South Fork Nature Center’s Docents will be staffing a “South Fork Nature Center” booth at the Van Buren County Fair on September 15-19. Because of this local event there will be no third Saturday event scheduled in September. Come by our booth instead and visit with our loyal, dedicated docents and see what South Fork Nature Center has to offer you, your family, club, or classroom.

Education is our driving force at SFNC. We strive to provide stimulating, field based educational opportunities to everyone with an emphasis on our regional students, clubs and organizations. We also promote great outdoor FUN and exposure to some of Arkansas’s most beautiful natural habitats. So come by and see whats happening at South Fork Nature Center this fall!

At the cabin Joyce Hartmann gave a short program “Night Songs”, featuring mostly insect noises: what they were and how to identify them, how and why they sing, and how they hear and communicate through their songs.

Singing insects are usually males calling for females to come mate. Insects often hear through “ears” or tympana in their legs or abdomen; by having hearing membranes and sensitive hairs located in a wider part of their body rather than in their narrow head, they can better detect the direction of the sound waves so they know how to respond. Male cicadas in the order Homoptera make their sounds with abdominal membranes called tymbals that pop in and out quickly, resonating as the sound is amplified by air sacs. Crickets, katydids, and grasshoppers are in the order Orthoptera, and make their sounds by stridulation, rubbing two body parts together…wings and/or legs…like running a fingernail on the teeth of a comb, with one body part having “teeth” and the other part used as a bow. People shared stories and interesting observations of insect and mating behavior.

Joyce also played owl calls so that people could identify them; however, nothing was heard over the loud continuous insect sound except occasional distant dogs barking and voices of fishermen and their motorboats.

Bob Hartmann led the group on a sunset nature walk around the big loop of the peninsula. Cameras clicked to capture the red sky and orange ball reflected in the lake. The group saw many of the milkweed plantings, a project to help restore the monarch butterfly population. As night fell, loud katydids and trilling crickets took over the surround-sound concert. Bob lit a lantern inside the cabin, and the group talked about Almeda Riddle, who was one of eight children born and raised in the cabin. They listened to a few of her folk songs; her spirit still lives on within these woods as well as throughout the Internet world.

Don Culwell
Twenty-four populations of milkweeds, largely Asclepias tuberosa (orange butterfly milkweed) and A. verticillata (white whorled milkweed)…432 plants in all…recently planted on the ten acres of glade ecosystem at South Fork are happy and doing well with what appears to be better than ninety percent survival rate! More than six inches of rain has fallen on the glades since they were planted during the week of June 21, 2015; watering teams have made the rounds several times with nearly a quart of water for each plant during a few dry periods in the open glades. It is important for the young plants to become established with good root systems to carry them along during drier periods, and that appears to be happening from the growth that can be seen. Many plants have grown twelve to fourteen inches with leaves that are nearly normal size…a number have already bloomed.

The milkweed project is part of a nationwide monarch butterfly project to enhance habitats for the monarchs whose numbers have plummeted significantly by as much as eighty percent in recent years…funding for this monarch project at SFNC is provided by the US Fish and Wildlife Service.

Don Culwell

It’s evening now, and this time of year the melodious up and down buzz of locusts fills the air in my neighborhood…must be a hundred of those large, nearly 2 inch long, fat, green insects rubbing their legs as if they are bows on fiddles…the orchestral piece is stunning! Can you hear it in the trees outside…the buzz up and down the musical scale, on and on?

The purr of the hummingbird wings (90 beats or more per second) as the tiny feathered friend with its throat decked out in ruby red scarf…then in zips an angry hummer intruder, fast, with its whirring, purring hum as it darts after the one feeding on the red sugar water that hangs on my porch. Now both hummers have quickly darted off, only to have one of them return shortly. Can you hear those beating wings with an occasional “chip, chip” of its tiny voice?

Then out back from the deep woods comes the raucous call of the pileated woodpecker…I can see it in the tree as it flies near me, its large red crest standing as if it is all butched…its raucous call breaks the silence of the morning as the sun rises and the day slowly reaches full speed.

Or maybe you are sitting at the base of a large oak soaking up all the nature around you in the cool of the day. Hear the wind in the trees…the pines over there almost seem to whistle so softly in the breeze…leaves of the red maple twitch and turn a bit.

Not uncommonly this time of year a silent moment reveals the pelting of tiny bits of insect droppings from vast armies of walking sticks, caterpillars, or some other ravenous insects as they defoliate the trees…droppings resounding on the brown leaves of the forest floor like so much sleet in the winter woods.

Many are the sounds, some so quiet and soft, almost unnoticed (not the crashing, thunderous storm)… quiet moments, sweet songs, a scampering here and there, the snort of a doe warning her fawn…check out the biodiversity as Hank Lentfer so ably puts it, “The Earth’s rich mosaic of life has a complex and gorgeous voice.” (hanklentfer.com)

BE ON THE LOOKOUT: PERSEIDES METEOR SHOWERS

Nature lovers, look up to see the 2015 Perseid meteor shower…it’s supposed to be at its peak on the mornings of Aug. 11, 12, 13, and 14…perfect viewing conditions, too, as the moon will be dark. Estimates run from 50 to 100 meteors per hour. Meteors will originate in the constellation Perseus in the northeastern sky, but can appear all over the sky, going in all directions.

Evening hours might yield those long glowing eye-popping memorable streakers, while early pre-dawn hours will probably produce the most numbers. It would be a great time to sleep outdoors, or to have a star party…

Here are some tips to get the most out of your meteor shower-watching experience:
• Find an open location away from light pollution.
• Be comfortable…sit or lie down…fill your entire peripheral vision with the night sky.
• Give your eyes time to adjust to the darkness, which can take up to 20 minutes and be disrupted by looking at a bright phone or tablet screen. If you need a flashlight, use a red filter.
• Be patient. Give yourself anywhere between 30 minutes and an hour.
• No need for telescopes or binoculars, which will make it harder for you to see meteors since they only cover a small sky portion.