Praying mantis captures food with quick reflexes, fatal grip

Insects range from beautiful butterflies to everyday ants to creepy spiders and everything in between. Praying mantids are in-between with their strange looks and fatal forelegs.

A praying mantis specimen

Mantids are not as common as ants, grasshoppers or spiders. Usually, you will accidentally find them. Praying mantids are typically green or brown and blend in well with their surroundings. 

Their remarkable camouflage allows them to sit and wait for prey and helps them avoid being prey. A mantis will remain motionless while waiting for prey to pass by. Sometimes, they will gently rock side to side as if swaying in a breeze. Mantids will eat moths, crickets, grasshoppers, flies and even each other. 

As it waits, the mantis holds its forelegs folded against its prothorax in preparation to snatch an insect. This pose suggests an attitude of prayer and is how the praying mantis received its name. 

A mantis can swivel its head 180 degrees, giving it a wide field of vision. Its two compound eyes and three single eyes between the two eyes allows it to gauge the distance of moving objects up to 60 feet away. 

If the insect is within range, the mantis will slowly swivel its head and prothorax in the insect’s direction and will then quickly snatch the insect with its spined forelegs. 

Spiny forelegs and triangular head characterize the praying mantis

Some mantids are fast enough to snatch a passing fly or flying insect out of the air. However, if an insect remains motionless, a mantis will not recognize it as prey and may walk past it or even over it without responding. 

Once the insect is in the mantid’s pincer-like grip, the mantis begins to devour the insect alive because its strong grip prevents the prey from escaping. 

When mantids are on the other end of the food chain, they have defensive strategies to survive. Birds, lizards, insectivorous mammals, bats and spiders eat mantids. To avoid predators, mantids can quickly run away, launch into flight or expose bright-colored markings. If those strategies don’t work and the predator approaches too closely, the mantis will immediately strike with its spined forelegs (even towards a curious person). 

If picked up, the mantis will bend its forelegs backwards over its prothorax and utilize its spines to ensure it is dropped or held more carefully. 

If the mantid is only being held by a mid- or hind-leg, it will sacrifice it to escape, just like western skinks do with their tails. The mantis can contract a special muscle at the base of its leg to release it while it pulls away. If the mantid is young, the leg will grow back. A mantid will not sacrifice its front legs because without front legs it cannot catch food. 

Mantids are one of those species that will eat their own kind. Female adults will eat other female’s young and in some subspecies, the female with eat the male before, during or after mating. 

The spiny forelegs and triangular head are the two identifying characteristics of the strange-looking praying mantis. If you find one and want a closer look, be careful of the spiny forelegs.

Note: Reprinted by request. Originally printed in the Bonners Ferry Herald on November 11, 2010.

Color can be deceiving when it comes to bears

After spotting a bear in the basin below Goat Mountain on the State Line, I pull out my binoculars to take a closer look. Even though the bear is black, I can’t assume it is a black bear since grizzly bears can be black and this is both grizzly and black bear country. I try to glimpse a profile view of its face, shoulders and rump as it wanders through the trees. These physical characteristics are the best means of identifying a bear from a distance. 

A black bear has a long, straight profile from its forehead to nose tip while a grizzly bear has a concave or dish-shaped profile from between its eyes to the end of its nose. These facial characteristics make a black bear’s face appear round and a grizzly bear’s face appear broad. 

A family of black bears identified by the straight-profile face of the mother bear

When looking at the shoulders, grizzly bears have a distinctive shoulder hump created by their massive shoulder muscles used for digging. The shoulder hump is the highest point on a grizzly bear when it is standing on all fours. Black bears lack a shoulder hump so their highest point while on all fours is either their rump or middle of their back. 

The distinctive shoulder hump of a grizzly bear can be seen from a distance

If the bear is closer, another identifying characteristic is the ears. Grizzly bears have smaller, rounder ears while black bears have larger, longer, more pointed ears. 

Black bears have larger, longer, more pointed ears than grizzly bears

If the bear is extremely close, take a look at the claws. A black bear’s short (less than two inches long), sharply-curved claws help them tear into rotten logs in search of insects and climb trees to escape predators. While the longer (two- to four- inches), gently-curved claws of a grizzly bear are better adapted for digging roots and excavating winter dens. Despite the differences, black bears still dig and grizzly bears can climb trees.

The claws can also be helpful in identifying the tracks of both bears. Since the grizzly bear’s claws are longer, the claw marks will be farther away from the toe marks than the black bear’s short claws. 

Another difference in the tracks is the relation of the toes to the pad. When a straight edge is aligned with the front of the pad and the rear of an outside toe on either side of the front track, a grizzly bear’s toes will all be in front of the straight edge, whereas the opposite outside toe on a black bear’s track will be partially behind the straight edge. This technique only works on the front track which is smaller and more square than the rear track. 

Grizzly or black bear tracks? (Southeast Alaska)

The main thing to remember when trying to determine a black bear from a grizzly bear is to not identify the bear based on color. Even though they are called black bears, they can also be brown, cinnamon, blonde or a combination of light and dark colors. Likewise, not all grizzly bears are brown, they can range from black to blonde and even white (such as the spirit bears in western British Columbia).

Grizzly or black bear? (Glacier National Park, Montana)

The bear below Goat Mountain wandered into a meadow long enough for me to see the straight face and lack of a shoulder hump, which confirmed that this black-colored bear was indeed a black bear.  

Note: Published in the Bonners Ferry Herald on July 19, 2012. 

Looking upstream to Libby Dam and Lake Koocanusa

Forty years after being completed (1972), Libby Dam is still fulfilling its mission of flood control on the Kootenai River. The Kootenai River is the third largest tributary of the Columbia River and over 8,900 square miles drain into Lake Koocanusa. With June precipitation being more than 300 percent of normal, the dam has helped minimize the flooding in Bonners Ferry but cannot eliminate it all. 

The record levels of rainfall prompted the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers to temporarily raise the maximum elevation of full pool by one foot and then another foot, and luckily the peak level did not exceed the first additional foot. One foot may not seem like much, but considering Lake Koocanusa is 90 miles long, the gallons add up quickly. At normal full pool elevation of 2459 feet (total depth of 370 feet), Lake Koocanusa holds 5,809,000 acrefeet of water (an acrefoot of water covers 1 acre to the depth of 1 foot and equals 325,804 gallons)--that is approximately 1.89 trillion gallons. Adding one foot to the 46,500 acres that full pool covers means an additional 15 billion gallons of storage space. 

Normally water only exits the reservoir through the generators so electricity can be generated. However, in emergency situations, such as this year, water is released through two spillways and three sluiceways because more water is entering the reservoir than can be passed through the generators without exceeding full pool. 

Libby Dam with spillways open

The spillways release water from the top of the reservoir and look like waterfalls flowing over the front of the dam. The sluiceways release water from the bottom of the reservoir. The spillways are 48 feet wide and 56 feet high and at full capacity water flows through at 1.2 million gallons per second--eight times greater than Niagara Falls which has a normal flow of 150,000 gallons per second. A stilling basin below the spillways and sluiceways helps slow the water’s velocity to prevent downstream erosion. 

In addition to spillways and sluiceways, Libby Dam was constructed with other emergency situations in mind. Although uncommon in our area, earthquakes can occur and the Libby Dam is built to withstand an earthquake up to 6.5 on the Richter scale. If structural damage does occur, the entire dam will not fail. Libby Dam is composed of 47 individual dams (or monolith sections) which act independently to hold back the water in the reservoir. The vertical lines on the front of the dam indicate the separate monoliths. If one monolith section fails, the adjacent sections are constructed to maintain their strength. 

The profile of Libby Dam is a right triangle

The sheer amount of concrete in Libby Dam holds back the water in Lake Koocanusa, not the shape of the dam. Over 7.6 millions tons of concrete were used in the construction of Libby Dam. Some dams are curved like Hungry Horse Dam near Kalispell, but Libby Dam is straight across the valley. In a cross section, Libby Dam is shaped like a right triangle with the base being 310 feet wide and the crest being 54 feet wide. At 422 feet tall and more than half-a-mile long, there is a lot more to Libby Dam than meets the eye. 

Note: Published in the Bonners Ferry Herald on July 12, 2012. 

No escaping the annoying buzz of mosquitos

Lying under the window at night I can hear the constant buzz of mosquitos swarming on the other side of the window screen. Almost asleep I hear the buzz become louder and louder until it is next to my ear. I slap the side of my head but miss--I won’t be falling asleep until I stop that annoying buzz. 

On the other side of the screen

While in Bettles, Alaska this time of year, I have a nightly ritual of going around the house and killing all the mosquitos I can find--the other night there were 24 in the bedroom alone. There is satisfaction in zapping a mosquito with one of those yellow tennis racket-looking contraptions--especially when they pop and smoke. I don’t consider it cruel because their annoying buzz has kept me up many nights as they lurk just beyond my grasp. 

The arctic tundra seems to be the ideal breeding ground for mosquitos. All mosquitos need is water, warmth and blood to thrive. Water is everywhere--from lakes to stagnant water in depressions smaller than a soup bowl. Mosquitoes don’t need much water and it doesn’t have to exist for long. A mosquito egg can hatch into larvae in as little as 48 hours and develop into an adult in four to seven days. 

Did you forget about that old tire behind the shed that filled with water during the last rainstorm? It won’t be long before a female mosquito lays eggs there and not just a few eggs, a female can lay between 100 and 300 eggs at a time. All the female needs is a blood meal to produce the eggs. Most mosquitos will stay within one mile of their hatching site but some will range up to 20 miles. 

As for warmth, the midnight sun rarely lets the temperature drop below 50 degrees Fahrenheit, which is perfect for mosquitoes. Since mosquitos are cold-blooded, they thrive in warmer temperatures. They function best around 80 degrees, become lethargic around 60 degrees and are mostly inactive below 50 degrees. 

Though they still seem to find me quickly in the morning when the temperature is hovering in the 50’s. The heat and carbon dioxide my body emits is easily detected by mosquitos. Since mosquitos can see in infrared, they can see a warm human body against a background of cooler trees and make a bee-line for it. They can also smell the carbon dioxide I exhale up to 100 feet away! 

Spend a few minutes outside and the mosquitos will find you

There is no escaping mosquitos--not for humans, not for any animal. While it may seem mosquitos gravitate towards people, some species of mosquitos actually prefer cows, horses, dogs, squirrels, birds and even frogs. Unfortunately mosquitos don’t have a main predator, such as lynx with snowshoe hares, instead they are a minor food source for numerous species, such as birds, fish, bats and other insects like dragonflies. Not even the dozens of swallows nesting around the airport can eat enough of them to put a dent in the population. 

With a rapid reproduction rate and a lifespan ranging from three to 100 days, mosquitos can easily adapt to the changing conditions of the seasons. Some mosquito eggs can lie dormant for up to five years waiting for water to refill a depression. And when cold weather strikes, mosquitos are capable of overwintering in any life stage (depending on the species). No matter what conditions prevail during the summer, mosquitos will be ready to annoy you with their buzz. 

Note: Published in the Bonners Ferry Herald on July 5, 2012.

Orchids aren’t just tropical flowers, they also grow in Idaho and Alaska

Wandering through the woods looking for spring flowers a few years ago, I stumbled across a small pinkish-purple flower on a stem no more than eight inches high. I crouched down and inspected it so I could identify it at home. To my surprise, that small flower was an eastern fairy slipper--an orchid.

Eastern Fairy Slipper

At the time I had no idea that orchids grew outside the tropics, especially north Idaho. And to my surprise this summer I found an orchid growing in Bettles, Alaska--above the Arctic Circle. There are over 30,000 species of orchids worldwide and over 200 of those species grow wild in North America. Amazingly, twenty-five species even grow in Alaska. 

Northern Lady Slipper (also known as Sparrow's Egg Lady's  Slipper) growing in Bettles, Alaska

Not all the orchids found in Idaho are as big and showy as the ones in the tropics, but they can be equally impressive. The mountain lady’s slipper was the second orchid I found in north Idaho and I was amazed at its beauty. The flower’s shape reminded me of the pink lady slippers in northern Minnesota that I saw as a kid (back then I didn’t know lady slippers were orchids). 

Mountain Lady's Slipper

The key to identifying a flower as an orchid is the combination of three sepals and three petals. Sepals are modified leaves on the outer ring of a flower, often the green part at the base of the flower. Orchids tend to have modified sepals that can resemble petals because of their coloration and shape. On the eastern fairy slipper, the sepals are pinkish-purple. On the mountain lady’s slipper the sepals (of which two are fused together) and two petals are copper-colored, long and twisted. 

The three petals can be highly modified or even joined together. On the mountain lady’s slipper, the lower petal (also called the lip) forms a pouch that resembles a slipper (hence the name). Of all the orchid’s petals, the lip is generally larger, colored differently, more conspicuously colored, or shaped differently in the form of a lobe, fork, pouch or spur. 

Modified petals on the western fairy slipper form a pouch (or slipper)

One family of orchids characterized by a spurred lip is the rein-orchids. I’ve found an Alaska rein-orchid in north Idaho and didn’t believe it was an orchid at first. The multitude of tiny flowers grew upward along the stem and they seemed too small to be orchids, but they were because of the three sepals and three petals. 

Alaska Rein-Orchid growing near Bonners Ferry, Idaho

Coralroots are another unusual type of orchid because they lack chlorophyll (and the associated green color) and, therefore, are yellow, purple or brownish. Because they lack chlorophyll for food production, coralroots are saprophytic, meaning they derive nutrients from decaying organic matter and the associated soil fungi. This dependency often results in coralroots being abundant in one area of the forest one year and completely absent the next if all the nutrients are gone. 

Spotted coralroot before flowers emerge

Most orchids in Idaho rely on soil fungi for germination and growth because orchid seeds lack the food reserves found in ordinary seeds. The microscopic seeds rely on the fungi for nutrients but the seeds and plants also need certain soil moisture and sunlight/shade conditions. Because of the specific requirements needed for orchids to survive, finding an orchid can be extremely rewarding, whether in Alaska or Idaho. 

Note: Published in the Bonners Ferry Herald on June 28, 2012. 

Stealthy predator relies on several tactics to capture prey

Out of the corner of my eye I noticed a big bump on a spruce limb three-quarters up a tree that seemed out of place. I stopped biking and realized the bump was an owl roosting on the limb. As I slowly walked closer, I realized the owl was a northern hawk owl because of its hawk-like resemblance. 

Northern Hawk Owl near Bettles, Alaska

Owls rely on their drab appearance to blend in to their surroundings, especially when roosting. An owl’s drab gray, brown and buff coloration along with streaks and striations help camouflage it with tree trunks and the dappled shade of underbrush. 

Most owls need this camouflage because they roost during the day and are active at night. However, owls can be active during the day too--these owls are considered diurnal, such as the northern pygmy-owl. Owls only active at night, such as barred owls, are considered nocturnal. Owls that are active in the early morning and/or late evening hours, such as great horned owls, are considered crepuscular. 

The time of day when an owl is active depends on when its prey is the most active. Owls prey on small mammals, small birds (including smaller owls), amphibians, reptiles and invertebrates. The great horned owl is the only predator that preys on skunks regularly and they also catch fish in shallow water. 

Some rodents are most active under the cover of darkness but owls are equipped to outsmart them. An owl’s night vision is thought to be the best in the animal kingdom. Their large eyes allow them to collect more light--so much that they can see objects in one-tenth to one one-hundredth the amount of light we would need to see the same object. Their eyes are so large that they cannot even move in the sockets. To compensate for this owls can swivel their head within a 270 degree range. 

Diurnal owls rely mostly on their eyesight to find prey but nocturnal owls rely mostly on their hearing. Great gray owls can detect a vole 60 feet away under 18 inches of snow by hearing alone. Owls are believed to have the most accurate hearing in the animal kingdom. The ear tufts on owls have nothing to do with hearing, they help communicate mood and help break up the outline of the owl’s head for camouflage purposes. 

The characteristic facial disc is one of the reasons owls can hear extremely well. The facial disc acts like a satellite dish and guides sounds towards the ear openings on the outer rim of the disc. On some owls these ear openings are not symmetrical like on humans but asymmetrical with the right ear opening higher than the left ear opening. This allows the owl to better pinpoint a sound by rotating its head until the sound reaches both ear openings at the same time. 

A great horned owl next to its skeleton in the Kootenai National Wildlife Refuge Education Barn

Another reason owls are stealthy predators is their capability of silent flight. Some birds, like ravens, can be heard above the tree tops, but not owls. Their flight feathers have tiny serrations on the leading edge that muffles the sound of air flowing over the wing. 

Once an owl silently stalks and then captures its prey with its sharp talons, the owl will fly to a perch and swallow its meal--often whole. The non-digestible parts (fur, feathers, bones) are regurgitated six to twelve hours later in the form of a compact, oval owl pellet. Finding multiple owl pellets under a tree may be evidence of an owl’s favorite perch and may reveal a well-camouflaged owl roosting next to the tree trunk. 

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

First day of summer may be the longest but not the hottest

The stars haven’t made their nightly appearance in Bettles, Alaska since mid-April when twilight overtook the darkness of night. Since then, the amount of daylight has been increasing at such a rapid pace that all I ever see is daylight--even at two in the morning. 

In the Land of the Midnight Sun (as much of Alaska is called during the summer), one can lose track of time easily when the sun doesn’t set. In Bettles, the sun doesn’t set between June 2 and July 9. That is one advantage of living above the Arctic Circle--endless daylight around the summer solstice. Actually it seems like endless daylight from the beginning of May until mid-August because even twenty hours of daylight seems endless. 

For the rest of the northern hemisphere, summer solstice (June 20 this year) marks the day with the greatest amount of daylight. Bonners Ferry will peak at 16 hours and 9 minutes of daylight, but will bask in that maximum day-length (when rounded to the nearest minute) from June 17 to June 24. 

On the summer solstice, the sun will be at its highest point in the sky and setting and rising at its most northerly points on the horizon. Additionally, the earliest sunrise and latest sunset will occur simultaneously on the summer solstice. In Bonners Ferry, the sun will rise at 4:42 a.m. and will set at 8:52 p.m. The earliest sunrise actually occurs for several days--from June 11 to June 20. Likewise, the latest sunset begins on June 20 and continues until June 29. 

While the first day of summer may be the longest day of the year, it definitely won’t be the hottest. Both April 12 and August 31 are the same number of days away from the summer solstice but a significant amount of snow can be on the ground on April 12 while a 90 degree heat wave can persist on August 31. 

Snow lingers in some basins of the Selkirk Mountains well after the summer solstice

The difference in temperatures is that the northern hemisphere is still warming up in April and releasing heat in August. The Earth’s oceans and atmosphere act as heat sinks and absorb the sun’s warm rays. During the longest days of the year, they absorb the most heat and then retain that heat. This retention makes July and August the hottest months of the year. 

After a certain point, more heat is lost at night than is gained during the day, causing the northern hemisphere to cool. This cooling trend continues until after the winter solstice when the days become longer and more heat enters the atmosphere. Similarly, the shortest day of the year isn’t the coldest, January and February are usually the coldest months. 

The Earth takes longer to warm up than it does to cool down--on a yearly scale and a daily scale. After sunset, the coolness of night quickly rushes in while the warmth of the morning sun slowly warms the land. The icy grip of winter takes a long time to break in the Arctic, but once the Midnight Sun prevails the snow and ice melt fast.

With the longest day of the year occurring on June 20, the hottest days of summer aren’t far behind. 

Note: Published in the Bonners Ferry Herald on June 14, 2012. 

Arctic Tern Egg

Arctic tern eggs are camouflaged extremely well. I spent nearly twenty minutes searching for this egg that I knew was in this area and was extra careful not to accidentally step on it. The nest did contain two eggs a few days before but was now abandoned.

Can you find the egg? 

Close-up of an arctic tern egg using a telephoto lens

Arctic Tern

The arctic tern migrates nearly 50,000 miles from the Antarctic to the Arctic to lay its well-camouflaged eggs.