by Roland D. Hallee

There is nothing more soothing than to hear a coyote cry out in the darkness when at a remote location in Maine.

Coyotes have made a return to Maine. This happened sometime in the 1960s and they have settled in very well. Archeological research has shown that coyotes lived in the East 30,000 years ago. What caused the coyote to leave the East is not known.

With the extirpation of the wolf in the lower 48 states caused by clearcutting of the virgin forests, and constant predator control, coyotes began to roam. From the southwest they roamed to Alaska and Canada, and then on to the northern Great Lakes region, and into Ontario and Québec. In eastern Canada, coyotes encountered scattered packs of the Eastern Canadian wolf population. Generally, coyote and wolves do not get along. If a coyote comes across wolves, he is certainly going to die. But these groups of wolves acted differently toward the coyotes since their numbers had been decimated due to extensive hunting and trapping, breaking down their complex social structure. Subsequently, many eastern coyote offsprings possess some degree of wolf genes, but remain coyotes in both appearance and behavior.

Coyotes are one of the most adaptable animals in the world, changing their breeding habits, diet and social dynamics to survive in a wide variety of habitats.

The coyote can be found on the North American continent, and only on this continent. They are also known by other names, such in the southwest and Mexico where they are called “Old Man,” and in other areas of the continent as “America’s Song Dog.” Many Native American myths were passed on from generation to generation with coyote chosen as lead character in all their stories. The Native Americans recognized and respected the coyote’s intelligence, adaptability, cunning, curiosity and humor. The ancient Aztecs gave the coyote his name: “Coyoti,” meaning “God’s dog.”

The coyote is one of the few wild animals whose vocalizations are commonly heard. At night, coyotes both howl and emit a series of short, high-pitched yips. Howls are used to keep in touch with other coyotes in the area. Sometimes, when it is first heard, the listener may experience a tingling fear of primitive dogs, but to the seasoned outdoorsman, the howl of the coyote is truly a song of the West.

The howling shows territorial warnings to other male coyotes. Females are always welcome. Yelping indicates a celebration or criticism within a small group of coyotes. The bark is what the coyote is named for, Canis lantrans means “barking dog.” That is used to display threats when a coyote is protecting a den or a kill. Huffing is usually used for calling pups without making a great deal of noise.

That relationship with humans ended when the Europeans arrived in North America. In his book The Voice of the Coyote, Frank Dobie wrote, “The English-Americans have never taught coyote any language but that of lead, steel, and strychnine.” The coyote, though, was not alone in experiencing the wrath of the settlers, other native wildlife were either pushed into extinction, or their populations were diminished – the wolf being one of them. The coyote, however, would survive.

For centuries, coyote lived with wolves, but very cautiously. It was important for the coyote to stay outside wolf territory if they wanted to survive.

According to Geri Vistein, representing the national Coyote Project, “Coyotes are very capable of co-existing with us, but we need to keep coyotes wild, by never providing them food, water or shelter.”

Conversely, killing coyotes to protect farm animals can actually have the opposite affect. Stable, healthy families of coyotes are likely to be wary of humans, said Vistein, while wandering, unhealthy or starving coyotes are more likely to snag an unprotected chicken or other farm animal. Killing coyotes that have established their territories only opens those areas up to marauding coyotes.

Although there have been no reports of coyotes attacking people in Maine, there are a few things to remember if you should encounter one. Ninety-nine percent of encounters with coyotes result in no confrontation. They are wary of humans. Only on occasion will they display some aggressiveness. Watch its behavior. It’s natural reaction will be to identify you, and then turn away and run off. If it becomes aggressive, treat it like a dog. Show it that you are the master: shout at it, stand your ground, but do not run away.

The coyote’s tail is used to signify a threat. It becomes bushy and is held horizontally when the coyote displays aggressiveness.

Humans have mixed emotions about coyotes. Some want them killed while others see benefits in their presence. Some rural residents feel the presents of coyotes restrict the freedoms of their pets and their own lifestyles, while others who have farm animals, using the proper precautions, have never experienced the loss of any farm animals at the hands of coyotes that are obviously present in the area.

The coyote seems to be asking for humans to feel comfortable having wildness in settled places, it’s up to mankind if that is to happen.

Whether to allow the coyote to live or die is a debate that has gone on for centuries in the United States, but to quote Dell Hymes in his Fivefold Fanfare for Coyote: “…Never will he go from this land / Here always, as long as the land is, / that is how Coyote is in this land….”

Roland’s trivia question of the week:

The MLB Texas Rangers have been in Texas for 53 years. However, their history goes back to 1961. From where did they move to Texas?

Fancy feather-footed pigeon

by Roland D. Hallee

One night last week, my wife showed a photo to me she received from a friend, showing a pigeon-like bird with fuzzy feathers on its feet. I wasn’t quite sure what it was, but it did look like a pigeon.

Research led me to identify it as a fancy feather-footed pigeon. So, more digging was done, and this is what I found. Unfortunately, there wasn’t much about them online.

A fancy feather-footed pigeon, such as the English Trumpeter or Bokhara Trumpeter, is a domesticated pigeon bred for ornamental beauty, distinguished by “muffs” of feathers on its feet, which are a form of genetic variation from its rock pigeon ancestors. This distinctive feature, which gives the appearance of “feather pants,” is caused by genetic mutations that reprogram the leg to develop feathers instead of scales, and can vary in length from a few stray feathers to large, fluffy plumes.

Foot feathering is an uncommon trait among bird species, as most birds have scaly feet. Some raptors and boreal birds have feathered feet, and among chickens and pigeons, birds can have feathery or scaly feet, depending on their breeds.

Fancy pigeon refers to any breed of domestic pigeon, which is a domesticated form of the wild rock dove. They are bred by pigeon fanciers for various traits relating to size, shape, color, and behavior, and often exhibited at pigeon shows, fairs and other livestock exhibits.

OK, with all that beauty, are there any brains?

Rock Dove

Pigeons are considered to be quite intelligent birds. They can recognize themselves in mirrors, learn complex tasks, and remember long-range routes. How smart are pigeons? Pigeons can learn and remember tasks, solve problems, and recognize individual people and places.

Fancy pigeons with feathered feet are a sight that you can find often at bird shows and displays. But why do some pigeons have feathered feet while others don’t? What evolutionary processes lead to feathers on some pigeons’ feet?

Pigeons with this characteristic have become the subject of much discussion. You can see some of these birds in bird shows and exhibits.

Pigeons get feathery feet because of one or more genetic variations. Though you might think this is just some sort of overgrowth of feathers like humans that have hair in the wrong places, foot feathers are actually not the skin growing extra feathers.

Other bird species with feathers on their feet include Snowy owls, golden eagles, certain bantam breeds, and ptarmigans.

Aside from them, certain chickens and domestic pigeons have been bred with and without feathers in the same species. The evolution of feathered feet throws new light on how evolutionary processes work.

So, where did this particular fancy feather-foot pigeon come from? Well, although they are common among breeders for show purposes, this kind of genetic mutation does not occur in the wild. So this bird is probably one that has escaped from a breeder or an owner. It’s likely to have a home somewhere nearby.

Roland’s trivia question of the week:

Name the famous football player who is the brother-in-law of former Boston Red Sox star Kevin Youkilis?

by Roland D. Hallee

Well, we’re coming up on the middle of October, and time to take a look at what Mother Nature has provided to us in regards to a preview of the upcoming winter.

Brrrr! Dread the thought!

During the summer and fall, our little critters, and even our vegetation, provides us with a glimpse of what we may be in store come the winter months.

Now, let’s make it clear. All of the following are according to farmers’ folklore. I looked up the word “lore” in the dictionary, and this is what I came up with: “All the knowledge of a particular group or having to do with a particular subject, especially that of a traditional nature.” Apparently, these are the result of many years of farmers keeping track of conditions involving their fields and crops.

First, it’s the old wives tale about the beloved onion. The lore goes that if an onion is difficult to peel, it is a sign of an impending harsh winter. If the onion peels easily, we can expect a milder winter. Notice I said, “milder.”

So far this summer, I have noticed that onions have been relatively easy to peel. My wife and I eat lots of onions, so this is more than just a small sample size.

Next comes those dreaded hornets and wasps. Farmers’ folklore has it that ground hives signify a low snowfall. Well, we went through this a couple of weeks ago when I told of the problem we had at camp this fall with yellow jacket hives in the ground. We had at least four that we knew about this summer, when action had to be taken to alleviate the problem.

However, during our close-down weekend at camp, we were again pestered with a multitude of yellow jackets, indicating there was another hive nearby. We never found it.

Contributing to that theory is the hornets nest I saw last week. A nest, the size of a honeydew melon, hung on a branch, low on a tree, probably about six feet or so off the ground. Not very high for a hornets’ nest.

With so many nests in the ground and the one hanging low on a tree branch, that, supposedly, indicates low snowfall. Wouldn’t mind that, even if I do have the snowblower tuned up and ready to go.

Another sign that the impending winter will be on the mild side has a little bit of controversy.

The wooly bear caterpillar. That darling, little fuzzy insect that usually comes out in mid-September. I have seen only a few, but they all have been on the highway, where I can’t get a really good look at them.

I did see one last weekend at camp, and the results were favorable.

Now, I am sure everyone has heard the myth that the length of the rust-colored band on a wooly bear tells of how severe or mild the winter. If the rust-colored band dominates the body, it will be a mild winter.

The wooly bear I saw measured 1-5/8 inches long. An inch of that length was black, while the rust-colored band measured only 5/8-inch. That’s telling me the winter will be a little on the bad side. However, other people have told me – and showed photos to me – the wooly bears they have seen were predominantly rust-colored. I hope mine was the flunky of the wooly bears.

Finally, the cicadae. That is the green insect that buzzes during the hot, steamy, humid days of July. Farmers’ folklore has it the first killing frost of the season will occur 90 days following the first sound of the cicadae, after the full moon. The first time we heard the cicadae this summer was on July 26. Count out 90 days, that brings us to October 26. With the next full moon happening on October 6, you have to go beyond. The next full moon after that is November 5. We could be looking at an Indian Summer, with the first killing frost following that date.

Now, just for giggles, let’s throw in the Farmers’ Almanac. The Farmers’ Almanac, which has provided long-range weather forecasts for more than 200 years, is predicting a cold and snow-filled winter for Maine. Do we dare look any further?

Roland’s trivia question of the week:

Which Red Sox batter has the best career On Base Percentage in team and major league history?

by Roland D. Hallee

OK, we’ve been going through quite a dry spell since July, with hardly any rain. Plants and flowers are starving for the liquid and so are the bees.

I’m sure everyone has noticed the presence of many, many more bees than normal. Just last week, on a particularly beautiful Saturday, I decided to go read my daily newspaper on the deck with a glass of wine.

Nope! Not happening. I was immediately swarmed with dozens of bees all fixated on that glass of wine. So, inside I went.

Last week, my granddaughter and two great-granddaughters came out for lunch. The little girls wanted to eat in the gazebo. So they went out with peanut butter and jelly sandwiches, and an apple, with some apple juice. Well, guess what happened. Inside they went because of the swarming bees, with the apple and apple juice seeming to be their targets.

Actually, I use the term “swarm” loosely. Do you know how many bees it takes before it is considered a swarm? Give up?

A bee swarm typically contains thousands to tens of thousands of bees, with average swarms around 10,000 to 30,000 bees. The number can vary significantly, though, from a few hundred to over 30,000 depending on the original colony’s size and whether it’s a primary or secondary swarm. Swarms are a natural form of honey bee reproduction, where a queen and a large group of worker bees leave their original hive to establish a new colony.

So, why all the bees?

During a dry spell, the increased bee activity is driven by the colony’s heightened need for water to cool the hive and a scarcity of natural food sources. You are more likely to see bees congregating in places where water is available, such as puddles, pet bowls, and swimming pools.

Bees require a lot of water to maintain their hives, particularly during a dry spell.

The hive needs to be cooled. Bees use a process called evaporative cooling to regulate the temperature inside the hive. Water-foraging bees collect water, spread it in thin layers, and fan their wings to create airflow and lower the hive’s temperature. This is crucial for keeping developing larvae and the wax comb from overheating.

Water is also necessary for feeding young bees and for diluting honey. With natural water sources drying up, bees will congregate around any available source they can find. Interestingly, they often prefer “dirty” water, like from puddles or damp soil, because of the minerals and scent, which they can detect more easily than clean water.

Droughts lead to a “nectar dearth,” a period where nectar-producing flowers are scarce or no longer in bloom. This lack of food changes bee behavior and makes them more visible to humans.

As food sources dwindle, foragers must travel farther and search more aggressively for nectar and pollen. Bees will seek out alternative sources of sugar and carbohydrates, which brings them into contact with human areas like picnic tables, garbage cans, and sugary drinks.

The combination of hunger and the need to protect their limited resources can make a colony more defensive. They may become irritable or aggressive, especially if they are a strong colony attempting to rob a weaker hive. The heightened activity during a dry spell is also influenced by the seasonal growth of bee colonies.

By the end of summer and beginning of fall, colonies typically reach their maximum population size. This means there are simply more individual bees out foraging and more individuals to notice around your home and garden.

My wife, who can’t stand bees, sets off on a mission to capture the bees by luring them to sweet liquids and then disposing of them. I tell her bees are necessary to pollinate the gardens. I explained to her the famous quote: “If the honey bee disappeared off the face of the Earth, man would only have four years left to live.” It is a misattribution to Albert Einstein. While the statement is not found in any of his writings, it originated with a Canadian beekeeper in the 1940s and was popularized by a French journalist in 1965, later circulating on pamphlets and in media to highlight the importance of bees as pollinators. We’ll see how that goes.

So, it’s a conundrum. We need the bees, but they can be pests, especially during dry conditions. I was stung a couple of weeks ago, and it wasn’t a picnic. I worry about my great-granddaughters.

Roland’s trivia question of the week:

Whose 240 hits in 1985 are the most in a single season in the Boston Red Sox team history?

a cicada

by Roland D. Hallee

Last week, while doing some yard work, my wife noticed some insects on our outdoor fire pit. When summoned, I went over and identified the “bug” as the cicada exoskeleton, the part the cicada leaves behind its external skeleton, a hard, protective outer shell. We counted 11 of them. As a cicada grows, it outgrows its exoskeleton and must molt, shedding the old, hard shell and emerging as a larger, soft-bodied form.

The cicadas are a superfamily of insects, with more than 3,000 species described from around the world. Cicadas have prominent eyes set wide apart, short antennae, and membranous front wings. They have an exceptionally loud song, produced in most species by the rapid buckling and unbuckling of drum-like tymbals. They typically live in trees, feeding on watery sap from xylem tissue, and laying their eggs in a slit in the bark. Most cicadas are cryptic. The vast majority of species are active during the day as adults, with some calling at dawn or dusk. Only a rare few species are known to be nocturnal.

One exclusively North American genus, (the periodical cicadas), which spend most of their lives as underground nymphs, emerge in predictable intervals of 13 or 17 years, depending on the species and the location. The unusual duration and synchronization of their emergence may reduce the number of cicadas lost to predation, both by making them a less reliably available prey (so any predator that evolved to depend on cicadas for sustenance might starve waiting for their emergence), and by emerging in such huge numbers they will satiate any remaining predators before losing enough of their number to threaten their survival as a species.

The annual cicadas are species that emerge every year. Though these cicadas’ life cycles can vary from one to nine or more years as underground nymphs, their emergence above ground as adults is not synchronized, so some members of each species appear every year.

The “singing” of male cicadas is produced principally and in the majority of species using a special structure called a tymbal, a pair of which lies below each side of the anterior abdominal region. The structure is buckled by muscular action and, being made of resilin, unbuckles rapidly on muscle relaxation, producing their characteristic sounds. Some cicadas, however, have mechanisms for stridulation, sometimes in addition to the tymbals. Here, the wings are rubbed over a series of midthoracic ridges. Although only males produce the cicadas’ distinctive sounds, both sexes have membranous structures called tympana (singular – tympanum) by which they detect sounds, the equivalent of having ears.

cicada exoskeleton

For the human ear, telling precisely where a cicada song originates is often difficult. The pitch is nearly constant, the sound is continuous to the human ear, and cicadas sing in scattered groups. In addition to the mating song, many species have a distinct distress call, usually a broken and erratic sound emitted by the insect when seized or panicked. Some species also have courtship songs, generally quieter, and produced after a female has been drawn to the calling song. Males also produce encounter calls, whether in courtship or to maintain personal space within choruses.

Most cicadas go through a life cycle that lasts two – five years. Some species have much longer life cycles, such as the North American genus, which has a number of distinct “broods” that go through either a 17-year or in some parts of the region, a 13-year life cycle. For example, a 17-year cicada with a predator with a five-year life cycle will only be threatened by a peak predator population every 85 (5 × 17) years, while a non-prime cycle such as 15 would be endangered at every year of emergence. Cicadas are commonly eaten by birds and mammals, as well as bats, wasps, mantises, spiders, and robber flies. In times of mass emergence of cicadas, various amphibians, fish, reptiles, mammals, and birds change their foraging habits so as to benefit from the glut. Newly-hatched nymphs may be eaten by ants, and nymphs living underground are preyed on by burrowing mammals such as moles.but observations of predator responses refute the claim.

In mythology and folklore Cicadas have been used as money, in folk medicine, to forecast the weather, to provide song (in China), and in folklore and myths around the world.

Cicadas feed on sap; they do not bite or sting in a true sense, but may occasionally mistake a person’s arm for a plant limb and attempt to feed. Male cicadas produce very loud calls that can damage human hearing.

Cicadas are not major agricultural pests, but in some outbreak years, trees may be overwhelmed by the sheer numbers of females laying their eggs in the shoots. Small trees may wilt and larger trees may lose small branches. Although in general, the feeding activities of the nymphs do little damage, during the year before an outbreak of periodic cicadas, the large nymphs feed heavily and plant growth may suffer.[111] Some species have turned from wild grasses to sugarcane, which affects the crop adversely, and in a few isolated cases, females have oviposited on cash crops such as date palms, grape vines, citrus trees, asparagus, and cotton. Cicadas sometimes cause damage to ornamental shrubs and trees, mainly in the form of scarring left on tree branches where the females have laid their eggs. Branches of young trees may die as a result.

Now we know a little more about the insect that makes that loud, buzzing noise in mid-summer.

Roland’s trivia question of the week:

What former New England Patriots player was nicknamed “the law firm”?