In a process called "overwinter- 

 ing," some baby land turtles stay in the 

 nest all through fall and winter. 

 Although the turtles may hatch, says 

 Braswell, they won't leave the nest. 

 Instead, they feed off the yolk material 

 left from their eggs and let their 

 metabolisms slow. 



On the seafloor, the jellyfish 

 settles down to wait. For the sea nettle, 

 a jellyfish found in all 

 saline waters of North 

 Carolina, life begins 

 as a larva. 

 By the 

 late fall 

 and 



winter, 

 these 



larvae 

 have 

 settled 



to the bottom of the 

 ocean and formed polyps. 

 A polyp is the waiting, benthic — 

 or bottom — stage of the jellyfish's 

 life cycle. If temperatures get too cold, 

 the polyp can squeeze into a cyst, 

 waiting for the weather to warm. Each 

 polyp can produce more polyps, or it 

 can break into thin saucerlike divi- 

 sions. In the spring, each saucer slowly 

 floats to the surface, popping up as the 

 bell-shaped, many-tentacled "medusa" 

 that sends swimmers screeching. 



North Carolina has nine types 

 of jellyfish and two comb jellies. 

 Although most have a polyp stage 

 and a medusa stage, these stages vary 

 from season to season. Although the 

 sea nettle lies low as a polyp in late 

 fall and winter, the lion's mane rises as 

 a medusa. The cycle depends on what 



type of wind, waves, temperature and 

 food each jellyfish prefers. 



Oysters also take a break. All 

 summer oysters have been spawning 

 — pumping out billions of oyster 



larvae. In the fall, they 

 begin to lay in fat for 

 the winter and add 

 to their shells. 

 Fall and 

 winter are 

 prime times 

 for oyster 

 harvests, as the oysters get 

 fat and tasty. In the summer, 

 the oysters use up their fat 

 stores as they begin to spawn 

 again and become more watery. 



Most folks associate hibernation 

 with bears, but bumblebees do it too. 

 In the late summer or fall, queen bees 

 seek a sheltered place to spend the 

 winter. They hide in cavities of old 

 walls, under fallen logs or moss, or an 

 inch or so underground. 



After mating in late summer, the 

 bumblebees stay in their hideaways 

 until the next spring. This period can 

 last as long as nine months. Because 

 the queen bee stays hidden longer than 

 the average winter hibernation, her 

 beauty sleep is correctly called a 

 diapause. 



Unlike 

 honeybees, 

 bumblebees 

 form new 

 colonies 

 every 

 year. 



Through- , 

 out the 

 spring and 



early summer, the queen 

 bee has been laying eggs. 



These hatch into worker bees — 

 males and females that gather food 

 and tend to the queen. Around 

 midsummer, the bumblebee queens 

 "stop producing worker bees and 

 start producing reproductives," says 

 Stephen Bambara, an N.C. State 

 University entomology extension 

 specialist. 



"Reproductives" are the bees 

 that will mate. After mating, the large 

 females, or queen bees, will dia- 

 pause. The males, remaining workers 

 and even older queen bees will 

 eventually die off. Next spring, the 

 new queen bee will lay her eggs and 

 begin building a new colony all by 

 herself. 



Another insect in hiding this fall 

 is the spider-killer wasp. Through- 

 out the summer, this big bug catches 

 and paralyzes spiders. In the fall, the 

 wasps lay their eggs on top of the 

 spiders in a sand dune burrow. When 

 the eggs hatch, the immatures survive 

 the winter in the burrow, feeding on 

 the spider. Adult spider-killer wasps 

 spend the winter underground or 

 in their own 

 burrows. 



In 1947, naturalist and 

 Pulitzer prizewinner Edwin Way 

 Teale and his wife Nellie began 

 the first of four trips around the 

 United States. These trips were 



arranged by the seasons. In 1956, 

 Teale published the second of four 

 books resulting from those trips: 

 Autumn Across America. 



"These are the seasons of 



constant change, " writes Teale. 

 "Like dawn and dusk they are 

 periods of transition. But like 

 night and day and day and night 

 they merge slowly, gradually. " 



COASTWATCH 5 



