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 Adult monarch butterflies seek out milkweed in particular to lay their eggs. Milkweed is a native species so named for the slightly toxic milky sap that oozes from the broken leaves or stems. This diet of milkweed, which the monarch caterpillars evolved to not be harmed by, is actually essential to their survival. Photos, a full transcript,...

Producers: Hazel Stark & Joe Horn Host: Hazel Stark The chicken mushroom grows on hardwood trees, typically oak, all across North America. The brilliant sulphur yellow and orange of this shelf mushroom makes it easy to identify and it’s a delicious edible mushroom. Photos, a full transcript, references, contact information, and more available at thenatureofphenology.wordpress.com. The post Th...

Producers: Hazel Stark & Joe Horn Host: Hazel Stark There truly are no words to capture the beauty and purity of this bird’s song. The notes are crisp yet wavering, sad and reflective yet untroubled. This song captures and conveys human feeling and human emotion across a barrier of fur and feather, beak and lips. Photos, a full transcript, references, contact information, and more available a...

Producers: Hazel Stark & Joe Horn Host: Hazel Stark At high tide, this flowering plant is often submerged in saltwater, light purple blossoms swaying beneath the green sea. Sea lavender’s juicy, thick leaves have an important role in this task: they are specialized to be able to pump salt out of their tissues. Photos, a full transcript, references, contact information, and more available at t...

Producers: Hazel Stark & Joe Horn Host: Hazel Stark I’ve often heard it said that the wildness of lowbush blueberries make them far superior to highbush blueberries. But in truth, our lowbush blueberries are actually a diverse collection of species, and our highbush blueberries are as wildly Maine as pine trees and lobster. Photos, a full transcript, references, contact information, and more...

Producers: Hazel Stark & Joe Horn Host: Hazel Stark Deer flies lay their eggs in or around water where they will hatch and the young larvae will grow up eating decomposing organic matter. When they emerge as adults the males tend to feast exclusively on fruit and nectar, but the females—compelled by the increased metabolic demands of motherhood—look for energy dense food in the form of blood,...

Producers: Hazel Stark & Joe Horn Host: Hazel Stark Because evening primrose grows in places we usually associate with non-native weeds, it is a plant that is often overlooked. But this native biennial is one of our many local treasures that should be appreciated wherever you find it. Photos, a full transcript, references, contact information, and more available at thenatureofphenology.wordpr...

Producers: Hazel Stark & Joe Horn Host: Hazel Stark Loon chicks are hatching now, so your lake explorations might be rewarded with the sight of a fluffy, charcoal gray loon chick riding its swimming parent’s back. While loons have had millions of years to adapt to life on and in the water, they have not had as long to adapt to the loud noises of fireworks. Photos, a full transcript, reference...

Producers: Hazel Stark & Joe Horn Host: Hazel Stark Mayflies are aquatic insects belonging to the scientific order of Ephemeroptera, derived from ephemeral, or short-lasting. They are insects of fresh water, and while they are most often seen as elegant winged adults, they spend most of their lives in their nymph stage crawling along the bottom of these water bodies feeding on decomposing lea...

Producers: Hazel Stark & Joe Horn Host: Hazel Stark Blue flag irises are actually a collection of species native all over the continental United States, Alaska, and Canada with the exception of the desert southwest. Even here in Maine, what is typically called blue flag iris is actually a couple of species such as Iris versicolor and the ever so rare Iris prismatica. Our blue flag irises are...

Producers: Hazel Stark & Joe Horn Host: Hazel Stark Swallowtail butterflies are a group of large and colorful butterflies that exist all over most of the planet. As we start to head to beaches in late spring, so do they. Sandy beaches, gravel, mud, and puddles are ideal places to look for groups of these butterflies now, engaging in a behavior called “puddling.” Photos, a full transcript, ref...

Producers: Hazel Stark & Joe Horn Host: Hazel Stark For such a small, elusive frog, their call is anything but elusive. The call of the gray tree frog is one of the loudest calls of all North American frogs. They breed later than most other local frogs, so we start hearing them after the clacking of the wood frogs has ended and once the chorus of peepers in the evening is no longer a novelty....

Producers: Hazel Stark & Joe Horn Host: Hazel Stark Hawthorns are a group of large shrubs or small trees which grow across most temperate regions of the world. This time of year, they are draped in the flowery trappings of white and blush pink. Photos, a full transcript, references, contact information, and more available at thenatureofphenology.wordpress.com. The post The Nature of Phenology...

Producers: Hazel Stark & Joe Horn Host: Hazel Stark It is hard to miss this shrub this time of year. If you see a large splash of bright pink in wet or disturbed areas, like roadsides or bogs right now, you can be pretty confident that it’s rhodora. Photos, a full transcript, references, contact information, and more available at thenatureofphenology.wordpress.com. The post The Nature of Phen...

Producers: Hazel Stark & Joe Horn Host: Hazel Stark Large clusters of hobblebush flowers can be found now. Not only do hobblebush flowers trick pollinators into landing on them, but the plants really do trip walking animals and careless hikers more than your average shrub—hence the name hobblebush. Photos, a full transcript, references, contact information, and more available at thenatureofph...

Producers: Hazel Stark & Joe Horn Host: Hazel Stark Common nighthawks are part of the nightjar family, which includes whippoorwills. Birds in this family are all a bit strange-looking, with flat heads, stunted bills, short necks, big eyes, and feathery whiskers—a generally mousy appearance. These long distance migrants, which may have spent the winter somewhere between Mexico and Argentina, a...

Producers: Hazel Stark & Joe Horn Host: Hazel Stark Field horsetail, known by botanists as Equisetum arvense, shares a rough resemblance to a young pine tree—green in color overall and somewhat like a bottle brush in shape. These ancient plants are easy to notice now as they are just starting to emerge from wet fields and ditches. Photos, a full transcript, references, contact information, an...

Producers: Hazel Stark & Joe Horn Host: Hazel Stark At first glance, coltsfoot flowers resemble dandelions. These two members of the Asteraceae family share the characteristic of having flower heads comprised of many individual flowers. Photos, a full transcript, references, contact information, and more available at thenatureofphenology.wordpress.com. The post The Nature of Phenology 4/25/20...

Producers: Hazel Stark & Joe Horn Host: Hazel Stark Last week we learned about the resounding success of alewife restoration efforts across the region due to dam removals and installation of better fish passage. Such efforts have resulted in tremendous revivals of alewife runs, such as on the mighty Penobscot River which just last year had a run of over 2.1 million fish. This increase in fish...

Producers: Hazel Stark & Joe Horn Host: Hazel Stark Perhaps there has been no greater contemporary environmental success story in New England than that of one silvery springtime fish that is at this moment ascending the rapids, runs, and falls of our waterways as they head to their ancestral spawning grounds: alewives. This will be part one of a two-part series exploring these fish and the co...

Producers: Hazel Stark & Joe Horn Host: Hazel Stark In today’s episode, I will share some bird songs to be listening for now. If you’re a practiced birder-by-ear, stay tuned for some opportunities to quiz yourself; if you’re new to the birding-by-ear world, you might grab a piece of paper and writing utensil to take a few notes. Photos, a full transcript, references, contact information, and...

Producers: Hazel Stark & Joe Horn Host: Hazel Stark Crocuses are a collection of thirty or so species and a plethora of hybrids all in the scientific genus Crocus in the iris family. While crocuses seem quite at home here in New England and across the northern tier of the United States, they are, like so many of us, far from their ancestral roots. Photos, a full transcript, references, contac...

Producers: Hazel Stark & Joe Horn Host: Hazel Stark Like the first spring sighting of a robin or the first blooming dandelion of the year, red-winged blackbirds can inspire the phenology observers in all of us. Males return ahead of the females to determine their territory and belt their characteristic radio static “conk-la-ree” calls from marshes throughout Maine. Photos, a full transcript,...

Producers: Hazel Stark & Joe Horn Host: Hazel Stark There are twenty five species of chipmunks in the world, and all but one species is found in North America. The chipmunk species we have here in Maine is the eastern chipmunk, the biggest of all the chipmunks at up to eleven inches long and no heavier than a D-battery. February to April is the first of chipmunks’ two breeding seasons, so you...

Producers: Hazel Stark & Joe Horn Host: Hazel Stark Highbush cranberries with their outrageously bitter and sour berries are one such fruit that will linger long into February, but it would appear that the dry fuzzy berries of sumac win as the least desirable and longest storing fruit of summer past, despite the fact that for us humans, sumac berries make a refreshing summer drink just as soo...