Monthly Archives: April 2010

Sunday Snapshot – Spring Peeper

Posted on April 11, 2010 | 1 Comment

Earlier last week, on a warmish night, I stepped outside to check the porch light for moths and bring raven in from her tie-out and nearly stepped on this little guy, who was sitting still as a leaf on the wooden porch decking. I was a little surprised to see him. I keep emphasizing that there is no substantial body of water anywhere near the house (Raven’s drinking bowl doesn’t count) and I’m always surprised to see aquatic or semi-aquatic creatures turn up there. Since the frogs started calling this spring I’ve determined that there’s a vernal forest pool in the neighbour’s forest, almost due west (or at least, at straight right-angles from the house; not sure how west lines up). That’s the closest pool of water with any frog potential, and it’s still probably 90 meters (295 ft) at a minimum, which is a long way for a little frog not much bigger than the last joint of my thumb to hop. Maybe the other frogs were picking on him for the imperfect cross pattern on his back. Or maybe it was a she and she was just feeling overwhelmed by the testosterone and needed to escape for a breather. In any case, it only stuck around long enough for me to take one photo before jumping off the porch and disappearing into the darkness of the garden.

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Posted in amphibians

Tagged Spring Peeper

Promises

Posted on April 9, 2010 | 6 Comments

I suppose it must simply be because of this early spring we’ve experienced this winter, all the snow gone by mid-March, but I seem to be getting ahead of myself this year. I was absolutely convinced that by this time last year the slope leading down to the water at the lake house had been carpeted in wildflowers. That I hadn’t yet seen any wildflowers here I attributed to the fact that we were slightly farther north, didn’t have same sort of nice exposed eastern slope, and – yes, I’ll admit it – I still miss the lake house and have a slightly biased view of it having been a better-quality habitat. Or richer in biodiversity, anyway. I hadn’t seen any evergreen hepatica leaves in our forest here, and so I just figured all those lovely spring wildflowers that I seemed to remember popping up at the cusp of April, the hepaticas and spring beauties and Dutchman’s breeches, must not occur around here.

I’m slowly coming to realize that, as much as I loved that spot, and it did perhaps have a slightly higher number of provincially rare species, much of what was found there I can also find here. I went out into the woods yesterday afternoon to see if there were any signs of spring ephemerals yet. Any at all, and I was fully prepared to not find anything, since, after all, I hadn’t spotted any hepatica and it should be visible as soon as the snow’s melted. I was pleased when I came across a patch of Trout Lily in one of the little patches of trees left in the middle of the first meadow. Just the leaves so far, the flowers will be a while to come yet. But it will still be nice to have that splash of colour on the forest floor.

I wandered through another patch of trees without seeing anything, and then ducked into an area that’s effectively just part of the expansive woods that fill the neighbour’s property, distinct only in that a cedar rail fence runs through it, half a dozen meters from the edge of the trees, defining the boundary between the two properties. I found some more Trout Lily, and then, a short distance away, some frilly leaves that I recognized at once. Dutchman’s Breeches! I looked more carefully, and sure enough there was another patch, and then another. One or two even had flower stems with half-formed flower buds on them, promising of good things to come. Oh, how exciting!

I pushed on, looking more carefully now. Probably they hadn’t been present a week ago when I wandered through, or maybe I just wasn’t looking in the right spots then, but now as I looked I discovered there was quite a bit of the wildflower. In one spot, on a fairly steep east-facing slope, there were even a couple of plants with nearly fully-formed flowers. That’ll teach me to doubt!

I found a few other things while searching the forest floor, too. I turned up two trilliums, this one with a flower bud. I don’t think of trilliums as blooming until two or three weeks after this other stuff, so this individual seems quite early to me. It looks like it will be a white flower – perhaps not a great surprise, as that’s the most common colour in our forests.

In a few spots there were these small, tapered leaves, growing in pairs, scattered in patches. I didn’t know what they were and I walked right by them at first. Then one caught my eye: it had flower buds! Looking more closely, it turned out that these were Spring Beauties, not yet opened. Another I hadn’t expected to see here! Neither the Dutchman’s Breeches nor the Spring Beauties grew in the mixed-wood forest where I grew up, and I’d come to regard them as a Carolinian species. I knew that pseudo-Carolinian habitat extended up from the Kingston area along the Frontenac Arch, where we were at the lake house, but figured we were too far north here for them, especially when there weren’t any hepaticas. I know, I know – I hinged quite a lot on the presence or absence of those hepaticas.

And finally, a flowering grass, which I almost passed by before I realized it was blooming. I’m not sure what species this is; I tried looking it up, but without success. There are just so many species, and searches are complicated by all the cultivated varieties available for gardens. So it will have to remain unidentified.

This afternoon I looked up my wildflower post from last year. Sure that it had been in the first week of April, I was surprised to discover I’d posted it on April 17. The photos used in it were taken on April 14. So we really are right on time this year.

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Posted in flora, flowers

Tagged Dutchman's Breeches, Spring Beauty, trillium, Trout Lily, wildflowers

Turtle time

Posted on April 7, 2010 | 5 Comments

Today’s blog post is courtesy of Dan. He was out this past weekend, taking advantage of the gorgeous weather to do some site scouting and other tasks related to his Frontenac Bird Studies projects. On this particular outing he was down at the now-retired third MAPS station, Hemlock Lake, which was north on the road where we used to live. Upon departing the site he discovered a turtle at the side of the road, and stopped to move it out of harm’s way. Judging from the nicks to its shell, it’s already been a little beat up. I wonder how much is just from scraping against rocks wherever it hibernated.

The bright yellow throat makes the identification easy: it’s a Blanding’s Turtle, Emydoidea blandingii. Although it’s not a rare species here in southern Ontario, it’s certainly uncommon. It’s also classified as Threatened, both provincially and nationally, as its populations are in decline. A large part of this is habitat loss, but also road mortality. Blanding’s Turtles are highly mobile, by turtle standards, with the potential to travel as much as 7 km (4.3 mi) in search of food or a mate. One can imagine that such a journey would take them across many roads.

Compounding the problem is that they don’t reach reproductive age until they’re 14 to 20 years old, or even as old as 25 years, and even once they start laying eggs, the small clutch size of only about 8 eggs, plus predation from raccoons, skunks and others, means only a small number of laid eggs ever make it to hatching (and an even smaller portion of those reach adulthood). In ordinary circumstances, once it’s made it through the perilous first few years, a Blanding’s Turtle may live to reach 80 years old. This should be lots of time for at least one of its babies to reach sexual maturity, thus replacing itself and maintain a stable population. However, early mortality may mean the adults are killed before this can happen.

Last summer, on my way back from running a few errands in town, I found a Blanding’s Turtle crossing our road. Naturally, I didn’t have my camera with me. I picked it up and moved it off the road, toward a wet bit there, and hoped it got where it was going. I was a bit surprised to find it in our area, but only because I tend to think of it as being a more southern species and we’re pushing the edge of the Shield here. Turns out it’s actually found quite a fair way north in the province. The above map is borrowed from the Ontario Herpetofaunal Summary Atlas, on the Ontario Ministry of Natural Resources’ website. Away from the shores of the Great Lakes, there seem to be definite areas of higher density – and the edge of the Shield, that transitional zone between St. Lawrence Lowland forest and Southern Shield which is sometimes labeled “The Land Between”, seems to be one of them. I’m not sure why this should be, but perhaps it relates to the area being rocky enough to be mostly undeveloped for farmland, but still containing many wetlands and water bodies.

Like the terrestrial Box Turtle, the Blanding’s has the ability to close up its shell by way of a hinged portion of its plastron (the belly of the shell), although it doesn’t close as tightly as the Box Turtle can. Wikipedia suggests that the species is fairly timid, but the ones I’ve encountered have all seemed just as bold as the Painted Turtles; I’ve never seen a Blanding’s close its shell right up (but then, my sample size is quite small).

I was a little surprised to hear Dan had encountered one so early; I only saw my first turtle (a Painted) this weekend at my parents’. However, they start emerging in early April and mate from mid-April to early May, so I’ll have to be on the lookout for them.

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Posted in reptiles

Tagged Blanding's Turtle

Tay Meadows Tidbit – Small Milkweed Bug

Posted on April 5, 2010 | 7 Comments

I’ve been virtually offline for the last several days, related to the coincidence of blissfully warm weather and Easter weekend. A good deal of time has been spent outdoors, but working in the garden and walking about with my family. The camera hasn’t seen much activity, ironically, other than to capture all the mothy goodies that have been coming to my lights the last few days. The garden’s now mostly tidied (just need to clean up the mess I made on the lawn by raking all the stuff out, now), and with Easter over I’ll be back to my regular hiking routine, I expect.

These photos are from earlier last week, just as the weather was starting to warm up. Me and my camera went for a walk through the field looking for things to photograph. Not many insects were out and about just yet, but I did find these bugs prowling about in the dead grass. At first I thought they were box elder bugs, even going so far as to label this post as such. Then I looked up my post from a couple years ago about box elder bugs, and realized they weren’t, in fact, the same species. Well. I knew they weren’t the Large Milkweed Bug that’s on the cover of the Kaufman Guide to Insects, and didn’t spot it in the other bugs displayed in the KGI plates.

I ended up finding it on BugGuide. It’s a Small Milkweed Bug, Lygaeus kalmii. It is in fact displayed in the KGI, but they illustrate a western specimen, which have white dots in that big black diamond at their rear, whereas eastern specimens do not. The diagnostic mark for telling them apart from other orange-red and black bugs seems to be this black heart-shaped patch on their shoulders and upper wings. They’re a fairly abundant species and active most of the year, as long as it’s warm enough. Their diet seems to be fairly fluid, with the bugs being scavengers or even predators of other insects in the early spring, then turning to nectar once flowers are available, and finally feasting on milkweed seeds once the pods develop in the fall. The adults overwinter, and are out early, as soon as the weather turns warm enough. They lay their eggs on young milkweed plants shortly after, and the nymphs develop over summer.