Nature at your Doorstep

As my faithful readers and colleagues know, I am very fortunate to be able to travel abroad, to see new and exciting things, with some frequency. Still, I always love to come home and settle into the rhythm of daily life, with family, friends and of course our local wildlife. Over the years, I have shared many stories with you and sometimes think, “What else could there be? By now, I must have seen everything which could show up in my personal wildlife haven (aka my back yard).” Wrong!

The other day, I was doing some gardening, to prepare for the winter. I do as little possible, not because I’m lazy, but to ensure our tiny overwintering invertebrates have a safe home in which to spend the winter. So, with that in mind, I spend a lot of time looking around to see what must (or must not) be cleaned up. On one of these recent forays, I saw a small mushroom-like thing I’d never seen it before. I checked my books and what I had found was a Rounded Earthstar. It is an oddly shaped fungus which looks like a flower and grows close to the ground in lightly acidic soils. It starts off as a relatively inconspicuous onion-like structure which morphs into a spectacular star-shaped mushroom. This happens because calcium oxalate crystals build up inside the fungus, creating mechanical pressure, forcing it to split its outer ‘skin,’ revealing 4-10 pointed rays mimicking flower petals! Stemless, unlike many other mushrooms, they sit directly on the ground, slowly working to decompose rotting wood in our forests. Raindrops are the mechanism by which they disperse their spores. Each drop of rain, hitting the tiny mushroom, elicits a response, where they release a small puff of spores into the local airstream – and so the cycle continues!

On another day, I saw an odd insect I didn’t recognize. Again, my books were helpful, and I eventually identified it as a Pine Tree Cricket. It doesn’t really look much like the typical black Field Crickets we’re used to seeing in our lawns and homes. While in the same family, they have developed very differently, spending most of their lives high in pine and other conifer trees. Like the other familiar crickets, the males do ‘sing’ to attract females. The ‘song’ is described as a plaintive and relaxing musical trill, with about 45 pulses per minute. I must have heard these before but, to be honest, never recognized it as such! Other local members of the tree cricket family, such as the Snowy Tree Cricket, can, quite accurately, report on the ambient air temperature where they are. Simply apply Dolbear’s Law – count the number of chirps in 15 seconds and add 40 – then you have the temperature, in Fahrenheit degrees. Amos Dolbear was an American physicist, who, in 1897, worked out the mathematical formula which defined the cricket’s response to temperature. In case you were wondering, if the temperature is below 60F or above 85F, the crickets stop chirping, so you’re on your own!

Once the male lures the female to its lair, so to speak, mating takes place and then when she is ready to lay eggs. She uses a drill-like appendage (ovipositor) to cut a slit into a plant stem. While other tree crickets will lay eggs on brambles, weeds or other bushes, the Pine Tree Cricket is fiercely loyal. She will only lay her eggs inside the woody twigs of conifers.

Its camouflage is so perfect it mimics the tiny conifer buds near where it lives, showing shades of green and brown just like the adjacent tree buds do. These crickets can subtly match the specific age or type of conifer they inhabit and can adapt readily to local conditions. Populations, found on younger conifers with darker, blackish bark, have been observed with much darker markings on their heads, to ensure they match their specific tree's trunk!

Well, as you can see, you need not go far afield to find interesting things – just open your door and look outside!

Geoff Carpentier is a published author, expedition guide and environmental consultant. Visit Geoff on-line on LinkedIn, Facebook and Instagram.