Nature Hermit

The grackles are near

2012-01-12T07:06:00.000-08:00

Grackles in Quakertown, NJ (photo by Marty Campanelli, borrowed from the Hunterdon County Democrat)

I have an unexplainable fondness for grackles. The massive flocks that came by my yard last fall didn't show this year. A smaller flock made a brief appearance in September, but no real "megaflocks" despite plenty of "waste" corn in the fields. And so far only a fraction of the snow geese of last year too - only fly-overs. It could be the weirdly warm winter keeping most of them farther north. Regardless it feels like something's lacking. No ridiculously huge flocks to make my backyard feel exciting. But wait...

Thanks to the avian desk at the Hunterdon County Democrat I know that there is a massive flock, 30,000-50,000 strong, just 20 miles south of me in Quakertown, NJ. I'll be keeping my eye out.

http://www.nj.com/hunterdon-county-democrat/index.ssf/2012/01/massive_flock_of_birds_has_bee.html

Berry Go Round #46

2011-11-28T16:50:00.000-08:00

One-seeded burr cucumber (Sicyos angulatus L.) in New Jersey after the first hard freeze.

Welcome to the 46th Berry Go Round...it is the month of November when most of the plants die of exposure where I live (New Jersey, USA). But not all of the plant dies of course. If some part didn't live through the winter (dormant stem, root, fertilized embryo) the species would cease to exist. Well, on that note...

Luigi at the Agricultural Biodiversity Weblog has been pondering the origin of broom corn...and tracks down some historical, oddly-shaped grapes...

Mike at Nature Hermit has been contemplating the existence of native cucumbers and their seeds...

The Phytophactor has been thinking about Spanish Moss as a commensalist...dashing our perceptions about Cycads...and attempting to explain a Lotus...

Roberta at Growing With Science shows us some cool Texas Mountain Laurel beans...

Emily at No Seeds, No Fruits, No Flowers introduces us to Dryopteris ludoviciana...and gives us a peek down under at Australia's ferns...

Jessica at Moss Plants stresses out some sperm...

Julie at Net Results provides a well-researched debunking of the buckthorn diarrhea myth...

Anybody Seen My Focus? checks out some lily beds on the Cahaba River, Alabama...and shows us some fall wildflowers and finds a blooming witchhazel in Georgia...
Happy November!

No gleaners yet

2011-11-28T15:55:00.000-08:00

The combine, late October.

Turns out the first swarm of grackles I saw back in September was a fluke. I haven't seen another all month, despite their being plenty of leftover corn in the field. I could easily collect a 55 gallon drum of full corn cobs in a few hours of picking. (I do pick up the occasional cob as supplemental sheep feed.) Last year the megaflocks were a regular occurrence in November and December. But then again we had a harvested sunflower field last year which is essentially a gigantic birdfeeder. Corn isn't as choice to a blackbird, I'd imagine. But it is to snow geese, which should be showing up en masse next month if last year is any guide.

Cucumber update

2011-11-28T15:42:00.000-08:00

The burr cucumber on the garden fence stayed green way past the first frost (early October), all the way until the first hard freeze (early November), and got hit by a number of small frosts in between. The seeds have set and I looked closely at them. They basically look like cucumber seeds but a little fuller and harder (and darker). There is no fleshy fruit, but the pods are covered with spines that actually stick into your hand (burrs I guess). As far as I know the seed isn't edible. I bit one and chewed a little...no taste. I spit it out. I wonder what disperses such a weird seed. Not easily searched for online. I think there should be a huge list or database somewhere that tells you whether each plant is an annual, perrennial, biennial, etc. and how its seeds are dispersed. Alas, I don't feel like making it!

I got a trail camera...

2011-09-25T10:29:00.000-07:00

...and now I know that one or more raccoons walked along the north bank of the Musconetcong at 3:54 and 4:12AM this morning!

Spider time

2011-09-24T10:48:00.000-07:00

Retro-looking photo of a Spined Micrathena (taken August 24, 2011, near the Musconetcong River, Mansfield Twp, NJ).

August is the month for getting spiderwebs stuck to your face. They seem to pop up all of the sudden between every shrub in the woods. Around here they mainly belong to the Spined Micrathena (Micrathena gracilis). A few weeks ago I also found this fancy-looking Arrowshaped Micrathena (Micrathena sagittata) down by the river. It's web was only two feet off the ground, apparently typical for this species (NWF insect book). Also from the book, both species live in open woods and "brushy areas" east of the Rockies.

The less common Arrowshaped Micrathena (taken August 24, 2011, near the Musconetcong River, Mansfield Twp, NJ).

New Jersey cucumbers

2011-09-17T15:23:00.000-07:00

Fresh and inedible. Fall seems to be the time for native wild cucumbers, of which there are two types in New Jersey according to Karl Anderson's list. They have recently become conspicuous, becoming greener as other vegetation begins to fade away. They are still blooming in mid-September, and still growing fast...high up into trees and up and over shrubs. The tendrils and leaves are really cucumber-like (it's in the same family, Cucurbitaceae) and are really picturesque. I somehow never came across these plants until living at my current house (northern NJ) where they are ubiquitous. The most common species is Bur Cucumber (Sicyos angulatus), but I also came across one specimen of Prickly Cucumber (Echinocystis lobata) down by the river.

Bur Cucumber growing up the wires of my garden fence, quite close to his domestic cousin.

Bur Cucumber Flowers.

Bur Cucumber Fruit (quite bur-like).

Bur Cucumber growing high up in a black walnut.

The rarer Prickly Cucumber. This is the only individual I've found so far, and I can't remember where exactly! Somewhere along the Musconetcong River in the WMA. It has longer petals, more finger-like leaves, and a neat-looking spiky oblong orb of a fruit. I have no idea what eats such bur-like and prickly cucumbers and disperses their seeds, but apparently not humans.

First grackle megaflock

2011-09-07T17:01:00.000-07:00

Mixed flock of blackbirds in late fall last year (2010), post-corn-harvest. This year's corn is still green.

I hereby record that the first megaflock* of common grackles this year arrived at my Warren County home in the pre-dusk hours of September 4th. They squeaked and creaked and occupied every ash, hickory, and sycamore branch along a half-kilometer stretch of the Musconetcong River. Then they departed, flying west-ish in the typical (and typically impressive) never-ending-river-of-birds. It would be fascinating to have a map of the wanderings of these bird-herds. Maybe ebird has this in their power?

They apparently wander this way all winter, and farther north than NJ, too. Here is a photo of another megaflock feeding on my lawn when I lived in Orange County, NY (taken December 2009).

Megaflock of grackles in Goshen, Orange County, NY, December 2009.

*I made up the word, but it fits...

Upstate dirt

2011-09-07T16:43:00.000-07:00

This is neat. Look at the difference between the Hudson (top) and Raritan (left) rivers after Hurricane Irene. All that dirt from flooded creeks and farm fields in upstate NY and Vermont are engulfing Sandy Hook and NJ towns on Raritan Bay. I'm guessing this mingling of waters is always occurring (though to a lesser degree), but is just more visible now. NJ is more connected to the Hudson than I knew. Probably lots of PCBs in that plume b/c of the GE dredging.

Eastern koala

2011-08-25T03:43:00.000-07:00

I treed a woodchuck the other day along the Musconetcong River. I must have surprised him, or blocked access to his hole. Otherwise, I don't know why he would have gone up there. I could have just waited at the bottom of the trunk for him to get tired (if I really wanted a woodchuck)! After about 5 minutes of taking pictures of him, he made the bold move of descending the tree with me standing about 15 feet away. Right then, I could have run up an grabbed him (and gotten some nasty scratches, I think), but I squelched my animal instincts and let him disappear into the brush. By the way, I'm not the first to have this urge! In one of the stranger parts of Walden, Thoreau expresses the desire to grab and eat a woodchuck, raw.

A bold exit.

Wanderers

2011-08-04T14:41:00.000-07:00

A Carolina Chickadee, where it belongs - Ocean County, NJ. I heard a Carolina-type song in Warren County today - usually solid "Black-capped" country.

The birds are coming to me lately.

I haven't had a chance to do much birding around my property this summer, but now I keep seeing "good" species while poking around in the yard, going about my business. Post-breeding wanderers, I assume.

A blue-gray gnatcatcher feeding fledglings in the rose-of-sharon and on my garden fence (they move easily through 1-inch chicken wire holes, incidentally). A family of great-crested flycatchers making sallies out over the yard. A blue-winged warbler gleaning for caterpillars between an indifferent resident pair of bluebirds.

But today was the best one. A Carolina chickadee singing from the old apple tree. That is, at least a chickadee was singing a Carolina-type song. Here in Warren County, NJ (Mansfield Twp), we are a good 30 miles or so from the boundary between northern Black-capped and southern Carolina chickadees. Complicating things is the fact that they hybridize, and that they can learn the "wrong" song near the hybridization zone. But, I grew up in Hunterdon County, 30 minutes to the south, and I've never heard a Carolina song there. So this was an interesting treat either way...even if it could be an evil omen of a changing climate?

Bird bug

2011-07-25T17:18:00.000-07:00

Hummingbird moth (Hemaris thysbe) drinking nectar from a wild bergamot flower in my garden two days ago (Warren County, NJ).

This insect must have evolved as a "hummingbird mimic"...but why? Even the eye looks like a vertebrate eye, with a dark "pupil" in a brown "iris" (click on bottom picture). The white belly and dark back (known as "bicolored") is a common coloration among birds and other vertebrates. I think the clear patch in the wings makes them look more like the blur of a hummingbird wings. The whole package must be meant to give pause to potential bird-predatator, which presumably couldn't (or at least wouldn't) dine on a fellow bird.

Fireflies

2011-07-23T11:47:00.000-07:00

Possible "Big Dipper" fireflies (P. pyralis). Taken 8:15 PM, June 25 in Warren County, NJ. Corn may be a "biological desert" but it sure has a lot of fireflies over it, especially when it is young.

The katydids are just now starting to mean business. And of course the fireflies have been out for a while, but I've just started paying more attention to them lately.

They begin the light show at around 7:30 PM and then (this is what I've somehow failed to notice until now) they tend to go away almost completely once it gets really dark. There also seems to be a succession of different species over the course of the twilight. The "short, upward, vertical-liners" start it out, flashing in dazzling numbers over grassy areas. Then the "J-makers" and other higher flying or tree-dwelling ones become more noticeable. The "short, upward, vertical-liner" I take to be the Pennsylvania Firefly (Photuris pennsylvanica). According to my NWF insect guide, these often fool Big Dipper Fireflies (P. pyralis) - which I take to be my "J-makers" - into landing near them by imitating their female flash pattern on the ground, and then eating them!

This link from Dr. Steven Carr at Memorial U. of Newfoundland, shows the flashing patterns of the various species.

Ox beetles and other monsters

2011-07-17T06:10:00.000-07:00

An Ox Beetle. Taken July 7th in a grassland in Ocean Co., NJ.

This (if my ID books and bugguide.net have steered me right) is an ox beetle (Strategus anteus). I've seen a lot crawling around sandy bare areas of my Ocean County grassland lately. It is one of 5 ox beetles (Strategus sp.) in the US and the only one (at least the only common one) that lives in the Northeast. Bugguide.net shows it going all the way up to Nantucket Island in Massachusetts. Females (which lack horns) lay eggs in rotting wood, where the larvae develop. Male horns probably serve as some sort of courtship or mate-getting ornament, which is amusing to picture!

Another big beetle (Pasimachus sp., ground beetle family) common in my Ocean Co. grassland. This is a flightless beetle (shell is fused in the middle)! I've found shell remnants below Amercan Kestrel feeding perches. (Photo taken June 22.)

The sandy soils of south Jersey seem to support lots of really big insects. I've seen several other kinds of 1-2 inch beetles (including other dung beetles) crawling around between the grass tufts. Along with the abundance of over-sized grasshoppers, they seem to provide a main source of food for American kestrels (see here and here), and also possibly nighthawks which are common in the Pinelands and apparently eat a lot of beetles...this according to their BNA account and this wonderful Audubon print...

A domestic situation

2011-07-07T15:36:00.000-07:00

Here was a curious situation. A pair of bluebirds that inhabited a box about 10 yards away from my tree swallows were actively harassing them a few days ago. The tree swallows had young in the nest at the time, and the bluebirds were still laying eggs (3 at last count). It seemed like the bluebirds were a bit tougher than the swallows, but (being in the box) the swallows were able to hold their own. I have no idea what the indigo bunting was doing...I only noticed him after I downloaded the photos!

As an aside, I've noticed birds being testier in general these days. I'm guessing that it's due to territories "expanding" while fledglings are roaming around, but still being fed by their parents.

Tree swallow update

2011-07-05T18:01:00.000-07:00

Dad, peeking out the front door. (Taken June 15th in Warren Co., NJ).

At least some of the baby tree swallows in my box (concieved during this copulation event) were still in the nest yesterday (July 4th). I could hear them chirping in there, sounding pretty much like the adults. I think I saw a fledgling or two (looked like drabber versions of adult) but didn't have a chance to confirm it. Anyway they are pretty much home free and should be fledging soon. (Nestling periods lasting longer than 14 days have to be pretty rare. I know Acadian flycatchers usually go about that long, and that they are on the long side among songbirds.) So that would be about one full month from copulation (May 30th), through hatching (June 19th), to fledging (about July 4th). A bit longer if you count nest building which I didn't actually observe (I must have been away during it).

Beetle-hawks 2

2011-07-05T17:28:00.000-07:00

Elytra (shell) from a large Pasimachus ground beetle found with pellets near an American Kestrel feeding post.

This beetle shell was found near (a few feet away from) an American Kestrel feeding post in Lakehurst, Ocean Co., NJ (taken June 22nd). I moved it over for composition purposes, but I'm pretty sure the kestrel ate it (note the pellets with insect bits in them). Also it has a hole in it that I could picture a kestrel's beak tip going into. Below is (I think) the same beetle species found dead about 50 feet away from the post. According to bugguide.net, it's in the genus Pasimachus, in the family Carabidae - the ground beetles. This adds weight to my theory that summer kestrels are as much beetle-hawks as they are vole-hawks, or sparrow-hawks. And I guess they are grasshopper-hawks, too, as I found a large grasshopper wing nearby, as well. See previous post on beetle-hawks here.

Thanks to bugguide.net I know that these big monsters are in the genus Pasimachus (Family Carabidae, the ground beetles), and that it is a flightless species, having wing shells ("elytra") that are fused in the middle.

Kingbird on a wire

2011-06-25T12:00:00.000-07:00

The second in my utterly pointless "birds on barbed wire" series. (See also "Dove on a wire".)

(Taken June 22 along a sand road in the Pine Barrens, Ocean Co., NJ)

Grasshopper season

2011-06-22T12:55:00.000-07:00

This monster was laying eggs (it seemed to be, anyway) in the middle of a sand road in Ocean Co., NJ, yesterday. I think it is Pardalophora phoenicoptera, the orange-winged grasshopper.

Grasshoppers have recently become more noticeable in the grasslands of south Jersey. I never thought of them as a seasonal animal before, but I guess most insects have their seasonality just like plants do. And insect timing, I suppose, often coincides with plant timing.

Adding to my theory that "grasshopper season" is upon us is this: I have found plenty of shed skins from aquatic insects before (exuviae, technically speaking), but yesterday was the first time I've found a shed grasshopper skin...completely intact too! If I remember correctly from the time I raised crickets (for an insect class), they usually eat the skin after they shed it. The one that molted the skin shown was still a juvenile at the time, identified by the still-short wings. I think the strings and stuff visible in the photo may be the linings of air tubes and other "internal" organs, the skin of which also gets molted.

Shed grasshopper skin. Taken yesterday in Lakehurst, Ocean Co., NJ.

Here is the large grasshopper from two more angles. Even his eyes look sandy...

Mole crossing 2

2011-06-21T15:06:00.000-07:00

Following up on my previous (and portentious) "mole crossing" post, I actually saw a mole crossing a paved road today! It was small and looked like an eastern mole as it didn't seem to have a starry nose. The road was over 100 feet wide! It skittered awkwardly forward, and looked nervous (if I can read mole body language as well as I think I can)...like a fish out of water. Same site as last time, so it may have been same kind that made the tunnel across the sand road. No time for a photo unfortunately.

A successful copulation...

2011-06-20T15:21:00.000-07:00

The five eggs perhaps fertilized in part during this "copulation event" (described here) just hatched yesterday. When I peeked in the box, there were four of the typical tiny, wriggling, pink, weird-looking creatures, and one as-yet-unhatched white egg. Much more parental activity in and out of box now.

Goat's rue and other plants I've never heard of

2011-06-16T16:43:00.000-07:00

There are about 1861 plant species native to New Jersey (Anderson 1997). So it isn't really surprising that I keep running into new ones. This one (Goat's Rue, a type of pea, photographed June 1 in Lakehurst, Ocean Co., NJ) was particularly strange in its "bicoloredness": yellow and pink. Mustard and ketchup. And it was providing food for an interesting little weevil. Weevils incidentally are the most species-rich family (~60,000) in the most species-rich order of insects (beetles). So I won't attempt to identify it. Anderson (1997) lists 48 native "peas" in NJ (family Fabaceae), not including introduced or extirpated species. Many more peas left to meet.

Another plant I met this spring that I'd never heard of is "Cut-leaved Toothwort." It is in the mustard family, and was growing along the Musconetcong River in Warren County. It seems to be fairly common, but I was excited because it wasn't listed as occuring in Warren County in the great NJ plant-atlas book by Mary Hough. "A discovery!" thought I.

Cut leaved toothwort, photographed April 17 in Musconetcong WMA in Warren County.

Lit Cited

Anderson, K. 1997. A checklist of the plants of New Jersey. Self published. Mount Holly, NJ.

Mole crossing

2011-06-15T10:13:00.000-07:00

Mole directions for crossing sand road: Go straight past the grass clump. Take a sharp left at the tire track. Then swing right at the other grass clump.

(Taken June 4th in Ocean Co., NJ.)

Striped eye

2011-06-09T16:18:00.000-07:00

Thanks to the miracles of digital photography and cropping, I now know that painted turtles have...striped eyes. This strikes me as bizarre. Although I suppose "breaking up" the appearance of the eyes (or creating false "eyes" elsewhere) is a main function of camouflage in many species. Admittedly, having stripes on your eye does serve to make the face more cryptic. Especially since the face is often all that is showing on this mostly-aquatic species. (Taken today in Hamden Co., Massachusetts)

Butterflies eating poo

2011-06-08T12:02:00.000-07:00

Lovely tiger swallowtails feeding on fresh raccoon poo (taken a few years ago in Hunterdon Co., NJ). This behavior apparently allows butterflies to gain extra nitrogen and sodium which are needed for reproduction and are scarce in their typical sugary fare of flower nectar (Lederhouse et al. 1990). These nutrients can also be found in rotting animals (scroll down on this link to see one eating a dead raccoon!) and also puddle margins. I've seen great clouds of them gathering on the mud of drying ponds - it can be quite spectacular!

Here is a red admiral drinking nutrient soup from the manure on an amputated lamb's tail (the tail had been "docked"). (Photo taken a week ago in Warren Co., NJ.)

Bird sex

2011-06-02T14:54:00.000-07:00

Bird sex must rank high on the list of strange animal reproductive positions (although see this video of slug sex and the series by Isabella Rossallini). It is simultaneously awkward and graceful. This weekend, a pair of not-modest tree swallows that live near my doorstep in Warren Co., NJ provided a good illustration of this.

1) First the male lands and plants his feet on the female's back.

2) Then, he grabs a mouthful of her head feathers for balance!

3) Then, he puts his wings up and performs an impossible twist of his tail to line up cloacas.

This whole process lasts about 1-2 seconds, according to my camera's time stamp. The pair was observed mating several times over the course of a few days. It seemed to happen in the morning and evening more (too hot mid-day?), in short "frenzies" with the male going in for several tries each time. This timing coincided with their recent take-over of a birdhouse after some house sparrows vacated for unknown reasons. I could be wrong, but I think mating only occurs during egg-laying, as there has to be a relatively recent mating to produce a fertilized egg each day. I supposed that's why she always indulged the male, though she didn't always seem into it...

"That was awkward."

As an aside, this is the first time I've realized that male and female tree swallows are quite different looking, the female being much less shiny.

An over-the-wing headscratcher

2011-05-31T06:46:00.000-07:00

"Head scratching is so essential to birds that even one-legged individuals will attempt it." This according to the Birder's Handbook, which also says that it's purpose (in addition to spreading oil around) may be to remove molted feathers, discourage ecoparasites, or even to relieve pressure in the ear! It also says that some birds scratch by stretching their foot over the wing (such as this tree swallow photographed in Warren Co., NJ this weekend), and some scratch with their foot under the wing. It might be more typical to scratch over the wing, as they mention that 31 out of 38 wood warblers examined scratch this way, while only 7 prefer underwing scratching. Why, I don't know.

Dove on a wire

2011-05-23T16:07:00.000-07:00

I feel like this symbolizes something, but I'm not sure what...

(taken a few days ago in Ocean County, NJ)

Casualties of migration

2011-05-11T12:12:00.000-07:00

Found this American redstart yesterday in a Massachusetts parking lot. No trees in site. Since there are no signs of injury (although what is that thing in it's cloacal region?!) I'm guessing it landed exhausted after a night of migration and just keeled over from lack of food? But it could have just fallen off of somebody's grill.

In a previous May, I found an ovenbird dead outside of a convenience store in an urban area. These two observations lead me to conclude that migration is: 1) difficult and 2) messy, with a certain percentage just dropping dead along the way...a percentage that is certainly higher (and rising) in this age of parking lots and convenience stores.

Night swallows

2011-05-09T16:07:00.000-07:00

Early this morning, around 4:15, long before the first hint of light dawned on my New Jersey backyard, I heard...tree swallows.

And they appeared to be flying around, foraging! I remember hearing barn swallows flying and calling in pitch darkness several years back too. I wonder what is going on? (A quick google search yields no answers.)

Feeding on moths? Early / late migration? I'm pretty sure they are mainly diurnal migrants. Who knows? Golondrinas de la noche.

A foot-trembling woodcock?

2011-05-09T15:53:00.000-07:00

I had one of those encounters today where you meet a bird and then think "why aren't you running away from me?" (And luckily had a camera with me.) This nice woodcock allowed me to park my car right next to her while she went about her business. This business was actually the interesting part: instead of probing over and over to look for worms, she appeared to be feeling with her feet! In a rocking-back-and-forward motion, she would put a foot down twice before putting her weight on it and advancing one step to do the same with the other foot.

Other shorebirds, especially Charadrius plovers, but also solitary sandpipers and others, use a "foot trembling" foraging technique that apparently helps scare inverts up to the surface. To quote one paper on foot-trembling in the semi-plover (Cestari 2009):

Tapping or trembling movements involve the use of one leg at time during foraging in order to expose or incite movement in cryptic invertebrates of intertidal zones and grasslands (Sparks 1961, Piersma 1996). The advantage of this technique lies in the transfer of vibrations from the foot through the substrate to the prey (Tarburton 1989). This kind of movement may also startle insects on the surface, facilitating the capture of prey by visual-foraging birds (Piersma 1996, USFWS 1996).

This sounds a lot like what I observed, and woodcock are "shorebirds" after all. (What a bad name for this group of birds.) ... But wait, after checking the Birds of North America account, I discover that alas I'm not the first one to observe this rocking, foot-feeling walk, although it does still seem to have some mystery associated with it. From the BNA account (Keppie and Whiting 1994):

While feeding on lawns, birds seen to rock their body forward-backward without moving the head, as they slowly walk about, placing weight heavily upon lead foot. Does rocking motion and heavy foot generate vibration that causes shallow earthworms to move, a response then heard by woodcock (Marshall 1982b) or detected by its bill in contact with soil? Fascinating anecdotal reports in early literature suggest this may be so (Pettingill 1936).

Maybe so. I should have watched longer instead of getting greedy for photos!

Beetle-hawks

2011-05-03T17:52:00.000-07:00

A sparrow-hawk? No, a beetle-hawk.

Two pellets (a.k.a. puke) freshly coughed up by American kestrels (they were still moist...note the ant). Also part of a dismembered iridescent beetle (a scarab?). All were found beneath favored kestrel feeding posts in an Ocean County (NJ) grassland. Almost all the kestrel pellets I've found so far this April have pieces of beetle shells in them. I think there are lots crawling out of the soft sandy soil - maybe as hibernating adults, or maybe freshly-metamorphosed from wriggling, dung-fattened grubs. Some they are definitely catching on the ground, but I wonder if some of the aerial insect hawking I see them doing (way high up) is after these big and tasty slow-flying beasts. The pellets are about 1 inch long, for scale.

The dark side of meadowlarks: an annotated bibliography

2011-04-22T15:48:00.000-07:00

A ruthless killer. (photo by Chuq Von Rospach)

You might not know it, but meadowlarks are carrion-eating scavengers, egg-eating nest predators, and even cold-blooded killers! I didn't know either, until I stumbled upon a series of articles detailing the full scope of their gruesome taste for blood. I'll get right to the bibliography...

Terres, J. 1956. Eastern meadowlark eating a traffic-killed bird. Auk 73:289-290.

The first hint of these dark tendencies was revealed in a 1956 article by John Terres of the National Audubon Society. In it he relates a chilling scene of cannibalism that must have made an impression, as it occurred 17 years before the article was published. It was early July 1939, in upstate New York. Along the edge of a well-traveled road, a dead meadowlark is systematically pulled to bits by a live member of its own species. Terres, perhaps too professional to express his presumed horror in anthropomorphic terms, coolly excuses the behavior as simply making nutritional sense. As he put it, "I see no reason why almost any wild songbird might not be inclined to eat meat if it had the opportunity."

Hubbard, J. P. and C. L. Hubbard. 1969. Meadowlarks feeding on road-kills. Wilson Bull. 81:107-108.

Further light was shed on this scavenging (and cannibalistic) tendency one snowy day in December 1967. John and Carrie Hubbard were driving along a lonely desert highway in New Mexico in a blizzard, when they witnessed a curiously macabre scene. They began to notice dead birds along the roadside. Lots of them. Horned larks, mourning doves, lark buntings and meadowlarks, all apparently killed by cars as they foraged in the only snow-free areas around: tire ruts. The Hubbards made their way along this gruesome route, where "bodies littered the highway and roadside," stopping frequently to collect specimens (typical biologists, apparently). Before long they began to get suspicious. At each carcass (including those of meadowlarks) one or more live meadowlarks would often flush. Later examination of meadowlark stomach contents confirmed their suspicions: feathers and bird skin pieces were main components.

Tyler, J. D. and L. L. Choate. 1990. Opportunistic scavenging by meadowlarks in southwestern Oklahoma. Proc. Okla. Acad. Sci. 70:41-42.

Twenty years later, a similar but even more grizzly scene was witnessed on Interstate 44 in Oklahoma after a massive ice storm. Dead birds (and mammals too) were everywhere, killed in the same manner: struck by cars while scrounging for seeds on ice-free roads. The article by Jack Tyler and Larry Choate of Cameron University reads like an account of a plague or epic natural disaster. The body count included nearly 500 meadowlarks (eastern and western), over 900 mourning doves, "great numbers" of bobwhites, and mammals including house cats, hispid cotton rats, and cottontails. Throughout this scene of carnage, a mixed flock of eastern and western meadowlarks roamed and feasted on the flesh of mammal and bird alike. There also seemed to be a vicious circle in effect, in which meadowlarks were struck by cars while feasting on road-killed meadowlarks which were struck while feasting on...etc.

Schrick, M. P. 1979. Tree Sparrows killed and eaten by meadowlarks. Bull. Oklahoma Ornithol. Soc. 12:33-34.

Now it's getting serious. I was willing to accept carrion-feeding in meadowlarks, but predation...that was too much to believe. Again the scene is rural Oklahoma during a mid-winter blizzard. Michael Schrick of the Corp of Engineers had been shooting starlings at a bird feeder with a pellet gun (?!) and was shocked when the meadowlarks below the feeder began "pecking at and eating" the corpses. And this despite the piles of seeds he had scattered for them. Imagine his surprise two days later when he witnessed the following. I quote:

Park Ranger Wes Masonhall and I saw a meadowlark suddenly walk toward and grab with both feet a Tree Sparrow, a maneuver that obliged the meadowlark to fall to its side while striking its victim
with its beak. The commotion did not seem to frighten the Tree Sparrows, but it did attract the other meadowlarks, several of which started to peck the captured sparrow. Rivalry developed: one meadowlark, more aggressive than the others, jabbed savagely at the sparrow's captor, forcing
that bird to release its prey. The aggressor strode off with the dead sparrow in its beak. When it stopped to feed, however, the other meadowlarks put it to flight. Eventually, still carrying the sparrow in its beak, it disappeared in the distance.
Almost immediately, the vanquished meadowlark caught another sparrow; another free-for-all developed; and the sparrow was killed and eaten. The living sparrows, obviously ravenous, and possibly weakened by starvation, did not seem to realize that the meadowlarks would be predatory.

Wow, that is real drama! Rivalry, vanquishing, victims, starvation, free-for-alls, striding, aggression. It has it all. This turned out to be the first of several accounts indicating that meadowlarks, when pushed to the edge, will kill.

Waters, L. S. 1990. Meadowlarks prey on Pine Siskins and American Goldfinches. Bull. Okla. Ornithol. Soc. 23:7-8.

Bell, P. M. 1990. Eastern Meadowlark predation on American Goldfinches. Bull. Okla. Ornithol. Soc. 23:20-22.

An Oklahoma bird feeder, mid-winter, recent snowfall. Starting to see a pattern.

Two separate articles by Patrick Bell and Luann Waters published in 1990 not only added significantly to the body count attributable to meadowlarks, but also shed light on their ghoulish methods. For example: "Part of the roof of the finch's skull was gone, as was half the brain." And "another goldfinch had a massive opening in its cranium..." And "bird was killed by pecks to the back of the head and then left intact while the meadowlark returned to the feeder and ate sunflower seeds...Later, the meadowlark came back, ate the brain first..." Aaaaahhh!

Creighton, P. D. and D. K. Porter. 1974. Nest predation and interference by Western Meadowlarks. Auk 91:177-178.

Schaeff, C. and J. Picman. 1988. Destruction of eggs by Western Meadowlarks. Condor 90:935-937.

Picman, J. 1992. Egg destruction by Eastern Meadowlarks. Wilson Bull. 104:520-525.

Say it ain't so. Not only do they kill adults, but they also kill babies. Specifically they have a taste for eggs of horned larks and lark buntings, and even Coturnix quail and clay eggs placed in artificial nests. Presumably, eggs of all ground nesting species would suit their pallets. And nestlings are also fair game, apparently, as Creighton and Porter found a lark bunting chick with "deep puncture wounds in the back and neck" after the nest was "inspected" by a meadowlark.

So, after all is said and done, can we excuse these anthropomorphically distasteful behaviors of eastern and western meadowlarks - namely cannibalism, infanticide, and murder? I say: maybe so. At least on the basis that they seem to occur mainly in extremely harsh circumstances (think "Donner Party"), and primarily in Oklahoma.

Squirrel goiter?

2011-04-22T11:41:00.000-07:00

At first glance, this might look like a cute picture of a squirrel loading his cheeks up with acorns. But when I downloaded the pictures, I realized that only one cheek was puffed up. That's odd. Looking closer I saw that instead of being cute and cuddly, it was a decidedly non-cute and non-cuddly fleshy growth of some kind. A tumor? It looks like it has scabs and pus on it. I suppose it could be a botfly, which I know affect squirrels in this region. Bad place for a botfly!

The growth, up close.

The non-tumor side.

Who builds the nest?

2011-04-20T16:21:00.000-07:00

First of all, it is amazing that a little bird that hatches out of an egg one June morning, can the next year build a nest of its own that is a typical specimen for its species (with no training even). Secondly, it is interesting that often it is only the female that builds it. The male presumably is above such domestic endeavors.

But not in all species. I'm not positive (and because this is a blog I'm not required to verify it), but I believe that the vireos and possibly other groups engage in dual-sex nest building. (Go check your Birders Handbook and post the answer for me below.) I seem to remember watching two blue-headed vireos both collecting nesting material together once somewhere near a hemlock-lined stream in Pennsylvania. Maybe it was a dream.

Now for the point of my story. Today I witnessed a common thing: a female bluebird making repeated trips to a nest box with a mouthful of nesting materials (grasses, pine needles, etc.). But the interesting thing was that the bright blue male followed her every step of the way, but did none of the work. He would fly with her to a spot several hundred meters away to collect stuff (staying within a few meters). Then he would fly all the way back to the nest while she put it in the box. While she was in there, he would perch on top and sometimes come down to look in.

This has two potential explanations, as far as I can tell: 1) he was guarding her against being cuckolded by rogue males (as she was likely approaching fertility at this point), and 2) well there is no 2. But it is also possible that this "male accompaniment" is some sort of transition between "male doesn't help at all" and "male helps build nest." No proof, but why not. I'm pretty sure there are also cases in which the "male helps a little bit."

Miscellaneous dead things

2011-04-19T12:28:00.000-07:00

This is a post of random dead things I've come across in the past few weeks...dead things being one of the main things of interest one runs across during winter/early-spring walks! (I know spring is farther along now, but I'm behind.)

This flicker was found inside an abandoned house in Warren County a couple of weeks ago. It looks to be surrounded by dried yew berries. Maybe it wandered in and couldn't get out, and/or maybe it was cached by a squirrel!

These next three were all found in Ocean County this month. Skunks have tiny, delicate feet, which is also reflected in their tiny tracks. This foot belonged to half a skunk I found near a predator burrow (fox? coyote?).

This dead pine snake was brought to my attention by a turkey vulture that was eating it in the middle of a large, wide-open grassland. It didn't smell and was very cryptic, so I was pretty astonished that the vulture had found it. The only visible damage to the snake was a smooshed-in head, so I wonder if the vulture killed it (maybe it had come out of hibernation too early and was sluggish), or if it had died last October when the field was mowed (maybe would have looked more weather-beaten), or maybe just keeled over (do snakes have heart attacks?). This is a threatened species in NJ, and I see a lot of them out in the fields, so mowing during the warmer months would not help in any case. Many of the snakes I find are 6 feet long, so this was a fairly young one, I'm guessing.

Deer skulls are an all-too-common sight in any NJ woodland. But this one has an extra tooth! Looks like a very old deer - the teeth (even the extra one) have lots of wear. Maybe this extra tooth contributed to its demise? I'm not a dentist, but it looks sort of painful. Compare with normal deer skull below.

Nestlings by the numbers

2011-04-05T16:43:00.000-07:00

After my last post, I started reexamining my pics of Acadian flycatcher chicks to see if I could actually identify the fuzzy tufts that I only recently found out have names. I realized that many of them are actually pretty obvious (see below for key), and I also realized that the close-cropped white fuzz of Acadians make them a pretty good study-species for the aspiring fuzz-identifier (fuzzer?). Compare, for example, the wispy, hard-to-differentiate fuzz of baby grasshopper sparrows. And besides being funny-looking (I especially like the "occipital" patch - #2 - for it's jauntiness), these humble fuzz-patches can even tell an evolutionary tale. If I remember correctly, the Acadian is the only Empidonax to have white rather than tan fuzz, one of several things that make it an outsider in its group (nest structure, range, and habitat also come to mind). Connect the numbered tufts to reveal a hidden picture!

Baby birds are strange

2011-04-01T07:08:00.000-07:00

Actual scientific drawing from Saunders (1956)

Very strange indeed. It seems like the random tufts of fuzz on newly hatched chicks are just for decoration. What other purpose could they serve? Warmth? It does look warm, but there's not enough of it. There are apparently names for each little patch, too. I came across a 1956 paper in the journal Bird Banding (by Aretas Saunders) that describes the fuzz from several species, and gives names to each fuzz patch. I don't necessarily see the corresponding patches on the nestling photos that I have (see below), but maybe it varies by species (the drawing is of a chipping sparrow). Maybe I should actually read the article. Here are the patches (refer to numbers on the cute yet scientific drawing above):

1. coronal } capital

2. occipital } tract

3. dorsal
4. humeral
5. femoral
6. caudal
7. secondary } alar

8. primary } tract
9. crural
10. abdominal } abdominal
11. lateral } tract

Here are some pics of alien nestlings from my files:

Acadian flycatcher

eastern meadowlark

blue grosbeak

grasshopper sparrow

field sparrow

Lit cited

Saunders, A. A. 1956. Descriptions of newly-hatched passerine birds. Bird Banding 27:121-128.

Good books

Baby Bird Portraits: Watercolors in the Field Museum

The costs of mobbing

2011-03-19T15:29:00.000-07:00

I went out to investigate a crow mob in the backyard today. It was a very raucous one with about 20 crows, so I was thinking "great-horned owl."

Nope, it was a hawk. I finally caught a glimpse of it when it flew away at my approach (this always happens), and it could have been a small red-tailed or a large Cooper's hawk...or maybe a red-shoulder, or (wishful thinking) a goshawk.

Anyway, I went over to the trees that the crows were in and was surprised to find a dead crow lying on the ground. I poked it with a stick, then touched it and it was flexible and warm with fresh blood on its face. It's eyes (usually the first to decay) looked relatively normal. Conclusion: the hawk killed it! This must have happened as I was just starting into the woods, when a big uproar of cawing erupted and the crows scattered for a minute, but I didn't see anything else fly.

Before this, I had always thought that mobbing in crows was more of a fun thing for them, or at least that they were really in control and safe. Otherwise they wouldn't be doing it. I've even seen the "mobee" attempt an attack on its annoyers, but I still didn't think they were in real danger. This makes me think that mobbing is serious business. Since it carries with it the risk of swift death, yet they still do it, it must be fairly important to them. There probably have been a million papers written on it, but my hunch is that its purpose is to drive potential nest predators (and predators of adults that are on nests) out of the area.

Maybe it was a young bird that got killed. It was regrowing the outermost primary on each wing, so I don't know if that helps age it at all. I'll have to look it up.

Good Books

Mind of the Raven

Notes from a frozen river # 2

2011-01-23T14:17:00.000-08:00

Slushy ice in the still-not-completely-frozen Musconetcong River, this despite single-digit nighttime temperatures. Tonight is supposed to be minus 8! I watched a deer wade across it (apparently comfortable) yesterday.

Fox tracks and pee at a rose-bush that doubles as a scent post.

A mouse highway between two rose-bush clumps.

Barberry berries are still around. Something must eat these because it spreads all over. But they can't be very tasty if they are still around at this date.

A crew-cut of spice bush sprouts, munched down by deer. This (plus all the thorny invasives dominating the shrub layer) is a sure sign of over-abundant deer.

This hermit thrush was hopping around the cliff-side and eating multi-flora rose hips. It was a good bird morning. Also seen: winter wren, yellow-bellied sapsucker, field sparrow, pileated woodpecker, brown creeper.

New threatened bugs in NJ

2011-01-20T06:40:00.000-08:00

A Superb Jewelwing (Calopteryx amata), a damselfly newly added to the NJ Threatened species list (photo by Mike Ostrowski).

Right after I wrote complaining that NJ doesn't pay enough attention to insect conservation I learned that NJ DEP will soon be adding 7 dragonflies to the threatened and endangered species list, and a whole bunch of invertebrates (lots of dragonflies, a butterfly, and a mussel) to the "special concern" list. (Incidentally, six birds will also be added to the list: American kestrel [T], cattle egret [T], horned lark [T], black rail [E], golden-winged warbler [E], and red knot [E].)

There is also a newish guide to the Dragonflies of NJ out by Conserve Wildlife Foundation, and a nice website on the same subject. OK, so we've covered butterflies, dragonflies, and mussels...when are they going to tackle beetles, flies and wasps?

The 7 new T & E dragonflies are:

Banner Clubtail - Gomphus apomyius (T)
Brook Snaketail - Ophiogomphus aspersus (T)
Harpoon Clubtail - Gomphus descriptus (T)
Kennedy’s Emerald - Somatochlora kennedyi (T)
Robust Baskettail - Epitheca spinosa (T)
Superb Jewelwing - Calopteryx amata (T)
Gray Petaltail - Tachopteryx thoreyi (E)

Good Books

In praise of a bug guide

2011-01-19T06:00:00.000-08:00

Red-headed Pine Sawfly larvae (Neodiprion lecontei) devouring a new pitch pine shoot in the NJ Pine Barrens.

Proof that the internet is magic: I submitted this photo to BugGuide.net yesterday morning, and by afternoon I knew that these creatures were the larvae of the Red-Headed Pine Sawfly (Neodiprion lecontei). Sawflies aren't flies at all, but a relative of the bees and wasps.

BugGuide.net also stores and displays the geographic location of each bug species it identifies, making it like a virtual museum collection. That makes it the only source of general NJ insect and spider distribution info that I know of. I know there are butterfly, moth, and dragonfly lists, but does an "Insects of NJ" list even exist? How many species are there? What counties are they found in? It seems to me that NJ DEP and other organizations should be making atlases of all types of organisms...mosses...protists...fungi and lichens... why isn't there an unlimited source of funding for biodiversity conservation?!!??

Notes from a frozen river

2011-01-18T10:10:00.000-08:00

The (partially) frozen Musconetcong, a nationally recognized
"Wild and Scenic River."

There is a whole world going on in an around the icy river these days, completely undeterred by the ice and snow. The snow actually helped to reveal creatures that I hadn't been aware of, like the river otter and a cave-dwelling red fox...

Otter scat and tracks along the riverbank.

Otter scat detail: it's filled with fish scales.

The otters' "snow slide."

A tiny cave in a riverside cliff with fox tracks leading into it.

A guy named Steve who was out walking by the river (the first self-described "tracker" I've ever chanced upon in the woods) kindly pointed me to this black duck carcass. I regularly see flocks of 10-15 black ducks on the river (along with dozens of Canada geese and the occasional common merganser), but never their ubiquitous cousin the mallard...

The remains of an American black duck found on iced-over eddy.
Possibly killed by the fox that left prints all around it.

Close up of the iridescent patch on the black duck's wing.

A muskrat swimming comfortably in the icy waters.

Notable Hermits: Estwick Evans

2011-01-17T04:36:00.000-08:00

“I wished to acquire the simplicity, native feelings, and virtues of savage life; to divest myself of the factitious habits, prejudices and imperfections of civilization; to become a citizen of the world; and to find, amidst the solitude and grandeur of the western wilds, more correct views of human nature and of the true interests of man." – Estwick Evans (1787-1866)

Wow, what a hermit. I found this on Stephen Bales' "nature calling" blog. Stephan (the author of Ghost Birds, about the Ivory Billed Woodpecker) describes him as:

"An attorney who walked, in the dead of an extreme winter, from his home in New Hampshire to Detroit dressed in buffalo skins. He wanted to experience the wilderness first hand"

He wrote a book about his journey with the nice title "Evan's Pedestrious Tour of 4000 miles - 1818."

Finding a warm place to sleep

2011-01-16T14:40:00.000-08:00

The nuthatch hole.

4:22. It seemed a little early for nuthatch bedtime. A full half-hour before sunset, and an hour before real darkness set in. So I decided to sit down on the river ice below the small knothole it had disappeared into and watch. I eyed the hole as steadily as other distractions would allow to see if it was in there for good, or just for a visit.

4:30. A red-bellied woodpecker clucked restlessly from branch to branch, checking out his own potential accommodations...4:40. A muskrat swam by...

4:44. Having almost forgotten about the sleeping nuthatch, I heard a scuffle overhead. Looking up I see two nuthatches tumbling out of the sky toward me, apparently having fallen straight out of the knothole. An interloper! The two fought it out in a squeaking blur of feathers for a few seconds until one (I imagine it to be the original inhabitant) emerged as the victor and returned to the hole. So that's why he went to bed so early. Possession is nine-tenths of tree-cavity law, or at least pretty important. Essentially, this was prime nuthatch real estate.

The nuthatch hole from a distance.

This made me think about all the other birds that sleep in holes, and how finding a good hole with all that competition can't be easy. In fact, it seems like most of the birds in the woods right now are "cavity nesters," which means they also generally sleep in knotholes, woodpecker holes, hollowed out branch stubs, nooks, birdhouses or whatever enclosed space is available. The titmouse, chickadee, nuthatch, bluebird, brown creeper, Carolina wren, 6 woodpeckers, and a screech owl: that's a lot of competition!

A titmouse finds shelter in a hollow silver maple branch (not a recent photo).

I would bet that for all of these species, finding a hole at night in winter is a primary concern, almost as big as finding food. Especially when it is 5 degrees and windy out. This is supported by the fact that a good hole seems to be worth fighting for. Remember the nuthatches? And last month the Cape May Bird Observatory posted an account (click and scroll down) of a sapsucker that wouldn't let a poor brown creeper sleep in the same tree nook with him! You would think that it would only make it warmer. (Bluebirds are known to sleep 10 to a box in winter for this very reason.) Maybe the sapsucker just didn't trust that strange-looking, pointy-beaked creeper - a case of speciesism. Or maybe you need just need to be previously acquainted! In the case of the nuthatches, maybe the interloper wasn't a sibling or close relative, but was from another tribe.

Or maybe there just wasn't enough room.

fine print: flying squirrel tracks

2011-01-12T12:24:00.000-08:00

Two fresh sets of flying squirrel tracks in this morning's snow. They must have glided down from my roof because they start out of nowhere. I've seen them do this same maneuver before: glide from the roof down to the bottom of the oak, scurry up to the upper branches of the oak, and then glide far out over the garden. Surprisingly quick, too.

"I take pleasure in noting the minute things about me...One seldom takes a walk without encountering some of this fine print on nature's page." - John Burroughs

Snowbirds and snow angels

2011-01-10T18:40:00.000-08:00

No bird loves snow like a junco. That is a scientific fact.

Their other common name - a more fitting one than "junk-o," my sister thinks - is the snowbird...or even better, the slate-colored snowbird.

A snow angel made by a snowbird.

The trail of the snowbird.

After the recent snow, I was watching them hop through junco-hip-deep snow with joy. They like the patterns that they create in new fallen snow. This much has been proven.

As an added bonus to the satisfying work of snow-angel-making, weed seeds become even more visible on the pristine white snow surface. Henry David Thoreau, in a December 1856 journal entry, called it their "clean white napkin" to eat off of.

"December 1st, 1856 - Slate-colored snowbirds flit before me in the path, feeding on the seeds on the snow, the countless little brown seeds that begin to be scattered over the snow, so much more obvious to bird and beast. A hundred kinds of indigenous grain are harvested now, broadcast upon the surface of the snow. Thus at a critical season these seeds are shaken down on to a clean white napkin, unmixed with dirt and rubbish, and off this the little pensioners pick them. Their clean table is thus spread a few inches or feet above the ground."

A patch of red-top, a warm-season grass, in seed. Note all the junco footprints below.

Proof that this stem had been ridden to the ground: it lined up with one of their wing-print snow angels when I bent it down. Note the seeds.

Further proof of their snow-love can be found in their favorite winter sport: riding grass stems. They hop on a red-top seedhead (pictured above), and riding them to the ground they pick up any fallen seeds off of the "clean table" of the snow. A type of winter fun, no doubt, much like Robert Frost's swinging on birches, but with the added bonus of a meal at the end. Maybe they are not the only bird with a sense of winter joy: a (rare) reader of this journal commented on the same behavior by chickadees.

In the face of all this indisputable proof of a bird that enjoys winter, snow, fun, and (I daresay) beauty...how could we not ask ourselves these questions that Thoreau concludes his journal entry with...

"Will wonder become extinct in me?" he muses. To this he adds (weirdly): "Shall I become insensible as a fungus?" How is he so sure that fungi are insensible?

fine print: virginia creeper sap

2011-01-02T08:12:00.000-08:00

"fine print" is a new recurring feature to quickly post new things I learn while walking around...

"I take pleasure in noting the minute things about me...One seldom takes a walk without encountering some of this fine print on nature's page." - John Burroughs

An obviously-not-recent photo of a Virginia creeper vine (taken in the fall). I found one with sapsucker wells. The sap was sticky and sweet and I saw a nuthatch eating it.

Found a white-breasted nuthatch drinking from some liquid on a vine yesterday. Upon closer inspection it was a sticky sap leaking from a small hole in a 1-inch-diameter Virginia creeper stem. The hole, drilled by a yellow-bellied sapsucker, was one of many all leaking sap. I tasted it, and it was the consistency of syrup and was actually sweet!* Who knew?

*I looked it up and it is also supposedly poisonous! But only a little bit. USDA says it has oxalic acid crystals in it (like skunk cabbage) that should make your mouth burn. I felt no burning.

Notable hermits: Alvah Dunning

2010-12-30T15:29:00.000-08:00

Alvah Dunning (1816-1902) was known as the Hermit Guide of the Adirondacks. "He could lure the timid mink from its hole by imitative chippering."

My criteria for a Nature Hermit is simple: a person who appreciates nature so much that they are compelled to live in it. It doesn't matter if you are solitary or live with a family. Whether you grew up there or came later. Whether you stayed a lifetime or less than a year. If you lived IN nature by choice, because you weren't content only to visit in your free time, then you are a nature hermit.

That said, I read something recently by W.H.H. Murray about guides in the Adirondacks in the 1800's. (It was in an anthology.) The "good" guides, as he described them, seemed to fit my bill:

"Born and bred as many of them were, in this wilderness, skilled in all the lore of woodcraft, handy with the rod, superb at the paddle, modest in demeanor and speech, honest to a proverb, they deserve and receive the admiration of all who make their acquaintance. Bronzed and hardy, fearless of danger, eager to please, uncontaminated with the vicious habits of civilized life, they are not unworthy of the magnificent surroundings amid which they dwell...The wilderness has unfolded to them its mysteries, and made them wise with a wisdom nowhere written in books. This wilderness is their home. Here they were born, here have they lived, and here it is that they expect to die. Their graves will be made under the pines where in childhood they played..."

Another Adirondack guide and his so-called "sport" (what they called the rich city fellows that hired them).

And then there was Alvah Dunning. He was moody and cantankerous, according to the Adirondack Museum's website (a profile worth reading). But he was also (according to a 1921 book by Afred Donaldson) "probably the most wily and resourceful hunter, fisher, and trapper the Adirondacks ever housed. He lived in the woods all of the time, and for the most part alone. The human voice was less familiar to him than the noises of birds and animals, and he often seemed able to understand and speak their language. He could lure the timid mink from its hole by imitative chippering, and trick a frightened deer back to the water's edge by deceptive bleating with his throat and splashing with his hands." (My Italics.)

Now that's a Nature Hermit!!!

I'm not saying he was perfect. He hated wolves and women, and maybe, just maybe, killed the last moose in the Adirondacks. But he also was a nature lover who "knew every tree, every flower, and every forest animal" according to those that knew him, and he disapproved of killing for sport alone. Quote the hermit: "In the old days I could kill a little meat when I needed it, but now they're a-savin' it for the city dudes with velvet suits and pop-guns, that can't hit a deer if they see it, and don't want it if they do hit it." He went to his grave eschewing modern technology, and firmly believing that the Earth was not round!

More Adirondack guides and their "sports".

All photos and info came from Wikipedia and the Adirondack Museum. Here's some newspaper articles written about Alvah, and here's a whole bunch more info on other Adirondack guides in the Adirondacks, where I found this nice picture of a bark hut on Tupper Lake (1899):

A possum wanders by

2010-12-30T14:15:00.000-08:00

Hello, I have a dirty nose.

"There's a weird creature in the field. I think it's a possum."

This was followed by the closest encounter with an opossum I've had in a long while. It was nosing around in the old sunflower field, in between snow patches. Nosing very...very...slowly, as opossums often do. I would think that this slowness alone was a symptom of some kind of possum-ailment had I not seen other, healthy opossums foraging at the same...glacial...pace...previously. Similar to the impossible pace of a sloth. But this individual was also shivering a little at the mouth, and it let me get a little too close without seeming even a little alarmed. I took some nice pictures of it. Then I started to feel guilty. Like I (a warm and well-fed human) was happily snapping pictures of a dying man. I left the possum to live out its last hours in dignity.

The possum in perspective. Why do all my shots have Point Mountain in the background?

Good bye. I left the possum to live out its last hours in peace.

The dandelions of winter

2010-12-27T13:25:00.001-08:00

Why are there dandelions blooming in my yard?!

The temperature has been in the 20's F and below for weeks. I wonder if it is just partially formed flower buds from the fall that have been busted open by extreme cold.

There are two dandelions in this photo.

And now, after last night, these flowers are covered by 5 inches of snow! Pollinated by snow fleas?

A snowy Christmas

2010-12-26T16:54:00.001-08:00

This morning, for the 3rd time in the last couple of weeks, we've been inundated by snow geese! Here they are with Point Mountain (Hunterdon County, NJ) as a nice back-drop.

This is presumably just another visit by a part of the vast Merril Creek Reservoir flock, which I still haven't found time to go see firsthand. Quite a spectacle!

Half an acorn

2010-12-24T06:51:00.001-08:00

I've been finding a lot of half-acorns lately.

This was a rediculously productive year for the red oak tree in my yard. In October, there was a solid carpet of acorns on the ground beneath it, and that was after an entire garbage bag was carted away for other uses (feeding woodrats). The squirrels (and my sheep) have gradually thinned out this acorn layer until there is now mainly just a carpet of acorn shells below.

But there are also chunks of acorn meats. Lots of them. Mostly the lower (pointier) half, with the upper (fatter) part missing, chewed off. Each morning I've been gathering these meats and feeding them to the sheep - about enough to fill my two cupped hands. And by the next morning there is a whole new crop of nut meats for the gathering.

My theory was that the fat end of the acorn (the part that is missing from most of the meats) might be more nutritious. Maybe during super mast years, the squirrels just eat just the good parts and leave the rest. Kind of like the brown bears that eat just the skin of the salmon. But this diagram (below) makes it seem like the fat end isn't so different from the pointy end, and the pointy end even has more goodies, like the root. But you never know. In any case, this phenomenon (if it happens in the woods, too) probably provides a steady source of acorn meats over the winter for other animals during big mast years. Even when the squirrels have hidden them all last fall.

The gleaners 2: clouds of snow (geese)

2010-12-23T05:06:00.000-08:00

First it was black. Now it is white.

A few weeks ago, blackbirds by the thousands were the story here in the cornfields of Warren County, NJ. Now it is thousands of even prettier birds: snow geese. I am even beginning to see the merits (albeit imperfect and possibly double-edged) of corn, a crop that I previously thought was utterly useless to wildlife beyond deer and turkeys (and cows).

I'm not patient enough to actually count or even reasonably estimate the numbers I saw a few days ago, but it was a lot. My off-the-cuff estimate (though I don't have 'cuffs') is over 10,000...maybe even 20,000 or more! I was working by the river (Musconetcong) on the morning of Dec 20th I watched flock after flock after flock pass over headed northeast (upstream), flying in low, loose, honking, barking V's for over 15 minutes. If you're into math, maybe a flock of 100 flew over every 5 seconds (conservatively) steadily for at least 15 minutes, followed by a few straggler flocks. That comes out to at least 18,000!!! That has to be a measurable percentage (i.e., at least 0.1%?) of total world snow geese numbers. Pretty neat to think about.

The day before one unit of this super flock (a flock of V's) landed in the cornfield just a few hundred yards from the house. Feasting on corn. Imitating snow. Honking. Lift-off resulted in an apocalyptic roar, and a steady stream of barkers and honkers swirling low over our house, deciding where to go next and who to follow.

This is actually a well-known flock that I was just lucky enough to host for a few days. It is most famously for icing over Merril Creek reservoir nightly with white feathered bodies, the vast clouds arriving there at dusk, and departing each morning on a daily quest for waste grain.

Ah, waste grain. It doesn't sound very significant, but living here has made me realize that the innocent little unharvested kernels are actually a global ecological force. It helps to sustains these artificially-vast hordes of snow geese (a species whose population is dramatically on the increase), which are denuding fragile alpine vegetation in the arctic and fragile salt marshes along the coast. It sustains artificially-vast flocks of brown-headed cowbirds, each one a little flying "percentage point" of nest success for North American warblers, thrushes, vireos, tanagers, grassland sparrows, and on and on. (Bird feeders are also culpable in this phenomenon, but I wont be such a grinch.) And those factors don't even consider the corn-fertilizer-induced Gulf of Mexico dead zone, which is so large and so dead that it must affect some bird species (if that's all you care about)!

Anyway, my bittersweet relationship with corn continues. Time for a corn muffin.

Cannibal mice

2010-12-13T14:25:00.001-08:00

White-footed mice are cute, it's true. But don't let it fool you. They are known egg thieves, they dine on helpless baby birds, and when it comes down to it, they don't hesitate to eat their own kind.

We live in the country where the mice move in when the weather gets colder. They leave poop on the counter, make nests in our towels, and hide birdseed in our shoes. They are good climbers on wood or stone, but (we've learned) not on metal or plastic. Whenever we would forget and leave the washing machine lid open, there would invariably be a mouse in there the next day. We let them out by setting a broom down in as a ladder. Once we left it open for a week and caught two mice. Only one survived.

Confirming that rodents (and most herbivores) will generally eat meat if given the chance, the survivor lived out the week thanks to the flesh and blood of his cell-mate. I prefer to think that they sat huddled in there together until the weaker of the two peacefully expired, and that there was no foul play.

A few weeks later, a plastic garbage can left too close to a counter top caught three mice. Again, cannibalism. The mouse flesh of two sustained a lone survivor, at least until the last carcass was picked clean. I'm guessing the last died from lack of water, as it didn't look emaciated.

Not a pretty site, but interesting (at least I thought so)! We have since excluded the mice from our house using plastic spray foam. They are cute, but they can live somewhere else.

Behold this compost!

2010-12-04T16:21:00.000-08:00

Behold it well.

That's what Walt Whitman said, and I know where he was coming from. For the past two years, I've been the steward of roughly 5000 worm souls living peacefully together in a standard-size rubbermaid storage bin in my house. The amazing part is that they transform about a gallon of food scraps into pure, rich, wonderful dirt in only about 3 weeks. And they do it without any unpleasant smell at all! (We even had it in our kitchen for a while.) In fact, it is actually pleasant. If you put your nose right up to it, you are rewarded with the nice fresh aroma of rich soil.

We collect our food scraps in a gallon-sized bowl: egg shells, coffee grinds, banana peels, carrot tops, and the like. At the end of the week I take the bowl, which is usually full, and bring it down to feed the worms. I dig a trench in the dirt, dump it in, and cover it up. I rotate the spot each week: one week I dig in the left side of the worm bin, then the middle, then the right side. By the time I get back to the left again (3 weeks later) everything is just about gone, replaced by clean dirt. "What chemistry!" as Whitman said.

There are some tricks to good worm husbandry, of course. If you get the wormery too wet, things get bad. A little bit too much, and the worms climb up the sides. Way too much and everything dies, rots, and gets smelly. Leaving the cover off helps let water evaporate, and the light scares most of the worms down below. It also scares away other (harmless) creatures such as mites that can reach insane population densities (though I haven't had that "problem" for a while).

I only add water when it looks really dry - about 2 cups every couple of months. The decomposing vegetable juices keep it nice and moist on their own. If you see lots of worms crawling up the sides, lots of mites, or any water dripping out the bottom, you know you are adding too much water. Add some newspaper shreds to the mix to dry it out. Newspaper is good to add periodically anyway as it is a carbon source. If you drink a lot of coffee, grounds work well for this, too.

The finished product, after it is screened with 1/8 inch wire mesh and frozen for a week (to kill worm eggs), makes a fine and nourishing potting soil, straight up or mixed.

From "Leaves of Grass":

O how can it be that the ground does not sicken?
How can you be alive, you growths of spring?
How can you furnish health, you blood of herbs, roots, orchards, grain?
Are they not continually putting distemper’d corpses within you?
Is not every continent work’d over and over with sour dead?

Where have you disposed of their carcasses?
Those drunkards and gluttons of so many generations;
Where have you drawn off all the foul liquid and meat?
I do not see any of it upon you to-day—or perhaps I am deceiv’d;
I will run a furrow with my plough—I will press my spade through the sod, and turn it up underneath;
I am sure I shall expose some of the foul meat.

Behold this compost! behold it well!
Perhaps every mite has once form’d part of a sick person—Yet behold!
The grass of spring covers the prairies,
The bean bursts noislessly through the mould in the garden,
The delicate spear of the onion pierces upward,
The apple-buds cluster together on the apple-branches,
The resurrection of the wheat appears with pale visage out of its graves,
The tinge awakes over the willow-tree and the mulberry-tree,
The he-birds carol mornings and evenings, while the she-birds sit on their nests,
The young of poultry break through the hatch’d eggs,
The new-born of animals appear—the calf is dropt from the cow, the colt from the mare,
Out of its little hill faithfully rise the potato’s dark green leaves,
Out of its hill rises the yellow maize-stalk—the lilacs bloom in the door-yards;
The summer growth is innocent and disdainful above all those strata of sour dead.

What chemistry!
That the winds are really not infectious,
That this is no cheat, this transparent green-wash of the sea, which is so amorous after me,
That it is safe to allow it to lick my naked body all over with its tongues,
That it will not endanger me with the fevers that have deposited themselves in it,
That all is clean forever and forever.
That the cool drink from the well tastes so good,
That blackberries are so flavorous and juicy,
That the fruits of the apple-orchard, and of the orange-orchard—that melons, grapes, peaches, plums, will none of them poison me,
That when I recline on the grass I do not catch any disease,
Though probably every spear of grass rises out of what was once a catching disease.

Now I am terrified at the Earth! it is that calm and patient,
It grows such sweet things out of such corruptions,
It turns harmless and stainless on its axis, with such endless successions of diseas’d corpses,
It distils such exquisite winds out of such infused fetor,
It renews with such unwitting looks, its prodigal, annual, sumptuous crops,
It gives such divine materials to men, and accepts such leavings from them at last.

Why did the bear climb the tree?

2010-11-29T12:33:00.000-08:00

Bear claw marks up a tulip tree. The other side of the tree had identical marks.

I took a walk down by the Musconetcong River yesterday (near Point Mountain). Two tall trees on a bluff over the river had bear claw marks all the way up the trunk. On both trees - a tulip poplar and a black walnut - there were two lines of claw marks, one on each side of the trunk. They were both about 15-20 inches in diameter. As I gazed up at the marks, which went up as high as I could see, I thought: why did it bother going all the way up there? I suppose bears may eat black walnuts, since I've seen their poop full of crushed hickory nuts (see previous post). But the tracks were recent, and walnuts have already fallen off. And tulip tree seeds have almost no meat on them. We were way off trail, so maybe a hunter or a gunshot scared it up there - gun season just started recently. Or maybe it just wanted to have a look around.

Close up of the claw marks on the tulip tree.

Point Mountain, Hunterdon County, NJ.

Bear poop

2010-11-26T19:34:00.000-08:00

There is something exhilarating about finding fresh bear poop. Or fresh tracks, for that matter. Last December in Stokes State Forest (northern NJ) I came across this pile, composed entirely of crushed up hickory nuts.

If you have ever tried to crack a hickory nut with your teeth, it's not easy! It looks like s/he chewed them up as we would a handful of pumpkin seeds. Here are some bear molars (from Washington State) to give you a visual on that:

Bears aren't "supposed" to be out in December, but this one was. So was another one that left tracks in the new fallen snow the next day (below). Maybe they were up because of the hickory nuts (it was a good year for them). Or maybe s/he was hungry and deranged. Gulp.

Notable hermits: Hanshan

2010-11-20T14:44:00.000-08:00

The first in an occasional series highlighting notable nature hermits...

From Wikipedia: "Hanshan is said to have lived in a cave named 'Hanyan' (寒岩, Cold Cliff), a day's travel from the founding home of the Tiantai Buddhist sect, Guoqing Temple; itself located within the Taishan Mountain range on China's southeast coast."

Cold mountain. Hanshan's cave is in the lower right.

Hanshan lived in the 9th century (the 800's) and wandered around on Cold Mountain appreciating nature and writing poems about it. He had two friends (Fenggan and Shide, also poets) who lived in the temple, a day's walk away. The beat poet Gary Snyder was a fan and translator of Hanshan's poems.

Here is his Poem # 126:

The layered bloom of hills and streams

Kingfisher shades beneath rose-colored clouds

mountain mists soak my cotton bandanna,

dew penetrates my palm-bark coat.

On my feet are traveling shoes,

my hand holds an old vine staff.

Again I gaze beyond the dusty world-

what more could I want in that land of dreams?

He wrote about 600 poems up on Cold Mountain. His cave looked like this:

The view from the inside of Hanshan's cave.

Here is poem # 26:

Since I came to Cold Mountain

how many thousand years have passed?

Accepting my fate I fled to the woods,

to dwell and gaze in freedom.

No one visits the cliffs

forever hidden by clouds.

Soft grass serves as a mattress,

my quilt is the dark blue sky.

A boulder makes a fine pillow;

Heaven and Earth can crumble and change.

They grow up fast

2010-11-11T14:04:00.001-08:00

Once upon a time, I was an Acadian flycatcher nest-finder.

A few nests (out of around 150) were really low and easy to photograph. These were fun to follow, and made you realize how amazingly fast birds grow up: from egg to fully feathered fledgling in about 14 days. (This is actually nothing compared with grasshopper sparrows and their grass-dwelling ilk, which fledge in only 8-9 days!)

Here is one Acadian flycatcher nest I documented (almost) daily...

Day 0 - Hatch day. Tiny, fuzzy, and blind.

Day 0 - Later in the day. Last egg hatched, but looks a little runty.

Day 1 - Skin has gotten a little less orange and more pink. Little Runty's fuzz has dried, but he is still noticeably smaller.

Day 2 - Tiny pin feather pins visible beneath skin on back and head. Little Runty is not looking too good.

Day 3 - Pin feathers have broken the skin. Little Runty looks larger, but is dead or nearing death.

Day 4 - Pin feathers nicely developed. Little Runty seems to have died (he's visible underneath bottom nestling).

Day 5 - Feather plumes beginning to emerge from pin feather sheaths. Little Runty appears to be gone - removed by parents?

Day 6 - Feathers covering up much of the skin between feather tracts.

Day 7 - Looking rather furry. Just a little skin visible.
Day 8 - No skin visible. All feathered, but still a little pin-feathery looking. And more golden colored than gray (due to feather tips).

Day 10 - Fully feathered, gray plumage with cream-colored wing bars. Alert and getting wary of visitors. Only 4 days left until fledging, and 2 days before they can jump ship if disturbed. Sadly these guys were eaten by predators later this day or overnight.

Day 11 - Here is another nest with 3 nestlings, 11 days old. Getting pretty crowded! Only three more days left like this.

I don't have any photos of older nests because they get pretty skittish after 10 days. But here are some of adults to complete the cycle:

The gleaners

2010-11-01T06:11:00.001-07:00

A swarm of thousands of blackbirds take over the sky and woods surrounding a cornfield in Warren County, NJ.

"The Gleaners" (1857) by Jean-François Millet. Peasant women pick up the left-overs of the wheat harvest. Note the flock of black birds in the background.

The combines have finally come through to harvest the cornfields, and now a plague of blackbirds has descended upon us. Thousands of blackbirds! Grackles, red-wings, cowbirds, and starlings.

They blacken the corn stubble with their bodies. They fill up the tree branches. They swarm and stream overhead. The air, fields and woods are a squeaking, creaking, chattering cacophony. It is quite exciting, really.

Why these four different species feel so comfortable associating together is a puzzle to me. On the ground, they form a pretty even mixture, all climbing over one another for kernels without segregation. And in the air, too, they fly up as a single terrifying superorganism when a red-tailed hawk makes a dive, or the neighborhood feral cat gets too close. A pretty effective strategy, I guess. But I wonder what a red-winged blackbird thinks of the grackle he's rubbing wings with. Not to mention the starlings, who aren't even related, and have only known these new world blackbirds for a mere fraction of a millennium.

Cowbirds, grackles, and red-wings jostle for position in the old sunflower field.

The flocks aren't singular, but are more like a huge patchwork multiflock. A thousand birds will be in the cornfield, another thousand in the trees, a few hundred down drinking in the creek, and hundreds more streaming in from parts unknown. Each contributes his own chatter and squeak to keep up the ambient din, the creaking soundscape. The patches are glued together by constant streams of individuals moving between them. These are the birds who have had enough of one activity, and are now inclined to partake in another. (Enough corn, time to bathe.)

Taking in the spectacle as a whole, it isn't too difficult to imagine the passenger pigeon hordes that must have descended on these same fields only a few hundred years ago.

The aftermath.

P.S. my wife just pointed out to me that all (or almost all) of the red-wings and cowbirds are males! Where are all the females?

P.S.S. see related post on snow geese.

Fog

2010-10-27T09:23:00.000-07:00

Steam fog over the Musconetcong River, New Jersey.

Being up at dawn for the last few months, and doing work that requires me to see things (bird surveys), has made me very aware of fog. In fact, I just realized now, after 3 decades, that fog is almost uniquely a creature of the fall.

Why? And why in the morning? And why over water?

For answers, I turned to my favorite source of erudite weather knowledge: USA Today. Actually, it was the first thing that came up in the search engine, but it gave good descriptions of the two main types of fog: steam fog and ground fog.

Steam fog forms over water when the water is warmer than the air (see above). This is the stuff that makes early morning ponds and rivers so picturesque this time of year.

Ground fog is more my nemesis, cloaking vast areas and killing precious visibility. It forms when the ground is colder than the air. It supposedly happens more in the fall because the nights are longer, allowing the ground more time to cool off. This must also be due to the shifting cold and warm fronts of air that happen in fall. (This in turn contributes to the windier weather this time of year...something I've also just noticed). Fog also seems to happen more in certain areas, which must be well known given that there are even highway signs that say "FOG AREA"! Mysteriously, large grasslands seem to be prime fog areas...when there is fog in the forecast, it can be completely clear on the drive to work, but the grassland is engulfed. It is pleasant to breathe in fog, by the way. But hard to see through.

A fog bow, somewhere in south Jersey...

Another great mystery of fog...the "Fog Bow." Just as it sounds, this is a rainbow-shaped thing made entirely out of fog...no colors, just a white tube of cloud. I never would have known, or believed, that they existed until I saw one a few years ago. Also on a big grassland in south Jersey. I googled "fog bow" because that was the only name that I could imagine it having. I was correct, apparently, but I still have no idea (or interest in, really) how it formed. I prefer to leave this mystical fog-beast a mystery.

Why do raptors hate each other?

2010-09-24T07:00:00.000-07:00

Large grasslands are good for raptors, especially in September. At the one I work at in Massachusetts, I've seen merlins, kestrels, peregrines, ospreys, Cooper's, red-shoulders, and red-tails all in a single day. And they all seem to hate each other.

Yesterday I saw a peregrine and a Cooper's hawk terrorizing a pair of harriers, which seemed slow and cumbersome in comparison. And they weren't just chasing, but actually making full-speed, talons-forward attacks. The harriers would roll over, talons up, to defend themselves - a common response of larger birds in response to such pestering. But mostly they just seemed to want to be left alone.

It could be a between-species competition thing...or maybe a small bird, large bird thing. But I don't think so. A few years ago (same site, same time of year), I saw a harrier and a peregrine working together, relentlessly attacking a second, perched peregrine (see photos).

Harrier versus peregrine.

Peregrine versus peregrine.

It could be a between-individual competition thing. I'd say it probably is most of the time. A crowded field of hawks, hungry and cranky from migration.

But, intriguingly, it also could be cannibalism of a sort. A common site around the grasslands is merlins (notoriously cranky, even for raptors) swiftly pursuing kestrels in the same "I-want-to-kill-you" way. I've never seen one caught yet, but if I do I won't be surprised.

Harrier wins.

Mockingbird attitude

2010-09-09T15:17:00.000-07:00

Audubon print showing typical mockingbird attitude.

A few weeks ago, in Massachusetts, I saw a black rat snake crossing the road with a mockingbird swooping down at it over and over and over again. This seemed silly. Why would a big snake be scared off by a little mockingbird?

Well, I suppose it could alert a hawk to it's existence...but never mind that. I happen to know that mockingbirds pose a real threat.

A couple years ago, in the Jersey shore town of Lavalette, I heard the telltale ear-splitting whine of mockingbird babies (a mystery in and of itself) coming from a street-side holly bush. I was parting the foliage and peeking in at the nest when...wham!...the parent swooped down and slammed into my arm so hard that it actually hurt! The bird, which I was sure would not survive such a collision, flew to a nearby perch and kept up his/her complaining "check" notes.

A tropical mockingbird...different species, same attitude.

And this turned out not to be an isolated incident.

This summer, in another Jersey shore town (Bay Head), I was simply walking along the sidewalk - not bothering any nests, mind you - when...whoosh!...a mockingbird came down from the wire and grazed my hair! I imagine that I would have been thumped again if I had dared approach its nest.

What's with the attitude?

New Jersey comments aside, I'm guessing that mockingbirds are just juiced up on an abnormal amount of hormones during the breeding season. I have no proof. But they sing all night long. They even sing in flight, as I also observed this summer. And why else would they be ornery enough to perform full-force body-slams into creatures hundreds of times larger than themselves?

Chickadees and cherries

2010-09-01T15:33:00.000-07:00

Wild black cherry trees are in full fruit these days, and the birds are all over them. I found a good one a few days ago in Lanoka Harbor, NJ. Good in this case = low to the ground, and absolutely loaded with ripe fruit. The "low to the ground" part facilitated nice views of the birds perusing the fruit clusters, and the "loaded" part made the birds crazed enough with food lust that they paid little attention to me. Orioles, titmice, and house finches all picked at the cherries, and a gnatcatcher hopped about, maybe in search of cherry-eating insects. A juvenile chipping sparrow, a female cardinal, and a few robins also made appearances.

But the star of the show (both in numbers and in style) was a flock of about 10 carolina chickadees. Their strange eating style was as follows: pick off a cherry, grasp it between the toes, peck at it for a second, drop it, and move on to the next. I thought maybe they were eating the pit, at first...similar to how sparrows often eat just the seeds of rose hips, spitting out the fruit.

Chickadee, pecking.

But when I downloaded my photos, I found a surprise: a little grub-like creature. My guess is that they were extracting fly larvae, and then spitting out the "useless" fruit and pit which would clog up their guts with empty calories. The amazing thing was how fast they would accomplish this process: pick, peck, drop, repeat.

Chickadee in mid-grub-extraction. Notice the squirt of juice!

As with many great discoveries, I have no proof but a grainy image. It was getting dark, and I didn't have time go cherry-dissecting to find grubs. I did, however, find time to eat a few myself.

Exhibit A. Grainy close-up of a grub-like object in the chickadee's beak.

Wild birdseed

2010-08-19T18:20:00.000-07:00

Deer-tongue grass (Dichanthelium clandestinum).

"Shall I not rejoice also at the abundance of the weeds whose seeds are the granary of the birds?" - H.D. Thoreau

Today I found a flock of 25 bobolinks gorging on seeds in a patch of grass (below). It reminded me that wild seed bonanzas can rival birdfeeders in quality and quantity. The bobolinks, plus about 10 savannah sparrows, were confined to a patch of one particular type of grass, a native species named deer-tongue (Dichanthelium clandestinum). It is recognized by its fat leaves, hairy stem, and seeds hidden within a tube at the top of the plant (hence the "clandestine" species name, I guess). The birds were flying from plant to plant, voraciously picking the seeds out of the tops. It reminded me of another natural spectacle: the multi-species bird parties that occur in a fruiting red mulberry tree in June. Always more satisfying to watch (for me) than a bird feeder for some reason.

Bobolinks at the "feeder."

Later in the day, I came across two more bird parties. One, again, in a patch of deer-tongue, and another in a patch of different native plant: lamb's quarters (Chenopodium album). The lamb's quarter party was less diverse - consisting only of savannah sparrows - but it was just as hopping.

Lamb's quarter (Chenopodium album).

The savannahs were obviously quite happy gorging themselves on the seeds, which are quite a bit smaller than deer-tongue's, and in fact look like tiny black specks.

The small but tasty seeds of lamb's quarters.

They are apparently nutritious...to humans too. Wild food guru Euell Gibbons recommends grinding them into a hearty flour. (As a side note, I happen to know that the leaves are also much relished by real lambs.) Mixed in with the lamb's quarters was another native (though often disparaged) birdseed-bearing plant: ragweed. The birds will have to wait a while for this one, however. Right now it is still in the pollen-spewing (sneeze-inducing) flower stage.

Nighthawks

2010-08-16T18:16:00.001-07:00

I'm in western Massachusetts for the week. Tonight a cloud of 15-20 nighthawks swooped over the urban rush-hour mayhem of Route 33 in Chicopee. There were so many, they looked like swallows at first glance. Migrating already? Or maybe just congregating into post-breeding feeding frenzies.

Nighthawks that nest in the sandy grasslands near Lakehurst, NJ usually finish up by mid-July. For the next few weeks after that, the parents and children spend their mornings flying around he fields in flocks similar to this one, especially on overcast days. So...maybe this is just a nearby roof-top colony (it's an industrial area) in post-breeding flock mode. But, then again, there are many miles of swooping to do between here and South America, and relatively little time to get there (say by mid-October). Best to get an early start.

The dots are nighthawks.

Good Time Park

2010-08-08T07:14:00.000-07:00

Went exploring in the wetlands of Good Time Park yesterday. It is an abandoned horse-racing track from the early 1900's in Goshen, NY. Not sure who owns it now, but it is colored green (like public land) on Google Maps. There is a fence around it, and there are no trails or signs.

A heron was standing in the pond north of the old track. Near him was something I have never seen before. There and in other random spots around the pond, huge fish (~ 2 feet long) were swirling around each other and breaching the surface. I'm guessing they were carp based on the big scales on their backs. They gave the impression of large reptilian pond monsters. The heron was ignoring them, though they were right near its legs.

There were other monstrous creatures in the pond. Huge mussel and snail shells were scattered around the banks. The snail in the picture is ~3 inches tall.

In the swampy center of the "triangle," a deer and her fawn stood in the water eating marsh plants...moose-like. The water was completely covered with duck-weed. Large patches of a leg-lacerating, serrated grass grow here that make travel in shorts and sandals inadvisable (whoops). I later learned that it has the sinister name of "cutgrass." Kingbirds, house wrens, song sparrows, swamp sparrows, starlings, mallards, robins, and cedar waxwings live here.

A tree in the center of the marsh supported a small great blue herons rookery (four nests), apparently done for the season.

Ruby Meadowhawk dragonfly.

Found an old relic of the old horse-racing facilities. I'm guessing this was the box they did the announcing from. It wasn't fast horse racing, but the slow kind called "trotting." (The horse equivalent of speed-walking.) A famous race called the Hambletonian was hosted here in the 1930's.

Monkeyflower (Mimulus sp.).

I (hesitantly) walked right by a very recent-looking hobo shelter built right along the old track. He had some disheveled tarps, a cooler, some blankets, and even a clothes-line. Lots of trash strewn around as usual. I thought I caught a glimpse of legs and sneakers, but I didn't want to look too closely. I wonder where his home range is?

My favorite bird of the day was the humble swamp sparrow. This one had a crossed bill tip.