The Mighty Chickadee In The Colorado Forest

The Cornell Lab of Ornithology describe the little bird that frequents most of Canada and North America as "universally cute." But Kailen Mooney, while a doctoral student at UC-Boulder in 2006 proved this "cute" bird can also save the magnificent pine trees. He found that these mountain chickadees , along with other songbirds such as the red-breasted nuthatch and the pygmy nuthatch who are year-round residents of the Colorado pine forests can change the "flavor" of a tree. Mooney put about 300 insects and spiders on some ponderosa pines in Colorado. Then he covered the pine with netting so the chickadees and his friends could not eat the aphids and caterpillars. While dining on the branches the tree, like other plant life, these insects cause the tree to give off an odor. When the birds ate the insects, the tree's "flavor," or odor, which Mooney explains is a chemical called terpene, changed. But wait there are three other actors in this environmental tragedy. In walk the bark beetle, the squirrel and porcupine. They smell a change. A whiff they dislike. Like so many of Aesop's tales, the largest forest inhabitant once again is saved by his tiny companion. But the play does not end here.

A White Squirrel?

My son spotted a white squirrel in our yard today. We live in Durham: it is in the southern, central part of Connecticut. Like most of us, his first thought was albino. But this white squirrel is not an albino; according to biologists, it is a genetic mutation of the eastern gray squirrel. Its dark, not red, eyes reveals its true identity. They are, however, fairly rare. One observer in Ridgefield, Connecticut suggested that the other squirrels did not like him. How did he know this? Well, it seems that another gray was always chasing him.
Other interesting animal coloration included the piebald dear which brown and white patches making it look, more like a cow than a deer.
Share you other interesting sitings with my readers.

Read More About It
A new picture book, A Little White Squirrel's Secret: A Special Place To Practice, by Penny Hunt and others, captures the white squirrel's beauty and his triumph over being different.