The Naturalist's Almanac: A Naturalist's Journey Through the Year

By Mark M. Peyton

Nature is cyclic with the same things occurring at the same time each and every year, whether it be the night sky, migration of birds, or the emergence of miller moths. In The Naturalist's Almanac, Peyton takes you through the year, month by month, looking at the various cycles of nature that are associated with each month. The year starts with wolves and ends with the discussion of reindeer. In between are recaps of weather events, stories of different constellations, and multiple natural history essays about a variety of birds, insects, and other animals. In addition, Peyton talks about the impact of smallpox on the New World, the drama associated with the development of vaccines for polio, irrigation, the problem with longitude, and the determination of the birthday of Earth. The Naturalist's Almanac is a look at nature as we once again make a trip around the sun.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Page Publishing, Inc.
• Release date: Nov 23, 2023
• ISBN: 9798889608288

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The Naturalist's Almanac

A NaturalistaEUR(tm)s Journey Through the Year

Mark M. Peyton

Copyright © 2023 Mark M. Peyton

All rights reserved

First Edition

PAGE PUBLISHING

Conneaut Lake, PA

First originally published by Page Publishing 2023

ISBN 979-8-88960-817-2 (pbk)

ISBN 979-8-88960-828-8 (digital)

Printed in the United States of America

Table of Contents

Introduction

Nebraska

Chapter 1

January: The Year Begins

Chapter 2

February

Chapter 3

March

Chapter 4

April

Chapter 5

May

Chapter 6

June

Chapter 7

July

Chapter 8

August

Chapter 9

September

Chapter 10

October

Chapter 11

November

Chapter 12

December

Postscript

Year's End

About the Author

Introduction

Nebraska

The land that is Nebraska has been here a long, long time; however, the name for that land, Nebraska, only dates back to 1714. In that year, the French explorer Etienne de Bourgmont became the first European explorer to travel up the Missouri as far as the Platte River of today. The area around the mouth of the Platte was the home to the Otoe Nation. Their name for the river was Nebraskier or flat water. Two additional French explorers, Pierre and Paul Mallet, reached the river from the southwest a few years later and renamed it the Platte, a French word that again means flat; however, the moniker of Nebraska stuck to the area.

Mother Nature formed the landscape that is the state with runoff from the uplifting Rocky Mountains to the west, carried by snowmelt across what was once a large inland see to the east. This runoff created the large flat area known as the Great Plains. Nebraska sits in the middle of this great plain.

In 1682, thirty-two years before the travels of de Bourgmont, the French explorer La Salle canoed down the Mississippi River from the Great Lakes to the Gulf of Mexico and claimed for France all the land west of the Mississippi from Canada to the present-day border between Oklahoma and Texas, westward to the Rockies, and back up to the Canadian border. It was named the Louisiana Territory after King Louis XIV. That expanse of land included what is now the State of Nebraska.

France utilized the land mainly for trading furs with the natives until 1803 when it was sold to the United States as the Louisiana Purchase. With the purchase of the land, the United States effectively doubled in size and removed the French as a potential threat. It also provided a buffer between the holdings of Spain and the new nation. The purchase was a good deal for France, who needed money for its war campaign in Europe, and a good deal for the US; however, it was not so good for the multiple Native American nations of the area.

The Louisiana Territory was divided into smaller territories with the Nebraska Territory occupying the largest amount of land. At that time, Nebraska stretched from the fortieth parallel (present-day Nebraska–Kansas border) northward to the Canadian border and from the Missouri River in the east to the Rocky Mountains in the west.

It was believed, rightfully so, that an area that large was too large to efficiently manage, and, thus, it was further divided. The first division, in 1861, was the formation of the Colorado Territory, a block of land 275 miles long and 375 miles wide, and the Dakota Territory that started on the forty-third parallel (the present-day boundary between Nebraska and South Dakota) northward to the Canadian border.

The formation of the Colorado Territory created the panhandle of Nebraska. Originally, the panhandle stretched along the forty-first parallel all the way to the Continental Divide. In 1863, that area of the panhandle lying west of the 104th line of longitude was reassigned to the Idaho Territory, much of what would later become part of Wyoming.

Four years later, Nebraska was admitted into the Union as the thirty-seventh state. At 430 miles long and 210 miles wide, it is the sixteenth-largest state by area. The natural habitat is mainly grassland with small rivers and even smaller lakes.

While those naming the area used the word flat, Nebraska is anything but that. The northeast has rugged hills and valleys that are the remains of the last glacier while the central portion of the state is covered by the second-largest sand dune area in the world, the Nebraska Sandhills. Rivers cut through the state mainly from west to east forming large valleys.

While the rivers are on the small size compared to those east and west of us, they are nonetheless of interest. The Platte River lives up to its name in being flat, falling an average of only six feet per mile. The valley on either side is also flat thus providing the best path if you wanted to cross the state. Movement from east to west followed the river. The first explorers made their way up the Platte to the mountains out west. The fur traders then shipped their pelts down the river. The Mormon Trail, the Oregon Trail, the Overland Trail, and the Pony Express all followed the river, paving the way for the first telegraph lines and intercontinental railroad. It also paved the way in 1913 for the first transcontinental highway, the Lincoln Highway.

Fifty years later, the same path was used for Interstate 80, the busiest cross-country interstate in the nation…all along the banks of the Platte River.

The Niobrara River, named for a Ponca word for spreading water, links west ecosystems with the east. Plants and animals common in the east of Nebraska are found along this river which has its beginnings in Wyoming and joins the Missouri River at the Nebraska–South Dakota border about two-thirds the way across the state.

The Dismal River, probably the poorest named river in the state, is one of, if not the most, consistently flowing rivers in the United States. Along with the Niobrara, Snake, Loup and Elkhorn Rivers, the Dismal is the drain for the huge sponge (over twelve million acres) that is the Nebraska Sandhills.

The Republican River is shrouded in legal issues, the White River is in trapping history, and the Cedar and the Calamus Rivers are just fun to canoe.

Nebraska lies in the geographic center of North America. Thus, plants and animals common in the east can be found in Nebraska as well as those common in the west. The same is true in the north–south direction. Nebraska also lies right in the middle of the mid-continental flyway. The Cornell Lab reported that in 2022, over 362 million birds were recorded during the spring migration as they made their way across Nebraska. These birds cross the state twice a year going to and coming from the nesting grounds to the north, some as far away as Siberia and the wintering grounds to the south as far away as southern South America.

Lying in the middle of the continent, Nebraska experiences fairly mild weather punctuated by violent storms and blizzards. The average year-round temperature is fifty degrees with January the coldest month when temperatures rarely exceed freezing and July the warmest with highs averaging around ninety degrees. The highest temperature recorded in the state is 118°F recorded in 1936 and the lowest is -47°F recorded in 1899.

Average precipitation varies west to east with averages in the ten- to fifteen-inch per year range in the west to 30"/year in the east, making most of the state semiarid.

When European explorers and pioneers first made their way across Nebraska, there were few trees. Fire, drought, and the need for wood combined with the natural climate limited the growth of forests.

Forests are possible in Nebraska as Dr. Charles Bessey proved in 1903 with the establishment of the Bessey and McKelvie National Forests located right smack-dab in the middle of the state. Since that time, literally millions of trees have been planted across Nebraska.

Tree planting in Nebraska actually had its beginnings in 1872 when newspaperman and politician J. Sterling Morton proposed a tree-planting holiday. The day set aside was April 10, and on that first Arbor Day, over one million trees were planted leading to the state's nickname, the Tree Planters State. Even with 150 years of planting trees, today forests only cover about 2 percent of the land that is Nebraska.

In 1820, Stephen H. Long led an expedition along the Platte River from the Missouri to the confluence of the South Platte and North Platte Rivers. From there, he followed the South Platte to the Rockies before returning east. Long described the land west of mid-Nebraska as the Great American Desert, claiming it was worth nothing more than a buffer between the US and Spain to the south and west and Russia to the northwest. He described it as hot and dry, with no fuel, and peopled by hostile natives.

Seventy years later, twenty-three years after Nebraska became a state, John Wesley Powell also traveled across the state, and he noticed a distinct change in the climate in mid-Nebraska. He identified the boundary between arable land to the east and desert land to the west as the one hundredth meridian. Because of the scarcity of water and its immense value, he proposed that the boundaries of states in the west be determined by river drainages. That would prevent conflicts between states over water. No one listened to him, and those conflicts continue today.

In a way, the people of Nebraska did follow Powell's advice. In 1972, the state created Natural Resource Districts, and the boundaries of those districts followed river drainages. However, until the development of deep-well technology, much of the state was considered to be rangeland and not suitable for cultivation. Irrigation changed that. Today, Nebraska ranks no. 1 in irrigated acres, which results in a national rank of no. 3 in the production of corn and no. 4 in soybean production.

Despite the conversion of almost half the state into cropland, millions of acres of natural grasslands still exist, and Nebraska is the second leading beef-producing state in the nation. This patchwork of ecosystems, both natural and man-altered, makes Nebraska a very special location for a naturalist.

A naturalist is someone interested in all the aspects of nature: ornithology, entomology, ichthyology, mammalogy, herpetology, botany, astronomy, geology, meteorology, wetland biology, rangeland biology, forest biology, and even history.

Yes, history because if you look closely enough, almost all history revolves around some aspect of nature. The early conflicts between Native Americans were over food and the search for food, with later strife once the Europeans arrived. That strife centered around the search for gold and other minerals including petroleum, the harvesting of fur and forests, fishing grounds, and land needs for a growing population, etc.

Thus, being a naturalist gives you a very wide range of disciplines in which to dabble throughout the year. If you recorded those dabblings over the course of the year, you would have a naturalist's almanac.

An almanac is a kind of calendar, and the early ones were dedicated to mainly astronomy and meteorology and how those things impacted agriculture. Some famous examples of almanacs are Poor Richard's Almanac written and published for twenty-five years by Benjamin Franklin, The Old Farmer's Almanac first published in 1792, and, of course, A Sand County Almanac written by Aldo Leopold in 1949.

This almanac is a record of those dabblings by one naturalist here in Nebraska; however, just about everything I record is also true for all the Great Plains States and most other states as well. So join me as I take a yearlong journey through the nature of Nebraska.

The Year

If we define this almanac as a record of things through the year, we might be wise to first talk about the term year.

There are various definitions of year. You probably think in terms of the calendar year. There is also the solar or tropical year and the sidereal year. The solar year is equal to 365 days, five hours, forty-eight minutes, 45.25 seconds, or 365.2421875 days. The sidereal year is twenty minutes longer than the solar year, and for astronomers, it has value, but for the everyday naturalist, not much.

If we compare the solar year to our calendar, we find the calendar year is off by -0.2421875 days. Over a four-year-period, this equals -0.96875 days. To reconcile the difference between our calendar year and the solar year, we add a leap day every four years. Now we have a difference of +0.03175 days every four years, or approximately +0.78125 days in a century. To compensate for the extra time, every century divisible by four hundred has a leap day, but those not divisible by four hundred do not…Confused yet?

Originally, the Roman calendar, developed by King Romulus in 738 BC, consisted of ten months and an intercalation to bring the seasons into harmony with the calendar. The Romans believed that even numbers were lucky, so on this calendar, each of the ten months was thirty days long. Thus, the year was three hundred days long with a sixty-five to sixty-six day intercalation thrown in at the end of the year.

This was how Rome kept track of time for almost seven hundred years. Because the length and timing of the annual intercalation was calculated by local politicians, by the time of Julius Caesar in 46 BC, there was so much corruption involved that it became almost impossible for the entire empire to agree, not only on what day it was but actually in what year!

Julius Caesar formalized the calendar by assigning five months with thirty-one days, six months with thirty days, and one month, February, with twenty-eight. Every four years, an intercalation of one day was added to February. January and February were the two new months, and originally, they were the last two months of the year. However, the New Year was soon moved to January 1.

The Julian calendar, as we call it, had 365.25 days a year, thus only requiring an intercalation of one day every four years, very similar to what we used today.

However, because the solar year and the year on the Julian calendar were not exactly the same, by 1582, the Julian calendar was ten days ahead of the solar year. Pope Gregory XIII changed the calendar once more by jumping forward ten days at the end of October in 1582. This brought the calendar and the spring equinox back into alignment.

England and her colonies did not accept the Gregorian calendar. The calendar was of Catholic origin, and fifty years prior to Gregory XIII's adjustment of the Julian calendar, England separated itself from the Catholic Church and out of principle refused to accept any Catholic convention. England and her colonies did finally adopt the Gregorian calendar in 1752, and by that time, it was another day off in comparison to the solar year. Thus, parliament declared that the calendar of 1752 would go from September 2 to September 14. This was followed by riots with people demanding the return of their twelve days!

January, the first month of our year, is named for Janus, a Roman god and protector of gates and doorways. He is depicted as having two faces, one looking into the past and one into the future. January brings one year to a close, and it is the beginning of the next year. In Rome, the Janus Gate was open, and the army would march through it on the way to war. It stayed open until the army came back, marching through the gate once more at which time it was closed.

February is named for "februa which means to cleanse." It was a time right before spring in which a festival of purification and atonement was held. It was also a time in which temperatures improved such that people could take baths and clean up!

March was originally the start of the year. It was the time in which the ground thawed and there was less snow and so the armies could head out to do battle. The month was named for the Roman god Mars, the god of war. March is also the time of the equinox and the beginning of spring, and several festivals were held at this time, partially in expectation of the spring and partially in preparation of the season of war.

April is named for "aperio which means to open," presumably because this is when the buds on several different species of trees and flowers open.

May was named for the Roman goddess Maia who was the goddess of plants and the nurturing of the earth.

June is named for another Roman goddess Juno who was both sister and wife to Jupiter. Juno was many things, but her role as patroness of marriage and young people led many to plan their marriage for the month in honor of her and to gain her blessing.

July was the fifth month in the old ten-month Roman calendar. Originally, it was called Quintilis. Two years after Julius Caesar created the Julian calendar, the name was changed to July in his honor.

August, like July, was first named the sixth month, Sextilis, but in 8 BC, it was changed to August in honor of Emperor Augustus.

September, October, November, and December were all named for their numerical order in the old Roman calendar…the seventh, eighth, ninth, and tenth months. Of interest to our almanac, the month of October stands out. It was also called Winmonath, which translates as Wine Month because it was the time of harvesting the grapes and making the wine. In addition, it was the full moon of October that was considered the start of winter.

A year is one trip around the sun. Four seasons, twelve months, 365 days, five hours, forty-eight minutes. A lifetime for some animals, a blink of an eye for some plants. For the naturalist, it is a rhythmic pattern of biological, meteorological, and astronomical happenings that brings changing wonderment and joy with each of the four seasons, twelve months, and 365 days, five hours, forty-eight minutes.

Chapter 1

January: The Year Begins

January is the coldest month of the year here in central Nebraska averaging about 25°F, with highs in the forties and lows in the tens. As you would expect, the first week in January is the coldest week of the month and, thus, the year with an average temperature of 24°F. January is also dry as a bone with average precipitation coming in at just 0.33 inch. In three of the years since records were kept, there has been no precipitation at all during January, and the maximum was 2.33 inches in 1879.

During the final week of the month, the average temperature tweaks up two degrees Fahrenheit to twenty-six degrees. The nights remain cold with temperatures below zero somewhat common. Daytime highs are usually in the thirties and forties.

The sun in the last week of the month is 5.8 degrees higher in the sky at noon than it was January 1. The sun rises twelve minutes earlier than it did the first week and sets thirty-five minutes later, giving us forty-seven minutes more of daylight this week than at the beginning of the month. The higher sun and extended day are the driving forces behind an increase in the average temperature. However, it is still dry.

The cold temperatures and low precipitation do have their advantages. January is an excellent month to get out after dark and observe the night sky. The observing week begins on the second with a meteor shower, the Quadrantid shower. This shower can have as many as one hundred shooting stars an hour during its peak, a peak that lasts only six hours.

The cold dry air of January enhances the view through your telescope or binoculars. It is also the beginning of the brightest night sky of the year. The constellations of Gemini, Leo, Taurus, Canis Minor and Canis Major, Cassiopeia, Cepheus, Ursa Major and Ursa Minor, and, of course, Orion are all above the horizon at, or shortly following, sundown, and in those constellations, you will find nine of the twenty brightest stars in the sky.

We all know that it is the earth revolving around the sun over the course of the year that is the cause in the change in constellations visible at different times of the year. This wasn't always known. Early stargazers thought the stars were fixed in place (since the constellations never change shape). They were aware of seven heavenly bodies that were not fixed and moved; those seven bodies are the sun, moon, Mercury, Venus, Mars, Jupiter, and Saturn. The sun and moon's movements could be predicted; however, the five stars that moved did so at times in unpredictable ways and just kind of wandered.

The term planet refers to a star that wasn't fixed and indeed wandered. To explain the movement of these seven heavenly bodies, a theory evolved. About 500 BC, it was believed that the moon, sun, and five planets were each embedded in a crystalline sphere. These spheres were then nested one inside the other, and so for us to see the further planets, the spheres had to be transparent. The only transparent material known at that time was crystal.

Saturn was the slowest planet as it moved across the sky, so they correctly determined that it was farther from Earth than the other planets. Jupiter was the next slowest and then Mars. Venus took longer than Mercury, and the moon at times came between the sun and Earth. Thus, the resulting order of the spheres orbiting Earth were moon, Mercury, Venus, sun, Mars, Jupiter, and Saturn.

Pythagoras was one of the first individuals, 2,500 years ago, who recognized a mathematical consistency to nature. He also noted the mathematics of music. He thought there was a connection to the fact that there were seven days to the week, seven heavenly bodies, and seven notes in a scale. Thus, he ascribed music to the spheres and even tried to write that music down. The Music of the Spheres.

The stars, that did not move, were imbedded in the outermost of the spheres, and it was unmovable. These stars form patterns as seen from Earth; patterns called constellations. Constellation is Latin for set of stars. There are twelve constellations along the ecliptic, which is simply the path of the sun. These are the signs of the zodiac, a word that started as Greek, was altered by Latin, and then further altered in Anglo-French language…the original meaning was circle.

Each constellation averages about thirty degrees in length and sixteen degrees in width. Thus, the constellation Orion, which is just rising in the east at sundown