Flail Adele - A Nature Lovers Almanac : Kinky Bugs, Stealthy Creatures, Prosperous Plants and Celestial Wonders

January takes its name from Janus, the two-faced God who guards the passage between past and future. In days gone by, many Native American tribes kept track of the seasons by the recurring full moon. This was the month of the Full Wolf Moon or Full Old Moon.

Tonight and tomorrow night, look to the north for the Quadrantid meteor shower , visible in the Northern Hemisphere, radiating from near the constellation Botes. The Quadrantid shower is one of the years best, typically producing over 100 meteors per hour.

Earth reaches perihelion , its annual position closest to the sun today. During winter, the lower altitude of the sun means its light hits our hemisphere at an oblique angle, causing the atmosphere to dissipate the heat.

Feed the birds! Seeds make great fodder, but birds also need fatty foods, like suet cakes and peanut butter, during cold weather.

Black-billed magpies are frequent and rowdy visitors to winter suet feeders. Omnivorous and resourceful, magpies forage for insects, berries, seeds and carrion; they pick ticks off horses, cows and deer and routinely pilfer from predators and other birds. They often make food caches, into which they deposit fresh and regurgitated snacks. Magpies can find food by scent, which is unusual in the avian world, as most birds have limited sense of smell.

Theres always plenty in the natural world to engage the senses, even in the midst of winter.

During the day, look for trees and shrubs with interesting forms, like weeping crabapple and cherry, sumac and corkscrew willow, or those with cool seedpods, like catalpa, red bud, honeylocust, sycamore and linden.

At night, look for planets (stars scintillate, while planets shine more steadily and appear disc-shaped) and constellations. Take a deep breath. What kind of firewood is burned in your area? Cedar? Maple? Oak? Pinion? Juniper? They all have distinctive aromas.

Day or night, pay attention to the feel of the earth beneath your feet and the air against your skin.

You just might encounter a skunk in your rambles. Skunks stay active all winter, foraging for rodent nestlings, snails, fallen fruit and old vegetables, carrion and garbage. Dont worryskunks typically give plenty of warning and generally are not trigger-happy. Before spraying, they do an elaborate warning dance, which, in the spotted skunk, includes a handstand. But if that doesnt do the trick, nipples leading from the anal glands pop out, adjust, and rotate like an anti-aircraft gun. If theyre near enough, the attacker gets a jet right in the eyes; otherwise, an all-encompassing mist is exuded.

Though it seems they do, fruit flies do not spontaneously generate from ripening fruit; they can just smell it from a long way away. The fruit fly has 32 odor receptors on each antenna, and all are honed to sniff out its favorite foodyeast.

Female fruit flies both feed on fermenting fruit and lay their eggs in it400 to 500 of them, in fact. They hatch in half a day, and the larvae feed for about four days before they pupate. Four days later, another generation of randy, red-eyed adults emerges ready to perpetuate the cycle.

Fruit fly courtship and mating are ceremonial and lengthy. The male must perform a five-step song-and-dance number to the females liking (the re-dos can take hours) before hes allowed to transfer his sperm cells. That takes at least 30 minutes. The female then stores the sperm until she finds a suitable time and place to process it and lay her eggs.

Should you run out of slightly slimy fruit, worry not; fruit flies can sustain themselves on sink drain slime, moist crumbs, and even alcohol fumes. Seriously, though, to rid your kitchen of fruit flies, tape a sheet of paper into a funnel and put it into a jar baited with a few ounces of cider vinegar. They wont be able to resist.

Coywolves, coyote/wolf hybrids, are flourishing in southeastern Canada and the northeastern U.S. One is even reputed to be living in New York Citys Central Park. Larger than coyotes but smaller than wolves, they are strong enough to hunt deer and are able to coexist with humans. And unlike many interbred species, their offspring are fertile.

If you have a pond with over-wintering fish, make sure a section is always ice-free.

Unlike most insects, earwigs are good mothers. They keep their eggs warm and clean and vigorously protect them from predators. As the eggs hatch, the mother assists them, and the nymphs nest under her like baby birds. Mama earwigs even regurgitate food for their babies until theyre able to hunt and forage on their own.