How do animals beat the heat?

On sweltering 90-plus degree days we can retreat to basements or air conditioned buildings but how do animals beat the heat? 

Often animals gain relief from the heat in some of the ways we do-- taking a dip in the water, finding shade and sweating.

Moose cool down while foraging for aquatic plants

A hummingbird? An insect? What is it?

What hovers like a hummingbird, flies like a hummingbird but has antennae? A hummingbird moth. Aptly named, hummingbird moths can easily be mistaken for hummingbirds but they are a sphinx moth. 

Hummingbird moths can easily be mistaken for hummingbirds when they hover at a flower

Sphinx moths are one of the few groups of insects that can hover. Since a few species resemble hummingbirds and are active during the day (unlike most moths) they are commonly referred to as hummingbird moths.

Don’t be fooled by a coot

The American coot may swim like a duck, dive like a duck, and look like a duck but it isn’t a duck. As much as coots resemble ducks they are not a duck. Instead, the gray to black birds with white bills are more closely related to the gangly sandhill crane. 

Coots often intermingle with waterfowl which lends one to think they are a duck. However, their small head, scrawny legs and lobed feet reveal they aren’t a duck. Unlike the webbed feet of ducks, coots have broad lobes of skin between their long toes that help them kick through the water and support their weight on mucky ground. 

Coots have dark bodies and white bills

Magnitude of beargrass blooms unpredictable

While on the Parker Ridge trail below Parker Peak last summer, I rounded a corner and was surprised by the hundreds of beargrass blooms filling the avalanche chute in front of me. The magnitude of blooms was the largest I had ever seen and one I won’t forget. Will the blooms be of the same magnitude this summer?

Rhizomes and seeds help create dense fields of beargrass

Summer serenaded by insect chorus

Have you taken the time to listen on a warm, summer evening? Trains, trucks and lawn mowers are the first sounds you may hear but if you tune them out you may hear a chorus of clicking, buzzing, chirping and creaking. You probably won’t see who is playing the sounds coming from the grasses, fields, trees and shrubs. As soon as you approach, the musicians--crickets, katydids and cicadas--will stop playing. 

Crickets, katydids and cicadas don’t all sing in the evening, some sing during the day and some sing at night. Since they are cold-blooded the insects need to warm up to begin singing, which is why we don’t hear them on cool mornings or cool rainy days. 

The singing of cicadas and crickets can be heard on warm summer evenings but most likely won't be seen. The snowy tree cricket, also known as the thermometer cricket, can tell you how warm it is (in Fahrenheit) if you count the number of chirps in 12.5 seconds and add 38 (this formula works for crickets west of the Great Plains). 

Like birds, each species has its own “song” but the insects don’t sing using their throats and lungs. Crickets, katydids and cicadas make sounds using specialized parts on their body. 

First day of summer longest but not hottest

The warm, sunny days in early June made the last part of spring feel like summer. Summer technically doesn’t begin until the summer solstice on June 21 but we’ve enjoyed summer-like weather for a few weeks.

The summer solstice marks the day when the sun is at its farthest north position in the sky in the northern hemisphere north of the Tropic of Cancer just as the winter solstice marks the day when the sun is at its lowest position in the sky. On the summer solstice at the Tropic of Cancer (23.5 degrees north latitude), the sun is directly overhead at its highest point in the sky, such as in the Bahamas. 

Snow still clings to the mountains after the summer solstice but the heat of summer quickly melts it

For many locations the summer solstice isn’t the day with the earliest sunrise or latest sunset due to the tilt of the Earth and the Earth’s elliptical path around the sun. 

Swallows provide valuable insect control

Pesky insects can bother us during gardening, barbecues and other outdoor activities but one bird species makes an impressible dent in the insect population for us--swallows. With some swallows eating 60 insects every hour from dawn to dusk, one swallow can eat more than 720 insects each day! By the end of the week, that is 5,000 fewer insects bothering you. 

Six swallow species take to the skies of North Idaho to feast on flying insects--barn, cliff, tree, violet-green, northern rough-winged and bank swallows. Purple martins are another swallow species but they do not reside in northern Idaho. However, European starlings are often mistaken for purple martins.

Cliff swallows will follow a successful neighbor back to its food source if they can't find food

White wildflowers blooming everywhere

Early spring wildflowers, such as trilliums, are blooming at higher elevations as the snow recedes and the ground warms. At lower elevations summer wildflowers are blooming including several with white flowers. Starry Solomon’s Seal, false Solomon’s Seal, wild sarsaparilla, mariposa and Queen’s cup are some of our white wildflowers in North Idaho.

Starry Solomon’s Seal (Smilacina stellata)

Dense colonies of starry Solomon’s Seal bloom in the partial shade of forests. Alternating leaves growing along the stalk lead up to the creamy white, starry-looking flowers numbering 12 or fewer at the end. The stalk grows between 12 to 24 inches high. After pollination, the round, greenish yellow berries mature into dark blue/reddish black berries.

Starry Solomon's Seal