June 2009 – Page 2 – Seabrooke Leckie

Chickadee chicks and moulting mom

We were back to Maplewood Bog today for MAPS visit #3. We’d got 20-25 captures on each of our first two visits, and were expecting something similar today, perhaps a handful more as some young start to fledge and move around. Imagine our surprise, then, when our day-end total finished up at 45 captures, more than double what we’d had the previous visit!

We had a good number of chickadees caught, including part of one family that I’d noted had been foraging in the trees near the net. On my way to check said net, I’d paused to photograph the adult birds and their youngsters in the tree canopy. Not the best angle, looking up at their bellies, but good enough for the blog. I ran off a couple dozen photos and then moved on to the net, where I found a couple of the fledglings waiting for me. They were returned to the site once they were banded, to be reunited with their family.

One of the things that drew my attention to the family group was the constant chirring of the young birds. The fledglings will slightly spread and flutter their wings, and chirr at the parents to encourage them to feed them. The noisiest ones are the ones to get fed first, so natural selection has driven them to become quite noisy. I could hear them from 50 meters/yards away, begging at their parents. Since chickadees aren’t very secretive, as birds go, it didn’t take me long to find them.

I watched for a bit as the parents foraged through the branches, catching food, preparing it for the young (for instance, pulling a caterpillar out of a cocoon, which is what I think the adult was doing here), and then stuffing it in their maw. Unfortunately, I didn’t think to get a photo of either of the youngsters while I was banding them, which is too bad, they’re irresistibly fluffy little birdlets, with thick yellow “lips” at the corners of their beaks (these turn into a bright yellow mouth, when the bird opens its mouth to beg – another evolutionary tactic to stimulate parents to feed them).

It was interesting to discover that our banding captures weren’t heavily biased toward young birds, as is often the case when numbers spike like that. Two-thirds of the birds we caught were adults, and while some were likely breeders that were nesting in the area, probably about half of those were likely either early or failed breeders, birds who’d already raised a brood to completion, or whose nests were predated, or who never managed to attract a mate, that were dispersing from their territories to wander around and forage while they moulted. This was one such chickadee, looking scruffy as can be with half of its feathers regrowing in.

It was a female, which I could tell by parting the feathers on her breast (done with a carefully aimed stream of air that makes the left and right feather tracts separate like the parting of the Red Sea). Females of most songbirds and some other species will lose the feathers on their bellies (either by naturally moulting them, or by plucking them) during the summer breeding season. This exposes a large patch of skin, which then becomes vascularized and cushioned with a thick pad of fluid. They use this to incubate the eggs, as having the eggs up against the skin is much more effective than trying to incubate through feathers. Once the breeding season is done they need to regrow those belly feathers, which is what you can see here.

It’s interesting to note the colours of the feathers. Although a chickadee’s belly is white, when you see it perched on a branch, only the outer half of the feather is actually white. The inner half is dark, and this is actually true of many birds. Darker feathers are structurally more dense because of the pigments contained in the barbs (just like how brunettes usually have thicker hair than blondes), so this offers the bird better insulation close to the body without sacrificing the visible plumage colouration.

This last photo is of the same bird’s leg. You can see she’s now banded – a little circlet of aluminum that sits about her ankle like a bracelet, and slides or turns as she moves her leg. But what I was really taking a photo of was her thigh. She’s dropped all of the feathers from this thigh, exposing the skin. This is really illuminating in terms of seeing how a bird’s leg works. In our own limbs, our muscles run most of the length of our bones. A short piece of tendon joins the muscle to the bone, close to whichever bone is being moved. Your biceps, for instance, runs most of the length of your upper arm, with just short pieces of tendon near your elbow and shoulder.

A bird’s leg is different. The only muscles that are used for controlling the entire leg and all of the toes are contained up near the body, in the thigh. From there, long, narrow tendons run down the entire length of the bird’s leg to connect to the particular joint they need to move. This is how birds can have such tiny, thin legs, which don’t freeze in the winter. Muscles produce a lot of heat, and if you can minimize how much muscle is contained in limbs away from the body, you can minimize your heat loss. Even better, if you can do away with muscle mass away from the body, there’s virtually no heat to be lost. A minimal amount of blood travels to the legs and feet, cooled through countercurrent circulation (arteries are lined up side-by-side with veins, so that blood that’s going down to the foot transfers its heat to the blood that’s coming back up to the body, leaving little heat still in the blood to be lost to the air when it reaches the foot). Muscle is also weighty, and birds are designed to minimize the amount of weight they carry on their body (for instance, having evolved hollow bones), so by reducing the amount of muscle necessary to operate the foot they can reduce their body weight.

Monday Miscellany

I never did get around to posting any photos from our most recent visit to Rock Ridge, with the exception of the unboring beetles. That’s not for lack of any, however. I’ll probably recycle some of last visit’s photos into the post on our next visit (tentatively scheduled for Thursday, weather permitting). However, I’ll also post a couple here. This first one is a posed self-portrait (about the only sort of photo I get of myself, since I’m usually the one holding the camera) looking out over the main lake at Rock Ridge about an hour after sunrise. I’m not aware of a name for the lake, and in fact many of the lakes in the park are nameless, or at least lack any sort of official designation. The same was true of Hemlock Lake over at the first MAPS site (we gave the lake that name). Given that this site is Rock Ridge, perhaps I should start calling it Rock Lake? We’ll have to ponder that on the next visit…

This photo was taken on Big Clear Lake, one of the larger “perimeter lakes” that border the edge of the park. True to its name, the lake is both big and clear. On sunny days it’s easy to see the bottom even ten feet down. The clear waters imply it’s an oligotrophic lake – “oligo” meaning few, and “trophic” referring to the food chain. There’s not a lot of nutrients in this lake, possibly as a result of a granite bottom, and so there isn’t a lot of algae growing in the water column. Lack of algae means lack of plankton, lack of plankton means lack of aquatic insects, and all the way up. That’s not to say that there’s no life in the lake, just that compared to lakes with lots of nutrients this one is relatively depauperate.

I came across this beaver jawbone at the site, nestled in a bed of pine needles. The yellow teeth are characteristic of rodents, and their relative length and the overall size of the bone identifies it as a beaver. Beavers have sharp, strong teeth that grow through their entire lives. They need to be constantly chewing on trees and branches in order to keep them worn down. If they stopped chewing, the teeth would eventually grow into the roof of their mouth and make it impossible for the animal to eat. It’s possible that this bone was the kill of one of the wolf/coyote packs in the park, or it may simply have been a beaver that died of natural causes.

These Olympia Marble caterpillars were found crawling about the tip of a stem of woodland phlox that had gone to seed. The long, thin projection in the foreground, and the one that the little caterpillar is on, are both seed pods. I’m not sure if they were actually eating the seed pods or stem, or if they were there looking for a place to pupate; probably the latter, as the hostplant for the species is given as rockcress, not phlox. I mentioned the adults in another post a few weeks ago, found in similar habitat.

As we were leaving the site we noticed a couple of fish in the short, shallow creek that joins Big Clear Lake with “Rock Lake”. They were close enough, and the water clear enough, to get a passable photo. This one is a Pumpkinseed, identifiable both by the red crescent at the back of the black “ear flap”, and the red and blue striping on the cheek. They look considerably different when out of the water, however, the blue fins don’t really show up and the fish’s body looks green, not brownish red. They’re a common species that I’ve encountered in all of the lakes of the area, or at least those that I’ve looked in.

And a few steps further up the path (okay, so this post ended up being mostly about unposted photos from Rock Ridge), this fishfly flew in front of me and landed on the underside of this branch, where he obligingly stayed put so I could photograph him. I’ve talked about fishflies before, but the ones I’d seen were in the other fishfly genus, Chauliodes. This one is in the genus Nigronia, which have white patches on their wings, and is probably N. serricornis.

We’re starting to pack up the house in preparation for our move, now only a week away. Merlin and Oliver try to help, though I’m not sure they really lend much to the operation. There’s just something about an empty box that a cat can’t resist. We’ll have lots of packing to do, more than the last time we moved – at the time, back in Toronto, half my stuff was already boxed and in storage, which made it a bit quicker. We’re renting a truck and hopefully will be able to do it all in one day, if we’re prepared ahead of time.

And finally, this is a screenshot taken of the front page of the Nature Blog Network toplist. For the first time since I signed up, I’ve made the front page! I’m listed right behind one of my favourite blogs, too. I post this not to gloat, but because I’m proud to see something do so well that I’ve put so much time and effort and devotion into over the last year and a half. Of course, ultimately it’s my readers, all of you folks, that I really have to thank. Without you, I would still just be blogging away to myself. I know that I often fall behind on comments in trying to keep juggling all the balls of my life, but know that I read them all and I really appreciate hearing from everyone! And I do hope to eventually reply to them all (if I get organized, maybe I’ll even start keeping on top of it…).

A sneak peek at the new home

Porch on north side — The north side of the new house - note the screened-in porch!

Back in April I mentioned that our landlord had decided to list his house. We got the news a couple of weeks ago that it had sold, and that as of the end of the month we would be moving out. We investigated a number of places in the area, but for one reason or another, none of them worked out. Coincidentally, it turned out that my sister’s friend owned a house up near Perth that would be vacant beginning this summer and was considering renting it out. We were looking, they were looking, we both knew each other to be good people, it was serendipitous timing and a happy turn of events. We’ll be moving in July 1.

View north from house — Looking north from the house - a mowed trail goes all the way to the back of the 30 acres, through mostly meadows.

This afternoon Dan and I headed up there to see the house again and walk about the property, as well as check out the nearby town of Perth. I had visited the home back in May, but Dan hadn’t yet seen it. Even though I’d been there once already, it was interesting to note how much things had filled out and grown up even in the few weeks since I’d last seen it. There were more birds around, too, many species that hadn’t yet arrived when I’d visited in May. We were pleased to note a few more northern breeders, such as White-throated Sparrow, Nashville Warbler and Black-and-white Warbler. Of course, mid-afternoon wasn’t the most ideal time for birding, so it will be interesting to see what’s present when we’re actually there for the early morning hours.

perth26 — At the back of the property is a dense stand of cedar and tamarack in a wet boggy bit - this is where the White-throated Sparrow was.

Although the new house doesn’t have the wow factor that our current one does, looking out over the lake, it has lots of land to roam with a variety of habitats, and should be every bit as interesting to explore. The house is larger, more room for both ourselves and our pets. And Raven had great fun bounding through the long grass, she rarely has an opportunity to be off-leash here in the forest now that everything’s breeding.

It’s a bit frustrating to find ourselves moving again less than a year from our last move, but we expect that this will be the last move we’ll have to make until we’re ready to buy a home of our own. Once we’re moved in and settled, I’m sure I’ll have lots more photos to share!

Raven waiting in the car — Heading home.

Today at Kingsford – Field Sparrow fledglings

As I was walking back to the banding station after opening my half of the mistnets at our MAPS visit Tuesday morning, I crossed some juniper habitat that we don’t usually pass through during the course of the day. Within moments of stepping onto the granite rise I had two very upset, very vocal Field Sparrows circling around me, moving from ground to tree to shrub. They were giving harsh alarm chips, their mouths full of caterpillars and other bugs. I knew there had to be babies around very close by. I had found a Field Sparrow nest at one of our other sites nestled into the branches of a little juniper shrub, so it was in the shrubs that I started to look first.

It only required lifting a few branches before I spotted the cute little face above staring back at me. The fledgling was out of the nest, certainly, but not long. It showed no fear or attempts to escape; I could probably have reached out and picked it up if I’d chosen to. Fledgling chicks don’t show this flight behaviour until they’ve been out of the nest a couple of days; for the first little while they just sit still and hope you don’t see them. Often, it works. I finished taking a few photos of the above youngster, and then stood up to carry on back to the station. After a few metres I realized I’d left my lens cap on the ground near the chick, and turned around to go back to get it. As I was scanning the ground to see where I’d set it, I spotted a second fledgling that I’d completely missed on my first search. Surprisingly, it was sitting out in the open, beside a fern. It had been so still I hadn’t noticed it. I took a few quick photos of this second chick, collected up my lens cap, and then left so that the distraught parents could return to feeding their babies.

Unboring boring beetles

A few days ago I had a great string of beetle sightings within about 24 hours. It began with the beetle shown above. We had a couple of friends from back in Toronto for a visit, dropping in en route to their cottage north of here. We’d set up some chairs on the deck, a nicer place to sit at this time of year than indoors, and were chatting when Dan noticed a large beetle walking along the deck railing. He pointed it out to me and I hurried to get my camera. It didn’t sit still, but I was still able to run off a few passable shots of it before it paused, spread its elytra, and flew away.

I was quite enamoured with it, as it was the first long-horned beetle I can recall seeing (that’s not to say there weren’t perhaps earlier ones, just that I don’t remember them if there were). These beetles are quite large, by beetle standards. This one was probably over an inch long in body, with the antennae being the same length again, perhaps 2.5″ (5cm) long overall. It was interestingly patterned, patchy black and white. I didn’t get a chance to look it up right away, so I didn’t know its name or any of its ecology.

The following day we were out at Rock Ridge. The morning had been rather slow as far as the birds went, and we were feeling tempted to call it a bust. Nine birds captured in six hours wasn’t much to keep one stimulated, particularly when your alarm had gone off at 3:15 am after just 4.5 hours of sleep. On my penultimate net check, an hour left to go in the morning, I discovered this beetle in one of the nets. Another longhorn! Well, considering that was the only thing I’d pulled out of the net over the past couple of hours I was feeling somewhat buoyed by the discovery. I carefully tucked the beetle into a cloth bag and took it back with me to photograph. I wasn’t sure if this one was the same species as the previous day’s or not – on the one hand, it looked more mottled and brownish than the first, but on the other, some species of insect can be quite variable. Only one way to know – photograph it and look it up.

On the final net round, as I was starting to close up the nets, I discovered this third longhorn hanging from the fine mesh. Was I stoked! This one looked like it was a different species, too, all black with a bold white spot at the base of the elytra and a bold red thorax. Its antenna were markedly longer than the first couple I’d found; in this photo the spread from one tip to the other might be as long as my open palm. It was quickly slipped into another cloth bag and secured to my belt while I finished closing. Interestingly, this one squeaked in protest at its confinement, a noise one doesn’t often associate with beetles.

I took photos of them both and brought them home to compare to the previous day’s beetle and look up an identification. It didn’t take long to find it in my Kaufman Insects: White-spotted Sawyer, Monochamus scutellatus. I was a bit disappointed to learn that they weren’t three species after all but just one. However, the difference in appearance, it turned out, was due to the sex of the beetles. The first two I’d got, with the shorter antennae and mottled patterning, were both females. The shiny black one with the extra long antennae was a male. The white spot referred to in the name is actually present on all of them, but blends in with the other mottling on the females.

The red collar on the male turned out not to be part of his colouration at all, but was in fact a thick band of mites. I only saw one other reference to this online, another photo of a White-spotted Sawyer, its thorax thick with mites, posted to BugGuide.net. No explanation of what the mites were doing was present, and it’s possible that it’s not really known.

The species is a borer of dead and dying conifers. Around here it would primarily target White Pine, though spruce and balsam fir are also favourites where they’re present. At Rock Ridge there is plenty of White Pine, it’s one of the dominant tree species, but around our home there’s virtually none except for a bit on the far side of the lake from us. They spend about ten days to two weeks feeding on the soft new growth of conifer twigs before mating. Then the female beetles will search out some appropriate wood (they’re decent fliers, which explains their presence in the nets) and lay her eggs in the crevices of the bark. When the eggs hatch, the larvae bore through the outer layers of the bark into the softer inner layer, the cambium. There they spend the rest of the summer feeding, then gradually tunnel in to the heartwood to spend the winter. The following spring they return to the surface layers where they finish their growing. In warmer climates the larvae may pupate and emerge as adults that summer. In cooler climates, such as ours, they may require a second winter as a larvae, finally emerging as an adult two years after the egg was laid.

(The squeaking, it turns out, is made by the beetles as they rock their head from side to side, rubbing tiny ridges on the inside surfaces of their thorax. I’m not sure if this is a behaviour evolved for the purpose of startling predators, or if its production when captured is a secondary purpose to the evolutionary reason for the noise.)

It was also on that closing round that I ran into this flashy beetle. Or rather, he ran into me. I had paused to disentangle my shoulder bag so that I could set it along our exit trail and avoid carrying it all the way back to our banding site, and then all the way back out. As I was standing there, something flew into my forehead at high speed and pinged off, falling to the ground at my feet. It was easy to spot, as it practically glowed in the sunlight. As soon as it had hit my head it had folded its feet to its body and played dead. It was sitting on the ground on its back, a compact nugget of bronze. It was a metallic wood-boring beetle, another group of beetles that I knew right away but couldn’t remember having ever seen before.

I took photos of both sides and then left it for a bit as I photographed one of the longhorns. As I was doing so, it came back to life, putting its feet out and taking a few tentative steps. It caught the attention of a couple of ants who came over to check it out (or maybe the beetle was sitting in the middle of their pheromone trail; in any case, it gives the beetle some scale). I had photos that better showed the metallic sheen, but I liked the species interaction in this one. (The ant, incidentally, I believe is a species in the genus Formica, but there are 86 species in this genus in North America, many of which look very similar, so I can’t say much beyond that.)

Upon returning home, I found an approximate match in my Kaufman Insects and followed it up on BugGuide.net. Some poking around on the latter suggested that this might be Dicerca divaricata, a fairly common species in the east that targets the heartwood of dead hardwoods such as maples, oaks, and others. Most records for this species on BugGuide.net are from June. However, there are a number of Dicerca species that all look somewhat similar, and I couldn’t definitively rule out the possibility of another species.