Elm Tree Experiment

July 22nd, 2009

This is a little experiment I’m doing:

I wanted to find out how a forked stick from an Elm tree would grow if the forked end was put in the ground.

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Denning Red Foxes

January 9th, 2009

Last week, our dogs started barking. Going to the door to find out what they were after, I saw a red fox slowly running off behind a house.

Today, one of the dogs seemed very interested in a particular spot outside. There was a red fox again.

This fox was not as red as the first one, but it was larger and seemed to be “fluffier”. It stood for a short while and then ran away. Shortly afterwards, another fox, very red and slim, appeared in a yard two houses away. This one circled between two yards, at one point going directly up to a house. It may have been trying to get to where the first fox had been standing. The direct route was blocked by a fence.

At about nine-thirty in the morning, not long after the fox sightings, I helped my mom walk the dogs. We found the tracks of the two foxes where they had crossed the road. All around the block, a distance of a little more than a mile, we noticed fox tracks. Apparently, this pair of red foxes has decided to den in the neighborhood. Or they may just be checking out the area. Here are two pictures contrasting the footprints of a domestic dog (left) and a red fox (right).

Red foxes mate in the January to March range. The kits are born as early as March or as late as may. They disperse after four months.

While often thought of as sneaky raiders of poultry, red foxes will actually eat almost anything. These food items include small mammals, insects, crayfish, grapes, and other fruits.

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Growing Frogs in the Garden

August 23rd, 2008

Everyone knows that frogs can be found near lakes, ponds, and streams, but we have frogs growing in our garden.

The nearest body of water is several blocks away, but when someone walks through our garden, large numbers of frogs (and toads) hop out of the way. Perhaps there are so many frogs in our garden because we have sprinklers set up, there are areas of tall weeds for frogs to hide in, and there are good places for the frogs to sun themselves.

We caught one of these frogs and it appears to be a mix of the two different colors of Northern Leopard Frogs.

We’ve been offering our frog several different insects to see what it would eat and we were amazed when it ate a large grasshopper that was around this size:

We plan to feed and observe the frog for several days and then return it to the garden.

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Hundreds of Creatures in a Water Droplet

June 9th, 2008

Have you ever realized how much tiny life is around you that you can’t see? Maybe these pictures will give you some idea of the amount of microscopic life there is. The pictures show some microscopic creatures from some stagnant water.

These are some of the microscopic creatures that were on the microscope slide. Many more of these could be seen at a lower magnification.