The Woodland Aquarium

One of my earliest and fondest childhood memories is of going to the pet shop to pick out new tropical fish for my freshwater aquarium. Throughout my first 17 years of life I considered countless guppies, tetras, angelfish and coolie loaches my most devoted companions. I appreciated that they were attentive and patient listeners to my childhood stories of elation and angst, and that they taught me about the fragility of an enclosed ecosystem. My last buddy, a 12+ year-old redtail shark, died shortly before I went away to college. Over the next few decades, my nomadic lifestyle discouraged me from resuming my hobby, but its funny how life comes full circle, sometimes in unexpected ways. I just returned from the "pet shop" with 4 new grass carp for my half acre freshwater aquarium. Right now they're settling in to their new digs, making friends with the catfish and bluegill and bass, while I regale them with my stories.

Alien invasion

For the love of nature, let's go kill something.                                                                                                                                                                        

We bought our land fully intending to give it over to Nature. We wanted to let the wild plants and animals live in their natural ecosystems, so we vowed to keep our human interference at an absolute minimum. Back then we thought we could let Nature do its natural thing by instituting a few hands-off-oriented rules: our house would be as small as possible, we would disallow hunting, and we would refrain from feeding any wildlife (except for one bird feeder). Oh, how naive we were.

It turns out that the definition of "natural" is ultimately in the eye of the beholder. What is natural to one person - or plant or animal - is likely not considered to be so for another.  We came to this realization when we noticed that certain plants and diseases were competing with, and in some cases eradicating, many of our native flora and fauna.  We soon learned that our beautiful, native species are under constant attack by non-native and invasive ones, and if we wanted the native plants and animals to survive, we would have to roll up our sleeves and give Nature a (human) hand.

So now, throughout the year, we find ourselves killing things (mostly plants and insects) around our property, all in the name of Nature. 

Garlic mustard

 
At the beginning of each calendar year, we do battle with the Garlic mustard.  It is a non-native invader from Eurasia that emits a toxic chemical in the surrounding soil that prevents other, native flora from growing near it. It arrives in early Spring and is relatively easy to spot, so the month of May is Garlic mustard spraying season around here.



 

Japanese stiltgrass

A few years ago, we noticed large patches of a tall, Asian-looking grass coming up in our lovely wildflower meadow, along the driveway and along all our grassy trails.  After doing a good bit of research, I learned that its common name is Japanese stiltgrass and, as you can tell by its name, it is not native to North America.  Its crime is to displace native woodland plants and grasses and it prevents tree seeds from reaching the forest floor and therefore keeps tree seedlings from germinating.  It grows tall and fast, but not until late in the season. After several failed attempts at pulling and bagging it, spraying it with weedkillers, and burning it, we have discovered an herbicide that's particularly effective at killing only grasses while leaving the other woodland plants intact.  

Emerald ash borer devastation

The Emerald ash borer is a rather striking iridescent green beetle, native to Asia.  The female lays her eggs in the crevices of the bark of our beautiful Ash trees.  The larvae feed underneath the bark to emerge as adults one to two years later, and by then, the tree is dead.

Last Spring, I noticed the telltale EAB holes in the bark of several Ashes. We tried treating them with a systemic insecticide but to no avail.  Over this past Winter, dozens of our Ash trees finally succumbed and simply broke off mid-trunk.  The landscape here look like its been logged, which means we have a good bit of clean up to do in order to reclaim the hiking trails.

Little brown bats

One of the things we enjoy most in Summer is watching the bats come out at dusk to swoop along the surface of the pond, feeding on mosquitoes and other juicy insects.  Over the past few years, we've noticed their numbers have dwindled significantly and on some nights we don't see any at all.  In a previous blog post, I wrote about White Nose Syndrome and as I feared then, I believe our bat populations have been afflicted.

But there's a glimmer of hope to be found in the eaves of our covered patio. For the past six years, from Spring to Fall, a Little brown bat has appeared in our eaves where he (or she) roosts throughout the day. Last Fall, about a month before he went away to over-winter in a nearby cavern or tree snag, a friend joined him.  That the same bat keeps returning - and now has a friend - is hopefully a sign that our population may be recovering (or at least holding its own). So far this year, just the one LBB has returned. Fingers crossed that his little brown buddy is not far away.

April showers bring May flowers

Just when you think the world can't get any uglier, these little beauties start popping up around the forest floor. Although it has been colder than usual, a smattering of heavy rains over this month of April has brought our woods back to life with Spring's first flowers.

Bloodroot

May apples (their flowers will appear in May)

Fiddleheads

Wood poppy

Red trillium

White trillium

It's a mink eat goose world

The Canada geese out here have a rougher road than those in the 'city'. Each year for the past ten, one - and only one - pair has arrived in March to stake claim to our pond, build their nest, and faithfully attend to a clutch of 3-6 eggs. And each year, for the past ten, they manage to get them hatched but always lose every last gosling (within about a week) to our resident mink. I keep hoping this will be the year the pair will be able to fend off the mink (and raccoons and foxes and snapping turtles) long enough to get at least one little guy or girl to adulthood. I'll keep you posted.

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.

Another Wood Duck family is born

It has been a long while since I've updated you on the goings-on here in our little slice of paradise. Rest assured its not because there haven't been plenty of fabulous wildlife dramas playing out each and every day.  I'm pleased to announce that on May 8, 2014, another Wood Duck family made its way into the world.

Click here to see the video from inside the nest box, and here to see the video from the outside of the box.

Spoiler Alert:  This delightfully happy story has a bittersweet ending.  Unfortunately, one of the ducklings hatched almost a day later than the rest and was too weak to make it out of the box with his brethren.

Photo credit:  The photo isn't mine.  It's courtesy of www.hiltonpond.org.

Date night

Last night we spent the evening down by the pond, enjoying the campfire, eating chili, and taking in the pre-summer scenery.  A chili dinner down at Camp Firefly is our version of going out for an expensive meal and a play.  And though you don't know for sure who the characters are going to be or what the story line is about, you know that something interesting and surprising will happen nonetheless.

Last night's story began with a 'possum stopping by, oblivious to our presence (as they so often seem to be), scouring the forest floor for tasty bugs.  He (or she...it's impossible to get a look under the hood of a 'possum) appeared stage left, spent about an hour making his way up the creek bed, and exited stage right toward the big rocks up the hill.

Act II was a musical number - a medley performed by a trio of Rose-breasted Grosbeaks, Eastern Wood Peewees and Wood Thrushes.  And even though their songs were in a foreign language, it was clear they were singing about protecting territories and attracting mates.

Then, the story line reached its climax when Wood Duck mom, Lady, silently emerged from the brush along the pond shore, with approximately 6 of her brood in tow, to paddle around for only a few minutes before just as silently moving back into the safety of their den.  This was particularly thrilling because the last time we had seen Lady and her 13 kids was when they swam out of the camera shot on May 10th.  Earlier that day, we had just decided that all the ducklings - like their gosling brethren before them - must have fallen prey to the many predators that roam our woods.

The play concluded at dusk, when the bats arrived to perform their nightly aerobatics, and the 'possum reappeared, making his way stage right to left, bringing our story line full circle.   

Hello world

Our Wood Duck babies began hatching on May 9, 2013 at 8:00 in the morning.

By noon, a total of 13 fluffy ducklings had been born.

That evening, Lady left the nest box around 5pm for her usual dinner, leaving the clan alone for the first time.  She returned about an hour later where she and her baker's dozen spent a safe and cozy night together.

As youngsters, they are well developed.  Unlike many other newborn fowl, Wood Duck babies look very much like their adult counterparts.

On May 10th, around 10am, Lady left the nest to call to her kids from the water below.  Here is video of the babies climbing the ladder, where one by one they leapt from the opening to join Mom in their new watery world.

It will be several weeks before the ducklings will be capable of flying, so until then they will have to stay near the water, which is their safest place of refuge.  But it is now May 13th and we haven't seen Lady or her brood since they merrily paddled out of the video shot on the 10th.  I am choosing to believe that the whole family is hiding safely in the brush that overhangs the pond shore and that at least some of the 13 youngsters have managed to evade our marauding raccoons. 

First paddle

Five geese babies were born on April 21st around 5pm.  Here is a glimpse of their first paddle the next morning.  

All is calm

On April 7th (the day after the interloper incident), Lady began staying on the nest 24/7.  The Wood Duck incubation period is around 28 to 34 days, so we should see babies in early May.  Since then, things have been pretty boring in there...just much nest-fluffing and snoozing.  We are still seeing the male coming around in the mornings and evenings, swimming around and eating along the pond shore. And no other Wood Ducks have appeared since the 6th, which seems like good news.