Lizard skin

There are quite a few alligator lizards around our place, and one of them left a shed skin for us to find last month. Our lizards are probably the Southern Alligator Lizard, (Elgaria multicarinata). (See here for range map and basic info.)

[photo © Gary Nafis, from the californiaherps site]

The skin is complete, although in two pieces (ventral or belly view below).

The larger scales of the head

[photo © Gary Nafis, from the californiaherps site]

are clearly visible, or at least their clear covering is.

Also the legs, as they were arranged when the lizard wriggled and scraped its way out of the skin.

Here are the rear legs and vent.

And here’s a photo by Mark Leppin, in Northern Oregon, of the belly of a live alligator lizard:

The shed skin is turned inside out as the lizard peels it back over its head, by wriggling and scraping against whatever’s handy. Unlike most lizards, the alligator lizard sheds its skin in one piece (the one we found tore in handling), but it is like others in usually eating the shed. Depending on an individual’s health and rate of growth, it may shed every four to six weeks. Beforehand lizards and snakes may seek out water or damp places to help loosen the skin. The process is said to take only a few hours for those that shed in one piece.

Alligator lizards are insectivores but also take small eggs, snails, and probably anything else that they can find. The young are live-born, and we see them each summer––scarcely over an inch long, and very fast once they learn that everything bigger than they are regards them as lunch. The adults lose their tails once in a while, perhaps to snakes or other predators, and regrow them but the regenerated tails look stubby, not long and whiplike. Every dog we’ve had has tried to catch these creatures, without even coming close. My attempts to take pictures of them have all failed too, they’re just too wary and quick.

Views of a lion skull

Recently I had the opportunity to photograph a lion’s skull. Since there seem to be few detailed photos of this subject online, I’m posting several here.

The ruler at the bottom is 3.5 inches (89mm) long. I don’t know the age or sex of this animal, only that it was an African lion. The ragged hole on top of the skull is a bullet hole; more about that later.

The large openings flanking the nasal cavity, and beneath the huge eye-sockets, puzzled me. Turns out they are the passageways into the eye area for the infraorbital nerve, artery, and vein (technically, each of these two openings is termed the “infraorbital foramen”). The infraorbital foramen is indicated by the arrow in the anatomical illustration below, from the University of Wisconsin’s digital collection of Veterinary Anatomical lllustrations.

In searching out what these openings were, I came across the information that Asiatic lions often have divided infraorbital foramina, with a bony bridge across the opening. Most African lions have the single open foramen seen in the skull I photographed. It is believed that the modern lion originated in Africa, and some researchers think that a severe population bottleneck at some point in the recent past of Asiatic lions may have allowed this variation to become common.

[]Thanks to Bibliodyssey for the post on these great illustrations.

The longitudinal grooves or clefts in the upper canines seem odd, though I found similar ones on another skull pictured online. Most of the lion skull images online were casts, replicas, and lack these grooves.

On the side of the lower mandible, insertion openings for nerves or blood vessels are clearly visible.

Turbinate bones and the air we breathe

Few skulls or replicas online show something I was especially interested in, the delicate turbinate bones within the nasal cavity. These are thin bony structures, with a rich blood supply, found in all modern warm-blooded animals. Here they show a complex scrolled shape that is marvelous to see.

The turbinates are also seen in the first photo; the close-up above is taken from a lower vantage point, looking farther into the nasal cavity.

What is the function of these unusual structures? The tissue covering the turbinate bones warms, cleans, and humidifies air as it is inhaled; the air exhaled from the lungs, which has picked up even more heat and moisture there, is cooled to reclaim moisture and prevent dehydration. The turbinate system also benefits the sense of smell. Humidifying the incoming air is necessary to “preserve the delicate olfactory epithelium needed to keep the olfactory receptors healthy and alert” (Wikipedia); the turbinates also increase the surface area of the inside of the nose and direct air upward toward the olfactory receptors. And, in humans at least, the tissues are what get swollen and obstruct our breathing, when we have allergic reactions.

The dinosaur connexion

The turbinates interested me because I remember reading speculation, in Digging Dinosaurs by palaeontologist Jack Horner, that dinosaurs were endothermic, warm-blooded––and he based this partly on indications that some skulls showed signs of turbinate bones (I don’t recall what exactly he described). However, that book was published in 1988, and it appears that subsequent researchers have failed to substantiate his suggestion. The delicate turbinate bones rarely survive as part of fossilized skulls; for example, none have been found in fossils of ancient birds’ skulls, even though the birds must have been warm-blooded. Some dinosaurs have thin tubular nasal spaces, as do present-day reptiles, and it is argued that those with narrow nasal cavities couldn’t have had turbinate bones. The question is not settled, but the current consensus seems to be that dinosaurs were not warm-blooded. For point-by-point summaries of the controversy, these seem good: The Evidence for Ectothermy in Dinosaurs (cold-blooded) and The Evidence for Endothermy in Dinosaurs (warm-blooded). Wikipedia considers some additional points in Physiology of dinosaurs.

Cause of death of this lion

The lion skull had been lent for a display in our local library, by the US Fish and Wildlife Service Forensics Laboratory in Ashland Oregon. It’s the only lab in the world devoted to crimes against wildlife, and I’ll say more about it in another post. The skull had been evidence in a despicable case: an individual bought up lions (they breed easily in captivity) from roadside zoos, put them in small enclosures and sold the right to shoot them. My grim theory is that the “hunters” were required not to shoot at the head, so that more shots could be taken at the living lion, before the highest-paying customer delivered the coup de grace in a shot to the top of the head. First, that would yield the most money for the scumbag, and second, it would have been very difficult to make this shot to the top of the head of a lion still standing.

At least the person running this was tried, and convicted with the assistance of the Wildlife Lab. Highly unlikely that he received a sentence I’d regard as sufficient, though.

A Cape Lion (Panthera leo melanochaitus, now extinct) in a drawing of the Dutch artist Rembrandt Harmenszoon van Rijn. Circa 1650-52. Location: Louvre, Paris. Source, Wikimedia Commons.

Home Ground: Words of our native land

Home Ground: Language for an American Landscape, edited by Barry Lopez. Trinity University Press, San Antonio Texas, 2006.

One of the language byways I find fascinating is that of terms for landforms; they’re often based on metaphors (oxbow bend in a river, neck of land), some have ancient linguistic roots, others reflect the cultural history of an area with words from the language of indigenous people or early explorers. Those who share my interest will love this book, but it also has appeal for those who enjoy American regional writing or history, or are interested in how the landforms we see come into being.

Home Ground’s entries are in alphabetical order but it’s far richer than a dictionary. Entries are signed by their authors, who are mostly American writers with particular regional roots––novelists, poets, nature writers, scientists. From them we hear not just the definition and history of the term but also more diverse notes: political (the drowning of Celilo Falls in the Columbia River, by a dam, comes up in the entry for dalles), ecological, personal, and literary (quotations from hundreds of writers including Thoreau, Jack London, T.S. Eliot, Joel Chandler Harris, Pablo Neruda, Louis L’Amour, Joyce Carol Oates).

There are no fewer than three indexes: one for authors so quoted, one for terms (with cross-references), and one for specific place names mentioned: the San Andreas Fault, Satans Slab, South Dakota. And there are short biographies of the writers who produced the entries. With all this, you can browse the book or look for something specific like every mention of the Mississippi River, all the terms relating to ice, or mentions of Herman Melville.

If you have ever wondered what the difference is between a hill and a mountain, or among the words canyon/cleft/coulee/gorge/gully/ravine, you can find out right here. Terms run the gamut of languages––ronde, tseghiizi (Navajo), névé, krummholz, cuesta, gumbo (probably from a Central Bantu dialect), nunatuk, eddy (possbily Norse), erg (Arabic) and so on (although etymology is not always included). And they vary from the words of Western science (imbricated rock) to those of other observers (coyote well, paternoster lake).

And now, a few sample entries:

tule land

Tule land is a term recorded as early as 1856, just after gold rush. It usually refers to the flats of bulrushes and other reeds along the rivers of the West Coast. In the muddy shallows along the Sacramento, for example, as the river takes its time joining the San Joaquin and approaching the San Pablo and San Francisco Bays, there are vast thickets of reeds, home to waterfowl and fur-bearing animals. Tule lands are especially common at the junctures of rivers, where the slightest breeze will set the rushes whispering and rasping over the mud and standing water. The Wintu Indians called tule land “the storehouse of instant tools” because the rushes could be used to make so many things: mats, clothes, baskets, lodges, boats, and cradles, sandals, brooms, fish traps, and talismanic images. ROBERT MORGAN

nivation hollow

In A Walk in the Woods: Rediscovering America on the Appalachian Trail,
Bill Bryson wrote: “I never met a hiker with a good word to say about
the trail in Pennsylvania. It is, as someone told a National Geographic reporter in 1987, the place ‘where boots go to die.’…Mile upon mile of ragged, oddly angled slabs of stone strewn about in wobbly piles…These require constant attentiveness if you are not to twist an ankle or sprawl on your face––not a pleasant experience with fifty pounds of momentum on your back.” Such a hiker on the Appalachian Trail in Pennsylvania might just as well have been complaining about nivation hollows. A bowl-shaped depression in the ground, a nivation hollow begins to take shape when ice forms over a shallow rock basin beneath a snow bank. The ice freezes and thaws over time. During the warm period, melted snow seeps into the bottom of the hollow. During the cooler period, the seep water freezes. The rock breaks up, weathers, and erodes. Meltwater carries away the finer rock particles and the hollow becomes larger and deeper. MARY SWANDER

fil du courant

A Cajun French term meaning “thread of the current,” fil du courant is used to describe the optimal navigation course within a bayou or river. The fil is often visible as a glassy-smooth pathway through the otherwise ripping water. Louisiana shrimpers follow the fil du courant to avoid underwater obstructions and to secure sufficient depth for skim nets that extend winglike from either side of the vessel. MIKE TIDWELL

fall line

Fall line is a phrase both metaphoric and literal. In broader terms, it means the zone where the Piedmont foothills level out into the coastal plain, where sandy soil derived from marine deposits replaces rocky rolling land. On some southeastern rivers, such as in the Carolinas and Virginia, the Fall Line is a specific place where shoals and rapids once stopped navigation from the coast because ships couldn’t pass through. Cities such as Richmond, Fayetteville, and Columbia sprang up at the head of navigation, and mills and factories were built to take advantage of the water power at the falls and rapids. The abrupt change of elevation caused industry and commerce, courts and seats of government, to take root in those areas. ROBERT MORGAN

Line drawings, by Molly O’Halloran, illustrate some of the terms, such as this one for “Quaking Bog” which shows how peat, sphagnum, geologic forms, plants and water all combine to form this floating vegetative structure that will seem solid until stepped on. [The scan is much reduced, and for some reason tinted beige, unlike the original.]

Paper wasps and their nest

I found a group of paper wasps working on a nest, on top of our porch swing.

Behind the active nest is another larger one, apparently abandoned––or maybe the young have already emerged from it.

A few days later both nests had been knocked down by some creature that probably ate the wasps and any eggs or pupae; nothing left but one dead wasp.

In North America there are 22 species of paper wasps, genus Polistes, according to Wikipedia. [More about paper wasps, including their life cycle: 1, 2, and Bugguide has photos of about 18 different species from N. America.] They are quite common around our place, and generally ignore us if we do the same. I’ve gotten stung twice this summer though: once when removing a nest made in the recess of the car door hinges; and once when I was replacing a hummingbird feeder without noticing the wasp clinging to the bottom––I touched it and was stung. (Paper wasps feed on nectar, so the hummingbird food attracts them; they also prey on caterpillars and other “garden pests” so they’re generally considered “beneficial insects” in our narrow human way of thinking.) I caused both of these incidents, so I have no gripe against the wasps, just a resolve to be more careful. As you can see, these wasps let me get quite close with the camera.

Don’t expect such tolerance from some other insects that look very similar. Hornets and yellowjackets are irascible and can sting more than once. Stings from any, including the paper wasps, can cause severe reactions (anaphylactic shock) in allergic individuals.

A few wasp-related byways

More good pictures of paper wasps, taken by a backyard naturalist in Michigan, are here. The common wasp builds quite large nests, also of paper, but they are spherical and the cells are not visible as they are in paper wasp nests.

And here’s something I enjoyed discovering: a bird, Pernis apivorus, which may have wasp repellent. It’s called “Honey Buzzard”, but it is not a buzzard and feeds more on wasps (adults and pupae) than on bees. It’s believed to have some chemical on its feathers that dissuade wasps from stinging!

[Painting by John Gould, English ornithologist and artist]

This beauty winters in Africa and summers in Europe and Asia, so we won’t be seeing it around our house. It has a very unusual display in flight: “The most striking version of their soaring displays involves a characteristic wing quivering which looks as if the bird is clapping its wings together above its head.”

[Photo of a wasp-eating Honey Buzzard in Sweden, by Omar Brännström]

Bees in the garden, and strange habits of gophers

Mint is fine as a culinary herb, but plant it in the ground and it’s like having a tapeworm: you’ll never get rid of it and it just gets bigger. I keep pulling and slashing away at the mint planted by a previous resident, to no avail. The tiniest piece of root or stem will grow a new plant if it finds a little water. Stems flop to the ground and root, new plants pop up from seed or wandering underground invasive roots. And somehow it even hangs on, once established, here in the long hot dry summer.

And here it is, in bloom! I was irked until I saw how much “our” honeybees were enjoying the flowers. (I’ve posted before about the small hive of honeybees in a cavity in a dead oak tree on our place.)

The wire fence in the background encircles our vegetable garden; the mint just loves it in there, where there’s regular watering. If only the gophers would use the mint as a garnish for the vegetable plants they devour: every single sweet pepper plant (7 plants!) was sucked down into the ground by the gophers this year. It happens overnight as if the plants walked away, but dig and you will find remans. And the gophers tunnel around the roots of other plants which they don’t seem to eat, but the plants die anyway.

For ten years I waged war against the gophers until the futility of it sank in. I tried everything: a trap––lots of work to dig in the stony dry ground looking for a straight open run of tunnel, and the trap never caught one anyway; gassing them with exhaust via a pipe from the car to a tunnel opening (yes, there is a specialized flexible pipe sold just for this purpose, I’m not the only anti-gopher fanatic out here)––results apparently nil, though how can you tell?; curses and exhortations; and dozens and dozens of sulfurous poison gas bombs, like big firecrackers that you light and stick into a tunnel you’ve excavated, then cover it up so the smoke goes through the tunnel system. Or that is the theory. Within a few uses the gophers were changing their tunnels: adding right angles and frequent backfilled partitions. Even stranger, they often dug back to the site of a “Gopher Gasser”, then up to the surface, and left me a message:

That’s the carefully ejected remnant of the “Gopher Gasser” placed right on top of the new pile of dirt! If you look closely you can imagine the little thought balloon above it…

After seeing the bees busy in the mint I checked out their activity elsewhere. This is one of the big “bumblebees” or so we call them, on a Caryopteris plant (a hybrid cross between C. incana and C. mongholica ‘Bunge’, with cultivars such as “Bluebeard” or “Blue Mist Spiraea”).

There were honeybees on this plant too, but more of the big guys.

One was clinging upside down, sheltering under a leaf because the sprinkler had been on this plant earlier.

I like to watch the industrious behavior of the bees; if only I could feel that way about the gophers. Well, maybe a mint julep would help…

Visit to a California Eucalyptus grove

Growing up in Northern California, I always had a special fondness for the eucalyptus; various species have been planted there, mostly as windbreaks. They grow fast, are evergreen, and haqve fragrant leaves and varicolored bark that peels away in great strips.

So last week as we headed home from Sacramento, up I-5 to Southern Oregon, I wanted to stop and get close to some eucalyptus again. We left it a little late, and settled for a planting at a rest stop, on the northern edge of where eucalyptus flourish. These were not as densely planted as many groves, but then you can appreciate the individual trees more.

These trees were afflicted with scale, which you can see as small white spots on the narrow leaves.

Bark patterns are always fascinating; like the madrones of Southern Oregon, eucalyptus trees present masterpieces of natural form wherever you look.

Wildlife

You can’t expect to see much in 20 minutes, during the hottest part of the day, among trees next to a freeway rest stop, but we found a bit.

In the picture below, a woodpecker’s work can be seen at the top.

We found traces of some sort of beetles under peeling areas of thick bark, and these are probably what the bird was hunting.

At night, other insect hunters emerge; at mid-day they were sleeping high in the trees invisible to us, but one who had died lay beneath a roost tree. (Traces of droppings, along twenty feet of the tree’s trunk, indicated the presence of multiple individuals.)

We did not examine him or her, and I’m not sure what the species may be.

A good guess would be the little brown bat, Myotis lucifugus: it’s very common, it is the right size and color, and has small dark ears as this one does. Or maybe California Myotis (or “California Bat”), Myotis californicus. I am really just guessing––one source says there are 24 species of bats in the state of California. The small ears and lack of a “leaf-nose” structure do rule out a few candidates.

The butterfly we saw and photographed we do have an identification for, though: the Common Buckeye, Junonia coenia:

I didn’t recognize it, and located a useful list of California butterflies with links to photos and information on each species. Then it turned out that Dan knew what it was all along, but it was fun to look through butterfly photos and have the Eureka! of seeing it. Maybe I will remember it better that way. The Common Buckeye probably isn’t resident where we saw it; the Butterfly Site says it lives along the coasts as far north as Central California in the West and North Carolina in the East and that:

Adults from the south’s first brood migrate north in late spring and summer to temporarily colonize most of the United States and parts of southern Canada.

That’s a lot of traveling for this tiny seemingly fragile creature.

Eucalyptus seedpods

I wanted to collect some seeds to grow at home, and had in mind the seed pods that are up to an inch long and look like this (source of drawing), though the ones I wanted are silvery-grey in color.

But the trees at the rest stop were a different species, with very different seed pods.

I’ll give them a try and maybe in ten years I’ll have my own eucalyptus grove.

Sea Snail Trail in Sand

Sea Snail Trail in Sand, Shi Shi Beach, Olympic National Park

A while back I posted some of our photos from a low-tide explore near Gold Beach, Oregon, and that got me interested in the marks and tracks left in the sand. I found this great photo on the flickr account livingwilderness. This photographer has an eye for patterns and forms in nature as well as spectacular scenes, in the American Southwest, Pacific Northwest, and New Zealand. Take a look!

Extraordinary cloud!

We’ve all seen threatening thunderheads, poised to loose their lightning and thunder and deluges, but the cloud we saw two nights ago had a form that seemed as if it had risen above us and was ready to bend and crash down.

The rest of the sky was clear except for 180° away, where the cloudscape was a mix:

Photos never do justice to clouds––how can we reproduce the experience, where our eyes take in half the sky, with just a small window’s view? But this cloud also had a looming ominous presence like a solid creature in the sky looking down on us which is hard to convey.

It would have been easy to project an angry deity onto this phenomenon, and then see confirmation in the huge thunderstorm that followed (but that was three hours later, when this celestial warning was long gone). The heavy rain was very welcome after a couple of weeks of temperatures above 100°, and there were few lightning-started wildfires, so the omens weren’t so bad after all.