Chattering red squirrels also known as pine squirrels

When walking through the woods the silence is often pierced by the rapid chatter of a red squirrel as I intrude upon its territory. But the recent deep blanket of snow has the little red squirrel snug inside its nest. 

Red squirrels loudly scold any intruder in their territory

Red squirrels will sleep in tree cavities, abandoned bird nests, under rotten logs or, most commonly, in dreys. Dreys are nests squirrels build out of leaves, sticks, grass or needles. They are spherical in shape with an inner chamber four to six inches across. A drey can be distinguished from a bird’s nest because of the presence of dried leaves and its spherical shape. 

A drey that has fallen out of a tree and broke into two pieces

The inside of the chamber is lined with soft material, such as shredded bark, bird feathers, animal fur or dried grass. Squirrels will keep adding material to the outside of the nest to insulate and waterproof it. 

With a few inches of material separating the inner chamber from the outside air, the temperature on the inside of the nest is several degrees higher than on the outside. To increase the insulating factor, squirrels often construct the dreys on the south side of a tree to maximize the warmth of the sun. 

Often a squirrel will build the drey high in a tree above one of it’s middens, of which the squirrel can have as many as six middens. A midden is the squirrel’s cache of cones that it eats during winter when other food is scarce. 

Red squirrels often eat cones on top of their midden, adding to the pile

These middens and the associated cone trees make red squirrels one of the most territorial animals in the forest. Their chatter, screams, growls and screeching make their territory well known to intruders. 

Squirrels will also mark their territory by leaving their scent along frequently used paths. Glands in their cheeks leave a scent when rubbed against an object. 

Once snow covers the ground, squirrel trails become obvious--a tiny packed trail between trees. If the snow is deep, the tracks may disappear at the tree trunk and delve beneath the snow to a midden or up the tree to a drey.

Unlike other small rodents, most red squirrels nest above the snow high in a tree, whereas mice and voles spend the winter in the subnivean space beneath the snowpack. The temperature is more moderate between the ground and the snow, making winter easier to survive for those rodents.

Not so for the little red squirrel. During inclement weather, a squirrel will hole up in its drey, lowering its rate of energy expenditure. With a cache of cones nearby and the capability to obtain dietary moisture from its food, the squirrel doesn’t have to travel far in the winter. 

A well-defined squirrel trail led to this squirrel's midden

But when the squirrel does travel in the warmer months to harvest food and feast on berries, fungi, buds, and seeds, its stays within its home range. Depending on the abundance of food, their home range can range from 0.7 acres to 3.7 acres.

Any intruder into a squirrel’s home range will receive a long scolding if he comes too close to a midden, breaking any silence that might have been. 

Note: Published in the Bonners Ferry Herald on Dec. 27, 2012. 

Only cartoon turtles can remove their shell

Burrowed in mud at the bottom of a pond are turtles waiting out winter. Come spring, they will be basking on logs and rocks soaking in the sun’s rays. Since the painted turtle is the only native turtle in Idaho, it is easy to identify. But in other regions of the country, more than one turtle species exists.

Painted turtle basking in spring sun

When identifying a turtle, the shell is often the defining characteristic. Turtle shells are commonly brown, black, or olive green but can have red, orange, yellow or gray markings that help in identification. 

The shape of a turtle’s shell indicates its lifestyle. Aquatic turtles, such as the painted turtle, have flatter, streamlined shells that let them glide through the water easier. Land dwelling turtles typically have high-domed shells to protect them from the jaws of their predators.

Streamlined shells help painted turtles swim more efficiently

Some turtles can pull into their shells to evade predators, but unlike cartoons, they cannot remove themselves from their shell. A turtle’s shell isn’t like a snail’s shell that is completely on the outside, instead a turtle’s shell is part of its skeleton, much like people.

The shell is composed of two sections: the carapace (the top half) and the plastron (the bottom half). A bony bridge fastens the two sections together. Both the carapace and the plastron are made of bone and scutes. The carapace consists of 50 to 60 rib and back bones while the plastron is a fusion of the clavicle and rib bones. The bones are flattened into plates that fuse together.

Scutes form designs on a turtle's shell specific to each species 

The bone contains a blood and nerve supply and is protected by scutes. The scutes are overlapping pieces of keratin, the same material in other reptile scales and our fingernails. Even though the scutes provide protection, a turtle can still feel pain and pressure through its shell. 

Turtles are capable of repairing damage to their shell if it isn’t too extensive--like being run over by a car. The blood vessels in the bone provide protein and calcium for the bone to regrow and reshape itself. 

Most turtles have approximately 38 scutes protecting the carapace and 12 to 14 scutes on the plastron. A turtle has the same number of scutes throughout its life. Since the shell is part of the turtle’s skeleton, it grows with the turtle. Just as a baby’s skull plates are not fused at birth, a baby turtle’s bone plates don’t fuse together until it has grown to its maximum size. 

As the bone plates grow, the scutes also have to grow to cover the bone. Some turtles, such as wood turtles, enlarge the diameter of the scutes by adding layers of keratin which creates “growth rings”. 

Unlike trees, the growth rings are not completely reliable for determining age because more than one ring can grow a year and older rings can be worn down and be hard to distinguish. 

Other turtles shed the old, smaller scutes as they are replaced by larger ones from underneath. The old scutes often fall off while basking in the sun on a warm summer day because the sun’s warmth dries out the old scutes while also warming the cold-blooded turtle. 

Note: Published in the Bonners Ferry Herald on Dec. 20, 2012. 

Conks begin recycling trees before they’re dead

High in a birch tree, a large conk grows on the trunk--a sure sign the birch is decaying from the inside out. Conks, also known as shelf fungi or bracket fungi, are an external indicator that a tree may be rotten inside. 

Bacteria and fungi both can cause decay, but fungi are more obvious, especially conks. While conks grow in a variety of shapes and colors, most assume a shelf or bracket shape with a woody or leathery top. 

Named because of their shape, shelf or bracket fungi are also called conks

The conk visible on a tree trunk is only a small portion of the entire fungus. Actually, the conk is the reproductive part of the fungus, roughly comparable to a flower or cone. 

What is not visible is the main body of the conk which is composed of slender filaments that are collectively called mycelium. The filaments, called hyphae, penetrate the substrate in which they grow, in this case wood, to absorb nutrients. 

Fungi have to obtain food by absorption because they lack roots, stems, leaves and chlorophyll, which is why they are a fungus and not a plant. 

As the mycelium absorbs nutrients in the wood, it decomposes the wood in the process. Therefore, shelf fungi are considered a major wood rotting fungus that cannot be killed once a tree is infected.

The rot caused by conks attacks the top of the tree, the heartwood inside and the base of the stem. Conks can either cause brown rot or white rot. 

Brown rot makes the wood dry, brittle and darker than the original wood. This is because the fungus cannot break down the lignin in the cell walls. Lignin is a reddish-brown molecule that makes the cells stronger and waterproof. 

On the other hand, white rot makes the wood soft, spongy and whiter than the original wood. While white rot attacks both the lignin and cellulose (the molecules in paper), the rotted wood is white because the fungus leaves the cellulose behind. 

Only after several years of decay by the mycelium does a conk form. Unlike familiar mushrooms that produce new reproductive parts every year (such as morels), a conk builds upon itself every year by adding a new layer. Each layer has pores on the underside of the ‘shelf’ that are vertically orientated. If a tree leans as it decays, the conk will grow new pores that are vertical the next year.

A second conk grows out of an older conk to keep the pores vertical

Vertical pores are important because the spores produced within the pores have to drop down the pore into the air without sticking to the sides. These spores then travel via air currents and ideally find a tree to establish itself in. 

Since the chance of landing in an ideal location is slim, conks compensate by producing an abundance of spores. A large conk can release 30 billion spores a day for a period of six months--that’s five trillion spores released annually. 

These spores can establish themselves on growing trees, fallen trees on the forest floor or any tree that is moist. 

Without fungi, the forest floor would be littered with trees from hundreds of years because fungi are important recyclers. Fungi break down woody debris through rot which recycles nutrients back into the soil. The nutrient-rich soil then supports the growth of a tree in which a shelf fungus will establish itself someday. 

Note: Published in the Bonners Ferry Herald on Dec. 13, 2012. 

Mountains moved to form the Purcell Trench

The Kootenai Valley and the Selkirk, Purcell and Cabinet Mountains are the main geographic features in Boundary County. One geologic feature is responsible for how we see them today--the Purcell Trench. 

The Purcell Trench is the valley structure between the Selkirk Mountains and the Cabinet and Purcell Mountains. The Purcell Trench extends beyond Boundary County. The southern edge is in Rathdrum Prairie, though south of Sandpoint it is harder to distinguish. The Purcell Trench also extends north into British Columbia where it eventually merges with the Rocky Mountain Trench.

From atop Clifty Mountain (in the Cabinets), the Purcell Trench is visible into Canada

Valleys can be made by erosion (water or glaciers) or by an underlying geologic structure. The Purcell Trench is too long, wide and straight to have been formed by erosion and, therefore, it is a result of a major bedrock structure. 

One bedrock structure responsible for creating valleys is a fault. The basin and range mountains in Nevada formed because of faulting. A fault is a fracture in rock where sliding occurs (both sides don’t have to move, often it is one piece moving against the other stationary side). The San Andreas fault in California is one example. 

There has to be a reason for rock to move and in the case of the Purcell Trench  it was because this area was being stretched. As one can imagine, rock isn’t a likely candidate for stretching, so what happens is faulting. Faulting releases the tension built up by stretching. 

Purcell Trench south as viewed from Tungsten Mountain in the Purcells

What caused the stretching? Intruding magma. Long before the ice ages, a large mass of granitic magma was rising in the Earth’s crust under the present day Selkirk Mountains. As the giant bubble of magma neared the surface, it weakened the crust by stretching it. 

The giant bubble of granitic magma cooled before it reached the surface, creating a giant granite batholith. But the tension was still there from the stretching. 

Consider that the granite cooled miles below the surface and now is exposed in the Selkirk Mountains. Something had to move to make the granite visible, it wasn’t initially eroded away. 

Exposed granite in the Selkirks cooled several miles below the earth's surface

Quite a bit of imagination is necessary to envision what happened. The rock that is now the Cabinet and Purcell Mountains was once on top of where the Selkirk Mountains are located. When the magma intruded, it bulged up the overlying rock, much like a bubble forming in pizza crust. To release the tension, a fault formed along the current eastern front of the Selkirk Mountains. Over millions of years the rock on top (the current Purcell and Cabinet Mountains) slowly slid down the fault in an easterly direction into their current position, leaving an open trench behind. That open trench is now called the Purcell Trench.

Looking east across the Purcell Trench at the Purcell Mountains

As the overlying rock slide off to the east, the granite batholith was exposed. 

The rocks around the fault zone are under tremendous pressure as the faulting occurs, which results in folding and metamorphosing the rocks. Rocks along the eastern front of the Selkirk Mountains may have a shiny look to them, with all the crystals aligned in one direction--these rocks were altered by the heat and pressure in the fault zone. 

Have you taken a close look at the rock cut where the Myrtle Creek Road takes off from the West Side Road? This rock was folded deep in the crust along the fault zone as the Purcell Trench was being formed. 

Sediment has filled the Purcell Trench (looking west at the Selkirk Mountains)

The Purcell Trench doesn’t look the same today as it did after it was initially created. Glaciers, lakes and rivers have scoured, eroded and deposited sediment to create the valley we know today as the Kootenai Valley.

Note: Published in the Bonners Ferry Herald on Dec. 6, 2012.

Muskrats, beavers similar but not related

Muskrats and beavers are similar in many ways which is surprising since they aren’t even close relatives. Muskrats are more closely related to voles and lemmings than to beavers. 

Both are semiaquatic rodents that slap their tails when alarmed. However, a beaver’s tail is flat like a paddle and a muskrat’s tail is like a rat tail--scaly and nearly hairless. 

Muskrats are more buoyant than beavers, so more of their body is visible when swimming

Both are able to swim underwater for over 15 minutes and also feed underwater. Muskrats and beavers can both close their lips behind their incisor teeth to harvest food underwater but they feed on different food. Muskrats eat aquatic plants such as cattails and bulrush, including the shoots, bulbs, roots, tubers and leaves. They will also eat the occasional small fish, snail or turtle. Beavers eat bark, twigs, leaves, roots and green vegetation, which can include sedges, grasses and pond lilies. 

Like beavers, muskrats build lodges except that their lodges are made of cattails and sedges, not sticks. Muskrats build in shallow water and access the nest chambers via underwater tunnels like beavers. A muskrat lodge is smaller than a beaver lodge with a diameter of six to eight feet at the base. 

Muskrats also excavate burrows in shoreline banks like beavers that live in rivers. Muskrats prefer denning in banks than living in lodges if conditions allow possibly because less maintenance is needed and they are cooler in the summer. Unlike beavers whose den entrances are underwater, a muskrat’s den entrance can be above or below water. 

Muskrat lodges can often be found in beaver ponds because beaver dams increase habitat for muskrats by flooding new areas. They are able to occupy the same habitat because there is no apparent competition for food. Muskrats are more commonly found in shallow marshes with abundant cattails verses wooded areas that beavers prefer. 

A muskrat has a small home range compared to a beaver, often less than 200 feet in diameter, which is roughly half a football field. Depending on the location a beaver can have a home range of half a mile. 

Within that home range, muskrats build a lodge and feeding shelters (sometimes referred to as “push-ups”). During the winter, muskrats build feeding shelters on the ice as a place to feed, rest and warm up. The shelters are constructed by the muskrat pushing various types of debris up through a hole in the ice until it forms a heap that is large enough to include a cavity for the muskrat to sit. When the shelter becomes covered with snow, there is enough insulation to keep the hole in the ice open. 

The feeding shelters are built within the dive limits of the muskrat, which is longer in the winter because their oxygen-storing capacity increases by 42 percent. This allows the muskrat more access to submerged vegetation in the winter. Beavers, on the other hand, build a raft of wood near their lodge to feed on during the winter so they don’t have to actively forage. 

In the warmer months when both are foraging, it may be hard to see them since they are both nocturnal. Both can be active during the day, especially muskrats on rainy, overcast days, but they prefer to be nocturnal to stay hidden from predators. 

When beavers swim, sometimes only their head is visible

Once spotted, there are two major differences that distinguish the two. When swimming a beaver has one hump consisting of its head, neck and upper back or just its head. Whereas a muskrat while swimming has two or three separate humps--its head, its upper back and sometimes its tail. 

The other difference is size. A muskrat weighs roughly two-and-a-half pounds, while a beaver weighs between 35 to 70 pounds. 

Note: Published in the Bonners Ferry Herald on Nov. 29, 2012. 

Feast or famine for animals in the winter

Last weekend, the chickadees and nuthatches finally found the two bird feeders I filled several weeks ago. For birds, finding a full feeder is like finding a Thanksgiving feast. 

Surviving winter is feast or famine for animals that don’t migrate or hibernate. Plentiful insects, fruits and green vegetation are gone or hard to find. Once an animal finds a feast, it will frequently come back, eat it all at once or cache it away for times of famine. 

The chickadees and nuthatches don’t stay at my feeder all day, but come in waves. They make their rounds between known food sources--maybe even the neighbor’s bird feeders. Before they found my feeders, they fed on the cones in the Douglas-fir trees in the yard every morning. 

Some flocks of birds feed almost exclusively on seed crops in the winter which makes their movements highly irregular. Redpolls and goldfinches fly between birch stands to feed on small birch seeds. Flocks of crossbills seek out spruce and pine trees to feast on the seeds that their bills are specifically adapted to pry out of the cones.

Flock of pine grosbeaks on cone-laden tree

Hemlocks are the tree of choice for pine siskins whose long, thin bills reach under the bracts of hemlock cones. Waxwings travel in flocks and descend upon berry-laden trees or shrubs and feast until every last berry is gone. 

Birds such as waxwings, redpolls and grosbeaks will fly out of their typical range in search of seeds or berries if there is a crop failure in their regular range--which is one way to avoid famine in the winter. 

Gray Jay

Another way animals avoid famine is to cache food when it is abundant. Only a small percentage of species worldwide cache food for winter. Gray jays cache food all year long by wadding food into a ball, coating it with saliva and wedging it under tree bark. As long as they cache enough food, their excellent memory prevents them from famine in the winter. 

Living in mountain talus slopes, the resourceful pika makes hay in the summer by drying grasses and stockpiling it deep within the rocks where snow can’t reach it during the winter. 

Pika collecting vegetation to dry

Red squirrels are notorious for their caches of cones, called middens, scattered throughout the forest. Unlike the mushrooms that squirrels harvest and dry in the crotch of tree branches, they prefer to keep the cones moist. Dry cones are less palatable, so the cool, damp depths of middens are perfect for storing cones.

Squirrel midden

A few other rodents that stockpile seeds for winter are deer mice, pocket mice and chipmunks. A larger rodent, the beaver, stockpiles trees underwater to feast on all winter. 

Fewer animals stockpile meat for winter. Saw-whet and great horned owls create their own frozen dinners by killing and stockpiling mice. Then to eat a mouse, the owl sits on it like it is incubating an egg until the mouse is thawed enough to tear apart and eat. 

Then there are those animals that take advantage of other species caches to survive. Elk and deer feast on hay bales in fields and barns, turkeys feed on grain spilled next to grain bins, and birds feast on the cache of sunflower seeds hanging outside my window.

Note: Published in the Bonners Ferry Herald on Nov. 21, 2012. 

Leonid meteor shower peaks this weekend

Shooting stars are always exciting to see. Sometimes I only see them out of the corner of my eye, other times I’m lucky enough to be looking at the right part of the sky at the right time. 

Star trails with satellite crossing sky

Despite resemblance in brightness and size, shooting stars are not stars streaking through the sky but instead are meteors. Meteors have nothing to do with stars. Meteors are bits of interplanetary rock or debris that have fallen or broken off comets or asteroids and enter Earth’s atmosphere. Outside of Earth’s atmosphere, these rocks are called meteoroids.

Most meteors are smaller than a garden pea. Larger meteors do exist but they are less common. Meteors that are barely visible to the naked eye are usually only 0.55 millimeters in diameter--that’s smaller than a grain of rice!

When a meteor streaks across the sky, we aren’t seeing the meteor itself. We see the light emitted from reactions between the friction of the rapidly moving meteor with the gases in the atmosphere.   

Big Dipper

Meteoroids enter the atmosphere at tremendous speeds--between 25,000 to 160,000 miles per hour. They quickly ignite from searing friction with the atmosphere. The outer layer of the meteor is vaporized and stripped away due to high speed collisions with air molecules. 

The composition of a meteor and the colliding air molecules are responsible for a meteor’s color. Since the source of meteors varies, the elements within the rock or debris varies. When vaporized, each element emits a signature color. Meteors containing sodium will be orange-yellow, iron will be yellow, magnesium will be blue-green, nickel will be green, and ionized calcium will be violet. When a meteor appears red, the reactions of the atmospheric nitrogen and oxygen atoms are overpowering the reactions of the elements in the meteor. 

A meteor’s velocity can also impact its color and brightness. Slow meteors tend to be red or orange while fast meteors are frequently blue. Faster meteors are also brighter. 

Watching for meteors provides a chance to look at the stars

Most meteors only streak across the sky for a short time before they burn up in the atmosphere, typically between 60 to 80 miles above the Earth’s surface. If a meteor does make it to the Earth’s surface, it is called a meteorite. 

Interestingly, most meteorites tend to be from slow meteors. Nearly all meteorites originate from astroids but astroid-originated meteors only comprise five percent of the meteor population. The other 95 percent of meteors originate from comets and they rarely make it to the Earth’s surface. 

Meteoroids originating from astroids are created when something collides with the astroid and a piece is chipped off. These meteoroids typically create the sporadic meteors not associated with meteor showers. 

Comet-originated meteors are the ones seen during meteor showers. As a comet orbits around the sun, the heat from the sun causes the comet’s outer layer to vaporize and particles to “fall off” in the form of comet dust. 

Always a chance of seeing the unexpected

If the comet’s path crosses Earth’s orbit, then a meteor shower will occur when Earth passes through the comet dust every year. Since Earth encounters the comet dust at the same time every year, meteors seem to radiate from a specific constellation in the sky every time. Meteor showers receive their name by the constellation they radiate from. For example, the Leonid meteor shower radiates from the constellation Leo. 

November is when Earth passes through the comet dust that creates the Leonid meteor shower. The Leonid shower begins on Nov. 13 and ends on Nov. 21, with the peak around Nov. 17 or 18. At the peak, up to 10 meteors per hour will be visible. However, the Leonid meteor shower is cyclic like sunspots and has a cyclic peak every 33 years that is associated with the return of its parent comet into the inner solar system. During this cyclic peak, hundreds to thousands of meteors can be visible every hour--but that peak won’t be until around 2028. 

Note: Published in the Bonners Ferry Herald on Nov. 15, 2012. 

Sign Posts of the Forest

Wandering through the woods, I found a tree with claw marks scratched in the bark at eye-level and black hair stuck to once oozing sap. The culprit--most likely a black bear sometime this summer. 

Black bear claw marks and sapsucker holes

After I found the claw marks, I started to look for more animal sign on trees. On the same tree right next to the claw marks, were lines of square holes drilled into the bark--a sapsucker. True to their name, sapsuckers drill the holes to allow sap to ooze out so they can lap it up. 

Sapsuckers drill holes for sap

Sap is also the motive for black bears to peel the bark off the lower portion of trees, sometimes even girdling the tree. On the same wander in the woods, almost every larch tree for a few hundred yards had a section of bark removed from the base. Black bears go after the sweet tasting sap in spring and early summer and signs of their destruction last for the life of the tree. 

A black bear girdled this larch tree by peeling off the bark for the sap

Likewise, one single climb up an aspen tree by a black bear may be seen for the entire life of the tree since the claw marks scratched into the soft, smooth bark can become scabbed over. 

Aspen trees may also have rough, blackened trucks to the height an elk can reach. Elk like to gnaw on the aspen trees in winter, which causes the tree to scab over. 

Gnawing on trees, especially during the winter, is a habit on many animals and key to their survival. Porcupines gnaw large patches of bark off tree trunks and eat the bark off twigs. Their gnawed areas have neat edges, irregular outlines and numerous small toothmarks, which help distinguish them from elk or moose sign. 

Closer to the ground, snowshoe hares will feed on the bark of trees. However, when they feed on the cambium, they gnaw far beyond the bark into the woody center unlike other animals. 

Then there is the gnawing champion--the beaver--who gnaws through an entire tree trunk to fell a tree. In addition to eating the bark and wood, beavers need to constantly gnaw on trees to wear down their continuously growing teeth. 

Beaver sign

Instead of gnawing, woodpeckers drill into trees to find insects to eat or to excavate a nest cavity. Some of these sought after insects leave their own sign. Ever notice the insect trails on the inside of bark or the outer edge of wood when peeling the bark off for firewood? Birds will debark a section of tree to access these insects, such as bark beetles, and will expose the insect’s trails.

Woodpeckers hammered this tree for insects

Insect trails in wood

Some tree signs aren’t related to food. A medium-sized sapling with its bark shredded and small limbs broken reveals the presence of an elk or deer rubbing or thrashing its antlers on the tree during the rut. 

A deer rubbed the branches off this sapling

While not as obvious as elk or deer, bears will rub against a tree to remove their winter coat or unwanted parasites, often leaving behind hairs in sap or on bark. They need a back scratch too!

More animals than mentioned here let their presence be known, whether purposely or not, on sign posts in the forest. We even leave our sign on trees, in the form of trail blazes, so that we can find our way through the forest.  

Note: Published in the Bonners Ferry Herald on Nov. 8, 2012. 

Autumn reveals hidden hornet nests

As the yellow leaves of autumn drop from trees, they often reveal hidden treasures such as bird nests and less desirable wasp nests. The gray, papery football- to basketball-sized nests normally hidden by leaves are home to bald-faced hornets during the warmer months. Other paper wasps such as yellowjackets also create paper nests in varying shapes and sizes. Despite their name, bald-faced hornets are members of the yellowjacket family.

A bald-faced hornet nest that once was hidden by leaves

These visible nests in late fall and winter are the result of a summer’s worth of work by many hornets. The entire nest is built from wood fibers that each hornet has gathered, chewed and mixed with salvia in their mouth to form a soft wood pulp. The varying colors on the outside of the nest (called the envelope) result from different sources of wood fibers, which can include weathered and rotting wood, fence posts, dead plants, cardboard or newspaper. 

Varying colors a result of different sources of wood fibers

The queen bee initiates nest building by adhering wood pulp to a structure, such as a tree branch, that will hold the nest, typically at least three feet off the ground. Then the queen starts building the nest with a horizontal layer of hexagonal cells on the inside and a papery, protective envelope on the outside to the size of a golf ball. 

In those first cells, the queen will lay eggs that will become adult workers. Upon hatching and pupating into adults, the workers will take over the nest building and feeding the larvae while the queen solely lays more eggs in the cells they create. During the height of production a nest may hold up to 700 hornets. 

Inside of a hornet's nest

The workers keep building the nest one mouthful at a time until it is roughly football or basketball size. They will create several horizontal layers of cells on the inside and a one-to-two inch multi-layered envelope on the outside while leaving a small, round hole near the bottom for an entrance. 

Workers leave a small hole at the bottom for an entrance

Two sizes of hexagonal cells are created: small and large. The majority of the cells will be small and will be utilized up to three times during the summer to raise worker hornets. Starting in the fall, single-use larger cells will be constructed to raise the future queen hornets and the males (drones) that will mate with the newly hatched queens. 

Mated queen hornets are the only ones to overwinter--the remainder die off when the temperature drops below freezing, including the reigning queen. Despite the thick outer envelope on the nest that keeps the hornets warm in the spring and fall and cool in the summer, it isn’t enough protection for a new queen in the winter. Instead, she will spend the winter in a crevice under tree bark, in a tree stump, behind house siding or in the eaves of a house. Come spring, the new queen will begin her own nest since bald-faced hornets do not reuse nests. 

Bald-faced hornets still occupying a deteriorating nest in late autumn

The abandoned nests don’t go unused--spiders and other insects will seek shelter in the nests during winter. However, insect-seeking birds easily hone in on the exposed hornet nests dangling in bare trees and will readily shred the nests looking for slumbering insects, which truly makes the nests hidden treasures. 

Note: Published in the Bonners Ferry Herald on November 1, 2012.