To help celebrate this special birthday, I decided to take a series of photos of 40 garden objects. This photo series was inspired by the blog Things Organized Neatly. My arrangements are not arranged as neatly as many photos on that blog, but you get the idea.

Here’s photo #3 – 40 green leaves from plants in my neighborhood:

40 Green Leaves from my neighborhood

Can You Identify the Plants?

Here’s my best guesses, although I am not a naturalist:

4. Virginia Creeper

6. Viola

8. Cabbage

9. Liriope

11. Hosta

13. Holly

14. Hosta

17. Holly

18. Wild Strawberry

20. Clover

21. Dandelion

22. Yew

25.  Maple

26. Iris

27. Maple

29. Clover

33.  Fern

You can see past 40 garden object photos:

• 40 Garden Tools
• 40 nuts nibbled by squirrels
• 40 flowers from my neighborhood

Share Your 40 Garden Objects Photos!

During Garden for Wildlife month, I’m going to keep taking photos of 40 garden objects. Would you like to join me? What will you photograph? Share your photos at our Garden for Wildlife Facebook page for everyone to see.

And if you haven’t already certified your yard as wildlife-friendly, certify your yard with National Wildlife Federation this month!

National Wildlife Photo Contest entry by Helen Anderson.

Branching Out for Wildlife

Volunteers plant trees in Ohio’s Wayne National Forest.

In Clermont, Flordia, 300 trees were planted to support the Florida Scrub-Jay (an threatened species). Boy and Girl Scouts, students for the local elementary school and adult volunteers worked together to improve wildlife habitat, by planting more food sources and places for the jays to raise their young. These birds — unlike the common bluejay — are less afraid of humans and enjoy some interaction, as 10-year-old volunteer Lauren discovered. Our volunteers planted scrub oaks, red cedars and longleaf pine trees.

In Mukilteo, Washington, about 40 kids and their parents planted about 200 conifer trees on March 23, a beautiful sunny day. When participants arrived to do the planting, Mukilteo Community Development Director Patricia Love welcomed volunteers and explained why we were planting trees, as team members demonstrated how to plant and talked about the benefits of the trees to forest animals. Planting in a forest understory is not the easiest type of planting to do, but the kids were enthusiastic and planted from one to 10 plants each.

Children from the Harbour Pointe Middle School who were there to perform community service helped during the two-hour event, but most kids planted and then did a scavenger hunt or vice versa. All the plants were planted and each planter was given flagging to tie onto the tree limbs to locate the plants for follow-up maintenance. Planting western red cedars, western hemlocks and grand firs will add to the evergreen forest of the this northwest community and help with water quality for the Puget sound.

Planting trees continues to be a vital way to make a difference for not only wildlife but future generations, who will have a cleaner and better environment due to our work today. You can still donate today to help wildlife and those future generations>>

Staying Warm

The core body temperature of cold-blooded animals (such as reptiles, amphibians and fish) is directly dependent on how hot or cold their environment. When the sun is out, their bodies soak up the heat, they warm up, and they become more active. When it’s cold, they tend to be a bit sluggish as their bodies slow down to conserve energy.  I’m jealous that these animals have a reason to sit out in the sun all day.

Collared Lizard by Sarah Waterworth

Keeping a Full Belly

Warm-blooded animals are able to regulate their own body temperature, which requires a great deal of energy. When warm-blooded species get cold, they must generate their own heat by converting food to energy. Maybe that’s why shoveling the snow-covered driveway makes me so hungry! Many animals rely on leaves, fruits and flowers as a primary food source, providing necessary energy. The sun is essential to the lives of those plants, and thus to the survival of plant eating wildlife.

Pika by Danny Nestor

Take Shelter

There are many species that live in trees or use plant material to build homes (such as nests or lodges). Trees and plants derive energy from the sun. Photosynthesis, boom. Therefore, the sun indirectly helps house a number of wildlife species!

Prothonotary Warbler by William Mangun

Follow the Big Yellow Thing

Modern GPS systems haven’t quite caught on with birds. Instead, researchers have found that some birds use their internal clocks in conjunction with the sun in order to navigate migration.

Starlings in Flight by Brad Smith

You Can Be Solar Powered, Too

The sun could be useful to humans as well. In addition to vitamin D that the sun provides, the sun can also be used to provide energy for everything we need in our homes and businesses. The sun provides a clean, renewable energy source that is much healthier for the planet than other fossil fuels.  Learn about NWF’s solar energy partner for the home at www.sungevity.com/nwf.

A scrub jay lands on Lauren Wagner’s hand. Photo by Neva Wagner.

We’re planting trees on the Scrub-Jay Trail, a habitat restoration project designed to provide a safe haven for the federally threatened Florida scrub-jay, Florida’s only endemic bird. During National Wildlife Week, we will introduce 500 trees into the scrub habitat, consisting of chapman oak (quercus chapmanii) and myrtle oak (quercus myrtifolia) which provide excellent cover, nesting and food supply for the jays. In the transitional sandhill zones, we’re planting 100 flatwoods plum, southern red cedar and longleaf pine.

Prior to the planting, we provide the volunteers with an educational session, utilizing the NWF provided curriculum. Additionally, we discuss the trees the scrub-jay and its companion species need for their existence.

On day 1, three families were planting scrub oaks on the western end of the Trail when we heard the distinctive call of the scrub-jay. As soon as we spotted the jay, 10 year old Lauren Wagner extended her hand and to her amazement, the scrub-jay flew down and landed on her hand where it stayed for at least 30 seconds.  This is the same life-changing scenario that involved eight year old Sarah Morningstar, six years ago. She went on to become an active proponent of scrub-jay habitat protection. (see Ranger Rick February 2011 edition) We’re hoping Lauren will follow in Sarah’s footsteps.

Nate Daugherty and Chase Daugherty planting trees for National Wildlife Week. Photo by Neva Wagner.

The Branching Out for Wildlife program is proving to be a big hit with kids and families, and National Wildlife Week activities are high on our list of annual projects.

Help NWF reach its goal of planting 75,000 trees. Please donate today>>

Fishing in the Florida mangroves.

There I was, a mosquito biologist on a hot summer day, knee deep in the mud of a mangrove swamp bordering the Indian River Lagoon, the long estuarine system along the Florida east-coast.  I had given up trying to get a “biting count” (believe it or not, you actually try to count the number landing on you in one minute…an ‘index’ of misery!).

I had stood in this very spot two weeks before, and there were none, but shortly after that the tide had risen sharply, flooding the mangrove swamp and apparently hatching the myriad of saltmarsh mosquito eggs secreted in the mud.  I had missed finding the larvae, a critical part of any control effort.

Frustrated, I jammed my dipper, the long-handled scoop which is the main tool of the mosquito larvae sleuth, into a small puddle. No larvae, of course, but four small fish darted frantically about in the dipper. Always interested in fish, I glanced at them and could not immediately identify them, so I placed them in a bucket.

Sometimes it is the smallest things that are life-changing: this simple act, placing the four little fish in a bucket, has led to over 25 years of research and insights into the remarkable life of a very unusual fish.

The mangrove rivulus is the only known vertebrate which is a selfing, simultaneous hermaphrodite, able to “clone” themselves.

The “well known” part was due to a very unusual sex life: this is the only known vertebrate which is a selfing, simultaneous hermaphrodite—they “clone” themselves. Adult rivulus have a complex reproductive organ, and internally self-fertilized eggs are laid which hatch into exact genetic duplicates of the parent…with some exceptions, as you shall see. Oddly enough, pure male rivulus, which differ from the “herms” in having a bright orange/red tint, had been caught in the wild, but their function was unknown: sexual reproduction had been documented in the lab but never in the wild…but more on this later.

Covered with mosquito bites, I kept glancing in the bucket on the way back to my office that day. Once I got an ID on my fish, a few days later I was back in the mangrove swamp, peering at the small puddle where I had collected the fish. But this was no common puddle! I immediately recognized it as a water-filled land crab burrow. With a quantum leap in collecting technology, I plunged a small net into the murky depths of the burrow, and withdrew it with 5 more rivulus.  A few more dips, and I had a total of 13.  I was floored to realize that I had just collected more rivulus in one location than anyone ever had before.

Setting traps for rivulus in Florida mangroves.

More than a Hole in the Ground

After gently placing the fish back in the burrow, I left, wondering if this association was mere coincidence.

The great land crab (Cardisoma guanhumi) is a large blue crab found throughout the shorelines of the tropical Atlantic, but it is actually a terrestrial crab. It digs burrows in saltmarshes and mangroves and sometime inland for some distance. The burrows are dug to the depth of groundwater, typically about 2-3 ft. deep, and the crab uses the pool of water to moisten its gills.

I began to suspect that the “scarcity” of rivulus had more to do with “looking in all the wrong places.” I was right. I checked crab holes far and wide, in every saltmarsh and mangrove swamp where my job led me. In the ensuing years, I have collected several thousand rivulus, and not just in Florida: I have found them in Belize, and also in Honduras, the Bahamas and Cuba.

The relationship seems well established. So, in Florida at least, rivulus is not as rare as originally thought, but still rare enough to warrant designation by the state as a “Species of Special Concern” and collection is prohibited without a permit.

Fish or Amphibian?

Early in my burrow-peering days, I found that sometimes rivulus would be out of the water, stuck to the side of the burrow, well above the water line. This behavior apparently offers the fish a means of avoiding poor quality water. During these aerial jaunts, the fish becomes torpid and respires through an extensive capillary network in the skin and fins.

My colleague Dr. Patricia Wright from the University of Guelph in Canada has been studying the physiology of emersion in her lab for years, and her findings are remarkable. My own lab study has shown that they can live at least two months out of the water in damp habitats: when re-flooded after 66 days, they were skinny, but eager to eat and devoured mosquito larvae immediately!

The adaptive value of emersion was dramatically revealed when I came upon a macabre scene inside a crab burrow where dozens of small minnows had been stranded by receding tides.  Not as hardy as rivulus, the minnows began to die and rot, and I observed several rivulus emersed above and on the rafts of floating corpses, waiting for conditions to improve.  A week later, when all trace of the dead fish was gone, only live rivulus were left in the burrow.

It turns out that rivulus will also occupy small, shallow pools at higher elevations in the mangroves. These pools flood and dry intermittently with higher tides or heavy rainfall. It is rare to find other fish species here, as they die when the pools dry. In Belize, my colleagues William P. Davis and Bruce J. Turner and I were puzzling over where the rivulus went when such pools dried.  We had assumed that they would retreat to adjacent crab burrows or burrow into masses of mangrove leaf litter.  It turns out that there were other housing options when your pool dries up.

Dr. Eric Reyier and I performing a visual census. I’m wearing pink “tags” for labeling filed sites.

The Birds and the Bees

Speaking of sex (were we?), I have already alluded to the mysterious presence of male fish in an hermaphroditic species. Why would nature find this necessary? We know that male fish regularly show up in laboratory colonies of rivulus, and rearing the developing eggs at lower temperatures (~ 20° C /68° F) produces a high percentage of males, but low temperatures are not a common phenomenon in the tropics.  So, my colleagues and I were shocked in our initial collections in Belize to discover that fully 25 percent of the population was male, and this high ratio has now persisted for over two decades. A few stray males have shown up in Florida, and a couple from the Bahamas and Honduras, but something strange is going on in Belize, because there the fish is reproducing sexually.

Apparently, in the presence of these flashy males, the herms somehow suppress internal self-fertilization (a fascinating physiological problem in itself!) and lay unfertilized eggs, which are then fertilized externally by the males.  Of course, in the murky confines of a crab burrow (not the most romantic of settings), this has never been observed, but geneticists can tell by looking at the DNA that ‘sex’ is happening here!

When some wild Belize fish produce self-fertilized eggs in captivity, the offspring are not genetically identical. This means that at some point in prior generations, sexual reproduction occurred. Cloning has taken a lesser role here. Why? We don’t know. And the real puzzler is why would you need sex in an animal that appears to be eminently successful without it? After all, if you are distributed from southern Brazil to central Florida and throughout the entire Caribbean and western tropical Atlantic, you must be doing something right.  This extensive range does speak to the advantages of ‘waif dispersal’: it only takes a single individual to found a population.

As they say, much remains to be done, but I thank my lucky stars that I did not discard that dipper full of murky water on that fateful, mosquito-ridden day 25 years ago.  I still stalk the mangroves and look for other miracles. And there are others out there, to be sure.

D. Scott Taylor was raised in east central Florida and has a PhD in marine biology. His career interests are in mangrove fishes, where he has studied at field sites in Belize, Honduras, Cuba, the Bahamas and coastal Florida, battling mosquitoes the entire time.  He is currently a land manager with the Brevard County (Florida) Environmentally Endangered Lands Program, charged with managing and restoring Florida’s diverse natural habitats.

This guest blog is part of our 2013 National Wildlife Week celebration of trees and the wildlife that depend on them.

Volunteers plant trees for nature center in West Atlanta

Urban areas experience increasing amounts of paving and land development that convert large areas of spongy natural land to hard surfaces that cannot absorb water.  When rain hits paved-over or built-over areas, it runs off directly into storm drains and eventually into area streams and rivers.   A hard, fast rain, with no vegetation or natural land to slow it down can hit these water bodies with such speed and force that it will result in flooding and severe erosion problems.  Downstream areas such as bays and estuaries can get deadly slugs of sediment and chemical pollution from these run-off surges.

Anyone who has stood under a tree at the beginning of a rain shower (not advisable in lighting storms) knows that tree canopy absorbs falling rain.  In urban areas this can reduce water run-off by as much as 10 percent and that can make a huge difference in the speed and erosive force of the rain shower.  That is one reason trees are increasingly becoming a standard design feature for automobile parking lots which, left uncovered, are huge run-off generators.  These same parking lots are also heat on hot summer days and contribute to spikes in temperatures know as “heat islands.”  Tree canopy is an effective coolant in these areas and that is likewise good for local wildlife and water.

Trees also need water to grow and can help consume excess water in urban areas.  Urban planners and designers are paying more and attention to filling remaining “plantable” spaces in cities and suburbs with trees.   The recent trend of planting areas called “rain gardens” in parking lots and other developed areas that are specifically designed to capture rain water and help it percolate into the ground.  This absorption is facilitated by tree planting.

Please be sure to visit the original post to read the whole thing, and learn about the ways NWF is partnering with the National Aquarium to protect the Chesapeake Bay and other coastal areas.

Also, celebrate National Wildlife Week by donating to our tree bank today! You can help us reach our goal of planting 75,000 trees this year>>

Douglas-fir trees in Oregon. Trees are home to numerous wildlife species, and provide many benefits to humans as well. Flickr photo by Tom Brandt.

National Wildlife Week 2013 is all about trees – we are Branching Out for Wildlife! Trees are an invaluable resource for wildlife and for people, yet we often take them for granted. Trees provide us with oxygen, with paper and wood products, with fruit and nuts, with cleaner air and water, with shade and so much more. Wildlife find food, cover, places to raise their young and even water in trees. Our world needs trees!

As part of National Wildlife Week we are featuring 45 different wildlife species so you can learn about them in depth. We have 10 tree species, 9 mammals, 8 birds, 8 invertebrates, 4 amphibians, 3 reptiles, 2 fish, and even one fungus! See if you can discover the many interesting relationships between these species.

For instance, the red tree vole and northern spotted owl both live in forests dominated by Douglas-fir trees. Indiana bats sometimes roost under the shaggy bark of shagbark hickory trees. The dusky-footed woodrat likes to line its nests with California bay laurel leaves. The mangrove rivulus fish can survive two months out of water in mangrove forests. And the Louisiana pine snake likes to eat pocket gophers, which in turn like to eat the roots of quaking aspen trees.

How to Celebrate

There are lots of things to do during National Wildlife Week. Learn all about the trees and wildlife, download our Mega-poster of a tree (it’s over four feet tall!), play games with our Wildlife Trading Cards, organize a tree planting event, donate to our tree bank, or simply get outside and climb a tree or look for wildlife in your own backyard or neighborhood.

And please let us know, how do you plan to celebrate National Wildlife Week!

Help us reach our goal of planting 75,000 trees. Please donate today>>

Aspens in Grand Teton National Park. National Wildlife Photo Contest entry by William Wiley.

NWF can assist you each step of the way in organizing a tree planting event, from helping to figure out the right time to plant to advising on what native species to use, (GO NATIVE!) to helping you involve friends and community members.

I am challenging youth of all ages to make a commitment to help wildlife and our planet by organizing a service project at their school or in their community to plant trees.

Friends, family and community members can help as well. Donate today to NWF’s tree bank and help us provide trees to students to plant in their community.

We Need Trees!

Trees play a critical role in supporting so many other living things – human and wildlife alike.  Did you know…

• Trees clean the air: Trees absorb odors and pollutants and filter our air through their leaves and bark — our own built-in air purification system!
• Trees provide oxygen: Over the course of a year one acre of trees provides enough oxygen for 18 people.
• Trees save water AND help keep our water clean: Trees help to both reduce runoff and help to filter groundwater and the water in our streams. Shade from trees helps slow water evaporation so you don’t need to water your lawn as much.
• Trees provide jobs: Whether it is harvesting fruit, nuts, or other products from trees or using trees for clothing, tires and other products – trees provide jobs and help to sustain our economy.
• Trees are critical for wildlife: Trees provide many different species with food, cover and places to raise young and for some species are even their water source. Whether it is in the canopy or trunk or roots wildlife can be found both in living, dying and dead trees helping to keep our ecosystems balanced.

So take up our 2013 National Wildlife Week challenge to Branch out for Wildlife and help us plant 75,000 trees!

Help us plant 75,000 trees for National Wildlife Week, and be sure to share this with your friends on Facebook.

Support National Wildlife Federation’s efforts to plant 75,000 native trees in celebration of National Wildlife Week! Make a generous tax-deductible donation today >>

If you’re an educator, you can find out more about about National Wildlife Week and all of the great educator resources we have available at NWF.org/NationalWildlifeWeek. If you have any questions about National Wildlife Week, contact us at nationalwildlifeweek@nwf.org.

3/18 Update: A prior version of this infographic incorrectly stated the height of trees from whence wood duck ducklings leap.

Cherry blossoms flowering on the grounds of the Washington Monument during President Obama’s Second Inauguration, January 21, 2013. NWF photo by Bruce Stein.

Climate scientists at NOAA recently announced that in the continental United States, 2012 was the hottest year since record-keeping began 118 years ago, blowing past the previous record by a full degree. The effect of these increasingly warm temperatures is already showing in our woods and meadows. Just last week scientists reported record early flowering times for dozens of spring wildflowers in the eastern United States. Using notes from famed naturalists Henry David Thoreau and Aldo Leopold, research teams documented that flowering is now occurring up to three weeks earlier than in Thoreau and Leopold’s time, 160 and 80 years ago respectively.

While an early spring may not sound too bad to winter-weary New Englanders, many plants and animals depend on the linked timing of other species to survive—for instance, the timely emergence of insects for birds to feed to their chicks, or the arrival of bees or hummingbirds to pollinate flowers. Accelerate or delay one side of the interaction and the other can suffer in response. This form of ecological mismatch is just one example of the impacts of climate change on species and ecosystems that were summarized in a recent report to the National Climate Assessment, on which I was a co-author.

As I stood on the grounds of the Washington Monument with thousands of others yesterday, I was thrilled to hear President Obama speak very directly about the need to finally confront the dangers climate change poses to America. “We will respond to the threat of climate change, knowing that failure to do so would betray our children and future generations.” He then noted that “some may still deny the overwhelming judgment of science, but none can avoid the devastating impact of raging fires, and crippling drought, and more powerful storms.” Indeed, the science is now clear; it is only the political science and our will to act that is in doubt.

Early this morning as I stepped outside to walk my dog, temperatures in Washington hovered around 19 degrees, a dramatic dip from the previous day’s relatively mild temperatures. Such cold days are now becoming a rarity in Washington, and I found myself savoring the bite of the winter air. I couldn’t help but think, though, about the now-frozen petals on the National Mall, and the young trees that, come spring time, would be without cherry blossoms. Washington’s cherry blossoms long have been a national treasure. It’s time we listened, as the president clearly did, to what they are telling us.

Speak up for wildlife, like polar bears, and support limits on carbon pollution from power plants!