Plants have evolved strategies for lure in the best pollinators while discouraging destructive ones, while some animals develop workarounds to get to the nectar, in this week’s Wild Ideas column.

The ninth annual county butterfly count, held last Saturday (July 20) during the recent brutal heat wave.

In talking with me a while back about how Rappahannock Nature Camp evolved, Lyt Wood, its founder and director, suggested some books for broadening our understanding about nature. Most of these have just been added to the Conservation Collection at the Rappahannock County Library.

I’m lucky to have landlords who alert me to the presence of interesting wildlife where I live, such as a large, mostly brown caterpillar my landlady found down by one of the lower ponds early in June. I thought it was probably the larva of a eastern tiger swallowtail butterfly, judging by th…

This spring, a tiny, vibrantly colored spider that spins a round web seems to be everywhere in my yard and on the exterior of my house.

While I’m still trying to keep up with spring as it unfolds, notices of several events featuring pollinators and other “bugs” have been landing in my email inbox:

Last week, as I was getting increasingly frustrated in trying to take bird photos, a jaunty little bird gave me encouragement.

The past week has been one of wonderful surprises and great frustrations, the latter mostly because of dark, rainy weather.

This time of year, sorting out the many bird species that are vocalizing can be overwhelming. Not having ambitions of ever being a dedicated birder, I’ve worked my way all the way up to, at best, average at identifying local birds by sight. This year, I’m trying to get a better handle on bir…

Last year, along a trail I hike frequently in Rappahannock County, I found a trillium that is rare in Virginia and a bit hard to spot. This year, I went looking for more.

April come she will

Up around my house on Oventop Mountain, the spring wildflower show started last week (Mar. 24), when five bloodroot buds popped up along a trail dubbed the Spring Road, a few starting to bloom.

Lyt Wood and I have been sending messages about nature sightings back and forth for years. Recently, we got into discussing the evolution of Rappahannock Nature Camp, a summer day camp Lyt founded in 1986 and continues to serve as the director.

Although spring just officially starts March 20, here in Virginia the season usually arrives earlier — but not this year.

Along with skunk cabbage, a lot of nearby nature events, indoor and outdoor, are coming up over the next couple of weeks:

What native plant now blooming produces heat well above the ambient temperature, has a bizarre bloom, can live for a century and stinks? The answer is skunk cabbage, whose amazing biology makes it an early bloomer and resilient survivor.

In my last column (Feb. 7), I mentioned a few species that don’t wait until spring to start reproducing — wood frogs, spotted salamanders and hepatica — but they are far from the only species to do so.

When I was freezing my rear end off on the high plains of Wyoming years ago, I longed for a Virginia February. While this can be our snowiest month and any joy I experience in winter is waning rapidly at this point, warm stretches are common this month, and some species take advantage of the…

While I haven’t made much progress in figuring out why birds where I live seem fewer in number this winter, and keep disappearing and reappearing for no clear reason, I did do a bit more reading on their winter survival strategies.

My usual avian winter residents have been disappearing and reappearing. Where they go and why has been a mystery.

While many readers may not be familiar with the flawed 1965 film “Baby, the Rain Must Fall,” starring Steve McQueen and Lee Remick, its title popped into my mind as I was pondering 2018 precipitation totals here in Rappahannock County.

For a decade, a quiet struggle has been waged against invasive plants in a special plant community in the Buck Hollow area of Shenandoah National Park (SNP). The original volunteer leader in this effort, Rappahannock County resident Robin Williams, will lead a walk there on Jan. 13 to talk a…

Tomorrow (Dec. 21) is the winter solstice, which marks the longest night of the year and the official start of winter, and as usual, I’m ambivalent about it.

In combing through my recent email last week, I found news about a potential weapon against a dangerous bee disease and ants that decorate their nests with the skulls of an enemy.

Mast, which many wildlife species depend on in winter, is abundant this year, according to field surveys conducted by the Virginia Department of Game and Inland Fisheries (VDGIF) and the Virginia Department of Forestry (VDOF).

This time of year, a lot of berries and other fruits of wild plants start looking pretty dodgy, but for some wildlife they are critical to surviving winter.

As fall progresses, I’ve been noting changes and have run into a few surprises.

Virginia is famous for its fall color, which in some years can be described intense, vivid, vibrant or even spectacular. As I wrote in Sept. 15 column, I was concerned that too much rain might dampen this year’s show, and in checking around the county and nearby, I’ve found the show is a bit…

With all the rain this summer, I figured we should have a good crop of mushrooms this fall. But, in continually checking the forest around my house, on Oventop Mountain, I was coming up empty. I started to think maybe even these damp-loving organisms could have gotten too much rain.

Lately I’ve been enjoying watching fall-breeding orb-weaver spiders in Halloween colors spinning their webs on the outside of my house and in the woods surrounding it.

Filled with envy that my brother and his wife are spending a couple of months in beautiful, dry Arizona, I’ve been trying to find some bright spots, literally, in the continual deluge here. Some wildflowers and butterflies that seem to be coping well with the rain are among them.

Brown marmorated stink bugs have started showing up on the outside of my house, right on cue. Around the autumnal equinox every year (Sept. 20 this year), these Asian invaders start looking for places to spend the winter.

As I’m writing this, on Tuesday (Sept. 11), rain is falling once again, flash-flood warnings are out and Hurricane Florence is heading our way with the promise of even more rain — lots of it. While some rain during the growing season is great for plants, too much can be disastrous.

One of the things I like most about nature is that it continually surprises me, like the David-and-Goliath spider story that unfolded under my porch light recently.

I love to hear thine earnest voice,

While butterflies look for mates quietly, using visual and chemical signals to find them, some insects send out loud calls, often in chorus. The most notable about these insect singers are cicadas and katydids. Together, they fill Virginia summer days and nights with pulsating, percussive so…

During the few dry spells we’ve been having, especially warm, sunny ones, more butterflies have been showing up around my gardens. I’ve spotted several pairs mating, which is the sole purpose of the short adult phase of a butterfly’s life cycle. In most species, females have less than a week…

Just when the weather seemed to be improving for butterflies, rain set in the day of Rappahannock County’s annual butterfly count, so what will that mean for the results?

I don’t usually get cabin fever in the summer, but after all the rain and then heat, combined with writing and editing deadlines that kept me glued to my computer, I finally had to get out and enjoy what I was writing about.

I had hoped to find an active bird nest this year to monitor. It turned out I didn’t have to go far.

In between torrential rain storms, reptiles have been out to hunt and bask around my yard, including an eastern ratsnake and a tailless five-lined skink.

On June 14, as I turned onto a quiet gravel road off Thornton Gap Church Road, I almost ran into a small doe and her tiny spotted fawn headed in my direction. The two deer quickly turned around and then ran off one side of the road but took different paths — the doe into brush along a stream…

Summer is here, and annual butterfly counts across North America are looking for volunteers, including counts in Rappahannock and Fauquier counties and Shenandoah National Park. Monitoring butterfly populations is not only important in determining their health but is a great way to learn abo…

Between rains, which most reptiles avoid, I’ve had two sightings of box turtles this year where I live — one as I was driving down the driveway, the other in the yard next to my house. While I couldn’t stop to check out the one in the driveway, I did take a good look at the one in the yard a…

The continuing heavy rain seems to have made the whole world outside damp, smelly, slimy and dark. But some organisms, undaunted by the rain, go about the business of reproduction, including a few mushrooms.

Early this spring, I found three Chinese mantid egg cases on dried stalks of plants that had been knocked to the ground by fierce winds we’d been having. I rescued the cases and the stalks they were attached to, sticking them in a pot holding a dipladenia. A few weeks later, I enjoyed watchi…

The forest canopy has closed, and most spring ephemeral wildflowers are done blooming and have disappeared under understory plants that are rising and expanding their foliage. Having enjoyed upland Virginia’s amazing spring wildflower show, it’s time to move on to my first love — critters.