Weather nature watching

Nature Talk
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A friend a few countries away just asked me if I was OK, and it took me a few minutes to understand that she meant in terms of Hurricane Milton, now a category 5, who will sometime, likely later today, pass over us.

(I am not unduly worried, as the walls of our home are mamposteria nearly a meter thick and our garden has ample unpaved area for water to drain.) Our conversation quickly turned to what exactly was happening outside NOW, so I took a few moments to go outside and investigate.

The wind is blowing above, high in the tree canopy, but lightly. Bird sounds are minimal to absent. The few bees I see are two stingless species who live local to my garden – no honey bees now or sweat bees or Orchid bees. And only a few! Most are going back into their little pipes. And the butterflies have begun to take shelter under the Hamelia patens, like this Ruddy Daggerwing.

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I have been making a Gulf Fritillary Observation Set and I admit I am a bit worried the wind might prove too much.

Does anyone else look for nature/weather corollaries? (Anything else I might note?)

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Here in the Southwest US, we may occasionally notice a correlation between some vagrant bird and dragonfly sightings with storms coming in from the Gulf of Mexico or the Pacific.

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In the Dominican Republic, I have noticed that the layers of Sargassum weed covering the beaches get refreshed after there is a storm at sea.

According to Bond (1985), Birds of the West Indies, the habitat of the Black Swift (Cypseliodes niger) is described thus: “Forested hills and mountains; occasional in lowlands, especially in rainy weather.” The one time I saw them in lowland Cabarete, it was indeed rainy weather. Several West Indian swifts have the common name “rain bird.”

Hunkering down in my casita there, if a heavy rain came in at night, suddenly the casita would fill with black, flying termites coming up from the ground. The fire ants would have a feast day. As soon as the rain ended, so did the swarm.

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In the Midwest U.S., in the spring, lots of robins everywhere after storms, and where I live, and tons of turkeys right before a bigger storm, always running in straight lines and sometimes pausing to go in a circle before continuing on. They will stand in the open during hailstorms for some reason lol

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After a hurricane (I can’t remember the name) last September, sooty and bridled terns were found here in the Northeastern US.

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And are you still safe Lucy ?

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I am! I briefly ventured into the garden just now (it is still raining) and almost trod on a drowned mouse, poor little thing, but the pupa is still there!

I’ll survey a bit more when the weather lets up.

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when Hurricane Beryl blew through my area in July (overnight), i remember going outside at night and hearing the toads chorusing, since it was the first rain that had come through in a while. I remember a dragonfly seeking shelter in the garage, wiping its eyes and looking too tired to fly.

after the hurricane knocked down lots of trees and limbs that had been previously stressed by the previous year’s severe drought and the spring’s derecho event, i remember seeing things like wood borers visiting the wood, and i remember seeing nests, lichens, galls, etc. scattered on the ground that otherwise would have been hard to see in the trees.

i think the hurricane probably took out a lot of insects, since I haven’t seen as many as i would expect in the last couple of months. probably other animals died, too. i remember there being a pair of green herons with some chicks in a nest at a pond nearby before the storm, and i remember seeing only the adult green herons after the storm. i remember seeing dead squirrels, robins, etc. in the tree debris after the storm, too.

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during the previous year’s drought, there were lots of water snakes that came to eat the fish that had nowhere to go in ponds that had dried up. i remember unusual fish being uncovered, and i remember seeing tadpoles with barely formed legs crawling around in the mud.

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i like to go explore after the first rain after a long period of no rain, since lots of things seem to perk up. even during the rain, sometimes i like to go to one of the local urban parks just to see how happy the ducks are. i’ve sat in a tall tower with an open 360 degree view over prairies and forests as a storm has rolled through, and i remember seeing wading birds still flying back and forth from their rookery to where i assume they were finding food for their chicks, even as it was still raining and thundering.

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after the first hard freeze of any year, i like to go look for frost flowers, and to see the winter birds pick frozen insects off of ponds that have iced over.

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After regular (non-hurricane affiliated) rains here, I like to go out and look for rain frogs. And the next morning, if it is a heavy enough rain, there are sometimes rain lilies that have come up and rain pool gliders holding onto tall grasses.

(I used to have a tiny rain tree in my passageway, a volunteer, and it would often bloom after rains as well, but it died last year during the dengue sprayings.)

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