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Nature

Babysitting Turtles

Dear Audubon, Before beginning my internship at Audubon, my experience with nature was purely subjective. No doubt, I was appreciative of nature and extremely passionate about protecting the environment and all of the wildlife who call planet earth home; however, I could only imagine the broad perspective that I would gain by the end of the summer. Throughout various adventures such as rescuing a great blue heron from the terrifying death grip of a snapping turtle’s jaws, watching as a wasp carries a spider away to feed its young, floating around Big Pond hunting for invasive water ...

Many-Legged Creepy-Crawlies Are Usually Harmless

One of my first childhood memories is getting ready for a bath and finding a two-inch long “thousand-legger” in the tub. My reaction was to catch it and put it in a jar, but mom always grabbed some tissue paper, squished it, and flushed it down the toilet. If she had just scooped it out of the tub and let it roam the house, we would have been better off. Centipedes (approximately 2,500 species worldwide) are predators and eat all kinds of household pests. Common house centipedes, the species that appears in bath tubs or on kitchen floors, eat a variety of household insect pests, ...

Goldenrod Falsely Accused, Ragweed Is Culprit

Fields throughout the Chautauqua Watershed are ablaze. One of nature’s spectacles, the fall blossoming of goldenrod is underway and will continue until the first hard frost. Rest assured that if you have hay fever allergies, goldenrod is not the cause of your affliction. The culprit is ...

Fundamental Tasks

Pruning is one of the most fundamental tasks in gardening, and knowing when to trim is as essential as knowing how. Pruning woody plants at the wrong time can interrupt bloom cycles and damage stressed plants. “It’s time to prune whenever your pruners are sharp” is an old adage ...

The Plastic Pollution Research Initiative

Plastics have been around in their current form for decades, and estimates suggest that more than 8 billion metric tons have been created since large-scale production of plastic started in the 1950s. The vast majority of plastic that has been created is still in existence today, resting in landfills or floating around the planet’s waterways as litter. Plastics do not biodegrade – they photodegrade. This means that they don’t readily break down into their constituent materials, but instead, they break down into smaller and smaller particles. This aspect of their chemistry is ...

Sounds Of Summer Nights

Now that summer is winding down and temperatures have begun to moderate, it’s a joy to sleep with a cool, gentle breeze wafting through open windows. The sounds of nature make a perfect lullaby. The voices of owls and frogs subside in September, allowing insect sounds to dominate summer nights. From late July until fall’s first hard frost, the sounds of insects are difficult to miss. The best time to hear late summer insects is after dark, when orthopterans monopolize the nightly concert. Members of the insect order Orthoptera include the insects commonly known as crickets and ...