Did You know - outdoor edition

[KEC]

The wildlife in North America owes a huge debt of gratitude to Johnny Appleseed. So many birds and animals relish apples and many birds nest in the trees and eat the insects off the trees. Part of the enjoyment of wandering around outdoors in the fall is in sampling the apples off the many trees growing wild. I once caught a gray fox on New Years Day that had a belly full of apples.

[WV Sawmiller]

   A little off the central theme of this thread but did you know in Japan they typically put a pair of Temple Dogs or Temple Dragons on the gate posts to the home to protect it from evil spirits. The male dragon/dog has his mouth open to roar and scare away the evil spirits while the female dragon/dog has her mouth shut to keep the evil spirts from escaping. They also put these temple dogs/dragons on both ends of bridges to help prevent accidents on them. 

   We did a renovation of a mess hall in Okinawa in 1986 and used a local contractor and before the start of the work they brought in a Shinto priest to pray for a safe work place with no accidents. I thought this was a nice touch although it would probably not be considered PC in our country.

[firefighter ontheside]

Did you know an apple tree can keep some green leaves into the middle of January in Missouri?


 

[WV Sawmiller]

   Did you that a Mayhaw looks like a tiny apple and makes great jelly? It is a small tree that grows in wet areas in the southern USA. The fruit is about the size of a marble and typically gets ripe around late April and May. They are usually found around slow moving sloughs and boggy areas and often spend a good bit of their life in standing water especially in wet years. I remember my old mentor saw a bunch of Mayhaw blooms in a backwater area and said "When the blooms fall in the water that's about where the haws will fall."

[WV Sawmiller]

   Do you know how whales nurse their young? It is pretty interesting. The mother has an inverted nipple in a sort of slot and when the calf nudges her the slot opens and the nipple is extended and when nursing the mother can actually force the milk out to the calf. Sperm whales actually squirt the milk out into the water for the calf to feed on. Whale milk may be up to 50% fat and in some cases is the consistency of toothpaste. Some is like blubber and it is a very high energy food since the calf needs it for energy and to keep warm in their watery environment.

[HemlockKing]

Milk sludge....consistency of toothpaste? I was eating lunch until I read that 

[WV Sawmiller]

 

[WV Sawmiller]

   Well, so HK can finish his breakfast/lunch this time we will shift topics.

Did you know next month the Bald Eagles here in WV will be laying eggs and starting to incubate them? The young will hatch mid to late March IIRC and they will stay on the nest several months till they are old enough to make training flights and leave the area.

  We drove past an eagle nest in a big sycamore tree yesterday on the very tip of an island in the New River. There is an overlook on Highway 20 on the other side of the river from which you can actually look almost straight down a couple hundred yards into the nest and see the nesting parents and the young sticking their heads up once they hatch. From our side of the river you can see it on the road to Sandstone Falls not long after you pass Brooks Falls. The nest has been there many years and is easily over 10' in diameter. They will continue using it many more years and it could get half again the current size as they keep adding on to it. It sat vacant a year or so when the male eagle got hit by a CSX train several years ago but the female either found another mate or one of the eagles hatched there came home to take it over after his dad's funeral. My wife was photographing them from above several years ago and got pictures of the male eagle returning with a 4'-5' snake in his claws which he dropped into the nest.

I read or heard somewhere a group placed an Eagle-Cam on a nest so people could watch the eggs hatch and the young birds grow up. All was well and an elementary school group eagerly watched it every day. Things were fine when the parents would drop off a rat or snake for dinner but the kids got pretty upset when they'd drop off a cute little bunny or two and finally the teacher had to change the channel when the parents came home and fed junior a cute, fluffy kitten.

[firefighter ontheside]

I was watching an ongoing video last year of a pair of eagles at Tahoe who had laid an egg or two.  Lots of video of them bringing back food was interesting to watch.  In the end the eggs never hatched.  Apparently the unhatchedd eggs just become a part of the nest or maybe at some point while both eagles were away from the nest a critter would come in and eat it.

[WV Sawmiller]

   I remember reading a while back when they were trying to boost production of the California condor they would remove the eggs which prompted the condors to lay another. I think they were able to get a female condor to lay 6-7 eggs a year instead of the 1-2 they normally would lay. They artificially incubated these eggs to increase the size of the very small population. 

   Nature has a number of options to help a species to survive and laying another clutch of eggs to replace those lost, increasing the number of young a mother has, reducing the breeding age and increasing the frequency of breeding are some of the techniques she uses as needed.

[KEC]

I have looked into boxes that I put up for Eastern Screech-Owls and found feathers of cardinals, Cedar Waxwings, and Blue Jays, amoung others. That technique of taking eggs from a nest to get the female to lay more is called double clutching. Usually,  for birds that lay several eggs, you let the bird lay 2 eggs and you take 1 leaving 1 in the nest. You just keep taking new eggs and leaving one. Some people place a fake egg in the nest so there's 1 there. Otherwise the bird will abandon the nest. Flickers (the woodpecker) might normally lay 5-6 eggs. By taking eggs, a researcher got a flicker to lay 29 eggs before quitting.

[firefighter ontheside]

  I remember reading a while back when they were trying to boost production of the California condor they would remove the eggs which prompted the condors to lay another. I think they were able to get a female condor to lay 6-7 eggs a year instead of the 1-2 they normally would lay. They artificially incubated these eggs to increase the size of the very small population.

  Nature has a number of options to help a species to survive and laying another clutch of eggs to replace those lost, increasing the number of young a mother has, reducing the breeding age and increasing the frequency of breeding are some of the techniques she uses as needed.

Yeah, my brother in law works for the US Dept of Fish and Wildlife in California.  He has been marginally involved with that process.  They seem to be having great success as long as they can keep the birds from getting lead poisoning from eating dead animals that have been shot with lead bullets and then ingesting the bullets.

[WV Sawmiller]

FFOTS,

   We have similar problems here. A rescue group were given a sick, mature bald eagle several years ago who had ingested too much lead eating fish from the local lake/streams.

    They tended him for nearly a year and he made a complete recovery. They announced the release date and had a bunch of local tree huggers and even the local press out to watch the eagle turned free. They scheduled the release at a local city park on the banks of the New River just a few hundred yards below the Bluestone Dam. My free lance photographer wife and I went down to watch and she wanted pictures. The rescue lady brought the eagle out in a big fiberglass dog crate and wrapped it in a blanket to get it out of the crate. She set the eagle down and everyone was prepared to watch/photograph/video it as it flew majestically up towards the top of Elk Knob to the west. 

    Instead the eagle took flight to the east directly over the New River with the dam in the background. All went well till, to the horror and consternation of all watching, about 30 yards from the far bank he crash landed into the river. : 

   He floated on the surface in the swift water for a while then began to flap his wings getting a few feet closer to the bank each time. Finally he reached the overhanging limbs of the trees on the far bank and flapped hard and long enough to fly up to a limb about 20' over the river. He sat there for a long while and finally flew to another, nearby limb. 

    Evidently he had lost a lot of muscle tone during his months in captivity recuperating. I don't know if he ultimately survived or not.

[Don P]

I heard about this lost eagle the other day. He's apparently about 5,000 miles from home;
Maine Photographer Spots Rare, Lost 'Sea Eagle' In Snowstorm – CBS Boston (cbslocal.com)

[WV Sawmiller]

   Yeah, there was a post about the sea eagle over in the Birds thread. Apparently a whole aviary club were there so it was a real big deal.

[WV Sawmiller]

   Since it is snowing all over parts of the south right now including some places that almost never get snow, did you know a freak snow storm can provide some excellent deer hunting opportunities for those of you where the season is still open? First you can see a deer half a mile against a white background. Second you can spot tracks of any deer who have been moving and track them to their beds. Third the deer are very nervous with this new experience and change to their world and you can set up some man drives with a couple or several of your hunting buddies to push deer out of thickets and such and right past a few waiting guns. 

[HemlockKing]

Is is common to not get snow at all during winter where you're at?

[WV Sawmiller]

   We always get a few snow sessions here. The last couple of years have been pretty light. The post above was directed more at the people in Ga, NC, SC, and possibly Ala who very seldom get snow. Our deer get exposed to snow every year. Our season ended 31 December except for a 3 day heritage hunt that ends today for people with sidelock muzzleloaders, crossbows and recurve bows. I don't hunt in those hunts.

   A rare snowfall in South Ga for example might have enough to cover the ground every 10 years or so. You will have whole generations of deer who have never seen snow and if the deer season is still open there, it presents real opportunities to go kill some really big, spooky bucks. The smart old bucks that bed in the real thick stuff and watch as hunters walk 25 feet away are now visible. You can see fresh tracks of any who did move around and trail them to their beds and if you don't get a shot you can at least push them out to your partners. 

   Some of those techniques work here but our terrain makes it a lot harder to do things like sneaking up on them.

[WV Sawmiller]

   Since the MagicMan has been posting a lot of sage marital advice and observations over in the Jokes thread did you know there are some interesting marital customs in Africa? These are observations from various tribes:

 It is common for a man to have to pay a bridal price to the father of the bride. Historically this had been cows or goats but now money, whiskey, building supplies etc. may be provided. I had one local worker in Douala Cameroon who paid for his wife by paying for the education her younger sister to a similar amount of that of his wife. In this case they figured the more education she had the more she was worth.

 In some tribes the groom has to make a big batch of millet beer for the brides family and if acceptable they can continue negotiation. If they don't like the beer he is rejected. I don't know remember if he can try again later or not.

 I think it was our guide in Kenya who said he bought his wife on credit. They determined the number of cows he had to pay and he could pay over time but he did have to have at least one cow to be used to throw a wedding feast for the village. I think it was him who said if he died before the debt was paid their oldest son became responsible for the debt so a grandson could come into this world owing his maternal grandfather for his mother.

 If a woman died before the debt was paid she would be taken and buried in her father's cemetery instead of her husband's family.

 The women or girls in the Kome (Koo maa) tribes in the Atlantika Mountains on the border between Nigeria and Cameroon pull their two front teeth when they get engaged. I heard one explanation was to make the married women less beautiful so Muslim raiders in the area would not steal them. I don't know how far back this tradition goes and fortunately I never got to observe the engagement party and teeth being extracted under such primitive conditions. I always wonder how many young women and girls (These brides marry as soon as they begin to signs of puberty - 12-13 is not uncommon) have died over the years from infection from their engagement party. We met one 30 y/o woman there who already had 15 children and a number of grandchildren.


Above picture shows a brides wedding outfit for a bride from the village and area of Rhumsiki (Rum seeky) on the border of Cameroon and Nigeria. (My ATV key is shown for perspective) This is the entire wedding attire except for the string around her waist to hold it up. (Its a little frayed from hanging on a basket on a shelf over my kitchen sink for 20 or so years) I don't know what the bridesmaids wear. I guess she does not need attendants to hold her train. Unfortunately I also never got to witness a traditional Rhumsiki wedding either.

[WV Sawmiller]

   Did you also know it is common to have up to 3 weddings in Africa? The first is a traditional wedding where the groom buys or "Steals" the bride and the village chief performs a bit of a ceremony and records the wedding in his records. The next is a municipal (Probably not the right word) where they go to the courthouse and the judge or JP marries them and documents the wedding. The third is church wedding similar to what we have. The couple can have one or all three depending on their preferences.

   Our gardener married my maid and I was invited and was the only white guy there. I think we stood for 2 hours. Monica came dancing down the aisle which was the first time I'd ever seen that. At one point a deacon or associate pastor tried to turn on a 30" pedestal fan but could not find the switch. I was only 6' away on the front row where the other maids had dragged me from my seat in the rear. Ever the helpful soul that I am I stepped forward and turned on the switch and immediately blew the preachers notes off the podium. : One white guy in the whole building makes it hard to blend in after something like that.

[HemlockKing]

Well to each their own culture I guess lol.... sounds like a lot of hoops.

I'd like my wife to keep her front teeth.... If you have the right woman you dont need to worry if other men find her attractive or not....not gonna happen.

[WV Sawmiller]

  Yeah but we don't live in a region where they are likely to be forcibly stolen away.

  I saw a Himba man in Namibia who had his front bottom teeth knocked out. The put a piece of wood against his teeth and rapped the other end smartly with a big rock.

  Many tribes do/did scarification and we saw one pygmy boy in a The CAR who still had the razor blade left in as they were installing the marks in stages.

[WV Sawmiller]

  Did you know bats use a type of sonar called echolocation to identify their prey and objects in their area? They send out a call and the echo bounces off objects and they can find a flying insect or keep from flying into a tree or power line by the return signal they receive. 

   A good way to test this is go outside on a summer night and find a night light with a lot of bus circling it and watch for bats swooping through catching them. When you find a bat is active in the area pick up small pebbles or twigs and throw them up into the air. The bat will swoop down and catch it in the air in many cases. I have always thought about going out with a fly rod and a cork popping bug and see if I can catch some but I really don't want to hurt them and can't think if an easy, safe way to unhook one if/when I do hook him. :

[Don P]

We used to mess with them as kids. It doesn't take them long to figure out you're a wood duck  :D.

Knocking out teeth and a comment brought up a memory. The designation 4F, unfit, came from the Civil War. If you didn't have 4 front teeth to bite the end of a paper cartridge off you were at a severe disadvantage.

[WV Sawmiller]

Don,

   I don't know if its the actual origin for 4F classification but it makes a good tale. I guess if they'd had dental implants back then he could still have been drafted and in boot camp they'd have drilled him in some new choppers. :D

   Allergy to wool was and may still be listed as an excuse to avoid or get out of military service. I think bedwetting used to be another. : I suspect in combat that rule changed. ???

   I saw some articles not long ago where there is more and more of a move to get women included in the draft. Apparently this is a result of all the fighting for women to be allowed into all positions including combat roles, on ships, subs, pilots, etc. I think this is another case of those "Unintended consequences".

   Actually, I served with many women in the USMC and they were first rate and true professionals. I learned many unexpected things from them including the fact tampons work great to remove excess lubricant from those hard to reach spots on an M-16. A couple of Kotex maxi-pads under your packstraps help keep them from cutting into your shoulders on those long conditioning marches, etc.

   A WM LCpl sat me down and showed me how to turn on a PC in 1989. If not for her I wouldn't be able to write this post here today. ;)