Worms Take The Ultimate Risk On Trips To Surface After Storm

Tue., April 13, 1999

By Susan English susane@spokesman.com

Why do worms congregate on city streets and sidewalks after a rain, wondered Outside magazine reader Ken Younger of Bozeman, Mont. Good question, really.

Apparently worms are 80 percent water and the change in barometric pressure during the storm and the humidity lure them above ground where they gorge on soft, wet organic material. But in Cinderella fashion, they have to squirm back underground at dawn; more than a half-hour of UV rays from the sun will paralyze them and they dry out and die, unless they become early morning roadkill first. (From April Outside)

* An ongoing debate: We’ve received dozens of phone calls and e-mails about the variegated robins spotted by readers in the area about a month ago. To help clarify, we’re publishing a photo of the first variegated robin sighted and reported to us. The robin was hanging out at The Rock Garden in Newport.

Rock Garden owners Skip and Christy Hensler put a photo of the robin — Spot — on the Web. Birding experts we’ve consulted say Spot is, indeed, a robin but he/she is a partial-albino, which accounts for the color variation.

Other sightings of variegated robins could have been spotted towhees, which look a great deal like a robin in some instances. Check out the listing for rufous-sided towhee (the old name) in the “National Audubon Society Field Guide to North American Birds” for just such a photo.

You can find the photos of Spot and an e-mail address for the Henslers at www.povn.com/rock/spot.html/.

* Backyard journal: The battle with a mating pair of magpies has continued into its seventh week now. Their nest-building activities in a honeysuckle bush have dampened interest in the bluebird nestbox right below. Bluebirds need the box more than magpies need this particular bush. Yet, near-daily destruction of the bunches of sticks and mud these magpies want to call home has done nothing to make them rethink their choice of real estate.

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