December 7, 2011

Yesterday, as my wife Liz and I were out putting holiday lights on the bushes in front of our house, we came upon this garter snake sunning itself in a bed of dry leaves that were caught in the branches. He was so quiet that I reached forward to see if it was alive. Sure enough, it slithered away, out of sight. I spotted it there again this morning, though. This must feel like a cozy spot!

What is surprising is that normally, in December, this snake would already be down in a den below ground, sleeping together with hundreds of other snakes for the winter. Once the weather cools down to normal winter temperatures, that is what it will do.

OK - WRITERS, ARE YOU READY? Write a few sentences describing the snake on the bush. If you like, you can put yourself (the writer) in my place and describe finding the snake. Use comparisons to describe how the snake looks in amidst the branches. Maybe ask a question that the reader will be thinking about as he or she looks at this photograph of a snake in a tree. Use as many descriptive details as you can to describe what the snake looks like, how it felt to find it in such an unexpected place, or even how you think it was feeling when humans showed up!

Post your writing by clicking on "comments" at the bottom of this blog. I am looking forward to reading what you write!  

I have created a Guide called “Writing Exciting Nonfiction,” which you can download by clicking on this link. It outlines different techniques that I use in my writing, and includes many examples from my books. I have posted it so that you can use it with your students. Please let me know if it is helpful, and share any other feedback about how we can make this blog a productive tool for you to use in exploring and encouraging nonfiction writing with your students.

October 19, 2011

Believe it or not, this is a beautiful mushroom often called a "turkey tail." It has a scientific name too, but one not nearly as easy to remember: Trametes versicolor. I took this picture of a turkey tail growing on a rotting piece of wood just off the road near my house. It’s a common mushroom found anywhere there are dead and rotting trees and stumps in woods. The colors are variable but are usually brown and reddish brown. The mushrooms have zones of color and the surface is velvety.

There are a number of other mushrooms that look very similar and are lumped together by collectors as "turkey tails."

Here’s another picture of a quite different looking mushroom called a puffball. 

There are many different kinds of puffballs, from tiny ones that grow in clusters on trees or in circles called "fairy rings" in gardens or meadows. These puffballs in my garden are about an inch or two in diameter. But a few kinds of puffball mushrooms are over a foot across.

If you slice open a puffball, it contains either flesh or, if it’s dried out, spore dust. I advise you NOT to eat any kind of mushroom that you find growing in the woods because they are hard to identify one from another and some kinds of mushrooms are poisonous. If you have touched a puffball or other wild mushroom, be sure to wash your hands well with hot water and soap.

The autumn is a great time to get out and explore. If you would like to learn more and find interesting kinds of life, click here to download a simple, fun Seymour Science project called LIFE IN A ROTTING LOG. Happy exploring!

September 21, 2011

My goodness. It seems that every morning when I go out to pick raspberries for our breakfast cereal, I find another exciting-looking caterpillar! Of course, they are eating nearly around the clock these days, getting ready to spin their cocoons, where they will spend the winter before emerging as butterflies or moths in the spring.

As I wrote the other day, it’s best not to handle hairy caterpillars because some of them are poisonous or otherwise dangerous. Some of them have specialized hollow hairs, and when they are touched by humans, the hairs can create a tiny scratch on our hands and release a strong toxin (poison) into the almost invisible cut. This process is called "urtication," and caterpillar urtications can cause severe allergic responses in some people. So keep your hands off hairy caterpillars!

I picked this one up on a piece of cardboard and moved it out of the grass to a rock in order to get a better look at it. It was still sparkling with morning dew, and curled up into a ball as soon as I got near it. That is a defensive mechanism, to protect itself from predators (though I really wasn’t going to hurt it!). I could see immediately that this kind of caterpillar is a typical "woolly bear" variety, with a thick coat of black bristles called setae. The red bands around its body are so distinctive that I was able to easily identify it simply by typing "caterpillar black hairs red bands" into a web browser.

Well….I can say is…..WOW! This is the caterpillar of the Giant Leopard Moth (Hypercompe scribonia). 

It is one of the most beautiful of all moths - white with iridescent blue spots. And it truly is "giant," with wingspan of about 3-inches (8 cm). That is biger than your middle finger - a good-sized moth, for sure.

We do not clean up our garden very much in the fall, leaving the dry stems and leaves to create winter shelters for helpful and beautiful insects like these. I hope that lots of them find a safe haven up under the raspberry bushes, because I would love to see a giant leopard moth in person come the spring.

Keep your eyes open when you are walking in the outdoors, and then write and tell me what interesting wild creatures you see.

Moth Photo: Wikimedian Kevincollins123

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READERS: Are you wondering how to add your own "comment" to this blog? Click here for exact directions on how to add a comment so you can become one of our Seymour Science writers! We also want you to be safe and not share too much information when you write on this blog, so please take a minute to read about how to stay safe on the Internet. We love to hear from you, so give "comments" a try! 

September 18, 2011

It is autumn in the northeast, which means that the countryside is dappled with fields of goldenrod. These yellow weeds are a favorite of the monarch butterfly, and everywhere that I went today, there were monarchs flitting amongst the yellow flowers, sipping their nectar.

Then, I realized that all the monarchs I saw were also flying in a southerly direction. The winter migration has begun. Over the next few weeks, these delicate creatures will travel nearly 3,000 miles to their winter home in Mexico.

September 2, 2011

I have a home in the upper Hudson Valley near the New York State-Massachusetts border. The Northeast and Mid-Atlantic States were just hit by the enormous rains and flooding caused by Hurricane Irene last weekend. Driving around looking at the swollen rivers and streams and the downed trees in some areas I realized that there was another, more seasonal, change in some of the trees. They were beginning to turn red, the way they do every autumn.

Autumn is one of my favorite times of year in the Northeast. Ideal autumn weather is bright, warm days and cool, crisp nights. The days grow shorter, the nights longer, pumpkins and tomatoes are ready to harvest, and yes, school is starting up again.

I wrote a series of books about the Seasons Across America. The photograph above is one that I took of autumn leaves for my book AUTUMN ACROSS AMERICA. Here is the explanation I wrote in that book about the change of color: 

Yellows, oranges and golds are produced in leaves by pigments (coloring materials) called carotenes, reds by pigments called anthocyanins. You can’t see these colors during the growing season because they are hidden by the bright green of chlorophyll. Chlorophyll is the green pigment that helps plant cells use sunlight to make food, a process called photosynthesis. In autumn, as days grow shorter, chlorophyll production slows down and the green fades, revealing the yellows of the carotenes. 

When chlorophyll production stops, a layer of woody cells develops and begins to seal off the leaf from the twig. Water can no longer reach the leaf. As the trapped sugar breaks down, red anthocyanin colors are produced by exposure to sunlight. Cloudy, rainy autumn weather prevents the red colors from forming. Ideal red colors come when autumn has bright sunny days followed by cool nights.

August 22, 2011

I was so pleased to discover seven new comments on the blog this weekend….mostly from kids on the West Coast and the South, where schools are starting up. Although I’m always a little sorry to see the summer come to an end, it means our readers are coming back. We missed you!

I have a funny photograph (and a story to go with it) to share this week. I was out in my yard, photographing some of the beautiful summer flowers. 

Just as I was snapping a picture, I saw a movement out of the corner of my eye. It was a hummingbird! I quickly refocused the camera, but before I could shoot again, it was gone. Curious, I toggled back to the photograph that I had been taking when I sensed the movement next to me, and sure enough, I caught just a blur as it entered the scene. Do you see it, in the top right corner of the photograph?

I named this photograph "Sneaky Hummingbird," because it darted into the background of my photograph to grab a sip of nectar, and was gone before I could lower the camera and take a look!

I’d love to hear stories from your summer in the outdoors. Click on "comments" below and tell me what you saw as you explored nature over your summer vacation.

READERS: Are you wondering how to add your own "comment" to this blog? Click here for exact directions on how to add a comment so you can become one of our Seymour Science writers! We also want you to be safe and not share too much information when you write on this blog, so please take a minute to read about how to stay safe on the Internet. We love to hear from you, so give "comments" a try! 

August 4, 2011

August sunset is made even more brilliant by dust in the atmosphere.

Photo: Seymour Simon

June 17, 2011

I took a walk today in Great Falls National Park, along the Potomac River in Virginia. The falls are really beautiful, and the trails are wooded and shady, but the best part, for me anyway, was spotting all the wild animals.

This Great Blue Heron (Ardea herodias) feeds at the water’s edge, using its long legs to wade through the water, spearing small fish and frogs with its long, sharp bill. 

You can clearly see the compound eye of this beautiful Dragonfly (an insect belonging to the order Odonata), which was perched in the foliage high above the falls. You usually find dragonflies near the water, because their larvae, called "nymphs" live in the water. These insects are valuable predators (valuable to humans, at least) because they eat mosquitoes.

My grandson Ben Simon took this great photograph of a wolf spider, which was hiding inside a crack of an old stump. Wolf spiders are members of the family Lycosidae, from the Ancient Greek word "λύκος" meaning "wolf". The blue and white mass, which almost looks like a piece of jewelry, are actually all her babies - dozens of tiny wolf spiders, riding on her back!

Have you taken a walk in the outdoors this week? If not, get outside and keep your eyes peeled. There are fascinating wild creatures all around you.

June 8, 2011

When I saw a wild turkey crossing over the dirt road leading up to my house in the country the other day, I thought of Benjamin Franklin, one of the founding fathers of the United States. Why? Because when it came to choosing a symbol of the United States, Ben Franklin thought the wild turkey was a more dignified bird than the bald eagle.  I’m not sure if I agree; the bald eagle is magnificent soaring in the sky and I think the turkey looked a bit pompous and stuck-up strutting across my road. But the turkey is a pretty interesting bird. It would rather walk than fly (though it can fly, at least for a minute or two). Seeing a single turkey is rare around here; I usually seem them in flocks of a dozen or more birds.

Not to be outdone by a wild turkey, a large snapping turtle (Chelydra serpentina) came walking across the same dirt road. I stopped the car to take a picture of the snapper. When I came close, the turtle turned around to face me, snapped and hissed. "OK," I thought. "I’m just looking. Let’s part friends!" And I got back in my car and watched the snapper disappear into the undergrowth. There’s a stream just nearby the road and I guess that’s where the turtle was headed.

A snapping turtle has a large head with strong jaws. This one was quite large - I would estimate about 14 inches from its head to the tip of its armored tail. That’s about the distance from your fingertips to your elbow. Unlike many other kinds of turtles, the snapper can’t withdraw its head into its shell. It relies on its jaws for defense and can bite hard enough to take your finger off. I wouldn’t try to pet a snapping turtle, and neither should you! Thinking it over, petting a wild animal is a "no, no" in every case, no matter what. Wild animals are not pets and should not be touched, for your own safety as well as theirs. 

May 13, 2011

Yesterday, we drove along winding roads through the hills in Dutchess and Columbia counties, in New York State. It’s very agricultural up here, with many horse and dairy farms.

Spring is the season for animal babies and we saw many calves and foals in farms along the roads. This calf is two to three months old and follows its mother everywhere. Where mom goes, baby is not far behind.

Spring is an amazing season of quick changes. Trees and bushes leaf, and the color of the leaves changes from a pale yellow-green to a darker green in a few weeks. Flowers bud on apple trees and on forest floors as if by magic. Birds are singing. Butterflies are flitting from one bush to another. It feels as if you’re in a nature movie, but this is real life and it happens every spring.

Years ago, Rachel Carson, a scientist and naturalist, wrote a book called Silent Spring. It was about the dangers of using too much and the wrong kinds of insecticides. The "silent spring" referred to the bad effects of insecticides upon birds. Every time I hear birds singing in the spring, I give silent thanks to Rachel Carson, a wonderful nature writer who also provided me with the inspiration to become a writer. 

I often travel with Seymour as he walks in nature and photographs, and thought that it would be fun for readers to see what was going on "behind the camera" while Seymour was taking the photograph above. This herd was very curious, poking their heads through the fence and nuzzling to see if he had any food for them!

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