Category Archives: Wildlife

Spring peepers

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pond surface in springThe first sounds heralding the arrival of spring: 1. The snarling, metallic, tiny weed-whacker sound of the beard trimmer. That’s B shaving his winter beard because it’s the vernal equinox, and like all the other creatures compelled by their DNA to respond to the seasons, he must shed his winter coat.  2. Spring peepers! This year I first heard them March 28. (Last year it was March 12.) They are “chorus frogs,” and can live in breeding groups of several hundred. Their bodies can be less than an inch long or up to about 1.5 inches. It’s only the males that make the sound (to attract their women). They hibernate under logs and leaves, and can survive being mostly frozen. Then in spring, you hear them especially in vernal ponds and other temporary wetlands. They lay their eggs in the water, and then live on land the rest of the year, feeding on insects. I’m sorry this photo is just a thawing pond with no actual frogs to look at, but here’s a video that shows some Connecticut peepers in action:

Spring Peepers (Pseudacris crucifer)

Snow blanket on the purple loosestrife

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Blizz2013river_tonemappedloosestrifemallow1Alert Flowerophile Sybil inquired about when I would start posting again. I’m thinking it will be awhile before we see any wildflowers… but here’s a comparison view: a bend in the Charles River, Dover MA at sunset after our most recent giant blizzard (Feb. 9, 2013) and how it looked back on Aug. 6, 2012.

Bonus picture: deer out foraging on that same evening, after about a day and a half when all creatures just had to hunker down and wait for the weather to ease up.

Blizz2013_deer

Grass Spider Webs

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It looked like someone had too many diamond-studded hairnets, so they had just tossed them all over the grass. Here’s one in sun and one in shade. In the sun one, you can see the sky reflected in the dew. In the shade one, you can see the dark funnel-shaped hole that the spider hides in. Evidently these webs are not sticky, so if anyone (very small) happens on to it, the spider is just very speedy zipping out to grab it. Their bite paralyzes their prey, but their chompers are too small to pierce human skin. Genus Agelenopsis.

Grass Spider

Wasp Nest

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Nestled in the spurge and poison ivy, a cozy wasp nest. There are two categories of wasps: solitary and social. The singletons don’t construct nests, and they’re all fertile. The socials live in colonies with thousands of their buddies and often only the queen and males are fertile; the rest are sterile female workers. Also, most wasp species are parasitic; i.e., they lay their eggs directly into the body of a host insect. Ew.

Great Blue Heron

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I happened to take Lucy for an early walk and lo, there was a big heron on the other side of the pond. It looked very slate blue. This is about one minute from our house… I feel lucky to live here and see this!

Great Blue Heron (Ardea herodias)

Camouflage

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Lucy and I were walking in the woods not on a trail when something cold brushed past my leg. I kept the shrieking to a minimum and saw this toad, about the size of my fist, so well camouflaged that I never would have seen it had it not tapped me on the shoulder. So to speak. Even the stripe on its back looks like a bit of grass.

Their tadpoles are very small, solid black, and reach adulthood in 30-40 days, and then become mostly terrestrial. Their skin produces a toxic chemical that discourages fish from eating them.

American Toad (Bufo Americanus)

Northern Water Snake

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Let us digress from admiring wildflowers for a moment and instead say Eww on behalf of this big snake who was basking on a rock very near the water lilies I photographed recently. An unusual sight — usually we just see garter snakes. The Northern Water Snake eats pretty much anything alive that fits in its mouth– frogs, birds, mammals. At night, it can eat fish sleeping in shallow water. It can swim on the water’s surface, or submerged. Thanks to Alert Wildlife Spotters Clara and Aaron for taking this photo. Colubridae family. Native.

Northern Water Snake (Nerodia sipedon)

Charles River Peninsula

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Here are two HDR shots by A.F. Aaron, where I was only the art director (and HDR technician). The meadow at Charles River Peninsula — a shagbark hickory at the top of the hill and lots of bedstraw, madder, milkweed, clover and cypress spurge. And a snail on the bedstraw. It’s an Oxyloma retusa, a tiny land snail with some sort of topo map on its shell.

I took a walk here that was so fascinating, new things revealing themselves… and later read a blog entry at happiness-project.com (July 13, 2012) that made a lot of sense to me: “Recently, I noticed a pattern among activities that people find fun: Go on a mission. There’s something about having a playful purpose, of trying to achieve something, that makes an activity more fun. For example, a friend told that she loved visiting flea markets and antique stores to look for old globes – not fancy ones, cheap ones. She has a rule that she’ll never pay more than $20. She’s the kind of person who loves poking around in those kinds of shops in any case, but having a mission makes it more fun, less aimless….. Taking photos is a common way to incorporate a mission into traveling. Not only does this help keep memories vivid, it also makes you more attuned to your environment while traveling.” Anyway. It’s funny how this project has transformed my perception of our walks — What will I find?!