Awakenings

I woke up Sunday morning to see this outside my living room window. HM. Either that was one large raccoon, or I had a bear. I put the leash on Toby and went out to assay the damage.




Stop 1: Where It Got In
I always knew that this fence would never keep out a bear, especially a determined one. Still, I remained hopeful. So much for hope. The bear just pushed the fence down, bending the fencepost by the garage, and walked right over the wire.


Stop 2: The Attractant
This feeder pole and its feeders were only about 50 feet from the entry point. The coiled up snarl is the remains of the peanut feeder, which I had filled last week (and the blue jays let me down here, because they usually empty it in less than a day and it's been sitting there for over a week). The smell of peanuts must've been more than a hungry bear could stand. The blue feeder, while severely cracked and with a twisted hanging wire, was amazingly resilient. The nyjer feeder, full of nyjer seed, was untouched (you can just see the yellow bottom at the bottom of the photo).

Stop 3: The Compost Bin

A quick walk across the yard, past the shed and the veg garden, brought the bear to the compost bin. While as a general rule I don't put meats or dairy in my compost bin, there was stuff here that the bear obviously wanted. Like the jar of furry lard that I lobbed in there this winter. And the paper towels full of doggie barf from Toby's upset stomach last week.

Stop 4: More Birdseed

This pole has seen bear damage twice before - and twice before my dad has gotten it straightened back out for me. Luckily I had taken in the really big hopper feeder - the one that can hold about five pounds of seed.

Stop 5: A Survivor!

This is the weakest of my feeder poles - but notice the distinct crook in its normally straight mien. The feeder you see on the pole was already empty, so the bear left it alone. A second feeder, which normally holds peanuts, had been filled with sunflower seeds a couple days before. It was chewed to bits and lying on the ground (you can see the green top, the green bottom, and the silver wire middle at the bottom of the photo).

Stop 6: Exit, Stage Left

I next walked the fenceline, knowing that the odds of the bear leaving the same way it came in were probably slim. This is why I had Toby on a leash - I didn't want him haring off into the woods after a now-phantom bear. Sure enough, at the back corner the bear found a weak spot where two rolls of fence had been joined together. He just leaned against the wire and pushed. The join separated right behind the green fencepost there - you can't really see it too well.

>sigh<

I really have no one to blame but myself. I knew I was taking a risk by still feeding the birds, but I just didn't get motivated enough to bring in the feeders.

Damage repair commenced. I straightened the fence as best I could, used pliers to repair the join, put a new fencepost in by the garage and rehung the fence, and tried, half-heartedly, to reassemble the compost bin.

Compost bin: post "repairs" -

I think I need to get out some tools and do some more straightening.

And no, I never heard a single noise while all this havoc was being wreaked. For once, I was sleeping soundly. And if Toby heard anything, well, he isn't saying.

And from my dad, this poem:

Bear wakes up,

realizes it is hungry.

Bye, bye Jo's fence and feeders.

All That's Gold

When you see a male goldfinch going through his molt, it is hard to believe that you thought he was such a nice bright yellow two or three months ago.

His emerging lemon yellow suit makes his duller winter duds seem almost colorless by comparison.

Keeping Us In Line

Just so we don't all get cocky, Mother Nature throws us for a loop once in a while. For example, she gave us a good two weeks of what was essentially summer weather. And then, just to make sure we know where we stand, winter returns:



But, the intelligent ones among us knew this was bound to happen - after all, it is still early April. Admittedly, it's only about three-quarters of an inch of snow (so far) - just barely enough to put a layer of slush on the water in the rain barrels and not enough to completely silence the peepers yesterday evening, but I think it was enough to dampen the spirits of the worms that had crawled out of the ground to escape this week's rain.

Close Encounter with a Grouse

I was sitting at my desk putting some finishing touches on an article about fireflies, when I heard a resounding crash from the front of the building. A few seconds later, the front bell dinged, and a couple visitors came it. I figured the crash was them banging around out front. Then a man came in, rather flustered.

"Is there a ranger here?"

"You've got me," I said. "What can I do?"

"There's a bird out here. It hit the building and is injured. Can you come save it?"

We went right out. There, lying among the rocks bordering the hummingbird garden, was a ruffed grouse, and it had expired. The man was greatly saddened. As I lifted the bird, we could see its neck had been broken from its impact with the immoveable wall. A little blood glistened on its beak. I told him we'd put it in the freezer and see if anyone wanted it for a taxidermy specimen.

After they left, I took the bird back outside to get some photographs, for after all, how often does one get to see a ruffed grouse up this close?



The coloration on the neck feathers was stunning. This is where the ruff is located. When in full display, the male erects these feathers, making it look like it has a feathery version of an Elisabethan ruff around its neck. The chicks apparently find this very attractive.

When relaxed, the tail isn't much to brag about...

...but when it's fully displayed, it is a beautiful appendage.

I was surprised at the lack of coloration on the wings, though. When folded against the body, only the uppermost part is visible, and it shares the cryptic coloration of the rest of the body.

The head is topped with a small crest. Like many birds with similar decorations, these feathers are raised when the bird is excited.

I've mentioned in the past how grouse grow special scales on the sides of their toes that enable them to navigate a little better in deep snow.

Here's a close-up of the toes and those wonderful scales:

How beautiful is this? The colors are so perfectly suited for its environment, that when I went out to retrieve it, it took a few moments for me to actually see the bird, even though I was looking right at it.

Obviously, this was a tragedy for this bird, but at least it gave us an opportunity to see a grouse up close and admire it's beauty and adaptations.

More Insects of Early Spring

After spending a couple hours weeding four more beds of the veg garden on Sunday, I grabbed the camera and headed for the willow shrub, which was just swirling with insects. By now, thanks to three days of temps in the 80s, most of the catkins were "open" and the insects were in buggy heaven.

This little yellow dude was one of the first to catch my eye. I think it is a fly of some sort, but again, I have an ID request in at BugGuide. Will keep you posted. Update: Ken Wolgemuth at BugGuide suggested Scathophaga sp., so I looked it up in Kaufman's and found Scathophaga stercoraria, which seems like a pretty good match. This is a dung fly, which prompts the question "so why is it on the willow?". Well, it turns out that as adults, dung flies are predators; it's the larvae that feed on animal droppings. So, this adult was probably scoping out the scene for tasty morsels that were so focused on finding their own food that they weren't watching for predators. Still, it certainly looks like this one is snacking on the catkin. According to Stephen Marshall's Insects, this is also called the Pilose Yellow Dung Fly, and it usually breeds in fresh ungulate (eg: cattle) dung, where the male is known to guard the female while she lays her eggs.

I was watching the larger of this pair, contemplating whether to take a photo of it or not, when the smaller one flew it and latched on. Turns out, the big one is female and the male decided it was his job to sire her offspring. His front legs were scrabbling the entire time, while his abdomen pumped away. I took some video footage of it, but I'm having a difficult time trying to load videos on this post. It's probably just as well, because between the wind blowing the branches and my legs shaking (I was kneeling upright - not a stable position), the video needs to warn viewers to take dramamine before watching.

This enormous, and rather fierce-looking, fly came in and dominated the scene a bit. Isn't it the most bristley thing you've seen?

Here it is again, this time as seen from behind. I figure that white butt has got to be diagnostic. We'll see what BugGuide has to say. Update: Andy Calderwood over at BugGuide says it is a Tachinid fly of the genus Epalpus - the white patch diagnostic, as I suspected. Looking up Epalpus in my Kaufman's field guide, I see E. signifer as the illustrated specimen. This fly has a whitish face and thorax, which you can sort of make out in the first photo. According to the field guide, there are three species of Epalpus found in North America (the other two species are not found in the East). It's a parasitoid, laying its eggs on the caterpillars of a species of owlet moth. Reading up on this fly in my new weighty tome Insects, Their Natural History and Diversity, the very first sentence reads "We are surrounded by killer flies." The family Tachinidae is made up almost entirely of parasitoids. AND, just in case you are wondering, a parasitoid kills its host, where as a parasite does not. Anyway, the whole page about Tachinids is fascinating and gruesome. I won't violate copyrights by typing it up here, but if you really want to know some of the reproductive strategies of these flies, you'll want to find a copy of this book and turn to page 408. I don't recommend it as late night reading.

I checked out the black pussy willow, too, to see if anyone besides the flies were visiting. This small wasp was having a busy time getting a meal.

The daphne are all is full bloom. Amazingly, it is only this year that I've noticed how cloyingly sweet their scent is. It's got a kind of soapy quality about it. Ick. Still, up close the flowers are rather attractive.

Zipping about the stem of the daphne was this sweet little jumping spider. It was so fast that every time it jumped, it reminded me of Jeannie in "I Dream of Jeannie" - a blink of the eyes and she vanished from here and reappeared there. Update: this is probably the zebra jumping spider (Salticus scenicus). Jumping spiders are delightful creatures. See those big black eyes? They have fantastic vision and will actually look up at you and watch you. The males are noted for their elaborate courtship dances - make the most of that good vision, eh? And when it comes to jumping, well, these guys can out-distance even our best long-jumpers, for they can jump up to 50 times their body length! Let's see, for me that would be something like 275 feet. But they've got rather scrawny legs, so how is that possible? They use a system kind of like hydrolics. Quick contractions of the muscles in the front of the body cause an increase in blood pressure, which in turn makes the legs extend rapidly. Zooooommm! Blink and it is gone!

The place was hopping down at the vernal pool Sunday evening as Toby and I strolled by. Spring peepers and woodfrogs alike were busily singing their hearts out. I tried to get photos, I tried to call in the woodfrogs, but my efforts usually resulted in silence. So we finished our trip to the river and on the way back I gave the pond one more try. This time I just shot some video. Most of the action is behind the grasses (you can see the water roiling a bit), but at the beginning you can just make out a couple frogs as they bob near the surface. The high-pitched peeps are the peepers, and the quacking sounds are the wood frogs.

And here's what all the fuss was about - eggs!

Our final find of the evening was this bizarre-looking thing. It's like someone crossed a caddisfly larva with a pangolin. It was creeping across the road, tucking its little tush underneath as it moved, much like a crayfish does. The head, stretched out here, was moving back and forth, sometimes extended way out, other times pulled back in under its protective armor. I collected it in a vial and brought it to work today, where my boss immediately said "OH! A firefly larva!" Well, who knew!


These guys are out at night hunting for things like snails. Like their parents, the larvae have glow-in-the-dark capabilities, but it was still light enough that this fellow wasn't lit up. You will be happy to know that he's been released back into the woods.

One More Thing

I keep adding more and more things to the previous post (like last night's frog findings), but since folks have started reading it already, I decided I'd better start a new post so they don't miss anything, like these coltsfoot flowers, which just opened today!

First Flowers & Their Friends

Would you believe we hit 80*F yesterday! In the Central Adirondacks! In Early April! Unheard of. Must be a new record.

The plants and insects are enjoying it, though. Mr. Mike reported coltsfoot in bloom at his barn, and he also saw "an orange butterfly with black spots." One of the punctuation butterflies? A Compton's tortoiseshell? I don't know.

Back at my house, though, I discovered the following signs of life:

Daphne, opening in profusion.

The giant pussy willow had three or four catkins "open"

(pollen now available), and they were drawing in the bees.

This was the giant among the hungry feeders. I think it is a type of mining bee, but I'm waiting for confirmation from BugGuide. Update: The experts say this is Adrena frigida, one of the mining bees. There are about 1200 of these solitary bees in North America. They burrow in the soil. I watched a nesting aggregation of these bees last spring, but never got any photos of them. Maybe this year.

This trio were all quite focused on the pollen and ignoring each other

as well as me. Update: the big one in the middle is another species of Adrena, but the Bugnet folks couldn't give me more than that. How different it looks from the fuzzy Adrena in the previous photo. The other two are the same species as the one in the next photo.

Here's one of the trio (and there were a lot of these - probably the dominant bee at this shrub). I think it is a species of sweat bee, but again, I'm waiting to hear from BugGuide. Update: and the experts say this is a male Nomada bella. Nomada are cleptoparasites of digger bees, specifically those in the families Andrenidae and Halictidae. Their larvae, which are laid in the bees' burrows, eat the pollen and nectar that have been put aside for the digger bees' offspring. Sometimes they kill the host larvae, too. As adults, Nomada look a lot like wasps.

The second species of the trio. I have no idea what kind it is...BugGuide is on standby. Update: Adrena sp., as noted two photos up.

Meanwhile, over at the black pussy willow, the only visitors to its catkins were flies. Hm...I wonder what that means?

Idefix was enjoying his time outside.

This is one of the few photographs I've taken of him

where he doesn't look pissed off at the world!

And there, in the "field" (the unmowed portion of my yard),

two crocuses (crocii?) had raised their cheery heads.

And then, to top it all off, last night, as Toby and I were walking the golf course, I heard them: the first frogs. First, it was a lone peeper, who, after two peeps clammed up. But then we came around a bend in the trail and in front of us a pocket wetland was full of woodfrog songs! As we approached, a chorus of coyotes started calling from the woods. Toby, of course, had to respond, which promptly made the woodfrogs close their mouths and submerge.

I perched on a rock and tried "quacking" to entice the frogs back, but after several minutes nothing happened. The rock was becoming uncomfortable, and Toby was eager to move on, so we left the frogs to themselves. Maybe I'll try again tonight.

And then, the cap it all off, we heard the first peents of the woodcocks, followed by their twittering flights.

Note: the spring peepers are about 20 days earlier than usual, and the wood frogs 10-20 days earlier.