Outdoors in August 2022

Tobacco barn

“Keep calm because August is here.” – Unknown

This may be remembered as the year of drought and oppressive heat. Trees and shrubs are showing signs of stress in parts of the state that missed isolated rainfall events, and many fern species in shaded woods have turned brown. Animals are having a full-time job looking for water and birds are at my bird baths all day long getting a drink. Even though it has been a dismal year weather-wise, there are still a lot of interesting things to see when we are out and about.

Common buckeye butterfly on a wild Rudbeckia flower

The native trailing wild bean, Strophostyles helvola, may be common but easily overlooked as populations can be sparse in their habitat. Flowers are pink and the lower keel has a dark purple projection that curls upward like the raised trunk of an elephant. Leaflets are in threes, with bluntly lobed leaves.

Groundnut, Apias americana is another native pea family vine that blooms in August. The flowers of this plant are clustered and very fragrant and they are visited by many of the smaller native bees that can climb inside.

Groundnut flower cluster

In a field with mowed paths I recently observed a good number of the non- native wool carder bees on the flowers of birdsfoot trefoil. This plant is also member of the pea family and has yellow, puffy, slipper-like flowers.

Wool carder bee with head inside birdsfoot trefoil flower

This same field had thousands of grasshoppers that took flight as I walked along the path. Most seemed to be what I have nicknamed the ‘plus and minus” grasshopper, for the tiny patterns on the wings. There was also a seed bug on Queen Anne’s lace that had interesting vein patterns on its wing tips.

Wing tip vein patterns on seed bug

A little eft of the red spotted newt put in an appearance in a golf course fairway a couple of days after a heavy rain, as is their habit. They come out of the woods looking for food, seem to lose their way getting back to the safety of leaf litter and often need a rescue from mowers.

Eft returned to the safety of the woods

Katydids are another late summer insect that may be heard rather than seen. Their loud rasping ‘night music’ begins in late July and is joined by crickets by August.  

 Common true katydid

This morning I was out just before sunup and heard odd noises on the siding of the garage. I saw two dark forms moving up the siding and needed a flashlight to discover that they were gray tree frogs. Must have been some insects there they were hunting, I guess.

Gray tree frog climbing up the house

Tobacco is being harvested and hung in barns now. Any barn is something of interest to me, and tobacco barns in use are just one type I like. Any barn with a flag, too, for some reason. I am also a fan of playful or interestingly creative farm signs.

Something bad must have happened

I am hoping we come to the end of this drought in time for water supplies and plants to recover before winter. Just saw a monarch laying an egg on milkweed that hadn’t succumbed to aphid damage or drought, so that is something good. As you travel about outdoors, at any time of year, do not forget to look up. You may miss something…

Pamm Cooper

 

May Flowers and Other Things

Tulip tree in flower

 

“ The first day of spring is one thing, and the first spring day is another. The difference between them is sometimes as great as a month.”

• Henry Van Dyke, Fisherman’s Luck

 

The first day of spring was in March and I feel like we have been gypped so far in 2019. The expected arrival of warm weather, or just sunny days for that matter, has not come upon us yet. The almost daily rains of April and May so make Seattle look dry by comparison. But enough griping about the weather. May is here and with it come the birds, flowers and butterflies that winter had kept at bay.

Eastern redbud trees flower in early May

Pinxter Azalea, Rhododendron periclymenoides, is a native rhododendron that has tubular pink and white fragrant flowers that appear just before the leaves expand. It is found in moist soils along stream or pond banks. Pinxters sometimes have a juicy, sweet “apple” gall formed by the fungus  Exobasidium vaccinaii.

Pinxter azalea flowers

Pinxter apple is really a gall

Native tulip trees, Liriodendron tulipifera,  bloom in May, and when they do, it is apparent how they received their common name. Yellow and orange flowers resemble tulips, standing upright among the flat-tipped leaves. This tree is sometimes called yellow poplar and is one of the largest trees in North America, sometimes reaching a height of over ninety feet.

Some native wildflowers are putting in their appearance now. One of my favorites is the diminutive gaywings or fringed polygala-Polygala paucifolia. Usually no taller than 6 inches, these plants may go unnoticed along woodland edges or peeking up out of needles lying under white pines in open woods. The magenta flowers have three petals, one of which is keeled and ends in a pink fringe.

Fringed polygala

Solomons’s seal is a native wildflower that is a good choice for use in woodland gardens. Its dangling white flowers along graceful, arching stems produce blue- black berries later in the fall. Hummingbirds will visit the fragrant, sweet smelling flowers. Geranium maculatum is another native wildflower that can be used in shade gardens.

Variegated Solomon’s seal

Swallowtail and other butterflies are seen regularly now that temperatures (rising at a glacial pace!) have warmed up and plants have leafed out. Painted ladies and red admirals have arrived from their southern wintering areas, and other butterflies should eclose from their chrysalises as the weather warms up. The gray hairstreak, one of the first hairstreaks besides the spring azure to make its appearance in May, should be out in warmer areas of Connecticut.

Gray hairstreak butterfly in May

Migrating birds have been a little slow to return, but thrushes, Orioles, tanagers and veerys arrived at their usual time when oaks are in flower. Warblers are pushing through on their way to their northern breeding grounds. Magnolia warblers arrive as crabapples are blooming and may linger around until it warms up. Listen for bird songs of warblers on Cornell’s allaboutbirds.org website, and then see if you can spot them with a pair of trusty binoculars.

Wilson’s warbler passing through on its journey north

Green tree frogs have been trilling during the day and turtles may be seen as they begin to look for mates and afterward for suitable nesting sites. Efts and salamanders may be seen on rainy days, or on sunny days following rains, and box turtles often are seen as they cross roads during or after rainy days. Things always perk up a little for me I see my first eft of the red-spotted newt out and about, usually in mid-May.

Eft form of the red-spotted newt

 

Of course, spring is not always a jolly time for gardeners. Lily leaf beetles, rose slug sawflies, asparagus beetles and gypsy moth caterpillars are here and carrying on with their plant damaging specialties. Check plants regularly to stop some of these pests in their tracks.

The harbinger of doom for true lilies and fritillarias- the lily leaf beetle

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But it is May. And May is not, by nature, a limpid herald of doom, but rather a forerunner of the warm, sunny days to come. Cheer up, little buttercup! The best is yet to come.

Pamm Cooper

 

wild columbine and wild geraniums by a country roadside

 

Outdoors in September

“By all these lovely tokens September days are here, with summer’s best of weather and autumn’s  best of cheer”

Helen Hunt Jackson

September is here with its splashes of goldenrods, Joe-pye and other late summer flower. Butterflies that migrate are having their last hurrah and late season caterpillars are ready to pupate. Fruit trees are loaded down with apples, and the air in the early morning may be scented by ripe wild grapes. This is a great time of year, still green, but showing signs of the autumn that will soon arrive.  Getting outside now has its own sets of rewards.

Spider web on a foggy September morning

 

While moving rocks in a landscape, one had a small mud like structure stuck to the underside. This was the work of the female Eumenes fraternus potter wasps construct mud brood  that look like miniature jugs. After an egg is laid inside with a good supply of caterpillars or beetle larvae to feed the larva when it hatches, the female seals the hole. Since the female potter wasps do not defend their nest, you can check inside to see the food stores/larva or pupa.

Potter wasp nest cell attached to a rock

Wildflowers in bloom now include cardinal flower, turtlehead and closed gentians, all of which can be found in damp soils, especially along banks of ponds and streams. They can be found under shrubs or among other plants growing in wet areas. Cardinal flowers are a good plant to stake out for the hummingbirds that love their nectar. Bumblebees can be seen squeezing their way into to the gentian and turtlehead flowers that most other bees do not have the muscle to get inside.

turtlehead along a pond bank

There are spectacular late season caterpillars, like sphinx and tussocks. Also the aptly named asteroid, which feeds on both aster and goldenrod flowers and flower buds.

Northern pine sphinx caterpillar

The asteroid

I had to rescue an eft of the red spotted newt the other day. They sometimes come out of the woods after rainy days in warm weather, and this little fellow had come a few hundred yards away from the nearest wood line and was in the middle of a fairway being mowed. Disaster was averted, and the eft was brought to a wooded area near a vernal pool.

eft of the red- spotted newt

I returned to an area of woods off a hiking trail that has a number of nodding trillium, Trillium cernuum.  They now have the brilliant red berry that contains seeds, but you have to lift up the large leaves in order to them. This is one of my favorite trilliums, mostly because it is hard to find, and then the flowers are a reward for those who peek under the leaves to find them.

nodding trillium berry

 

This summer has been warm and droughty after a fairly wet May and June, and even part of July. There has been flooding after the numerous rains where soils are heavy and do not drain well. Then days in the 90’s coupled with poor surface drainage caused turf grasses to die. Even grasses in a light soil may have had shallow roots going into the hot, dry spell, and some of that turf may have bought the farm as well. Yesterday we had only an inch and a half of rain, and yet flooding still occurred where soils were hard from drought conditions. Like Roseanne Roseannadanna used to say- “It‘s always something!”.

flooding after a rain

I will not especially miss this summer, with its extended heat and awful humidity. I intend to enjoy the cooler weather and especially the cooler nights. And may I never complain about the winter again. Like that will actually happen…

 

Pamm Cooper

you never know what you may find…

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Giving Mother Nature a ‘ Helping Hand ‘

If you can’t be in awe of Mother Nature, there’s something wrong with you.

• Alex Trebek

Cecropia moth made it to maturity from caterpillar raised in a sleeve

Sometimes, in the course of our lifetime, we may find ourselves in the right place at the right time to make a difference in the life of some living thing. Maybe it is just the simple act of putting a nestling bird back in the nest from which it has fallen. Or we may be able to transplant a native plant to a safe location just a few feet away from the reach of a roadside sickle bar. Once I had to scoop up with a towel a baby fox that had fallen asleep in a dangerous place on the golf course and put it back with its brothers (or sisters!) who had chosen their resting place wisely. While it may not always be a good thing to interfere, sometimes it may be the best thing.

Box turtle was helped across busy road

Where I work, we often have a surprise when mowing early in the morning. This year when I was mowing a green with lights on just before sun-up, I noticed something that I thought was an earthworm moving in the path of the mower. At the last second before running it over, the creature starting running on little legs and I stopped in the nick of time. It was a tiny salamander. I put it in a plastic cup with a lid I always have with me and later on I put the little guy in the woods near a vernal pool.

tiny salamander saved from a mower

In a similar way, the eft form of red-spotted newts often end up on greens or fairways the day after a rain. Being so small, they are often unable to make it back to the woods where they belong. So placement in a plastic cup keeps it safe until the opportunity comes to set the little eft on the forest floor. Like Shakespeare wrote- ‘all’s well that ends well’.

Eft form of the red-spotted newt

Our giant silkworm moth caterpillars have a high percentage that are killed by introduced parasites meant to control the gypsy moth caterpillars. When I find young silkworm moth caterpillars in the wild, I like to raise them so prevent parasitism. When they form cocoons, I take them back from whence they came. Cocoons can be attached to twigs of the host plant with a bread tie or put in leaf litter below.

First instar cecropia caterpillars found on alder and raised in captivity safe from introduced parasitic wasps

Turtles often are the recipients of human kindness, especially when they attempt to cross roads. Box turtles are frequently seen crossing roads the day after a summer rain, and many have been helped across by kind people. Some turtles travel great distances to lay their eggs and encounter similar hazards. Once we found three spotted turtle eggs while renovating a bunker. Carefully marking them to keep them right-side up, they were transferred to an aquarium and placed under sand. Within two months they hatched and were released on the banks of the pond where the eggs where originally laid. If it were possible for turtles to leap for joy, they would have.

Spotted turtle hatched from egg just before release

Another spotted turtle removed from harm’s way

If a baby bird is found on the ground, it is important to note whether it is a nestling, which has fallen from the nest prematurely, or a fledgling, which should be out of the nest. The cedar waxwing shown below was a fledgling found on the ground on a cart path. It was moved out of harm’s way to a low branch nearby where the parents easily found it. Unlike many other animals, parents will still feed and care for baby birds even after human handling.

Cedar waxwing fledgling moved from a cart path to a low branch

There are walking sticks I find every year on certain plants on a particular power line right- of- way. A lot of tree and shrubs were marked to be cut down to clear the lines including a small clump of filbert and viburnum that are the host plants for these insects. I wanted to try to save a few before the chain saws arrived, so I took my beating sheet and was able to find several tiny walking sticks that probably had hatched that week. They were raised that summer until work along the lines was complete. Since the host plants were left standing, the walking sticks were returned.

Power line right-of-way after drastic tree removal. Walking stick host plants escaped the saw

Walking stick just hatched removed from power line area, raised and released back after tree removal work finished

This year we had an interesting incident involving honey bees. Since it was late in the year and many flowers were no longer available, honey bees were very busy on black and blue salvia in a large planter outside the clubhouse. The problem was, someone had fallen into and smashed the salvia and it had to be removed. Our gardener noticed that over fifty honey bees were still swarming around where the plant had been, and they were even trying to get nectar from the petals remaining on the ground. Since a planting nearby along a stone wall also had the same salvia, we took small branches with the flowers and held them over the ground where the bees were. The bees immediately went for the flowers on the stalks and stayed there, or flew with them to the front planting. We shook the bees off, and they found the new flowers right away. We were able to get all the bees over there in this way. They probably would have found the other salvia on their own, but it was something to do…

Transporting honeybees on a branch of black and blue salvia flowers

Honey bees inside flowers and following branch as they are moved to a new nectar site

To help wildlife on your own property, include water dishes for toads, chipmunks, and other animals, birdbaths and perhaps bird and bee houses. Provide shelter for  birds such as small trees and shrubs, which may also double as food sources and nesting places.

Bee nesting house using bamboo tubes that should be sealed on one end with mud or another substance

When you are out and about enjoying  nature in the wild or in your own back yard, it is always satisfying and cheering to one’s own little self to see something else become better off because of what we may be able to do. Just think- you don’t have to be a nature expert to become, at least for a little while, a bee whisperer.

Pamm Cooper                                              all photos by Pamm Cooper