Recycle those old CDs and other plastic media items!

Click on image to open new window to website

Watch Democracy Now's video re: TransCanada Keystone pipeline bullshit

Another 'must see' about North American bats

The Battle for Bats: White Nose Syndrome from Ravenswood Media on Vimeo.

A 'must see' video about the devastating syndrome affecting bats

White-nose Syndrome from Gerrit Vyn on Vimeo.

Eggplants and Insects

Naughty little conehead eating my eggplant leaves!  Must say, it was too impressive to do anything but take pictures of it.  :~)  Favorite bug ID website here.

Busy little bumblebee collecting precious stores of pollen from my eggplant flowers (which are a bit more intense in coler due to adjusting tonal levels with my picture software).  Look at those bundles of pollen on its quarters!  Did you know that bees pack pollen grains into the tiny hairs on their back legs?  Pollen baskets!  They feed their young with pollen.  :~)

Black Swallowtail Butterfly

The easiest way to distinguish Black Swallowtails from Spicebush Swallowtails (the two species that are most often confused, especially if you don't have the plants, and thus caterpillars, to rely on--as those are quite different) is by the yellow spotting on the topside wings.  Black Swallowtails have yellow spotting ABOVE the blue, while Spicebush's is typically below the blue, if at all present!  'Course, that's the case with the males, anyway.  Females are a whole different thing (but aren't we always!  Ha!).

There are lots of great sites online to check into when looking for butterflies.  But you probably already know this.

Have a great day -- thanks for visiting!

Hanging annual (in NH, anyway) is Lantana.

Double-duty clothesline

...Years of having to deal with the plastic carried in by various family members and dinner guests (who seemingly have an inexhaustable supply) has led to the ultimate use of my clothesline.  For the ziplocs, a few years ago I had hubby drill some holes in squares of stone blocks (he's in the trade; use wood if you attempt the same), which I then stuck 3/16th dowels into.  Drill at a slight vertical angle all the way around the perimeter of the block.  There are more glamorous versions online if you look hard enough.  I, however, am all for Yankee ingenuity.

Need a reason to avoid plastic?  Read this.  Or this...

From the west-coast group, Algalita Marine Research Foundation, working to protect oceans from plastic pollution.  Click on the picture to see the whole 'Plastics Are Forever' educational brochure.

   

1st Day of Leo

Sunflowers and amaranthus grown and arranged by Abe Zacharias of Zach's Farm in York, ME 

Love these spires!  Did you know that amaranthus comes in dozens of varieties, and that some have been grown for grain for more than 8000 years?

Beautiful!

What I'm reading...

An excerpt (pp 187-188):

“We must…rebuild the bottom of the food chain we have already lost by restoring the habitats where forage fish are born and reared.  Estuaries and river systems are vital zones of food production and not simply “natural” spaces.  Nearly every wild fish highlighted [in the book Four Fish]—striped bass, European sea bass, cod, Alaska Pollock, Atlantic and Pacific salmon, bluefin tuna—depends upon a supply of forage fish whose life cycles are in turn dependent upon rivers and estuaries.  Herring, menhaden, smelt—all these small fish are the silver coin, the coin of the marine realm, and their hatching and rearing often occur in direct association with access to rivers that enter the sea.  Restoring these areas increases the food supply for the fish we eat most.  Deny the restoration and…abundance will inevitably be limited by a low ceiling of limited food.”

Paul Greenberg, Author of Four Fish

2010, The Penguin Press

Precursor to Celebrating the Summer Solstice

The Mountain from TSO Photography on Vimeo.

Giant Ichneumon Wasp - Megarhyssa macrurus

I nearly bumped into one of these this morning while outside watering deck plants. An incredible flying wasp-like insect with a phenomenally long tail (ovipositor -- for egg laying). Ran inside for the camera, searched in vain for a shot. It was gone. After researching on one of my favorite bug sites, found its name, and then searched further online to come across this "microphotography" of females in action out in Illinois. Great pictures, and a wonderful summary to go with them! Awesome!

Protecting Diversity of Thought and Action

Life is Good

Red-bellied woodpeckers are courting, chickadees are building their nest, orioles and yellow-rumped warblers are in the canopy, and hummers are at the feeders.  And our peas have sprouted.  Life is good!

Snags are good.  This tree is used in spring and summer by red-bellied woodies for nesting, and in winter by bluebirds

Chickadee nest building began Sunday, May 1, 2011

unrefined wool from Riverslea Farm makes for perfect nesting material for all kinds of songbirds

Oak-hickory-birch canopy...buds are just popping (May 3, 2011) and attractive to orioles, warblers, grosbeaks....

orioles love grape jelly and oranges

Our hummer's favorite feeder.  Make your own solution: 1 part sugar to 4 parts water.  Dissolve over low heat, COOL before adding to feeder, change every third/fourth day depending on temperature/sun exposure.  Clean feeders are essential to the health of hummers!

'Super sugar' snap pea sprouts.  Can't wait for these babies to start climbing!

Frogs in Decline

For years it has been known what Atrazine and other pesticides do to amphibians, and yet these chemicals still get pumped into the system. What gives?

http://action.biologicaldiversity.org/p/dia/action/public/?action_KEY=6526

Frogs give, that's what gives.

Radiolab - WNYC

Earth Day 2011 only one week away!

A great resource to rely on for learning how to diminish, if not eliminate, your trash footprint is Colin Beavan's 'No Impact Man' blog.  From a blog entry in 2009, great tips were suggested for eliminating waste from your life.  I'm proud to report that we have only a couple areas to check off: soft paper goods (tissues and paper towels, both of which we buy from unbleached, 100% p-c sources), and certain plastics (specifically, those ratty little plastic "safety" strips found on most bottles, jars and other food containers, as well as, #5/7 plastic tub containers that sour cream, ricotta cheese and certain nuts/seeds come in).  I really appreciate his 'Waste not, want not' category.

From his 2009 blog post:

20 ways to keep the landfill empty

Organic material--food and paper, for example--rot and release methane, a potent greenhouse gas, when sent to the landfill. When the liners meant to seal landfills eventually crack, toxic substances can leach into the water table, causing hard to trace illnesses in faraway communities.
But perhaps the worse thing is, when we throw something in the landfill to be buried in the ground (or worse, in an incinerator to be burned into our air), it represents a waste of resources that we took from the earth in the first place.
Here's the good news: I think it actually feels good not to waste. That is to say, I've found that not making trash, actually makes me feel better about myself.
For these reasons, I've put together this list of 25 ways to avoid making trash suggest by readers of the No Impact Man blog:

1. Keep your own cutlery with you so you don't have to use the plastic versions
2. Cut up your old clothes for use as rags and avoid paper towels
3. Use mason jars to carry everything from drinking water to a packed lunch
4. Use a handkerchief instead of tissue
5. Make notepaper from the blank side of junk mail
6. Give your old eyeglasses to the local Lions Club for distribution to those in need
7. Make cardboard egg cartons into biodegradable seed starters
8. Cut yogurt containers into strips and use them to label garden plants
9. Use cloth bags for the bulk bins at the grocery store
10. Empty out vacuum cleaner bags and reuse
11. Use cloth napkins instead of paper towel
12. Cook from scratch to avoid food packaging
13. Use shaving soap bars to avoid throwaway bottles
14. Make your own yogurt so there are no plastic tubs
15. Wash and reuse ziplock bags
16. Use the waxy liners of cereal boxes to wrap sandwiches
17. Use scrap office paper for kids coloring books
18. Carry a cloth for drying your hands and wrapping things in
19. Pack a lunch in a reusable container instead of buying lunch in plastic packaging
20. Use rechargeable batteries

A hope for Earth's future: 'Power Shift 2011'

Until now, I was convinced there was no hope for our planet and co-inhabitants.  But maybe, just maybe, there is.  From a recent Wonkroom post:

Power Shift 2011, the biennial national summit of the youth climate movement, begins this Friday in Washington, DC. The challenges facing the Millennial generation posed by the dirty energy economy is seemingly insurmountable: the destruction of our planet’s atmosphere, the poisoning of our political discourse, the dissolution of the American Dream. Armed with the vision of a cleaner, greener, future, the participants in Power Shift are choosing not just to fight back, but to organize and realize their collective potential.

Do you have bats living in your barn or house?

Both of the species of bats most commonly found in NH attics and barns--Little and Big Brown bats--will take to bat houses.  Hang them under eaves over areas where you won't be bothered by guano (bat poop, and a good fertilizer), but where they will receive lots of sun and shelter from the elements.  You may have to experiment over a few summers before finding a successful location!

Many bat species are dying from a new disease called White Nose Syndrome.  Thousands upon thousands of bat lives have been lost since the disease was first detected in the northeast in the winter of 2008.

The following is an excerpt from a Speaking For Wildlife presentation that I have given as part of my volunteerism for the NH Coverts Project.  It was written by NH Fish and Game wildlife biologist Emily Brunkhurst and USFWS wildlife biologist Susi Von Oettingen, and is intended to provide homeowners some low cost, easy solutions for problems they find come with having bats, but also for providing bats the critical support they need now:

Have you ever had bats living in your house or barn? Finding solutions to the problems bats can cause without removing them from where they live is an important thing you can do for bats:


• Bats in your attic is a problem that usually can only be remedied by excluding bats from the house. If you are uncomfortable with bats in your attic, you can hire a licensed wildlife control operator to do an exclusion (or you can do it yourself). They will put up a 1-way device over the holes where bats enter your house, so the next time they fly out they cannot get back in. After the bats are all gone, you can seal up the holes. However, from mid-May through mid-August the bats have babies that cannot fly. To avoid baby bats starving in your attic, do not hire someone to do this exclusion during that time. Most won’t do it anyway. Allowing bats to be successful in raising pups is critical, so even in attics, if there is no immediate human health issue, let the bats remain there until the pups fly, then exclude all the bats. For the homeowner, excluding bats when pups are there runs the risk of dead bats remaining in the attic;

• In barns and outbuildings, tarps or other types of temporary ceilings can be put up to catch bat droppings, and be easily removed for cleaning. Thus the owner gets to use the barn for equipment and the bats get to use it too;

• Building bats houses can help too. Be sure they are large and put up properly (you may need to experiment over several summers). Bats look for good roosting places in buildings, so a bat house should be on a building, near the roof, and on the south side so it can get hot;

Big Brown bats are the most common attic bat and will also use barns and other buildings, both in summer and winter.  At night, after feeding on insects for awhile, they will rest in garages or on porches.  They often have two babies, unlike most of the other cave bats who only have one baby.  Big Brown bats appear to tolerate the drier conditions and somewhat variable temperatures found in buildings, as opposed to the consistent temperatures and high humidity found in caves, so while they will hibernate in caves and mines, they can also use buildings for hibernation.

Little Brown bats also live in houses and barns in the summer, preferring buildings close to open water so they can forage on mosquitoes and other aquatic insects. They hold their single pup between their wings during the day, and prefer to gather in very large colonies, with hundreds if not thousands of other bats around them.  In the winter, they all go to caves and mines.  They are the most susceptible to WNS.

• Tracking bats is important, and Fish and Game biologists want you to tell them about any maternity colonies you have in your houses, barns or other buildings. Instructions for doing a simple count and reporting this are on the bat pages of the NH Fish and Game website.  NH Fish and Game biologists cannot reply to every report, as they get many each week, but they will investigate all new locations with multiple sightings (by phone or by visiting the site).  However, they do use this valuable data, so please send it in!

NH Legislative Session 2011

New Hampshire House Approves Tax Cut On Cancer-Causing Cigarettes, Cuts Health And Education Funding

From the Wonkroom:

"In a flurry of legislative activity this week, the New Hampshire House approved a tax cut on cigarettes even while cutting funding for education, and health care. The ten cent tax cut bucks a national trend of raising taxes on tobacco since “forever” and, according to multiple studies, could lead to a 6.6 percent increase in respiratory cancer deaths.
Republican lawmakers claim that the tax cut, which the New Hampshire chapter of the Koch-funded front group Americans for Prosperity strongly pushed for, will attract out-of-state smokers and raise revenue in the “long run.” Yet a spokesman for Gov. John Lynch (D) notes that the state already has the second-lowest tax burden in the nation. And with rising gas prices, the odds of smokers driving to New Hampshire for their cigarettes are slim.
Instead lawmakers have chosen to weaken an extremely effective policy tool: cigarette taxes not only reduce smoking but help limit underage smoking, exposure to second-hand smoke, and related health care costs. The tax cut is just one part of a legislative agenda that New Hampshire Republicans pushed through this week that cuts programs that keep Main Street healthy and strong:

-Yesterday, The House’s powerful Finance Committee moved forward on legislation that would cause mass layoffs of physicians and nurses and result in more than 12,000 people, including 500 to 800 children, losing their health care coverage.
-Wednesday, the House approved a bill freezing funding for schools.
-Tuesday, lawmakers approved a bill that “removes compulsory school attendance for children.”
-The Republican-controlled Senate approved pension-reform legislation that increases health care costs and raises the retirement age for public workers.
-House members passed an amendment to the state Constitution “to bypass a Supreme Court decision ordering the state to pay for the cost of an adequate education for every public schoolchild.”

Last week at a public hearing, the state’s Episcopal Bishop V. Gene Robinson called the recent legislation “a stubborn or selfish unwillingness by us, the privileged, to tighten our own belts for the good of our fellow citizens who are truly in need.” While similar cigarette tax cut bills have stalled in New Jersey and Rhode Island, Republicans hold veto-proof majorities in both the Senate and the House, limiting the state’s Democratic governor and progressive lawmakers ability to de-rail the legislation.
Instead, it’s been left to the state’s Main Street Movement — a coalition of business leaders, union workers, social justice advocates and religious leaders — to stand up against the legislature’s right-wing agenda in public hearings and in demonstrations across the state."

– Kevin Donohoe

Happy Spring 2011 - It's Been a Long Time Comin'!

Fifty degrees, sunny, and barely a breeze - my kind of day!  Chickadees and tufted titmouse looked for nesting cavities all morning, and the squirrels were busy chasing each other up and down the trunks of trees - the northeast is awakening once more!