Canadian Tiger Swallowtails

While we’d been busy banding birds, the Sun had climbed high into open skies above the Moquah Barrens on the spine of the Bayfield Peninsula. The temperature had climbed since early morning, too. As the group of students in the Wisconsin Master Naturalist Volunteer Training Course climbed back into our cars and caravanned through this U.S. Forest Service Special Management Area, yellow clouds rose up from the middle of sand roads.

Pulling into the Bladder Lake Recreation Area a few miles away, we were met by more yellow. Kathrine, one of the Museum’s new Summer Naturalist Interns, walked down to the sandy shoreline only to be engulfed in a swirl of yellow wings. I don’t think I’ve ever seen more Canadian tiger swallow butterflies in a single day!

This abundance of beauty has been building. On June 5, as I paddled the Namekagon River for a “Birding by Ear” field trip, occasional tiger swallowtails flitted along the shoreline. By June 10, we encountered half a dozen on the blackberry flowers at the trailhead for Morgan Falls—a hike that’s always a highlight of the Master Naturalist Course. And now it was June 11, and we were surrounded by their delicate yellow wings with black tiger stripes and scalloped edges leading into two little “swallowtails” at the rear.

As lackadaisical as the flight of butterflies may look, these butterflies are in a hurry to complete their life cycle in a brief northern summer. Visiting flowers to sip sugary nectar powers their flight. Males need some additional nutrients, too, and those come from something much less sweet than a flower.

Our vehicles disturbed clusters of butterflies on the sand roads. Their rising inevitably revealed a pile of animal scat. Male butterflies engage in an activity called puddling, where they lap up nutrients from the surface of puddles, or piles of poo. At Bladder Lake, they were puddling on a collection of decaying plants that had washed into a corner of the beach. The salts, proteins, and minerals they gain from this behavior get wrapped up in a nuptial packet and transferred to the female during mating.

Most if not all male butterflies engage in puddling, but it seems especially important for Canadian tiger swallowtails. Females must have enough energy to give their offspring a head start by laying large eggs; the nuptial packets are part of this. They also place their eggs, one per leaf, on the south side of trees. This provides more warming Sun exposure and less competition for the developing larvae.

As the temperature increases from 54 to 86 degrees Fahrenheit (due to normal changes in weather, or just a great location) the larvae can increase their growth rate by up to 500%. There is a catch, though. Larvae on birch trees won’t grow faster, even if it’s warm. Only the more nutritious leaves of aspen trees allow for such rapid growth. The butterflies must choose their host plants carefully, and hope that aspens are available, especially at the far north end of their range in Alaska and Canada. Apples and cherries are also possible host plants.

In a surprising but smart move, if a caterpillar survives a summer cold spell, they will then begin to grow faster. The longer and the colder it was, the faster the caterpillar will grow when it’s over—as long as they aren’t dead. Larvae with food in their guts freeze at warmer temperatures.

With all the poop puddling their Papas do, perhaps it’s fitting that young tiger swallowtail caterpillars avoid predation by looking just like brown and white bird droppings as they feed on the sunny surfaces of leaves. The older caterpillars costume themselves to look like mini snakes with leaf-green bodies and big yellow eyespots. They arm themselves with orange glands that emit stinky chemicals if disturbed. Despite those defenses, birds such as the gray catbird, rose-breasted grosbeak, and eastern towhee who we’d banded earlier that morning, probably eat many of them. As we’ve discussed before, one Being’s baby is often another’s baby food.

If they survive childhood, the larvae store up cryoprotectants to help them avoid freezing and then transform into pupae. Once properly hardened off and hidden away, the chrysalis can survive at least seven consecutive days at -2 degrees. The faster that a caterpillar can get to the safety of a cold-hardened chrysalis, the better—even if that means not growing as large. Smaller larvae result in smaller adults, but that didn’t seem to matter to the clouds of yellow and black butterflies rising in the sunshine.

Emily’s award-winning second book, Natural Connections: Dreaming of an Elfin Skimmer, is available to purchase at www.cablemuseum.org/books and at your local independent bookstore, too. Natural Connections 3 is in the works—and needs illustrators from the community! Find out more at: https://www.cablemuseum.org/books/

For more than 50 years, the Cable Natural History Museum has served to connect you to the Northwoods. Our Summer Calendar is open for registration! Visit our new exhibit, “Becoming the Northwoods: Akiing (A Special Place). Follow us on Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, and cablemuseum.org to see what we are up to.

Junebugs and Beetles

Something small and bright caught my eye. Stopping mid-stride and mid-conversation, I bent down to look at a small jumble of legs and exoskeletons in the tread of the Ice Age Trail. Luckily, my hiking buddy was also a naturalist, and she investigated the insects with me.

The yellow mantle behind the head of a black carrion beetle is what I’d noticed first. They are quite striking, even when rooting around in the decaying flesh of a recently dead animal, looking for a place to lay their eggs. The adults eat dead stuff, too, hence the bear hug this one was giving a shiny brown, but unmoving, carcass of a Junebug. I snapped a couple photos of the food chain in action, and we continued hiking.

Seeing the Junebug triggered childhood memories of these big bugs battering against the window screens while we played board games around the kitchen table on hot summer evenings. Though harmless and clumsy, their clawed feet and loud scrambling scared me. Things scritching on windows at night was definitely the stuff of nightmares.

Junebugs are harmless of course. And they are not actually bugs, they are beetles in the genus Phyllophaga, which means plant eaters. The distinction between bugs and beetles has to do with their wings. True Bugs have one pair of wings that are half leathery and half membranous. When folded, they don’t quite meet. This forms an X on their back. Stink bugs are a classic example. Beetles, in contrast, have two pairs of wings. One pair is hardened into a protective sheath, and they cover a more fragile pair used for flying.

Well, the males use them for flying anyway. In many species of Junebugs the females have small, ineffective wings. Instead, they waft pheromones into the night and let the males come to them. Sometimes the males get distracted from their search by your lighted windows. Now that the air conditioner is turned on and the windows closed, I rarely hear them.

The next afternoon I was walking dirt paths again, this time at the Cable Community Farm. A glint of shiny auburn caught my eye, and once again I was looking at a dead Junebug in the dirt. Their particular shade of red-brown really is very pretty. I think Anne of Green Gables would approve. Their head had been snapped off and the guts extracted through the hole. No murder weapon was in sight.

Since my evenings at the garden have been alive with birdsong, an avian predator was my best guess. Birds are excellent pest control at the garden. Bluebirds love caterpillars, tree swallows clear the air of flying insects, a local Cooper’s hawk will hopefully keep the rabbits out, and someone ate a Junebug. Thanks, Friend!

Junebugs are native insects, but in large numbers they can be destructive to lawns and gardens. Their larvae are big white grubs who live in the soil for a few years while nibbling on the roots of plants. The damage makes it hard for plants to take up nutrients and water, so they end up looking yellow and wilted. Robust, healthy plants can often withstand the stress, but small plants may be killed.

I dropped the Junebug’s empty shell back to the ground and continued with my task for the day—hand sifting the soil in an entire row to pick out rocks and make it ready for carrots. The Cable Community Farm is enjoying our first year at a brand-new site, and the soil has already grown a bumper crop of rocks!

Partway through the row, that familiar shiny brown popped up again. This time the Junebug was still alive! As I pulled out my phone to snap some photos, the beetle ran around anxiously until they found soft soil and then made short work of burrowing back down. It was clear that they prefer being underground during the day, even as adults. Zooming in on the photos, I could see the little clubs at the end of their antennae that are characteristic of the Scarab Family. These can be fanned out to detect odors.

After finding only one live beetle in my garden row, I was happy for my carrots, but worried for the Earth. Many people are quick to pull out the chemicals when they see an insect but fail to see the far-reaching consequences of disrupting the food web. Decades of increasing use of pesticides has taken a toll on ecosystems, and the beneficial bugs—like pollinators—often are killed right alongside the ones whose value we don’t yet understand.

I dug the beetle back up and tossed them into the compost pile with the grass roots, far away from my carrots. They are an important member of the ecosystem and I’m happy to let them live…over there.

Emily’s award-winning second book, Natural Connections: Dreaming of an Elfin Skimmer, is available to purchase at www.cablemuseum.org/books and at your local independent bookstore, too. Natural Connections 3 is in the works—and needs illustrators from the community! Find out more at: https://www.cablemuseum.org/books/

For more than 50 years, the Cable Natural History Museum has served to connect you to the Northwoods. Our Summer Calendar is open for registration! Visit our new exhibit, “Becoming the Northwoods: Akiing (A Special Place). Follow us on Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, and cablemuseum.org to see what we are up to.

Skydancing the Night Away

Excitement and nerves were at an all-time high as my car crept down the gravel road, the sun having just slipped below the horizon. I was on the hunt, following clues to lead me to my prize. My treasure was the somewhat elusive American woodcock, and I was hoping to catch a glimpse of their infamous skydance. Each spring, the males put on a dramatic display to attract a mate. They prefer a wet, forested area to hide out in, with a clearing nearby to perform their dance. The spring peepers and chorus frog songs that filled the air clued me in on being in the right place.

An American woodcock. Photo by Keith Ramos, USFWS.

The wind whipped through the trees, and time ticked by as robins, chickadees, and other songbirds sang their evening delights, but I had yet to pick up on the distinctive call of the American woodcock. Doubt began to creep in with each minute that went by. I began to wonder if I had found the right place, and was on my way to accepting that I may not find what I was searching for tonight. That's when I heard it–the American woodcock's opening line to start his show.

Peent.

My head snapped to the direction of the sound, with my ears tuned in and excitement taking hold once more. There it was again, peent. The soft, almost nasally call was off in the distance. I started my car and continued creeping down the gravel road. A small, shadowed shape flashed before my car, and disappeared into the thicket on the other side of the road. A woodcock!

The woodcock landed on the gravel road, not 20 feet behind my car, and began to call out again. Peent. I watched his silhouette, barely letting a breath escape my lungs, not wanting to risk scaring him away. He continued his serenade for a few more minutes before rocketing into the air. The remaining light was dwindling fast, but I watched as he flew past and began his spiral upwards.

As he flew, I mainly tracked him with my ears–only catching an occasional glimpse with my eyes. The twittering noise of his wings gave him away, his physically modified flight feathers singing as air rushed through them. It was like being immersed in a natural surround sound theatre as he circled around, higher and higher, the whistling sound of his wings looping through my ears.

Suddenly the sound of his ascent stopped, and a new sound took its place. In the final act of his mating display, the woodcock fell from the sky, spinning acrobatically as he plummeted. I found it reminiscent of scenes in old cartoons with the twittering piano tunes escalating as the character falls through the air. But rather than crashing into the ground, he righted himself at the last moment, and landed near the same spot he took off from. He was hoping that a female had taken notice of his superior showmanship, and would be waiting in the spot he took off from. He was not so lucky this time around.

But rather than that being the end of the show, it's simply the first act of many. As he stood on the gravel road that was his stage, the Woodcock began to call again. Peent. His determination to impress the ladies will keep his show going into the night.

While I was not his intended audience, I was enthralled by his skydance. There is something to be said about being privy to the intricate lives of wildlife. It feels intimate, getting a small glance into their private lives. As I watched the woodcock’s dance, a few cars drove down the gravel road, but turned before reaching us. I couldn’t help but think they were so close to a show of a lifetime, and had no idea. The woodcock paid them no mind, continuing to call out before taking to the skies again.

Night had completely fallen by the time I headed home. As I left, I was grateful I witnessed the woodcocks skydance. It is amazing how the smallest moments leave lasting impressions, and the impactful memories that wildlife can impart. I wish I could thank him for letting me witness his display, and the lasting memories he unknowingly imparted. Instead, I left him still singing on the gravel road and wished him luck in his nighttime endeavors.

For more than 50 years, the Cable Natural History Museum has served to connect you to the Northwoods. Our Summer Calendar is open for registration! Visit our new exhibit, “Becoming the Northwoods: Akiing (A Special Place). Follow us on Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, and cablemuseum.org to see what we are up to.

Baby Food

The wetland just east of Lake Namakagon was still brown with last year’s dried leaves and swollen with this year’s melted snow as we drove home from a chilly hike in late April. Movement caught our eye, and we peered intently into the late afternoon sunshine. Two sandhill cranes, perfectly camouflaged in the warm browns of the marsh, stood on a spit of sedges and leatherleaf. Their red caps didn’t stand out, but when their eyes caught the sun just right, they glowed orange.

As we watched, one crane and then the other dipped their head down into the thicket of plants, then tossed a twig or long leaf over their shoulder. Over and over they repeated this behavior while we snapped photos. At one point, one of the cranes folded up their stilt-like legs and nestled their belly into the vegetation, their long black beak, red cap, and orange eyes just visible over a small channel of open water. Clearly, they were building a nest. Likely, the sitting bird was the female, helping to mold the pile of weeds into a cozy home.

Although the female shapes the nest and incubates the eggs overnight, the male helps to build the structure and splits incubation duties with her 50/50 during the day. Both parents lose belly feathers to form a brood patch where blood vessels just under bare skin share body heat with the eggs.

Although I often hear their rattling bugle calls echoing across the lake and through my open windows, having cranes nest where I could see them was a new treat. For a few weeks, every warm afternoon found me biking along that stretch of road with my camera at the ready. Each time, the evening sunlight spotlighted the face of a crane on the nest.

Then, I left for a conference in California. When the weather and my schedule finally cooperated again, it had been exactly a month since the nest building. Although I scanned the wetland with high hopes, no cranes were visible. The typical incubation period for cranes is 28-30 days, so it was conceivable that the 1-3 eggs might have hatched. But although the chicks emerge with eyes open and can soon walk and run, there’s little chance they could have already had the strength to travel to another wetland. And although they would have been too small for me to spot among the shrubs, their parents would surely have been visible.

The possible culprits are numerous. Many Beings will eat an egg or a baby bird. Crows, ravens, raptors, foxes, coyotes, raccoons, mink, and great horned owls are all potential predators if they can avoid the kicks and stabs of a defensive parent.

A few days after biking past the empty wetland, I switched vehicles. Paddling through a wide, marshy section of the Namekagon River, we again spotted a pair of sandhill cranes. This time their rusty feathers stood out against the fresh green spikes of horsetail. One stalked through shallow water with eyes focused downward, even dipping their head into the muck for something tasty.

The harsh cries of a red-winged blackbird brought our attention back to the other crane in the taller grass. The red and yellow epaulets on the blackbird’s wings flashed brightly as he dive-bombed the crane and even landed on their broad brown back. The wading crane returned, but there was little they could do except hunker down and point their beaks against the attacks of the smaller bird.

And could you blame him? This one male blackbird may have attracted as many as 15 females to build nests in his territory. While he doesn’t help incubate the eggs like the male crane, he does spend more than a quarter of his daylight hours in territorial defense against his peers and potential predators. And the cranes were potential predators. Although they eat plenty of waste grain from farm fields during migration, throughout the breeding season they seek the protein of small mammals, frogs, and baby birds. The blackbird was right to be leery.

These crane encounters drove home an ecological reality: One Being’s baby is often another’s baby food. The abundance of summer is driven by this necessity. Tender young leaves become caterpillar food. Six thousand caterpillars—who are baby butterflies and moths—become a half-dozen chickadee chicks. Some of those chicks become red squirrel kittens. The squirrels become red fox kits, and so on. How does anything survive?

Red-winged blackbirds can have multiple broods with several eggs over the course of a summer. Even after feeding a few cranes, they are one of the most abundant native birds in North America. At best, a pair of cranes raise no more than one chick per summer, but may have 30 years or more together to produce two successful heirs and replace themselves. Even with some predation, their population is increasing slowly due to habitat protection. There is space enough for all of us.

In the end, we can’t escape the fact that a bit (or a lot) of death goes into every life.

Emily’s award-winning second book, Natural Connections: Dreaming of an Elfin Skimmer, is available to purchase at www.cablemuseum.org/books and at your local independent bookstore, too.

For more than 50 years, the Cable Natural History Museum has served to connect you to the Northwoods. Our Summer Calendar is open for registration! Visit our new exhibit, “Becoming the Northwoods: Akiing (A Special Place). Follow us on Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, and cablemuseum.org to see what we are up to.

The Teachings of Ghost Pipe

Last Sunday I was asked to give the message for the Chequamegon Unitarian Universalist Flower Ceremony. Everyone brought a flower, they were admired in a bouquet, and each person left with a different flower. This symbolized the unique value of each person and the way we came together to create a beautiful bouquet. To illustrate this idea, I chose to talk about ghost pipe (previously named Indian pipe), a plant whom I’ve been puzzling over for a while. In preparing the talk, I realized that I’d learned a lot from ghost pipe.

At a glance, we can tell that ghost pipes are unusual because they are pure white. Unlike green plants, they don’t have chlorophyll and can’t do photosynthesis to transform water, carbon dioxide, and energy from the Sun into sugars. Instead, ghost pipes are classified as parasites because they take sugar from Russula mushrooms. Sometimes, when I tell people about this relationship, they are indignant. Our culture loathes a mooch.

But let’s consider this from another perspective. Russula fungi produce beautiful mushrooms with crisp white flesh and caps in shades of pastel red. They can’t make their own food either. Many mushrooms decompose dead wood to gain energy, but Russulas have another system. The white threads of their fungal hyphae weave through the soil and connect to the roots of pines, oaks, and also to ghost pipe. The fungal hyphae are much better at collecting water and nutrients from the soil than relatively large tree roots, and these resources are shared with the trees. In return, the trees give up to 30% of the sugars they produce through photosynthesis to the mushrooms.

The trees themselves are big and healthy, waving crowns of green leaves in the sunshine. But big trees can’t thrive on their own. Water and other nutrients like nitrogen and phosphorus are often limiting for trees, especially because pines and oaks tend to grow on dry, sandy soil. The mycorrhizal relationships they have with fungi connected to their roots are essential for their supply chain. Even if they must pay for the water and nutrients, they can’t be resentful of a trade deficit. Resources gained through mycorrhizal relationships are what allow the trees to thrive, and include many side benefits.

The network of fungal hyphae (collectively called mycelium) woven throughout the soil and connecting many species of trees and fungi, can act as an internet of the forest, a way for chemical and electrical communication about drought, stress, pests, and pathogens to flow among the trees. The fungi may have some capacity to share the sugars from a thriving tree with another one who is struggling. In this way, the mushrooms can ensure that their preferred habitat—a deep, dark, shady forest—is maintained. A healthy forest is key to their survival. Some tree sugars travel through the Russulas into the ghost pipe. Is this a choice, or a trick? Scientists aren’t quite sure.

So, what is the value of ghost pipe in this system? The purpose of any living thing—at least from their own perspective—is to make more of themself. That’s what the trees and the mushrooms are doing. They haven’t forgotten that the health of the whole is essential to their own survival, even when parts of the forest ecosystem may compete at times. All flourishing is mutual.

As for the ghost plant, they have no leaves or trunk. They are just a flower—a reproductive structure. The beautiful, bell-like blossom curves over to protect a deep well of nectar. That nectar attracts and feeds bees and other insects, who move pollen from flower to flower and fertilize their seeds. The seeds disperse, and if they connect with the hyphae of Russula fungi, will grow. This focus on reproduction could be seen as self-serving.

But it's in this process that we begin to see ghost pipe’s unique contribution. The flower has given up their independence. They now rely on the mycorrhizal network for survival. Through this sacrifice they have gained the ability to bring a supply of sweet nectar into the darkest corners of the mid-summer forest floor, where few other flowers can survive. The trees, the mushrooms, and the flower are all part of the endlessly woven web of life on Earth.

Did you see yourself in any part of this story? Are you a healthy tree with resources to spare? Are you a networking fungi making sure your community is healthy? Are you a ghost pipe flower bringing beauty into the dark corners—even if that requires some support from others? Do you take sap from trees, concentrate it, and share it with others? I happen to have a little jar of maple syrup on my desk from someone who fits this last description. Maybe you're all of those. Maybe you're something else entirely.

Just like a mushroom is a visible outgrowth of the mycorrhizal network, each flower, each person, and each Being is a part of the web of life on Earth. If ghost pipe provides benefits that we struggle to notice, what does this teach us about other Beings in the web? Could it be that a “useless” Being is one whose value we just don’t understand? Could it be that a “mooch” is actually doing important work? Just like the bouquet of flowers on the altar, the web of life is more than just the sum of its parts.

Emily’s award-winning second book, Natural Connections: Dreaming of an Elfin Skimmer, is available to purchase at www.cablemuseum.org/books and at your local independent bookstore, too.

For more than 50 years, the Cable Natural History Museum has served to connect you to the Northwoods. Our Summer Calendar is open for registration! Visit our new exhibit, “Becoming the Northwoods: Akiing (A Special Place). Follow us on Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, and cablemuseum.org to see what we are up to.

Wilson’s Warblers on Their Way Home

One lovely afternoon last May, I set out with a friend to paddle an upper section of the Namekagon River. Flights of “mackerel sky” clouds patterned the sky, but plenty of blue shone through. The white blossoms of highbush cranberries and wild cherry trees accented the bright greens of brand-new leaves. As we rounded a corner, we spotted a flock of half-a-dozen or more little birds with lemon yellow bodies and smart black caps.

These beautiful Wilson’s Warblers are neotropical migrants who spends their winters along the south coast of Texas, or in Mexico, or Central America, and their summers in Canada and the Pacific Northwest. The bug-filled bushes of the Namekagon River are just a rest stop for them.

This May, I found myself in a very different habitat. As you might have read last week, I made my own migration to southern California for a museum conference. And then I rented a car and bopped over to Joshua Tree National Park to see what my friends had been raving about.

The temperature was pushing 100 degrees when I finally arrived just after noon. Stressed from L.A. traffic and drained from a week spent in the city, I pulled off at the very first trailhead and was surprised to find it empty. A faint trail led off through a desert of sparse and prickly plants. Chugging some water and grabbing my camera, I followed it.

This Zebra-tailed Lizard was the first animal life I spotted in Joshua Tree National Park.
Photo by Emily Stone.

At first all I saw were unfamiliar leaves. Then I recognized a clump of funny green twigs. To survive the desert, Mormon tea gave up on leaves and just photosynthesizes through their bitter green stems. Years ago, when I lived in Southeast Utah for a season, this plant was a familiar friend. A few steps later, a hit of fresh scent, vaporized like a potpourri pot by the blazing sun, led me to the shiny, tiny, leaves of a creosote bush.

Then the surface of the sand shifted, and a perfectly camouflaged lizard scurried away. As I began to feel the presence of wild life around me, my shoulders relaxed. The Sun blazed on my skin, but also warmed my heart.

Scientist E.O. Wilson’s book Biophilia hypothesized that humans possess an innate tendency to seek connections with nature and other forms of life. He wrote, “To an extent still undervalued in philosophy and religion, our existence depends on this propensity, our spirit is woven from it, hope rises on its currents."

I don’t know how people can survive for long in a city. “There are some who can live without wild things, and some who cannot,” wrote Aldo Leopold. I am one who cannot.

Soon, a lilting, three-note birdsong lured me toward a dry creek bed and an outcrop of rounded rocks. My Merlin bird ID app identified them as a Verdin, a pretty gray bird with a yellow face who only lives in northern Mexico and a bordering band of the U.S. I squinted through the intense Sun in the hopes of spotting the singer.

Flight! Out of the corner of my eye I caught the dart of a bird and followed their glint of yellow into a bush. Training my camera on the thicket, I snapped away, then zoomed in to check my results: yellow body, smart black cap. Instead of a new-to-me Verdin, I’d found an old friend!

A Wilson’s Warbler gleans bugs off of a desert-willow tree in Joshua Tree National Park. 

Photo by Emily Stone.

I watched as the Wilson’s Warbler bounced like popcorn through the narrow, willow-ish leaves of an unknown desert shrub. While this bird was named for a different Wilson, he certainly satisfied E.O. Wilson’s Biophilia. I wonder if the caterpillars and aphids he was eating here taste different than the ones along the Namekagon River? I wonder if he, too, was a bit fatigued and dehydrated by the intense heat?

I wound my way through the park, stopping at several short nature trails to explore. Several more times, movement among the leaves revealed the black-and-yellow garb of Wilson’s warblers.

I flew home early the next morning, wishing that I could listen to the soft rustle of wind through feathers instead of the roar of jet engines. One of my first days back at work was spent leading a birding field trip in the Bibon Swamp just north of Cable. Golden-winged warblers buzzed, catbirds warbled, and rose-breasted grosbeaks sang sweetly. I absorbed their vibrant life into my soul and the midwestern humidity into my skin.

Two years ago on this same field trip, we’d spotted a flock of little black-headed, lemon-yellow Wilson’s warblers bouncing through the willows. This year, we didn’t spot a single one. A part of me is worried that the population who migrates through here met some untimely end in their wintering habitat or during migration. With headlines like “75 percent of North America’s bird species are in decline” in the news, it’s not unlikely. Wilson’s warblers have declined by 60 percent between 1966 and 2019, mostly due to habitat loss throughout their range.

But a part of me is optimistic that they are taking a more leisurely trip north from Joshua Tree (as I would have preferred to do, too!), and will arrive in the Northwoods next week. In E.O. Wilson’s words, “hope rises on [this] current.”

Emily’s award-winning second book, Natural Connections: Dreaming of an Elfin Skimmer, is available to purchase at www.cablemuseum.org/books and at your local independent bookstore, too.

For more than 50 years, the Cable Natural History Museum has served to connect you to the Northwoods. Our Summer Calendar is open for registration! Visit our new exhibit, “Becoming the Northwoods: Akiing (A Special Place). Follow us on Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, and cablemuseum.org to see what we are up to.

Networking: Reflections on the American Alliance of Museums Conference in LA

From the air, Los Angeles looks nothing like the Northwoods. There’s the grid of roads, the glint of glass, and too little water. But with 841 museums and art galleries in Los Angeles County, it was an ideal location for the American Alliance of Museums (AAM) Annual Meeting. Our tiny little Cable Natural History Museum (CNHM) is accredited by AAM, which means that we achieved and now maintain core standards and best practices for the museum field. That’s a big deal, but still I felt like pretty small potatoes walking into the conference center with CEOs and curators from the most well-known museums in North America and around the world.

And yet, as the CEO of a local cultural center and I helped each other find our way through the maze of registration, our conversation somehow drifted to the mycorrhizal relationships between trees and fungi and how they allow for the sharing of resources and information throughout the forest. We headed in opposite directions after that, but we each felt that the conference was off to a good start.

During a lull in the presentations and networking events, I caught a rideshare to the La Brea Tar Pits and Museum with Rich Jaworski, CNHM director. Here, in southern California, the Ice Age looked different than it did in northern Wisconsin. While the Northwoods were buried under a mile of ice and even the earthworms were wiped out, the La Brea Tar Pits were a hub of big, furry, life.

The La Brea Tar Pits are an odd natural phenomenon that formed after a 6-mile-thick deposit of ocean floor sediment was buried and the algae within it turned into oil. Now pressure forces that crude oil up through bedrock cracks, and it turns into asphalt as kerosene evaporates. Throughout the grassy park surrounding the museum, Rich and I spotted small areas of blackened soil surrounded by fencing where asphalt continues to ooze up.

The much larger Lake Pit caught our attention next. This small pond is surrounded by bulrushes and cattails—and a serious fence—and its dark water churned ominously. Methane gas forms as the algae and other marine organisms continue to break down, and it bubbles to the surface.

Three sculptures of mammoths posed around the Lake Pit at the La Brea Tar Pits depict outdated ideas. The artist mired the female in the muck, with her baby and a male standing on the shore. Scientists now know that females lived in herds, and males lived apart. Males were more likely to get stuck in the tar because they didn’t have a herd to rescue them. Networks are valuable for many reasons! Photo by Emily Stone.

The Lake Pit is deep because it was excavated during asphalt mining operations in the late 1800s. Rainwater collects on top of the goo. And three sculptures depict the heartbreaking scene of a family of mammoths becoming trapped in the sticky mire.

Historically, the natural asphalt pools probably weren’t as deep and watery as Lake Pit. Scientists think it would only take a few inches of tar to spell an animal’s doom. The surface might have become camouflaged by dust and leaves, tricking animals into stepping right in. Once a large herbivore like a mammoth was stuck, their plight would have attracted scores of carnivores who also became trapped. Dire wolves are the most common large mammal found in the pits. One entire wall of the museum is covered in dire wolf skulls.

It’s dangerous to compare yourself to others, of course, but I couldn’t help thinking about the Cable Natural History Museum’s thousands of specimens in contrast to La Brea’s millions of bones.

Then, as we continued through the exhibit hall, I noticed a sign that explained how scientists use the teeth of these preserved remains to determine what their owner ate. Flat, grinding molars indicate that they were chewing plants; sharp canines were made to grip meat; and a combination of the two indicate an omnivorous diet. This is exactly what our four naturalists teach second graders in our MuseumMobile programs in schools!

The plant-grinding teeth of a mammoth.

The carnivorous teeth of a saber-toothed cat.

The omnivorous teeth of a Giant Ice Age Bear.

The hooked beaks of several extinct eagles excavated from the pits all looked very similar to the owl skulls we show fourth graders, and are a sure sign of a raptor. Yet another display explained how scientists can use the teeth of saber-toothed cats to determine how old they were. In fifth grade classrooms, we used to do the same thing with the jaw bones of white-tailed deer.

The Cable Natural History Museum may not encompass one of the world's most important paleontological sites, but the science we teach our students could still put them on a path to studying these fossils someday.

And here’s the thing about La Brea—the big animals represented there all went extinct. Meanwhile, descendants of all the plants and many of the small animals found in the pits are still alive today. I’ll take that bit of wisdom home with me.

As the conference continued, I interacted with people from museums of all sizes. Whether in a presentation or just waiting for a session to start, we shared our challenges and talked over solutions. In the furrowing of foreheads and scribbling of notes, I could see resources being shared, ideas taking shape, and relationships being forged.

Whether a network is made of fungi linking trees or shared goals uniting people, connections allow us each to grow just a little bit more than we could have on our own.

Emily’s award-winning second book, Natural Connections: Dreaming of an Elfin Skimmer, is available to purchase at www.cablemuseum.org/books and at your local independent bookstore, too.

For more than 50 years, the Cable Natural History Museum has served to connect you to the Northwoods. Our Summer Calendar is open for registration! Visit our new exhibit, “Becoming the Northwoods: Akiing (A Special Place). Follow us on Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, and cablemuseum.org to see what we are up to.