SCORES & OUTDOORS

by Roland D. Hallee

Last week a reader sent a photograph of a caterpillar that she couldn’t identify (see photo).

The photo she sent shows the Hyalophora cecropia in its fifth instar (stage) of development, or the cecropia moth caterpillar. It is the largest native North American moth.

Cecropia caterpillar

The female moth has had its wings measured up to six inches or more. Its range is from Nova Scotia in eastern Canada and Maine south to Florida, and west to the Canadian and U.S. Rocky Mountains. It can also be found in California.

Like all members of the giant silk moth family, the moths only reproduce because they lack functional mouth parts or digestive system, meaning they never eat. Therefore, the life expectancy is only about two weeks.

The female lays up to 100 eggs, which hatch into tiny black caterpillars. The larvae feed upon many common trees and shrubs, including maple, birch and apple. The larvae are more commonly found on maple trees. As they grow larger, it becomes clear that the black color is actually small hairs growing. In the early stages they are yellow-green. As they grow larger, the colors change to green to bluish-green, with the tubercles becoming blue, yellow and orange. Upon reaching matu-rity in autumn, the caterpillar, now about four inches long, spin large cocoons on trees or wooden structures to emerge as adults in the first two weeks of seasonally warm weather in early summer. They only have one generation per year.

Pests of the moth have become a significant problem. Parasites such as wasps and flies lay their eggs in or on the young caterpillars. The eggs then hatch into larvae, which consume the internal organs and muscles of the caterpillars. Once the eggs hatch into larvae, the para-sites release chemicals that override the regulatory mechanisms of the caterpillar, and will eventually kill the cecropia pupa. Squirrels also consume the pupae of the cecropia moths, which decreases the population significantly. Pruning of trees and leaving outdoor lights on at night can also be detrimental to the moths.

Cecropia moth

The wings of the moth are brownish with red near the base of the forewing. Crescent-shaped spots of red with whitish center are obvious on all wings, but are larger on the hindwings. All wings have whitish coloration followed by reddish bands of shading beyond the postmedial lie that runs longitudinally down the center of all four wings. The body is hairy with reddish color-ing. The body has alternating bands of red and white.

The coloration of the moth is so spectacular they are prized by collectors and nature lovers, specifically for their large size and extremely showy appearance.

Now you can impress your friends when someone sees one of these and you can identify it as the Hyalophora cecropia.

SCORES & OUTDOORS

by Roland D. Hallee

Well, we are approaching that sad time of year when my wife and I are readying to shutter camp for the winter. It’s with mixed emotions because we really enjoy camp (we live there from May to October), but it’s football season, and we are both avid New England Patriots fans, and home is where we like to be for Sunday afternoon kickoffs.

The big question that comes to mind is which do we prefer, the sounds of the loons’ eerie calls in the night, the barred owls caterwauling at each other in the early morning hours, peepers in the spring and all the other wonderful sounds of nature, or… the sounds of ridiculously large pickup trucks revving their oversized gas-guzzling engines with the loud exhaust belching fumes and smoke into the air, squealing tires, police sirens blaring at all hours of the night, barking dogs, arguing neighbors, etc? Living in the middle of Waterville, those sounds always make me think, “Welcome home.” I think the answer to my question is a no-brainer.

With that in mind, here are some of the more memorable things that I witnessed this past summer at camp.

First, we’ll talk about the bald eagles consistently seen circling over Webber Pond in search of food. On two occasions this past summer, while fishing, we witnessed bald eagles come swooping down from a high perch in the trees, to scoop up fish from the surface of the water with their sharp, deadly talons. One time the bird came as close as 20 yards from our boat. The second time, it was a little further away, but still as magnificent.

Then, there was the morning when, on my way to work on the Seaward Mills Road, in Vassalboro, I saw a rafter of geese crossing the road in front of me. I had to come to a standstill because one of the adult turkeys was stationed smack in the middle of the road while the rest of the brood crossed, in single file, with an adult leading the way. That turkey resembled a school crossing guard as he stopped traffic for the kids to cross.

Not too long after, on the same road, I saw another flock of turkeys crossing the road, but this time they were accompanied by a house cat, who showed all the techniques of a border collie herding sheep. It would move around the flock to keep the young ones in line as they navigated the asphalt. Quite something to see. The cat showed no interest in harming any of the fowl.

There was also the night, which I mentioned before in this column, of the barred owls as they caterwauled to each other late one night. They started quite innocently as you would expect to hear an owl. These, being barred owls, would call out “who cooks for you, who cooks for you, all.” However, the calling began to intensify and before long the calls began to sound like barking dogs, something I had never heard before from barred owls.

Finally, in mid-May, there was the night we heard noises off in the distance that sounded like a small dog wailing from discomfort. It was a yelping sound, followed by a whine. “An injured dog,” was the first thought. However, as the sound persisted, it became clear that the calling was from red foxes calling out to each other during the mating season. The foxes have been around all summer, but the callings have stopped.

Nature has sounds of its own, and even though they can be loud at times, still trump (Oops, there’s that word, again) the sounds of the city.

Every year, the weekend after Labor Day, we make a fishing trip to Nesowadnehunk Lake, in a remote area abutting Baxter Park to the west, where we can lay in our cots in the tent, and listen to the coyotes howl in the distance. Ah, the wonderful sounds to which to fall asleep.

SCORES & OUTDOORS

by Roland D. Hallee

Last week, I received an email from a colleague, and follower of this column, asking the question, “Why don’t deer and moose get their antlers caught in trees?” Well, it isn’t uncommon to find deer with their antlers caught in trees. But it usually occurs following adverse conditions, especially from flooding or being frightened into a desperate retreat.

Well, actually, that was a question I always wondered myself. I always thought that maybe their antlers were like whiskers on a cat, using them as feelers to determine whether they can pass through an opening.

Moose antlers in velvet.

It turns out I probably wasn’t far off with my assessment.

I turned to my contacts at the Maine Department of Inland Fisheries and Wildlife for an answer. According to the state moose biologist Lee Kantar, “As the moose antlers grow, the moose ‘develop’ a sense of their width.” I can only deduce that the same holds true for deer.

Following the fall rut, male deer and moose will shed their antlers. In spring or early summer, March or April, the new antlers begin to form, growing out from a pedicel bone, a bony stalk situated on the frontal bone of the skull. The antlers begin to grow at a rapid pace. During growth, they are covered with a skin, called the velvet, a living tissue, which contains many blood vessels for the nourishment of the growing bone tissue.

“During antler growth,” said Kantar, “the antlers are highly vascularized and the moose can feel where those antlers are, touching other surfaces during the growth phase.”

When the antlers have reached the size and shape characteristic for the particular species, the blood circulation in the velvet is stopped, the velvet dies, and the buck or bull then rubs off the dead skin against branches,

In the case of moose, “During antler growth this velvet layer of hair that covers the antlers are the ‘feelers’ for the antlers,” the biologist continued.

“At the end of August into September the antlers essentially harden into bone and the velvet is rubbed and sloughed off as the bull thrashes and rubs against vegetation. By this time, the bull has essentially ‘learned’ the dimensions of his new antlers for his travels.”

Deer and moose have played a very important role in the history of our country, especially deer. The American Indians and European settlers depended on deer for food clothing, implements, ornaments, ceremonial items, tools and weapons. The hides provided shelter and protection from the weather.

Did you know the term “bucks” when referring to money comes from the American Indians. Deerskins were considered valuable for clothing and the skins were called “bucks.” They were traded for various other articles.

Lewis and Clark might never have been able to finish their journey from St. Louis to Oregon if the hunters they took along had not furnished them with deer meat along the way. For the four months they wintered in Oregon, they had little to eat other than deer meat.

Have you ever seen a set of deformed moose antlers on a mount, and wondered why? Well, if a bull moose is castrated, either by accident or chemical means, he will quickly shed his current set of antlers and then immediately begin to grow a new set of mishapen and deformed antlers that he will wear the rest of his life without ever shedding again.

I know I wandered off the initial subject, but I found all this information fascinating. I hope you did, too.

SCORES & OUTDOORS

by Roland D. Hallee

Last week we discussed the plight of the Atlantic salmon and the efforts underway to restore this majestic fish, in its natural form, which had seen declining numbers. One of the reasons cited was the new threat from competitive farmed fish.

Such an operation exists in East Machias at the Peter Gray Hatchery. The hatchery has reported the highest smolt production in the East Machias River since the start of the Peter Gray Parr Project in 2012. This summer has seen similar weather conditions as last year, except that the days and evenings are cooler than normal for July. Despite the dry spell, the “little athletes” in the hatchery are doing well, according to the hatchery’s monthly newsletter.

So, that brings us to an article written by Kathleen McKeog­hain, of AlterNet. She claims, “Atlantic salmon, the native salmon that used to inhabit the northern Atlantic Ocean, rivers and seas, is a species now represented by an imposter: farmed salmon.”

She goes on to say that farmed salmon come from hatchery genetic stock and unlike its native ancesotrs, lacks wild genetic variation. The wild fish our ancestors ate is gone. What appears on our dinner plates is a substitute copy, a genetic dilution of a once mighty fish, the adaptive king of the sea, and a significant food for coastal humans since prehistoric times.

According to McKeoghain, the change in genetic stock has been happening for decades, as farmed salmon are released into native waters via restocking progrms (in an attempt to reduce the negative impacts of overfishing of wild salmon) and also unintentionally as a consequence of faulty containment in sea net-cages. The resulting “swamping out” effect — farmed in, wild out – along with several other insidious factors, has driven native salmon to effective extinction.

“When I began to research the scientific literature on native Atlantic salmon, I was stunned to discover that this species, Salmo salar, is essentially extinct,” continues McKeoghain. How can this be?

“The verified statistic is that 99.5 percent of all Atlantic salmon living today, whether farmed or fished from open ocean or rivers, is not what biologists call “wild type” and does not faithfully represent, in a genetic sense, the native fish that once broadly populated waters of our planet’s Holarctic zone, the ecological region that encompasses the majority of habitats found across the Earth’s northern continents.”

The fish we eat today is not the fish that fed our ancestors, or even the fish that fed our forbears of a century ago. Today’s salmon, because of the effects of a force called genetic erosion, is the diluted copy of a fish that once thrived on a wild genome, that tried and true set of original genes which, in the case of salmon, generated a fish capable of magnetic field navigation, survival in fresh and salt water and geochemical detection of spawning micro-habitats.

The earliest salmon came from a diverse group of ocean vertebrates known as the ray-finned fishes and was part of a broad divergence of ocean fishes that adapted over eons to the cold, northern waters of the upper northern hemisphere, around the Arctic Circle. Early Atlantic and Pacific salmonid ancestors branched into separate ocean groups of early species types about 600,000 years ago.

Salmon are anadromous, a migrant from fresh water to salty sea, a fish who returns to its birth river to spawn in the family niche for the next generation, for the continuation of each clan, the many clans for each population, and the many populations for each species.

According to Slow Food, an affiliation of the Lighthouse Foundation, “the stocks of wild Atlantic salmon have been reduced to dangerously low levels. Reasons are overfishing, pollution, environmental changes, aquaculture, habitat deterioration and disturbances of migration routes. In many regions, the species has disappeared completely. Even though wild Atlantic salmon stocks have been drastically depleted, farming represents a poor alternative, given the environmental havoc it causes. Farmed salmon should not be eaten frequently. Farmed salmon flesh contains significant amounts of pollutants.”

McKeoghain concludes by saying, “the salmon has taken a fatal series of genetic blows. Its ‘old growth forest’ was set on fire by a human feeding frenzy that began with overfishing and was fed by industrial aquaculture. The genetic erosion is shocking and steep. Today, 99.5 percent of all native Atlantic salmon has disappeared from the wild, forever.”

SCORES & OUTDOORS

by Roland D. Hallee

This bit of news came across my desk this week, and I thought I would share it with you. According to Maine Department of Inland Fisheries and Wildlife, applications for 2017 any-deer (antlerless) permit lottery are now available online from the Maine Department of Inland Fisheries and Wildlife.

To apply online, visit www20.maine.gov/online/nedeer/. Online applications are due by 11:59 P.M. on August 15, 2017.

It is free to apply for the any-deer permit lottery. The drawing will be held on September 8, and results will be posted on the department’s website.

A total of 66,050 any-deer permits will be issued in 22 of the state’s 29 wildlife management districts. This is an increase from last year when there were 45,755 permits available to hunters. The permit allocation is: 16,517 for landowners; 16,517 for juniors; and 1,453 for Superpack holders and 31,563 for all other hunters.

The 22 wildlife management districts where any-deer (antlerless) permits will be issued are 2, 3, 6, 7, 8, 9, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 20, 21, 22, 23, 24, 25, 26, 27 and 29. This year, permits have been allocated to districts 7, 12, and 13 as biological data collected and field observations by staff suggest that these WMD’s have experienced population growth.

The department uses the any-deer permit system to manage the white-tailed deer population in the state. The ability to enact change in the state’s deer populations derives from the ability to increase, or decrease, the number of breeding female deer on the landscape. By controlling the harvest of female deer in the 29 regional wildlife management districts throughout the state, biologists can manage population trends.

With last year’s winter below average in severity, more permits can be issued. White-tailed deer are at the northern edge of their range in Maine, and winter severity is a limiting factor concerning population growth. The 2015-16 winter proved to be mild in nature, in fact it turned out to be one of the mildest in the last 60+ years which often results in an increase in the deer population. To offset potential population increases due to increased juvenile survival, MDIFW increased Any-deer permit (ADP) allocations by approximately 60 percent (45,755) from the 2015 allocation of 28,770.

Last deer season, Maine hunters harvested 23,512 deer, representing an increase of 16 percent from the 2015 deer harvest. There were 20,040 deer tagged during the general firearms season, 1,267 deer were harvested during the expanded archery season, 469 deer were tagged during the regular archery season and Maine’s youth hunters harvested 659 deer. Muzzleloaders tagged 933 deer.

Deer hunting season (firearms) begins with Youth Deer Hunting Day on Saturday, October 21. Youth may take a buck statewide or an antlerless deer only in the wildlife management districts where any-deer permits will be issued this fall.

This year, Maine Residents Only Day is on Saturday, October 28, and regular firearms season for deer runs October 30 through November 25. Note: this year, a nonresident who owns 25 or more acres of land in Maine and leaves land open to hunting, holds a valid hunting license, and is not otherwise prohibited by law, may hunt deer on the resident only day.

For more information, visit www.mefishwildlife.com.