northeast-flora-and-fauna

After my 1st persistent [1] snowfall of the season I figured I'd show something warm today. Perhaps the spirit of Muhammad Ali was out there, since some of the meadow denizens could float like a butterfly and others could sting like a bee. This little lady stings exactly like a bee, since she's a Western Honeybee , and was busy with a goldenrod. She does not sting much like Muhammad Ali in one way though, since she dies after stinging. October 6, 2022 at Duke Farms Photo 249884608, (c) jpviolette, some rights reserved (CC BY-NC) This next denizen isn't a kamikaze stinger; it's a Dark Paper Wasp . Assuming this is a female, she can (like many bees/wasps) sting without dying herself. She's also foraging on a goldenrod. October 6, 2022 at Duke Farms Photo 249884670, (c) jpviolette, some rights reserved (CC BY-NC) And finally, who floats like a butterfly better than a Monarch butterfly? (I suppose other butterfly species might argue they float even better, but Monarch

Here's another photogenic bird of prey, an Osprey . I've seen them before at Duke Farms and elsewhere , though AFAIK they don't breed in this exact area. My recollection is that this Osprey was up a tree overlooking one of the Duke Farms lakes. My guess is that the Osprey was in the process of migrating south for the winter - the picture is from last October - but stopped here to rest and do some fishing. Placing Ospreys within the taxonomy of birds is difficult. It's the only living species in its genus and family. Its closest relatives are believed to be hawks and eagles, but it seems unlikely it'll ever to reclassified as either. Are Ospreys seahawks? When people aren't talking about seahawks other than the Seattle Seahawks, Ospreys are a candidate for the bird they're talking about, but seahawk doesn't really refer to any particular species of bird. October 7, 2022 at Duke Farms Photo 249884878, (c) jpviolette, some rights reserved (CC BY-NC)

Here's a Great Blue Heron I saw at Duke's Brook last autumn. I had been seeing a heron there over a span of a couple of weeks, and I'm assuming this was a favored fishing spot for a particular heron, though I have to admit I could have been seeing 2 or more different herons. In any event, this particular Great Blue Heron got what it came for, fish for a meal. Though the fish is sideways in the heron's beak, the heron will need to toss or otherwise reposition the fish so that it can be swallowed headfirst. I suspect that occasionally they'll botch the toss and the fish escapes, but herons do this sort of thing for a living and no doubt get pretty good at it. October 7, 2022 at Duke Farms Photo 249884838, (c) jpviolette, some rights reserved (CC BY-NC)

Here's a native wildflower I don't see very often, a Blue Mistflower . Architecturally it looks a bit like a White Snakeroot ; they have clusters of small hairy flowerheads and similar leaves but with light purple flowers. The hairiness of the flowers gives it an unclear look that someone thought was like looking through mist, inspiring the mistflower name.  Similar to White Snakeroot and the Joe-Pye Weeds , Blue Mistflower has also been reclassified out of the boneset/thoroughwort genus . That genus used to have over 800 species but is now down to at most 60; that's a lot of reclassifications. October 6, 2022 at Duke Farms Photo 249884740, (c) jpviolette, some rights reserved (CC BY-NC)

For Throwback Thursday here's a Cooper's Hawk from July of 2019. The hawk was trying to enjoy breakfast (which almost certainly consisted of one of our songbirds) when my camera and I interrupted it. My recollection is that this was the season when I had a pair of Cooper's Hawks nesting near my apartment complex [1]. Cooper's Hawks were called "chicken hawks" in the past, but they only weigh about a pound and are probably too small to tackle adult chickens. Chicks are probably a different story. Cooper's Hawks are somewhat unpopular with people maintaining bird feeders since they (and their smaller Sharp-shinned Hawk cousins) specialize in preying on small birds. I've heard though that these hawks aren't especially successful hunting around bird feeders though since the bird feeders have so many birds looking out for predators. (Foraging alone is probably more dangerous for passerines, doves/pigeons, and woodpeckers, which is why you frequently s

Here's a picture of a European Starling from last autumn. These are generally the birds of murmuration fame [1]. In the picture this starling is in its winter (non-breeding) plumage. This consists of dark but speckled feathering; in breeding plumage they lose the speckles but gain a shiny look like this pair . Although we're used to many birds having breeding and non-breeding plumage, some birds like our European Starlings also change their beak color durinng the year. In warmer weather their beaks are a light yellowish color but in winter it becomes essentially black. It's possible that the black beak, containing beak-strengthening melanin , may help them crunch hard seeds during the winter. (In the summer they preferentially eat softer invertebrates.) Depending on the angle, their beaks can look fairly long. If someone who's not very bird-knowledgeable tells you they have a "black woodpecker" in their yard, they might really be seeing a starling [2]. Octob

Here's a White Snakeroot from last autumn. At least I'm pretty sure it's a White Snakeroot; it has a few similar-looking relatives in the area: The flowers are white, unlike the pink/purple Joe-Pye weeds  or the blue mistflowers . None of the leaves are lance-shaped like most of the bonesets/thoroughworts . I think if this was a Smaller White Snakeroot (AKA Lesser Snakeroot or Small-leaved White Snakeroot), the leaf stems would be shorter and the plant would look a bit sparser.  As I alluded to in this post , busy botanists have been reclassifying this plant and its relatives. Back in the naive 1970s the bonesets/thoroughworts, snakeroots, Joe-Pye weeds, and mistflowers were all one happy genus, but sometime over the last half century each has gotten its own genus (though there's no denying that all these plants are fairly closely related). White Snakeroot has a dark side. It's poisonous, and if cows or goats eat it, the poison gets into their milk, potentially ca

Here's a Gray Hairstreak butterfly, a species I'll usually see 2-4 times a year. They're not considered rare, but there are lots of easier-to-find butterflies. They do cover a lot of territory and are considered the most widespread American hairstreak and can be found in all the lower 48 states, most of Mexico, and parts of southern Canada. As you'd expect with such a widespread butterfly, they're not picky eaters. They use many legumes and mallows  as host plants, sometimes putting them at odds with farmers.  The Gray Hairstreak doesn't have a lot of relatives around here; most of their relatives prefer gulf states down to the tropics. They're the oddballs of their genus, handling colder temperatures that most of their close relatives want no part of. They can overwinter in their chrysalis depending on how cold the winter is; in the northern part of their range they probably die in the winter and repopulate when warmer weather returns. I'm not sure wh

No, this isn't a post about the threat of zombie squirrels; it's just a regular old Eastern Gray Squirrel eating an Osage Orange (nicknamed "monkey brains"). My understanding is that squirrels will poke around in the (sticky, messy) Osage Orange fruit, eating the seeds while discarding the latexy flesh of the fruit. (There seems to be some Osage Orange debris on the ground near the squirrel.) I don't actually witness this very often though, perhaps because I'm not around Osage Orange trees most of the time. September 27, 2022 at Duke Farms Photo 248785674, (c) jpviolette, some rights reserved (CC BY-NC)

While most of us would be pretty uncomfortable eating upside down, this American Goldfinch considers it to be just a routine maneuver to get a meal. Being able to maneuver through a thick patch of wildflowers is easier if you're open to creative positioning. (Being small helps too.) A male American Goldfinch in breeding plumage has a shockingly bright yellow appearance. To get such a bright yellow look, they've got a secret: their feathers are yellow at the ends but white closer to the body. This means that any sunlight that gets through the yellow feathering tends to reflect back out again. The book What It's Like to Be a Bird by Sibley describes it as "the feathers of a goldfinch essentially form a translucent yellow film with backlighting". September 29, 2022 at Duke Farms Photo 248786468, (c) jpviolette, some rights reserved (CC BY-NC)

A little like Martians or Vikings, these Purple Loosestrife flowers are invaders, natives of Eurasia that can cause trouble here in North America. Though I don't see them overwhelming an environment the way some plants do, they can crowd out our cattails and take over sedge meadows . The following is from the book Who Named the Daisy? Who Named the Rose by Mary Durant: Loosestrife, according to Pliny, was named for Lysimachus, a crony of Alexander the Great and a general in his army. Lysimachus means loosestrife, from the Greek, lysis , loosing, and mache , strife - a curious name for a general, whose favorite stamping ground was the battle field and who died happy, sword in hand. But Lysimachus was credited with discovering the powers of the plant; hence the use of his name. As Pliny explained it, if loosestrife were placed on the yoke "when the beasts of burden are quarrelsome, it checks their bad temper." Pliny added that the smell of loosestrife also kept snakes aw

It's Throwback Thursday, so let's talk about something I saw 4 years ago. (Some of you might be familiar with this story already.) A few years ago while wandering through a patch of woods trying to walk off my lunch, I encountered a hawk version of mixed martial arts. Initially I had heard a Red-tailed Hawk screaming [1] overhead, which I considered a little puzzling since I'd expect the noise to be advertising to all their potential prey to be on alert. I didn't get a visual of the hawk in flight though, and soon forgot about it. Then 15-20 minutes later, I heard a commotion in a little clearing off the trail. It turned out to be a couple of Red-tailed Hawks battling on the ground. (I don't know if the fight started in the air, though I wouldn't be surprised if it did.) Initially I couldn't tell what was going on. I saw 1 hawk that seemed to be thrashing around and I wondered if it was hurt. Looking closer it became clear that there were 2 hawks involved,

I came upon a Horse Chestnut  tree last autumn. Though their seeds have a superficial resemblance to the American Chestnut , there are lots of differences: American Chestnuts are in the same family as oaks and beeches, while Horse Chestnuts are in the same family as maples. American Chestnuts are native to much of North America; Horse Chestnuts are native to southern Europe. American Chestnuts are hard to find due to being devastated by chestnut blight; Horse Chestnuts in the US are not uncommon. While the seeds of American Chestnuts used to be a good food source for us and many other animals, Horse Chestnut seeds are poisonous to most birds/mammals. Here's the inner part of a Horse Chestnut seed. I'm assuming that wild animals know not to eat them despite them looking a bit like a cap-less acorn. I've read that these seeds are toxic when fresh but lose their toxicity when they start to germinate, and that crows and jays will sometimes bury them and then go back to eat them

Here's an Osage Orange fruit (sometimes described as "monkey brains") from last autumn. These are from smallish trees [1] native to parts of Texas but which have been introduced to other parts of the country. Having thorny branches/leaves, they were used similar to Multiflora Rose , as a "living fence". My guess is that the shrubby manifestations of Osage Orange made for a better fence than the tree manifestations. The Osage Orange is a large fruit that isn't eaten by a lot of animals today, and the main 2 that eat them around here (squirrels and deer) don't effectively spread their seeds [2]. This gives rise to speculation that seed dispersal used to be done by extinct megafauna. Other than making some logical sense, there's not really good evidence of an ecological connection between Osage Oranges and extinct megafauna. September 27, 2022 at Duke Farms Photo 248785697, (c) jpviolette, some rights reserved (CC BY-NC) [1] There's a bit of a fuz

Leaves of three, let it be. Hairy rope, don't be a dope. || Hairy vine, no friend of mine. Berries of white, run in fright. || Berries of white, danger in sight. This Eastern Poison Ivy plant does an excellent job of demonstrating plant's hairy vine appearance. Leaves, vines, and berries of this plant all contain urushiol (YOO-roo-shee-awl), a durable chemical that usually causes an allergic reaction when it penetrates the skin. If anything, this picture illustrates the hairiness too well; I frequently see thinner vines with far subtler degrees of hairiness. We actually eat seeds of some Eastern Poison Ivy relatives: cashews , pistachios , and mangoes . They all have urushiol or a very similar skin-irritating chemical, though apparently not in the parts we eat. September 26, 2022 at Washington Valley Park Photo 248785401, (c) jpviolette, some rights reserved (CC BY-NC)

For Superb Owl Sunday , I'd be remiss if I didn't spotlight an owl, wouldn't I? Here's an owl someone pointed out to me; it's an Eastern Screech Owl sheltering in an old tree cavity. Though Eastern Screech Owls do nest in tree cavities, given this picture is from December I suspect the tree cavity was merely providing a secure place to spend the daylight hours. These guys have both songs and calls . The songs are mostly used for romance, sometimes being a trilly sound and other times sounding vaguely like a horse winny. The calls are more about territorial warnings to other owls or battle cries when defending their young; the calls can be pretty screechy. If you annoy them, they might also snap their beaks at you. They have an odd relationship with European Starlings . Though Eastern Screech Owls will prey on the starlings, European Starlings will also bully the owls out of a nesting spot. (It's possible that the ESOs will sometimes pick off a lone starling, th

I doubt most of you would consider this Red-tailed Hawk to be singing [1] if you heard it, though for all I know it could have been the hawk equivalent of a love song advertising their availability for courtship. Or maybe it's a defiant warning to other hawks that this territory is taken. The warning call may be more likely since I'm not sure Red-tails are looking for mates in September.  For most of our hawks and eagles, the females are larger than the males. It's not completely clear why that's the case. One theory is that since the males and females are different sizes, they may each be a little better at hunting certain types of prey; the larger female might be better able to handle a fully grown skunk while the smaller and more agile male might be able to catch an incautious starling. So why wouldn't the male be larger? Maybe because the female spends more time incubating the eggs, and her larger size covers the eggs better [2]. September 22, 2022 at Duke Farm

When I 1st spotted this lepidopteran (I was pretty sure it was a butterfly or moth), I wasn't sure what I was looking at because of the dark-and-pale wing pattern. It turns out that I was seeing a butterfly I see semi-regularly, a Mourning Cloak . The abdomen and wings close to it were in bright light while the rest of the butterfly was shaded. (Once I got my binoculars on it, I recognized the wing pattern easily enough, but from a distance I thought I might have stumbled upon something much stranger.) More about these butterflies is here . September 21, 2022 at the John Clyde Native Grassland Preserve Photo 248765523, (c) jpviolette, some rights reserved (CC BY-NC)

Here's another Eastern Phoebe , one of our most commonly seen tyrant flycatchers . I've talked about these birds before  but will try and augment that with information from What It's Like to Be a Bird (Sibley). These birds are tail-pumpers; you'll sometimes see them pumping their tail up and down. This is the way that phoebes tell predators "I see you. You're not sneaking up on me, and trying to attack me is just going to waste both our time/resources." (This does suggest that if you see the tail pumping, the bird's interpreting you as a predator.) Phoebes like to build nests in niches, under overhangs, and protected ledges. They are also one of the relatively few birds that reuse their nests in the same season. Most birds don't reuse nests in this way because parasites can accumulate there, but because phoebes are fairly particular about what they consider to be a good nesting location, they're probably forced to reuse nests in those good loc

Here's a Common Merganser I met late last summer. This was a slightly unusual sighting for mid-September since most Common Mergansers breed north of us during the spring/summer and then visit our area over the winter. Still, we're really not too far from the southern part of their breeding range; they're supposed to breed in northern NJ and adjacent parts of NY and PA. And it's also possible this was just an early migrator. It's a little hard to tell if this is a male or a female. When we see them over the winter, the males already have their breed plumage which consists of green feathers on the head. But in September they've usually got their non-breeding plumage where they look much more like the brown-headed females (and juveniles). When the males have their green plumage, the green manifests itself in 2 ways that combine blue and yellow: The yellow coloring comes from pigmentation. If you pulverize the feathers, you'll see a powdery yellow. The blue col

Here are a couple of  Eastern Gray Squirrels ready for action, all set to jump or scamper depending on what I do. Although they don't necessarily stay in poses like these for long, squirrels are frequently found in poses resembling superheroes . Another interesting thing about Eastern Gray Squirrels is that they're not necessarily gray. In fact, a little south of me the Princeton campus is known for its melanistic squirrels , basically Eastern Gray Squirrels with black coloring. It's possible that black squirrels have a slight camouflage advantage in coniferous forests which tend to be darker than deciduous forests, and it's possible they have a slight thermoregulation advantage where it's very cold. It's less clear why they seem to have carved out a home in Princeton. While they're too common to get excited about from a naturalist perspective, squirrels can be entertaining to watch. January 6, 2022 at Duke Farms Photo 176178635, (c) jpviolette, some right

Last week I got an ID for one of my older pictures, this one is a species of long-legged flies in the complex Condylostylus sipho . If you like shiny things, these flies fill the bill. A complex is a term used when there are 2 or more very similar and closely related species that are extremely difficult to differentiate. In this case there are considered to be 6 species in this complex, and they're all fairly small, metallic-green flies. None of the species has a common name, though the family, dolichopodidae , are referred to as Long-legged Flies [1]. Though other flies like mosquitoes have long legs, mosquitoes are in a different family. While the Long-legged Flies are considered predatory, their choice of prey is to feed off various invertebrates (including in some cases mosquito larvae). The lesson: Not all flies with long legs are going to bother you. June 5, 2019 at Murray Hill Photo 44124004, (c) jpviolette, some rights reserved (CC BY-NC) [1] Note that there are lots of o

Here's a Northern Mockingbird taking in the scenery from a low perch. I've talked about their mimicry and eating habits in prior posts, which suggests I see/hear them a lot. Today I'm going to write this stealing information from a book I borrowed from the library: What It's Like to Be a Bird - Sibley. Apparently mockingbirds will "attack" people, at least if you define an attack as "making a lot of noise and flying towards you only to veer off before getting to you". I've personally been attacked like this by Red-winged Blackbirds , Tree Swallows , and even an American Robin , but never by a mockingbird [1]. In virtually every 1 of these situations the attacking birds were trying to harass me into leaving an area, almost certainly because they perceived a threat to their nest or a fledgling. One foraging tactic they (and some other birds) use to find food is " wing flashing ". Here's the way it works. The bird lands someplace t

Here's a species of March Fly that's been identified as  Dilophus spinipes , a species without a common name. (They probably consider themselves "uncommonly good flies" for this reason.) Though there are significantly smaller flies, these guys are on the small side. I'm pretty sure those are goldenrods that the fly's on, and the goldenrod flowers are pretty small. These flies are somewhat noticeable because: Their black-and-red coloring stands out pretty well on the yellow goldenrod flowers. There tend to be a bunch of them around. It's easy to overlook 1 tiny, weird thing on a goldenrod patch; it's harder to overlook a dozen or more. Though they're considered March Flies, a group that tends to be spotted in (unsurprisingly) March, some species (including this one) can be found during other parts of the warmer months. This one was photographed in September. Some March Flies don't eat as adults while others are pollinators as adults; based on t

Let's combine Groundhog Day and Throwback Thursday with one of my more interesting Groundhog (aka Woodchuck [1]) pictures. When working at Alcatel-Lucent (later bought by Nokia) I would go for a walk outside after lunch. One day I spotted this Groundhog attempting to hide under a bench. I'm used to Groundhogs seeing me and loping awkwardly away, usually to hide in thick vegetation or a hole. Presumably this Groundhog decided a nearby bench was a better refuge than a more distant thicket or hole [2]. I can imagine this little fella thinking "He'll never find me under this bench!". June 7, 2018 at Murray Hill Photo 20774264, (c) jpviolette, some rights reserved (CC BY-NC) [1] I grew up calling them Woodchucks , and still do for 364 days out of the year. But on Groundhog Day I "go with the flow" and call them Groundhogs. [2] Considering I'm not a true predator, the decision turned out to be a sound one. Still, if I had been a Coyote, Bobcat, or Fisher

Here's a Variable Dancer I met late last spring. This is 1 of the few odonate species that consists of subspecies due to both geography and appearance. Since females would have black lines on her abdominal segments, I believe this to be an immature male. And given the relatively clear wings and that he was living in NJ, I suspect that when fully mature he'll turn out to be 1 of our Violet Dancers , 1 of the 3 subspecies of Variable Dancer. June 1, 2022 at the Plainsboro Preserve Photo 205020761, (c) jpviolette, some rights reserved (CC BY-NC)