The Urban Naturalist

Once in a ... well ... you know

(Photo from the Sydney Observatory in Australia)

If the weather permits, include gazing at the full moon in your New Year's Eve plans. Better yet, make it your New Year's Eve plan. The full moon is December's second one, which makes it what many people call a "blue moon."

The lunar cycle is 29.5 days long, which means every so often the full moon catches up with itself and occurs twice in a month -- about seven times in every 19-year period, according to Philip Hiscock, a professor at Memorial University of Newfoundland. Although the term "blue moon" has been used in popular vernacular for about 400 years, NASA officials (citing Hiscock) report that this occurrence has only in recent decades been called a "blue moon."

And it was so-named by mistake. According to the NASA Web site, a definition of "blue moon" by a 1937 article in the Farmer's Almanac of Maine was a confounding essay involving "the ecclesiastical dates of Easter and Lent and the timing of seasons according to the dynamical mean sun."

In an effort to explain this convoluted concept to regular people, a 1946 Sky & Telescope magazine article only further confused the issue by citing the Maine essay and asserting, wrongly, that it basically meant the occurrence of a second full moon in a month. the error was discovered and corrected in 1999, but of course it was too late. We have our blue moon definition, and we like it.

Check out Hiscock's article at: www.ips-planetarium.org/planetarian/articles/folkloreBlueMoon.html. It gives more interesting tidbits about the use of this term over the centuries.

But don't spend your New Year's Eve reading about the blue moon. Get outside and see it.

Up on the rooftop ... ungulate paws?

  OK, so she's not one of Santa's ungulates, but she still walks on her tippy-toes. This little mule deer, like reindeer, is an ungulate.  The word refers to animals with hooves.

How many hoofed animals can you name?  How many can your child name?  Who can name more?

See?  Learn a new word and you can turn it into a new game that can help pass the time on those long drives to family holiday gatherings.

Hoofed animals are pretty cool. They support their entire body weight by walking on their toes. Some have odd-numbered toes (think horses). Some have even-numbered toes (pig or pronghorn). A pig actually has four toes, although only the two in the middle are used for walking. A tapir has three toes on its hind feet and four toes on its front feet.

The outer covering of hooves is made of keratin, and it folds over and under the front of the hoof to protect the soft tissue underneath as our fingernails do. Our hair and fingernails are made of keratin, as are bird feathers. (Nature made a really durable and versatile substance in keratin. No sense using it on only one animal or body part.)  As with fingernails and hair, the hoof covering never stops growing. It simply stays worn down because the animal walks on it.

A closer look at the feet of this little mule deer above will reveal that she has a couple of smaller "dew claws" above her hoof.  These are not used for walking, but they may touch the ground when she jumps. Some indigenous people used to lace the dew-claws onto a string and use them as a kind of doorbell at the doors of their lodges or teepees.

While doing some research for this post, I stumbled onto a cool Web site about ungulates: www.ultimateungulate.com. It says that the definition of "ungulate" has in recent years been extended to include whales and dolphins -- which have no hooves at all -- because they, like today's hoofed mammals, share a common ancestor from the Condylarthra ungulate order from the Paleocene Epoch, some 55 to 65 million years ago.

Still, it is difficult to imagine eight tiny dolphins pulling Santa's sleigh.

Where would he keep them?

These boots are made for ... snow

This lone little teasel looks as though it was the center of an impromptu ring-around-a-rosy game of feather-footed friends.  And it is just the kind of sight that captivates and delights the children who attend field trips at the nature center where I teach.

The days on which we have the time to walk a little farther and linger a little longer along the snowy paths are the ones that the children -- and I -- like best.  there is no telling when an adolescent mule deer is going to step out from behind a tree or a family of California quail is going to skitter across the trail.

Truly, it is difficult to top a leisurely winter stroll on one of those afternoons when the sky is breathtaking blue and the snow sparkles in the sunlight. But nothing can ruin the outing faster than having frosty fingers or wet feet.

It never ceases to amaze me that children who live in homes with a computer, more than one television set and vast collections of DVDs and video games don't have a proper coat or boots to wear outside in winter. I can recall when back-to-school shopping started with seeing how last year's snow pants, coat and boots fit. once those were replaced, we bought all the other stuff.

Now, I see children come for a day of snow-walking wearing ballerina flats or canvas sneakers and cotton socks, a cotton hoodie and a pair of those thin, knitted gloves that come in a gazillion colors. All are very cute and practical for much of what today's children do -- play inside.  But as a combo for outdoor excursions they spell disaster.

Granted, snow clothes can be expensive, and children outgrow them. No one said they have to be brand-new. Thrift stores are a great place to buy sturdy, warm winter outerwear -- often in high-quality brands that cost less than a couple of movie tickets. 

If thrift stores aren't your gig (something you may want to re-consider, as buying second-hand is reducing, reusing and recycling), maybe you can create a co-op among your friends and neighbors. As the older kids outgrow their coats, they hand them down to the younger ones -- sort of like one, big happy family.  Have a back-to-school cookout where everyone brings last year's coats and boots and the kids mix, match and try on stuff.

Just because it's cold and snowy doesn't mean it's time to stay indoors.  The best way for children to learn about -- and learn to care about -- nature is to spend as much time exploring it as they can.  Getting them the right clothes to enjoy it is the easy part.

The harder part -- but the fun part -- is figuring out just who did make those tracks in the snow.