The USEE staff would like to wish you a lovely holiday season! We hope the season brings you much joy and is full of family and friends. May the New Year fill your heart with love, your heart with hope, and the world with peace.
We thank you for all of your support this year. The USEE staff will be out of the office for the rest of the holiday season. Make sure to check back the first week of January for more great blog posts and EE information. Happy Holidays!
Hi, I’m Holly Strand from Stokes Nature Center in beautiful Logan Canyon.
There’s a large paper wasp nest on display on a bookcase at the Nature Center. Last week, Anna and I noticed some strange noises emanating from it. It even seemed to move a little on the shelf. We carefully, and a bit nervously, approached to investigate. I picked up the nest and it began to shake vigorously. Then a live missile shot out of the opening. It was a chubby little squirrel with huge dark eyes. He jumped from the bookcase and went scurrying across the floor with Anna and I in hot pursuit. Then he scampered up to the top of a door frame. We tried to catch him with a cardboard box, but he spread his little legs out wide and went sailing over our heads, landing smoothly on floor across the room. And then he ran under the couch. We stood there in amazement. He wasn’t your normal squirrel—he was a flying squirrel!
The northern flying squirrel is one of two flying squirrels found in United States, the other being the southern flying squirrel. Northern flying squirrels occur in many of Utah's mountainous areas, primarily in mature coniferous forests and riparian zones.
According to Mike Wolfe at Utah State University’s College of Natural Resources, they aren’t exactly rare in Logan Canyon. In fact, they are active here throughout the year, but they’re completely nocturnal. So many people never see them and are surprised to find that we have them.
Flying squirrels don’t really fly. They glide. They have a loose fold of skin known as a patagium which runs along each side of the body from the ankle of the hind leg to the wrist of the foreleg. When they stretch this membrane and launch they instantly become a furry paraglider, capable of covering great distances using a small fraction of the energy it would take to run.
Rocky, as we called the nature visitor, proved very difficult to catch. In the end, we used a live trap baited with apples and sunflower seeds. On Thanksgiving morning, my husband and I found him sitting in it, wishing he were somewhere else. We took him up the canyon and released him. He scampered up a tree and seemed to regard us thoughtfully. On the way back to the car, I looked back once more and was lucky enough to see one last beautiful 20 ft glide from tree to tree.
Thanks to the USU College of Natural Resources for supporting research and development of this Wild About Utah topic.
For Wild About Utah and Stokes Nature Center, I’m Holly Strand.
Credits:
Images: Courtesy Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife Text: Holly Strand, Stokes Nature Center
This has been an exciting year for environmental education (EE) in Utah. The Utah Society for Environmental Education (USEE) staff, board, members, and volunteers have taken great strides in our efforts to provide statewide leadership that expands the quality, scope, and effectiveness of environmental education in our state.
Thanks in large part to all of our supporters in 2009, USEE:
Increased the participation at our Annual Conference to over 120 participants (including 15 students) and provided a Regional Component enhancing EE efforts throughout the West;
Expanded Project Learning Tree to reach with over 300 teachers and college students;
Worked with students to produce amazing art through the 1st Annual Salt Lake City Squatters Recycled Materials Sculpture Contest;
Taken over coordination of the Project WET program, which will bring additional water education workshops to Utah’s teachers;
Compiled a Model Implementation Strategy for EE in Utah based on the comments and needs of over 1000 teachers and organizations in Utah;
Increased our membership by over 50% since last year to 93 individuals and 31 organizations. Working with these members is the highlight of every day here in the office! (We just need 7 more to meet our goal of 100 individuals by the end of the year… are YOU a member?)
As you may know, our Executive Director, Jason Taylor, has left USEE to pursue new adventures in life and I am filling in as Interim Executive Director. With Jason moving on from USEE, I have some pretty big shoes to fill, but I am confident we will continue to provide the same great service to the community and will promote EE throughout Utah as we did before because of the wonderful support you all provide. Over the next year finances are going to be tough for everyone, including individuals and non profits, but we all must keep our eye on the goal, which is providing high quality information and education about the environment to the citizens of Utah. USEE's role as a professional organization is to help Environmental Educators and Organizations shine through these challenging times, but we can only do this with the support of our community.
If Environmental Education is important to you, and as you reflect on what you are able to give this season, I hope that you consider making an end of year donation to USEE. You can even make a donation in honor of someone else, which would be a great holiday gift! No amount is too small to help and all donations are tax deductible.
For those of you out there with Urban Chickens, or thinking about getting some, you'll be happy to know that Salt Lake City Council passed the new chicken ordinance.
This ordinance has changes about where the chickens can be, how far the coop is from your house and neighboring buildings, and how many chickens you can keep on your lot. There are many positive changes for urban chicken owners, so check out the New Chicken Ordinance to find out how this might affect you, your neighbors, and the chickens in your neighborhood.
Yesterday, Linda Kervin from the Bridgerland Audubon Society on Wild About Utah "re-purposes" her Christmas tree for the birds in her yard. This got me to thinking about one of the posts that Andree' put up last year about the infamous Christmas Tree Debate.
Real or fake? What are the benefits of each? The cons? What is the environmental impact? I think it would probably be safe to argue that the best bet is to simply do with out the tree, rather than worry about the transportation of the live trees down from Canada, or the chemicals used in the fake trees, and the degradation of both in the landfills. But traditions die hard.
In my own family, we have a fake tree. We have had this tree for probably 15 years or so, or at least as long as when we moved into the house my parents own. The Christmas tree debate doesn't really happen in our house any more because we got the tree before it was "cool to be green" and now that we have it, there's no reason to not use it. I also have a small fake tree that I found in my parent's garage. I have no idea where it came from, but I've used it every year since I moved out.
The debate continues in sustainability circles, but if your traditions die hard on this matter, I encourage you to read Andree's post from last year, and to think about providing a safe haven for your local bird populations as Linda does if you do get a real tree.
As a word, "re-purposing" grates a little on my ear. But the concept is laudable. At my home, we reuse items in new ways for bird feeding. Our main bird feeder hangs from the trunk of a venerable old apple tree in our backyard. In winter, the apple offers fruits and perches aplenty, but no cover for hungry juncos, chickadees, and finches.
What they want are the thick boughs of a conifer. After every Christmas, there is just such a tree, all decorated, standing in our living room. Rather than hurling that tree on the municipal heap straightaway, a rather abrupt fall from grace, if you ask me, we prop it up beneath our feeder, giving it new purpose as a shelter for feeding birds. They duck in and out of its needled boughs all day long. Some even roost there at night. Beneath it, ground feeding birds can safely clean up the seeds that rain down from the feeder above. A ring of upturned tomato cages beneath the feeder, that otherwise lie idle in our vegetable garden, are given a winter purpose of impeding any stray cats interested in the birds beneath our seed feeder. For no cost and scant effort, we provide our feeder birds with shelter from winter storms and protection from feline predators.
Don’t forget water for the birds in winter. Open water can be a scarce commodity. In areas with freezing temperatures, there are heating elements to put in an existing birdbath or baths with a heating element encased in the base. In our yard, the birdbath is as popular as the seed feeders.
Birds appreciate the simple gifts: shelter from a discarded Christmas tree, a feeder full of seed, and water to drink.
This is Linda Kervin for Bridgerland Audubon Society.
Credits:
Text: Jim Cane and Linda Kervin, Bridgerland Audubon Society
This article originally appeared in Utah State University Extension's email newsletter, but I thought there were some of you out there that might like to read about this too!
Caring for Your Poinsettia -by Maggie Shao, Extension Horticulture Agent
To care for your poinsettia, remember that these plants are grown in high relative humidity and high light intensity. The plants do well when you can try to match these conditions. Tips for poinsettia care:
Place the plant in a location where it will have the most available sunlight.
Keep the room temperature between 65-70 degrees during the day.
Remove foil wrap around pot when watering to prevent roots from sitting in water. Keep plants well watered, but not continually wet.
Grouping plants together on a pebble tray will help raise humidity around the plants themselves.
Avoid placing plants near doors or heating vents, as extremes of hot and cold will cause leaf drop.
If you would like to learn more about the Utah Botanical Center and the Ogden Botanical Center's resources (such as gardening and plant care tips) and programs, click here to subscribe to their newsletter.
The pilgrims had turkeys for the first Thanksgiving, but the likelihood that turkeys roamed Utah at that time is small. Archaeologists have found turkey bones in pueblos in the south-eastern corner of the state. But, it is not known if they were domesticated or wild birds. However, like the ring-necked pheasant, and chukar partridge, more than 20,000 wild turkeys now roam Utah thanks to hunters and wildlife professionals.
Turkeys are the largest upland game bird in Utah. Toms stand 4 feet high with tails fanned. Hens stand 3 feet tall. First year birds are called Jakes and Jennies.
Three of the five sub-species of wild turkey were introduced to Utah. Eastern turkeys lived on Antelope Island from 1925 through the 1950s. The Merriam's, from the ponderosa pine habitat of Arizona, New Mexico, and Colorado were introduced in 1952. And Rio Grandes, native to cottonwood river bottoms of Texas, were introduced in 1984.
Merriam's turkeys are blacker than the eastern turkey, with reflections of blue, bronze, and purple. Tail coverts, the feathers of the lower back that cover the tail feathers, are white on a Merriam's turkey and buff or tan on a Rio Grande. For protection, turkeys roost in trees, but descend to feed under or near trees during the day. Except when nesting, they prefer protection in numbers and rarely wander alone.
In winter they roost in flocks, but disperse as far as 10 miles to nest. Hens lay 10-11 eggs near brushy cover and incubate them for 28 days. They eat pine nuts, acorns, seeds, insects and green vegetation.
The main predators are hawks, golden eagles, foxes, coyotes, dogs, cats, skunks, raccoons, ravens, and magpies. Fortunately, the numbers hatched usually overcome predation losses.
Thanks this holiday goes to the National Wild Turkey Foundation and Utah DWR for our Wild Turkeys.
This is Linda Kervin for Bridgerland Audubon Society.
