Rattlesnake Plantain

This evergreen perennial is in the orchid family, and its leaves are the most striking part. They have an electrifying white pattern set on a deep blue-green background. They are thick and supple and cool to the touch. The flowers are dull-white to greenish and grow on a long, terminal, hairy spike with most of the flowers interestingly oriented to one side. The plant grows from short creeping rhizomes, and like to live in coniferous forests in a shady, dry to moist habitat.

I am not sure of the flowering cycle of this plant, but I have only seen it bloom once over the last three years. That said, the flowers are small and subtle and can easily be overlooked. The flower petals are succulent and fleshy to the touch, and even though they are in the shade, I find it interesting that they are blooming in the middle of the dry, hot summer. I have been visiting them all week wondering if any pollinators would show up. So far I haven’t seen any.

Planaria

I was sitting on the bank of the river poking around in the water. I flipped over a rock and found all of these flat creatures clinging to the bottom. Once exposed, they immediately began to move around to the other side of the rock. On the top side of the rock, two of them are fleeing and you can see how flat they are. Many of them would detach from the rock once they came back in contact with the water. The current of the river’s edge would gently sweep them away, and then they would slowly sink, reattach to another rock, and move underneath. Every good-sized rock I turned over had a small gathering of them underneath.

I didn’t know what these animals were. I thought they might be some sort of leach. I looked up the photo with a friend at the arboretum and discovered that they were planaria. In the photo, you’ll see that its head is triangular. Not all species have this shape, but if it has this spade-shaped form, then it is definitely a planaria. It can also be identified by its flat body and two eyespots on top of the head. Maybe they are small, but I don’t see any eyespots on these. I will go back and see if I can get a close-up photo.

Planaria are carnivores, feeding on a variety of smaller invertebrates or other small worms. Its mouth is not located on its head, but halfway down its body. It doesn’t have a respiratory system so it lacks lungs or gills. They receive oxygen by diffusion through their body surface. If you think that’s fascinating, check this out. If you cut up a planarian into pieces each piece will regenerate into a new one! I can’t even believe this little creature is real.

Bat Skeleton

This little bat was found dead last fall clinging to the side of a tree. Since then, I would occasionally remember to check to see if it was still there. I was always surprised to see it still remained attached to the tree. Apparently, it was sheltered from the weather, and no other animals disturbed its body. So there is stayed, slowly withering away. The last time I checked, its body was a small, indistinguishable mass of fur. I thought about this little bat today and was amazed to find this delicate, beautiful skeleton hanging on the tree. It seems remarkable that the bones of its foot are still intact and grasping the bark!

Seeing this bat skeleton, reminded me that it is so beneficial to regularly return to a place over days, weeks, months, or years. If I take the time to truly observe, there is always something new and marvelous waiting to be discovered. Nothing is commonplace.

Sitting By The River

I sat on a gravel bar along the river one morning. I watched birds come and go for hours. Goldfinches stopped by quite often to drink from shallow pools. They dipped their bills down in the water, raised their heads up, and slightly tilted their heads back to swallow. A Robin hopped along the rocks gathering insects. Once its beak was full it would fly back to the nest. Its babies immediately reached their heads upward. Their outstretched, yellow mouths were ready to be stuffed with food. Cedar waxwings swooped back and forth over the river catching insects. Across the river, an American Kestrel was using an old cottonwood as a perch as it hunted in the farm field. A female common merganser was zigzagging across the river diving for fish. Just upstream, I could see a green heron stalking along the shoreline. Killdeer were downstream gleaning insects on the gravel bar. A lazuli bunting was singing from the willows to my right and occasionally came down to the river to drink. A pewee was calling and hawking flying insects from over the river. A song sparrow hopped about the river stones in front of me catching insects. Towards the end of my time sitting there, a pair of California Quail quietly appeared out of the willows. I don’t get to see them very often out at the arboretum. They like to stay hidden, are well camouflaged, and are easily startled. They only spent a minute or so out in the open then moved back into the willows. I could occasionally see their silhouettes as they moved through the thicket. Seeing these quail reinforced the approach to birdwatching in which you quietly sit and let the birds come to you.

Hope you are finding time to get out and do some birding this summer.

Reflections

A small stained glass window is resting on a leaf. The opalescent panels shimmer with the slightest breath of wind, reflecting the radiant halo of mother nature. It is a passageway, an opening to a locket. Inside are luminous keepsakes. The song of the Chickadee. An inchworm measuring your arm. A sweep of wind across a meadow. An unrestrained river. An expansive sky. The quaking of Aspen leaves. Drifting clouds. The moon. The chirp of a cricket. A blanket of morning dew. The yawn of a coyote. The warmth of the sun. The falling rain. An old tree. A swimming tadpole. A marching ant. The tapping of a woodpecker. The changing leaves of fall. A starry night. The smell of the ocean. A patch of moss. The track of a deer. You.

Nature is an inexhaustible source of wonder. I look forward to seeing you out there.

Chemical Weathering

I found this rock broken in half on a small gravel bar along the river at the arboretum. The rock’s radiant colors and gritty texture gave it a cosmic impression. I felt caught between deciding if something was being created or destroyed.

It turns out that it is both. One way that rocks are broken down to contribute to the formation of fertile soils is through chemical weathering. Rocks that contain iron are highly susceptible to the chemical reaction known as oxidation. When iron is exposed to any type of moisture, the iron atoms react with the oxygen molecules in the air to form iron oxide, also known as rust. The rust will weaken rocks and cause them to crumble. As the rock deteriorates, the small bits of rock and minerals will be carried away by the river and dispersed into the ecosystem.

Pocket Gopher Digging

Pocket gophers are found throughout the arboretum. You can see the evidence of their presence from all of the dirt mounds. In this video, they launch the dirt from their tunnels leaving a fan-shaped mound around the hole. If you are walking slowly and quietly, you can often see one excavating. I am usually able to sit right next to the hole and watch them dig. Their eyesight must be fairly limited from a life spent mostly underground. You will often see them pausing at the surface and sniffing the air. Its sense of smell might be one of its more attuned senses. It is always enjoyable to watch them and get a glimpse of their huge curved teeth.

Cicada Shell

I’ve been hearing the sound of cicadas buzzing as I walk around the arboretum, and I will occasionally see one buzz by me. Hearing them buzz recalls memories of the hot, humid summers of the East Coast where I grew up. There were pine trees around my maternal grandparents’ house that always had these shells attached to the bark—the nymphs crawl out of the soil to molt into an adult, leaving this amazing papery exoskeleton behind. It is a treasure to come across one of these sheds out at the arboretum. It reminds me how nature is powerful at building connections to memories and feelings of my life.

Ants & Aphids

While hunting for acorn weevils, I came across small groups of aphids and ants on the stems of the oak trees. The aphids feed on the sap of plants and secrete a liquid known as honeydew. Ants are drawn to this sugar-rich substance and harvest it as a food source. In return, the ants will protect the aphids from predators like ladybugs. In reading about this symbiotic relationship, I found some fascinating articles. One article talked about one ant species storing the aphid eggs in the colony to protect them over the winter. Another article reported ants moving aphids to other plants to feed and clipping off their wings so they are unable to fly. One article talked about how ants will stroke the aphids with their antennae to stimulate them to secrete honeydew. As a result, some aphid species lost the ability to naturally secrete waste, and depend on ants to do it for them.

This is fascinating! I encourage you to read about the interesting research and discoveries being made about the relationship between ants and aphids. My intentions are always to pique your interest to explore, discover, wonder, enjoy, etc. the natural world. See you out there!

Common Yellowthroat

The Common Yellowthroat is a beautiful bird. The male has an olive-brown body with a striking, black mask that is bordered by a bright yellow throat below and a brush of white above. The female is elegant with an olive-brown body and a gentle yellow wash on her throat, breast, and under tail.

Sometimes this bird is tricky to see. It likes open areas with thick, low vegetation. It usually stays concealed as it shuffles through tall grass, thickets of blackberry, and low-growing shrubs of the meadow. It’s fond of the area past the old Quonset hut in the bristly fields of teasel I call Teaseltown. That is the plant you see it perched on in the photos.

While you patiently wait for a glimpse of this magnificent warbler, listen for its rhythmic, fluid song that Peterson describes as a “bright rapid chant, witchety-witchety-witchety-witch.”

The Common Yellowthroat has a pointy bill that is excellent for gleaning all the nooks and crannies of leaves, bark, branches, etc. Its diet includes spiders and a variety of insects, such as flies, beetles, ants, termites, bees, wasps, grasshoppers, dragonflies, damselflies, moths, butterflies, caterpillars, and other larvae.

In the margin on the website All About Birds, it lists other common names which I think are interesting and fun: Mascarita Común (Spanish) and Paruline masquée (French).

Nature is an inexhaustible source of wonder. I look forward to seeing you out there.

Resources
Common Yellowthroat Overview, All About Birds, Cornell Lab of Ornithology. https://www.allaboutbirds.org/guide/Common_Yellowthroat/overview. Accessed 25 June 2023.

Peterson, Roger Tory, et al. Peterson Field Guide to Birds of Western North America. 4th ed, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2010.

Canadian Geese & Goslings

I was sitting on the bank of the river. It was a quiet morning. It was slightly cloudy and the temperature was a little cool. There were bird songs filling the air. The song of the river saturated the background. A family of Canadian Geese was casually floating downstream next to the shore foraging on grass. They were graceful and calm and also keenly watchful of their surroundings for any danger. I often hear their clamorous honking as they fly along the river, but today they are quiet. They are vulnerable to predators. It takes about 10 weeks for a baby to mature and be able to fly. It is nice to see them nesting out here. In my time observing nature over the past few years at the arboretum, I don’t recall seeing them breeding. That said, there is so much life occurring here, and I know that I miss infinitely more than I discover.

Cool Bushtit Nest

Check out this cool bushtit nest. It is attached to some old teasel flower stalks from last year. I have only seen bushtits build nests on trees and shrubs. I am surprised how sturdy these flower stalks still are after enduring a rainy winter and spring. The common teasel is an invasive plant that is native to Europe and temperate Asia. It has swallowed up a sizable area out in the south meadow and is a tough plant to remove from an ecosystem once it has established itself, like what you see at Mt. Pisgah. Anyways, it was cool to see bushtits attaching a nest to old flower stalks. It got me thinking about whether or not there are native plants that could fulfill this role of having old flower stalks being used for building a bird nest on. I like that bushtits are creative and resourceful.

Western Wood-Pewee

For me, the whistling, buzzy pee-wee of the Western Wood-Pewee’s song signals that the warmth and blue skies of summer are here.

Besides establishing territory and attracting a mate, I imagine the song celebrates its miraculous journey and successful arrival at the arboretum. The Western Wood-Pewee is a medium to long-distance migrant that primarily winters in the north and west of South America and travels to North and Central America to breed.

It’s a little, gray bird with a peaked crown that gives its head a triangular shape. It is dapperly dressed in a vest that looks buttoned at the top and has two pale wing bars. The bill is mostly dark with yellow at the base of the lower mandible.

Look for it perched on exposed branches constantly turning its head as it looks for insects. When it spots an insect it will fly out, grab it, and return to the same perch or one nearby. If you listen closely, you can hear the pop of its bill as it snags the insect out of the air. When it lands it will usually flutter its wings slightly as if readying for the next flight. It will eat small insects in midair and bring back larger prey like dragonflies to eat at its perch. I also see them on gravel bars on the river darting around the rocks and gleaning insects.

The nest site is usually at the fork of a horizontal branch. The female builds a compact nest out of small plant fibers and camouflages the outside with lichen, mosses, etc. It is about 3 inches wide and 2.5 inches tall. It can be from near ground level up to 80 feet high! Out at the arboretum, I generally find them at around 20 to 40 feet. As the babies grow up and the nest gets crowded, I get nervous watching them especially if the tree is swaying in the wind.

This is a great bird to get to know. I feel it is very accessible to watch. It will often perch on a lower tree branch near the trail or on old plant stalks.

Nature is an inexhaustible source of wonder. I look forward to seeing you out there.

Resources
Peterson, Roger Tory, et al. Peterson Field Guide to Birds of Western North America. 4th ed, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2010.

Western Wood-Pewee Identification, All About Birds, Cornell Lab of Ornithology. https://www.allaboutbirds.org/guide/Western_Wood-Pewee/id. Accessed 14 June 2023.

Ripe Osoberries

As I walked around the arboretum this week, I have been really surprised to see all of the ripe osoberries. Usually, I am lucky if I can find one that actually ripens enough to eat. When the cedar waxwings show back up at the arboretum, they will descend on these berries and gobble them up before they completely ripen. In years past, it was common to see 3 or 4 cedar waxwings in one osoberry shrub devouring the unripe berries. Also, I usually get lucky enough to see waxwings doing their courtship routine by passing a berry (see blog post: Osoberries Ripening, June 8, 2022), but I haven’t seen many waxwings down in the shrubs so far this year. Maybe they have been there when I haven’t been around. Robins will also eat their fair share too, and I have seen a few robins eating them. I suppose what I am getting at is that there seem to be fewer birds. Maybe there is a more inviting, nutritious food source around that they are eating at the moment. I am not sure. I also saw a chipmunk harvesting them. It was fun to see it pluck one and scurry over to a limb to eat the thin layer of fruit and the seed inside.

Head-scratching Behavior

Quite a few years ago someone gave me a binder they inherited labeled Bird Biology: Seminars from the Laboratory of Ornithology at Cornell University. It is a great resource on the life of birds and a fun read to geek out on. I wanted to share part of it so when you are at your next ornithological cocktail party, you will be able to feel more relaxed and get involved in some nerdy conversations about birds.

“Watch an American Robin on your lawn as it scratches its head. Note that it always passes its leg over a drooped wing, indirectly. All American Robins, as far as we know, scratch their heads in this way. Ovenbirds, on the other hand, always scratch their heads directly by passing the leg in front of the wing. Any behavior that a bird repeats in the same way is stereotyped; any behavior that is the same in all members of a species is species-specific. The indirect head-scratching behavior in the American Robin is stereotyped, species-specific, and probably instinctive.

Because birds no doubt inherit stereotyped, species-specific behaviors, such as the head-scratching behavior in the American Robin, and perform them without preliminary experience or learning, we call them instinctive, or innate. No American Robin learns to scratch its head indirectly; it just does it that way from the first scratch until it dies. Instinctive behavior then is a stereotyped pattern of behavior that the bird inherits. We call these instinctive behavior patterns fixed action patterns.”

Cheers!

Eggshells

In the book What It's Like to Be a Bird: From Flying to Nesting, Eating to Singing--What Birds Are Doing, and Why, David Allen Sibley writes: “If you find a broken eggshell on the ground, the shape of the pieces can give you some information about what happened. If an egg hatches normally, the chick chips away a ring around the widest part of the egg and the egg separates into two halves. The parents then carry the eggshells from the nest and scatter them some distance away. An eggshell cut straight across in this way is likely to be the result of successful hatching nearby. Eggshells in smaller pieces, fragmented or crushed, could be the result of an accident or predation. Given the opportunity, many species of birds and small mammals will eat the contents of an egg and leave the shell behind.”

To me, an eggshell seems like cramped quarters for a baby chick about to hatch out. I am surprised that they take the time and have the ability to chip away a ring around the widest part and cut the egg in half. Amazing!

Cowbird?

On May 21, I wrote about the Brewer’s Blackbird collecting insects by the river. I returned to the gravel bar earlier this week and saw them again collecting insects. This time they were flying over to the nearby willows to feed a begging bird that I could hear but couldn’t quite see. I watched them for a while and the baby bird stayed hidden at the base of willows in the shadows. Eventually, the insatiably hungry juvenile came out to meet the parent foraging nearby, and I got a better look. I thought… Wait a minute, is that a juvenile cowbird? I remembered from my earlier post that Brewer’s Blackbirds will have a clutch size of 3 - 7 eggs. So, should feeding only one bird lead me to be suspicious of cowbird parasitism?

The cowbird egg usually hatches out earlier than the host species. Afterward, they may roll the other eggs out of the nest. Cowbirds will often choose to parasitize smaller birds, so they have the advantage of competing for food with the other baby birds of the host family. They hatched out first, and they are bigger. From what I have read, they can literally starve out the other birds or literally crowd them out of the nest. I looked up juvenile Cowbirds and they look similar to juvenile Brewer’s Blackbirds. Hmm… What do you think? It got me reading and thinking about it more anyways.

Be sure to click on photo to get a better look.

Check out this introductory paragraph from The Cornell Lab of Ornithology Birds of the World: “The Brown-headed Cowbird, North America's best known brood parasite, lays its eggs in the nests of many different species. Originally these ‘Buffalo Birds’ were limited to short-grass plains, where they followed herds of North American Bison (Bison bison) and fed on the insects stirred up by their movement. The Brown-headed Cowbird has since dispersed widely as European settlement in North America opened forests and homogenized the environment into the agricultural and suburban landscapes of today. The expansion of the Brown headed Cowbird has exposed new species and naive populations to brood parasitism, and the pressure on such host populations can be substantial. During the breeding season, female Brown-headed Cowbirds wander widely, overlap the home ranges of other females, and may lay 40 eggs per season.”

Lazuli Bunting

Lazuli Buntings are small finch-like songbirds. Its length is 5.5 inches, which is a pretty small bird. It is smaller than a Western Bluebird (7 in.) and larger than a Lesser Goldfinch (4.5 in). The male is a dazzling blue with a warm orange breast, a white belly, and a prominent white shoulder patch. The female and immature are plain brown with a blue tinge to the wings and tail. They have two buffy wing bars and a pale tan breast. The male perches out in the open while it sings to attract a mate and establish territory. So it is a little easier to see it and capture a photo. The female is a little more challenging to see or photograph because she is usually in a shrub or on the ground.

Peterson describes its habitat as “open brush, grassy hillsides with scattered bushes, riparian shrubs, grassy patches in chaparral, weedy fields and ditches.” The Arboretum has lots of attractive habitats for it. I see them up the creek trail, around the south meadow, and throughout the east side where it is open and shrubby.

To locate this bird, listen for its song and call. Here is Peterson’s description of its voice: “Song a lively, ringing warble, often ending in a quick sputter. Call a sharp spit and a dry buzz.”

All About Birds had this interesting information to think about as you listen to its song: “Just like we each have our own voice, each male Lazuli Bunting sings a unique combination of notes. Yearling males generally arrive on the breeding grounds without a song of their own. Shortly after arriving, they create their own song by rearranging syllables and combining song fragments of several males. The song they put together is theirs for life.”

I love finding a good place to sit and watch this beautiful bird and listen to it sing.

Nature is an inexhaustible source of wonder. I look forward to seeing you out there.

Resources
Lazuli Bunting Overview, All About Birds, Cornell Lab of Ornithology. https://www.allaboutbirds.org/guide/Lazuli_Bunting/overview. Accessed 31 May 2023.

Peterson, Roger Tory, et al. Peterson Field Guide to Birds of Western North America. 4th ed, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2010.

Oregon White Oak - New Acorns

Well… I remember reading that the male and female flowers are separate inflorescences. The male flowers are hanging catkins and the female flowers are single or in small clusters. I have photos of the male catkins, wanted to take a photo of the female flowers, and I forgot to do it this year. So I have to start creating a calendar of all the photos I want to take for next year so I don’t miss them again.

Anyways, these beautiful new acorns are forming, and I wanted to share them with you. I am on the hunt for acorn weevils so stay tuned for more about acorns.

Red-tailed Hawk Eaten?

Walking along the road out to the barn yesterday, I came across some flies buzzing around something on the ground. It was a pile of some guts that had been slightly flattened by one of the arboretum vehicles. I looked up to the limb above it and saw feathers scattered across it. As I begin to scan the ground below the limb, I saw a leg that had been torn off or broken off that had a big yellow foot and black claws. A feather was on the ground nearby. It was a new feather that was still growing out, which indicates that this might have been a juvenile bird.

What happened here? I looked at feathers online and the color of the feet of large birds of prey, and my best guess at the moment is that it is a red-tailed hawk. I don’t really imagine these birds being preyed upon, and they probably aren’t very often. I could see more new feathers on the limb, so this was probably a juvenile still in the nest or perched on a limb nearby. I thought about what bird lives in the arboretum and is big enough to kill a red-tailed hawk. I looked up the diet of a great horned owl on The Cornell Lab’s All About Birds: “They eat mostly mammals and birds—especially rabbits, hares, mice, and American Coots, but also many other species including voles, moles, shrews, rats, gophers, chipmunks, squirrels, woodchucks, marmots, prairie dogs, bats, skunks, house cats, porcupines, ducks, loons, mergansers, grebes, rails, owls, hawks, crows, ravens, doves, and starlings. They supplement their diet with reptiles, insects, fish, invertebrates, and sometimes carrion.” This is quite an impressive list, and as you can see, hawks are on the menu. All About Birds also had this to say: “Although they are usually nocturnal hunters, Great Horned Owls sometimes hunt in broad daylight. After spotting their prey from a perch, they pursue it on the wing over woodland edges, meadows, wetlands, open water, or other habitats.” The nighttime hunting hours are pretty short this time of year, so maybe an owl was out this morning.

Whatever did this, it certainly perked up my awareness. It had the power to tear the leg off! Yipes!