Four Dark Swallowtails

According to Butterflies and Moths of North America, there are 926 species of butterflies known to live on the continent. Jeff Trahan – with help from Rosemary Seidler, Terry Davis, and me – has found 97 of them in Caddo Parish.

So far.

Four of those species are commonly called “the dark swallowtails,” and those four species can be tricky to tell apart. They are the Pipevine Swallowtail, Black Swallowtail, Spicebush Swallowtail, and the dark morph female Eastern Tiger Swallowtail.

To distinguish between them, let’s look at them at the same time.

Dorsal View
Ventral View

Okay, look at them again. This time, focus on the field marks, or things that define each species.

Dorsal View
The top left is a Black Swallowtail. Males are unmistakable because instead of white spots, they have yellow spots, and they have an extra row of them. The female is pictured here. Male and female Black Swallowtails can always be identified by the black dot inside the orange dot. There are also some differences in the size and shape of the white spots on the forewing, and some other distinctions, but "pupil-in-the-iris" orange/black spot is a dead giveaway.

The top right is the female Eastern Tiger Swallowtail, dark morph. Notice the white spots on her forewings are really dashes. Also notice the white spots on her hindwings have a little orange in them, especially the ones on either end of the row. Sometimes you can still see a little yellow and maybe even a tiger stripe, but the dashes and the extra orange is always there. She's a bit bigger than the other dark swallowtails, too.

The bottom left is a Spicebush Swallowtail. There are some differences between males and females, but both sexes always have those fingertip-shaped spots on the hindwing that are bluish-white.

The bottom right is a Pipevine Swallowtail. There are subtle differences between male and female Pipevine Swallowtails as well, but both sexes have blue tails. Also, the blue color on Pipevines does not seem to be compartmentalized the way it is on other dark swallowtails, but rather blended looking.

Ventral View

The pupil-in-the-iris is still visible when viewing the ventral side of the Black Swallowtail. There are pretty much two rows of orange spots, and the row closest to the body has a double spot.

"Tigers do not have spots!" At least female Eastern Tiger Swallowtails do not have spots on their bodies. All the other dark swallowtails do. Also, the dashes are still visible.

Often you can see some of the dorsal side when Spicebush Swallowtails' wings are closed, and when that happens, you can still see those bluish-white fingertips. With only the ventral side of the hindwing showing, you can see that Spicebush Swallowtails have two rows of orange spots, minus one. That absent orange spot is diagnostic.

Sometimes you can still see the blue of the Pipevine Swallowtail's tail on the ventral side. Sometimes you can tell that the body is a bit blue (the others are pretty much black). Regardless of whether you can see that blue or not, you can always identify a Pipevine Swallowtail with its wings closed by counting the rows of orange spots. There's only one row.

To test out these identification short cuts, grab your binoculars and head out to the park for some butterfly watching. Swallowtails fly fast and high, so you may have to let some go uncounted.

But it's the thrill of the hunt, right?

Nature Camp Songs

I've been a camp counselor, a camp instructor, and a camp director, but I must confess that I've never been a camper. All the camp songs that I know I learned from Michelle Balfe Keefer, who taught them to me in preparation for the camp we co-directed in 2001.

I followed her example and included the lyrics to several camp songs (that I deemed to be appropriate for a nature-oriented camp) for my counselors at Earth Camp. But I couldn't get her on the phone to sing the songs to me, and if I can't sing them, I can't expect the counselors to, so I've been scouring the internet for AUDIO files of camp songs.

First of all, the Ultimate Camp Resource pages are certainly enough to keep a camp planner busy, and they have thousands of song lyrics (no audio).

The National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences has an extensive collection of children's songs - WITH AUDIO - several are 'camp songs' and the rest are Old MacDonald kind of stuff. It's been an invaluable resource for me for years, since I didn't really know that many children's songs either (I was able to solve the mystery of the tune of the beeping crib toy that was driving me crazy by going one-by-one through the list. Luckily, the NIEHS list is in alphabetical order and the song was Animal Fair, because it's a really big list.)

The song Gray Squirrel or Brown Squirrel or Squirrel Squirrel is performed on You Tube here - hillarious!

The song Acorn Brown or I'm a Nut is demonstrated on You Tube by Cullen's ABCs, which I just discovered. It appears to be a how-to for parents and teachers of preschoolers. (Kind of wish I'd found that sooner.) But I couldn't help but think I'd heard that tune somewhere before...

The National Wildlife Federation has a page of camp songs WITH AUDIO (you can tell I find that to be an important detail). Specifically, it has Mmm Mmm Went the Little Green Frog One Day.

Then there's the Girl Scout Music site with The Frogs, The Bear Song, Ants Go Marching, and Lion Hunt (I'm hesitant to include that one in a nature camp), and the Latter Day Saints Girls Camp Songs - some of which work for nature camp.

And, if you want to dust off your bell bottoms, tie-dyed shirts, and tambourines, Ally Ally Oxen Free may just be the song for you. I, personally, can't stop laughing through it, so I'm crossing that one off my list.

The Birdie Song is sung on the Camp Sea Gull and Camp Seafarer page. If you've got a coastal site, then the other songs may be of interest to you, as well.

I've found a few versions of Peanut Butter (And Jelly), but none quite so funky as the one sampled here.

Now I'm off to practice so I'll be in tune for my staff training tomorrow morning. Happy Camping!

Making Ice Cream at Summer Camp

Here's the recipe per pair of campers:

1 cup milk
1/4 cup sugar
1/4 teaspoon flavoring
1/2 cup rock salt
2 cups ice
1 quart-size freezer bag
1 gallon-size freezer bag
4 full sheets newspaper
1 strip of duct tape

(I am reversing the assembly line this year, so instead of the counselors delivering the ingredients to each pair of campers, the pairs will go around to stations to receive their stuff.)

Table 1: No counselor needed. Pairs pick up one of each type of freezer bag.

Table 2: One counselor pours milk into quart-size bag. One counselor pours ice into gallon-size bag.

Table 3: One counselor adds sugar to milk. One counselor adds salt to ice.

Table 4: One or more counselors add desired flavor to milk and sugar. (I'm using baking extracts from http://www.spicebarn.com/. The same extracts are used in a scent sense game earlier in the day. The extracts relate back to the idea that plants are food sources for people. We have peach, lemon, blackberry, spearmint, and coconut, because they are all clear and cannot be identified by color - which would spoil the scent game.)

Table 5: One counselor inserts milk bag into ice bag, seals outer bag, and passes to one counselor who wraps the bag in newspaper like a Subway sandwich (I knew that job experience would come in handy somewhere), and passes to one counselor who tapes the package. (These tasks can be done by one person if there are not enough instructors, counselors, or chaperones to fill all the stations.)

The pairs shake their packages vigorously, trading off as one tires. After 10 minutes, campers can unwrap the packages, extract the ice cream bag from the saltwater bag, and split the portion into two bowls.

There are science lessons that accompany this activity at teachnet.com, and about.com: chemistry, if you need to justify making ice cream.

Here's something I think you might find useful:

Regular bags of granulated sugar are 4 pounds, which works out to about 9 1/2 cups, so each bag serves 19 pairs of campers.

Regular boxes of rock salt weigh 4 pounds. 4 pounds of rock salt = 6 1/2 cups, so each box serves 13 pairs of campers.

You can find both granulated sugar and rock salt in larger packages, and buying in bulk is usually more economical. Remember, y'all aren't eating the salt. It isn't actually coming into contact with food, so it doesn't really have to be "ice cream" rock salt. The dirty-looking street salt works just as well, and is even cheaper.

I'll have to post a follow-up to let you know whether or not the campers liked peach, lemon, blackberry, spearmint, and coconut flavored ice creams. (I do have vanilla extract in reserve just in case).

I Live for Summer Camp

Ms. Rachel facilitates

live animal encounter, Earth Camp Week 1, 2008

I am gathering information on 50 nature-oriented summer camps around the country. So far, the programs seem to all have a common thread: activities are experiential and place-based, focusing on the resources unique to the site. For example, the Center for Alaskan Coastal Studies’ Junior Naturalist Science and Discovery Camp has hands-on activities in a spruce forest, a wildflower meadow, and a wetland, about moose, and during a boat trip to an intertidal bay field station. The Delaware Museum of Natural History’s Summer Camp facilitates activities under themes such as bugs, dinosaurs, geology, comparative anatomy, science tricks – and most curiously – the natural history of pizza.

My original intent for this project was to see how Walter B. Jacobs Memorial Nature Park’s Earth Camp compared to similar camps around the country and to find some inspiration (ideas to steal). If time and funding permitted, I would visit each of the camps and observe them in action, but that would probably take 50 summers. I am planning on attending the College of the Atlantic’s Family Nature Camp in Maine in 2011 (as soon as my son is old enough). This program is a place-based, experiential, and interpretive overnight camp for children and their parents. So far, it is the only program I have come across for the whole family, and its activities - like whale watching, eagle watching and hiking in Acadia National Park - sound like a great, enriching way to spend a summer.

The Park Tree

Maclura pomifera. Monkey brain. Horse apple. Hedge apple. Osage orange. Bois d’arc (pronounced “bo dark”). It’s a tree that goes by many names. It’s a tree like no other. Some think it’s got a lot of character (ugly). Once, while standing under a monstrous one at the East Kings Highway Park, I found myself defending the bois d’arc’s very right to exist. A park visitor wondered aloud “Why would they plant that ugly, thorny tree with poisonous fruit at the Duck Pond? Why don’t they just cut it down?”

“Where do I start?” I thought to myself.

You know, you won’t find “Duck Pond” on any Shreveport map. Don’t bother asking Google maps or Mapquest for it. The sign in front of the park says “East Kings Highway Park,” and while you can find that on the maps, you cannot ask a local how to get there. He’s never heard of the East Kings Highway Park. To Shreveporters, it’s the Duck Pond – never mind it’s not a pond at all – but a three-mile-long body of water called Old River Bayou.

The Old River Bayou is an old path of the Red River, and the bois d’arc’s natural range is the Red River Region of Oklahoma, Texas, Arkansas, and Louisiana. This fact and the sheer size of the specimen suggest it was here before the land around it became a park.

The seeds are edible. They are so difficult to extract that you probably won't find them to be worth the trouble, but sit back on a park bench and watch how hard a gray squirrel will work to get those seeds.

The fruits smell like oranges and makes great pomanders. Old wives have been parking bois d’arc fruits in the corners of their kitchens for centuries to ward off bugs, and it turns out the plant may in fact have insecticidal properties. It certainly enjoys a charmed existence free from any known insect pests.

No, horses can’t eat the fruits, but you do find them planted at the edges of pastures. Prior to the invention of barbed wire, ranchers planted bois d’arc trees “horse high, bull strong, and hog tight.” Bois d’arc branches may have even inspired the inventor of barbed wire.

Bois d’arcs are a living piece of history. Peter Custis wrote the first scientific description of the trees in 1806. They were closely associated with the indigenous Osage people. Osage men constructed their bows from these trees, which accounts for the common names, Bois d'arc ("wood of bow"), and Osage orange. The wood was useful (and useful equals valuable) so it was traded for other items amongst Native American groups.

According to the Virginia Big Tree Program, bois d’arc trees live an average of 75 years. The oldest one known to exist is the American Champion Osage Orange Tree at Patrick Henry's Red Hill, and it’s estimated to be between 200 and 300 years old. It’s on my list of things to see next time I’m in Virginia. I wonder if it’s a girl or a boy. Bois d’arc trees have flowers with pistils (female reproductive organs) or stamens (male reproductive organs), so they are either male or female. Only the females produce the fruits.

Maybe the bois d’arc is not the quintessential city park tree, but it’s got so much character.


By the way, Bois d'arc fruits are ripe now (August-September), so gather your air fresheners/bug repellents while you can!

Sources:

Great Plains Nature Center
Discovering Lewis and Clark
Red Hill Patrick Henry National Memorial
Hedgeapple.com
Virginia Big Tree Program
University of Florida Environmental Horticulture Department
The U.S. Forest Service
Wikipedia - Osage Orange, Maclura pomifera
Wikipedia - Osage people
Freeman and Custis symposium paper
Freeman and Custis book

Saint Paul's Cicada

I found this cicada at Saint Paul's Episcopal Church in Shreveport, "Saint Paul's Cicada" is not it's species name. If I can figure out what species it is, I'll edit my post here.

Name or no name, I was proud of my photograph (I think my photography teacher would even be proud). Anyway, without further ado...

The Dog Days

The “Dog Days of Summer” are technically July 3rd through August 11th. That’s if you are keeping track of Sirius, the “dog star,” which disappears from the night sky to rise and set with the sun during those few weeks. Most of us, however, think of the dog days as the hottest, most miserable part of summer, when we wish to emulate our dogs who do nothing but lie in the shade (or on our couch in the air conditioning). These dog days are well underway, with about four weeks to go.

During this time, a cacophony of singing cicadas reverberates through the forest. There are a number of different species out there, and you can actually tell them apart by their sound alone (which is good, because how many have you ever seen?) Some species start singing in May, while others are still crooning well into the fall, but since the majority of Tibicen species are heard from mid-July to late-August, they are all called “dog day” cicadas.

Each adult dog day cicada lives only a few weeks, and spends its time sucking juices from tender twigs, mating, and producing hundreds of eggs. Those eggs take a month or so to hatch. The hatchlings, called nymphs, then live underground for up to a decade. These cicadas are not "annual" at all, but since every year is somebody's tenth birthday (or hatchday), we can hear dog day cicadas buzzing in the treetops every July and August.

If you are interested in reading more about the astronomical dog days, check out Wikipedia, Cornell University’s Astronomy Department, and this guy’s website.

To find out which cicadas are singing when – and to hear their songs – check out the University of Florida’s Institute of Food and Agricultural Service, and the University of Connecticut’s Ecology and Evolutionary Biology Department. Other good cicada sources include Wikipedia, Cicadamania and this guy's website.