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Natural Connections

Natural Connections is a weekly newspaper column created by Emily Stone, the Naturalist/Education Director at the Cable Natural History Museum in Cable, Wisconsin. In each episode, Emily reads her fun and informative weekly column about Northwoods Nature.

science natural sciences

All Episodes

06:44

250 - Monarchs' Sacred Trees

Natural Connections ·

2022/12/29

Monarch butterflies as I recently experienced them in Mexico—gathering by the millions in their winter sanctuaries—are intimately tied to fir trees. Abies religiosa, the oyamel fir, also known as the sacred fir due to the way their oppositely arranged twigs make the shape of a cross, are essential to monarchs’ winter survival.

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06:29

249 - Monarch Magic

Natural Connections ·

2022/12/22

Every pair of gravity-defying wings, each metamorphosed body and magnetic navigational system is worthy of awe. But it is the collective action of an entire population that brought us here. Butterflies, and monarch butterflies specifically, live all over the globe. But no pollinator garden, no butterfly conservatory even comes close to hosting this many winged wonders. Somewhere in these clusters is every single surviving monarch born on our backyard milkweed. These volcanic mountains hold the most

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06:20

248 - Butterflies, Pyramids, and Volcanoes

Natural Connections ·

2022/12/15

Volcanoes are essential to our living Earth. Volcanic activity keeps our planet young and fresh by renewing the Earth’s crust and helping create our life-giving atmosphere. It’s no surprise, then, that at many a volcano someone will whisper, “this is a sacred site.” So, although we didn’t set out on our trip to Mexico with the intention of visiting volcanoes, that seems to have been the result. Volcanoes provide shelter to butterflies, a model for pyramids, and inspiration to many cultures. And

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05:44

247 - Bear Tracks and Cold Toes

Natural Connections ·

2022/12/08

As usual, my toes were cold. So, I hopped off my fat bike and began jogging down the trail beside it instead, trying to wiggle warmth back into my feet. Crunch, crunch, crunch, I ground icy snow under my boots with every step. The day before had been well above freezing, and the briefly slushy snow was now even more solid. I was keeping an eye on the edge of the trail when my foot landed next to the track of a larger foot. This wasn’t just some deer hunter’s big snow boot. This wide track showed

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05:35

246 - Red-bellied Woodpeckers Moving North

Natural Connections ·

2022/12/01

Red-bellied woodpeckers aren’t just expanding north into areas that now have the milder winter temperatures they are used to. The birds are expanding beyond their previous comfort zone and have somehow adapted to survive colder winters. I can relate. The climate hasn’t quite warmed enough to make winters in Northern Wisconsin comparable to the weather I grew up with in Iowa, but I’ve tweaked my wardrobe and thickened my blood enough to make the cold survivable.

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04:42

245 - November Child by JoAnn Malek

Natural Connections ·

2022/11/24

I am a November child. The bare bones of empty trees have always fascinated me. As I venture through the November of my life, I treasure memories of role models in my family tree. I am honored by a large--even growing--network of friends. I am blessed with a strong root system and the ability to appreciate patterns my life etches on the grey November sky.

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05:51

244 - Not a Lowly Lichen

Natural Connections ·

2022/11/17

Lichens on the whole are incredible. Each lichen is a symbiotic relationship between a species of fungus—who gives the lichen both their structure and their name—and another partner, like algae, who can photosynthesize. Together, they can live on bare rock, dead tree branches, old rusted-out cars abandoned in the woods, and much more. Nutrients come from the wind and rain. They create sugars from water and air.

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05:13

243 - The Night Gliders by Danielle Spak

Natural Connections ·

2022/11/10

The flash of a white, furry belly soars over my head. It is luminous against the backdrop of the nighttime sky. I duck as another small form soars past me with all four legs extended in flight, like a tiny caped superhero. A shrill, high-pitched warning squeak blasts from the pine tree beside me. As a heavy cloak of black velvet envelopes the evening and I round the last bend of my walk, the flying squirrels descend and commence their nightly plunder of my bird feeders.

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06:27

242 - Spongy Moth

Natural Connections ·

2022/11/03

The mystery and the egg mass were from spongy moths—the terribly invasive insect previously called a gypsy moth—just as the two girls had been trying to tell me. “Do you know how the students knew about the spongy moth? Have you been talking about them in class?” I asked the teachers in an email. Personally, I’ve been ignoring the headlines about them, which is why I didn’t recognize these two life stages.

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05:12

241 - What the North Wind Swirls

Natural Connections ·

2022/10/27

This week two birds dance on the north wind.

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06:27

240 - Shades of Rot and Life

Natural Connections ·

2022/10/20

Beside the wide, dirt trail, a ruffle of turkey tail fungus cascaded down the graceful curve of a tree trunk like an earth-toned ball gown: a damsel of decay. While the volume of fungal frills—each with a velvety top, concentric bands of color, and tiny pores in the white undersurface—was impressive, the bulk of the being was hidden inside. Intertwined among the wood cells, hidden from view, the fine, white threads of hyphae (the actual body of a fungus) were hard at work. The tree itself was dead,

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06:01

239 - Stories Buzzing in a Wasp Nest

Natural Connections ·

2022/10/13

This week we find the stories in a wasp nest.

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05:44

238 - Firefly Fall

Natural Connections ·

2022/10/06

The larvae of all fireflies are bioluminescent, and I was eager to see if the iNaturalist database would confirm my hunch. Sure enough, Photuris genus was the only ID suggestion that popped up. A firefly larva!

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06:16

237 - Journey through Fall

Natural Connections ·

2022/10/04

Every year, when the air turns crisp, the dogbane leaves glow lemony from the ditches, and the ash leaves fade to mustard in the swamps, I feel the urge to travel. I’m not the only one.

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06:18

236 - Glacial Refugia by Cade Campbell

Natural Connections ·

2022/09/22

Cade Campbell is from Bristol, Tennessee, and is currently studying Biology at East Tennessee State University. An avid naturalist, he spends most of his free time outdoors, and has both worked and volunteered with the Blue Ridge Discovery Center as a naturalist, and as a field technician elsewhere. Cade recently finished his tenure as a Summer Naturalist Intern at the Cable Natural History Museum. Where species once migrated south to escape a wall of ice, they must now escape in the opposite

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06:19

235 - The Bear Who Gave Us a Sunset

Natural Connections ·

2022/09/15

The voices filtering through our Boundary Waters campsite were so calm and sweet-sounding it took me a minute to process the words: “Hey, bear.” Lake water dripped from my swim shorts, and I continued toweling off in the sun while the meaning sank in. “Hey, bear!” Looking across the wilderness campsite, where a group of colorful tents lined the woods on the way back to the latrine trail, I saw a fuzzy black shape in their midst. Ally and Caleb, a young couple who’d been resting in a hammock, were

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06:53

234 - Fall Colors Revealed

Natural Connections ·

2022/09/08

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06:36

233 - The Purpose of Ghost Pipe

Natural Connections ·

2022/09/01

Ghost pipe is generally declared a parasite, but radioactive phosphorus first injected into ghost pipe was later found in neighboring trees. Nature is rarely as simple as we think. When I shared this relationship with a group of Wisconsin Master Naturalist students, they were indignant. Our culture loathes a mooch. “What good is it?” they asked. “What’s its purpose?” The purpose of any living thing—at least from its own perspective—is to make more of itself. This flower is surely doing that. I could

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05:56

232 - Bryozoans

Natural Connections ·

2022/08/25

While the blob looked more like a patterned glass art piece than a living being, it is actually formed of hundreds of genetically identical, physiologically interconnected animals called zooids. Similar to coral in their colonial lifestyle, each individual zooid is made up of an outer sleeve-like structure that produces a gelatinous exoskeleton; a mass of organs that can move within the sleeve; and the lophophore, which is a ring of tentacles that filters food particles out of the water. Instead of

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05:46

231 - Bird Banding by Olivia Rataezyk

Natural Connections ·

2022/08/18

This week Olivia Rataezyk talks about different types of bird banding. Olivia Rataezyk is from Seattle, Washington and studies biology at Kenyon College in Ohio. On campus, she divides her time between a research lab studying birds (her favorite animal) and her college’s art gallery. Olivia just finished her tenure as a Summer Naturalist Intern at the Cable Natural History Museum.

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200 results

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