Insects

“Much of the damage inflicted on land is quite invisible to laymen,” noted revered conservationist Aldo Leopold. The trained ecologist, on the other hand, “lives alone in world of wounds.” She takes no pleasure in evergreen thickets of Chinese privet on a dreary winter day. She cringes at patches of lush Japanese stilt grass. She […]

The North Carolina Museum of Natural Sciences in Raleigh has an area where you can see through the glass and watch scientists at work, and in this section they also have a couple of glass displays that house a much smaller worker of the creepy crawly variety – dermestid beetles. These beetles have a job […]

Is it possible “to see a world in a grain of sand and a heaven in a wildflower” as poet William Blake suggested? According to biologist David George Haskell, this “search for the universal within the infinitesimally small” runs through many cultures. Tibetan monks create mandalas, paintings of sand that represent the entire universe within […]

Sphingidae is a family of moths that are commonly referred to as hummingbird, sphinx or hawk moths. Some of the largest moths on earth, they have a heavy body and narrow wings. They are agile fliers and have the capability of rapid wing movement that allows them to hover over plants, and even move side […]

There was that glorious day toward the end of August when the humidity dropped and the heavens parted. The air felt fresh for the first time in months. I knew it wouldn’t last – we were bound to have another spell of muggy weather before the start of autumn – but I convinced myself the […]

This wet summer has brought out a number of wildflowers we rarely see, or at least not in great numbers. Recently, I saw one of my favorites blooming en masse in Montgomery County – the yellow-fringed orchid. This beautiful wildflower blooms from late June to early September, so they were just past peak but I […]

We talk quite a bit in the conservation community about invasive species and the threats they pose to habitats and ecosystems.We have to deal with invasive species on conserved lands, typically invasive plants like kudzu and privet, which can spread rapidly and choke out native vegetation. However, other invasives have had an even broader impact […]

Earlier this summer, I visited a Uwharrie pitcher plant bog at the right time to spot an interesting wildflower in bloom – swamp milkweed (Asclepias incarnate). Similar to the bright orange butterfly weed seen on many roadsides, this version of milkweed is considerably taller, and instead of a vibrant sunset-orange color, it is a more […]

Katydids, (also known as bush-crickets in Britain), are insects in the family Tettigoniidae. They are sometimes referred to as long-horned grasshoppers, but are actually more closely related to crickets. Katydids differ from grasshoppers in that they have very long antennae, while grasshoppers have short and thick antennae. Of the more than 6,400 species of katydid, […]

My grandparents depended on fireplaces and a wood-fired cookstove to heat their farmhouse in the Uwharries. Today many of us have the luxury of turning down our thermostats on winter evenings when we want to enjoy the pleasures of a roaring fire. There’s the faint aroma of hickory and oak, the logs shifting and settling […]