Earth Almanac: November/December 2009

Singing Fish

The love song of the aptly named red drum (a.k.a. channel bass or redfish) is anything but sweet. What’s remarkable about it, however, is that it exists at all. On late-fall evenings in saltwater bays and estuaries from Virginia to Mexico, males court prospective mates by nudging them and simultaneously vibrating a muscle in their swim bladders, thereby creating a drumming occasionally audible on land. A big female can produce two million eggs. They hatch after only about a day, and the larvae drift in the plankton column until they develop fins and scales and are able to forage on their own. Young drum grow quickly on crabs, marine worms, shrimp, and small fish, reaching at least a foot in length their first year. A large, black, eyelike spot (often several) near the tail may protect drum from predators by directing attack away from the head. Red drum flesh was generally scorned by Americans until the early 1980s, when chef Paul Prudhomme popularized his “blackened redfish.” The craze precipitated a crash in Gulf State waters. But after Florida, Louisiana, and Texas banned commercial netting, the stock rebounded. Strong, dogged fighters, red drum are among the nation’s most prized game fish. For this reason President George W. Bush signed an executive order in 2007 prohibiting the sale of redfish taken in federal waters.

Riders on the Storm

Along the edges of the hay field, snow is plastered on the north side of trees and fence posts. Northern harriers pushed south weeks ago. But there’s a large, long-tailed hawk flying low and wobbling on the Arctic gale. A straggler? Now it hovers—definitely a harrier! But no, it’s too dark. It is a rough-legged hawk, a migrant from the far north that winters in most of the United States save some of the Gulf and southeastern states. This buteo gets its name from feathers extending down the shanks of its legs, an adaptation to its frigid habitat. The rest of the plumage varies widely in individuals—from dark to light. In Europe the bird is known as the rough-legged “buzzard,” from the Middle High German buse for cat and aar for eagle, probably in reference to the bird’s catlike call. And like our “buzzards”—also known as vultures—the rough-legged hawk will disgorge food when threatened, enabling faster takeoffs.

Winter Green

In the high country, foothills, and adjacent piedmont of the central and southern Appalachians, patches of green brighten the season’s bare and brown hardwood forest. Oil nut shrubs aren’t evergreens, but they keep their color after other deciduous leaves have dropped or faded. You’re most apt to find them in areas disturbed by fire, wind, insects, or logging. Semi-parasitic, the species relies on minerals and nutrients it appropriates from the roots of other plants. Yet with its chlorophyll-rich leaves it photosynthesizes some of its own food. Oil nut spreads mostly by sending out subterranean rhizomes, which break through the forest floor as leafy shoots, but a single seed about as long as your thumbnail is contained in each dangling, pear-shaped fruit. Oil nut is also known as buffalo nut and elk nut because early settlers saw eastern elk and bison eating it. Suppress any desire to discover how it tastes, however, because the plant (known also as mother-in-law nut) causes severe irritation of the mouth—a discovery doubtless made by a chastened fellow who experienced from his wife’s mother an effect on his psyche not unlike the effect of oil nut fruit on his mucous membranes.