January 2011 – Page 2 – Seabrooke Leckie

Rubus galls

I have been seeing these things around our property since moving here. Initially there were just a handful of them, in the Rubus canes along the edge of the woods. I took a photo last winter, the first time I found one. I came home, tried to ID it, couldn’t find anything that quite matched. I found another this fall. Took a photo, came home, tried to ID it, came up blank. A few weeks ago I came across another, same thing. Each time I was sure that I just hadn’t been using the right search term, or looking in the right place, or something like that.

Then earlier this week I found a whole patch of them, in a thicket of canes over at the 100-acre woods. There had to be more than a dozen, clustered into just a few square meters. “Okay,” I told myself, “I really need to get these figured out.” I ran off a bunch more photos then came home, made myself a tea, and forced myself sit down and look till I had an answer. Worse came to worst, I figured, I’d post it to BugGuide and hope Charley Eiseman would help me out on this one, too. ;) But it’s so much more satisfying (and you remember better) if you can identify it yourself.

I think what had been causing me problems is I’d been looking for a photo match. This has always done me fairly well before. Go to Google image search and type in some sort of descriptive term, and in all likelihood someone else has described and ID’d the same thing you have. This didn’t work in this case. It pulled up quite a number of lumpy galls, but none of them looked to be the same as mine. I also tried my favourite recent reference acquisition, Eiseman & Charney’s Tracks & Sign of Insects (go get a copy, if you haven’t already! You’ll thank me!), but none of the photos there looked like my thing, either (though some looked similar). I repeated this process in each ID attempt, and again this week.

It was only on this most recent try that I finally delved into Eiseman & Charney’s text, paying close attention. And it was in there that I think I found my answer. I found three references to galls in brambles (Rubus sp.).

The first stated, “Metallic wood-boring beetles (Buprestidae) include the red-necked cane borer (Agrilus ruficollis), responsible for slight, ridged swellings that are 1 inch (2.5 cm) long in bramble canes”. Which, as cool as it would be for my galls to be wood-boring beetles, didn’t seem to be it. They’re more lumpy and large than slight and ridged, and most are longer than just an inch.

Number two said, “Woody stems and twigs are host to a number of Neolasioptera midges … N. nodulosa [is responsible for] swellings on brambles, sometimes ridged and usually near the tip of the stem.” This seemed a definite possibility. None of them were ridged, but the text only said “sometimes”. Many (though not all) of mine were near the tip. So I Googled it. They definitely do make swellings on bramble canes, but they seem to be much slimmer than what I have. Hm. Back to the book.

The final reference read, “Several species of Diastrophus (Cynipidae) cause pronounced swellings on blackberry stems (as well as roots), up to 6 inches (15.2 cm) long.” I’m not sure which species of Rubus is referred to by “blackberry” (there are at least two that could be called such), but they’re the right plant genus, anyway. And these galls are definitely pronounced, and a couple of them did reach a few inches long. The BugGuide.net page for D. nebulosus looks pretty similar, and the text did suggest that there are several species, which may or may not necessarily all look the same.

So I think these are Diastrophus galls. The insects that made them are wasps. They look less like what we typically think of as wasps, and more like fruit flies – very squat in stature. The lumpiness of the gall is due to the presence of many chambers within. Presumably the adult female lays many eggs into the plant, all clustered together, and they all make their own swelling, which in turns creates one large, lumpy gall. There doesn’t seem to be very much out there on their life history, but from the circumstantial evidence of my observations it would seem they overwinter in their galls and emerge in the spring to mate.

Though the galls on our 30 acres were untouched, more than half of the ones at the 100-acre woods had been investigated by birds. Downy Woodpeckers and chickadees will both drill into galls to extract the grubs overwintering within. They’re most commonly known to do this with goldenrod galls, but obviously these Rubus galls were large enough and promising enough to draw their attention. Where the birds have chipped away the woody cover, you can see the dark holes belonging to each individual chamber. (And it was the discovery of this, more than the abundance of them, that made me really want to get an ID after finding the bramble patch.)

Nest searching

My very first job abroad – the sort that requires you live somewhere other than your own home – was working as a nest-searcher in the Sierra Nevada mountains of the Lake Tahoe Basin in California/Nevada. Aside from a little bit of homesickness, it was an amazing summer. I drove down from Ontario at the end of April, taking the opportunity to do a bit of birding along the way as it was my first cross-country trip on my own. When I got there many of our study sites still had up to a foot of snow in the valleys and north slopes. Even in July, when we went out in the mornings I’d wear my winter jacket, toque and mittens, shedding layers as the sun came up till by the time we went home in early afternoon I’d stripped down to a tank top. I spent three months getting up an hour or more before dawn and trekking about the mountain slopes, hunting for birds’ nests while my partner (we went out in twos) spot-mapped the birds at the site. At the end of the season I led the team in number of nests found, a fact I’m still a little bit proud of, though its useful application is rather limited.

I still do a bit of nest searching in the summer, but nest searching requires time and patience. The most effective technique I found for locating nests is simply sitting in one place for a while and watching the birds come and go. When you notice one carrying nesting material or food, you can (stealthily) follow where it goes. Likewise, you might notice a bird repeatedly leaving a particular shrub or tree branch, which you can then go search. It’s also usually best if you don’t have a wolf-shaped animal cavorting about the area where you plan to sit and watch. So my opportunities for nest-searching are usually limited to my time between net-checks during our MAPS visits.

Nest searching is immensely easier in the winter, at least for those elevated from the ground. For one, you can bring your wolf-shaped animal with you, and no one’s going to care.

For two, after the leaves come down the bulky shapes of nests tucked into the twiggy vegetation are easy to spot, once you’ve got the search image in your mind. Even easier if they’re topped by a contrasting white hat of snow.

In our second field, halfway back on the property, there are several large patches of steeplebush and Rubus brambles (the short, thick stuff in the foreground of the first photo). The Field Sparrows like to nest in these, and I noticed the snow-capped construction of one pair while I was out snowshoeing the other day. Despite the leaves being down, if you’re not actively looking for them, it can be easy to overlook small nests, and I hadn’t paid any attention to the steeplebush patches. Curious, I wondered how many I could find.

The answer was four. It’s interesting that while each nest is very similar to the others, they’re all a little different, too. There’s always the possibility that one might have belonged to another species, but there are few other species that use that habitat, and which would also be likely to place their nest in the steeplebush. So I think these are all Field Sparrows.

Identifying birds’ nests can be a challenge. You think it ought to be easy, because it’s true that different species have different building tendencies for shapes and content, but there’s often a lot of overlap between species of the same taxon, and within a species different individuals may build differently according to what materials they have on hand and where they decided to place the nest. The nests of some birds, like robins (which always line their cups with mud), are easy. Baltimore Oriole nests (which are pendulous pouches of grass suspended from the ends of branches) are easy. Sparrows are tricky, as are warblers.

Most sparrows build cup nests, either on the ground or slightly elevated (none of these were above mid-thigh). They typically have exteriors of coarse grasses (or reeds, where the species lives in wetter areas), with interiors lined with fine grasses, rootlets or animal hair. Chipping Sparrows, for instance, almost invariably line with coarse hair, in my experience. Field Sparrows usually use fine grasses. So sometimes knocking off the snow cap and taking a peek inside can help to clear up an ID.

By the time you reach mid-winter, identification hasn’t been helped by the weathering process. Nests often look like they’ve gone through the washing machine one too many times. Many are misshapen; in others the materials have started to fall apart, or have become stuck together with repeated soaking. American Goldfinches, Yellow Warblers and Willow Flycatchers, which use plant down in the construction of their nests, tend to suffer this latter problem. This nest might have been a poorly-built Field Sparrow nest. Or it might have belonged to something else entirely.

This one had a flattened top, when I knocked away the snow. It puzzled me. Was it simply a nest where the cup part had been compressed under the snow? Perhaps it was a nest that had been started, but never finished? Another possibility that struck me was that it might belong to a species that builds covered nests. If this were in a wetland, I might suspect it to be just such a thing – Common Yellowthroats, for instance, build covered nests elevated in the cattails. But this was in a meadow, in a steeplebush. Besides, when I gently worked it free from the bush it was sitting in, I could see no discernible entrance. Odd that it would appear flattened when the others were all still intact, though.

This last one was slightly away from the others, further up the field, and placed in a hawthorn instead of a steeplebush. It would serve as good protection, I’d think! The construction was similar, though, and I’m pretty sure it’s another Field Sparrow. They’re not too particular about their substrate: hawthorn, spruce, pine, juniper, elm, apple and white cedar are listed as the most common substrate species in the book Breeding Birds of Ontario: Nidiology and Distribution by Peck and James.

If you can find yourself a copy of that book, incidentally, you should snatch it up. It’s out of print, but copies still float around. It’s essentially a summary of the data from the Ontario Nest Records Scheme from the 1960s through 1980s. It’s published in two volumes, Vol 1: Nonpasserines, and Vol 2: Passerines. The intro to #2 states that the book covers 144 species, using data from 67,091 nest records from around the province. They also incorporate external data into their species summaries, which are thorough, and usually list all variations and peculiarities reported. They mention everything from habitat, microhabitat, substrate preference, location within substrate, height, nest measurements, structure composition, egg dates and clutch sizes, to cowbird parasitism rates… and more. Almost 25 years have passed since its publication, but its still entirely applicable. An amazing resource.

It’s funny to think that those nests were there all summer, and all summer I simply walked by them, never knowing. I think this year I’ll need to try checking out the brush patches to see if I can locate any while they’re still active.

Lacy cocoon

I had one of those “Hey! I know that!” moments earlier this week when, hiking through the woods on my snowshoes, I paused to check out a little bagworm case on the trunk of a young Trembling Aspen. It was complete coincidence – it’s not as if I don’t see lots of bagworm cases around, so why I stopped for that one, I don’t know – but in glancing the other way, at the aspen beside it, something else caught my eye. And I recognized it immediately. And was immediately excited for the recognition. (Naturally I didn’t have my camera, the one day in weeks I left it at the house, so I had to mark the tree and come back the next day with my macro lens).

Do you recognize it? I briefly mentioned something like it before here, when I posted my book review of Eiseman & Charney’s excellent work, Tracks & Sign of Insects. It reminded me of one of the photos on the cover of the book, and which I also posted a scan of the relevant page from inside.

cocoon of Wockia asperipunctella — House key for scale.

Turns out it’s not quite the same thing. The one on the cover of the book is the cocoon of a spongillafly, a type of neuropteran (looks like a mini caddisfly) associated with freshwater sponges. But the spongillafly cocoons have a white inner cocoon that, even after they hatch and leave, remains behind. My lacy cocoon had no inner cocoon. Even besides that, the spongillafly outer cocoon is built in nearly hexagonal loops. In the one I found, the loops were more rectangular.

This was a key feature. Reading a bit more of the text, the authors say, “The bumelia webworm moth … spins a delicate, golden cocoon with a very coarse, rectangular mesh … Wockia asperipunctella, only recently discovered in Ontario, makes a similar cocoon on aspen and willow.”

Rectangular mesh – check! Found on aspen – check! Located in Ontario – check! Seems like a pretty good match to me!

camouflaged cocoon of Wockia asperipunctella — See it? Centred, about a third of the way down...

Just to be sure, I posted it to BugGuide.net, and Charley Eiseman, one of the authors of the book who happens to frequently patrol BG generously helping out with IDs, agreed with me that this was the likely builder.

I haven’t ever seen the adult moth of Wockia asperipunctella, but it’s a micro, and unless the micros are particularly flashy or notable for some reason, I haven’t paid much attention to them. I’m still working on solidifying my macro identification. The species will be included in our field guide, though. Here’s one of the plate images we’ll be using. It has no official common name anywhere that I could find, but asperipunctella roughly translates to “shaggy-spotted” (and you can see why – the black spots have raised scales), so that’s what I named it: Shaggy-spotted Wockia. I had to resist really hard calling it a Wookie.

Pre-Easter egg hunt

I love a good scavenger hunt. I love the challenge of hunting for something particular, given some guidelines on where to look, and the delight and satisfaction when the target is found. Which is probably why, every winter, I go out one afternoon to see if I can figure out where the tent caterpillars are going to be this year.

It all started when I found a cluster of white eggs on the shiny dark bark of what I think was a young apple tree, in spring of 2008. It had always seemed to me that the white tents of the tent caterpillars appeared as if by magic in the spring. One month there was nothing, the next month there was this large, fist-sized webbing in the fork of a branch. So when I discovered that the moths lay their eggs on the branches – fairly conspicuously, I might add – and that they spend the winter in this state… well. A challenge, if I ever saw one.

That was 2008. Late in the winter of 08/09, I went out and scoured the branches of appropriate trees, deliberately trying to find the egg masses of the tent caterpillars before they hatched out in the spring and started building their webs, and was pleased to actually find some. I did it again last winter, too, though I only mentioned it in passing in another post.

And here’s this year’s cohort. The top photo is of last year’s eggs (laid 2009, hatched 2010). The second photo is of what will become this year’s caterpillars (laid 2010, will hatch 2011). Between laying and hatching, the eggs are covered by a shiny brown, hard shellac-like cover that helps to protect them from the elements and potential predators. When the caterpillars hatch in the spring, they’ll have to chew their way through this cover to get out. The shellacking falls away after this, leaving white eggs with dark holes in the tops – how you can tell the difference between old and new eggs.

After they hatch, the caterpillars move down the branch (toward the trunk) until they reach the first major fork. There, they set up shop and start building their web. This photo is of a clump of new eggs only a handspan above a major fork. I bet you can guess where the nest is going to be, come May.

Tent caterpillars are no more than an aesthetic nuisance – they very rarely cause any lasting damage to the tree – and so I leave them. Out here in our fields, there’s no one to be bothered by a defoliated tree anyway. Once the caterpillars move on to pupate, in late spring/early summer, the tree will have a chance to regroup and fix itself up again before it has to go dormant for winter.

I talked a bit more about tent caterpillar biology in my original post from 2008 (mostly post-hatching info).

Seabrooke’s Bookshelf – Christmas books

Books have been a Christmas tradition in our family. Both of my parents have been big readers for as long as I can remember. My mom taught all of us kids to read before we even started school so that we could get a head start on diving in to these fabulous worlds ourselves. We “earned” our allowance through reading lists, lists of books that we were to read and report back to Mom on. Surprisingly, we never cheated (or at least I never did) – either we were too honest, or we rarely found it a chore (I can’t remember what my pre-teen self thought of it, but I’m banking on the latter). Books and reading have continued to be a big part of my life, though my favoured genres may shift back and forth from one year to the next. And for at least the last dozen years or so, Christmas has always meant at least a few new books to read, some ones that were asked for, some that the recipient might not yet know.

This year I got three books I asked for, and two that I didn’t but am looking forward to reading. I’ve already finished one book: Prairie Spring by Pete Dunne. I first heard about this series from my literary agent who handled the moth guide; he also represented this book (actually this series; there’ll be one for each season once they’re all out). My curiosity was piqued by his description of the project, but in the intervening time between then and when it was published it slipped my mind. I was reminded of it by a book review over at The Well-read Naturalist, and promptly put it on my wishlist.

The best literary non-fiction, in my mind, maintains a casual and engaging voice, usually employing a good deal of travelogue or personal experience interspersed with the background and supporting information. Some authors are okay at this, but there are some authors who are really good. This is the first book I’ve read of Pete Dunne’s, but he clearly falls into this category. I didn’t find this a dry read at all, as can happen sometimes with non-fiction, and could easily sit down for an hour or two at a time with it.

In this book he and his wife, Linda, load up their RV and trek off to the American prairies for a couple of months to watch winter slowly give way to spring. Their trip, and the book, is roughly defined by four experiences: Sandhill Cranes on the Platte River, Lesser Prairie-Chickens in New Mexico, Bison in South Dakota, and the network of National Grasslands. Around these he talks about the history of the prairies and the unique human culture there. Never having read any of his other works, I can’t say how this one compares, but I certainly enjoyed it and will have to pick up the next installment, Bayshore Summer.

Dunne’s easy writing style and combination of personal narrative and information reminded me of the works of one of my favourite natural history writers, Scott Weidensaul. The first book I got of Weidensaul’s was Living on the Wind (discussing migratory birds), a Christmas gift received perhaps approaching ten years ago, when I was in university. I devoured that book, if I recall, and was delighted when I discovered he had a new one out, The Ghost with Trembling Wings (which talks about birds and extinction). That one was also a Christmas gift. And then a few years later again, I received Return to Wild America, in which he traces the route that Roger Tory Peterson took some decades earlier in the book Wild America, to see how things have changed.

I think this last is perhaps my favourite of the five of his books I own. The book opens in Newfoundland, which was also the starting point of RTP’s trip with his traveling companion and friend James Fisher. He then approximately traces their route around the outer edge of the continent: south to Florida, west across Texas, north up the Pacific coast, ending in Alaska. I haven’t read the original Wild America that this book commemorates, but Weidensaul provides enough information that you don’t need to have in order to appreciate and enjoy what he writes. While the RTP original focuses primarily on the nature, Weidensaul notes the nature but spends more time discussing the conservation of it: the threats that have or are working on eroding what RTP observed, and the efforts and successes that have been undertaken to save it. Unfortunately, there’s more than a book’s worth of such circumstances on our continent today. Weidensaul is able to present it all with a hopeful outlook, though, and the book remains upbeat despite the sometimes depressing stories that come out of revisiting nature sites fifty years later.

Weidensaul’s published on average every three years. His most recent book, Of a Feather, came out in 2007. I haven’t heard of any new books forthcoming, but I hope he’s not done writing.

Edit: I was delighted to receive, this morning, an email from Scott Weidensaul himself assuring me that he was still alive and hard at work on his next project. The book looks at the colonial history of North America through the mid-1700s; a departure from his usual natural history subjects, but promising to be just as interesting! It’s scheduled to be out fall/winter 2011.

And time for one more. Another author whom I’d place in the same category as Pete Dunne and Scott Weidensaul is David Quammen. I was introduced to Quammen’s work back in university as well, when I borrowed my mom’s copy of Song of the Dodo (discussing evolution and extinction as it relates to island biogeography). Although it was many yeas ago now that I read it and I can only remember fragments of the book, it still remains one of my favourite non-fiction works. Some day I must find the time to re-read it…

A couple of Christmases ago I received his book Monster of God, which talks about the so-called man-eating beasts and humanity’s uneasy relationship with them. He travels to visit the home regions of lions, tigers, Carpathian brown bears, and crocodiles, and combines his modern-day observations and experiences with the history of the appreciation and persecution of each group of animals, and the people who have to live with them. It’s a fascinating account and well-written, highlighting some surprising facts about animals that are shrouded in myth.

He followed this up with a biography of Charles Darwin which came out in 2006 but which I haven’t yet read (I find personal biographies less interesting, usually, than natural history biographies). Like with Weidensaul, I haven’t heard anything about forthcoming books, but I hope he’s plans to write more.

Beyond simply highlighting a few Christmas favourites, I didn’t bother going into too much detail with the reviews here because you can get all of that and more from the Amazon pages, if you’re interested:

Prairie Spring – 5 stars
Return to Wild America – 5 stars
Monster of God – 4.5 stars