Caught 'Em

We were at the edge of a beautiful beaver pond with the beaver’s lodge in the foreground and the forest’s fall colors in the background –

We’d been there for a while when H saw one of her favorite birds across the pond – a great blue heron.

The bird was making its way along the far side of the pond searching for a meal. It would go along for several hundred feet, then turn around and make its way back in the other direction. It did that repeatedly until saw something of interest beneath the surface. Then with a sudden lunge it struck –

And surfaced with what appeared to be a sunfish in its beak and flipped it further back and on into its fate –

But one is never enough and so the heron continued hunting (fishing if you prefer) a bit further along the shore, tipping its head to the side to more easily peer into the water –

Lo and behold it caught something – another sunfish –

We watched for a while longer and it caught what looked like a frog. Eventually, the heron left the water to stand against the cattails –

With that it was time for us to depart.

Stone Walls Across the Landscape

 

 Something there is that doesn’t love a wall,
That sends the frozen-ground-swell under it,
And spills the upper boulders in the sun;
And makes gaps even two can pass abreast.

                                    Robert Frost, Mending Wall

When European settlers began clearing forests for fields, rocks had to be removed to allow crops to be grown or hay to be cut without dulling the scythe. The rocks were piled along the fences that had been built from the trees that had been cut to clear the fields, thus elongated piles of rocks accumulated.

When the wooden fences decayed, the piles of rock were readily at hand to build stone walls –

Construction of the walls has been described as one of the most heroic and back-breaking construction efforts in history. In 1939, using historical data from the US Department of Agriculture, it was estimated that there were 240,000 miles of stone walls in New England alone – how many more miles could be added from the other northeastern states? By one estimate, the work that went into them would have built the Egyptian pyramids one hundred times over.

The extent of wall building can be seen in this Lidar aerial photo of a small area in northcentral Pennsylvania (Lidar shows ground-level features, “seeing” through the forest canopy) –

There are many different styles of wall, usually depending on the heritage of the builders – Scotch-Irish, German, Italian, eastern European –

As Robert Frost wrote, walls are in constant danger of falling. From growing trees –

Frost heaving –

Utility rights-of-way –

Removal for landscaping –

Or because they're "in the way" of modern farming –

Many of the old walls have disappeared, most of those that remain either border fields that were abandoned years ago and have reverted to forest or are delineating property boundaries.

Eventually, hundreds of years from now, the last of the old walls will be gone: fallen, removed, buried. Meanwhile they’re a window into the past and the haunt of chipmunks, garter snakes and a vast array of other critters.

 

Troglodytes hiemalis

It was a beautiful fall morning in the Big Woods, clear and cool with only a gentle breeze. There I sat on a small folding stool against a large white pine close to a tiny woodland stream. I was in full camouflage (in what's called a "leafy suit" plus a facemask and gloves) waiting for a subject to photograph.

Thanks to the dry weather of late summer and early fall, the stream was quite dry with only a trickle of water. But the mostly dry channel still attracted birds and other wildlife.

After I'd been there about a half hour a few juncos and chickadees passed on by and then a winter wren appeared –

Troglodytes hiemalis , is the scientific name of the bird we call the winter wren, the smallest of the ten species of wren in North America. It’s song isn’t as loud as that of the Carolina wren nor is it as comfortable around people as the house wren. 

Winter wrens frequent stream banks and other cool shady places where they hunt for insects and spiders among fallen branches, and upturned roots. They’ve often been compared to a mouse as they scurry about seeking food.

Until fairly recently the winter wren was considered the most widespread species of wren, ranging from Newfoundland to the tip of the Aleutian Islands and across Europe and Asia. However, it has recently been decided that the winter wren is confined to eastern North America with the western population now named the Pacific wren and the wren of Europe and Asia (where it is the only wren) named the Eurasian wren.

In spring and early summer male winter wrens produce a long bubbly song that, because they’re rather secretive, is often the only indication that the wrens are nearby.

In our area we may see winter wrens throughout the year. Northern birds migrate south as winter sets in so its hard to say whether the birds we see in the winter are migrants or permanent residents.

The next time you’re in an area dominated by evergreens with a small stream running through it, sit still or stand quietly for a while and you may glimpse a mousy brown creature scampering along the ground –

Take a good look, it may well be a winter wren.

Into the Hole

It was a beautiful mid-October day; we were walking along the edge of an open woodland when H spotted something on the ground. That something was a bright green caterpillar on the brown and tan of the bare ground and the fallen leaves. The caterpillar was moving, but not on its own, it was paralyzed and being dragged by an inch-long wasp.

We watched as the wasp dragged the caterpillar quite rapidly across the ground, over fallen leaves and through scattered tufts of grass –

I recognized it as one of a group of ground-nesting parasitic wasps and we followed along as it traveled 40-50 feet. 

After a few minutes the wasp arrived at her destination and put down the caterpillar –

Then began opening a previously constructed burrow by removing pebbles and soil that were blocking the entrance –

When the burrow was open, she turned and pulled the paralyzed caterpillar into the burrow –

The wasp emerged and proceeded to pick up small pebbles and insert them into the burrow to block the entrance –

Finally, the wasp turned to scrape loose soil over the entrance and fly off –

Back at home, and after looking at the photographs, I identified the wasp as a common thread-wasted wasp, which is found from Canada to Central America. The species stings the caterpillars of moths and butterflies to feed their own larvae. The sting paralyses the caterpillar, thus ensuring a fresh meal for its own larva.

The common thread-wasted wasp lives in areas with bare soil where the female excavates a burrow a few inches deep with a brood chamber at the bottom. After completing the burrow the female closes and conceals the entrance, then flies around the area to memorize landmarks so she can find the burrow again.

At that point the hunt begins; when the female wasp finds a suitable caterpillar she stings it and takes it back to the burrow where she lays a single egg on the immobilized caterpillar. After laying the egg, the female wasp again closes the burrow with pebbles and soil. Occasionally the wasp will use a pebble as a hammer to pack soil tightly into the burrow entrance – one of the few instances of a tool-using insect.

The egg hatches after two days and the wasp larva feeds on the live but not moving caterpillar for about a week. It pupates and then emerges the next year to begin the cycle anew.