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Early Summer Drama
by Catherine Smith
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I am not a scientist. You could say I’m a naturalist. I am a human observer using senses, curiosity, inquiry, feeling, and imagination to relate to nature. I want to understand the lives – very different from mine – of other-than-human beings co-existing with me in the place where I live. I want to glimpse the “seen and unseen realities . . . of nature’s agency and drama” (Haskell) or the “living landscape” (Tallamy). June is a good time for watching.
In June, ChicoryLane’s landscape is lush, green, immersive. In the ambient green, white flowers stand out, draw my attention. Whether I’m walking in open grasslands or shrubby wetlands, white flowers catch my eye.
Notice that description’s action: white flowers draw my attention and catch my eye. When June’s white flowers connect with me, am I experiencing nature’s agency? Maybe so.
| | Images, Left to Right: penstemon (Penstemon digitalis), water hemlock (Cicuta maculata), goatsbeard (Tragopogon pratensis) | | |
People can be perceptive observers of nature’s dynamics. But flowering plants and foraging insects are the stars of June’s unseen reality show.
Take the penstemon, for example. It’s native to North America. Naturalized throughout the eastern United States, penstemon occurs in around 240 species and many colors. Only one species and color, white foxglove beardtongue, lives at ChicoryLane. You might also see it in roadside ditches around Penns Valley.
| | Old Field Green and White | | |
White foxglove beardtongue came to ChicoryLane (as far as we know) around 2005 in a pollinator meadow seed mix we intentionally planted to help regenerate a former corn field. Years later, rampant goldenrod has overgrown most of the intentional plants in that mix. Goldenrod now dominates the old field ecosystem.
But purple coneflower (Echinacea purpurea) and white foxglove beardtongue (Penstemon digitalis) persist in different areas of the field. Foxglove beardtongue thrives in the sunny, south-sloping areas of the old field draining to a tributary of Penns Creek. Its white flowers show up strongly along a streamside path that we call Martha’s Allee in honor of Martha Ruhe, a deceased friend of ChicoryLane.
Zooming in for a closer look, what do you see happening in that scene? You might see bumblebees, leafcutter bees, sphinx moths, or hummingbirds foraging the tubular flowers of foxglove beardtongue, according to biologists.
| My observer’s eye (without magnification) sees only fuzzy insects, maybe small bees, pushing in and backing out of flowers in the penstemon patch. They zip from flower to flower, stalk to stalk, leaving each flower quivering. I feel the intensity. I can’t see what the bees see and feel or how the flowers react during those quick encounters. But with the help of scientific reports on “electric ecology,” I can imagine it: | |
When a bee flies through the air, it generates a positive electrostatic charge. This charge arises due to the friction between the bee and positively charged particles in the atmosphere. Flowers, on the other hand, function as part of the Earth’s surface and typically hold a slight negative charge.
. . . As a bee approaches a flower, the difference in charge causes antennae and tiny hairs to flutter, which the bee detects as a physical sensation (interestingly, honeybees respond to the motion of their antennae, while the fuzzier bumblebees respond to sensation from the hairs).
When the bee [enters] a flower, the electrical interaction becomes even more dynamic. The pollen, being negatively charged with the rest of the flower, is attracted to the positively charged bee and leaps across and sticks. When the bee visits the next blossom, some of the now positively charged pollen leaps across to the negatively charged pistil and begins the process of fertilization.
The interaction doesn’t only transfer pollen. Electrons themselves move from the flower to the bee, weakening the negative charge of the flower. . . Bees then can detect the weaker charge of flowers which have recently yielded both pollen and electrons to another bee. This helps the bees to identify which flowers are more likely still to have plentiful nectar and pollen, optimizing their foraging efforts (AskNature.org).
| | When electrostatic changes in the electrical field signal that bees are nearby, does the sugar content of the penstemon blossoms' nectar increase in response? Maybe. | | |
Wetlands Green and White
Like herbaceous penstemon in the open field, June-blooming shrubs in the wetlands attract pollinator insects to their white flowers.
We planted a few viburnum shrubs at ChicoryLane early on, maybe in the 1980s, for their beauty. We continue to add them for their ecological benefits to insects and birds. In addition to our introduced plants, we find naturally occurring blackhaw viburnum (Viburnum prunifolium) and black as well as red elderberry shrubs (Sambucus nigra and Sambucus racemosa). Birds probably brought those here. All are welcome.
| | Images, Left to Right: arrowwood viburnum (Viburnum dentatum), downy viburnum (Viburnum rafinesqueanum), blackhaw viburnum (Viburnum prunifolium) | | |
Ongoing Regeneration
Several times a day in early June, John sits with binoculars in the Gator patiently watching kestrels feed their young in the restored prairie grassland. (Bluebirds are doing it near the farmhouse. Swallows are doing it in the barn. Red-winged blackbirds are doing it in the wetlands. Orioles are doing it at the pond. Wrens are doing it somewhere, too.) A kestrel nesting box intentionally placed in the grassland several years ago, unused at first, is now actively used. John has a good view of kestrel parents hovering and diving to hunt insects or rodents, dropping off food at the box entrance, then swooping away to hunt again.
On June 16, Shaver’s Creek Environmental Center’s Jon Kauffman gently removed fledglings from the box and banded them for an ongoing kestrel population study. (Jon helps conservation and natural regeneration through citizen science projects such as Project Nestwatch and Monarch Watch.) While human observers attentively watched the banding process, the parent bird circled, calling. When Jon returned the fledglings to the box, feeding resumed. Over time, hunting gets harder as swallows attack the parent kestrel and nearby food sources are depleted. But the parent kestrels continue to feed. When the fledglings leave their box, they might survive or they might become food for hawks.
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Patient observation motivates caring about other-than-human lives. “The least we can do is try to be there” (Dillard).
As James Lesher does conservation tasks around ChicoryLane, he regularly collects herbaceous plant seeds for propagation, pots them, and minds them in an informal nursery under trees behind the barn. Blue vervain (Verbena hastata) (image below, left), New York ironweed (Veronia noveboracensis), and red Canada lily (Lilium canadensis) seeds he has gathered, as well as mixed oak (Quercus rubra and quercus alba) tree seedlings (image below, right) donated by US Fish and Wildlife’s Adam Smith and Carla Hine, are there now. When seedlings are strong enough to live in the wild, James will plant them at ChicoryLane. Or share them for planting elsewhere. The goal is to plant many so a few will survive and spread.
Intentional conservation practices help to sustain ChicoryLane life.
| | Photo credits, all: ChicoryLane Collection | |
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Annie Dillard, Pilgrim at Tinker Creek (2013; 1998)
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“Bees and Flowers Harness Static Electricity to Spread Pollen,” Biomimicry Institute podcast
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David George Haskell, How Flowers Made Our World (2026)
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Douglas W. Tallamy, Rick Darke, E.J.Koh, The Living Landscape (2014)
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Lars Chittka, The Mind of a Bee (2023)
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Insights and Essays
ChicoryLane Reserve’s vital, other-than-human life inspires free-ranging thought. To express connections, questions, and ideas prompted by experiencing the place, the News occasionally reports observers’ reflections and speculations. ”Heron and Frog” (May Extra 2025) and “Heron and Frog: Take 2” (July Extra, 2025) reflect on predator-prey relationships. In this newsletter a speculative essay imagines a future ecology of human and artificial intelligence.
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Save the Date
Fall Bird Walk and Open Day
Saturday, September 12, 2026
Visitors are invited to start the day off with the Fall Bird Walk led by Joe Gyekis at 8:00 – 10:00 AM. Here is the list of the 41 species spotted last September. This is a great opportunity to see the fall migrating species.
From 10:30 AM – 3:00 PM the Reserve is open for exploring on your own. A wonderful time of year to enjoy the trails and benches placed around the property. Bring a picnic lunch. Pop-up talks on fall plant and animal life here might happen, too. Details forthcoming.
Image: At the Fall Bird Walk 2025, visitors trained eyes, binoculars and cameras on the raptor that guide Joe Gyekis had identified. Photo credit: Deb Rittelmann
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ChicoryLane is a reserve near Spring Mills protected by a conservation easement. Its 68 acres are actively managed for ecological enhancement.
The landscape is natural and scenic. It includes wetlands and meadows, streams, remnant and successional forests, and a grassland. This diversity of habitats is especially inviting to birds and insects. A system of mowed trails and boardwalks make most of the property accessible to walkers.
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