Animal Sightings

Wildflower walks will take you to interesting and new places once you’re grabbed by the adventurous spirit of finding new plants and flowers. Sometimes that feeling of awe comes in the form of seeing a favorite flower blooming or an alien-looking insect.

Walking down the lane to pick a few blackberries after breakfast, I spotted this cool damselfly. His thin body appeared bright metallic green and his wings looked of black lace.

A neon green damselfly called the Ebony Jewelwing, Calopteryx maculata, briefly rests on a touch-me-not leaf along the lane.

Lots of garden flowers are blooming now…marigolds, purple coneflowers, daisies, dahlias, rudbeckias, spiderflowers…the list goes on and on.

Native flowers blooming now include the tiger lilies or day lilies along the roadsides, butter-n-eggs, enchanter’s nightshade, touch-me-nots, thistles, milkweed, and lots of other “weeds”, including catnip.

A volunteer catnip plant, Nepeta cataria, grew between some slate and gravel rocks in the driveway last year. We didn’t cut it down as we wanted to collect some seeds and spread the feline love. This year the plant looks like a flowering bush. Small volunteers from last year’s seeds were transplanted to various sunny locations during late spring.

A large catnip plant releases its skunky scent every time the car brushes past it in the driveway.

Catnip flowers in several colors, so you may hear that catnip blossoms are white, pink or purple. Inspect the blooms close up and you will see why.

Unopened flower buds look softly pink and the opened catnip flowers are white with a few spots of purple.

Buzzing bumblebees busy themselves all around the catnip blooms. It’s time to harvest some of that catnip for the kitties before it all goes to seed. I’ve spied a few places in the country where it grows wild and that’s where I’ll collect seeds for next year’s crop.

Miss Laverne guarding her catnip bush!

By the way the blackberries I had collected this morning were delicious! I look forward to making a cobbler or something yummy with blackberries in a few days.

A couple weeks have passed since we first saw this family of ducks. So far, only one of the ducklings has disappeared, but we’re hoping the rest will make it through the summer.

Family of ducks taking a rest in a field of clover.

Reading about the varieties of wood sorrel in my field guides I came across a picture of a tall yellow-flowering kind that I had not seen before, so I made a mental note of it. That’s why I was pleasantly surprised to see a Great Wood Sorrel plant on my berry walk this morning down the lane. Growing in the shade next to the lane, this Oxalis grandis specimen is about 16 inches tall.

Small clusters of flowers arise from the leaf axils and the leaves are held out quite straight and horizontally.

With the number of times we’ve walked up and down the lane we don’t expect to find any new plants. We were quite surprised to see this pretty flower – a weed, really, hiding in the shade of the oak trees.

The light green to cream colored flower of thimbleweed has five sepals and numerous stamens.

The central leaflet is wedge-shaped and has curved sides, a feature that distinguishes the plant from other anemone species.

Thimbleweed flowerbuds, blossoms and fruit rise above the three- or five-parted leaves.

This member of the buttercup family, Anemone virginiana, has an interesting fruit which obviously lent the plant its name – Thimbleweed, also known as Tall Anemone.

Now I know that all those big-sounding rain drops that I hear the day after a storm, well, they aren’t always water. And those falling leaves aren’t always from the activity of mischeivious squirrels, either!

I made a strange discovery today when surveying the land for damage from the storm last night. We did lose at least three good sized trees due to lightning. We’re thankful to have such nice neighbors with chainsaws, but that wasn’t the strange part.

Feces of striking similarity to that of tomato hornworms, which is found on and around tomato plants in the summertime, littered the tops of everything under these oak trees! The red surface of the farm truck hood made these “caterpillar berries” stand out – otherwise, I’m not sure I would have seen them at all.

Caterpillar dung fallen from the oak trees.

The old farm truck caught a lot of these caterpillar berries.

Nature intertwines us all. Indirectly, these oak trees are fertilizing themselves in the midst of being eaten by insects. Voracious insects were helping to spread nutrients to the grass and herbs that lie in the understory and eventually to the tree itself. One doesn’t need to go to the Amazon Rain Forest to find examples of organisms being dependent on one another for survival.

Leaf damage as evidence of caterpillar occupation.

Now, my curiosity needs fed…is it a certain type of caterpillar that leaves such symmetrical, tell-tale poop? Or is it that all caterpillars are so geometrically inclined?

A red spotted newt crossed my path today as we took a walk out back in the woods. It had been an overcast morning with a few sprinkles here and there. As it started raining lightly again I came across this little amphibian walking in the forest.

Red-spotted newt walking in the woods.

A few weeks ago when we had some warmer weather newts were rolling around together at the surface of the pond, which is about an 1/8 mile down hill from where I saw the newt today.

The bright orange color with red spots tells us that this little salamander is the terrestrial juvenile stage called a red eft. Both the younger, larval stage and the older, adult stage are aquatic in form.

Red-spotted newt, Notophthalamus viridescens viridescens, in the terrestrial juvenile stage — The Red Eft.

A favorite woodland plant of mine is blooming. Fringed Polygala, Polygala paucifolia, or Gaywings, has been blooming now for about a week. The blooms are unique with two hot pink sepals that flare to the sides and look like wings. Petals are united in a central pink tube having the lowest petal tipped with fringe.

The unique flowers characterize this member of the milkwort family. Gaywings can also be recognized by the cluster of broad leaves that arise from underground stems.

We were greeted this Easter morning with a blanket of fluffy, flakey snow. About 4 inches covered everything but the driveway, where the stones must have held enough heat to melt most of it.

Snowy April morning. Note the pile of snow on top of the bird house!

As the morning turned into afternoon the snow silently disappeared except for a few patches under the trees.

I was lucky to see a couple of warblers on the grass along the driveway about noontime. A palm warbler – noted by his brown cap and bobbing tail – was shadowed by a yellow warbler as they hopped around in our forest opening. The palm warbler’s breeding grounds are in northern Canada, so it was probably on the way north, migrating up to Canada. But what about the yellow warbler? Was it on the same journey? Or was she a resident of the surrounding woods showing the migrant which way to go? Guess we’ll never know that answer.

Anyway, it’s always fun to see the dog get a kick out of the snow.

Time to frolic!

Spring at last! Here in the Northeastern United States the outdoor temperature is starting to agree with the calendar.

A last hurray by Winter was about 7-8 inches of snow two weeks ago after some very cold temperatures in February. Today is expecting a mix of sun and clouds and high temperatures in the 60s. Time to open the windows and doors for a breath of fresh air!

Tulip greenery is pushing through the composted leaves used as protection against the harsh winter weather. A blast of warm temperatures a couple weeks ago started the tulips on their spring journey, so now the green tops are about 6 inches out of the ground.

Song birds are becoming more active. We watch them chase each other among the trees and wonder how they can twist and turn through the air so quickly. I suppose the males are chasing after the females, but it’s really hard to tell who’s chasing whom. The juncos are still here, but probably not for long before they fly back to Argentina. It’s nice to see bluebirds again!

Next to the house we have lilies sprouting. Notice the light green foliage with one leaf being sheathed by the previous one. Flowers arise on separate stalks.

Day lilies sprouting in very early spring.

Lamb’s ear rosettes from last year are becoming more noticeable now. Lamb’s ears get their name from the soft, downy leaves of the first year plant. The crowded rosettes will be transplanted to other areas so they will have room to grow into two to three feet tall plants.

About 7 a.m. this morning before the sun poked above the clouds on the horizon, I saw a flock of turkeys in the field next to our house. I know…not really wild herb material, but hey, what’s blooming now besides the Christmas cactus indoors?

I had gone out to the porch to see if I could see any deer in the field as the light was still pretty dim. A light fog made the trees and everything else take on shades of grey.

Wild turkeys in the early morning light.

The first day of hunting season — shotgun for whitetail deer in Pennsylvania — was yesterday. We heard the booming around us from all directions. Didn’t hear on the news how many does or bucks were taken, but by the sound of it I would say there are quite a few less roaming the hillsides. While raking leaves yesterday I played it safe and wore an orange vest.

This morning’s flock was about half the size of what I had witnessed last evening from about 4 p.m. to sunset an hour later.

Corn was harvested some weeks ago from the field that is now green with grass. Spotting wild turkeys there is rather easy as their bronze and black feathers stand out against the green of the grass and besides, they are really huge birds!

The slope of the field rises up to a high spot in the middle. We have a great view from the second floor bathroom windows and also the attic window on the east side of the house.

There are many trees between the house and the field that interfered with counting the birds. At first I only saw 12 or 15 turkeys. I recounted…18, 23, 17…but wait — as I continued to watch and count another group of birds walked toward me as they crested the center of the field…25, 33, 40 turkeys in all!

The field is probably 4-5 acres in size and is surrounded by oak trees on all sides. The turkeys have a short distance to run or fly into the tree cover if something startles them. I’m sure they eat plenty of acorns as well.

As I watched this grouping of Wild Turkey, Meleagris gallopavo, in the evening I was surprised by their degree of social behavior. They walked along and sometimes scurried to find an unoccupied spot as they grazed the grass for insects or seeds and any bits of leftover grain. As they fed they constantly peeped to one another and there was a great deal of this talking back and forth.

When too many birds were concentrated together a squabble would erupt with wings flapping and much squawking. Two young birds would face off, flap their wings, jump in the air and throw their feet out at each other. The other turkeys stood there and voiced their opinions as if they were rooting on their favorite boxer to win the match. This foot-fighting would only go for one or two rounds and then everyone went back to grazing in their own direction.

The young birds were easily spotted as they were skinny in comparison to others in the flock and their feathers were a lighter color, more of a sandy brown than the black, iridescent color of the older birds.

The male gobblers were most impressive. I saw 2 very large males, perhaps there are two flocks that share this field, each one led by the largest male. I didn’t see the males display in the evening, but this morning one fanned out his tail and puffed up his body to full size. Was he the grand-daddy of them all? A few gobbles let all the hens and jakes know that he was in charge of his flock.

We celebrated Thanksgiving on Thursday and since turkey is traditionally at the center of the feast I thought it only fitting to let everyone know that the wild turkey is alive and doing quite well in the eastern United States.

Oh, and that Christmas cactus? It’s blooming in all its glory!

In autumn we always see these walking sticks. No other time of the year do they appear, except for in the fall.

We see them on the house and on many of the plants adjacent to the house.

Walking stick pauses on a chrysanthemum.

Insex, I mean insects, can be interesting to watch. The male walking stick is quite a contortionist as he holds his mate. Notice how that middle pair of legs comes in handy for holding on!

Walking sticks mating on a window screen.

Many different caterpillars are visible during the days of autumn as well. This brown caterpillar hanging under a budding mum was notable. As it hung upside down it grazed on the base of the flower petals as if it were eating the sepals. Its little head moved back and forth, left and right, like it were eating corn on the cob.