The Nature of Phenology | WERU 89.9 FM Blue Hill, Maine Local News and Public Affairs Archives

Producers: Hazel Stark & Joe Horn Host: Hazel Stark These charcoal gray to dark brown funnel-shaped mushrooms are so well camouflaged on the forest floors where they reside that they can often be missed. But once you find one, you are almost guaranteed to see many more. A classic case of “the more you look, the more you see.” Photos, a full transcript, references, contact information, and mor...

Producers: Hazel Stark & Joe Horn Host: Hazel Stark Photos, a full transcript, references, contact information, and more available at thenatureofphenology.wordpress.com. Some trees bore cherries as dark as ebony, others were scarlet red and caught the sun like so many plump rubies. I walked over to a tree whose fruit were a dark rich red reminiscent of Washington state’s bing cherries. I pluc...

Producers: Hazel Stark & Joe Horn Host: Hazel Stark Photos, a full transcript, references, contact information, and more available at thenatureofphenology.wordpress.com. While most folks state-side are familiar with the almost grape-sized cranberries of bogs, the mountain cranberry is a much smaller plant with berries that are as small as wild blueberries. As for their flavor, mountain cranbe...

Producers: Hazel Stark & Joe Horn Host: Hazel Stark Photos, a full transcript, references, contact information, and more available at thenatureofphenology.wordpress.com. If you’re a person who suffers from spring allergies but you get relief during the heat of summer, you might be edging into another bout of allergies now. Not only is goldenrod not the most likely culprit for these late seaso...

Producers: Hazel Stark & Joe Horn Host: Hazel Stark Photos, a full transcript, references, contact information, and more available at thenatureofphenology.wordpress.com. Perhaps the most distinguishing feature of this hefty beetle was its elegant antennae which extended from its head a full two times the length of its body and formed a brilliant delicate jointed arch which curled slightly at...

Producers: Hazel Stark & Joe Horn Host: Hazel Stark Photos, a full transcript, references, contact information, and more available at thenatureofphenology.wordpress.com. No matter the size of a seed, whether it’s smaller than a poppy seed or as large as the 40-pound coco de mer seed, all seeds have a few things in common: they have an embryo, which will develop into a more familiar-looking ad...

Producers: Hazel Stark & Joe Horn Host: Hazel Stark Photos, a full transcript, references, contact information, and more available at thenatureofphenology.wordpress.com. A perfectly sun-ripened wild raspberry still glistening with morning dew is one of the loveliest wild indulgences. The word “picking” when applied to these berries feels somewhat wrong. Ripe raspberries slip effortlessly off...

Producers: Hazel Stark & Joe Horn Host: Hazel Stark Photos, a full transcript, references, contact information, and more available at thenatureofphenology.wordpress.com. In my book, the plentiful pickerelweed need no more virtue than being abundant and beautiful during the dog days of summer. The lavender flower spikes may be the most conspicuous feature on this small aquatic plant, but every...

Producers: Hazel Stark & Joe Horn Host: Hazel Stark Great Horned Owls 7/13/19 Photos, a full transcript, references, contact information, and more available at thenatureofphenology.wordpress.com. I distinctly remember my first owl observation as a child: I watched a great horned owl soar across my backyard river in broad daylight, then perch on a branch and stare right back at me. This time o...

Producers: Hazel Stark & Joe Horn Host: Hazel Stark Photos, a full transcript, references, contact information, and more available at thenatureofphenology.wordpress.com. At this point in the year, you may have already started to notice the handiwork of Japanese beetles. While they can be a nuisance, Japanese beetles might be tied with the electric blue six-spotted tiger beetle in a beauty con...

Producers: Hazel Stark & Joe Horn Host: Hazel Stark Photos, a full transcript, references, contact information, and more available at thenatureofphenology.wordpress.com. Why should this small unassuming plant create something so beautiful and so sweetly scented? The theologist may argue that it’s proof of a greater divine plan. The ecologist may argue that it is an enticing indicator of necta...

Producers: Hazel Stark & Joe Horn Host: Hazel Stark Photos, a full transcript, references, contact information, and more available at thenatureofphenology.wordpress.com. If you’ve ever had the opportunity to watch a solitary heron seeking food, you know that they are the epitome of patience. Long, thin legs and neck provide an ideal vantage point from which the bird can wait motionless in sha...

Producers: Hazel Stark & Joe Horn Host: Hazel Stark Photos, a full transcript, references, contact information, and more available at thenatureofphenology.wordpress.com. Since the beginning of the 2018-2019 school year, I have been taking some students and their teachers at Milbridge Elementary School outside each week to learn about nature here in Downeast Maine. This spring, they were excit...

Producers: Hazel Stark & Joe Horn Host: Hazel Stark Photos, a full transcript, references, contact information, and more available at thenatureofphenology.wordpress.com. It seems like nearly everyone who lives in Maine has had a phoebe nest on or very near their home. They are easy to identify by ear because phoebes yell their own name. But they are also quite easy to identify by sight due to...

Producers: Hazel Stark & Joe Horn Host: Hazel Stark Photos, a full transcript, references, contact information, and more available at thenatureofphenology.wordpress.com. At one point in time the matter that makes up the coffee you are drinking right now was probably a blade of grass, or a cow, or even a dinosaur. This process is intimately familiar to the organic farmer who spends their time...

Producers: Hazel Stark & Joe Horn Host: Hazel Stark Photos, a full transcript, references, contact information, and more available at thenatureofphenology.wordpress.com. Warblers can be very challenging to identify, mostly because they’re hard to spot as they hardly ever stop moving, they’re quite small, and they are easily obscured in their leafy environs. Taxonomically, warblers aren’t real...

Producers: Hazel Stark & Joe Horn Host: Hazel Stark Photos, a full transcript, references, contact information, and more available at thenatureofphenology.wordpress.com. Shad run at various times in the year depending on where they live along their range from Florida to the Atlantic provinces of Canada. Here in Maine, that time is in the spring. Shad are large fish that can grow up to 30 inch...

Producers: Hazel Stark & Joe Horn Host: Hazel Stark Photos, a full transcript, references, contact information, and more available at thenatureofphenology.wordpress.com. So varied are the names used to identify shadbush, I inevitably find myself rattling off all the names for this stunning little shrub in the hopes that one of those names will sound familiar to my friends and fellow plant ner...

Producers: Hazel Stark & Joe Horn Host: Hazel Stark Photos, a full transcript, references, contact information, and more available at thenatureofphenology.wordpress.com. Bluets are small, mostly white flowers that grow in dense clumps, usually in lawns. They sport four petals, often tinged with blue and with a yellow center, that are fused together into a tube in the flower’s center. The smal...

Rhubarb Producers: Hazel Stark & Joe Horn Host: Hazel Stark Photos, a full transcript, references, contact information, and more available at thenatureofphenology.wordpress.com. All plant nomenclature and physiology aside, rhubarb is a most beloved fruit-like food in our far northern climates because unlike so many of the lovely true fruits we find in the grocery store, rhubarb is an extremel...

Big Night Producers: Hazel Stark & Joe Horn Host: Hazel Stark Photos, a full transcript, references, contact information, and more available at thenatureofphenology.wordpress.com. When weather conditions are just right for the first time in the spring—temperatures above 40, rain, or especially high humidity—over half of the breeding population of many of our local amphibians migrate to their...

Ospreys Producers: Hazel Stark & Joe Horn Host: Hazel Stark Photos, a full transcript, references, contact information, and more available at thenatureofphenology.wordpress.com. Unlike me, with my catch-and-release tendencies, ospreys live an exclusively fish-based diet, giving them their other name: ‘fish hawks.’ Everything about these incredible raptors has been optimized and specialized to...

Timberdoodles Producers: Hazel Stark & Joe Horn Host: Hazel Stark Photos, a full transcript, references, contact information, and more available at thenatureofphenology.wordpress.com. This chunky, long-billed, gourd-shaped bird is also called an American woodcock, mudbat, or bog-sucker, among other descriptive names. He flew straight up—100 feet or more–-and began to fly loop-de-loops in the...

Producers/Hosts: Hazel Stark and Joe Horn Beaked Hazelnuts Flowering Photos, a full transcript, references, contact information, and more available at thenatureofphenology.wordpress.com. What comes before the nuts—in fact, what allows for the nuts to emerge at all in the long term–are the shrub’s flowers. Before the bright green leaves burst forth from their buds in the coming weeks, two typ...

Producers/Hosts: Hazel Stark and Joe Horn Spring Equinox Photos, a full transcript, references, contact information, and more available at thenatureofphenology.wordpress.com. March 20th marked our celestial halfway point in our travels from winter to summer: the spring equinox. Rather than our axis being pointed towards the sun, as it is in summer, or pointed away from the sun, as it is in winter,...