May 2009 – Page 4 – Seabrooke Leckie

Flowers of the heart

Columbine are one of my favourite wildflowers. I think it’s their beautiful red colour combined with their interesting shape that really appeals to me. I’m rather partial to red, and it’s not a very common colour among wildflowers. I can think of only a few species from our area that sport striking red blossoms.

I don’t recall columbine being very abundant where I grew up, except for a couple plants in my mom’s garden. My wildflower guide states their preferred habitat to be “Rocky, wooded, or open slopes.” That seems to cover most types of habitat, but the last word, slopes, might be the key. The sloping habitat is reiterated at this site, with the additional description of thin soils over rock. At least on my parents’ property, there weren’t too many of those.

Certainly there’s lots here, however, of all three types. On the slope in front of our house – semi-open, semi-wooded, partially rocky – there seem to be quite a number of plants growing. I’m delighted because, as I said, columbine are one of my favourites. Every time I happen to pass by the patch of rocky slope where they’re growing I pause to admire them.

The wild columbine we have growing here has the common name of Wild Columbine, or sometimes Canadian Columbine, as its scientific name is Aquilegia canadensis. Despite that, it’s actually rather widespread, growing from the east coast as far west as Saskatchewan and Texas. Really, Canadian Columbine is a more appropriate name, as there is more than just one species of wild columbine. There are perhaps 60-70 species in the genus Aquilegia, of which 20 are native to North America. They are found in virtually every corner of the continent, where suitable habitat conditions exist.

They come in many colours, too. Our eastern variety is red, but they are also found in blue, white, pink, yellow or purple. Most, including the wild species, are bi-tone, or two-coloured. The ones we have here are mostly red, but with yellow inside. It’s an interesting pattern of colours. The flower itself is an interesting pattern of structures. There are five long, curving spurs; it’s possible that the group’s Latin name, Aquilegia, comes from the Latin “aquilinum”, meaning “eagle-like”, in reference to their resemblance to eagle talons. These spurs hold the flower’s nectar in their base, and the other possible origin for the genus name might come from the Latin for “water collector” because of this.

Columbine are members of the buttercup family, Ranunculaceae, which are characterized by having five-petaled flowers. The five spurs open up into the yellow mouths, and each tube is formed from a single petal. In between each spur flares out the sepal. In most flowers the sepal is green, but in some it is pigmented in petal-like coloration. Sepals are modified leaves and serve the purpose of protecting the petals while the flower is still closed and growing.

In the centre of the flower cluster the reproductive bits. The stamens, the male parts which bear the pollen, mature before the styles, the female parts which receive the pollen, so that flowers don’t self-fertilize. Instead, they’re pollinated by hummingbirds and bumblebees, and other long-tongued nectar-feeders. The hummers are no surprise, as their long, tubular, red flowers are the sort that tend to be associated with cases of coevolution between plants and hummingbirds. The flowers rely on these species for reproduction; to thwart smaller insects that might steal the nectar without transferring pollen, the spurs are constricted right near the end, and the nectar sits in the little bubble beyond the constriction, which prevents access by small bees.

The plants contain a cardiogenic toxin which, depending on the quantity ingested, can result in either an uncomfortable night of stomach cramps, or a quick trip to the hospital with serious heart problems (unless you’re a moth; there are several species that feed on columbine as a host plant). Native Americans would use infusions from the plants to treat a number of ailments, including, ironically, heart troubles. Flowers were eaten in small quantities as a sweet addition to salads. Apparently, the pulverized seeds, when rubbed on the hands, were also considered a love charm.

Their most common role these days, however, is as a garden plant. A number of species have been cultivated for the garden (the first ones being brought out of the forest in the 1600s), with artificial hybrids producing a variety of eye-catching colour combinations. They readily adapt to most garden conditions, providing they have the right lighting (not too shady, not too sunny), and are hardy plants that easily seed themselves.

Now that I’m back in a setting where I have the opportunity to do a bit of gardening, columbine will be among the first additions. Hopefully I will find it as easy to grow as it’s purported to be!

Today at Kingsford – Ruby-throated Hummingbird

Yesterday morning our first hummingbird of the season showed up in our yard. It was a bit earlier than I was expecting it to be; I wasn’t really thinking of looking for them till next week, and as such the feeders weren’t out yet. In fact, the feeders weren’t even out of storage. As soon as Dan called downstairs that he’d spotted a hummer in the yard, I dug our two feeders out of the cupboards, washed and rinsed them out, and then made up some sugar-water to fill them with. I hung them out, one at each end of the deck, and waited.

It didn’t take long for the little bird to find it. Within half an hour I spotted him coming to the feeder, and he returned at regular intervals throughout the day. Unfortunately, it was somewhat overcast, so the colours in the photos are muted. At one point, Dan saw another male come in, which the first chased away from the feeder, and a bit later I thought I might have heard him displaying somewhere. Seems like they suddenly arrived all in one big push.

Hummingbirds are daytime migrants. A large part of this is because they need to feed as they travel. Hummingbirds are so small and their method of flight so energetically costly they can’t store much fat and still expect to be able to fly efficiently. For most of the migration they build up their energy stores during the morning, and migrate throughout the afternoon, pausing periodically along the way to refuel. The exception to this is the big Gulf of Mexico jump, which is about 20 hours of straight flying without food, and so they lay on as much fat as they can while still being able to fly.

These hummingbirds are probably all migrants, just passing through. Indeed, I don’t think I saw one all afternoon today. Probably the individuals we saw yesterday arrived late Monday, and possibly hung around all day yesterday. They visited the feeders this morning as they fueled up, and then moved on by the afternoon. Alternatively, it may have been two separate individuals, one that arrived Monday and departed yesterday, and another that arrived yesterday and departed this morning.

There is very little information to connect hummingbirds to particular wintering grounds. Ruby-throated Hummingbirds winter from the tip of Florida all the way south to Panama, but it’s not clear whether northern breeders also winter further north (or further south), or if there is no correlation and they just mix it up. Regardless, all of these birds need to move north again in spring. Hummingbirds that winter in southern Mexico or further south are faced with crossing the gaping expanse of the Gulf of Mexico. It takes them 20 hours of non-stop flying to do so, barring inclement weather or strong headwinds, and they reach the far side understandably exhausted. Many may never make it. So why do they do it? Because it’s considerably faster than going overland around the gulf, and the bird that reaches the breeding territories first gets first dibs. If he can secure the best quality territory, he significantly improves his chances of successfully raising young that year.

We may not see our breeders arrive for a little bit yet, but it’s nice to have these charming little sprites coming to our feeders again.

Monday Miscellany

Is it just me, or has the spring, once it finally arrived, really been flying by? Here we are in May already. I think April must have disappeared when I blinked.

A varied assortment of miscellaneous photos this week. We did a bit of hiking about the last few days, which resulted in a number of them. This White-tailed Deer was actually observed as we were returning from one of our several outings. As we were coming down our dirt road, there were a group of five deer standing in the middle of the road. I’m not sure what they were doing – it’s too late in the season for them to be getting road salt, and I don’t think our road gets salted anyway. But there they were, nonetheless, and slow to clear out. Even once they did, they paused at the road edge to watch us drive by. This photo, cropped only slightly for composition, was taken with my wide-angle lens, through the car window.

The stream of returning migrants has started to get heavier. In the last week I’ve had nearly as many new arrivals as I’d had through all of the rest of April. One of the more recent species to show up has been the Rose-breasted Grosbeak. These gorgeous birds have been singing in our woods, and we even had a couple of them visiting our feeders, where they come for the sunflower seed. This particular individual was the first one I saw at the feeder. Naturally, as soon as I grabbed my camera he took off and sat in a nearby tree for a bit where he was a bit farther away. It was a dreary day, with a bit of drizzle, but he really added a splash of colour to the landscape.

While out hiking the last few days, we’ve noticed quite a number of these dark little skippers flouncing around a few feet above the forest floor. They hardly settled at all, barely long enough for a quick look, nevermind a photo. It was just by chance that while walking Raven today I this one skipped across in front of us. Raven sat-stayed (she’s been very good with that lately) while I sloooowly slouched over toward where the butterfly landed. I managed to get a couple of serviceable shots before it took off again. It’s got an interesting pattern, with the centre parts of the wings very dark, such that they look like they’re in shadow. These dark wings help to identify it as a duskywing, and the single small white spot in the centre of the forewing makes it a Juvenal’s Duskywing, a fairly common spring butterfly of oak woods.

Dan and I came across this scene in the park on one of our hikes last week. This Garter Snake was strung over the log, dead but otherwise untouched. The injuries to the snake are all near its head, and the way the head lies over the log while the rest dangles off the side suggests that this was the kill of a hawk. It could have been one of a number of hawk species that live in our area, but the most likely hunter was probably a Red-shouldered Hawk, which are reasonably common in the forests around here. They hunt in the forest, sitting on a branch in a tree to spot their prey, then swooping down from the perch to snatch it. Since the most dangerous part of the snake is its head, the first thing a hawk does is dispatch it quickly by severing its spine. The bird may have been disturbed by something (probably not us, as we didn’t notice any hawks in the area) before it was able to consume its meal.

My second tiger beetle of the spring, a different species than the first one. This one, I believe, is the common Six-spotted Tiger Beetle, Cicindela sexguttata. It’s the only species we have that is entirely bright green, with pale spots on the elytra. The only other species in Ontario that resembles it is Cicindela denikei, which is also all green, but with either no or almost no pale markings. Although my beetle resembled C. denikei more than the traditional C. sexguttata, I know it had to be the latter if for no other reason than location – C. denikei is virtually endemic to northwestern Ontario.

Another recent arrival is this Baltimore Oriole. Although they’ve been back in the area for about a week now, this is the first individual I’ve spotted. It was singing in our front yard, from high up in our mature maple tree. It was foraging among the buds, and pausing periodically to sing in cheerful outbursts of melody. I had the window open, and could hear it from where I sat at my desk, so I grabbed my camera and went out to watch and admire it a while.

I’ve noticed a few dragonflies around just over the last couple of days. Today I had a Green Darner zipping along the road, quickly out of sight before I could do much more than have the ID register in my brain. All of the rest of the dragonflies I’ve seen have belonged to this species. I’m reasonably certain this is an American Emerald, Cordulia shurtleffii. Most emeralds have bright green eyes, but the immature females have brown eyes. The diagnostic characteristic of this species seems to be the pale ring around the base of the abdomen. Although some dragonflies will have green markings, the emeralds are the only group where the green is iridescent. American Emeralds are often found along forest edges around bogs and fens, and sometimes vernal ponds in forest interiors. We actually found these in juniper rock barren clearings, without any water immediately nearby. This one was sitting in a juniper shrub, with its wing caught among the needles, so I was able to easily pick it up for a photograph.

There are some wild Canis sp. in the park, but whether they are Canis latrans, the Coyote, or Canis lupus, the Gray Wolf, seems to be a matter of some debate. Coyotes and wolves can interbreed freely, and both can mate with the domestic dog, Canis lupus familiaris, technically a subspecies of the Gray Wolf (with the point of divergence having taken place some 15,000 years ago), so it’s possible that the wild canids that roam the park are even a cross-breed between any one of these groups. Regardless of their taxonomy (the animals themselves don’t really care, do they?), these packs are the primary predators in the park. Every now and then you’ll see evidence of their activities. Scat is most common, but while out recently, we came across the bleached remains of a deer kill. This is the skull and upper mandible of a White-tailed Deer. You can see the bony knobs behind the eyes which the antlers are affixed to.

And the last photo in this installment is of a cocoon. It just happened to be hanging from a low branch immediately over the path Dan and I were walking along. Curled up and secured with silk, the leaf was also attached to the branch by silken glue to prevent it from falling off in the blustery winter months. I don’t know who the architect is for this home, but they seemed to still be in residence. I briefly considered plucking it from the branch and bringing it home with me to see who emerged, but we still had a few kilometers left to hike, and I didn’t have a safe way to protect it from being jostled or crunched while we made our way back to the car, so I reluctantly left it.

Frontenac snapshots

I’d love a home with a view like this. We had vultures cruising at eye level.

Yesterday afternoon Dan and I went out and hiked some of the park I hadn’t been to before. The landscape was gorgeous, and the colours yesterday seemed especially vibrant. The photographs just don’t do the scenes justice. As I sat on a granite outcrop looking over one of the lakes, I thought what a great spot this would be for a home…

Some boggy areas in one of the lakes. Wish I could get down there to poke around and look for bog specialties. Perhaps with the canoe one day.

We startled a Great Blue Heron off a nest in one of the lakes as we passed by.

Brooding clouds rolling in as we make our way home. This beaver dam was fantastic, a few dozen yards wide.

Porc and pine

So I started out yesterday not with the intention of posting about the new Frontenac Bird Studies MAPS program, but rather to write about this guy, who we startled as we were hiking through the bush. We were far enough off the trails, and the trails are infrequently hiked to begin with, that there’s a good chance that this particular individual almost never saw people, and was probably quite alarmed when we came over the hill. He scurried over to the nearest tree and quickly started hauling himself up the trunk.

It is, of course, a porcupine. More specifically, it’s a North American Porcupine, Erethizon dorsatum. There are 27 species of porcupines, found in both the “old” and “new” worlds. In the Americas, there are 16 species, most of which are found in South America. The only one to occur north of Mexico is this one, which is mainly a northern species. It also happens to be the largest of them all, growing up to 40 lbs (18 kg), an adaptation to the colder climate. Most are smaller, since they live in warmer regions – for example, the prehensile-tailed porcupines of South America are only about a foot long and weigh less than a kilogram (around 2 lbs).

Our “neighbour” at the north of the lake told us to be on the lookout for them, as this is “porcupine weekend”, so I wasn’t entirely surprised to find it. It was, in fact, the second one we’d seen – we’d already startled one shortly after we’d started out from the car. That one disappeared after cresting a hill, and must have either gone into a den or behind some rocks or something. Porcupines spend the winter in dens, often in the ground. They do not hibernate, but do spend a lot of the cold months sleeping. As they start to get more active in the spring, you start to see more evidence of them.

Deer droppings and porcupine poop.

In particular, you’ll likely start noticing piles of their poop on the forest floor. The first time Dan and I found one we had no idea what it was. In the same way that you find little piles of rabbit or deer droppings, these were a pile of pellets, but pale brownish, the colour of sawdust, and shaped like macaroni. The sawdust colour isn’t all that surprising, as that is essentially the bulk of a porcupine’s diet. In the winter they mostly chew on the outer bark layer, denuding the trunks of trees but leaving the tree itself intact. However, they do also eat twigs and buds, particularly in the spring when there is tender new growth.

Those tender buds can get them into trouble. According to Wikipedia (which references a printed book called “The North American Porcupine”), porcupines occasionally fall out of trees in their attempts to get at these delectably tender new buds. This would be dangerous enough for the average animal, but is even more so for the porcs because they may fall on and stab themselves with their own quills. This is common enough, in fact, that porcupines have evolved to have an antibiotic coating on the quills which helps to prevent infection and speed healing.

This is also good news for Fido, should his curiosity get the better of him. The danger for Fido is more in quill tips breaking off under the skin, since these can potentially get infected. Like a fishing hook, the quills have microscopic backwards-pointing barbs that prevent the quill from easily being pulled out. However, if the tip does break off, it should eventually work its way out of the skin on its own, like a splinter might. A single porcupine might sport up to 30,000 quills, ranging in length from half an inch to four inches (1.2 to 10 cm), so it won’t miss a few dozen should it need to shed them in defense.

The quills are really just modified hairs, made of the same materials that form our fingernails. And like our hairs, they are controlled by tiny muscles in the skin attached to connective tissue around their bases. When these muscles are pulled tight, the quills stand on end, just like the hairs on your arm do when you’re cold. Porcupines have more control over these muscles than we do of ours, however.

Contrary to popular myth, porcupines can’t throw their quills, but they do release very easily. When the porcupine is relaxed and the quills flat, there is a fair bit of give in the connective tissue and muscles, but when tightened, the connective tissue tears easily. When a predator (or curious dog) applies pressure to the quill when it is standing upright, it pushes the quill backwards into the skin slightly, just enough to tear the connective tissue, which releases the quill from the skin. Studies have shown that it requires 40% less force to pull a quill out when the muscles are tight than when they are relaxed, a mechanism that helps prevent the porcupine from stabbing itself in climbing accidents.

Porcupines are rodents, and the North American Porcupine is the third largest rodent, behind capybaras and beavers. They have the same big rodent teeth that beavers do, and they put them to good use. Trees are their natural diet, of course, but of human wood products, they are partial to plywood, because of the salts added to it during the curing process. They’ll also target road salt used in the winter, both at the side of the road and where it accumulates on soft parts of vehicles.

And, of course, the answer to the question I know you’ve all been asking – how do porcupines mate? Well, let’s just say there’s not a lot of cuddling going on. The female, when she is receptive to a suitor, will curl her broad tail over her back. The underside is barbless, and if the male porcupine, who stands on his hind legs during the act, touches anything of the female it’s only the underside of her tail. On a related note, baby porcupines do have quills when born, but they’re soft, like your fingernails when you climb out of the shower. Within a few hours they have hardened enough to be effective protection.