I am truly humbled and honored to have the opportunity to be a part of Meadowlark Hills.
Outdoor Encounters
February 6, 2025
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A recent late September hike along Meadowlark trails quickly confirmed the obvious: our campus biology is sliding full bore into fall—a wonderful time to be out, moving slowly, or sitting quietly, and watching the changes going on all around. Leaves are dying, preparing to drop, and changing colors as they do. Soil and water microbes and fungi soon will begin the large scale digestion of those leaves into their constituent minerals and chemical compounds. Thus freed, these chemical units can be used yet again in the building of new members of the countless species of organisms found in our local corner of the Flint Hills Tallgrass ecosystem.
Black walnut trees (numerous along Donner’s Way) are displaying their annual crop, and walnut shell fragments from fox squirrel dining make for crunchy walking along some parts of the trails. Red cedar, hackberry, arbor vitae, osage orange (hedge apple) trees, and various bushes (e.g., service berry and coralberry) are filled with fruit that will be eaten by various birds and small rodents. The seeds of sunflowers and other wildflowers, of weeds and grasses, and also leftovers in grain fields will provide winter food for many small birds and mammals.
Amid all of this, trees and bushes are preparing to ride out the cold, snow, ice and wind. About the only adaptation for cold weather we can see trees and bushes making is the loss of their most fragile parts, their leaves. The death of the fragile leaves shuts down their big summer vocation of photosynthesis. Plant metabolic rates slow significantly, and stored sugars will be used as an energy source until green leaf time comes again. But enjoy our glorious palette of fall while you can—maybe even press a leaf or two.
One silent example of botanical adaptation for winter is that plant trunks, stems and branches attempt to make their outer layers of cells more resistant to freezing. This is done by pulling more chemicals that are in solution from cells deeper within trunks, stems and branches and putting them in more exposed cell layers nearer the surface. Increasing the number of chemical molecules in solution in the cytoplasm of cells lowers their freezing point, making them less likely to freeze.
We can’t see most botanical adaptations against cold weather. But as we look at trees or shrubs during a fall or winter hike, we can marvel at them for surviving not only lightening but also the hottest, driest, windiest, and coldest weather that Father Sky throws at them.
Many of our wild animal neighbors also stay in place. Many terrestrial insects, spiders, and such usually are killed by the first deep frosts. Whoopee! Goodbye chiggers, mosquitoes and ticks! A few insects, spiders, etc., try to overwinter in the soil, behind thick bark on a tree trunk, or some such. And one famous insect, the monarch butterfly, makes a long migration to overwinter in the mountains of central Mexico. After that first killing frost is a very good time to take off-the-trail hikes.
Local mammals are not much into migration; most either hibernate or tough it out. Among the more visible mammals that meet winter head on are the fox squirrel, opossum, striped skunk, racoon, badger, black-tailed prairie dog, coyote, and red fox. You’ll see the fox squirrel out foraging during all but the very worst of snowy, icy, or rainy days. Most of the others listed above tend to be more nocturnal, but you may sometimes see any of them out during your wanderings. In contrast, the 13-lined ground squirrel (once common locally) and the groundhog (or woodchuck) do hibernate. Otherwise, there will be very little change in what mammals you might see as summer grades into fall and winter.
With birds, our highly mobile fellow travelers, the situation is far more complex. Many species of prairie, forest, water, and shore birds migrate through Kansas along the great Central American Flyway—stopping at places like Cheyenne Bottoms, Quivira National Wildlife Refuge, or at any of the numerous other established Kansas wildlife refuges. Thus, Kansas is known as a great birding state.
Some birds are permanent residents of eastern Kansas with little migration, e.g., American crow, Carolina wren, Carolina chickadee, bobwhite quail, northern cardinal, wild turkeys, great horned and barred owls, eastern bluebird, and both eastern and western meadowlarks. But as may happen for several other species, such as American sparrow, pine siskin, dark-eyed junco, our robin, several hawk species, and the bald eagle, some meadowlarks that nest in northern states also come south (including Kansas) to overwinter. You may see any of these birds at any time.
Most bird species that nest in Kansas , e.g., hummingbirds, warblers, orioles, most wrens, flycatchers, grackles and blackbirds, and the upland sandpiper—migrate back south in late summer or early fall. But some members of some species, e.g., the robin, great blue heron, and Canadian geese, do stay behind and overwinter here. And many species, plus meadowlarks, that nested farther north, do move south to overwinter in Kansas. It is said that almost all of our summer robins move south in fall and that our winter robins are mostly those that have moved south to overwinter here. Still much to see out there.
During summer walks around Bayer Pond, you will see the snouts of numerous pond slider turtles and an occasional snapping turtle as they watch you invading their turf. By now they have, or soon will have, buried themselves in the mud on the pond bottom for hibernation.
The same is true for frogs that inhabit the pond. Gone, or mostly so, will be the loud resonance of the daily bullfrog serenades. But bullfrogs do something special: their tadpoles from this past summer’s breeding activity have not metamorphized into frogs, nor do they hibernate! Rather, they overwinter as free-ranging tadpoles and will undergo metamorphosis into bullfrogs next summer. And you may see them at water’s edge.
Best of all, with leaf drop we enter the “see-through-season,” as my dear late wife, Imogene, called it. One can see much farther into a tree or into a whole forest to observe more of the wild beings that make fall and winter such interesting times to be out and about.
I am truly humbled and honored to have the opportunity to be a part of Meadowlark Hills.
2121 Meadowlark Road
Manhattan, KS 66502
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Call: 785.537.4610
Email: info@meadowlark.org
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