Home Depot Naturalist Moment

Okay, if this is a bit rambly and divergent, I claim sleep deprivation as my excuse…

Brief background: The door of the classroom at the nature park has a clear glass window. It lets in too much light to do activities requiring darkness – like simulating night vision, showing slide presentations, and facilitating our own version of Mystery Science Theater. Some of the naturalists also find it to be a source of distraction for them and for their audiences to have curious heads popping in and out of the window while presentations are in progress. Until a few days ago, the window was covered with a make-shifted privacy film. This morning, I went to Home Depot to purchase a commercially-produced window film of a botanical, stained-glass pattern (as per the naturalist team’s preferences).

An associate helped me locate the display of window film, and when we only found rice paper, frosted glass, amber glass, and pebbles, he set about to locate the extra stock for wisteria, magnolia, or clematis. As I stood there waiting for him to check in some out-of-site place, and then on a shelf around the corner, I spied the word “Gila,” and then the word “clematis,” about 12 feet above the mini blinds display. He was quite impressed that I found the items when he could not. I explained that the “Gila” brand name was on other window film products, so it caught my eye as I was looking up. Then, of course, “clematis” is one of the patterns I was shopping for, so that, too, got my attention.

When he struggled to pronounce those two words, the naturalist revealed herself. “I think it’s Hee-la, like the venomous lizard the Gila Monster.” Which is, by the way, named after a river and the area around the river where the lizard was discovered. “And it’s Clu MA tiss, A flowering vine.” As he confirmed the connection to the Gila Monster (because doesn’t everybody watch Animal Planet), I realized I may have honed in on those words because they are in my vernacular as a naturalist, whereas they have little to do with window coverings.

So before my first cup of coffee after a long night of mediating conflict between a basset hound and a Virginia opossum (a story for another time), I and the home depot associate learned something new.

Seven Days until the Shreveport Count

I'm feeling the pressure. Jeff Trahan is the Shreveport NABA Count compiler. I've had the privilege to go butterfly counting with him (not for the count) on a few occasions. I've expressed interest in THE COUNT year after year, and then let it slip my mind. This year, I vowed to actually participate in THE COUNT, and to seal the deal, Trahan assigned me a section of the count circle.

My own section.

No pressure.

To prepare for this, I have been studying. Using the Roger Tory Peterson method, I've been comparing similar species and honing in on how to tell them apart. (That man was a genius.) Here are the sets I am scrutinizing:

1. The Dark Swallowtails
2. Two Ladies
3. Two Crescents and a Checkerspot
4. Two Sulphurs and a Dogface
5. Little, Dainty, and Sleepy
6. Two Fritillaries
7. Two Emperors
8. Two Pearly Eyes
9. Viceroy and Monarch
10. Question Mark and Eastern Comma
11. Three Satyrs
12. Three Duskywings
13. Silver-spotted Skipper & Hoary Edge
14. Three Cloudywings
15. Two Broken-dashes
16. Dun and Glassywing
17. Least Skipper and Southern Skipperling
18. Clouded and Zabulon
19. Fiery and Whirlabout
20. Eufala and Tawny-edged

To my credit, I am competent at 11 of these. That leaves 9 sets to study with only 7 days to go, which means I probably don't have time to post my study guides here.

Two awesome sources that I am using are Randy Emmitt's Butterflies of the Carolinas and Virginia, and Will Cook's Carolina Nature-Butterflies. The Carolinas apparently have all the butterflies we have in Louisiana, and then some.

Emmitt's site has a few quizzes you can use to test yourself (be careful with your mouse, though, or you'll spoil the game). He also has pages for each species, and a neat little trick where you can roll your mouse over the image and see identifying features highlighted. There is a list in the left column of each species page that links similar species, so you can click back and forth to compare the forewing spots and hindwing bands and such.

Cook's Site is visually stunning. You can read about identifying features in the little text blurbs to the right of the photographs. Buried in those blurbs are jewels of trivia, like why it is called a "Comma!"

Between these two sites and the Butterflies Through Binoculars: The East book, I might not embarrass myself next weekend!

Two Ladies

The American Lady and Painted Lady butterflies are both found in Caddo Parish. It seems they are usually found at different times - American Lady in the spring and summer - Painted Lady in the fall. We still have to be able to tell them apart, and here's how:

"American Ladies have big eyes!"

Looking at the ventral sides, you can see that American Lady butterflies have two large eye spots, whereas Painted Lady butterflies have four smaller eye spots.
If you miss the botttom view somehow and only get a glimpse of the dorsal side, American Lady butterflies have two blue spots flanking two dark spots on each hindwing. Painted Lady butterflies have four dark spots with no blue.
There are eleven more days until the Ninth Annual Shreveport Butterfly Count. I will try to distinguish between as many of the tricky ones as I can between now and then...

Black Swallowtail Clarification

It is worth noting that the field guides I read suggest altogether different field marks for the Black Swallowtail. Also, my pupil-in-the-iris shortcut only works because here in Louisiana we do not have the other western swallowtails with that same marking.

Many people who know more about butterflies than me (as there are many many people who know more about butterflies than me), point to the parentheses-shaped markings and the second row of spots as diagnostic.


These field marks are helpful when they are all there, but sometimes they aren't.


Moreover, sometimes, the Eastern Tiger Swallowtail dark morph has markings that could be mistaken for Black Swallowtail parentheses.
As for the pupil-in-the-iris, it is also found on the Anise Swallowtail, Indra Swallowtail, and Old World Swallowtail. The Old World Swallowtail has a subspecies called Baird's that looks remarkably similar to a Black Swallowtail. These species are western and are not found in Louisiana.
There is a section of the U.S. where their ranges overlap with the Black Swallowtail. If you live within the red rectangle, then you certainly cannot count on the pupil-in-the-iris to be diagnostic.

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).