Nature

Eric Writes: Greetings from Chiricahua National Monument, For six days, in the last couple week, I conducted bird surveys in San Bernardino NWR with a team from Fish and Wildlife. San Bernardino is east of Douglas, AZ directly on the border of Mexico. It was the pilot year for the surveys so none had ever been conducted. Our first day was spent training; which involved teaching everyone the protocol and the birds. Through the rest of the time we worked in teams to conduct the bird suveys. The border fence at San Bernardino NWR The refuge is open to the public but only to walk-in traffic, so our ability to drive through the refuge certainly helped us learn the birds and lay of the land. If you have to walk in, it is over a mile to get to the good riparian areas that are full of birds. There are also many small, man-made, marshes scattered throughout the refuge that support many bird species that are uncommon throughout the region. Tropical Kingbirds, Green Herons, and many other marsh birds use all of these small ponds. The RV we were able to stay in while working at San Bernardino. Many Scaled Quail, Lesser Nighthawks, Eastern Meadowlarks, and Say's Phoebe were around Many birders don't bird on the refuge because of the lack of access; instead they bird at Slaughter Ranch on the southeast corner of the refuge. A few years back, Slaughter Ranch hosted two Blue Mockingbirds; which gives birders lots of hope when birding the area. Some of the other avian highlights included daily Gray Hawks, Zone-tailed Hawk, Varied Bunting, Crissal Thrasher, Greater Pewee (as a migrant), and many Yellow-breasted Chats and Bell's Vireos. The non avian highlights included a Regal Horned Lizard, a Coachwhip snake, and the endangered San Bernardino Springsnail. The Regal Horned Lizard; it was awesome to hold this guy!

A small selection of the wonderful colours of spring found on a variety of local plants. Blackthorn in flowerSnake's head FritillaryChestnut candlesCowslipLords and LadiesWall PennywortSycamoreBluebells

The website "The Birdist" has a great piece on the 50 official state birds and what they think would be more appropriate. It's a funny piece that I recommend you check out: State Birds: What They SHOULD Be

With 2013 recording one of the coldest springs for 50 odd years, our British Butterflies have suffered a further set-back. Many have been late to emerge and our rarer species are now on the wing anything up to several weeks … Continue reading →

The family Mymaridae includes more than 1,400 species of diminutive insects called fairyflies. They are not flies at all, but tiny wasps that deposit their eggs inside the eggs of other insects. Most of these parasitoids are found in tropical latitudes and the southern hemisphere, where they attack unborn offspring of true bugs, beetles, flies, [...]

Gray Catbird at the Dining window.. Not this window… This is our bedroom window.. We are parked close to a large Rhododendron bush. Because of our proximity and our reflective windows we tend to get birds tapping at our window and acting territorial. This particular catbird has been hanging out ever since we arrived in my parents driveway. It was probably here first. It sits on the shrub right outside of my dining window and stares at its reflection.. It sometimes taps at its reflection. I am not sure if its being territorial or if its trying to attract a mate. It has been pecking at the Rhodo buds.. Notice below..no more flowers! I like to think it was pecking one off to bring to its reflection.. Probably not. Do any of you have ideas as to why it is pecking at the flowers? I don’t even know if this is a male. I do hope it doesn’t peck all of the flowers off the Rhodo bush.. My mother wouldn’t appreciate that.. As it is Homey covers the whole Rhododendron bush and she cant see it unless she comes to visit. Guess she needs to come over for tea soon to visit her flowers.   Watch the video below to see the Catbird pecking at the flowers… What do you think its doing?   Oh. Look who I found! Poor Waldo was lost…I found him in the crack of the seat of our car. He is happy to be back in Homey!

Great Rhododendrons (Rhododendron maximum) grow wild in scattered colonies across New York and New England as far as southwestern Maine, but it's found primarily in the Appalachians from Pennsylvania to northern Georgia. Beyond that it has been widely planted as an ornamental. Wherever there is sufficient moisture, these evergreen members of the heath family can form dense thickets generally reaching a height of 13 feet, but old bushes are capable of growing to a height of 30 or even 40 feet and a crown diameter of 12 feet, essentially becoming small trees. The main requirement is acidic soil with a high organic content. The concave leaves are long and leathery and curve down to smooth edges that may curl under during dry or cold weather. Most of the leaves are clustered in whorls around the end of twigs and surround the showy, rose-pink to purple, sometimes white, flower clusters that open between March and August, depending on the local climate. Our ornamental version opens in late May here in the northern Finger Lakes region.In the wild, rhododendron is an understory plant and does well in the shade of taller trees. Combine that factor with the shrub's dense, evergreen foliage and you can understand why it's difficult for smaller plants and wildflowers to grow underneath rhododendrons. This species has a number of alternate common names including Late or Summer Rhododendron, Great, Bigleaf or Deertongue Laurel and Rosebay. It's the state flower of West Virginia. The name Mountain Laurel is reserved for its smaller relative, Kalmia latifolia. Corrections, comments and questions are always welcome at northeastnaturalist@yahoo.com or connect through my Facebook page and photo page. There's also a community-type page for The Northeast Naturalist. Other nature and geology topics can be found on the parallel blogs Adirondack Naturalist and Heading Out.

Running. Running every moment, trying to keep up with the gardens and the lawn, to plant what needs to be planted exactly when it needs to be planted; to avoid having things die. I can't sit down. Something might die. When I'm not planting and mowing and weeding, I'm on the road, always unloading from the last trip and packing for the next. I got in at 11:30 pm last night from a speaking engagement two and a half hours away in Pike County, Ohio. Showed them a good time, met some truly lovely people, had a beer and an impossibly tough ribeye at a roadhouse and hit the road again. Manager gave me $10 off and a bag of peanuts for the road, probably because I was nice about it. It all tasted wonderful. Just a textural thing. I turned around and gave it to the waitress. Not their fault somebody ran that poor steer ragged.Good thing I enjoy seeing new scenery, new skyscapes, meeting new people, because there's a lot of that going on this spring. Watching the light play on the road, that does it for me.I've finally unloaded the greenhouse, emptied that sucker all the way out, only to load it up again with tender things just now, because they're calling for upper 30's tonight. I believe it. This morning I shivered in 45 degrees. Walked out the door in a tank top and shorts, turned on my heel and got out the long pants and sleeves again. 45/37 on May 24? Really? I'll have to pile straw on the tomatoes and peppers tonight. It's a familiar drill. I covered and uncovered the peas almost daily through late April and mid-May.The good news is that the sugar snap peas I so boldly planted in mid-April almost all survived multiple mid-20's freezes, and they're a yard tall and blooming now. This cold snap won't faze them. That was an experiment that succeeded. I've never had yard-tall peas bloom in May before. Whee!I continue to run every morning, my 2.8 mile route, and I've been taking a small pair of compact binoculars with me so I can watch the yellow-breasted chats do their flight displays; see the last few migrating warblers slip through the leaves. It's enhanced my experience immensely. As much as I love to run unencumbered, some encumbrances are worth it. I'm looking for a nice pair of compacts now that I've thoroughly spoiled myself for naked-eye birding.This landscape continues to bewitch me, as the haymeadows grow up and new flowers open each day and new birds set up and shuffle territories. I never tire of this road, this sky, these sounds and scents, never tire of watching everything change hour by hour, day by day.Chet is always by my side, unless he's routing a deer, a squirtle, or that new stray cat we keep seeing. A dog has his work to do. At eight, he's still solid muscle. No flab on him!It's a bittersweet time for me. This morning, I bade goodbye to Clarence, who drives the bus Liam and Phoebe used to ride. Each morning, we had 20 minutes to chat (well, chat doesn't really encompass it) as he waited by the little cemetery I frequent until it was time for him to pick up the kids who live at the end of my road. I'd had a nodding, joking acquaintance with Clarence for several years, but when we had regular time for conversation, it got interesting fast. This ex-Marine was a jungle sniper in Viet Nam, able to go into the forest with nothing but his gun, ammunition and water purifying tablets, and emerge six weeks later, having not only survived it, but done a job too dark to tell. Clarence has stories, and I listened, usually only speaking to ask another question. He's one of the most fascinating people I've met, and I treasured those minutes. It's probably my writer's ear and the fact that I just like him that made me want to hear Clarence out. He often complained that I knew everything about him, but he knew nothing about me. I'd laugh then, and tell him he doesn't need to know about me. Nothing to know anyway. Compared to him, I'm nothing; I've never suffered real privation or had to do anything terrible. I'm like a sapling. He

Red-banded egret photo by Cindy Margulis Herons and egrets are common visitors to our two rehabilitation centers in California. Each year, we receive adult birds that have various injuries or illnesses, but it’s the baby herons and egrets of the summer that make the biggest impact. The species that we typically receive, in order of abundance, are Black-crowned Night Herons, Snowy Egrets, Green Herons, Great Egrets, Great Blue Herons, Cattle Egrets, American Bitterns and Least Bitterns. With the exception of bitterns, all of these birds nest in tree and bush colonies called rookeries. Each nest typically contains two to three eggs, and once the babies hatch, they begin to eat and grow quickly. Unlike many other bird species whose babies remain in the nest until they are at least flighted, baby herons become “branchers” as early as one week of age. This means that they begin to climb early on with their gangly legs, hanging out on the branches around the nest site. High winds, fights with their neighbors and sibling domination causes some of them fall. This is where we come in. In wild areas, the fallen babies either die, climb back up to the rookery or become food for predators. But in urban areas, they are often found by the public, and the live ones are brought to us for care and raising. In 2012 alone, our Northern California facility received 286 herons and egrets, while our Southern California center received 94. Raising baby herons is not difficult, as they are great eaters and social birds. But many of them sustain injuries during their fall. These birds require more intensive care, medications, and sometimes surgery and cage time. We have also seen vitamin deficiencies in the Snowy Egret chicks, but we have yet discover the reason for this problem. Baby Snowy Egrets, May 2013. Photo by Bill Steinkamp. All of our herons and egrets are federally banded upon release. About five years ago, we began putting an additional small, non-numbered red plastic band on the opposite leg of all hand-raised Snowy Egrets so that we could identify them in the wild. In 2012, we added white numbers to these red bands for the egrets, much like we do with our Blue-Banded Pelican program. This way we can actually trace any identified bird back to its origin. A few of the original red plastic-banded birds without numbers, as well as federally banded birds, are being reported every year nesting and raising young at the egret colony in Alameda, CA, located in the East Bay. We have also received reports of three red-banded Snowy Egrets with numbered bands since their release last summer: —1076-68351 red band (A51): Released 7/14/12 in Oakland, CA and sighted on 9/10/12 at the Don Edwards SF Bay NWL refuge, Lariviere Marsh in Freemont, CA —1076-68308 red band (A08): Released 6/23/12 in Oakland and sighted on 12/16/12 in San Jose, CA —1076-68331 red band (A31): Released 7/5/12 in Cordelia, CA and sighted on 1/6/13 in Davis, CA —Unidentified red band with white numbers at top of egret colony on 5/13/2013 in Alameda (shown in photo above) This is encouraging news, and we will continue to band these birds. Future plans are to color mark the Black-crowned Night Herons.

Birds & Blooms’ Friday Fun Photo for May 24, 2013: Swan and Cygnets by Raymond McDonald of Canton, Michigan. Raymond writes, “On the way home, in a storm, I noticed something I’d never seen before: a female swan carrying three cygnets on her back across the deep water. I quickly parked my car, threw a towel over my head and tried for a photograph. I got extremely wet, but I feel the picture is worth it.” So do we! It’s clear, well cropped and composed, and the rain in the cygnet’s head feathers adds so much fun! Do you have a clever caption for what these rainy day babies might be thinking? We’d love to hear it!