Dale's Column

Elroy Limmer was in a pretty good position to help people see the forest as well as the trees. As Peoria’s City Arborist, he dealt with numerous questions and concerns regarding proper tree care. For example, a home owner once complained that his sizable catalpa tree had so many caterpillars feeding on it, he...
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Elsie stood on my grandmother’s front porch one day looking not the least bit guilty. This was Gramma’s beloved “house” cat, and dangling from its mouth was a very dead purple finch. From that day on, the backyard was quiet. No more beautiful complex song of the purple finch, and the nest he’d been...
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In the middle of the night I occasionally notice a dark figure in my yard, hunkered over as if in prayer, lurking just beneath the bird feeder… chewing. If it notices me, moving inside the house, it will quickly disappear into nearby shrubbery. Cottontail rabbits tend to be predictable and timid, confining their feeding...
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From the “God particle” to Jurassic fleas, 2012 has been an incredible year for science. A lot happened while the myopic media remained preoccupied with an overload of election year political blather and smear, and superpac prevarication. Here’s a tiny sample of science news that you may have missed… * Physicists at the Large Hadron...
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The oak didn’t look as large as I’d remembered. I came upon it while visiting some of my old haunts. This was one of the trees my brother and sister and I used to frequently climb when we were kids. Located in the midst of a huge woods, it’s about 40 yards from a...
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A couple years ago I returned to my great grandparents’ farm after half a century, and barely recognized the place. The log barn was gone, the chicken coop gone, as was the machine shed. Pastures, garden, windmill … all gone. All that remained of the farm in western Wisconsin where my grandmother was born...
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It was a question I’d heard before. In August I was presenting a bird program when a lady asked, “Is it true that humming birds migrate south by hitching a ride on the backs of Canada geese?” This is a surprisingly common notion. It’s understandably hard to believe something as miniature as a humming...
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Every once in a while something comes along that changes everything. For example: in the mid seventeenth century, Dutch scientist, Antonin Van Leeuwenhoek, invented the first microscope. He could actually see previously unknown single-celled critters we now call microorganisms. This opened up a whole new tiny universe to science and paved the way to...
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It was a vision from a horror movie. The kids had formed a wide circle, backing away in disbelief as a growing gang of bee-sized yellow jacket wasps crowded over a can of soda. Screams and shrieks from fifth graders at the Nature Center picnic area had drawn me to this scene. You’d think tiny terrorists...
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It boiled down to cleanliness. That was the consensus from a class of 4th graders, to the question, “What is Earth Day all about?” Their experience reflects a common impression that it’s about picking up litter; cleaning up our towns, roads, and school grounds. One kid even suggested it’s about “cleaning up after old...
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