Tag: spring

Categories
Cottage Life

Wild Profile: Meet the American woodcock

By Lindaimke/Shutterstock

Have you heard of the woodcock? What about the timberdoodle? It’s the same bird. The same, strange-looking bird. Spring is a key time for the plump, stubby-necked avian. With its bizarre preportions—look at that long beak—it’s hard to imagine that the woodcock would be a strong flier. But it is. And beginning in March, males take to the skies to woo their future lady loves with astonishing courtship flights.

What does the woodcock sound like?

About 20 minutes after sundown in early spring, male woodcocks start to call to the ladies: peent, peent, peent. It’s nasal and buzzy, and audible from more than 200 metres away. A male will repeat the sound every few seconds for a couple of minutes, then launch into the air, spiralling through the sky 100 metres up. Then he abruptly hurtles back to earth, flying in a zigzag pattern. He repeats this aerial dance about a dozen times, and does the same thing again at dawn, for two months. That’s dedication.

What do woodcocks eat?

The woodcock isn’t nearly as fancy-footed on the ground, but it does move in an unusual way. While foraging—for beetle grubs, maggots, and millipedes—the robin-sized bird camouflages with its surroundings thanks to its buff, brown, and black feathers. It bobs back and forth, shifting its weight from foot to foot as it uses its upper bill to probe the leaf litter. The upper bill has a flexible, serrated tip that’s full of blood vessels. The woodcock uses it to detect the vibrations of critters in the soil—mostly earthworms, a staple food. Experts think the bird’s back-and-forth movement is intentional, to encourage worms to burrow deeper, and therefore, make noise that the woodcock can “hear”. Sneaky trick!

Categories
Cottage Life

Hibernation secrets: why animals don’t get weak over the winter

Photo courtesy Matthew Regan

Every year as the temperature drops, hibernating animals, fattened from a summer spent gorging on food, prepare to hunker down for the winter. When they wake up in the spring, they’re healthy and strong despite months of inactivity. So how do they do it?

This was the question that Matthew Regan, an assistant professor of biology at the University of Montreal, and his colleagues set out to answer in a new study recently published in Science. Hibernation has long intrigued scientists, he explains. There was speculation that something in the gut helped some hibernators preserve muscle. Regan and his colleagues tested this hypothesis on 13-lined ground squirrels in Wisconsin and found that bacteria play a key role in helping them stay strong while they hibernate. 

These ground squirrels are an “extreme example of hibernation,” Regan says. They are inactive for six months, during which time their metabolism is reduced by 99 per cent. When they wake up in mid-April, the squirrels “start eating furiously” and double their weight by the fall, he says. 

Like humans, ground squirrels have many different kinds of bacteria in their gut, and one group of microbes is doing them an important service. While the squirrels hibernate, urea, the main component in urine, is transported to their intestines where microbes break it down, releasing nitrogen, Regan explains. Nitrogen is essential for making protein, and this process allows the squirrels to preserve and build muscle through the winter. 

10 unexpected facts about bear hibernation

There is already interest in how this process could help humans prevent muscle-wasting—whether they’re patients on bed rest or astronauts in zero-gravity environments. Regan has received funding from the Canadian Space Agency to study the possible applications for space travel. However, the human gut microbiome is complex and delicate, and disruptions could have negative impacts, he says. So, careful research must be done before applying this mechanism in space.

For now, this process is best left to the squirrels. While it may be tempting to leave food out to help the little hibernators fatten up, Regan says it’s safer to “let them do what they’re evolved to do.”

Quiz: how much do you know about hibernation?

Categories
Mode et accessoires

Spring in Canada

Spring, formerly known as Transit, will be opened around Canada.  The negotiations for this project started three years ago.  In the last few days the project has been finalized.

Aldo would like to reach urban consumers, offering a product that is reasonably priced.  There will be 121 Spring stores in Canada, 17 in the United States, and 38 other boutiques in six other countries.  Each boutique has 250 styles for women, and 125 for men.