Deer Sleeping in Snow

by Jan Thornhill

Deer sleeping forms. 

They're pretty compact when it's below freezing, with their back legs tucked under. Deer put on a lot of fat in the fall, and their winter hair is hollow for added insulation. 

 

Their skinny, uninsulated legs are heat exchangers – warm blood pumped from their core runs alongside veins filled with cooled blood. This arrangement preheats the cooler blood so it's not super-cooled before it returns to the deer's heart.

Jan Thornhill is an award-winning (multiple awards!) Canadian author and illustrator. Her books include The Triumphant Tale of the House Sparrow, The Tragic Tale of the Great Auk, and she has rescued a turtle (read about it at this link). These photos are by Jan Thornhill.

Blanding's Turtle

 by Jan Thornhill

[Editor's note: our Jan Thornhill knows turtles. Several times, she has written for Sci/Why blog about turtles. You can read her short articles at this link. Today's short note is based on her recent Facebook post.]

I helped the first Blanding's Turtle of the spring cross our road today! 

Like snapping turtles, Blanding's turtles are slow to sexually mature at about 14-25 years of age. But they can reproduce until they are at least 75 years old. [note: This age is not old for some kinds of turtle or tortoise. There are Galapagos tortoises still reproducing at over a hundred years old!]

Female Blanding's turtles do long-distance overland nesting migrations of over 10 kilometres (over 6.2 miles). They're listed as a threatened species in Ontario.

 

My friend Marc says this photo shows the turtle is pleased. And there I was thinking she was giving me the stink eye! But Marc insists there's a slight smile and a twinkle in the turtle's eye.

 

Previously, Jan wrote this note that's worth repeating:

Help a Turtle Cross a Road

Pull over to a safe spot before getting out of your car. If it's any species other than a snapping turtle, use two hands to carry it in the direction it was travelling. Turtles often urinate when picked up. Don’t let this startle you or you might drop it! NEVER pick a turtle up by its tail—you could damage its spinal cord.

Snapping turtles have long necks that can easily stretch half the length of their carapace and they can also inflict a nasty bite or gouge you with their claws, so it's best not to pick them up. Instead, try using a stick or a shovel to coax them across the road. A snapping turtle will also sometimes latch onto a stick held near its mouth, making it easy to drag it across the road.

 

 

 

Fungus Photos

 by Jan Thornhill

[Today's post is based on some images and captions by Jan Thornhill. Her studies of fungus lead her to make photographs with surprising colours and textures! There are spores and bracket fungus and more.]

 

 

I found a new hen-of-the-woods (Grifola frondosa) fungus growing at the base of a tree, and took a quick location pic so I'd be able to find the same tree again next year. (My criteria for this location pic are: identifiable mushroom in foreground and, in the background, a fallen-tree-on-the-embankment landmark). Then I downloaded what I think is easily the best hen picture I've ever taken. I wish I'd had something to do with it!  

Here is Rhodofomes cajanderi, one of 2 pink-pored shelf fungi in Ontario (the other is R. rosea). Both are uncommon where I live. I can't get over the colour of this one! 

 

One of my favourite tiny gilled mushrooms - Resupinatus applicatus. Compare this image of the underside of these mushrooms to a photo of the topside, with my hand for scale.

This fungus is Gomphus clavatus (or Pig's Foot Gomphus - one of my favourite common names). It is a choice edible mushroom that, like the Chanterelle, has "folds" instead of gills. Despite the purplish colour, this mushroom produces ochre spores (visible on a couple of lobes in this pic).

Ever find raccoon scat sporting hair? If the "hair" tips are beaded with minute yellow spheres that then turn black (as the enclosed spores mature) you've probably found the fungal mold, Phycomyces blakesleeanus.

It's taken 30 years, but I finally found the jelly fungus, Dacryopinax spathularia! Here it is, growing on and in a fallen log.

[Mushrooms, of course, are more than the little round white shapes found in grocery stores. It's tricky to tell wild mushrooms apart. If you find some fungi growing wild, better not eat them. Just enjoy their looks and leave any eating to experts like Jan Thornhill.]

Happy Birthday to Us... Almost

By Claire Eamer

Last week, I was delving around in old Sci/Why blog posts, looking for a dinosaur photo to illustrate L. E. Carmichael's post on the enormous Tyrannosaurus rex unearthed in southern Saskatchewan, Move Over SUE, There's a New T. rex in Town. A few years ago, I had visited the fossil's home museum in Eastend, a small town set among the low, rolling hills of southwestern Saskatchewan's shortgrass prairie. I knew I had written a blog post about it, but I couldn't remember when.

Well, I found it. And it was longer ago than I realized. In fact, that post, Seeing the Real McCoy... er, McDino, appeared in Sci/Why's first summer, 2011. I also realized we're about to have a birthday. Sci/Why was launched in April 2011. We're about to turn eight years old! There should be cake, shouldn't there?

Not many blogs will show you this, but Sci/Why will. That is dinosaur poo!
Specifically, it's fossilized T.rex poo -- a coprolite, in polite company -- and it's the
first T.rex coprolite ever found. Here it rests safe in a display case at the museum
in Eastend, Saskatchewan. Claire Eamer photo 

The website intro (just over there on the right and up a bit) credits me with the idea for Sci/Why, but the truth is, it started because I'm lazy. A handful of us kids' science writers were at a conference when one of us said, "I think someone should set up a blog about Canadian science writing for kids." Because, you see, there's a lot of it, and it's actually very good. But a blog sounded like a lot of work -- and I'm definitely not in favour of a lot of work -- so I said, as quickly as possible, "Group blog. It should be a group blog!" (You see what I did there, eh? It's the Tom Sawyer you-will-love-painting-this-fence-for-me thing.)

And we did. And it's still going. What you are reading right now is Sci/Why blog post #436. As I write this, our all-time total page views number 436,724.

Want a few more stats? Of course you do!

Our most popular column ever, which also came out that first summer, is How big can an earthquake be? by Craig Saunders. So far it has garnered 40,586 page views, and it's in the top five columns almost every week -- especially if there are earthquakes in the news.

Another biggie from that first year is Joan Marie Galat's post, Why constellations and astronomy are important, from October 20, 2011. It has received 19,885 page views (as of this moment), and it too shows up regularly in the top five.

Both those posts address topics that turn up again and again in the news and in the school curriculum. But Shar Levine's piece on the Eleanor of Aquitaine Sundial is a bit more off the beaten track. Still, it has earned 9,393 page views and counting. And Helaine Becker's rant about American children's publishers shying away from the topic of evolution, A Call to Arms -- and Flippers, Too, has almost as many page views. In fairness, Helaine in full rant is always entertaining.

The big hitters in the page-view stats are the older columns, since they've had time to be discovered again and again. But some of our more recent posts are doing very well indeed. Adrienne Montgomerie's Iceman CSI: Tales from a 5300-year-old man, which dates from October 2016, has more than 2000 page views. So do several of Jan Thornhill's immaculately researched and beautifully illustrated posts. Check out her Colourful Wood: Spalting Fungi from last year to see what I mean.

Over the past eight years, we've had writers come and go as their interests and time constraints changed. Usually there are about eight or nine regular contributors, and a few more people who send in a blog post when they have time. We try to update the blog every Friday -- but we remind ourselves that the world won't end because we've missed a Friday. This should be fun -- for us and for you. We hope it is and continues to be. Happy Blog Birthday to all of us!

Yours fondly, Claire (and the rest of the Sci/Why crew)

Some Pleasing Embellishment

By Claire Eamer

Last fall, my sister visited the Galileo Museum of Science in Florence and sent me a photo of a plaque that hangs on its wall. (Of course, I'd rather she had just sent me a ticket to fly over and join her, but I suppose you can't have everything.)

The plaque carries a quotation from Eusebio Sguario, who wrote the first book in Italian about the science of electricity. It was published in 1746 -- and I presume this quote is taken from it:

"In this century of ours, it is an iniquitous crime... to treat matters that bore us to tears. Hence science... should receive from the industrious ingenuity of the writer some pleasing embellishment and entertaining discourse."

Leave aside, for the moment, the slightly archaic phrasing and think about this: almost 300 years ago, someone said that science deserves to be explored and expressed just as gracefully and entertainingly and with just as much artistry as any other subject. And that to give science less than its due is "an iniquitous crime."

(I actually quite like the idea of charging writers of boring science texts with Criminal Iniquity, but I probably won't get much support in Parliament for adding that to the legal code.)

In some ways, Sguario's time was not too different from our own. Science was blossoming, coming up with new information and new approaches to understanding almost faster than people could absorb them. Astronomers were peering at the heavens through better and better telescopes. Naturalists were exploring, sorting, and cataloguing the natural world. Microscopists were staring in wonder at living things so tiny that no one had suspected they existed. And people like Sguario were applying the still-revolutionary ideas of Sir Isaac Newton to the physical world.

Much of that new knowledge was unsettling. It challenged people's understanding of their world and humans' place in it. For some, that was thrilling. For others, terrifying. But information, facts, knowledge -- they're all hard to get rid of once they've been released into the wild. So it's better, as Sguario said, to use a bit of industrious ingenuity to convey that knowledge in a way that pleases and entertains as well as informs.
___________________________________________________

For some excellent science writing for adults, take a look at:

• Hakai Magazine -- a free online magazine with beautifully illustrated and beautifully written stories about the world's coasts.
• Ed Yong's online science stories in The Atlantic -- well-researched and always entertainingly written.
• Richard Flanagan's moving lament in The Guardian for Tasmania's transformation under climate change.

___________________________________________________

Today, scientists are producing information even more prodigiously than were the scholars of Sguario's day. Much of that information is vital to the future of the world as we know it -- perhaps even to our survival as a species. How much more important is it, then, to employ all the industrious ingenuity we writers can muster and spread scientific knowledge through entertaining discourse and with pleasing embellishment, so that everyone can understand the forces that will determine our future? We owe it to science and -- more importantly -- to the world.

So what's that got to do with writing about science for kids, you ask? After all, that's what this blog is about. Well, kids' science writers, like the ones who write for this blog, are all about entertaining discourse and pleasing embellishment. We write about science in ways that are funny, exciting, tantalizing, often gross, and sometimes beautiful. And we apply our industrious ingenuity to presenting science as accurately as possible -- even if we're presenting it to pre-schoolers.

__________________________________________________

If you think pre-schoolers aren't ready for the great ideas of science, check out:

• Elin Kelsey's picture book, You Are Stardust, with delicate artwork by Soyeon Kim.
• Jan Thornhill's charming Kyle Goes Alone, which teaches kids about both sloths and themselves.
• Helaine Becker's Counting on Katherine, a picture book biography that is hitting all the science writing awards lists this year.

__________________________________________________

We are all very aware that our readers are the adults of the future, and that the knowledge we can give them now -- and, more importantly, the sense that science is something they can enjoy, understand, and maybe do -- will contribute to ensuring they, and we collectively, have a future.

That sounds a bit grand, doesn't it? And I guess it's a bit of a rant. But good science writing is worth ranting about. As Sguario said, it's a crime to bore your readers to tears. Iniquitous!

Brand New School Year, Brand New Books!

by L. E. Carmichael

Forget January, for me, September is the start of the new year - the year of learning new things! September is also Read a New Book Month, and we at Sci/Why are here to help you with that task. Discover a new favourite with our freshly-updated-for-2018 Science Book List. Here are some hot-off-the-presses choices for you and your favourite junior scientist. Captions link direct to Amazon.

Bus to the Badlands

Cats

Erupt!

Do Frogs Drink Hot Chocolate?

Hubots

Hungry for Science

Counting on Katherine

Out of the Ice

Solve This!

The Triumphant Tale of the House Sparrow

Stories in the Clouds

Wild Buildings and Bridges

Insect Mimicry; Caterpillar Predators; Baby Snapping Turtles & Bird Eggs: Jan Thornhill Blog Post Updates

by Jan Thornhill 

This week's blog post was going to be about mimicry. I'd come across an insect in Chile that  was a fabulous example of automimicry – the kind where part of an animal's body looks like a more vulnerable part. 

Here's the first view I had of this insect:

"What a character!" I thought.  Kinda cute, and kinda homely at the same time, like an old shoe. 

Then I changed my camera angle...

...and saw that what I'd thought was a face was actually the insect's rear end. 

How fabulous – it's abdomen was pretty much a replica of its head, complete with bulging red eyeballs! 

If anyone knows anything about this beetle(?), I'd love to hear from you!!

And that was it. Kind of short for a blog post. But then I realized I'd already written a post about mimicry (Spider Art and Bioluminescent “Bombs”: Extreme Animal Mimicry) – and that I should just add this guy to that post as an update. And then I remembered more updates I needed to do.

Update # 2:

It seems like a no brainer to add this find to a post about cabbage moth caterpillars I wrote a couple of years ago, Wild Helpers in the Brussels Sprouts Patch. 

I found a tiny clay urn glued to our outdoor table yesterday. I knew it was some kind of wasp nest. I also knew that the tiny pot was going to be destroyed one way or another, so instead of leaving it to be crushed by a coffee cup or plate of sliced tomatoes, I sliced it off the table with a knife so I could see what was going on inside.

Oooh! 

The urn was built by a Potter Wasp nest – someone in the genus Eumenes. 

Potter Wasp, Eumenes sp. (Wikipedia)

Potter Wasps normally won't bother you. What they will do is construct tiny, marble-sized urns out of drops of mud.

Potter wasps sometimes include an urn "neck."

They fill these little pots with paralyzed caterpillars, then lay an egg on the inside clay surface. If all goes well, the egg will hatch and the wasp larva will feed on the caterpillars until it's mature enough to chew its way out of the pot and start its adult life.  

I don't think the egg in the one I found one "took." Or maybe something happened to the builder before she could lay an egg. Too bad, since there were five different desiccated caterpillars inside, one of which, judging by its pale green colour, was surely a cabbage caterpillar. 

A feast gone to waste.

Update # 3

A few weeks ago I wrote a post about a bird egg collection I donated to the Royal Ontario Museum, I Might Be a Criminal. I sent a link of the blog to the ROM's Mark Peck, who, in response, told me about a Canadian citizen scientist nest monitoring program that anyone can join: Project NestWatch. 

It looks like a fun summer project. A little late now, but there's always next year! Go to their website to see how It works:

Step 1:  Register for Project NestWatch 

Step 2:  Learn how to find and monitor nests using the resources provided on this site

Step 3:  Search for nests around your home, school, cottage, or elsewhere

Step 4:  Monitor your nest(s) throughout the breeding season

Step 5:  Submit your data online and contribute to Canada's national nest records database!

Update # 4:

I wrote a post a few years ago about helping snapping turtles on our road, A Baby Snapping Turtle Success Story. Snappers have been nesting on and near that same bridge for years. Then the county decided to replace the bridge. But what about the eggs that had already been laid? Solution: my neighbour Tracy and her daughter gathered the eggs and took them to the Ontario Turtle Conservation Centre (previously the Kawartha Turtle Trauma Centre) where they were incubated. Tracy picked them up when they hatched and sent me pictures of their release. 

Photos by Tracy Dafoe

Another friend brought 50 snapper eggs to the Ontario Turtle Conservation Centre a few weeks ago. At that point, the centre was already incubating 3,000 eggs! Please consider helping them in this important work!  

Looking for a Good Science Book? But Where to Start....

By Claire Eamer

If you're curious about Canadian kids' science books, but you don't know quite where to start, consider taking advantage of the expertise of others. A lot of that expertise goes into choosing shortlists and winners for a number of annual book awards that honour science and non-fiction writing for children. Here's where you'll find some of the best titles in Canadian science writing for children -- including some books by Sci/Why bloggers.

L.E. Carmichaeil's Fuzzy Forensics won the
2014 Lane Anderson Award for Youth Books.

Canadian Science Writing Awards

Science in Society Youth Book Award is given annually by the Science Writers and Communicators of Canada. For recent and current shortlisted and winning books, follow the links on the organization’s website at http://sciencewriters.ca/  Award winners for 2014 and earlier are listed on the Canadian Children’s Book Centre website at http://bookcentre.ca/awards/science-society-book-award-0/

The Lane Anderson Awards recognize Canadian science writing in both adult and youth categories. The current year’s shortlist will appear on the main website at http://laneandersonaward.ca/  Past winners and shortlisted books are at http://laneandersonaward.ca/past-winners-and-finalists/

Canadian Information Book Awards

The Children’s Literature Roundtables of Canada’s Information Book Award names a winner and an Honour Book each year. Many of the shortlisted and winning books are science books. For current and previous winners, go to the Vancouver Children’s Literature Roundtable’s website at http://vclr.ca/information-book-award/

The Tragic Tale of the Great Auk by Sci/Why's own
Jan Thornhill won the 2017 Information Book Award
given by the Canadian Children's Literature Roundtables.

The Norma Fleck Award for Canadian Children’s Non-Fiction was established by the Fleck Family Foundation and the Canadian Children’s Book Centre. For a complete list of winners and shortlisted titles, many of them about science, go to http://bookcentre.ca/programs/awards/norma-fleck-award-for-canadian-childrens-non-fiction/previous-winners-and-finalists/ 

International Awards

The American Institute of Physics presents an annual award for science communication for children, and Canadian writers have won on occasion, most recently in 2017. The list of previous winners is at https://www.aip.org/aip/awards/science-communication/children

Claire Eamer's Inside Your Insides: A Guide to the
Microbes That Call You Home was on the shortlist
for the 2018 AAAS/Subaru SB&F award.

The American Association for the Advancement of Science gives out the AAAS/Subaru Science Book & Film awards, and Canadian books have appeared on the award shortlists frequently. Find winners and shortlisted books at https://www.aaas.org/program/aaassubaru-sbf-prize

Our Booklist

If the awards lists have whetted your appetite for Canadian science writing for kids, why not delve deeper? Take a look at Sci/Why's own annotated listing of Canadian kids' science books. It's a free download on the Sci/Why site at https://sci-why.blogspot.ca/p/science-book-list.html

The Undead of Winter

 By Jan Thornhill

Ruby LOVES to "play dead" so we can will bury her in snow!

I love early spring! And no – I’m not talking about tulips and the return of migratory birds, though I have nothing against those things. I’m talking about earlier, in the first weeks of March, when there’s still plenty of snow on the ground, when, for all intents and purposes, it’s still the dead of winter.

Except it’s not dead.

Minute snow fleas appear on warm days in late winter.

In fact, there’s a surprising amount of life in the late winter forest here in Ontario – especially when the temperature squeaks a few degrees above the freezing mark. By early March, tree sap has begun to flow. Within a few days, deciduous crowns in the distance have taken on a haze, as if someone has smeared wet watercolour across the tips of their sharp branches. Their leaf buds are plumping. Male chickadees start using their “Hey, sweetie,” song, which, I think, is self-explanatory. Skunks wake from their winter torpor and amble about briefly – possibly just to stretch their legs – before returning to their dens to wait for real spring to come. On sun-warmed snow patches at the base of trees, snow fleas congregate, sometimes by the tens of thousands (see my post about snow fleas here).

This perennial Red-belted Polypore (Fomitopsis pinicola)
will drop spores on warm winter days.

And, all over the forest—believe it or not—fungi are procreating like crazy.

Amanita frostiana has a mycorrhizal relationship
with oaks and conifers.

These are not your basic ground mushrooms with caps and stems that you see in summer and fall. Most of those are mycorrhizal, and have a mutualistic relationship with trees, trading underground water and nutrients for the sugars that trees produce. But trees shut down sugar production in the late fall, so the underground networks of mycelia of mycorrhizal fungi also shut down during the frozen months.

The Violet-toothed polypore (Trichaptum biforme) is an annual saprobe.

But there are all kinds of other fungi that have a different kind of relationship to trees. They rot them. Many of these tree decayers, or saprobes, are polypores. Polypores develop their spores inside tiny tubes instead of on gills like store-bought mushrooms. 

The Hexagonal-pored Polypore (Neofavolus alveolaris)
 has—surprise!—hexagonal pores.

The most commonly noticed polypores are shelf fungi or conks. Many are perennial – they have skeletal hyphae—tissue than can withstand freezing and thawing—and just keep growing and growing, sometimes for 70 years or more. And during that time, whenever the temperature goes above freezing for a couple of days, these fungi produce spores. 

Yearly growth layers are obvious on this Phellinus that grows
new spore-producing tubes on its underside each year. 

But, why, you might wonder would they send out spores so much earlier than the birds start doing it and the bees start doing it—when the forest is still, in effect, asleep?

The Gilled Polypore, Lenzites betulina, has elongated tubes that almost look like gills.

They do it early because polypores, like all fungi, are opportunistic. Polypores that grow on living trees usually inhabit the heartwood that runs up the core of a tree trunk. To set up shop in this deadwood, a polypore has to get past a tree’s sapwood, the living layer below the tree’s bark. In the winter, deep freezes cause fractures in tree bark. These frost cracks are perfect for catching passing spores. When spring rains moisten the crevices, and before the tree has time to seal these cracks, the spores germinate and their mycelia work their way into the core. Once past the tree's defences, the fungus sets up shop, spreading its mycelia up and down and around. A fungus can secretly live inside a tree—gradually breaking down lignin and cellulose—for many years before it gives us humans a clue of its presence—by producing reproductive organs (shelf fungi, or conks) on the tree’s exterior.

Fomes fomentarius, is commonly called the Hoof Fungus
 (its shape)  or Tinder Fungus (used to carry fire from place to place
before matches were invented; Ötzi was carrying some).

The Cinnabar Polypore (Pycnoporus cinnabarinus) is the colour of dragon's blood!

The common name for Trametes versicolor is Turkey tails—for good reason

Chicken-of-the-Woods is an excellent edible polypore
 that has the unmistakable texture of overcooked
chicken if you miss its succulent stage.

This Artist's Conk (Ganoderma applanatum) is exhibiting geotropism
— the fungus first grew while the tree was still standing, then, after the tree 
fell, added new growth with its pore surface—once again—facing down.