Naturespeak

  You never know what an overnight spring rain will bring out.  “Things” come up out of the ground into the moist night air and are there in the morning for the curious to find. Worms are the most obvious of the rain flushed sort. What would a springy wet morning be without that wormy smell in the air?

  Morel mushrooms are the most desirable of such finds, but I have not been lucky enough to find any this year. A friend of mine recently gathered several hat-fulls of these delectable mushrooms and informed me that he got slightly sick by eating too many of them. “I have never had the opportunity to get overfull on morels,” I informed him and elaborated on the thought by mentioning that I would be more than happy to take these burdensome fungi off his hands next time. Of course, there may not be a next time this year. They say worms are good when fried up, but I do not anticipate getting stuffed on them any time soon.

  Another friend gave me the opportunity to pick up her post rain find. Her discovery could also be considered edible, but only in certain parts of the country. Edible or not, she didn’t want to touch it and knew that I would pick up just about anything – dead or alive. The thing was a mudbug, also known as a crayfish. This beast was completing a wet night stroll across a parking lot and was confronted with a formidable barrier in the form of a curb. I plucked it from the wet pavement and plunked it into a jar for later observation.

  It might seem odd that a crayfish would be out wandering on terra firma, but this particular voyager was a Burrowing Crayfish (see above). These crustaceans are capable of extended journeys into the upper world as long as they can return to the water on a regular basis. Rainy or moist nights beckon them out to feed on rotting vegetation, worms and other such delicacies and daylight prompts them to return to the sanctuary of their muddy water filled holes (see here). 

  In hand, crayfish look like miniature lobsters. Take a look at this view and you can see the claws (called chelicerae), body (carapace) and tail section (tail section). Burrowing Crayfish have fairly small claws when compared to others of their kind, but otherwise are typical in all regards.

  Their beady eyes are actually compound eyes much like those of an insect. The individual eye facets are sensitive to movement. Collectively they form an un-focused pixilated image of the world which means this poor guy was forced to look at a thousand fuzzy views of my face as I examined it. For a higher life form such an image would be nightmarish. Fortunately, crayfish are endowed with only simple nerve swellings for a brain, so they are unburdened with any emotion.

  An underside view (see here) reveals some of the hidden aspects of crayfish existence. There are five pairs of swimmerets under the tail section. This specimen was a female as evidenced by the fact that the first pair are not modified into sperm transfer “arms.” She will eventually carry her eggs within the protective envelope of these swimmerets should she be lucky enough to find a boy crayfish. All of the legs are attached to the main body under the carapace. You’ve probably noticed that the first several sets just behind the main claws end in a pair of tiny pincers while the rest are reserved for walking purposes.

  Before I put this wanderer back into her element, I want to point out one more thing. Take a good look at this underside view and you’ll notice those two pearl-like spots located just ahead of the multiple mouth parts. Structures such as these are firm proof that we are dealing with a creature that is very different from us. These things are called Green Glands Pores. They connect to internal green glands (really?) which function as kidneys.

  If you consider that these excretory pores are outlets for the liquid waste produced by the green glands, you’ll realize that the burrowing crayfish is a potty mouth. Yes, they pee out of an opening located right next to their mouth!  Aren’t you glad to know that?

   It wasn’t so long ago that farmers timed their annual planting and harvest cycles on seasonal phenology. They didn’t call it that, but they were practicing an age old recognition that certain natural things happened at certain times of the year – every year. Calendar dates weren’t as important as naturally observed events.

  Corn planting time around these parts has always been from late April through the first week of May, but old time farmers simply looked to their local oak trees for the go ahead.  “Plant corn when the oak leaves are as big as a squirrel’s ear,” they’d say.  They didn’t need to worry about the soil temperature getting up over 50 degrees or fret a whole lot about fancy hybrid growing needs. The oaks were good enough to determine the relatively short optimum planting time. Oak trees are among the last trees to commit their greenery to the whims of spring, so their decision implies that the warm season has really begun.

  This week, our oak trees are leafing out so I sampled a few budding clusters to see what stage they were at.  Indeed they are at the squirrel ear stage right now. The large white oak tree pictured above arrived at squirrel ear stage earlier this week and was already surrounded by freshly tilled ground by the time I photographed it. Here is a scene as old as farming itself.

  With the emergence of the leaflets, the trees also send out their clusters of dangling flower catkins. Take a look here at this cluster of Burr Oak leaves and you’ll see that each catkin has 30-35 beadlike floral clusters strung along its length.  These are the pollen producing male flowers that will soon fall off.  This discussion isn’t about the flowers, however, it’s all about the leaves and the squirrels. (You may find it interesting to know that the leaf sample I am holding in the picture was provided to me by a Fox Squirrel. The creature nipped it off and dropped it to the ground in front of me.) Notice that these perfect little baby leaves are about an 1- 1 ½ inch long. In order to determine if this particular tree (and this particular squirrel) was telling me to plant corn, I needed to establish the dimension of an average squirrel’s ear.

  There is no such thing as a plain “squirrel,” but for the sake of simplicity and in the interest of keeping this thing in line with folk wisdom, I decided that the familiar Fox Squirrel will be the designated “squirrel” in question. This is the woodland squirrel that associates with the oak woodlots and the one that brought the subject down to my level.  According to the Mammals of Michigan book, a classic tome by Dr. Roland Baker, the ear measurement of Sciurus niger (aka Fox Squirrel) is ¾ -1 ½ inch from notch to tip. The leaves and the ears are a match. It is time to poke the ground with yellow seeds.

  Of course, today corn planting is neatly done with mega machinery, but back in the old days the corn was planted in mounds. The same farmers that cited squirrel ear lore also took pains to plant seven kernels in each mound to honor the age old tradition that acknowledges: “One for the blackbird, one for the crow, three for the cutworm, and two to grow.”  Even if the seeds were planted at the correct time, the farmer had to heed the other realities of nature.

  My earlier entry regarding my day out on the Detroit River focused on the sturgeon work aboard the U.S.F.W.S. research boat Sentinel. This was the main reason for the trip – the headline material, so to speak. Our trip out into the mid-section of the stream brought us in contact with many other sights worth noting, however, and I’d like to bring a few of these to your attention as well.  First, allow me to complete a few “left over” sturgeon observations.

  The water was still quite cold this time of year. The temperature hovered around 52 degrees Fahrenheit when measured at each of the sturgeon sets. I asked Dr. Manny if there was any indication that the sturgeons were spawning yet and he shook his head in negative response. “No. it’s still a little too cold, but it’s getting there,” he answered. “The suckers are starting to spawn, though, and that means the time is getting close.” By suckers, he meant fish like the Golden Redhorse Sucker and White Sucker and was not referring to “those suckers” – as in sturgeon. You must be careful about this fisheries language where a big sucker is literally a big Sucker and a female walleye with eggs is called a hen.

  A large man made rock reef was recently laid on the bottom of the river just off the east shore of Belle Isle – at the head of the river. Scientists such as Bruce are eagerly awaiting the advent of this years breeding season to see if any sturgeon will make use of this area to lay eggs. The fish are regularly spawning on the Canadian side of the river, but need some help in returning to old sites closer to the Michigan shore.

  Out on the boat, I looked closely at one of our captured fish and suggested that she might try out this new spawning site. Her expression was unreadable, however (Here, take a look for yourself). Sturgeons don’t have ears, but do have four extremely sensitive barbels on their snout. I was hoping these appendages might pick up some sense of my message just like they sense food items on the bottom.  After all, I told her, there were plenty of other critters doing the “spring thing” out here on the river and it was time to get going.

  We passed an active Bald Eagle nest about mid-way down on the east side of Fighting Island. An adult bird was standing on the edge of the nest next to a large chick (see here).  There are at least four active nests on the Detroit this year and eagles are a regular and year-round sight.

  Down at the south end of the island there was a large Ring-billed Gull colony extending for hundreds of feet along the high bank from the top of the grassy ridge down to the limestone rubble rock (see here and here). It looked like most of the birds were sitting on eggs while the rest were flying overhead in all directions. Even though the whole place looked chaotic, there was some order within the apparent dis-order since each nest was located within a beak’s reach away from the nearest neighbor. From a distance you could hear the constant cackle of the noisy birds drift over the water as we worked the third set.

  While drifting opposite the gull colony, we pulled up a thieving Mudpuppy on one of the hooks. A series of a dozen empty hooks betrayed the presence of this giant aquatic salamander who had obviously helped himself to the feast. His last bite proved that there was no such thing as a free meal and he ended up getting snagged through the lip.

  I unhooked this wriggling beast and held him out for a portrait before tossing him back (see above and here). If the puppy looks uncomfortable, he was.  Being one of the slimiest creatures on earth (surpassing even the sturgeon in this regard) it was all I could do to keep a grip with one hand while taking a photo with the other. I was almost squeezing his innards out in order to maintain a grip. It was like holding a rotten pickle – a moving rotten pickle.   

  You are in the presence of true ugliness when you are staring at the face of a mudpuppy. Michigan’s largest salamander has a mug that only a mother could love. The large red feathery gills coming out of each side of the head only add to the unworldly nature of this beast. I wanted to get an angle that showed off the wide fin-like tail, but the thing protested so much that I was finally forced to let it drop back into the chilly depths. It was time to get back to helping Jim and Bruce with the sturgeon work, anyway.

  My left glove was covered with the snotty slime residue from my recent captive.  There was so much, as a matter of fact, that it created filmy webs between my fingers when I spread them out. The webs would dissolve into sheety dollops of goo and peel off in the wind.  Yes, admiring snotty slime from a rotten pickle was all part of a great day on the Dee-troit.

I just completed my third shift as a crew member aboard the good ship Sentinal and I enjoyed every minute of it.  Well, alright, not every single minute – there was the time when an extreme series of waves brought the starboard gunwale within inches of the water surface. As a landlubber I was a tiny bit horrified by this, but it was of no consequence to my shipmates Dr. Bruce Manny and Jim McFee. Bruce and Jim are fisheries biologists working with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service on a sturgeon monitoring program. The waves, as a matter of fact, were caused by our own wake as Bruce veered toward an orange buoy off of West Hennipen Point.

  On this particular day, the Detroit River around Fighting Island and the northern end of Grosse Ile was calm and only slightly cool. The buoy marked the southern anchoring point of a 250 foot trot line positioned to catch Lake Sturgeon from near the hard clay bottom.  On this particular pull, we ended up getting two of these magnificent fish on the line. The first was 4.2 feet long and weighed 26.4 pounds and the second was slightly longer and four pounds heavier. Both were measured, weighed and tagged before being released back into the cold emerald green water. By general fish standards these would be considered behemoths but by sturgeon standards they were completely average.

  Allow me to back up a moment and explain a few things. You may remember, if you are a regular reader, that I’ve taken you out on this trip before. If so, feel free to ignore the following details. Every year for the past few years, the USFWS crew has been out catching and tagging sturgeon on the big Detroit. They are monitoring the population and trying to build up a data base of information so that they can understand what makes this ancient fish tick. To catch these bottom feeders, the biologists put out six set lines each about 30 feet deep and equipped with 25 huge baited hooks spaced at 10 foot intervals. The bait consists of Round Gobies, those alien invaders who are abundantly available for just such a purpose. “This is the best use I can think of for these fish,” blurts out Dr. Manny. I agree with him. We both see the poetic justice of using a pesky alien to help out a rare native.

  The procedure is to hook the set line buoy, pull up the double pronged anchor, and slowly pull the line onto the deck. Each hook is detached from the line via a metal spring hook. It was my primary job to grab these hook-lines as they were pulled and keep them in a neat row along the edge of a big blue plastic barrel (here’s my work – nice eh?). When Jim returned the line to the water – after assuring the hooks are sufficiently baited – I handed them back to him one by one.  When a sturgeon came up on one of the hooks, of course, the real work began.

  We pulled up a total of six sturgeons- one each on the first two sets, and two each on the last two sets.  Each time the documentation procedure was the same. I was able to get a better view than previous trips because I was part of the process. 

  The first order of business is to lift the fish into a net cradle and weigh it. During this time, Bruce is writing down the numbers as Jim calls them out. “15.5” indicates a weight of 15 and a half kilograms. There are 2.2 pounds per kg, if you want to do the math. Our weights ranged between 6 ½ and 37 pounds. The total length was taken in millimeters from the tip of the snout to the tip of the upper lobe of the shark-like tail (which translated to a range from 35 inches to 55 inches). A shorter fork length is taken from the snout to the inside of the tail notch and then a “commercial” length from the back of the gill opening to the back of the anal fin. The girth was measured just behind the pectoral fins and ran from a mere 12 inches up to 22 inches.

  A uniquely numbered six digit tag called a Floy tag is inserted into the trailing edge of the dorsal fin – the small triangular fin just ahead of the tail. Accompanied by slight gristly sound, the tag is punctured through (with what looks to be a carpet needle!) and secured like a zip tag (see here). A radio tag, the size of a small pill, is then carefully inserted just behind the first back scute using a hollow syringe. The needle tip is daubed with a dollop of anti-biotic to make sure the small puncture heals properly.

  I thought my role significant when I was given the charge of reading off the frequency code that was called up on the hand held reader when it was passed over the post-implanted fish.  I enunciated every digit with professional clarity so that Dr. Manny could record it properly. I later found out that he already had these numbers on his sheets, having passed the reader over the electronic pills before they were inserted. My dramatic reading served only to confirm what was already known, but what the hey.

  The last part of the process involved cutting off the first spine of the left pectoral fin. By using a hack saw and a honking big knife, Jim was able to remove this 3 inch piece of fin with a minimum of blood. I will admit that the sound of saw rasping on hard cartilage does create a wince effect. This portion will be microscopically examined in the lab for a count of the annual rings that will provide an accurate age estimate. The severed spine is sealed into a small envelope upon which all the individual fish data is recorded (see here – note the super long number on the bottom line that I was responsible for reading).

  We slipped each fish back into the water within a few minutes of its capture – holding it captive on the steel deck only long enough to reap a harvest of valuable data from it.  Jim would gently lower the beast into the water and hold on for a while until it recovered sufficiently for release. Sometimes this took a minute or two, while other times the victimized fish broke free as soon as it hit the water.

  After the last set was complete, the Sentinel returned to the Wyandotte municipal dock and the gear was hauled ashore. We talked about the success of the day and the promise offered by the following morning.

  “You shoulda seen the fish we caught last week,” said Bruce when I expressed amazement at the 37 pounder. “That fish was so heavy,” he delivered like a set up line, “that it exceeded the capacity of our scale.” I glanced down at the scale to see that it was a 50 kg. unit, so I figured out and verbalized that it was over 110 pounds.  “Well over,” he added. “The snout hung out about this far over the front of the sling,” he said holding his hands about 18 inches apart, “and the tail hung out the same distance out the back. The girth was something like a meter.”  Given these dimensions, this sturgeon was one of those old school giants in the six foot plus category. Unfortunately Jim forgot his camera on that day, so the fish remains only as a statistical record.

“Sure,” I said in mock disbelief. “No picture, eh?”  “No, really,” they both retorted. Given the absence of eye winks, I was force to believe what they said was actually the truth.

  The potential of pulling up another one of these giants, or even re-capturing last week’s animal, will keep me coming back to the sturgeon boat year after year.

  Although the big fish are always the primary thrill, the other sights along the big river were satisfying as well. I’ll introduce a few of these in the next installment.

Today, while eating my lunch, I was given over to pondering a question. I’ve always known that the early bird gets the worm (I mean, it’s a fact of life right?), but how is it that the late bird also gets the worm?   You see, birds – especially those of the robin ilk – need to eat morning, noon, and evening and can’t afford to stop at the early worm.  They engage in worm hunting throughout the mid day, when the worms themselves aren’t active, and yet they still are successful.

  It is not my current intention to go in-depth into the subject of how robins find worms.  I do not know the whole answer, nor does anyone else apparently. Type the phrase “how robins find worms” into your search engine and you’ll come up with some conflicting answers. That they see ‘em is the primary answer, but the jury is out as to whether they hear ‘em as well. You’ve seen the birds perform the ritual a million times: a quick head down run ending in an erect pose, a pause followed by a tilt of the head, a jab or two, and up comes a worm held firmly in the beak.

  As a creature with oppositely facing eyes, the robin has to tilt its head sideways in order to get a vision fix on a close object such as a worm. It has little binocular vision capability and must rely on the high resolution sharpness provided by a single eye for detail work. This head tilt has also been construed to mean that the bird is directing an ear opening toward the ground and using sensitive hearing abilities to pinpoint prey location. There has been at least one experiment that seems to bear this out this latter theory. In that situation a robin was able to locate some mealworms without any visual clues. 

  Earthworms are covered with fine bristles and they do make somewhat of a quiet racket when pushing up against dry leaves.  It is entirely possible that the keen-eared robin is capable of hearing these sounds, but the head tilt is definitely a vision related posture.  The overall answer is probably a combination of visual clues and auditory clues. Either way, the worm is history.

  My lunchtime question was prompted by an opportunity to watch a robin work the bark chip mulch around some shadbush plantings. I was taking a break from presenting a whole slew of nature programs as part of the annual River Rouge Water Festival on the campus of the University of Michigan at Dearborn. My lunch break was 25 minutes long, so I had the time to sit outside on a picnic table while consuming my complimentary turkey wrap (I only do this program because of the free food). 

   Apart from watching the masses of 4^th and 5^th graders and their befuddled teacher escorts walk across campus, my attention was drawn to a single male robin about ten feet in front of me. I fixed my gaze upon the fowl as a way to occupy my time. At first I perceived this activity akin to being forced to read a copy of Redbook magazine in the doctor’s waiting room because all the Outdoor Life mags are gone, but this view soon changed.

  This bird seemed to be having extraordinary luck.  He kept returning to a patch near the base of one of the plantings. With each bite of my wrap, this efficient hunter was downing a worm – about one every ten seconds for a short period. Usually it took a few side swipes of the beak to clear away a piece of bark before the prize was secured. I watched the ground in front of him very closely to see if I could detect any worm motion but was unsuccessful. The robin flew off each time a passing clan of noisy children walked by, but it invariably returned to the same spot.

  It was a cool dry day and I couldn’t imagine why a bunch of worms would expose themselves in the noon hour sun – especially in the presence of killer. There were none in the bark closest to me.  I discovered the secret about the time I was tearing into my huge Macadamia nut cookie and confirmed it by the time I ripped into a bag of Doritos (I told you the free food was crucial here). The robin had an underground partner.

  Every now and then, a section of bark would push up from the ground at the exact point where the bird was operating. A mole was working the soil beneath the bark layer and causing the worms to issue up out of the ground as if they were being electrocuted.  The mole never broke the surface. I can’t confirm that the robin knew what was going on, but then again, I don’t think he cared. There were lots of worms and that’s all that mattered.

  I’ve seen this mole-induced worm terror before. Since earthworms are very sensitive to ground vibrations, the digging action of a mole – a worm predator- will alert a vibratory sense within all worms in the immediate vicinity to seek the safety of the surface. The escaping worms look like they are jumping out of a fire. Once I followed the course of a tunneling mole for several feet by watching the fleeing horde of worms that surfaced just ahead of it.

  Worm hunters – human worm hunters that is – have long employed this trick to get worms up and out. By sticking a rod into the ground and tapping it lightly, they imitate the mole’s digging sounds and fill up their bait containers in no time.

  Today was the first time that I saw a non-human bait collector take advantage of this effect. I enjoyed this bit of unexpected dinner theatre. It goes to prove that even mundane observations can reap some reward. One has to feel a little bit sorry for the worms in this case. Normally the surface provides them temporary safety until the danger passes. But when sandwiched between two predators, well, it’s like jumping from the frying pan in to the fire.  Fried worms anyone?

  Every now and then I like to turn things upside down in order to see them from a different angle. They say that such a thing actually puts the right side of your brain to work and, incidentally, causes a lot of things to spill (never look at the bottom of a glass when it is half full, for instance).

  Nature delights in turning things around as well. I suppose she does this to give us a different view of life and confirm that we should never assume anything when it comes to the natural world.  It would be natural to assume that a tiny sand hill with hole in the center is an anthill or that a colorful winged insect flying at mid-day is a butterfly. As a small way of turning your world upside down, allow me to introduce the exceptions to these examples.

  First of all, what about those anthills?  Yes, some ants do make sand hills. These hill-lets are possessed of a central entrance for ingress and egress, but I digress. Should you come across a sandy spot with a cluster of apparent anthills where the central holes are about ¼ inch wide and open slightly off to the side, you are actually looking at bee hills.  If you stick around a minute or two you’ll spot the specific bees belonging to these structures as they return to the surface and poke their heads out.  Take a look at the picture above and you’ll see two of these Solitary Bees guarding their burrow entrances.

  Solitary bees are members of a group of bees called mining bees (see a close-up here). There are some 1,200 species in North America, so I can’t tell you the exact species of the ones I encountered.  These insects produce neither honey nor beeswax. Oddly enough, most wild bees are of solitary persuasion and only a few form genuine colonies such as the caste-forming Honey Bees. This means that, although the honey/wax making species get all the glory, the vast tribes of solitary bees perform a great deal of the pollination work going on out there.

  It appears to be another turn-around of ideas to state that these so-called “solitary” bees nest in groups.  They do find some comfort being in the company of similar bees, but are not social insects in the true sense of the word. They do not co-operate or assist each other in any way – it’s a “you don’t borrow my tools and I won’t borrow yours” neighborhood thing.

  Each one of the separate but equal burrows is independently excavated by a female Solitary Bee. The main tunnel extends down into the sandy soil for a few inches. Brood chambers, or cells, are carved off to the side and at right angles to the main tunnel (here’s a cutaway view of a tunnel with a few side chambers exposed). These chambers are created and waterproofed with a waxy secretion. The female collects pollen (using special brushes called scopae on her hind legs) and rolls it into a ¼ inch ball. A liberal application of nectar provides sufficient moisture to hold it together and provide a bit of sweetener for the kids.  She then lays a single egg on the pollen ball (look here - both this and the previous shot were taken by Dennis Briggs of the University of California), and then seals up the chamber for good.

  She works on one cell at a time and eventually seals off the whole set after she’s laid eight or so eggs.  Her life work is done after several more burrows are completed.  Solitary bees do not provide any other parental care other than this initial set-up. The child bees are solo from here on out. They will hatch out later in the summer, eat up their pollen snack, pupate, and await the following spring to emerge as adults. They do all of this on their own. No bee is an island, but these come close.

  As if a community of solitary bees living in ant hills isn’t enough, I’d like to add one more contradictory insect to this essay. There is a flashy little moth out there called a Grapevine Epimenis (see here) that flies by day.  I encountered several of these on a recent walk and they all were seeking to suck up minerals from the trail limestone.

  A majority of moths are night fliers and all butterflies are day fliers. There are some significant exceptions to the moth rule. Some, such as the diminutive Epimenis, find the full light of day to their liking and shun the night. In the field guides, this black, white and red moth is listed as an early spring woodland creature that “is often mistaken for a butterfly.”  Trembling with energy, the pictured moth was difficult to approach because it would dart off as if driven by butterfly reflexes. Scientifically this species is called Psychomorpha epimenis which gives a hint at the crazy behavior of this day moth. I prefer to give it the previously unpublished title of “buttermoth.”

  If there is any lesson to be drawn from looking at bee hills and pseudo butterflies, it is that few things are as they initially appear.

  Natural cycles are a grand thing. For the most part, things happen about the same way and at the same time every year.  For instance, it is end of April and the new green cat-tail shoots are about a foot tall, the fragrant water lilies are just poking their leafy heads up out of the water, and both of our Red Wing teams are reaching the high points of their season. Yes, both the hockey team and the birds are providing us with spring highlights once again – one seeks “Stanley” and the other seeks population security.

  I’ll leave it to others to discuss the Detroit Red Wings and their annual trophy quest, and instead focus my seasonal attention towards THE “original” red-wings – the Red-winged Blackbirds. My morning walk along the marsh boardwalk at Lake Erie Metropark brought me in close contact with a female Red-winged Blackbird (see above). Her behavior – sticking around, as opposed to taking off, combined with the issuance of a continual stream of obscenities in my direction– indicates that she had a nest nearby.   It is that time of year again.

  It’s worth pausing to admire the female red-wing on her own merits. She has a cryptic beauty that transcends the male attributes that are responsible for the species name.  The male is a glorious beast whose fiery epaulettes define the color red, but without the handsome little females on the team there would be no species. You could say that she represents the “other other” Red Wing.

  The female’s striped cream and brown coloration is a practical camouflage pattern meant to blend into the dead leafy landscape of the marsh. The area around her face and throat, however, has a nice salmon cast to it that lends a feminine air to her appearance (sometimes you have to say these kinds of things to keep women happy – I think). Some female red-wings even have a hint of red on their shoulders, but not this one. When sitting on the eggs or nestlings she will become invisible and that is the whole point of this color scheme. 

  Her mate delivered only a cursory warning in my direction and was more concerned with the other male birds than me. He has to fulfill his promise to the other females in his harem to keep this section of the marsh clear of competition. It was the lot of this particular female to deliberately make herself visible in order to protest my presence.  She did so with a series of raspy “kecks” where each utterance was accompanied by a tail pump. In so doing, she perched herself in that classic split-leg pose so typical of these birds (see here).

  Even though I could not locate the nest, I know it is positioned only a few feet above the water surface.  It is woven from shredded cat-tail leaves and supported by a framework of at least three dead cat-tail stalks. I know that it blends well into the background from which it was made.  I also know that she has, or soon will have, a clutch of powder blue eggs to care for. Each egg will be randomly decorated with a pattern of dark spackling (see here).

  I look forward to the day when I will finally spot the nest and can watch her raise a brood and complete another successful season. I am less confident that the other Red-wings will successfully complete their season, but, like I said, I leave that grist for the sport bloggers to grind.

 Praying mantis egg cases are those familiar hard foam blobs that hold the promise of new life and garden salvation wrapped up into one package. Depending on which garden website you go to, you’ll see them offered for immediate shipment at a going rate spanning the gamut from $1.35 to $4.00 apiece. Promoted like T.V. miracle products, these egg cases come with a promise that they will release hundreds of pest-hungry predators into your garden plot like time-released headache medicines.  The hatchling mantids will grow into big mantids at the expense of your nasty garden pests and they are 100% chemical free. 

  Well, I guess most of this is stuff is true, but we loose sight of the fact that these creatures are very common and are quite capable of spreading themselves. Mantis egg cases are a regular sight in the leafless landscape, so chances are you can save a few bucks and transfer a few naturally occurring ones to your garden this spring. But, hurry because supplies will be going fast. They will be hatching out very soon.

  My intention here is not to re-tell the well known story of these beneficial insects, but instead to focus momentarily on their egg cases before they release their charges and become yesterday’s news. Mantis egg cases, like the one pictured above, are one of nature’s perfect packages and therefore worth a second look. Without them you have no Praying Mantis’- large or small.

  Yesterday, I encountered the case that is pictured above.  It was attached to a small dogwood in the midst of a field.  Like all examples, it is hard to the touch and water resistant. The material of which it is made was issued from the hind end of a female Chinese Mantis last September.  She deposited her 100-400 rice-like eggs into alternating rows and enveloped them in white bubbly aerosol foam that cured into a tan-colored rigid insulating cover. Technically these things are called Ootheca, but I tend to be un-scientific about it and call them seafoam packets. The new generation was well kept from the harsh effects of low temperature, wind, snow, and rain and the case delivered its cargo safely into the new year.

  From the top angle (see here), you can see a flat central mid-line that contrasts with the bumply ridge material to either side. The young will eventually push out of their chamber through this central section. These features are common to most, if not all mantis egg cases (There are thousands of species world-wide and I don’t want to go out on a limb and say that they all have these traits, even though I could pretend that is the truth).

  This particular case has a truncated end where it stops and slopes down at a steep angle to the stem.  Here is a prime example of the type created by the Chinese Mantis- an introduced species from that specific part of the world.  Last month I photographed another case with a very different profile (see here).  It was shaped like a tiny loaf of bread. I’m not entirely sure what species made this structure because both the European Mantis and the Carolina Mantis produce this kind of casing. The European Mantis, as you probably figured out, is an introduction from Europe and the Carolina Mantis is a native from the S.E. United States.  Since I snapped the shot locally and the Carolina is not normally found this far north, I have to conclude it’s from Mantis religiosa – the European immigrant. Neither of these cases is from a native insect.

  My point, in this case study, is to simply encourage you to take a nice close look at the next mantis case you find. See if you can figure out what specific kind was responsible and take a few moments to admire yet another example of naturally good packaging.

     A relationship in the natural world where one organism benefits from the actions of another is called symbiosis.  Unlike the sometimes parasitic relationship between a parent and a child, where the lesser life form sucks the life out of the greater beast, a symbiotic partnership is generally a plus-plus scenario. In this case, both parties benefit and need each other.  Since our children can occasionally be coerced into performing beneficial labor around the house and yard, I guess I should alter my parasitic child comment. After all, children bear a closer resemblance to those helpful tick picking birds on the backs of Cape Water Buffalo than they do to Tapeworms.

  Sometimes a symbiotic relationship becomes a plus-neutral interaction in which one party benefits and the other could care less. This latter interaction best describes the bond between the Yellow-bellied Sapsucker and the early spring butterflies.

  Sapsuckers are among the best named animals on the planet.  They are medium sized woodpeckers that suck sap and have yellow bellies, what more can I say. It is their habit to create a linear arrangement of shallow holes, or wells, in tree bark in order to induce them to weep a torrent of sap (see here and a detail view here).  Often there are so many wells on a trunk that it looks like it has been strafed by machine gun fire. The birds routinely return to these wells to lick up the sweet sap and sometimes nibble on the insects attracted to it.

  Two butterflies that regularly find comfort in seeping sapsucker wells are the Red Admiral (see here) and the Mourningcloak (see above).  Both of these gentle flyers are classified as Brush-footed butterflies because their front pair of legs are reduced to hairy pods. They are also called angle wings because the outline of the wings looks tattered and irregular. Both species over winter as adults – in other words they hibernate or go through “cryptopreservation” (controlled freezing).  They emerge from winter slumber well before other butterflies and don’t mind the chill of a crisp spring day. I mean, really, if you’ve already been frozen what’s a little dip into the 30’s!

  Cold loving butterflies, like these two, have hairy bodies and dark coloration in order to absorb as much of the sun’s energy as possible.  They spend a lot of time basking and eating high energy food such as rotting fruit, bird droppings (hey, don’t knock it), and sugary tree sap. With proper sunbathing and fuel intake, they can raise their body temperatures to a level near to our own and this enables them to fly. Since flowering plants are not available in the early season both early risers skip the traditional “butterfly at flower” thing.

  I came upon the two pictured butterflies while walking through a woodlot the other day.  I flushed the Mourningcloak first. It was imbibing at one of the sapsucker wells I showed you a few paragraphs ago. Several dozen flies were also there feeding but they didn’t acknowledge my presence at all (kinda like my kids).  Cloaks are deep purple in color with a bright yellow fringe decorated by intense blue dots. This pattern reminded the early naturalists of the cloaks worn by people mourning their dead – thus the reason they have a “u” in their name (as in “sad”). Their underwings are cryptically mottled with brown and they blend in when their wings are folded over their backs.

  The sad butterfly did not return to the sap wells during the few minutes I hung around, but instead proceeded to patrol its territory. A few trees over, several Red Admiral butterflies were more than willing to return to the bar after being flushed. Admirals are smaller than the cloaks and are distinguished by bright orange-red bands across each wing and antennae brightly tipped like match-heads. They too are mottled underneath so as to blend in when necessary.

  They usually feed upside down and you can see here the extended tongue that delivers the sap. But, they never stay in place for long.  Like the cloaks, they are territorial. The males patrol an elliptical space of ground up to 40 ft. by 75 ft. or so. Anything entering that space is chased off (even people) or, if it’s a female, mated with.  My admirals were constantly flying off, doing aerial combat with intruders and then returning for a second round of drinks.  They didn’t pay attention to the ever-present bar flies either.

  Take another look at these butterfly pictures and I’d like to point something out to you. You’ll note that these guys look pretty rag-tag at this time of year. They are near the end of their life cycle and looking for one last fling before cashing it all in. The cloaks emerged as adults last June. They dallied about for a while then estivated (a term for warm weather hibernating) until fall at which time they suck on some sap and go into hibernation. So, we are looking at a 10 month old butterfly here.

  The admirals have two generations per year, and the current individuals emerged late last summer as adults before they sucked sap and hibernated. They look a little better than the cloaks because they are four months younger.

  You know, they are always telling us to hug or kids -which is darn good advice - but have you hugged a Sapsucker lately?  They are the ones who make the trees cry and the angle wings fly.

  From the title of this piece you might assume that I am going to say that the status of this spring is somewhat doubtful – you know, as in yet to be decided or debatable.  Well nothing could be further from the truth. This spring season is charging ahead full force. It is neither late nor early, but definitely proceeding at its usual rapid pace. What I really wanted to say with this title is that the essence of spring is literally up in the air in the form of pollen and that the first pollen-producing spring wildflowers are located up in the air as well. In other words, ‘tis the time to suck in some tree dust and blow it out again (maybe that would have been a better title, eh?).  

  Trees, such as Black Alders and Red Maples are among the earliest of bloomers yet they are little appreciated for this effort. I was reminded of this the other day when I went up in the air aboard a helicopter.  We were engaged in deer counting again, but found it a difficult task without the neutralizing effect of background snow.  We did spot a few deer but only the ones that were flashing their white tummies in the morning light.  Doing an April survey wasn’t my idea – I can blame that on the Univ. of Michigan but don’t have time to explain why I was involved in this particular scheme.  Whilst airborne I got a spectacular view of the flowering red maples.  These trees added a crimson wash to a canopy otherwise dominated by gray. The view shown above is out my side of the cockpit over Oakland County and the chance to see it was a blessing – with or without deer sightings. The white pines poking through the canopy can be temporarily ignored because they are always green, whereas the maples are only vibrantly attired in red twice a year (during flowering and autumn leaf blush). O.K., you don’t have to ignore the pines. Go ahead and say “ooh” and “ahh” and “aren’t they great, etc.” and then let’s get back to the maples.

  You can see these trees blooming from down here on earth but you have to look up. Forget the late appearing daffodils and hibiscus and peer skyward in order to appreciate these much larger flowering plants.  The maples have been blossoming for several weeks and right now the red female flowers are at their peak. The male blooms started much earlier and a few are still out (see here). Each bunch of flowers consists of a cluster of five-parted florets sporting five individual yellow anthers.  Each anther is coated with grains of pollen whose sole function is to fertilize the female flowers.

 The Black Alder is another early tree flower that expresses itself in the form of a dangling pollen wand known as a catkin (see here). This is a low tree which really has to be appreciated from the ground level.  An individual male alder flower is not very impressive, but there are dozens that make up each catkin and together they make up a fascinating structure. The catkins open and relax downward when prompted by the first warming rays and shed their pollen load to the four winds.

  Since both the Red Maple and Alder are primarily wind pollinated they are called anemophilous plants (a term which literally means “wind loving”). They rely on the wind to distribute their pollen. Since the breeze is a haphazard postal service, such plants need to shed trillions of very light pollen grains in the hopes that some of them make their goal. It so happens that we are unintentionally sticking our noses into their love life by interrupting that pollen stream.

  A pollen grain is essentially a sperm packet surrounded by a tough outer coat. Most are round and elaborately ornamented and all are extremely tiny. Take a look here and you can see what the pollen grains of Red maple and Black Alder look like. Yes, that is my hand in the photo and yes, these are models.  Thank God, eh? Imagine sucking one of these things up your nose! In actual scale, the Alder grain (on the left) would be only 15 microns wide and the Maple (on the right, in case you weren’t paying attention) would be about 20 microns in diameter.

  A micron, or micrometer, is one-thousands of a millimeter, so you get an idea of just how small these grains are. If my photo were to scale, I would be only a few millimeters tall and my hands would be so tiny that I wouldn’t be able to type on a keyboard (I would, in fact, fall between the spaces in the keys and have to live off all the food crumbs found there).

  The air is now full of tree pollen and nearly all of it is wasted since very little makes it to the intended destination. Those that find their mark – being a female flower of the right species –immediately sprout a tubule which penetrates to the ovary and delivers the precious cargo. Those that are wasted end up in places such as your nose where they initiate sneezing. All maple pollen is allergenic to humans and some folks are allergic to alder pollen.

  If you are they type that gets seasonal allergies, you likely have been keenly aware that the trees have been flowering for some time. Perhaps this essay will give you something to look for in the Kleenex next time you blow your nose. For those of you who don’t feel the effects of tree dust, it’s time to stop and look up at our largest wildflowers and take in a deep breath of spring.