#1 Native Bee Enjoyer🐝🐝🐝

I WILL calmly and kindly try to help anyone who is afraid of bugs. I will show them my finds, i will explain their importance, i will tell them just how sweet and gentle and friendly they are. And I WILL shoot down any immature loser who believes senseless killing is the only possible response to not liking something.

"For decades, wolf researchers believed ravens followed wolf packs to find food. Every biologist who flew aerial surveys over Yellowstone saw the same thing.

Wolves moving across the snow with ravens overhead, black shapes trailing the pack like a shadow with wings. The assumption was simple. The ravens were following the wolves. The wolves would kill. The ravens would eat. A study published in March 2026 using GPS transmitters on wolves, cougars, and ravens in Yellowstone proved the assumption wrong.

The ravens were not following the wolves. They were remembering where kills had happened before and flying over those locations looking for new carcasses. The relationship between the two species is real. The mechanism is not what anyone thought it was.

Bernd Heinrich, a University of Vermont biologist who spent years studying ravens in Maine and Yellowstone, first documented the scale of the association. His data showed ravens present near wolf packs 99.7 percent of the time during winter in Yellowstone. Not occasionally. Not frequently. Essentially always. On Isle Royale, researcher John Vucetich observed the same pattern from the air.

Every wolf pack had ravens with it. The birds were just always there.

The numbers at kill sites are staggering. The average number of ravens documented at a Yellowstone wolf kill is thirty. The maximum recorded at a single carcass is 135.

A wolf pack brings down an elk in the Lamar Valley, and within hours over a hundred ravens have materialized from across the drainage to feed. They do not wait politely. They land on the carcass while the wolves are still eating. They grab chunks of meat and cache them in the snow and in tree crotches for later retrieval. Research estimates that ravens can consume up to forty percent of a carcass, which means a wolf pack that kills a seven-hundred-pound elk may lose nearly three hundred pounds of it to birds.

That loss is so significant that one study proposed a theory that reshapes how we think about wolf pack size entirely. If a pair of wolves can take down an elk, why do wolves hunt in packs of four, six, eight, or more? The per-capita meat return decreases with every additional mouth. A pair gets the most meat per wolf. The answer may be ravens. Two wolves cannot eat fast enough to outpace a hundred ravens stripping the carcass simultaneously. A larger pack can post guards, feed in shifts, and physically dominate the carcass long enough to retain a greater share of the kill. Wolves may hunt in packs not because they need more teeth to bring down prey, but because they need more bodies to defend the kill from birds.

The ravens pay for their meals. Heinrich documented in his book Mind of the Raven that ravens serve as an early warning system at kill sites. Ravens are more vigilant than wolves. They perch in trees overlooking the carcass and scan the horizon in every direction. When a grizzly bear approaches, or a rival wolf pack, or a mountain lion, the ravens see it first. Their alarm calls alert the feeding wolves to the incoming threat before the wolves' own senses detect it. The wolves get airborne sentries. The ravens get an animal with the jaw strength to open a frozen elk carcass that no raven beak can penetrate.

That is the core of the mutualism. The raven cannot open the hide. The wolf can. The wolf cannot see a threat approaching from a mile away while its head is buried in a rib cage. The raven can. Each species fills a gap in the other's capability, and the result is a partnership so consistent that L. David Mech, the most published wolf researcher in the world, wrote that each creature is rewarded in some way by the presence of the other and that each is fully aware of the other's capabilities.

The play behavior is the part that makes biologists uncomfortable because it implies something beyond transactional mutualism. Wolves and ravens play together. Not at kill sites. Not during feeding. During downtime. Yellowstone observers have documented ravens diving at resting wolves, pulling their tails, and flying away. Wolf pups chase ravens across meadows. Ravens steal sticks from pups and hold them just out of reach. The interactions look like the cross-species equivalent of two bored kids messing with each other because there is nothing else to do.

Doug Smith, the retired lead biologist of the Yellowstone Wolf Project, had watched this relationship from the air for decades. Wolf researchers have believed forever that ravens follow wolves, he wrote after the 2026 study was published. Every wolf researcher has seen it. I have seen it routinely from the plane while wolves are chasing an elk in Yellowstone Park, numerous times. Ravens are just always there. This is an age-old observation. But it has never been rigorously tested until now.

The 2026 study, which used 2.5 years of GPS data from transmitters on wolves, cougars, and ravens simultaneously, revealed that ravens were not tracking wolf movements in real time. They were patrolling known kill sites. A raven that fed at a wolf kill in a specific drainage in November would return to that drainage repeatedly over the following weeks and months, flying over the exact location where the carcass had been, checking whether a new kill had appeared. The ravens were not following the wolves. They were following the memory of where wolves had killed before.

That distinction matters because it changes the raven from a passive follower into an active strategist. A bird that follows a wolf pack is reacting. A bird that memorizes kill locations across an entire landscape and patrols them systematically is planning. The raven is not tagging along. It is running a surveillance network across hundreds of square miles of Yellowstone, checking sites where food has appeared before, and showing up fast enough when it appears again that every observer since the 1995 reintroduction assumed it had been following the wolves the whole time.

The wolf and the raven share almost identical geographic range across the Northern Hemisphere. Everywhere wolves live, ravens live. The association is not a Yellowstone novelty. It is a continental relationship between two of the most intelligent species in North American wildlife, running continuously across boreal forest, tundra, mountain, and prairie, built on meat, memory, and a mutual awareness that neither species has ever needed to be taught."

Over 500 years spent trying to cut down a whole trunk of human culture.

TOKOPHOBIA

“Vanilla” the subjective experience can be caused by any one of dozens of aromatic organic compounds. The Vanilla Orchid seed pod (not a bean), when ripened and cured properly, contains over 200 aromatics, many of which contribute to the subjective experience of “Vanilla” to varying degrees. However, Vanilla Orchids are… well, Orchids, which means they’re precious little darlings and a pain in the ass to grow, hence the low supply of the pods. Ripe vanilla fruit accounts for less than 15% of all Vanilla consumed annually.

From whence the rest, you ask?

Enter Vanillin, so named because it is foremost of these compounds in producing the aroma and flavor of the vanilla experience. This tasty little aromatic is actually a metabolic intermediary in all sorts of plant metabolisms, including but not limited to most woody trees.

During the development of Industrial Paper manufacturing, during a step which involves taking the pulverized and pulped wood fibers and washing them of the various compounds a living tree needs but a sheet of paper does not, one of the results was a rich, brown, pleasant-smelling, organic spirit. It was discovered that Vanillin could be mass-produced from this substance, and so Artificial Vanilla was born, which makes up the remaining 5/6ths of the vanilla consumed worldwide each year.

See, here’s the thing. Humans, like most Animals, can’t smell things that have no relevancy to our lives, and there’s correlations between attraction and aversion to certain compound classes and the lived experiences of our Ancestors. Smell is a deeply chemical sense, and we wouldn’t find Vanilla pleasant unless that aroma had some sort of universal relevance to Human Survival. Our ancestral environment was riparian woodlands.

There’s Vanilla in decaying leaf litter.

There’s Vanilla in rich soil.

Old books smell good because one of the products of the decaying wood of the paper is Vanilla.

With some of the responses I've been getting on my post about connecting with nature, I realized I needed to write about this.

Folks have got to understand that connection is not a feeling. "I feel such a deep connection with-" nope, that's not connection you're feeling; that's fascination.

Whether it's nature, or a culture, or anything at all, connection isn't transcendent. It's something you build with actual physical effort. It's a relationship.

Let's say there's a stray cat outside, and I want to have a connection with it. So I go inside my house and meditate on the cat, visualizing myself sending out rays of love to the cat. I look at pictures of cats on the Internet. I collect cat memorabilia and pray to cat goddesses. But when I go outside and try to pet the stray cat, it runs away.

This is because I never built a genuine connection, or relationship, with this cat. I'm a parasocial admirer, at best. To the cat, I'm a weird stranger.

But let's say I put cat food outside, and I stay out there while the cat eats, and slowly get closer to the cat as it becomes more comfortable with my presence. Finally, I give the cat light touches, and it gradually learns that I am safe. And we become friends.

Now I have a connection with the cat, because we have a relationship. I feed the cat, the cat eats my food, and we're in each others' social networks.

"But what if I can't build relationships like this?"

It's okay if this is impossible for you right now. You're not going to be a Bad Pagan or a Bad Witch because you can't do something that is literally impossible at the moment.

But, if a connection is something you want to have, at some point? Get studying. You want a connection with nature at some point? Okay, then start studying ecology. Learn about the rain cycle. Learn about environmental damage. Find materials about the plants and animals in your area.

What about a culture? Okay, go learn about its history, go learn what kinds of problems its people are currently facing, and work on perceiving them as real, complex people instead of whatever stereotype you have in your mind right now.

The first was implied in the OP, but I think may need to be made more explicit. It's also something I'm always going to repeat when I have the chance to say it: There's a difference between connecting with something, and connecting with the idea of something.

The cat example is actually a really good way of explaining the difference. While both approaches may give someone the sense of "being connected" with the cat, only one of them creates the actual result that is "connection."

Which leads me to my second point: The OP here is defining "connection" as strictly a circumstance, and circumstances are things that exist regardless of how we feel about them. We are either connected to the internet or we're not. We're either connected to our local community or we're not. Regardless of how intense our affinity for something feels, we have to actively forge a connection with it if we want a working relationship with it.

I'm going to be kind of blunt here and single out where the impression that "strong emotions = strong spiritual connection" mainly comes from: American Evangelical Christianity. Congregates are taught that their positive emotions are literally the presence of the Lord moving through them, as opposed to their personal reactions to things. This causes them to confuse experiencing their own positive emotions with experiencing divine connection.

Happy Place - Line Holtegaard , 2024.

Danish , b, 1980 -

My journey in forest mapping has brought up a lot of these questions. It's not just learning the names of plants, it's also learning about their growth environments and what makes them different. Some plants are indicators of a specific forest type. It's learning about the relationships between different species; some of them like to grow together. I have to look at the history of the forest and the structural features of it... etc.

My practice is very localized and I am extremely fortunate that the tales that I grew up with happened in places with similar nature to where I live and I count that as a blessing. This is the bais of this post [and of the entire screaming well honestly] and I don't claim that this is apply able to everyone but this is my method and I wanted to share it.

The plant l'll be talking about as a case study is hedge bedstraw or glad walstro in dutch.

When nature journaling l do a few steps that are always the same:

When l find the the plant / animal / fungus i log it on my phone l use a local version of inaturalist to do this most of the time but sometimes I'll write down the name if I didn't manage to take a picture.

I will draw it in a way that helps me remember it. What stands out to me what observations can I make about it myself. In order to do this i've gotten into more botanical terms for fun but you can do without honestly. The point of the drawing is to actively look at the plant and to be able to rechonize it next time I see it.

I look up the plant in botonist sites, the site I use is strictly for identification purposes and has detailed descriptions which I often find contain something I missed that I can tgen never unsee. I will then go back in and add it. Either by notes or by edditing the drawing this is where I also write down the edibility of a plant.

I will then look up the plant in an etemology data base and a story database. These databases are local to me and I will write down what I find about associations or stories they're mentioned in. I also do some general searches and read the Wikipedia for the plant. I also include family associations here.

Now for an example with the hedge bedstraw:

To me the most striking point is that the little white flowers have four points and four little stems at each corner it also has a stem in tge middle essentially the flower has 9 parts. Now tgat number is important to me so I note it down in my drawing. Then I look at the structure and where the leaves are placed. Each split in the stem has like a ring of leaves and there are no leaves in other places. These observations will help me rechonize it next time.

Now I start writing down wether it's edible or not. In this case it is and the roots are actually potentially a dye source. I don't forage for food a lot but these notes are always fun to make to me. I note that it's family of anotger plant. And then I note where it's name came from and that it was used as bedstraw the dutch name specifies this to cratle straw. I note the connection to child birth and sone sources on it being associated with protection of childeren.

Now this is where we get to the upg part. I associate child birth and protection of childeren with vrouw Holle. Therefore I note that this plant might make a good gift to her. The plant also has some snow associations and so I write that down too. Strengthening the connection a little bit.

Now with this plant my upg is mostly working on connections that had already been documented but in other cases the upg can be based on where a plant often grows, what it looks like, if it attracts certain animals and what those animals are connected too, did i find it together with a bunch of other plants? These are among the questions I ask myself that help me develop upg about the plants that live around me.

Over fifty years of data show a peak in PFAS (also known as "forever chemicals") content in seabird eggs in the 90s, followed by a decrease as regulations went into effect. The most recent findings show a 70% decrease of most common PFAS.

We are making genuine progress! Producers are dramatically altering how much they use PFAS and how much gets released in effluent, but also there's a lot better understanding of how to remove PFAS from the environment!

oh wow the glass-tower office buildings we constructed when we thought air conditioning and central heating would never have downsides...have downsides?

and we're still building them?

while the Victorian house museum where I work, with thick walls and small windows and big wooden shutters stays ~10 degrees above (winter) or below (summer) the outside temperature for days on end with no help at all?

uh. okay then