Nature in Plain Sight

A town bear's fall harvest.

Found this frozen black bear turd across the street from my house a few weeks back, and just had to admire the varied diet this guy/gal was getting! Of the things I could identify, I saw sunflower seeds (bird feeder or garden), pumpkin seeds (Jack-o-lantern), some kind of berries, and topped with a crabapple stem! Pretty sure that covers the important food groups... and plenty of dietary fiber!

Despite the care we take to make our trash inaccessible by hiding it in garages or locking bins, bears always get about a week to gorge on pumpkins leading up to Halloween. Add to that the untended apple trees, and truly massive quantities of chokecherries and other berries that grow in the valley, it's no wonder bears like to come to town.

It's a touchy subject with a lot of nuance, but I do really love the fact that we have our town bears in the fall. I bet that just about everyone who's been in Bozeman for at least two years has a bear story to tell. For the record, I keep my garbage in the garage, harvest my apples, keep my chickens locked up tight, and generally try to do my duty as a good neighbor and steward of wildlife not to get them accustomed to getting things from people.

But at the same time, I so love seeing the excreted piles of chokecherry pits along the roads and trails, paw prints in the mud, and yes, even (someone else's) tipped garbage bins lining residential streets every trash day! All unequivocal reminders that we share this place with the wild, that wildness is happening around us all the time, especially when we're not looking. But leaving us little reminders; prints in the mud, and copious mounds of p**p.

Free talk at the Co-op this Thursday eve....

gather & GROW October Speaker Series!

With fall comes the harvest — a season of abundance before the long winter ahead. While we’re busy canning and cozying up our homes, the animals around us are preparing in their own remarkable ways.

Join us for an evening with Cedar Mathers-Winn — a Bozeman-based naturalist, biologist, and educator whose work has taken him from Montana’s mountains to tropical rainforests and desert landscapes. Cedar brings science to life by using the everyday subtleties of nature to reveal the hidden wildness all around us.

In this talk, Cedar will share the unique strategies animals use to survive and thrive in the season of scarcity — a fascinating glimpse into the resilience of our wild neighbors.

📅 Thursday, October 23 | 6:30–7:30 PM
📍 Co-op West Main Training Room
✨ Free admission — all are welcome!

gather & GROW October Speaker Series! With fall comes the harvest — a season of abundance before the long winter ahead. While we’re busy canning and cozying up our homes, the animals around us are preparing in their own remarkable ways. Join us for an evening with Cedar Mathers-Winn — a Bozeman-based naturalist, biologist, and educator whose work has taken him from Montana’s mountains to tropical rainforests and desert landscapes. Cedar brings science to life by using the everyday subtleties of nature to reveal the hidden wildness all around us. In this talk, Cedar will share the unique strategies animals use to survive and thrive in the season of scarcity — a fascinating glimpse into the resilience of our wild neighbors. 📅 Thursday, October 23 | 6:30–7:30 PM 📍 Co-op West Main Training Room ✨ Free admission — all are welcome!

New thing! A short, guided exploration on a familiar trail. We'll talk about all these wonderful autumn things, what they mean, why they're happening: leaf color change, flocking and migrating birds, and whatever else we see. Offered with

$35 SAS members / $60 non-members

https://secure.lglforms.com/form_engine/s/ldVuV2ByU5Esl5YdTmGakA

Explore the natural beauty of Montana in the fall, and the stories behind it. Autumn colors, flocking birds, gorging bears, singing crickets – each has its own fascinating place in the ecology of autumn.

New thing! A short, guided exploration on a familiar trail. We'll talk about all these wonderful autumn things, what they mean, why they're happening: leaf color change, flocking and migrating birds, and whatever else we see. Offered with #sacajaweaaudubonsociety $35 SAS members / $60 non-members https://secure.lglforms.com/form_engine/s/ldVuV2ByU5Esl5YdTmGakA Explore the natural beauty of Montana in the fall, and the stories behind it. Autumn colors, flocking birds, gorging bears, singing crickets – each has its own fascinating place in the ecology of autumn.

A few treasures from my Inconspicuous Yellowstone course with Yellowstone Forever last weekend:

1. A recent bison wallow, demonstrating its moisture-retaining capabilities

2. Goldenrod crab spider (Misumena vatia) on buckwheat. This species waits in flowers to ambush the pollinators it preys on, and can actually change their color to match the flower!

3. Willowherb (Epilobium sp), showing off some beautiful nectar guide stripes and loaded with pollen

4. One of several iridescent blister beetles in the genus Lytta. Blister beetles (Meloidae) are infamous for producing cantharidin, a caustic agent that has been known to kill horses in large enough quantities. What's really wild about this is that only males produce the stuff - but they gift it to females during mating, and females coat the eggs in it! Also, for thousands of years, we humans have used this stuff as medicine - including as an aphrodisiac! Fitting maybe, but I'm not sure about ingesting something that's also used to treat warts, and as a poison comparable to strychnine.

All in a weekend at Yellowstone National Park!

Spruce broom, one of the common "witch's broom" growths we see on our conifers. A witch's broom is a dense cluster of small, short branches somewhere on the tree, all originating from one spot and looking quite a bit like a bird or squirrel nest (or I guess a broom). They're caused by all sorts of parasites - fungi, invertebrates, viruses, bacteria, and organisms called "oomycetes" that are none of the above. Spruce broom is caused by a fungus. Specifically, a fungus conveniently known as spruce broom rust (Chrysomyxa arctostaphyli).

There are lots of rust fungi (order Pucciniales, 7k+ species), and in many ways spruce broom rust is just like the rest. Like most rusts, it's a plant parasite that needs not one but two hosts to complete its life cycle. In this case, Englemann spruce and kinnikinnick (aka bearberry); it alternates between the two, and needs both to exist. Like most rusts, it also produces several types of spores, each with a different role to play - s*xual reproduction, as*xual reproduction, overwintering, dispersal, etc.

For me, what makes this particular rust special is not just the big, yellow witches' brooms, but the way they SMELL. If you've been around it, you know -- it's really, shockingly strong. I usually smell them before I see them. USFS describes the smell as "sweet and earthy" but I think it's more like chlorine, or maybe the rind on brie cheese? I don't know, but not, like, especially pleasant.

But so WHY do they smell? They produce this smell when they are sporulating - this is the s*xual stage of the life cycle. They need to get the s*x spores out there into the world in order for the s*x to happen, and to do that they use insects. Particularly flies, which are attracted to this offputting smell. Flies land on the broom, get spores on their feet, and then if all goes to plan, leave some on the next broom -- reproduction is achieved! Rust s*x!

So ultimately, what we have with this big stinky infection is essentially a fungal version of pollination. Spores instead of pollen, fungus instead of plant, broom instead of flower, but very much the same otherwise. Fungal attempt at a flower. See also: *stinkhorn*

Spruce broom, one of the common "witch's broom" growths we see on our conifers. A witch's broom is a dense cluster of small, short branches somewhere on the tree, all originating from one spot and looking quite a bit like a bird or squirrel nest (or I guess a broom). They're caused by all sorts of parasites - fungi, invertebrates, viruses, bacteria, and organisms called "oomycetes" that are none of the above. Spruce broom is caused by a fungus. Specifically, a fungus conveniently known as spruce broom rust (Chrysomyxa arctostaphyli). There are lots of rust fungi (order Pucciniales, 7k+ species), and in many ways spruce broom rust is just like the rest. Like most rusts, it's a plant parasite that needs not one but two hosts to complete its life cycle. In this case, Englemann spruce and kinnikinnick (aka bearberry); it alternates between the two, and needs both to exist. Like most rusts, it also produces several types of spores, each with a different role to play - s*xual reproduction, as*xual reproduction, overwintering, dispersal, etc. For me, what makes this particular rust special is not just the big, yellow witches' brooms, but the way they SMELL. If you've been around it, you know -- it's really, shockingly strong. I usually smell them before I see them. USFS describes the smell as "sweet and earthy" but I think it's more like chlorine, or maybe the rind on brie cheese? I don't know, but not, like, especially pleasant. But so WHY do they smell? They produce this smell when they are sporulating - this is the s*xual stage of the life cycle. They need to get the s*x spores out there into the world in order for the s*x to happen, and to do that they use insects. Particularly flies, which are attracted to this offputting smell. Flies land on the broom, get spores on their feet, and then if all goes to plan, leave some on the next broom -- reproduction is achieved! Rust s*x! So ultimately, what we have with this big stinky infection is essentially a fungal version of pollination. Spores instead of pollen, fungus instead of plant, broom instead of flower, but very much the same otherwise. Fungal attempt at a flower. See also: *stinkhorn*

Really excited for this trip with the famous Steve Hoffman (founder of HawkWatch International and birding guide) to Red Rock Lakes National Wildlife Refuge.

It's such a beautiful and biodiverse area, and this time of year, will be in full bloom with a huge diversity of birds performing their most elaborate songs and displays.

Fee includes transportation, lodging, and meals. Offered through the Sacajawea Audubon Society. More info at link below. Hope to see you there!

https://secure.lglforms.com/form_engine/s/5Ug0qmBzMMlnTa39T9Mekg

Nibblings on the early signs of spring.

For 6 months plus, our herbivores have been scraping by on dead grasses, tree bark, a few scant leaf buds, and roots if they can get to them. Now that the new growth is starting to show, there's finally fresh food again! Soft, succulent, bright green against the dark ground, and not covered in a bitter inedible skin.

I've got two wildflowers just starting to pop up on the hill behind my house, a wild onion (Allium) and a death camas (Toxicoscordion). As you might infer, one of these is food, and one is not. Death camas lives up to its name -- only a few pollinators can handle its toxicity.

In this image, the death camas is the tall, ungrazed plant on the right; the onions are the chewed stubs on the left. The two species aren't easy to tell apart - they are both in the lily family Liliaceae, both have long, narrow leaves, and at this stage, don't have any flowers to differentiate them. Luckily, wild animals are pretty amazing naturalists, and the deer (I think) that scarfed these onions right next to their deadly cousin clearly knew the difference, and left the poisonous plant untouched.

To those who are interested: at this point in their growth, you can tell the two apart by the arrangement of their leaves. The onion's leaves are flat against each other, stacked, while the death camas' leaves are arranged in a triangular pattern when viewed from above.

There's another way as well, which I think might be more accessible to a deer - smell. Right now, I'm regretting I didn't get down and smell the plants to see if I could tell that way too, but I'm imagining it is pretty faint if you don't break the leaf. And clearly the death camas leaves aren't broken.

Things like this always amaze me, that show how perceptive and attuned wild organisms/beings are to their environment. Songbirds that can recognize raptors from a fleeting glance, plants that recognize kin... There's just so much to be learned out there. It's good we have some amazing teachers.

Nibblings on the early signs of spring. For 6 months plus, our herbivores have been scraping by on dead grasses, tree bark, a few scant leaf buds, and roots if they can get to them. Now that the new growth is starting to show, there's finally fresh food again! Soft, succulent, bright green against the dark ground, and not covered in a bitter inedible skin. I've got two wildflowers just starting to pop up on the hill behind my house, a wild onion (Allium) and a death camas (Toxicoscordion). As you might infer, one of these is food, and one is not. Death camas lives up to its name -- only a few pollinators can handle its toxicity. In this image, the death camas is the tall, ungrazed plant on the right; the onions are the chewed stubs on the left. The two species aren't easy to tell apart - they are both in the lily family Liliaceae, both have long, narrow leaves, and at this stage, don't have any flowers to differentiate them. Luckily, wild animals are pretty amazing naturalists, and the deer (I think) that scarfed these onions right next to their deadly cousin clearly knew the difference, and left the poisonous plant untouched. To those who are interested: at this point in their growth, you can tell the two apart by the arrangement of their leaves. The onion's leaves are flat against each other, stacked, while the death camas' leaves are arranged in a triangular pattern when viewed from above. There's another way as well, which I think might be more accessible to a deer - smell. Right now, I'm regretting I didn't get down and smell the plants to see if I could tell that way too, but I'm imagining it is pretty faint if you don't break the leaf. And clearly the death camas leaves aren't broken. Things like this always amaze me, that show how perceptive and attuned wild organisms/beings are to their environment. Songbirds that can recognize raptors from a fleeting glance, plants that recognize kin... There's just so much to be learned out there. It's good we have some amazing teachers. #earlyspring #onion #deathcamas #deeratthegrocerystore

Each one of these deserves its own post, but these are a few of the things I look forward to every spring.

1) Pocket gopher eskers (resembles giant pile of shapely tubes/turds)

2) Snow mold (cobwebby stuff on grass, shows up under snow as it melts away)

3) Digs from a skunk digging up invertebrates (grubs, possibly earthworms) - newly accessible with the snow gone and ground warming up (looks like a burrow entrance, but only goes a few inches down)

4) Vole tunnels, trails, and eskers. Compared to pocket gopher eskers, voles' are less shapely (i.e., look don't look as much like a turd), and just less material overall. Trails are above-ground, and tunnel entrances are visible too - pocket gophers are more discrete, filling entrances with dirt and traveling mostly underground.

Oh there's so much to explore this time of year. Dirt and mold, who could ask for more?

This was so fun. Last week I got to lead an hour-long outdoor "sound walk" for a graduate class from MSU's Science & Natural History Filmmaking program, taught by the wonderful . Here we are listening to the railing on one of my favorite bridges (Gardner Park, if you're keen to take a listen ;)

Putting my ear against and then banging on objects is one of my main hobbies, but this was one of the first times I actually got OTHER PEOPLE to do it with me! Thanks, FILM 505 students, for helping me realize a dream.

We did listen to nature sounds too - I got to talk about environmental acoustics, animal communication, etc - but for me the bridge was the highlight. Also contact mic on a tree with its roots in the creek -- we could actually hear the creek *through* the tree!!

Right now, we are just entering what I think many would consider the most soniferous season of the year -- Spring, with everything singing, breezes blowing, creeks thawing, rain raining... Time to turn on your ears, good people, and hear what the not-human world has to say. And resonant metal objects too.

This was so fun. Last week I got to lead an hour-long outdoor "sound walk" for a graduate class from MSU's Science & Natural History Filmmaking program, taught by the wonderful @jenny_beee7. Here we are listening to the railing on one of my favorite bridges (Gardner Park, if you're keen to take a listen ;) Putting my ear against and then banging on objects is one of my main hobbies, but this was one of the first times I actually got OTHER PEOPLE to do it with me! Thanks, FILM 505 students, for helping me realize a dream. We did listen to nature sounds too - I got to talk about environmental acoustics, animal communication, etc - but for me the bridge was the highlight. Also contact mic on a tree with its roots in the creek -- we could actually hear the creek *through* the tree!! Right now, we are just entering what I think many would consider the most soniferous season of the year -- Spring, with everything singing, breezes blowing, creeks thawing, rain raining... Time to turn on your ears, good people, and hear what the not-human world has to say. And resonant metal objects too. #msu #bozeman #acoustics #soundscape #everysoundismusic #evenmagpies

The main purpose of this account is to connect people with their landscape, particularly folks in Montana and in the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem. I try to do this by telling natural history stories that are easy to miss, but also easy to find when you're looking. Essentially, connecting to nature by zooming in and bringing you up close.

It's probably a consequence of my particular brand of ADHD, my compulsive attention to details and patterns and things that don't fit them. I've been told that noticing these little things is my superpower :) But the flipside of that is that sometimes I can get too caught up in the little stuff. Day to day, that can lead to a hell of a lot of anxiety. Sometimes what's needed is to zoom out. Right now, more than ever, I'm finding that is what I need.

This morning I took a few minutes to stand on Peet's hill and look at mountains. The Spanish Peaks are one of the most recognizable geological features in the Gallatin Valley, but I'd never really thought too deeply about them. Today, they reminded me of something that I found really reassuring about time, which is that it is really fu***ng long. What really brought that home were the sharp peaks and ridges that make them so striking, horns and arêtes formed by thousands of years of glaciers. It reminded me that about 10,000 years ago, and for about 20,000 years, this whole valley (along with about half of North America) was under thousands of feet of ice. And, thanks to regular shifts in our planet's orbit, it will be again.

Every day, it seems like more and more of the world is on fire - figuratively, sometimes literally. And today, we need to be firefighters. But nothing that any arsonist can do will change the rotation of the Earth. Ashes to ashes, ice to ice.

The main purpose of this account is to connect people with their landscape, particularly folks in Montana and in the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem. I try to do this by telling natural history stories that are easy to miss, but also easy to find when you're looking. Essentially, connecting to nature by zooming in and bringing you up close. It's probably a consequence of my particular brand of ADHD, my compulsive attention to details and patterns and things that don't fit them. I've been told that noticing these little things is my superpower :) But the flipside of that is that sometimes I can get too caught up in the little stuff. Day to day, that can lead to a hell of a lot of anxiety. Sometimes what's needed is to zoom out. Right now, more than ever, I'm finding that is what I need. This morning I took a few minutes to stand on Peet's hill and look at mountains. The Spanish Peaks are one of the most recognizable geological features in the Gallatin Valley, but I'd never really thought too deeply about them. Today, they reminded me of something that I found really reassuring about time, which is that it is really fu***ng long. What really brought that home were the sharp peaks and ridges that make them so striking, horns and arêtes formed by thousands of years of glaciers. It reminded me that about 10,000 years ago, and for about 20,000 years, this whole valley (along with about half of North America) was under thousands of feet of ice. And, thanks to regular shifts in our planet's orbit, it will be again. Every day, it seems like more and more of the world is on fire - figuratively, sometimes literally. And today, we need to be firefighters. But nothing that any arsonist can do will change the rotation of the Earth. Ashes to ashes, ice to ice. #MadisonRange #SpanishPeaks #PinedaleGlaciation #distantpast #distantfuture #distantpresent

Winter sculptures.

Beautiful surface topography on some very sturdy wind crust, forming on the west-facing slope of Peet's Hill (facing into the prevailing winds). The crust itself was about an inch thick, and strong enough to support my weight (mostly)!

I took these pictures this morning, and you can see that the crests are actually facing east - opposite the prevailing winds. This tells me that these ripples probably formed Monday, when we had that intense weather system and that wind blowing hard from the east.

The last image shows a ski trail raised above the surface of the surrounding snow. This weird inversion happens when something compacts the snow, and then something else comes along that removes snow. The compacted snow is stronger, and doesn't erode as easily -- you see the same phenomenon in geology with harder and softer minerals and rocks (geologists call it "differential erosion). Same thing happens when you're shoveling snow that's been walked on, and the footprints stay on the sidewalk when the rest of the snow gets shoveled off.

Cold weather like this brings so much beauty, and crazy storms like the one Monday can make some really wonderful things happen. Winter is just such a different world! Make sure to make time for it :)

Last Saturday I led a super fun class on winter tracking for Jack Creek Preserve Foundation, in the Madison Range above Ennis. This was my third year teaching this class, and each time there's a few fascinating stories in the snow -- but we usually don't get to actually see the story being written! Right at the start of class, we got to watch this little weasel in beautiful winter coat bounding around the meadow. (Image 1 shows the trail, image 2 the weasel as photographed by Thomas Reed, wildlife photographer and tracking class participant :)

We backtracked the trail a little, admiring the incredible bounds and the little tunnels through the snow. Not to mention the beautiful tracks! Fresh snow, fresh weasel. Image 3 shows one impression - the weasel was moving from top to bottom, and you can see the little spray of snow as s/he bounded out of the hole.

Everywhere we went, our weasel had already been there. Eventually we ended up at a wood shed where a fox family had denned the previous winter. Our weasel had thoroughly investigated this shed, and exploring around, we saw why. Image 4, the trail has changed quite a lot - now impressions in the snow are much wider towards the top, even as the trail below hasn't changed. This weasel had caught something in the shed, and was carrying it off in his/her mouth! I was a little perplexed at first - there are impressions on both sides of the trail, too wide for a mouse or vole. We got another hint investigating the shed - woodrat s**t! Image 5 shows some little rat turds on a pile of snow, to the left of some larger fox turds (bottom edge of picture). And of course, some of the lovely faces that came to this class. Thanks guys for coming along with me to spend several hours chasing a weasel around, and looking at p**p! What a beautiful way to spend a day.