Outdoors Maryland; 1408

3. 2. 1. 1. 1. 2. 4. 2. 5. Left side. Left side. Lefton. 7. I heard. This program has been made possible by the members of MPT. Thank you for your generous support. Coming up, the flip side of butterflies provides a kaleidoscope of color. The wolves of the sky are trained in an ancient sport. And digging in the mud to unlock the Chesapeake's long-lost secrets. Next. Outdoors Maryland is produced in cooperation with the Maryland Department of Natural Resources.

DNR inspired by nature. Every year, one of nature's most profound transformations unfolds right here in suburbia. In a backyard that could be found almost anywhere America.

Mary Ann Blair of Mount Erie, Maryland has raised secretia moths for nearly 15 years. These bird-sized moths are among the largest in North America. They are among the most beautiful in the world. In the past, Mary Ann has provided the Smithsonian Institution with Sacropia for their insect collection. Now she breeds them to help replenish the moth's fragile population. I guess I find moths intriguing because people just don't realize that they're out there at night. Usually people think when you say moth, they think clothes eating moths. There's a whole spectrum of colorful and beautiful moths.

The flip side to butterflies. To me that the Sacropia is just nature wrapped up in one package. What their cycle goes through. How it goes from a little tiny egg to the larva stage and into an adult. It's just really spectacular. The moth's remarkable cycle of metamorphosis is a year-long process. Mary Ann carefully tends each step of the way. Sacropia begin as tiny eggs, astonishingly small, considering the huge size of the adult moth. Like other moths, Sacropia hatch into the caterpillar stage of the cycle. This is one of the most intense times for Mary Ann, who collects fresh wild choke cherry for the caterpillars twice a day for nearly three months. All summer long.

Believe it or not, that sound you're hearing is the Sacropia caterpillar's eating. It has been six weeks since the moths laid their eggs. I have various stages of larva here, the Sacropia caterpillars. They grow very fast, and at this stage they are definitely eating machines in the eat night and day. Believes must be fresh daily, and they must be wild cherry. Once started on a certain kind of plant, the caterpillars eventually digest only that plant. The caterpillars grow at a phenomenal rate and must shed their skin to accommodate their ever-increasing girth. Each Sacropia sheds up to eight times as it literally eats itself out of house and home. This one caterpillar here is half the size of what it will be when it matures and starts to spin the cocoon. At the end of summer, the huge caterpillars stop eating and begin spinning.

One of the differences between moths and butterflies are these overwintering constructions. Moths spin cocoons, a butterfly builds a chrysalis. It's the end of August and the Sacropia caterpillars are just about all their maximum size. Some have begun to spin their cocoons. They actually use a white silk, and inside there they anchor themselves to the branch, and they begin to spin one continuous long strand of silk. Sacropias are part of these silkworm family. This cocoon that the Sacropia spins is really amazing structure. The silk is soft and pure white when it's first spun.

Over a couple of hours it will dry into a very tight waterproof, freeze-proof structure that will keep the caterpillar pupa safe all winter. Once the cocoons dry, Maryann hangs them in a protective flight cage and her garage for the winter. Within the dark secret recesses of the cocoon, the caterpillar will turn into a hard-shelled pupa, the last stage before metamorphosis into a winged insect. Inside the cocoons, the moth leaves the pupa, and this is the last shed. It's the skin of the caterpillar. You can see, if you look closely, right here is where the wings were, and then it emerges in this late spring as the moth. In late spring, Maryann brings the cocoons outside again to a net tent.

Here, the Sacropia will emerge from the pupa inside the cocoon, and then from the cocoon. Immediately upon emerging, the moth has tried their gorgeous wings. They're actually very delicate at this point. If the wings are compressed and they're trying to expand them when they're dry, then they'll be deformed. They'll be able to fly. At this stage, the moth's single-minded purpose is no longer eating. In fact, they do not even possess mouth parts. The drive now is made and multiplied. When the male finds her, they'll cuddle and they'll stay coupled for about 24 hours.

When they disengage, she's set. She's ready to lay her eggs, and she'll continue that through the night. Going from tree to tree, she can lay up to 300 eggs. The male expires after mating. Maryann collects some of the eggs for her own incubation. Then, she releases the moths to the wild, where the females will lay their remaining eggs free in the tree tops. When I do my releases, I have to wait till night falls. Otherwise, the birds would just pick them off in the air. The release is a family affair. Scott has released Sacropia since childhood. It's a normal part of everyday life.

To have caterpillars everywhere in my house, to have cocoons and moths flying everywhere. It's just a part of my everyday life. Bye! The ritual of release is the fulfilling culmination of a year's devoted labor of love. It's very exciting. The main thing that I do is to put them back out in the wild. More and more as we have habitat destroyed, the stands at trees that these caterpillars need, we're seeing fewer and fewer. I feel that one person can make a difference. A cool winter sun listens off the wings of a Harris hawk as it sores and glides above a meadow, scanning the grass for any signs of movement. It's quarry, the elusive Cottontail Rabbit for the moment is nowhere to be seen.

A second hawk watches and waits. Its eyes alert and unblinking. Unlike many raptors, Harris hawks will hunt together. They've been called the wolves of the sky. Hey Luke! Come on! But these birds are not just wild animals. They have names. They are hunting birds who have been trained to come to the gloved hands of humans. Come on! He's getting fat and getting too much food in you. You're not going to want to do some hunting art. They did a good job that time. The sport of hunting with raptors is called Falconry. Mike Morland is an expert, a master falconer. He's been working with birds of prey since he was an 11-year-old boy. The birds have been taught to follow us because at any given time, we could call them to the gloved for food reward. The wind can't have caught him bloom over here in a little bit. Falconry has been around for thousands of years.

It's been called the sport of kings because in medieval times and earlier, it was a favorite pastime of royalty. Today, the sport is highly regulated by state and federal wildlife officials. It is no longer as exclusive as it was in medieval times, but it is still practiced by a select view. Mike Morland is one of only 125 licensed falconers in the state of Maryland. There are 3500 falconers nationwide. Five, 55, that's a good weight. Father today is not much different than it was practiced 4,000 years ago. The birds have anglots that go around their legs. The jesus are there for us to hold and maintain the bird. Mike is now teaching his 10-year-old son Patrick the skills he spent a lifetime learning. What's your way? 623. As you can see, he's not real crazy about this.

Monitoring the bird's weight is important to make sure they are fit to fly, but so are other details like trimming their beaks. Because beaks get a little bit long in the wild, their beaks because of their prey and the things they're working on, their beaks naturally wear it down, but in the captivity, they seem to grow over grow. For the past two months, Mike has been working with a young, relatively untrained bird given to him by another falconer. Dark's done a good job. I got the jesus, you ready? Let's go. The bird's name is Dart, and it's a hybrid, half-harous hawk, half-coopers hawk, and is proving to be somewhat difficult to train. You're still upset. Cooper's hawks are very fast, and they're harder to work with, and they tend to be best to work with one person, and one bird at a time. All right, let's go on out. We're going to do the first basic train in Falconry, and that's to get the bird to come to you for a fruity ward. To control the bird, the hawk is attached to a string,

so he doesn't fly off. What we usually do is pull this out here. Are you ready to do something? On Dart? Here we go. Who hit the program now? Each time the bird comes, he's given a reward, usually a morsel of chicken. They get to know you. It's a repetition. It's a repetition in reward is what we work with with the bird, and doing that day in and day out. Dark, come on, Dart. Come on. Dart's focused out on something for some reason, not on a way there. But Dart soon gets tired and is reluctant to work with Patrick or Mike. All right, now pick him up. All the way. Training sessions in Falconry, sometimes like this, can only last 15, 20 minutes, and then it's over with. Stay there, Nala. Training birds of prey is a critical part of the sport of falconry, but for Mike Moreland,

the attraction of the sport is all about hunting. His favorite hawk is new. What we usually do is get the birds out, and this one, I'm at least right out of the box. Come on, Luke. Come on, Luke. Come on. Come on. Fellow Falconer, Mike Bigelow, has joined Mike in Patrick. His hawk is named Sassy. Hey, Luke! The only reason to get into Falconry at all is to actually take a bird out in hunting. There's no other reason to get into the sport, because they don't make good pets. They're a wild animal, and they can be dangerous if they don't hand her properly. There she is. She wants to hunt. She's a no-business bird now. She wants to be out hunting here. I wanted to get you in a stuck in the anabriar, going by a pet, or a hole. The Falconer's used two trussle terriers called Nola and Dodger

to work the thorny brambles alongside a meadow. By beating the bush, they're hoping to chase a rabbit out into the open. Every now and then, rabbits will cut up here, and we'll go up there at the bird's fly up there. We'll work them back out of here. Find them at it. Come on. Come on. What we do is we flush the quarry for the bird, and that's our job. The dog's working something over there. Does that work? The dogs are key to this hunting relationship because they push the rabbits out of the thicker spots that we can't get into. What do you think? Nada, what are you smelling? What is it? Huh? See something? Huh? The hawk is out there to catch a meal. All he's doing is waiting for the opportunity to do that. If the hawk is taught right and work with enough, he learns that he needs to be right up with us in order for that to happen. Come on, dog. He's finding them out of it. When we jump something and we see it,

we yell a game call. We yell, oh, oh, oh. That's the signified of birds and a dog. Something's been jumped. Oh, oh, oh. Come on, find him. Oh, oh, oh. We have to hustle. We got Mike. Within seconds of the call, the two hawk said struck, and the rabbit struggle was quickly over. The end result of a blood sport that has survived for thousands of years, spanning the centuries as well as the continents. Some critics of Falconry might find the hunt cruel, but for Mike Morland, it is a way to interact and experience nature. I look at it as a natural process, something that happens nationally. See it all come together and watch the birds and the dogs work with you, and it really amazes me. Mike Morland has spent most of a lifetime in the company of these birds. He has learned to respect that they are wild animals. But it is that proximity to the wild he says that has drawn him to the sport of Falconry

to marvel at this ancient relationship between man and bird of prey. You just get that bond with the bird, and it's the same that I have with my dog. And that's the way it works, and that's the best I can unless you grow out in the experience. I don't know if I can put any more words to it than that. Hold on, hold on, hold on. They call it a drowned river, an inheritance bequeathed by the last ice age, when great ice sheets melted and the ancient Susquehanna River was flooded by resulting global sea-level rise. Today, the Chesapeake Bay is the United States' largest estuary, a time capsule chronicling the huge drama of climate change, mighty storms, the rise and fall of species.

Dr. Thomas M. Cronin is piecing together the Bay's evolution since its formation about eight to ten thousand years ago. He's with the US Geological Survey in Western Virginia. To uncover this deep history, Tom and a team of researchers collect core samples of Bay mud, which is a rich repository of clues to the Bay's changing ecology. This is a core of sediment taken from the Bay in this direction just off the mouth of the Potoxid River. This is only one short core, our longest sediment course we've taken, go down into the muds about 65 feet and they take us back eight to ten thousand years and record the entire history of the Bay. Tom's research is aimed at understanding human impacts on the Bay since early colonial times and also the impact of natural climate variability. Droughts, floods, sea-level rise. The importance of understanding sea-level change

in Chesapeake Bay has several aspects but the most important is of course that in the last century sea level has risen in this Bay by approximately a foot and it's projected to rise at least another foot over the next century and due to the sea level rise we've lost significant amounts of coastal marshes and land area and seen increased erosion in certain areas. In order to restore the Bay and to manage it better and to manage the lands and the watershed to drain into the Bay, it's important to understand how the Bay functions naturally. Tom's team has already made several startling discoveries. One of the most important is evidence for extensive drought in the Mid-Atlantic region around the turn of the 16th century, which could account in part for the desperate struggle of early colonists in North Carolina and at Jamestown. Our second important discovery has been evidence for relatively rapid catastrophic sea-level rise, flooding the Bay approximately 8,000 to 7,500 years ago

and other scientists studying the same sea-level rise in the Black Sea area have linked this to historical and archaeological records and termed this Noah's Flood and this is roughly synchronous with that global sea-level rise that's recorded in many parts of the world in fact and is a result of the final melting of glaciers since the last ice age. Today the expedition is collecting cores in the Potomac River. The research team includes geologist Jeffrey Halka, program chief with the Department of Natural Resources. Biologist Rick Younger is captain of the DNR research vessel. Tom has a long list of sites for quarry. The team is very experienced, but the process of driving long tubes into thick mud is never routine. Wind, currents, and the Bay's murky, shifty bottom

all conspire to keep the Bay's secrets secret. The team is alert. The explosive triggering mechanism that drives the cores into deep mud can be dangerous. Okay, coming up just on the floor. Okay, going down, right for the map. Okay, going down, right for the map. Here she goes. We're going down. We're going down, right for the lab. The rins action, whoa, we lost it.

All of it, plus any in the lab. Disappointment, part of the core has slithered back into oblivion. The Bay is jealous of its secrets today. Yellowstone. So we're going to take another core here, so this will be one one. OK, come up. The team tries for a second core at this site. It looks like it worked good. Very nice. For this, it's a beautiful core. 24 dash one. Other sites prove less resistant. The stash of precious cores grows.

These are really heavy a lot in every little last site. Weeks later, Jeff Hawke processes the cores at the DNR lab in Baltimore. X-rays reveal buried scientific treasure and ancient history. This core reveals an oyster bar centuries old and testament to historic abundance, but the shells abruptly stop. All of a sudden they're gone, and we started to accumulate lots more sediment. We can then look at these oysters and determine what date that happened, see if there was a change in the environment that led to the demise of the oyster bar. Another X-ray gives hints of a terrific ancient storm. And there's this clam here, he's a soft shell clam, and since the burrow is underneath him, that means that he was trying to get out, trying to dig his way up to the surface, but he didn't quite make it any dot. So this would suggest that this layer of sediment was deposited very quickly, so much so that this guy couldn't get out, so that could have been a particular storm event.

So this layer then we would point out to Dr. Cronin and his team to look at this particular layer for further study, and then try and correlate it with some climatic event or storm event. The Bay holds secrets of planetary processes of epic proportions, but the story is ultimately local too. The tiny drama of a clam's muddy demise centuries ago holds clues to the uncertain fate of the Bay's coastal populations and keynote species like oysters and the blue crab. Underneath the Bay's waves lies keys to its vast future. Drop into our website at www.mpt.org to send us your comments and suggestions.

This program has been made possible by the members of MPT. Thank you for your generous support.