Back in August, I posted a photo in one of my Monday Miscellanies of an orchid that I’d noticed growing in the shade of the pines along the side of the driveway. The orchid was a Helleborine, Epipactis helleborine, a European species that was introduced to North America in the late 1800s. It was first found in New York in 1879, and over the past 100+ years has efficiently spread throughout a most of the northeast, as well as parts of the west. The Orchid Society of the Royal Botanical Gardens (based in Burlington, Ontario), has a species database of wild orchids of Canada. There, they note the name of this species to be Broad-leaved Helleborine, but since it’s the only member of the genus established over here, often the first part of the name gets dropped.
Yesterday afternoon I took Raven for a walk into our back fields. For a change of pace, I decided to wander through some of the wet cedar groves at the back of the property, now mostly dry with the onset of winter. I’d only been through them once or twice. The last time I explored I found a wild turtlehead hidden in a small glade in the middle. Most of the vegetation has now died back, and the grove was mostly empty. I noted a few bones, perhaps left by a coyote who had retreated here to enjoy his lunch, a number of rotting mushrooms now so past their best that they would be difficult to identify, and a patch of dead helleborine.
I had walked a few metres beyond the helleborine before I had the thought: “Hey, wait a minute – why am I letting lazy Brain lead this tour? Get back there and check those out, or at least take a photo of record for the blog.”
So I turned around and came back for another look. Even in death, its dried, shriveled leaves still call to mind the form of a wild orchid. You can see the broad, ridged leaves that alternate up the base of the stem, and the brown seed heads hanging where the flowers once grew.
In summer, the flowers are understated, at least compared to the ladyslippers many call to mind when thinking of wild orchids. They have a similar form, though, with a bulging, cupped lower lip and a spreading hood that shelters the reproductive parts. A single stem holds many flowers, a characteristic shared among many non-ladyslipper orchid genera. The flowers bloom through the summer, June to August, sometimes lasting into September. This photo was taken mid-August; I can’t recall now for how long I continued to see the plants in bloom after that.
Come fall, little remains of the flower that might suggest the orchid of the summer. I was intrigued to notice that the seed pods had split open, forming little cages in which the seed sat, piled at the bottom. They reminded me of little lanterns, the candle glow flickering through the bars of the enclosure.
I plucked one for a closer look. The seeds were fine, light and downy, reminding me a little of cattail fluff. It was easy to see how the wind might blow through the open seed pods, picking up the weightless seeds and dispersing them through the surrounding forest. In combination with the fact that it can grow and survive in a range of habitats from wet to dry and open to wooded, it’s no wonder the plant has had such success colonizing North America.
It’s that time of year, the transition between summer abundance and winter dearth. In the warm months it’s so easy to find something to blog about: life is everywhere. Insects, flowers, birds, green leaves everywhere you turn. The brain gets lazy, there’s no need for it to work overhard. Then come October and November, all that great wealth of life begins to thin out. You go out with your camera to find something to blog about and the brain says, “Are you kidding me? There’s nothing out here!” It’s wrong, of course; there’s still plenty of interesting things going on, stuff to find, but the brain is in summer mode. It will take some effort and time to retrain it into a winter way of thinking and seeing.
Earlier this week I took my brain for a walk into our back fields. It saw nothing, so I made it look closer. “Let’s start with this rock,” I said, “and we’ll go from there.” My brain peered at the rock and saw only rock and moss. I chastised it. “No, look closer. Pay attention. What do you see?”
“Well, those red things are pretty obvious,” Brain said.
“Good!” I applauded. “That’s a great start. British Soldier Lichen, their red caps in full bloom, to produce spores. What else is there?”
“Um. Some spikey mosses. Lots of them there.”
“Yes! Juniper Haircap Moss, Polytrichum juniperinum,” I enthused, including the italics. “Cosmopolitan, occurs on every continent, including Antarctica! It gets reddish ‘flowers’ on the tips when it’s reproducing. You’re doing good! Keep going, what else?”
“Some branchy lichen to the side,” Brain pointed out. “Wait, I think I remember these – reindeer lichen?”
“Excellent! Yes, reindeer lichen, specifically Cladina rangiferina, which can be told apart from Yellow-green Lichen, Cladina mitis, by its blue-gray colour. It’s soft and spongy after a rain, but brittle and crumbles when dry. It’s a major food source of reindeer, hence the name.”
“There’s that curly grass stuff in the little patch there,” Brain said, warming up to the challenge.
“Probably the same stuff we walked through to get here,” I agreed. “Poverty Oatgrass, Danthonia spicata, widespread across most of the continent. It can be identified by the curly tuft of grass at its base. Grows on thin rocky soil and is very resistant to drought, probably why it’s growing in amongst all these mosses and lichens on the rock.”
“Hm. Oh, look! Cup lichen, tucked in beside the British Soldiers.”
“So there is, good eye,” I said. “Cladonia species, perhaps False Pixie Cup, C. chlorophaea, which grows on rocks, among other substrates, and is commonly found with mosses.”
“And the moss has put out spore spikes,” Brain said, now getting up to speed.
“Ah yes, just on the right. Now you’re on a roll. I didn’t even see those till you pointed them out.”
“Some dead cedar leaves, from the cedars at the edge of the rocks, I guess.”
“Seems probable. Deposited here by wind or animal, do you think?” I wondered aloud.
“Look at that cute little plant,” Brain pointed to some red leaves. “So small. Any idea?”
“None whatsoever,” I admitted. “Too bad it doesn’t have any flower heads or seed pods to help. Something to look for next summer, I guess.”
“Oh, and look. It was visited by a rabbit,” Brain finished up by pointed out one final item.
“Eastern Cottontail or Snowshoe Hare?” I joked.
Brain and I stood up from where we’d been stooped over our one-foot-square of rock.
“See? That wasn’t so bad,” I said. “All it needs is a bit of practice to get you back in shape.”
“Yeah, I guess,” Brain said grudgingly.
“You did good. Let’s leave the lesson there for now. We’ll try again later this week, perhaps.”
This week’s miscellany post could almost be relabeled “end-of-season inverts”, as most of the photos are of this group of critters. November is the month where winter finally seems to be taking hold: the trees are barren and gray, the meadow grasses are dried and dead, temperatures are falling, there’s often frost at dawn. And yet, even in the face of winter, thumbing their proverbial noses at it, the last remaining ambassadors of summer, insects and arachnids and other invertebrates, still come out in the afternoons.
Just yesterday this lovely Eastern Comma flitted across my path as Raven and I left the house to head out into the fields. It alighted on a sun-bathed cedar branch and spread its wings to soak up the warm rays. It’s like he came to bid me good night, see you next year! It won’t be long before all of these guys have found a snug place to sleep out the winter. As the snow begins to melt in March and the earth begins to warm again we’ll start to see them on the wing again, perhaps a little worn, but a refreshing sight nonetheless after months of cold and snow.
I’ve been searching tree trunks recently looking for a particular species of moth whose females are flightless and can sometimes be found on trees during the mating season. So far I haven’t located any, but while I was searching I came across this guy. It’s an Autumnal Moth, a cold-hardy species that’s found across much of the north. In addition to getting them coming to my lights at night, I’ve also seen them fluttering through the forest during the daylight hours, occasionally alighting on trees. I found this one by chance, though if one were to follow the dancing flight of a dayflying moth it would come to rest for observation eventually.
I mentioned a couple of posts ago how Dan brings me the most thoughtful gifts. This was his latest offering, a large, chunky caterpillar that he’d found climbing up the side of the porch steps. I’d seen these guys before at the lake house and so knew what it was: the caterpillar of the Giant Leopard Moth (I’d also caught the adults at my lights in June, photo here). I was a bit surprised to discover the species here at the new house; I had actually just mapped the range for the species for the guide that afternoon, so it was fresh in my mind. Giant Leopards are a more southern species, with their range just sneaking into Ontario in the Carolinian zones along Lake Erie and at the western corner of Lake Ontario. The Carolinian region here in eastern Ontario extends from Kingston on Lake Ontario north into the edge of the Shield along the Frontenac Arch, which includes Frontenac Provincial Park (which we lived across from). Although we’re only about 35 km from our last house, as the crow flies, the habitat around here feels different and I thought that we were outside of that Carolinian zone. But maybe not? Or maybe the species comes a bit farther north than the data I have indicates?
As a segue onto non-Lepidopterans, this spider turned up in my moth trap one night. I do get the occasional spider in the trap (one smart thinker actually built a web in the funnel and caught a moth), but this is the first time I’d seen one of these guys there. It’s a longjawed orbweaver (family Tetragnathidae), specifically Tetragnatha viridis. Members of the genus Tetragnatha are often seen stretched out on long, narrow foliage such as grass blades or goldenrod leaves, their long front legs extended ahead of them, parallel to the leaf. Apparently it also has the ability to skitter over water surfaces like a water strider. There are hundreds of species in this genus, found around the world. Tetragnatha roughly translates to “four jaws”, which presumably refers to the oversized mandibles of some species.
Even now, at the fringe of winter, there are still grasshoppers that bound off the path through the meadows as Raven and I walk through. I don’t know what the species of this one is, though I might guess it to be a member of the genus Melanoplus, such as a couple of the ones I found back in Grasshopper Season. I don’t know if it was because the air temperature wasn’t all that warm even by mid-afternoon, or if they’re just getting sluggish with the approach of winter, but compared to the skittish individuals back in September these ones were exceptionally obliging, allowing me to move grass blades just inches from their heads out of the way of the shot.
The final insect of the post, this ground beetle, or what I presume to be a ground beetle, was attracted to the porch light one evening last week. Despite the purplish sheen to the elytra, it was difficult to pin down an identification to this one, too. My guess might be Calosoma sp., a group of ground beetles predatory on caterpillars, but I find the all-black beetles a challenge to figure out.
At the back of our fields is a narrow stretch of boggy forest, full of sphagnum moss, cedar and tamarack, the only place I can recall seeing tamarack on our property. It seems to be a species often associated with wet or boggy habitats (although I know of a couple growing in my parents’ new backyard, which is dry). It’s a unique type of tree, looking for all the world like an evergreen until fall rolls around and its needles all turn yellow and fall off. One who didn’t know better might be alarmed for the health of the tree. Of course, this begs the question of why does it do it? Conifers have evolved exceptionally thin, waxy leaves (needles) specifically so that they wouldn’t need to drop them in the winter (the shape helps them to retain water, and they don’t become as heavy when covered with snow as a deciduous tree would). The reason relates to snow. Most conifers tend to develop very strong limbs to help them support the weight of snow collecting on the branches (they still collect more than a bare deciduous tree) in exchange for being able to keep most of their leaves and not have to invest energy in regrowing them each year. However, tamaracks have relatively weak limbs, and if they retained their needles the weight of the snow would snap them (compared to the equivalent situation in a spruce, whose limbs are stronger and can support the snow). The tamaracks have shifted where they invest their energy – instead of building strong, sturdy limbs, they have opted instead to regrow their leaves each year.
Most of the milkweed pods in the fields have opened up now, spreading their seeds to the wind. As the sun gets low early in the afternoon at this time of year the puffs of seeds seem to glow with the backlighting, radiant blooms of fairy hair.
Backlighting makes for some wonderful photographs in the meadow, and I took a number while I was out with Raven. I thought I’d try getting a photo of the path leading back to the hedgerow, the grass all golden in the sunlight. Raven rarely misses an opportunity to be in a photo, particularly if you’re taking the photo from ground level. As soon as she spotted me kneeling (to try to get a better angle), she came racing up the trail, ears flapping, tongue glowing, eyes bright.
The same day that I found the fairy ring, I also came across a caterpillar highway. At first, I only noticed one Wooly Bear crossing the path, and as I stooped to look at it, another caught my eye. I picked them both up and put them on my hand for a photo. Then when I leaned down to put them back on the ground, I found a third. Well, a photo of three in the hand is better than a photo of two in the hand, so I picked it up, too, and took another photo. Then I spotted a fourth caterpillar. And then a fifth. I wandered back and forth along about three meters/yards of trail and turned up these ten caterpillars all on or right beside the path. The brown-and-black ones are Wooly Bears, of course (my mom just did a great post about them). They were most likely wandering in search of a cozy place to hole up for the winter.
The white one is a Hickory Tussock Moth caterpillar. I think the little yellowish-black one is a younger Hickory Tussock (many caterpillars change colour/pattern with each successive moult). The tussock moths are a group whose caterpillars all share the characterisitc of having these great tufts of “fur” poking out around their head and tail ends. If the hairs prick the skin they can cause discomfort and rashes, particularly in people with sensitive skin. This is also true of Wooly Bears and all other fuzzy caterpillars. Presumably the fuzz would act as a defense mechanism since if a predator eats one and ends up with an itchy/sore palate and tongue as a result, they’re unlikely to eat another. This may be why they curl into balls when disturbed, protecting their hairless belly (all of the individuals on my hand started out balled up, but as they realized I wasn’t going to eat them, they started wandering and didn’t re-curl even when I picked them up to adjust their position). Another reason for all the hair is that these caterpillars hibernate as caterpillars, not in cocoons, and the fuzz may act as insulation. It is also often used in the cocoon when they’re building it.
Oh, and see those little green balls in the middle of all the critters? Caterpillar poop!
On Saturday, as I was gathering up my gear to head over to the 100-acre woods, Dan called me over to the window well at the side of the house. Perched on the windowsill, looking not too happy about her confinement, was this giant toad. Between the muskrat and now the toad, I’m starting to think perhaps we should put some window screening over the wells. Or at the very least a board or stick so the animals can crawl out again. I scooped the toad out and placed her on our walk for photos, with a penny for scale. This was a particularly colourful individual, with pale yellow underparts and a beautiful reddish tinge to the brown sides. It was also a lot blotchier than the one I profiled last year. There seems to be considerable variation in the colour and patterning of American Toads, and I’ve been thrown off on occasion when the individual just looks so unusual to me that I think it must be a different species. The only other species that might occur in Ontario to be confused with it, though, is Fowler’s Toad, and the latter always has three warts in the large black spots on its back, while Americans only have one or two.
Dan had been on a roll. The day before, he found this owl pellet, which he carefully saved for me. It was underneath one of the big maple trees in our yard. Most likely it was the product of a Great Horned Owl that had stopped by one evening. So far, the Great Horn’ds are the only species of owl that I’ve heard around the new place. They’re generalists as far as breeding habitat goes, able to happily make a living in even smaller wooded areas. You’ll even sometimes find them nesting in urban woodlots or naturalized parks. At the lake house we had virtually no Great Horn’ds around, but did have several Barred Owls in the vicinity, which prefer larger tracts of mature forest. It was neat to think of the owl having been in our yard, and spent long enough in the tree to produce this. If it hadn’t left the pellet, we would never have known it had been there.
Dan had saved the pellet thinking I might be interested in dissecting it and looking at the bones inside. Probably ordinarily I would have, but I happened to be distracted by this beetle. I found the beetle not far from the pellet, but placed it on the pellet myself. I know, I know, that’s cheating. Oh well. Makes a good shot, doesn’t it? The beetle actually stayed there where I’d put it, so I don’t know if it was interested in the regurgitated material, or was simply waiting for me to leave. The beetle is a carrion beetle, perhaps Nicrophorus orbicollis, one of many species that can detect rotting carcasses from long distances, up to 1.5 miles (4 km) away. Perhaps even more remarkable, the beetles can detect the dead animals often within an hour of death. And probably even more amazing, these beetles exhibit parental care, the parents staying with the eggs, and then the young once they’ve hatched, and feeding them regurgitated food.
Speaking of bones, I encountered these buried in the grass at the back of the property last week. They’re obviously quite old and weathered, and have been there a long time. It’s most likely that they’re deer bones, perhaps a kill made by coyotes many winters ago, but not being an expert in bone identification I couldn’t say for sure. I found one or two more a short distance away. Given that there’s only a few bones and not a whole skeleton, I wonder if the animal had removed a leg or section of the prey and brought it here to consume in peace.
A number of weeks ago I posted about a strange growth I found sitting on the trunk of a toppled hemlock in the 100-acre woods. At the time I thought it was an epiphyte, like a bromeliad, only some temperate woody species. I was corrected by a couple of my fabulous readers who pointed out that it was actually a deformity of the tree caused by a fungal infection, and was usually called a witch’s broom. While out this weekend I came across another one sporting these growths. However, these ones looked more like deformities than a separate plant perched atop a fallen trunk. I might have been able to figure out what they were if I’d seen these ones first.
All the milkweed pods are starting to split open and release their seeds to the wind. The meadows are dotted with fluffy white puffs, both attached to the plant still and ones that have already drifted off.
I haven’t decided what message I should send off to Santa yet, though.
Lowland Tapir by Jyrki Hokkanen on Picasa
In addition to the macaw clay lick, one of the stops on the Manu tour is near a mammalian clay lick, also called a colpa, that is often frequented by tapirs. These colpas are understandably less busy than those of the avian sort, but are often the best chance one has of seeing tapirs and many other mammals in their natural habitat, since mammals, even the large ones, can be incredibly secretive. Many tour companies and lodges will take their visitors to a hide at dusk, and the tapirs visit in the early hours of the night. Like the parrots, the mammals are looking for minerals and salts to help with their digestion and boost blood electrolytes.
I’m going to Peru with Kolibri Expeditions as part of their blogger promotional series. Want to come? I’d love to have you along! My departure leaves November 13, 2010 and returns the 21st, well before the US Thanksgiving. You can get more information about the trip, including itinerary and, of course, cost, at this page. Don’t forget that if you’re also a blogger you get $100 off. In addition to having a great time, meeting some great bloggers, and seeing some fabulous birds, you’ll also be supporting the local communities as they work toward developing a sustainable ecotourism industry for their area. It’s a win-win!
Autumn is upon us here in the far north. Although most of the trees still retain their green colour, a few are beginning to shift to shades of red or yellow. And a very odd few have already made the change. I spotted this strikingly red tree not far from the road along the route I take to pick up my CSA produce every other week. It’s a little hard to see in the photo, but it’s growing alongside a little creek. I’ve noticed that trees with their roots in water tend to change sooner than those on dry land, and I’m not sure why that would be. Are the trees more stressed, since they get less oxygen and/or nutrients to their roots? Does the water make their roots colder? I suspect I could probably turn up the answer with some digging around on the net, but I’m running out of time today – heading out to return to the Big City for a couple of days. The purpose of the trip is for a doctor’s appointment with my specialist in Toronto, but I’m taking advantage of the trip back to visit with some friends, as well. I’d hoped to schedule something to go up tomorrow (The Moth and Me is due up!) but don’t think I’ll be able to get to it till Wednesday. But look for The MaM here on Wednesday!
A common late-summer flower is Butter-and-eggs, Linaria vulgaris, an introduced species that lines our roadsides and other disturbed places. The meadows here have a fair bit of it; I think these fields were cleared at some point in the last 50 years, and so are a fairly recent disturbance, as these things go. Fortunately, the plants seem to be well-visited by pollinators, suggesting that they do produce a lot of food for our local insects. This one is a bumblebee if undetermined species. It’s probably a Common Eastern Bumblebee Bombus impatiens, but don’t know if I could say for sure just from this photo.
Notice that the Butter-and-eggs work a bit like snapdragons, with a lower “lip” that the bumblebee pulls down when it lands, opening up the flower so it can get inside. Presumably this prevents smaller pollinators from getting in. The bumblebee’s head and back are covered with huge mounds of pollen, deposited there by the flowers, which it will in turn carry to other flowers. Smaller insects wouldn’t be large enough to collect and transfer the pollen.
My favourite part of this photo, though, is the bee’s long red tongue. Also, its right foreleg, which you can see waving about in the air by its head like another antenna. When the bee exited the flower, each time it would wipe the pollen from its eyes with the bristles on its foreleg.
I found this secured to a branch in our cedar hedge. It’s the cap to a lepidopteran cocoon, though the inhabitant has long since left. I don’t know what species of caterpillar built it – it’s old and bleached and papery, leaving no clues that would help with identification. The rest of the cocoon would have been split open when the moth or butterfly emerged, and is long since gone, leaving just this little bit, resembling an acorn cap, hanging from the cedar branch.
I noticed a few of these rolled-up leaves in our grapevines when I was checking on the status of the grapes (still mostly green – I’m looking forward to being able to make pie with them in a month or so). Looking down the tube you can see that it’s been secured by many silk threads. These are the work of leafroller moth caterpillars. You’ll find rolled leaves like this not only on grapevine but also on other species of trees and shrubs. There are also leaf-folders, which just fold the leaf once instead of rolling it into a tube. I was hoping to find the caterpillar still inside, but when I unrolled the tube the owner had already left. All that remained was lots and lots of frass (caterpillar poop).
In a Monday Miscellany from a couple of weeks ago I shared an image of a vacant Argiope web with its characteristic zig-zag. I’ve been seeing more and more webs with their owners present lately. This one is a Black-and-Yellow Argiope, Argiope aurantia. Most of the time the webs they’re sitting in are empty, but this lucky spider had caught not one, but two grasshoppers in its snare. The grasshoppers looked like they had once possibly been Red-legged Grasshoppers, but they were wrapped up and it was difficult to discern any field marks. Most spiders would be too small to handle these large grasshoppers, and it’s possible that if a Red-legged hopped toward the web of a smaller orb-weaver it might pass right through. Argiopes have the heft and size to entangle and consume large prey such as this.
Our landlady, the house’s previous resident, planted a row of sunflowers down by our vegetable garden back in the spring. They grew very well over the summer and are just beginning to bloom. Sunflowers are such cheerful flowers, with their bright yellow faces held high to the sun. These ones are probably eight feet tall, towering over me. We’ll leave them where they are and allow the seeds to mature, and in the late fall and winter the Blue Jays and chickadees will enjoy hanging from the nodding flower heads to pick out the seeds.
Opisthocomus hoazin (Hoatzin) by Arthur Chapman
And finally, to wrap up this week’s edition, something a little different. I have signed up for a slot with Kolibri Expedition’s trip to Manu, Peru. My particular departure is set for November 13, 2010. Although there are a number of other bloggers also signed up to go, I’m hoping to entice some of my readers to come join me on this fabulous trip! It’d be a great way to escape the dreary November weather, and you’ll still be back in time for the American Thanksgiving. You can read more about the details and itinerary here.
In the meantime, I thought I would end my miscellany posts by choosing a species that will likely be seen on the trip and sharing a bit about it. Needless to say, because I haven’t been to Peru the photos will not be my own – but they will all be ones labeled for Creative Commons use. The photos will click through to the original source.
This first week I selected Hoatzin. This might be my number one desired species for the whole trip. They are just such cool birds. Considered by many scientists to be the “missing link” between the prehistoric Archaeopteryx, young Hoatzin bear claws on their “wrists” that they use for clambering about in the trees. Even adults do more clambering than flying, partly because their flight muscles are reduced in order to accommodate a larger stomach. Their stomach, in turn, needs to be larger because of the birds’ diet. They feed primarily on leaves, with only small amounts of fruit, flowers or insects. The leaves are broken down in an oversized crop using bacterial fermentation, much like cows and other ruminants do. However, unlike cows, the Hoatzin only has one stomach. Because of the bacterial digestion, the birds apparently have a rather manure-y smell, leading to the local name of Stinkbird. They can be fairly tame, for a wild bird, perhaps because their smell has discouraged much predation from humans.
seabrookeleckie.com 