Come critter spotting with us on a cold winter's night

Summary

Podcast Summary: Short Wave — "Come critter spotting with us on a cold winter's night"

Original air date: January 19, 2026
Hosts: Emily Kwong & Burleigh McCoy
Guests/Naturalists: Serenela Linares, Natalie Howe, Matt Felperin, Anna Kahanui
Setting: Patuxent River State Park, Maryland
Episode Length: ~15 minutes

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Episode Overview

In this engaging episode, Emily Kwong takes listeners on a nocturnal adventure through Patuxent River State Park, Maryland. Alongside a group of enthusiastic naturalists, the hosts explore how nature thrives—even in the dead of winter—by searching for glowing lichens, elusive owls, mysterious fungi, and animated salamanders. The episode blends scientific curiosity, wonder, and humor, revealing how much life persists through winter’s chill and offering insight into both the creatures themselves and the passionate people who observe them.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. Setting off on a Night Hike

• Emily joins a group of naturalists for a night hike with UV lights and homemade banana bread ([00:42]).
• Host Emily sets the scene: "We were bundled in our winter coats... no idea what the park looked like because it was so dark and we don't have half of these critters' night vision." ([03:37])

2. Lichen Under UV Light: Nature’s Sunscreen

• Under leadership of Serenela Linares and ecologist Natalie Howe, the group discovers patches of lichen glowing under UV lights ([04:00]-[05:39]).
• Notable Moment (UV magic):
  • Serenela Linares: "Nothing out of the ordinary, right?... Everything looks pretty much the same until..." ([04:17])
  • Emily describes: "It suddenly glowed neon yellow. The lichen, one particular part of it was fluorescing, so absorbing the ultraviolet light... and emitting visible light." ([04:39])
• The different colors signal different lichen species, each with unique fluorescence chemistry:
  • Emily: "The yellow lichen is called Pixene subsenaria and the orange lichen is Pixene seridiata. Both have chemicals in their tissues which allow them to fluoresce." ([05:36])
• Science takeaway: Lichen fluoresce as a protective response to UV light, effectively acting as their own sunscreen ([05:51]).

3. Examining the Forest Life Up Close

• The naturalists search with UV lights, referencing field guides, and even find trash that reflects interestingly ([06:21]-[06:27]).
• Natalie Howe: "Once I actually got too excited about finding, like, a soggy piece of toilet paper because it reflected weirdly." ([06:27])

4. Moths, Mercury Lamps, and Owl Calls

• The group spots moths drawn by mercury vapor lamps, used because moths navigate by moon and stars ([06:38]-[07:03]).
• Matt Felperin announces owl calling, explains barred owl’s territorial nature, and provides a mnemonic:
  • Matt Felperin: "There's a mnemonic for it... Who cooks for you? Who cooks for you all?" ([07:33])

5. Fungi and Citizen Science: BioBlitz and iNaturalist

• Anna Kahanui, co-founder of Capital Nature, excitedly documents a “snow fungus” and demonstrates her use of the iNaturalist app (5,107 observations!) ([08:14]-[08:47]).
  • Emily: "Learning to identify and name and even just notice the life forms around me is one of the best ways to deepen your relationship to land and to nature." ([08:51])
• Discussion of the City Nature Challenge—a global BioBlitz for citizen scientists ([09:16]).

6. Childlike Wonder Returns: Crustaceans, Isopods, and Incredible Fungi

• The hike becomes a playful, immersive experience: “Just watching these grown adults act more and more like kids was so amazing... jumping and shrieking when a tiny crustacean like an isopod appears.” ([09:37])
• Serenela Linares quizzes the group: "Give me a number of how many sexes do you think [Gizophilum commune] has?" ([10:09])
  • The answer: “20,000 different sexes.” ([10:31])
  • Serenela Linares: “It’s very successful, very abundant, and found almost everywhere. Take a look.” ([10:36])

7. Redback Salamanders—Masters of Winter Survival

• Discovery: An eastern redback salamander, which can burrow up to a foot deep in winter to stay moist and absorb oxygen ([10:49]-[11:10]).
• Emily: "One of the most interesting things I picked up was the fact that redback salamanders will bury themselves... to stay warm and wet." ([11:10])

8. Bioluminescent Honey Mushrooms: Not Tonight!

• The group finally finds the coveted honey mushroom—a bioluminescent species in summer, but dormant in winter ([11:51]-[13:23]):
  • Serenela Linares: “Come get me, I’m delicious. And by the way, take my kids away. So how do you advertise your burger king at 2 a.m.? You need a neon sign...” ([12:42])
  • In summer, the glowing acts as an invitation for animals to eat (and thus spread) the mushroom’s spores.
• Big idea: In winter, many organisms, like these fungi, conserve their energy and pause flashy displays—a lesson for all listeners about slowing down ([13:26]).

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Memorable Quotes and Moments

• On lichen’s UV glow:
  • Emily: “It was like the Las Vegas Strip.” ([04:56])
• On mushrooms with many sexes:
  • Emily: “20,000. This fungi has 20,000 different sexes.” ([10:31])
  • Serenela Linares: “It’s very successful, very abundant, and found almost everywhere. Take a look.” ([10:36])
• On the winter lesson:
  • Emily: “Which I think provides a nice life lesson for wintertime, you know, about not spending energy when you don’t have to.” ([13:26])
  • Burleigh: “Slow down, rest, conserve your energy, and... you can consider this hike your permission slip.” ([13:37])

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Notable Timestamps for Segments

• Night hike begins, lichen discovery: 00:49–04:56
• Exploration with UV lights and field guides: 05:05–06:38
• Mercury lamp for moths, owl calls: 06:38–07:46
• Fungi and citizen science (BioBlitz/iNaturalist): 08:14–09:16
• Playful discoveries (isopods, fungi biology): 09:37–10:36
• Redback salamander details: 10:49–11:10
• Bioluminescent honey mushroom and winter lessons: 11:51–13:37

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Takeaways and Tone

The episode’s tone is one of genuine curiosity, playful wonder, and encouragement for listeners to venture out and notice the natural world—even (especially) in winter. It’s a celebration of both scientific exploration and the sense of childlike awe that comes with paying attention to one’s environment.

• Final message: Winter isn’t lifeless; it's a period of adaptation, subtle activity, and strategic rest—something both animals and humans can learn from.

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For more on joining the City Nature Challenge or the Great American Campout, see the show links on NPR's website.

Transcript

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[Emily Kwong]

You're listening to shortwave from NPR. What's up, Tudorinos?

[Burleigh McCoy]

It's Emily Kwong and Burleigh McCoy. Today. I hear you recently embarked on some late night reporting in the woods under the COVID of darkness.

[NPR Sponsor Announcer]

Yeah.

[Burleigh McCoy]

So is this your way of telling us you're a spy?

[Emily Kwong]

Would a spy reveal that?

[Burleigh McCoy]

Okay, my thoughts exactly. But seriously, what were you doing out there?

[Emily Kwong]

Well, Burleigh, I was on a night.

[Serenela Linares]

Hike, so in about two minutes, we'll get started. Meanwhile, enjoy yourself.

[Emily Kwong]

It was a tromp through Patuxent River State park in Maryland, hosted by a group of naturalists, people trained in gathering observations and educating people about the environment. Now, naturalists lead hikes all over the world, but not all of them, like this crew, hand out homemade banana bread. That was pretty cool. And UV lights provided by our leader.

[Serenela Linares]

Hi, my name is Serenela Linares. I'm the facility director at Mount Rainier Nature center and the program chair of the Mycological association of Washington, D.C. okay.

[Burleigh McCoy]

So Serenella is a mushroom expert.

[Emily Kwong]

Yeah, along with other fungi. She's been leading nature walks since 2013. And tonight, I really wanted to see the forest through her eyes, to know what flaps and flutters and fluoresces when the sun goes down in winter.

[Serenela Linares]

It is a night for nature magic, bioluminescence, fluorescence of fungi and lichens of insects that fly in the night and are attracted to the bait that we have set up.

[Emily Kwong]

So I should really, like, try to listen very closely to everything we will have. And that's what I want to do with you today, Burley. I want to just get real quiet and listen to the sounds of a winter's night when everything is dead or dormant. Or is it okay?

[Burleigh McCoy]

Today on the show, we are taking you on a night hike through the Patuxent river watershed in search of owls and salamanders and maybe, if we're lucky, a bioluminescent mushroom. You're listening to Shortwave, the science podcast from npr.

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[Burleigh McCoy]

All right, Emily, so you went on this night hike last month, set the scene for us. What does this park look like?

[Emily Kwong]

No idea. Because it was so dark and we. We don't have half of these critters. Night vision.

[Burleigh McCoy]

Okay, this makes sense.

[Emily Kwong]

But I know that the park, because I looked at a map, sits along the Patuxent river, which flows into Maryland's Chesapeake Bay. We were bundled in our winter coats, and the first stop along our night hike was a patch of lichen growing along a tree just off the parking lot.

[Burleigh McCoy]

Remind me, what are lichen exactly?

[Emily Kwong]

Yeah, lichen is that stuff that grows on trees. It kind of looks like seaweed, but it's actually a hybrid colony of fungi and algae in a symbiotic relationship. To show us, Serinella dramatically shines her flashlight up the tree trunk.

[Serenela Linares]

Nothing out of the ordinary, right? That blue gray lichen color. Everything looks pretty much the same until.

[Emily Kwong]

Serinella then flips on her UV light and the patch of green lichen totally changes.

[Serenela Linares]

Wanna tell us more about these fans?

[Emily Kwong]

And it suddenly glowed neon yellow. The lichen, one particular part of it was fluorescing, so absorbing the ultraviolet light from the flashlight and emitting visible light.

[Burleigh McCoy]

Oh, and I'm just looking at the pictures you just sent me, and this is like neon. Neon yellow.

[Emily Kwong]

Yeah, it was like the Las Vegas Strip. Natalie Howe, an ecologist with the U.S. department of Agriculture, steps forward and shoves her face into the tree bark.

[Natalie Howe]

If you come up real close, you can sort of tell that there's a lot of diversity there because there's some that are a little yellower or some that are a little grayer. There's a lot of green.

[Burleigh McCoy]

She sounds so excited.

[Emily Kwong]

So we take a UV light and get up close to that tree to look, and pretty soon, Saranella shouts, oh, Natalie.

[Natalie Howe]

Pinkish1. What did you find? Oh, orange. That's true. We barely ever see that orange one.

[Burleigh McCoy]

They just sound so, so excited. This sounds like my kind of group. Okay, so, like, what do the different colors mean?

[Emily Kwong]

Yeah. Okay, so the yellow lichen is called Pixene subsenaria and the orange lichen is Pixene seridiata. And both have chemicals in their tissues which allow them to fluoresce.

[Burleigh McCoy]

Okay, but, like, why?

[Emily Kwong]

Natalie explained to me that lichen fluoresce as a protective response against ultraviolet light damage from the sun.

[Burleigh McCoy]

Oh, my gosh. I wish we could do this. Okay, that's so cool. So, like, these lichens are carrying their own sunscreen?

[Emily Kwong]

Yep. So the group starts to branch out at this point away from the lichen depot, drifting into pockets of the forest, swinging their UV lights and headlamps up trees. Everyone's kind of getting into it now, and they're breaking up books to try to identify what they see. And suddenly it just feels weird to.

[Burleigh McCoy]

Step on anything because, like, everything is alive.

[Emily Kwong]

Yeah. Except where there's trash. Oh.

[Natalie Howe]

Once I actually got too excited about finding, like, a soggy piece of toilet paper because it reflected weirdly.

[Burleigh McCoy]

Okay, so what did you see next on your hike?

[Emily Kwong]

Well, there was this gigantic piece of fabric that one of the naturalists had hung up and lit with mercury vapor lamps. So those are lamps that emit this very broad spectrum of light and attracted all these different kinds of moths just, like, clinging to the fabric.

[Matt Felperin]

Come on over here. If anyone wants to get a quick photo of the fall canker worm, I.

[Burleigh McCoy]

Want to see a photo of the fall canker worm.

[Emily Kwong]

Yeah. This moth, along with all moths, use the moon and stars to navigate. So lamps are a good way to draw them out of the shadows. Then Matt Felperin, a roving naturalist with Nova Parks, the regional park system of Northern Virginia, makes an announcement that he will be, quote, doing owl calls intermittently.

[Burleigh McCoy]

Okay.

[Matt Felperin]

They're very defensive of their territory, so they will frequently come and check out who the potential rival is in their territory.

[Emily Kwong]

So what's the best way to call Bard owl?

[Matt Felperin]

There's a mnemonic for it. And the mnemonic would be, who cooks for you? Who cooks for you all?

[Emily Kwong]

Matt learned how to do this while prowling for owls during the Great American Campout.

[Burleigh McCoy]

What is that?

[Emily Kwong]

It's this nationwide campaign that happens every June to get people outdoors in a safe way.

[NPR Sponsor Announcer]

And.

[Emily Kwong]

And this was a really common theme among the naturalists. They're all involved with some kind of community work. Anna Kahanui is the co founder of the D.C. based nonprofit Capital Nature. I found her crouched over a log Inches from the dirt, taking a picture with her iPhone. Oh, my gosh.

[Burleigh McCoy]

What is that?

[Anna Kahanui]

It's a snow fungus. So it's a jelly fungus.

[Emily Kwong]

That's.

[Serenela Linares]

Yeah.

[Anna Kahanui]

So I want to get a picture.

[Emily Kwong]

Of it when it's like that.

[Burleigh McCoy]

Fungi that are jellied.

[Emily Kwong]

Yeah.

[Anna Kahanui]

Let me show you a better picture of it.

[Emily Kwong]

It looks like slime. So you got Matt making alcohols in the background. Anna face in the dirt, showing me her inaturalist.

[Burleigh McCoy]

Okay, so Inaturalist is the app that helps you ID things in the natural world. I use it all the time for things like flowers and trees and one time a spider in my garden.

[Emily Kwong]

Yeah, Anna's like a prolific user of inaturalist. Whoa. You have 5,107.

[NPR Sponsor Announcer]

Incredible.

[Anna Kahanui]

I do make a lot of observations.

[Burleigh McCoy]

5,100.

[Emily Kwong]

That's a lot. Yeah, I have, I don't know, a few dozen. But I have realized that learning to identify and name and even just notice the life forms around me is one of the best ways to deepen your relationship to land and to nature. Anna says you could also look up a bird count or some other bio blitz in your area. That's what they call, like, these nature searches. One of the biggest ones is the City nature Challenge.

[Burleigh McCoy]

Oh, what's that?

[Emily Kwong]

It's basically a four day sprint around Earth Day. Cities who enroll are tasked with identifying as many of a certain type of species as possible.

[Anna Kahanui]

It's multi generational. So because, you know, mom and dad and grandma and grandpa and the kids can go out and the kids are low to the ground. So.

[Burleigh McCoy]

So did that owl ever show up?

[Emily Kwong]

Never showed. Gave us the cold shoulder. But at this point in the hike, owl cameo didn't really matter. I mean, over the course of the night, just watching these grown adults act more and more like kids was so amazing. Like sticking their fingers in dirt, rolling over wet logs, jumping and shrieking when a tiny crustacean like an isopod appears.

[Burleigh McCoy]

I love it.

[NPR Sponsor Announcer]

Oh, no.

[Emily Kwong]

It's like a little shrimp or a tiny fungi shaped like a fan with an incredible secret Gizophilum commune.

[Serenela Linares]

Doesn't have two sexes. Doesn't have four sexes. Give me a number of how many sexes do you think?

[Emily Kwong]

6? 8?

[Sponsor Announcer]

Higher.

[Burleigh McCoy]

27.

[Emily Kwong]

Go so much higher than you think is possible for how many sexes an organism can have.

[Burleigh McCoy]

I mean, 27 was the highest, you know, like what, hundreds?

[Emily Kwong]

20,000. This fungi has 20,000 different sexes.

[Burleigh McCoy]

Amazing.

[Serenela Linares]

It's very successful, very abundant, and found almost everywhere. Take a look.

[Emily Kwong]

And then there were life forms that were moving quite actively like, we got salamander.

[Anna Kahanui]

Yep.

[Emily Kwong]

So I got low, you know, army crawling and peering through everyone's legs, hovering beneath this like, chaotic cloud of science facts. Yeah, it's like orange and black and slithering. Looks kind of like a snake.

[Matt Felperin]

We have an eastern red back salamander.

[Serenela Linares]

Yeah.

[Anna Kahanui]

Copperish.

[Emily Kwong]

One of the most interesting things I picked up was the fact that redback salamanders will bury themselves sometimes a foot deep in winter to basically be surrounded by decaying roots to stay warm and wet. Because the salamanders need the moisture to absorb oxygen through their skin. Yeah, and there's so many adaptations for winter when you really start to look for them. Sometimes that looks like a change of location. Sometimes that looks like energy conservation.

[Burleigh McCoy]

Okay, give me an example.

[Emily Kwong]

Yeah, this was towards the end of the hike. I hear Serinella calling my name in the dark. Oh, all people look the same.

[Serenela Linares]

We don't overlook the stick.

[Natalie Howe]

The stick with the mushroom.

[Serenela Linares]

With the mushroom.

[Burleigh McCoy]

Wait, wait, wait. Is this the bioluminescent mushroom?

[Emily Kwong]

That's right. That's right. This is the one Saranella spent the whole hike searching for. It is a honey mushroom. Our final observation of the night. So in the summertime, honey mushrooms produce a green light known as fox fire. They glow in the dark all on their own, no flashlight required. And we call this phenomenon bioluminescence.

[Burleigh McCoy]

I am really sad to say I've never seen bioluminescence in nature, but honestly, I usually imagine it's like a frog or some kind of plankton doing the bioluminescing, not a mushroom.

[Emily Kwong]

Yeah, I had no idea that mushrooms bioluminesce either. Scientists don't entirely know why, but as Serinella explained to me and my husband Duncan, it might be the fungi's way of attracting nocturnal creatures. You know, the glow is basically an advertisement.

[Serenela Linares]

Come get me, I'm delicious. And by the way, take my kids away. So how do you advertise your burger king at 2am you need a neon.

[Emily Kwong]

Sign that people walking by say, oh, yummy, hungry animals. So birds, rodents and insects eat the mushrooms and poop it out later, which may help with some or dispersal. But that's not what I saw, Burley. No, no, it was winter. And apparently the honey mushrooms will shut down all bioluminescent business. They will not glow at night in wintertime summer.

[Burleigh McCoy]

You did not see the green glow.

[Emily Kwong]

Nope, Just a stick of happy brown caps that were not bioluminescing at all. Which I think provides a nice life lesson for wintertime, you know, about not spending energy when you don't have to.

[Burleigh McCoy]

Honestly, Emily, this hike is reminding me that that's what winter is all about, right? At least according to nature. Slow down, rest, conserve your energy, and.

[Emily Kwong]

You can consider this hike your permission slip.

[Burleigh McCoy]

Thank you so much for this night walk.

[Emily Kwong]

Any time, Burleigh. To join the City Nature Challenge or the Great American Campout, check out the links on our website.

[Burleigh McCoy]

Make sure you never miss a new episode by following us on the podcasting platform you're listening from. And if you have a science question, send us an [e-mail] this episode was produced by Jessica Young and Hannah Chin and edited by our showrunner, Rebecca Ramirez. Tyler Jones Check the facts. Jimmy Keeley was the audio engineer, Beth Donovan is our senior director and Colin Campbell is our senior vice president of podcasting strategy.

[Emily Kwong]

I'm Emily Kwong.

[Burleigh McCoy]

And I'm Burleigh McCoy. Thanks for listening to Short Wave from NPR.

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