and inform him that a department within his secretariat was dysfunctional and not living up to its stated mission. Could he see that DCR responsibly repairs the hill?
The letter included a site visit request. That it would be of value and take less than an hour of his time if he could stop by when next in the area, at his convenience, so he could be shown the land damage.
It has been two months since the letter was sent. Tracking shows it was received at EOEEA. No response yet.
BIORESERVE FAUNA OF THE MONTH – Banded Sunfish (Enneacanthus obesus)
Almost all of the freshwater sunfish species (family Centrarchidae) found today in southern New England ...species that many people, especially freshwater fishermen, think were always “here” …were brought here from somewhere else. These non-native sunfish include largemouth and smallmouth bass, rock bass, bluegill and black crappie/calico bass.
We do have two native sunfish species in our neck of the woods that don't get much attention from fishermen because of their small size, but what they lack in length and weight they make up for in beauty. One native is the pumpkinseed (Lepomis gibbosus) and the other is this February's “Fauna of the Month” ...the banded sunfish.
The banded sunfish likes small and shallow heavily vegetated acidic waters of ponds, pools and backwaters of creeks, small rivers and boggy brooks and is found in such waters along the Atlantic coast from New Hampshire to central Florida.
We find today, due to the introduction of non-native fish into their habitat and with the added burdens of agricultural pesticides and other chemicals, toxic atmospheric deposition, industrial and domestic pollution, the banded sunfish is not as common as it once was. It is listed as a species of special concern/species to be watched in New Hampshire, Connecticut, New York, New Jersey and Pennsylvania.
Adult banded sunfish average 2 inches in length. Like other sunfish species it is round in shape. Its tail is also rounded as are the pectoral fins. Overall, they are olive-gray in color with 6 to 8 darker vertical stripes along their sides. On the rear of the gill cover is a black spot bordered with purple and gold.
During spawning season, in late spring/early summer, these fish are very colorful. Their heads, sides and vertical stripes darken and both males and females develop a sprinkling of iridescent gold, blue and green dots along their head and sides.
Like other sunfish species male banded sunfish stake out a territory and dig a circular nest in the sand where they display with flared fins hoping to attract a female that is ready to spawn. Once the eggs have been deposited in the nest and fertilized the male hovers nearby to protect the eggs from aquatic insect predators. Once hatched the male continues to watch over the fry until they reach sufficient size to disperse from the nest into the surrounding vegetation.
The banded sunfish feeds upon aquatic insects, tiny crustaceans and other invertebrates. All larger fish and other aquatic carnivores as well as piscivorous birds, mammals, reptiles and amphibians prey on these small fish too.
An old banded sunfish is a wise banded sunfish and doesn't stray far from the safety of dense vegetation.
Photo – Noel Burkhead, Wikimedia Commons
BIORESERVE FLORA OF THE MONTH – White Oak (Quercus alba)
Leaves and acorns of white oak. - Commons Wikimedia
White oak trees growing in forest openings can be massive in size and were the next most impressive deciduous trees in local forests after the American chestnut. Unfortunately our native chestnuts, except for stump sprouts, are long gone having been killed off by the Asian chestnut blight brought to North America over a hundred years ago.
History repeating itself? Unfortunately, again, like with the chestnut, we have unleashed a number of alien oak consumers that are presently hard at work destroying our white oaks. Besides alien gypsy moths and winter moths defoliating white oaks during the growing season we have increasing attacks on our oaks from alien oak wilt, a fungal disease caused by Ceratocystis fagacearum.
We also have two natives that can do serious damage to white oak. The honey mushroom (shoestring fungus) and the two-lined chestnut borer.
White oak can reach just over a hundred feet in height and although not the tallest tree in the eastern forest they can, as mentioned above, be quite large and impressive with huge limbs. They thrive in most forest soils only avoiding areas that are too wet or too dry.
Locally white oak is often found growing in association with other oak and hickory species and with American beech.
White oak received its name from the color of its furrowed bark. More light gray than white it does have the lightest colored bark of our native oak species.
White oak is an eastern tree. Its range reaches from southern Maine, Quebec and Ontario to Minnesota and the eastern edge of the Great Plains. In the south, it avoids swamplands and coastal areas, but can be found from eastern Texas east to northern Florida.
White oak leaves begin to unfold from the leaf buds in May. The new leaves are covered with a silvery-pinkdown and pale green in color slowly turning a richer, shiny green as they grow. Leaves reach a length of 6 to 8 inches and 3 to 5 inches in width. White oaks leaves have rounded lobes, they do not come to a point
In late October/early November leaves turn reddish brown. Some leaves may cling to the tree through the winter.
White oak are slow growing trees and will not bear acorns until almost 50 years old. The trees flower in May as the leaves begin to open. Flowers of both sexes are on the same tree. Male flower catkins open and release pale green pollen which is carried by the wind to the inconspicuous female flowers that bear the shape, in miniature, of the mature acorns they will become if pollen lands on their stigmas. Some years at pollen shedding time winds are calm and/or the weather is cold and rainy. When weather conditions at pollinating time are not ideal for fertilization, fall acorn production will be spotty to nonexistent. In good years, by early fall, the almost inch long acorns are ripe and drop from the tree.
Good white oak acorn crops occur every 4 to 5 years. When they do, just about every forest creature turns out to get their share. In Massachusetts deer, bear, raccoon, gray fox, opossum, red squirrel, gray squirrel, flying squirrel, chipmunk, vole, woods mice, wood duck, wild turkey, ruffed grouse, nuthatche, woodpeckers, blue jay and crow are some of the most avid acorn eaters.
In years of abundant acorn production those few that escape being eaten and those buried by forgetful squirrels germinate quickly sending down a tap root but not sending a shoot above ground until the spring. White oak can regenerate via stump sprouts.
Indians utilized white oak acorns for food. White oak acorns were preferred to those of other oaks because of their low tannic acid content. Today, there are folks that still gather, prepare and eat white oak acorns. If you'd like to try eating acorns here's one of many sites on the internet that explains the preparation process and provides recipes: http://honest-food.net/2014/10/13/how-to-eat-acorns/
White oak in winter.
HAPPY GROUNDHOG DAY!!!- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pY9-qFu-S_w
February is the last full month of winter. If you enjoy winter activities don't delay. Spring is approaching and if the groundhog doesn't see his shadow spring may be here even sooner. Click on our Calendar for organized things to do.
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