Predators

Predation - the killing of one living organism by another for food

Predators make a living by eating other critters. Most of us have seen robins pulling an earthworm from a lawn or perhaps a Cooper’s hawk take a junco at the feeder. By the way, unless you’re a vegetarian, you too are a predator – once or twice removed from the killing part if you’re not a hunter.

Predation is a hard way to make a living; therefore almost all predators are also scavengers because it’s both energy efficient and safer to feed on something that’s already dead and doesn’t have to be caught or that might fight back.

Virtually all predators eat a lot of vegetable matter as well as their prey. Apples, berries, grass and forbs all make up a part of most predators' diets. 

Predators are usually not very common on the landscape and are usually opportunists, taking whatever’s easiest to catch and kill. Most have their eyes aimed forward, giving them binocular vision like ours. Binocular vision enables them to accurately gauge the distance to their prey.

And most predators are also quite intelligent compared to prey species.

Prey species, on the other hand, usually have their eyes toward the side of their head which gives them a wider field of view so they can see danger approaching.

As a rough (very rough) rule of thumb there are 100 individuals of any prey species to every individual predator – any fewer and the predator will run out of food. In general, prey abundance controls the predator population, not the other way ‘round as many people mistakenly believe.

If you’ve often visited In Forest and Field you may have gotten the impression that I tend to favor predators - you'd be correct. Most of my favorite wild critters are predators: black-capped chickadees, common ravens, eastern coyotes, short-eared owls, bobcats, the list goes on but those species are at the top of the list.

Weeks 5 and 6 at Home

It’s now been eight weeks since I came home from the hospital after low sodium caused me to collapse and hit my head on a piece of furniture and a hard floor. That produced a traumatic brain injury and a brain bleed; and somewhere along the line a bacteria that normally inhabits our skin infected my bloodstream.

Such is my tale of woe, but I’m much better now – the infection is gone, the pain and stiffness in my neck is much improved and the blood around my brain is mostly resorbed. I can walk fairly well, H had driven me to have coffee with friends and out to the lake and I'd been taking photos around the house.

Here they are, some of the most interesting photographs taken during the third two week period I’ve spent at home, all taken within 50 feet of the house –

As summer heats up insects become more active and so this set of images has an abundance of “bugs” even though there are only two true bugs (members of the order Hemiptera) in the batch.

The squash vine borer is one of the clearwing moths that have transparent sections in their wings.

The spotted lanternfly is one of the true bugs (the other is the red-banded leafhopper), it’s an invasive insect that originated in southeast Asia and feeds on many crops and ornamental plants.

Dead man's fingers is a fungus, the fruiting bodies of which vaguely resemble the fingers of a dead person. 

The garter snake’s blue eyes indicate that it’s preparing to shed its old skin as a new skin has formed beneath the old. Snakes shed their skin as they grow larger as well as to repair injuries or get rid of parasites.

The chipmunk in the photo is a juvenile, newly on its own and gathering leaves to line its burrow.

Now I can drive again and get out in forest and field where I walk very carefully – the old noggin can take just so many falls.

The time spent in and around the house and yard prove, once again, that it’s not necessary to travel far and wide to take interesting photographs – they can be taken anywhere.

Lady’s-slippers

Wild orchids have fascinated me for 50 years give or take. Wild orchids, not the delicate hybrid orchids of the sort that are sold in florists’ shops and super markets.

The wild orchids of the northeast range widely in color and size, some are plain green while others are brightly colored. Among the largest and most colorful, and my favorite wild orchids, are the lady’s-slippers. Here in the northeast we have but six species, only three of which grow in Pennsylvania.

The most common lady’s-slipper here is the pink lady’s-slipper or moccasin flower that prefers acid soil, which we have in abundance. Like all wild orchids, this species is dependent on a mycorrhizal fungus growing on its roots to acquire nutrients from the soil.

In June of 1978 I found a colony of thousands of these orchids in bloom in a red pine plantation.

As many times as I’ve returned to that site, which has since been logged, there have never been more than a dozen plants in bloom –

Many years ago in central Maine we came across a colony of pink lady’s-slippers with white flowers – what a find –

Much less common and essentially confined to rich soils is the yellow lady’s-slipper –

At one time I knew of three locations in our county where yellow lady’s-slippers grew. White-tailed deer browsed two of those colonies into oblivion while the third has been greatly reduced by browsing combined with shading by Japanese barberry.

The only other lady’s-slipper to be found in Pennsylvania is the rare showy lady’s-slipper that grows in alkaline fens in the far northwestern part of the state. The showy lady’s-slipper is both the largest and most colorful of our lady's-slippers –

In 1978 The Naturalists journeyed north into New York to a limestone fen where we photographed several small white lady’s-slippers. The small white lady’s-slipper inhabits the same fens as the diminutive rattlesnake known as the massasauga and another rare orchid, the arethusa.

Several years ago I returned to that fen in hopes of getting some more photos of small white lady’s-slippers. My hopes were dashed when I couldn’t find a single plant although they apparently still grow there.

Two other very rare lady's-slippers are found in the northeast that do not grow in Pennsylvania one of which I photographed a long way from home in Grand Teton National Park, courtesy of a friend who worked there. However, this orchid does grow in New York and New England; it’s the calypso or fairy slipper –

The remaining northeastern lady's-slipper is one that's extremely rare and I’ve never seen, the ram’s-head lady's-slipper.

There are other species of lady’s-slippers found in the U.S. but these are the only ones native to the northeast. All lady’s-slippers are beautiful, some are endangered and most of the rest are declining due to unscrupulous collecting, browsing by deer, habitat loss and a changing climate.