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• Foreign freshwater jellyfish have been swimming among us since the 1930s
  in News
  By Stephen Lyn Bales

  Freshwater jellyfish: Here one year, gone the next.

  KNOXVILLE — Paddling along the still water of Mead’s Quarry Lake you notice the air bubbles created by your oars. They are all around your canoe near the surface.
  

  It’s a hot early September afternoon and the nearly transparent bubbles seem to take on a life of their own. You slow to watch and yes, they undulate, rising and falling in the pristine water of the abandoned marble quarry.

  Air bubbles do not undulate!

  Taking a clear plastic cup, you lean over the gunwale and scoop up one of the penny-sized bubbles to get a closer look.

  Tentacles? Air bubbles do not have tentacles. What you are looking at is a freshwater jellyfish and the heat of late summer is its mating season. It’s a blossom of jellyfish as hundreds gather together near the water’s surface. They are commonly known as peach blossom jellyfish. 

• Monarch butterflies, an ephemeral but regular glimpse of beauty, are fluttering toward extinction
  in News
  By Stephen Lyn Bales

   A monarch butterfly, recently declared endangered despite decades of conservation, is seen atop a coneflower. Stephen Lyn Bales

  Dramatic monarch declines mean the bell tolls for we

  KNOXVILLE — Monarch butterflies are ephemeral by nature. The orange and black dalliances that flitter through our lives, our yards, and our countryside like motes of dust are here one minute and gone the next. We pause for a few seconds to watch the “flutter-bys” and then move on.

  For about all of the Lepidopteran family, where they come from, where they go, their raison d'être, we don’t ask. They are winged wisps that pass through our busy lives. But that is not true with this orange and black butterfly, named to honor King William III of England, the Prince of Orange. But two people did ask.

  Norah and Fred Urquhart lived in Southern Canada and in the late 1930s they noticed that the monarch butterflies seemed to all be fluttering south this time of the year. Could they possibly be migrating and if so, where did they go? The notion that a butterfly might migrate south for the winter seemed hard to fathom. Yes, broad-winged hawks migrate. But a flimsy butterfly?

• In throwback to early naturalist techniques, Big Camera! helps us picture plants under the sun
  in News
  By Ben Pounds

  Donna Moore and Anna Lawrence are pictured at a Big Camera! event in May at Ijams Nature Center in South Knoxville. Ben Pounds/Hellbender PressLessons in early and enduring photo techniques are an organic way to spread the arts and cultivate love of nature

  KNOXVILLE — Donna Moore and Anna Lawrence showed people how to take photos with the sun.

  The method, demonstrated this spring at Ijams Nature Center, involved putting one or more leaves on photo paper and spraying it with two sprays. One spray contained lemon and water. The other contained water with vinegar.

  Children then placed these leaves on wet photo paper in the sun. The sun’s light gives a permanent impression of the leaf on the paper.

• Knoxville kids go beast mode at new natural playscape
  in Earth
  By Cindy Hassil

  A child defends an elaborate stick fort at Ijams Natural Playscape, which opened this week at the South Knoxville nature center.  Ijams Nature Center

  New Ijams playground reconnects kids with neighborhood woods, forts and creeks of yore

  KNOXVILLE — Ijams Nature Center officially opened a portal into pure childhood beast mode this week.

  The Ijams Nature Playscape at Grayson Subaru Preserve is specifically designed for young children to play in a creek, climb hills, dig, build, crawl and engage with nature in an organic, unstructured way. The new space features a large nest, tunnels, log steps and different rooms to play in.

  “For generations, many of us had the opportunity to roam and play in the woods, empty lots and fields that surrounded our homes and neighborhoods,” Ijams Executive Director Amber Parker said. “We remember the freedom we had to use our imagination, test ourselves and become a part of the natural landscape, at least until we were called home for dinner.”

• Ijams Nature Center honors deep roots with expansion dedication
  in News
  By Cindy Hassil

  Martha, Elizabeth, Mary, and Josephine Ijams (from left) are seen in this 1923 photo. The girls were active in scouting and became accomplished naturalists early in life. Ijams Nature Center

  Help give thanks across history to founders of the South Knoxville nature center and celebrate the addition of 3 acres

  Cindy Hassil is a writer for Ijams Nature Center.

  KNOXVILLE When H.P. and Alice Ijams purchased 20 acres of land along the Tennessee River in 1910, they couldn’t have known their family would still be contributing to the legacy that would become the 318-acre nonprofit Ijams Nature Center more than a century later. 

  Ijams Nature Center will celebrate the contributions of the Ijams family and dedicate three acres of land recently donated to the nature center by H.P. and Alice’s granddaughter, Martha Kern, at 10 a.m. Thursday, April 28. The public is invited. 

• Get put together well: Ijams Nature Center hosts sustainable fashion show
  in News
  By Cindy Hassil

  The Fleurish fashion show will feature sustainable and stylish clothes to reduce your big old footprint on Earth.  Courtesy Fleurish/Ijams Nature Center

  Help rock the catwalk at Ijams’ display of sustainable clothing

  Cindy Hassil is a writer for Ijams Nature Center.

  KNOXVILLE — Clothes can be a burden to both bear and wear. Ijams Nature Center offers fashionable alternatives with sustainability cred this month.

  Ijams and Natural Alternatives Salon and Spa will present Fleurish: A Sustainable Fashion Event, from 6 to 9 p.m. Sunday, April 24.

  “Fleurish is a runway show focused on how sustainability, conservation and beauty intertwine and affect our lives … and our future,” Fleurish Creative Director Ben Prager said. “This event engages the audience in ways that will help the average consumer make changes in their day-to-day lives to better impact the planet while never losing sight of the beauty of nature and the human experience.”

  Twelve local designers, along with hair stylists and makeup artists, are coming together to create looks using both recycled and natural materials.

• Zigging and zagging to find the Zigzag
  in News
  By Keenan Thomas

  UT doctoral student Bryce Wade examines a Southern zigzag salamander he found at Ijams Nature Center in South Knoxville. Keenan Thomas/Hellbender Press

  On the happy herping trail: Bryce Wade searches for salamanders

  KNOXVILLE — Bryce Wade scours the nature trail, turning over rocks and logs. On this overcast day at Ijams Nature Center, he searches beneath the leaves on the ground for one creature: salamanders.

  Underneath the rocks, logs and leaves, salamanders populate the cool, moist earth, avoiding the sun whenever they can. Wade is looking for a particular type: a winter species informally called the Southern zigzag salamander (Plethodon ventralis). 

• Even the movement of butterflies is affected by supply-chain issues
  in News
  By Casey Phillips

  A postman butterfly feeds on a bloom in the Tennessee Aquarium’s Butterfly Garden in Chattanooga. At any one time, the garden may host 1,000 to 1,500 butterflies representing more than 200 species. Courtesy Tennessee Aquarium

  Butterflies are back at the Tennessee Aquarium after pandemic bottleneck

  Some of the Tennessee Aquarium’s most entrancing, cherished residents — and there are literally thousands of them — have been absent for more than a year and a half.

  The aquarium has been unable to source butterflies to fill the Ocean Journey building’s Butterfly Garden since early 2020 because of supply chain disruptions.

  The butterflies typically originate from Costa Rica. Every week, about 500 butterfly chrysalises — the life stage between caterpillars and full-fledged adults — are delivered to the aquarium. By raising specific plants, Costa Rican farmers can attract butterflies that use the plants as egg-laying sites and feeding sources for their offspring. By collecting and shipping chrysalises to facilities like the aquarium, farmers can earn a reliable income without resorting to destructive agricultural practices that threaten their country’s rainforests.

  And just in time for the holidays, the Tennessee Aquarium’s Butterfly Garden will reopen to the public Nov. 5. This warm, light-filled gallery in Chattanooga is once again filled with these jewel-like insects, which flutter in the air by the hundreds.

  “They have so many bright colors and intricate patterns that they’re kind of like living works of art,” said entomologist II Rose Segbers. “The butterfly garden is special because it’s completely immersive. There really aren’t any barriers between guests and the butterflies or the habitat.

  “You can see everything just like you would in nature, and a butterfly might even land on you.”

  Walking through the garden is like being whisked into the steamy, lush wilds of a Costa Rican rainforest. The interior of the gallery is always kept warm and humid — a welcome escape from the cooler, dreary days of autumn — and seemingly every leaf, blossom and branch serves as temporary resting spot for butterflies of every description.

  At any one time, the garden houses as many as 1,500 butterflies. These can come from any of more than two dozen species, from cerulean-winged blue morphos to enormous tawny owls with their tell-tale eyespots. 

  “You get a lot of variety in here,” Segbers said. “If you come here one week, you’ll see a certain variety of butterflies, but if you come back a week later, you might see completely different ones. It gives people a good excuse to keep coming back.”

  The cocoon-like chrysalises can be viewed hanging from racks through a special viewing window in the garden. Their shells often look drastically different from the butterflies within. Who would suspect that the familiar orange, black and white monarch butterfly would come from a gold-fringed, jade chrysalis or that leaf-like pink or green chrysalises are host to brilliant yellow cloudless sulfurs?

  Entomologist Rose Segbers pins blue morpho butterfly pupae to a hanging tray, where they will hang until they emerge in a few weeks time. Courtesy Tennessee Aquarium

• Requiem for the Lord God Bird
  in News
  By Thomas Fraser
  Movie footage from Louisiana, 1935 by Arthur Allen. Courtesy of Macaulay Library at the Cornell Lab of Ornithology. The library also has ivory-billed woodpecker calls recorded by Allen.

   

  The ivory-billed woodpecker is officially extinct, and it strikes a chord in Knoxville

  Clinging to a maple in the bayou, Jim Tanner finally had the rare nestling in his grasp. 

  He fitted it with a numbered leg band and placed the bird back in its hole high off the ground. 

  But true to its seldom-seen self, the juvenile ivory-billed woodpecker squirmed free and fluttered to the base of a giant maple tree in a southern Louisiana swamp owned at the time by the Singer Sewing Machine Co.

  The year was 1936, and Jim Tanner was in the midst of doctorate research at Cornell University funded by the Audubon Society as part of a push to prevent the pending extinctions of multiple bird species, including the California condor, roseate spoonbill, whooping crane and ivory-billed woodpecker. Eighty-five years later, the regal woodpecker would be the only one grounded for eternity.

  In the heat and rain of mucky, gassy bayous, Tanner compiled data on the range, population, habitat and prevalence of ivory-billed woodpeckers. He camped for weeks at a time in the swamps of the birds’ original range.

  On this day, his only goal was to band the bird but he rushed down the tree and picked up the agitated but uninjured woodpecker.

  He also wanted photographs.

  Tanner took advantage of the moment.

  He placed the bird upon the shoulder of an accompanying and accommodating game warden for 14 shots from his Leica.

  They were probably the first, and perhaps the last, photographs of a juvenile ivory-billed woodpecker photographed by Tanner in its natural habitat. He named the bird Sonny, and he was the only known member of the species to be banded with a number.

  The regal, smart, athletic bird, which peaceably flew over its small slice of Earth for some 10,000 years, was declared extinct last month by the Fish and Wildlife Service. Twenty-two other species also qualified for removal from the Endangered Species List — in the worst possible way.

  The ivory bill inhabited the swamps of the Deep South, far removed from Rocky Top, but old visages of the departed were found in Little Switzerland in South Knoxville. The work of Tanner, who would go on to complete a rich ecological research career at the University of Tennessee, has been memorialized by a talented East Tennessee science writer.

  And the Southern Appalachian region has other long-gone kinships with species that vanished from the Earth a long time ago. 

• Fly, flit, buzz, flutter or soar over to Ijams Nature Center this weekend for its Hummingbird Festival and Celebration of Wings
  in Event Archive
  By Thomas Fraser

  Bats, birds and all winged creatures are the guests of honor at Ijams Nature Center in Knoxville this weekend.

  The center plans a celebration of science and our flighty friends from 7 a.m. to 2 p.m. on Saturday.

  The educational event is open to all ages and will feature bird-banding demonstrations/projects; food trucks; guided walks; expert speakers; arts and crafts; and a chance to meet a number of raptors and animals native to East Tennessee. Citizen science demonstrations will show how anyone can contribute to the study and conservation of our natural world. 

  You can get tickets online for the Hummingbird Festival and Celebration of Wings.

  The 2021 Ijams Hummingbird Festival: Celebration of Wings is sponsored by Ergon Terminaling Inc., The Trust Company of Tennessee, WBIR-TV Channel 10, HomeTrust Bank, Stanley's Greenhouse, and Tennessee Wildlife Federation.