"What a thousand acres of Silphiums looked like when they tickled the bellies of the buffalo is a question never again to be answered, and perhaps not even asked." -Aldo Leopold
I posted about the Orgyia leucostigma (white-marked tussock moths) that I reared last year to adulthood and documented their breeding and oviposting on my back porch. In mid-April, the young had emerged from their egg case after overwintering on the porch. Here are some photos of these extremely tiny little ones. It was a pretty difficult task as these guys were not much larger than an average grain of sand. Additionally, shortly after emerging they just wanted to spin a thread and balloon away on the wind, which is their primary method of dispersing. I used a small paintbrush to try and gently move them to some leaves, but their threads would quickly get wrapped around their long setae. After getting some photos, I left most of them to disperse in the backyard.
Many thanks to Alex Ezell for pointing Miguel and I to the current location of this beautiful breeding-plumaged Ruddy Turnstone that was spending time at Riverlands Bird Migratory Sanctuary this past weekend.
In population biology the term “refugium” is used to describe a location that supports an isolated population of a once more widespread species. Refugia are almost always referenced in regards to climate. For example, a plant species that has found refuge in a cool and moist valley in a geography that is mostly inhospitable for its survival. I have come to discover another important example of this term in my own suburban neighborhood and examples of which can be found in most major metropolitan areas.
The photos I am sharing today come from the woodlot refugia that supply critical habitat for a variety of organisms that find themselves in the relative ecological desert known as the suburbs.
Although white-tailed deer will leave the woodlots to feed in our suburban lawns at night, they use these refugia for much of their feeding and daytime refuge.
Another mammal I frequently encounter on my early morning hikes through the woodlots is the Virginia opossum.
Woodlot refugia are green oases for migrating songbirds looking for food and shelter during their stopovers. There are also resident nesting birds that rely heavily on this resource as well.
Barred Owls (pictured above) and Great-horned Owls reside and nest in woodlot refugia.
One of my woodlots, that I have named “Gobbler Hollow” holds a flock of close to two dozen Wild Turkeys.
Here are a few migrant songbirds that stop at our woodlot refugia during their northward trip to nesting grounds.
This final bird is not necessarily a user of the woodlot refugia, but it is a bird I always look forward to seeing return in the spring when I walk through our common grounds turf fields on my way to the woodlots.
Barn Swallow flying over turf picking up insects.
Please make note of potential woodlot refugia in your neighborhoods. It is so easy to lose a 1-10 acre woodlot in the name of neighborhood development, but these places are critical refugia to the flora and fauna we share our homes with.
One of my goals this spring has been to get a better photograph of the Golden-winged Warbler (GWWA), a species that passes through Missouri during migration to nest in the upper Midwest, Ohio valley and northern Appalachia. Although I have been lucky in finding at least ten of these birds so far this spring, they are primarily treetop dwellers and I have struck out in getting one near enough and in good light.
While birding at Babler State Park in St. Louis County last weekend, I heard the familiar “bzzzzzzz buzz buzz buzz” vocalization of the GWWA. My birding companions and I began our search and I grabbed a few mediocre images before the bird quickly departed. Because I knew the lighting was poor and the distance was long, I didn’t spend much time reviewing the photos in the field. Arriving home later that evening, I reviewed the photos I collected that day and realized I captured something I was not expecting.
Brewster’s Warbler showing the lack of a dark throat patch and a mostly white breast.
It is well known in the birding community that the Golden-winged Warbler is closely related to it’s more southerly cousin, the Blue-winged Warbler (BWWA). Despite completely different physical appearances and different vocalizations, it has now been shown that the two species are 99.97% genetically alike. Where the nesting range of these two species overlap, hybridization occurs. There are two primary forms of this interspecies union. The first is what is known as the Brewster’s Warbler pictured here. The Brewster’s Warbler looks pretty much like a GWWA but lacks the dark throat patch and has an eye stripe more similar to the BWWA. This is the more common of the two hybrid forms between the BWWA and GWWA. The other hybrid form is known as the Lawrence’s Warbler. The Lawrence’s Warbler keeps the yellow belly coloration of the BWWA and has the black throat of the GWWA that is the recessive version of this trait.
Another angle on the Brewster’s Warbler
Little did I know I’d be getting a “lifer” so close to home this weekend!
As much as I love the change of seasons generally, nothing can beat the excitement and enjoyment of the arrival of spring. I simply can’t get out of doors enough during April and May. This past weekend Miguel and I had a great time in hunting newly arrived birds and newly emerged plants at a few of our favorite spots not too far from home. Here are a few photos from our day out.
First, a beautiful male Prairie Warbler from Weldon Springs Conservation Area.
Orange-crowned Warbler photographed at Bush Wildlife Conservation Area
A Worm-eating Warbler also found at Bush Wildlife C.A.
After a brick-fired pizza for lunch, we crossed the river to another favorite nearby location – Engelmann Woods Conservation Area. Here we were hoping to find the Wister’s coralroot orchid for Miguel to scratch off his list. During a good year, hundreds of flowering stems of this species can be found here. This year we found 15-20 stems just by looking along a mile or so along the trail.
Corallorhiza wisteriana (Wister’s coralroot)
Finally, we were able to find three stems of the parasitic Orobanche uniflora (one-flowered broomrape) mere inches off of the trail.
Orobanche uniflora (one-flowered broomrape)
Hoping you find the time to get out and enjoy this wonderful spring!
During this past weekend the WGNSS Nature Photography group met up with our friend Dr. Rick Essner from SIUE to see and photograph one of our favorite subjects, the Illinois chorus frog (Pseudacris illinoensis) . I first wrote about these wonderful little guys a couple of years ago when Rick helped a few of us see them for the first time.
This year’s visit was perfectly timed for my primary photography goal, which was to photograph this species during amplexus. Our first stop was at a sand-prairie habitat where the frogs use small plastic basins that are set into the ground in order to keep the standing water these frogs need to deposit eggs and the resulting tadpoles need for their development. In addition to these artificial basins, the land mangers at this and a nearby sand prairie tract have recently installed larger ponds with liners to retain water long enough to see the frogs through their development cycle without the need to worry about egg-predating fish. These ponds were only installed this winter, however, and cover-providing vegetation and structures in the water are not yet established. We only found a couple of frogs at these locations but hopefully these new ponds will support a strong breeding population in years to come.
An Illinois chorus frog hunkering in the sandy bank of one of the new future breeding ponds.
Rick Essner, his students and WGNSS photographers standing on the banks of one of the new breeding ponds within the sand prairie habitat. Photo by Miguel Acosta.
WGNSS members and frog paparazzi, Casey, Dave and Miguel photograph a frog while a student collects measurement data on another.
Getting photographs was not the primary reason Rick and his students were out on this fantastic evening. The biologists at SIUE are using mark-recapture techniques to study population demography and spatial activity, as well as the frog’s feeding behavior, locomotor behavior, and diet. It was fascinating to watch the students insert the smallest available PIT (Passive Integrated Transponders) tags in order to identify individual frogs in order to monitor their growth, movement and other characteristics over time.
A student uses calipers to take the frog’s snout-vent length measurement
A student prepares to insert the PIT subcutaneously into the frog. Following the insertion, the puncture in the skin is sealed with Vetbond.
After the PIT has been inserted, the student checks that the identification from the transponder can be read and recorded. The frog now has an identity!
After finding a few frogs in the sand prairie, we followed Rick and his students to other potential locations that might contain breeding frogs. We found what we were looking for in a location that was somewhat unfortunate but definitely contained what the frogs were looking for. At a drainage ditch between a small blacktop road and an agricultural field we found a group that I estimated to be between 25 and 50 Illinois chorus frogs along with quite a few American toads (Anaxyrus americanus). Here we easily photographed pairs in amplexus and struggled to photograph calling male Illinois chorus frogs.
In order to photograph the frogs with inflated vocal sacs during their vocalizations, we first needed to find the solo males that were vocalizing. This was the first challenge. The unpaired males seemed to have a high preference for vocalizing under the cover of the short vegetation along the banks of the ditch. This made finding them quite a difficulty. Additionally, as anyone who might have the experience of attempting to find vocalizing frogs will know, they exhibit what could be called a ventriloquist effect. As the observer hones into the location where the frog must be calling from, it is simply impossible to find. This effect is hypothesized to be an adaptation to predation avoidance. A stationary frog, vocalizing at incredible decibels, could be seen as ringing the dinner bell for predators with the ability to use auditory cues to track their prey. This may help with predator avoidance, but then how does the female find her chosen mate with the sweetest voice?
Finding the vocalizing males was just half the battle. In order to photograph these guys at night, we must shine a light in order to focus on them. More times than not, as soon as I trained my focusing light on to one of them, they would quit calling. It would then take quite a while for them to get started again after sitting still with the lights out. It took me quite a few attempts to get the few successful images I was fortunate to get.
When male frogs are in a perfect situation such as this, they are eager for ANY opportunity. If it moves and in any way matches their search pattern – namely, any other frog, they are known to grab and hold on, whether that be a conspecific female or male, or sometimes something even more, shall we say, less evolutionarily appropriate…
This Illinois chorus frog was so randy that this American toad looked ripe for the picking!
On top of this interspecies attempt, the toad turned out to be a male!
That’s all I have to share from this wonderful evening. I’m happy to see that researchers at SIUE are studying this threatened species and that the land managers are making strong attempts at improving breeding habitats for this wonderful species.
This beautiful Vermilion Flycatcher (Pyrocephalus rubinus) was recently found in the central Missouri’s Miller County. Many thanks to Chris Barrigar, who first found this bird and shared it with the birding community.
The Vermilion Flycatcher’s typical range includes much of South and Central America. It is also found in the southwestern U.S. states like Texas, Arizona, and New Mexico. Chances are likely that this bird was pushed along with a series of storms that moved through Missouri in the last week. Appropriately, this bird’s genus name, Pyrocephalus, means “fire-headed.”
It was interesting to find a couple of Long-eared Owls that had come back to an exact place they had been found nearly a year before in a small wooded area in St. Charles County.
Long-eared Owls are notorious for being found in thick vegetation. During my first visit, this was the best I could do for a photograph.
Returning later in the morning, my luck was much better.
I took another trip recently to Carlyle Lake and had a blast photographing these American White Pelicans. There were far more than 1,000 of these giant birds, coming and going from the dam’s spillway.
A Thousand Acres of Silphiums 