January 2009 – Page 2 – Seabrooke Leckie

Mummified hornworms

When out walking Raven the other day, I came across some little cocoons on a small sapling. Ordinarily I would probably have missed them, and I’m not sure why it was that the first one caught my eye. But I saw it, and stopped, and took some photos. And then I looked at some of the other branches on the sapling. After a moment or two I spotted another. And then another. I think my finally tally was 13.

Those will be the subject of tomorrow’s post, most likely, but the reason I bring it up is because that instance of being rewarded upon paying slightly closer attention, of discovering this stuff that I had passed by multiple times before and may have again had I not looked a bit closer, prompted me to pause and examine some of the branches I was walking by yesterday when I took Raven out. I didn’t know what I was looking for. Cocoons, maybe, galls, something abnormal or that showed that something had been there.

What I discovered was way cooler than anything I had envisioned finding. I had to post the images to BugGuide.net for a definitive ID. I got as far as thinking it was a caterpillar that had been parasitized, perhaps by a fungus, and the spike was the fungus growing out of it or something.

Turns out it’s the remains of a sphinx moth caterpillar, a young one that hadn’t grown very big yet. Many of them can get quite large, up to a couple inches or more. This was less than one inch long. However, the horn sprouting from its rear end is a characteristic of this group of caterpillars and not a fungal growth at all, an appendage that gives the group their “caterpillar name”, hornworms. But it had lost its head, and the caterpillar itself was long since dead.

The killer? A wasp in the genus Aleiodes, a group that bears the common name “mummy-wasps”. There are about 90 species in this group in North America. These wasps parasitize and eventually (but not right away) kill leaf-eating caterpillars, including many common and “pest” species such as Gypsy Moths, Tent Caterpillars, Fall Webworms, and others. The wasp larva develops inside the caterpillar’s body, eventually killing its host once it’s eaten enough, but it doesn’t consume the skin. Because the caterpillar would likely fall off the branch once it died, the larva actually affixes its host to the branch with a glue-like substance by chewing a hole in the caterpillar’s belly. When it pupates it leaves through a hole in the back of the dead caterpillar’s shell, but the caterpillar itself usually remains identifiable. This is unique among parasitoids, most of which consume the whole body, or the body otherwise becomes shriveled beyond recognition.

BugGuide.net pointed me to an identification guide put out by the US Forest Service on the common eastern Aleiodes species and their mummies. Based on this, I think my caterpillars were Waved Sphinx moths (a species I have actually encountered at my parents’ old place), and the guilty party therefore A. ceratomiae (a species I have not encountered, at least not consciously). This photo from Wikimedia Commons is of an Aleiodes (not A. ceratomiae, but similar) parasitizing a Gypsy Moth caterpillar.

In the case of the caterpillars previous, there was no exit hole. Chances are that the wasp larvae in these caterpillars died before it fully developed. I found two of those. I also found four of these brown empty cases, as in the photo above. Turns out, they’re the same thing, only the wasp larvae made it to maturation. The hole is the exit where the adult wasp left. The horn of the caterpillar at some point fell off during the drying process (as the head had done much earlier on both the above and this), but had been affixed to the right of the hole in this photo. You may note that this one is smooth, but the others are kind of spikey. The person at BugGuide.net who ID’d these wasn’t sure whether that was just the natural mummification process, or if perhaps there was also a fungus involved.

So there you go. You never know what you might find if you peer closely.

I and the Bird #92 – The picnic party

‘Twas the middle of winter deep,
When all sane critters are fast asleep,
This Canuck sent invitations
For a snowy celebration.

“Join me for lunch!” the invite said.
“The drinks are free!” it further read.
And so they came, in ones and twos
– free drinks, of course, they can’t refuse.

First to arrive, from overseas,
A motley crew of Indianese.
Worn out, I think, from their long flight
Their first concern, to grab a bite.

Not far behind, the Long-eared Owl,
Who hates the crowds all cheek-to-jowl.
Arriving early to stand beside
the food display – and then to hide.

Coming from the Salton Sea,
This group arrived reluctantly.
After all, what would you choose –
Southern warmth or winter blues?

Our winter’s not all knocking knees,
Indeed some birds are more than pleased
To venture south to our “warm” clime
Where it’s much easier to dine.

That is unless the winter weather
Isn’t kind to birds afeathered.
Little birds yellow and brown,
Forced to eat upon the ground.

I’m not that cruel with my buffet
I lay it out in wide display.
The barbets ate their fruit with glee;
The toucanet, respectfully.

The mockingbird was less polite,
Demanding food with great delight.
“The suet’s out!” – loudly complained.
“I want more grapes! This party’s lame!”

The Eurasian Jay took all the nuts,
Hid them away and off he struts,
Thinking that he wasn’t seen
– a cocky bird he’s always been.

Mother Scops-owl brought her son
A big mistake – she had no fun.
The boy was such a hungry babe
She spent her time stuffing his gape.

The teenage wattlebirds that came,
Compared to him, were almost tame.
They weren’t as bad as I’d’ve thunk,
Too occupied with getting drunk.

Which wasn’t easy, don’t you know,
With all this ice and frozen snow.
The saucers from which birdies sipped,
Frozen sideways when they tipped.

Although we served some caviar
The Snowy Egret liked fish tartar.
Instead of eating from the table
The little pond edge seemed more stable.

The juncos left the table, too,
Its boring spread just wouldn’t do.
The garden’s snowman was much nicer,
The blossom crown such an enticer.

You might call them omnivores,
But Sandhill Cranes are somewhat more.
They took no interest in the frog legs,
Grain instead was what they all begged.

The fruit I’d put out, though quite thawed,
Offended all the bright macaws.
They glared at me and gave a shrug,
And started eating from the mud!

The herons all were quite aloof,
Turned around, took to the roof.
There they stood all hunched and grumpy,
No doubt ’cause the soup was lumpy.

The Lapland Longspur also chose
To eat alone; That’s how it goes –
You plan a lunch and make the food
And all the guests say, “No thanks, dude.”

The starlings had one thing in mind –
The berries blue, not hard to find:
With them I lined my garden wall,
But not what I had planned at all!

The cardinal drank far too much
Fermented fruit and so as such
Got confused and flew into
My living room; it’s such a zoo!

The drink had also gotten to
The roadrunner who ambled through
My house behind me as I went
To tidy up the cups I lent.

The gulls – all five – sat atop
The TV set and wouldn’t stop
Asking me to try to choose
Which was which and who was who.

At least the Ring-bills stayed outside
Calling out as they soared by.
The cry, of course, was to distract
As they dove and took my snack.

The Gambel’s Quail sat in the pots
On my deck that I had got
To plant some flowers for the spring
But he had plans for other things.

I shooed him out and then I found
Some suspect wood upon the ground.
This woodpecker with red cockades
Was on my house chipping away!

The meadowlark’s bright yellow breast
Stood out against the snow the best.
So I could tell that he was busy
Working the chicks into a tizzy.

And that’s when things got really wild
When in should march some birdy-styled
Football players, baseball guys –
I cut off their drinks when I got wise.

But it was too late, they’d had enough
To start a fight and make a fuss
With the birds from Rio Grande –
The Chachalaca took a stand!

“Out! Out!” I cried, “That’s it! I’m done!”
And tried to shoo them out the front
Without much luck, although I tried;
Just the egret did oblige.

To the rest the words I said
On deaf ears they fell instead.
The owlet just looked at me,
His golden eyes alive with glee.

The football guy picked up a book
I had left out – a risk I took –
On woodpeckers and owls here
– and heaved it at the owlet’s beer.

“He looked at me!” the guy exclaimed.
“He’s lucky that he wasn’t maimed!”
I put my head into my hands
And thought of far and distant lands.

And while I took my mental break
A group of parrots (my mistake –
Parrotlets) – the whole family –
Went and ate my garden seed.

In the kitchen’s parrot group
A Puerto Rican stole my fruit,
A guava – seems appropriate
That he’d take my favourite.

The Echos hung from on the pot rack,
Banging pans until I walked back
And opened up the fridge’s door
So they could go and grab some more.

I gave up and went outside
Hoping for a better vibe.
“No such luck!” the Black Kites cried,
As they circled in the sky.

Sure enough, I looked around,
Red berries flung across the ground:
The turkeys had destroyed my sumacs,
Then ran off, leaving just snow tracks.

I thought sadly of the Murre
Who couldn’t make it (that’s for sure),
Whose calm is surely underrated;
It would have been appreciated.

I looked at all the chaos here,
The messy food and sticky beer,
And thought I’d fly to Tennessee
Where Rusty Blackbirds would calm me.

Or better yet, down to Belize
Where Black-and-Blues do much to please
The weary eyes of the winter-worn
Out on the shaded coffee farms.

It would be nice, but here I stay,
At least for just another day.
The mess to clean, stuff to repair –
And then, I’m sure, I’m headed there.

Up the stairs I head for now,
And into bed, with comfy down
To keep me warm while I await
For all this nonsense to abate.

——————-

I don’t proclaim to be the world’s best poet – but I hope folks enjoyed the party as much as I did planning it! (Cleaning up the mess once everyone’s gone home… now that’s another story.)

The cast, in order of appearance:

Madras Ramblings – Of legs, tails and beaks!
Owl box – First owl of 2009 – LEO!
Two birders to go – I love the smell of Snow Geese in the morning!
A DC Birding Blog – New at the feeders: Pine Siskins!
Behind the Bins – Siskin visit during an Ice Storm
The Hawk Owl’s Nest – Costa Rica Earthquake Impacts
Mary’s View – Northern Mockingbird Connection
Bird Snapping – Eurasian Jay caching acorn
Bird Ecology Study Group – Collared Scops Owl feeding fledgling
Ben Cruachan – A long time coming
Vickie Henderson Art – Funny Pine Siskins
The Birder’s Report – Snowy Egret Fishing the Sacramento Marshes
A Spattering – I built a snow-woman today
Rock Paper Lizard – Cranes eat grains.
TR Ryan** for 10,000 Birds – Licking Clay: the macaws of Tambopata, Peru
Wanderin’ Weeta – Heron Condos
Nature Photograph and Art – Lapland Longspur photo
Huckleberry Days – Kestrels, Starlings and Blueberries
Julie Zickefoose – Cardinal in the House
Wingbeat: The WINGS Birding Blog – The Boidfriend
Migrations – The Problem with Herring Gulls
Coyote Mercury – Watching Ring-billed Gulls in Central Texas
Aimophila Adventures – Suddenly…
Mike at 10,000 Birds – Stalking the Red-cockaded Woodpecker
Birder’s Lounge – Road Trip: Las Vegas, NV
Birdist – Bird-related Sports Uniform Designs: Part 2
Birding in New Jersey – Birding the Lower Rio Grande Valley! Texas Style.
It’s Just Me – Snowy Egret Obsession
A birding blog by Gunnar Engblom – Owl in Peru
Boreal Bird Blog – The Owl and the Woodpecker
Search and Serendipity – 2008: Untold stories
Nick Sly** for 10,000 Birds – Photo Essay – Green-rumped Parrotlets: from egg to adult
Charlie** on 10,000 Birds – The Puerto Rican Parrot
Charlie** on 10,000 Birds – Maruitius’s Echo Parakeet: to the brink and back
James Lidster – lineatus Black Kites from Japan
The Marvelous in Nature – Here and gone again
Great Auk – Or Greatest Auk? – Requiem for a Murre
Birdfreak.com – The Rusty Blackbird Hotspot Blitz
Coffee & Conservation – Know your coffee birds: Black-throated Blue Warbler
**Also check out all the other fabulous posts as part of Parrot Month on 10,000 Birds!

Today at Kingsford – Ruffed Grouse trail

This is a follow-up to my post here, where I mentioned the prints in the snow left by a departing grouse. Yesterday I took Raven for her walk to the same spot where we’d encountered the grouse before. Once again, we accidentally flushed three grouse – in a slightly different spot, but same general area.

What was interesting about this encounter was that the grouse seemed to have been foraging when we disturbed it. There was a trail pushed through the deep snow that lead to where the grouse had flushed up from. And the most interesting part was that there were bits of the trail that were under the surface of the snow. I’m not sure if this is where the grouse had pushed under a fallen log or branch or something, and the branch had supported the snow in that section, or if the grouse had just dug deep enough through the snow to not break the surface. Either way, I thought it was neat.

The grouse’s departure print is on the left. You can get a better look at the full-sized image. The feather prints on this one were nice and clear. The photo’s illuminated by flash, which makes it look like it’s the middle of night, but it was actually about sunset – I just couldn’t hold the camera still enough long enough to get an ambient-light shot under the forest canopy.

In other news, drop by tomorrow for the 92nd edition of I and the Bird! I promise it will be fun…

Tracks left behind

The thing about winter is that, despite the lack of insects and plant foliage, there will never be nothing to look at when you go out for a walk. If nothing else, there’s always animal tracks. Usually squirrels, who frequent feeders but are also often observed bounding about the forest, from one tree to the next. Another species whose tracks are commonly seen are rabbits. Around here, Eastern Cottontails. Strangely enough, I have yet to see one (or its tracks) around our house, and I’ve seen hardly any tracks elsewhere. They’re distinctive with their T shape. The two vertical prints are the forepaws, and the crossbar of the T is the back paws.

If you think of an animal such as a rabbit (although your dog does the same thing), their front paws are the first to hit the ground in a stride. These are usually planted one in front of the other. Then the back legs catch up. They actually overreach the front legs, so that the back paws are planted in front of the front paws (although, by the time the back paws touch the ground the front ones are usually leaving it). The back paws are planted together, side by side, for animals like rabbits that use their back legs for most of their momentum; more power is gained that way than if they were also one in front of the other. So the front paw prints of a rabbit are actually the ones at the back of the tracks.

Deer do the same thing. I found the tracks of two deer along the driveway of the abandoned property down the road, in the clean, fresh snow. They had been meandering along, digging under trees and nibbling at bark when something spooked them. They ran down the driveway about a hundred meters or so before pulling up, I guess deciding that whatever it was (possibly a bird they’d flushed?) wasn’t a threat after all. They were booting it. When animals with longer legs than rabbits run their back legs don’t often line up as nicely, and the faster they run, the more stretched out their tracks become. I’m pretty sure they were running away from me, though – the two tracks closer together, the back feet, are further away from where I’m standing, and the two tracks closer to me are quite spaced out. Deer also bound, usually if they’re less alarmed or are some distance from the threat, and their feet remain closer together in that movement. This is a great series of shots showing the running motion.

Mice and other rodents are bounders. Their back feet land just about right where their front feet were, so you end up with a series of side-by-side dots. In the case of mice, their tail drags along the snow behind them, so you see a line with parallel dots periodically along its length. Often the tracks disappear into (or emerge out of) a hole in the snow, which leads either to a subnivean (below the snow) tunnel network, or to a burrow. This set of tracks was going from a hole in the snow over to the edge of the foundation of the abandoned house.

This has to be one of my favourite tracks. I had the advantage of seeing this track happen, so I knew the animal that made it, but I could probably have guessed anyway. There were no tracks anywhere around it to suggest the animal had traveled along the ground for any distance, which means it was a bird. We can look a bit closer for more detail.

Birds of prey will make isolated tracks such as this when they drop down onto an unsuspecting rodent. Quite often though, you see a tail mark behind the depression. Also, the wing marks are on either side of the depression, not in front of it, as the bird lands on the rodent in the snow with its wings outspread.

These marks actually belong to a Ruffed Grouse. I startled the wits out of the poor thing as I was walking, and got a little too close to where it was snuggled up, all nice and cozy, bundled and insulated in the snow. The bird exploded from where it was roosting, pushing off with its feet as it unfurled its wings to take that first pumping flap. The initial push meant that the first wingbeat hit the snow in front of the depression where the grouse had been holed up. The bird disappeared into some cedars, and although I thought I had seen where he went, I wasn’t able to spot him again for any photos of the bird itself.

Finally, a real puzzler. I only have a hypothesis on this one. We observed this out on the ice of the lake. The tracks were crossing from the park over the wide, open stretch of the centre of the lake. There was just a light dusting of snow on the lake’s surface, which seemed to have accumulated on the tracks as it blew across the smooth expanse. The tracks appeared to belong to a canine, though it would be impossible to say whether it was a domestic dog or one of the coyotes from the park. And it appeared to be dragging something. It looked almost as though it had a very heavy prey item, which it would pick up above the ground for a few steps, and then either have to lower its head and drag it for a short distance, or touch to the ground as it readjusted its grip. It would have been interesting to see, whatever it was.

Edit: A comment by Webborne suggests the tracks may be from a River Otter, and checking it out, it certainly looks to fit. Because the tracks were blown over by snow, it would have been easy for me to misinterpret the pawprints as canine. I know otters to be in the vicinity, though I’ve yet to see one myself. How neat is that, though!

Here and gone again

I’ve been taking Raven out regularly, trying to vary up our destination a bit to keep things interesting. Some days I’ll take her down the road, sometimes to the north, others to the south, to one of the spots I feel comfortable letting her off-leash. Since the lake has been frozen, another option has been trekking up the ice to the north. I’m sure to the south would be fine too, but I feel less confident about the ice in that direction; I’m not sure why, we’ve had sub-freezing temperatures for a good long time now and I suspect the south would be just as frozen solid as the north, but I still avoid it. The same with going straight across; there’s a channel down the centre where the water flows in the old riverbed (going back a hundred years, originally it was a river that ran through a valley here, and when it was dammed it created the lake) that tends to stay open longer than surrounding water, so I’m nervous to venture too far out that way, either.

However, that didn’t stop these intrepid creatures. Normally I don’t see any tracks on the lake when I take Raven out, except perhaps our own from the previous day or two. But the other day I found this set of tracks heading boldly out across the open lake for the park on the far side. I hadn’t seen the animals that made them, and there weren’t any clear footprints in the half-foot deep soft snow, so I couldn’t decide what they may have been. I counted nine separate tracks heading over the otherwise unmarked snow.

Looking back in the other direction, the tracks meandered along the shore a little ways, following the contour of the ridge before popping up onto the land where the topography was gentler. Actually, when I paused to think about it, I couldn’t tell if the animals had been coming from the park or headed for it. The animals seemed to move along together, in a group, as best as I could tell. There weren’t any strong clues to the identity of their makers there, either.

This is the tracks from two of the animals close up. I couldn’t see any evidence of paw prints, cleft hooves or toe tracks, but it did seem like the animals were dragging their feet. They also looked like they had toes that left marks in the snow as they dragged them over the surface. I wondered about the possibility of deer. I’ve often see deer drag their feet, resulting in similar markings from their cleft hooves. Usually, though, you can see the hoofprint in the tracks, and the footprints are more separated. I haven’t ever seen a big group of deer around here, either, only twos or threes together. Muskrats maybe? But I haven’t seen a muskrat in months. So I wasn’t sure.

Further into our walk I came across the same sort of tracks again, only this time up in the forest. They seemed to be wandering around a young sumac patch, and I could see where they had been eating the sumac berries. The footprints were no clearer, but the way the tracks milled about suggested the animals were browsing there for a bit before they moved on. Deer again crossed my mind, but I figured I would be likely to see some nibbling at the soft fuzzy bark of the sumacs’ young trunks, which I didn’t.

But then I spotted this, and my question was answered:

Such a mark could only be left by a bird, as it either arrived or departed into the air. And tracks this size could only be made by one bird: Wild Turkey. It then made sense that there were nine tracks out on the lake – when we had had the birds visiting our feeders before Christmas, there were nine of them then, too.

Here’s another spot where the bird either arrived or departed. Birds, being the only animals that can get airborne, are by extension the only animals that can create dead-end tracks. Except for mice or voles, which can disappear into a tunnel, but then there’s an obvious tunnel entrance at the end (or beginning) of the tracks. These tracks were a bit further on, in shallower snow, and I was able to pick out some turkey prints among the shuffling in spots. Interestingly, nearby there were also clear deer tracks, and a couple spots where the animals had nibbled at the bark of young saplings.

These were left at the side of the road, the day after a snowfall, after the plow came by but before the snow had melted or hardened into ice. I love that you can see the individual segments of each of the toes, you can almost picture their thick, leathery appearance. You can also see the deeper holes at the tips of the toes where the stubby claws dug into the snow.

Tracks in the snow are interesting to contemplate. In the summer you rarely get such a peek into the activities of animals as they go about their daily routine, but in the winter, they leave a record of their wanderings in the snow, and often even suggest what they may have been up to, such as with the sumac berries. Next up are a few more tracks belonging to other critters.