Monarchs rule

Common Milkweed

When we acquired our property 10 years ago, we were surprised by the absence of the common milkweed plant. As its 'common' name implies, it's, well, common in our part of the world. So in our effort to help restore our property to its most natural state, we scattered some milkweed seeds into some of our most disturbed areas - including around the oil well and in the eventual wildflower meadow - hoping that it would find our conditions suitable.  Happily, the common milkweed, along with it's sister, the swamp milkweed, has made our home its home. 

Swamp Milkweed

A tall and sturdy plant with thick leaves and pretty pink flowers, the milkweed is the primary food source of the beautiful Monarch butterfly.  The plant is toxic to animals, including deer and groundhogs (who devastate just about every other plant on our property) as well as birds.  And while the birds don't naturally eat plants, they do enjoy caterpillars and butterflies, so ingesting the poison of the milkweed makes Monarchs toxic to its predators.  On the underside of a milkweed leaf is the only place a Monarch will lay her eggs, so where the milkweed thrives the Monarch thrives.  

An individual Monarch assumes four distinct identities over the course of about 30 days. The egg is where it all begins for our Monarch (I shall call him Henry).  Henry is laid as a single egg on the underside of one of our abundant milkweed leaves by his adult female mother, and will hatch in approximately four days.  It is believed that an adult female, like Henry's mom, will lay between 100 and 300 eggs over her short life span.  

Monarch caterpillar (larval stage)

The next phase for Henry is the larval stage in which he identifies as a caterpillar.  At this point in his life, Henry becomes a voracious eater with an insatiable appetite (I am reminded of my 17-year old nephew). As a caterpillar, Henry will undergo five growth spurts, as he munches milkweed leaves, outgrows his skin, and then molts into an ever larger caterpillar.

Monarch chrysalis (pupal stage)

Henry's vacated home

After about two weeks of munching and molting, it's time for Henry to become his next self.  So with his rearmost feet, he hangs himself upside down from the underside of one of his delicious milkweed leaves, and cocoons himself up into a beautiful green pocket, called a chrysalis.  This chrysalis will be his home for another week or so, within which he will undergo the most amazing of all his transformations.

As an adult male, Henry identifies as a butterfly.  There will be no more growing or morphing for Henry now.  Alas, he has entered his twilight years. In this last stage of his life, Henry is on the prowl for many mates (he is Henry the Monarch, after all).  Unless he is from the generation of Monarchs who will migrate to Mexico, he will spend this last phase of his interesting life - which will last about a week - impregnating females and dining on nectar to sustain his virility. 

Henry

Learn more about the complex generational aspects of Monarch butterflies, and their migration to Mexico here. 

Is this where the ducklings go?

In the last week, we’ve had two wildlife sightings at the pond that remind us of the tough road ahead for our Wood Duck ducklings.   

First, we came across this old gal below.  She's a Common Snapping Turtle about a foot in diameter.  She was excavating a hole in the top of our dam to bury her eggs.  This is our first sighting of a 'snapper' at our pond, but since they are pretty elusive, our assumption is that she’s been here for a while (snapping turtles live into their 70s and beyond, grow throughout their lives, and given her size, it's entirely possible that she and I are the same age!).  We just happened to catch her out in the open for her egg-laying event, where she emerges from the muck only long enough to dig the hole and deposit about 30 eggs.  They are strong ambush predators that can take just about anything they can grab.  And their necks are long (it is completely retracted in this photo) and flexible enough to reach around and bite you if you pick them up by the sides of their shells. 

Then, today, we got a glimpse of one of the larger denizens of the pond.  We rarely see the large-mouth bass in the pond and never see the biggest ones.  But the one in this picture was showing off today.  For scale, the smaller fish in the shot are bluegill.  They get up to a foot long but I estimate that the ones in the photo are 6-8 inches long.  There are two bass on the right side and the largest looks to be about 4x bigger than the bluegills on the left, which puts the bass in the 25-30 inch range!

Large-mouth bass will eat just about anything they can swallow and at that size, a duckling could be a snack.  And of course, this probably isn’t the biggest one in the pond.  As Obi Wan reminded us, there’s always a bigger fish.
 

It’s hard to know if either of these predators have actually taken any of our newest ducklings, but I suppose they would if circumstances were right.  It’s a dangerous world out there!  If it’s any consolation, though, it’s tough going for everyone.  The next day, we went to check on the nest where the snapper had laid her eggs and they had all been dug up.  It's likely that a raccoon or mink smelled them and ate her entire brood.  And of course, snapping turtles do prey on small fish like baby bass.

It’s the circle of life in Appalachia!

Life springs eternal

Amphibian pool one year later

Drainage.  It's something I never gave much thought to until I became the caretaker of a hardwood rainforest and Ohio River Basin watershed.

Water is in abundance here.  It falls from the sky in liquid and frozen form in large quantities throughout the year (we get about 40 inches per year, which is on par with Washington state), and it consistently or spontaneously bubbles up from the ground in various spots on virtually every acre of our property.

I have a bit of a love-hate relationship with all this water.  On one hand, its a blessing to have this vital natural resource at our beck and call.  Our drinking water comes from a very reliable spring about 100 feet downhill from our house.  Springs around the property create gorgeous babbling brooks and waterfalls, and springs feed 2 creeks that keep our pond full year round.

On the other hand, all the water coursing its way throughout our property means that our landscape and ecosystems are constantly in flux.  A new spring creates a new brook that washes out a part of our driveway.  Or a tree branch falls into a creek so the water redirects itself into a meadow which now becomes a marsh. Or a torrential rain soaks the ground so much so that a 50-year-old White Pine just floats out of the ground by its roots.  Our water's very mission is to ultimately make its way to the Gulf of Mexico...and to take tiny bits of our land and redeposit it in various other places along its journey.

Northern Green Frog egg mass

So in our effort to put some of our land back where we like it, we rented an excavator, dug out a perpetually soggy area, and built a retention pond. Our primary goal was to construct what's known as a silt pond...an area that would capture much of the Spring runoff and slow it down before all the water and silt that comes along with it can wash into the main pond. But an added (and more rewarding) benefit to all this digging was to also create a separate little pool that might serve as a spawning area for frogs or salamanders.  Not more than a week later, we had this! 

Northern Green Frog

And a month later, we had this!

So when I get to grumbling about the muddy bogs on the trails or having to dig out one of our many diversion ditches, I remind myself that all this water literally gives life to thousands of wild species, to one domesticated one (Roscoe), and to two lowly humans who, without this abundance of water, would be living a very boring existence in the suburbs. 

Death on the driveway

Our driveway is a narrow, rustic path that leads to some unseen destination deep in the forest.  I have driven or walked this half mile stretch of wildlife highway at least once a day, nearly every day, for the past 10 years, and I know every bend, dip, protrusion and rut like the back of my hand. So when something unusual appears on or around it, I take notice.  

Interestingly, I've found that our driveway tends to be the scene of many a deadly incident. I always come upon the aftermath (never the incident taking place in real time), so as a wannabe Quincy (am I revealing my age?) and puzzle aficionado, I love collecting clues, doing some research and sorting out how each victim must have met his or her demise.

Allow me to share a smattering of my driveway mysteries.  Please feel free to help me fill in the gaps to round out the stories of the victims' lives.

Here is evidence of what I believe to be a hawk catching a vole that had come above ground for a snack on a rare warm winter day.  I can't tell what species of hawk it is (heck, it could even have been an owl).  The long, straight track would have been made by the vole.  The feathery spread would indicate wings of a pretty large raptor.  And the large round depression at the top right of the photo is where the vole's foraging (and life's) journey came to an end.

One summer day while heading to the mailbox, I walked up on this raptor sitting in the driveway.  He appeared stunned, and made no attempt to move as I approached.  Hoping he would recover on his own, I took a more circuitous route to the mailbox.  The next day, I found him in the woods, about 5 feet away from this original spot, where he had succumbed to his mysterious ailment.  I never determined what species of raptor he was, or what he might have died from.  I left him where he lay, in that final resting place, as a way to honor his life. 

Then there was this poor creature.  While on a run, I spied this mole, who appeared to have two tumors growing out of its forehead.  Pondering whether moles could acquire (and die from) cancer, I naturally turned to Google for the answer.  Unfortunately I couldn't come up with the right search terms that would give me the info I was looking for.  I did, however, learn a lot about melanomas and the importance of wearing sunscreen.

Looking forward to hearing from my fellow Quincy wannabes.