Naturally Yours: Woodpecker Holes 1/10/18 Connie Deegan, Nature Program Coordinator First, let me briefly touch on why woodpeckers peck. Generally, it’s one of three reasons: to attract a mate/proclaim territory, to make a nesting cavity or to find food. Wouldn’t all of this pounding damage the wood pecker as well as the wood? They are well equipped. Turns out they have air bubbles in their skulls to act as shock absorbers each time they slam in for a peck. Many birds have three toes in the front and one in back. Woodpeckers have two in the front and two that point backward for a lock tight grip on the tree trunk. They have special stiff tail feathers that they can push against the tree for support while pecking. Their very sticky tongues actually do most of the work of locating food verse their beaks as they reach into the holes they’ve created to zip out those protein filled bugs. The holes pictured here, found on a Hemlock trunk, are the foraging or food finding variety. In the fall and spring, many kinds of wood boring insects sheltering underneath the tree bark, move around when cold nights are followed by warm days. Woodpeckers can hear this movement and use their pointed beaks as both a chisel and crowbar to remove bark to help with the hunt. This behavior will continue until an insect is found or the bird is satisfied that one is not there. Then the woodpecker may hop a bit to the side and repeat, living a horizontal drill line. When I lived in South Carolina, there was a male pileated woodpecker that discovered the Very Loud noise he could make when he drummed on an extremely tall metal light pole right near the house. It was spring and he was trying hard to get a date. There was no getting close enough to discourage him and no spray from the hose could reach him. Good thing for me that I have always been a very early riser.

Naturally Yours: Mast-1/3/18 Naturalist Program Coordinator Connie Deegan The word mast, from a nature stand point, is in reference to tree nuts that have accumulated on the forest floor. Hard mast in our area includes nuts such as acorns, hickory and buckeyes. (See if you can find them all in the picture). Walnut and beech seeds are other major players. There is also soft mast that refers to trees with fleshy fruits (berries) like dogwood, sassafras, and blackgum. I once lived in Connecticut, where we had a BIG Beech tree in our small back yard. Their seeds are hard, three sided and prickly. One took notice as you took a barefoot trip to fill the bird bath under the tree. One year, the tree produced a bumper crop with noticeably many more nuts. This is referred to as a ‘mast year’. Why does this happen? It could be nature's way of saturating the market with seeds/nuts so that after the critters have finally eaten their fill and buried and scattered the seeds, they'll likely be some left to sprout. Also, those bumper crop years often follow drought stricken summers. This may be a reaction to stress where the trees ‘think’ they may not survive and so try extra hard to propagate. These big mast years affect wildlife of course and I'll give just one example-in lean years, in the fall, nuisance bear reports are way up as the nice fatty nuts that they need to send them off to a peaceful hibernation are not there. They end up in backyards or campsites looking for food. On good years, the bears are fat and happy in the forest and so are the turkey, deer, grouse, fox, squirrels and…

Naturally Yours: Hornet’s Nest-12/27/17 Connie Deegan, Nature Program Coordinator This paper hornet nest provides a colony type home similar to honey bees and ants. It is made as the insect uses it’s mandibles to scrape bits of wood fiber from fences, logs, or even cardboard. The fibers are broken down with saliva and water to weaken them. The wasp flies to her chosen nest site with a mouth full of soft paper pulp and more or less chews it into location. I find the ‘paper’ in the hornet’s next a true work of art. There are many tiers of cells inside the nest, accessed by the single opening at the bottom. All of these nests are annual; they are Not used again so now you know. All the hornets, except the queen, die of old age or freeze in the fall. The fertilized queen will leave the hive in the fall and find a suitable hibernation spot. In the spring, she’ll make a small nest and lay some eggs. Female workers will hatch, begin foraging, and continue with the nest building. This frees up the queen to concentrate on laying more eggs; building the colony into a formidable size. A friend of mine told me about this nest on the back of her garage and of course I wanted it. I had to wait until my daughter could help as its removal is a two women job and no one else had volunteered.

Naturally Yours: Happy Holidays from Snakeboy-12/20/17 Connie Deegan, Nature Program Coordinator