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Black Birders Week and Beyond

SMRA June 27, 2020

Decades later, I still vividly recall my first experience birdwatching with a group. It was a boat trip to Monomoy Island, a shorebird haven off Cape Cod, and it took place in the late 1960s, when I was ten or eleven years old.

I also remember that all the other birders—all men, all white—were my father’s age or older, into their fifties and sixties. I could tell they knew each other well, and they were clearly surprised to see a young boy along. But they were delighted: As the trip’s “unicorn,” I was treated with kindness and inclusion. The others always made sure I saw the Willet or Semipalmated Plover, and congratulated me when I spotted something for myself.

Even though I’m now those “old” men’s age, I still remember how they saw me, celebrated our differences, and welcomed me into their group.

In the years since, much has changed. You can drive to parts of Monomoy now. Birdwatching is called birding. And a once largely male and middle-aged (or older) pursuit is now enjoyed by people of all ages and genders.

One thing that hasn’t changed? Birding remains a largely white pursuit, too often off-limits to people of color.

That reality came into sharp, unavoidable focus last month, when a Black man named Christian Cooper, birding in Central Park’s Ramble, asked a woman to follow park regulations and leash her dog. Instead of simply complying, she called the police on him, screaming that she was being threatened “by an African American man.”

This story did not end tragically, but obviously it could have. And it made clear a truth long known by Black birders, scientists, and those who merely love and want to explore the natural world: They often do not feel safe in places so many of us white birders explore without a second thought.

That’s the reality today, but it doesn’t have to be the future. The treatment of Christian Cooper—and the larger issues it brought to light—helped inspire the recent Black Birders Week. Using the power and outreach of social media, this ambitious, wide-ranging effort sought to bring birders and nature enthusiasts of color together…while also making them more visible to the rest of us.

Biologist Corina Newsome announced the creation of Black Birders Week in a video widely disseminated in both traditional media and on Twitter, Instagram, and other social media. (Look for the hashtag #BlackBirdersWeek.) “For far too long, Black people in the United States have been shown that outdoor exploration activities are not for us,” she said. “Well, we’ve decided to change that narrative.”

National Audubon “Birding While Black” online conversation.

Running from May 31 to June 5, the inaugural Black Birders Week featured a thoughtful, honest, sometimes painful series of online presentations, panel discussions, and other events. Participants were invited to answer birding challenges and “Ask a Black Birder,” and to follow “Black Women in Birding.” Meanwhile, online panels brought together scientists, birders, and nature enthusiasts from all over the country (including Christian Cooper) to discuss “Birding While Black.”

I talked with Alexi Grousis-Henderson and Nicole R. Jackson, two of the co-organizers of Black Birders Week, seeking their perspectives on the week and its aftermath.

Alexi Grousis-Henderson

Grousis-Henderson is a naturalist and zookeeper in New Orleans. Growing up in Central California, he was always more interested in nature than in what was going on right in front of him. “I was that five-year-old who’d stop in the middle of a soccer game to watch a butterfly.”

Later, as a student in Kansas City, he discovered a world of mature forests that he hadn’t known during his childhood in the California desert. Today, he says, “I’m a reptile kind of guy…though recently I’ve become obsessed with nocturnal South American mammals.”

Nicole R. Jackson

Nicole Jackson is Program Coordinator for the Environmental Professionals Network and the Ohio Certified Volunteer Naturalist program at the School of Environment and Natural Resources, Ohio State University.

For Jackson, nature played a crucial role during an extremely difficult time in her childhood in Cleveland. “I was in foster care in an abusive household,” she says, “and nature was my go-to, my escape.”

Ever since, she says, “nature has been that constant. We can be still, see ourselves learning life lessons. It gave me a shield until I was ready to reveal myself for who I was.”

To both of them, the sense of community Black Birders Week helped create may be its most valuable component.  “It makes a real difference,” Grousis-Henderson says. For a long time, “I felt alone, and I know a lot of us felt this way. We were all these islands.” The group chats that have formed in recent weeks, some encompassing thousands of participants, “have allowed us to share our joy.” 

Jackson feels the same way. “We have to reach out,” she says, “both to share our own knowledge and to learn from people who know things we don’t.”

The organizers of Black Birders Week hoped that the events would bring the same sense of community to newcomers that they themselves have experienced and shared on a personal level. When I asked Jackson and Grousis-Henderson if they felt that the effort had been successful, they were both optimistic. The panel discussions, for example, which streamed live on the National Audubon Society’s Facebook page (and are still available—see below), have garnered audiences in the tens of thousands.

The outreach was fulfilling in a more direct way as well, the two co-organizers revealed. “I received messages as the days went on from people I knew, but also from strangers,” Jackson says. “It was great to see people I didn’t know respond to my story and say ‘Thank you…I thought I was the only one.’”

Says Grousis-Henderson, “I was blown away by the number of melanated faces in natural spaces across the U.S.—and in some cases, across the globe! I honestly wasn’t prepared to see this many folks of generations and above and below my own. It was incredible.”

It’s clear that Black Birders Week’s message of community and connection was—and is—a vivid, fulfilling one of hope and essential (and long overdue) change. But that’s not enough: Its full impact will only be possible if white birders step up, too.  

What those “old” men did for me all those years ago helped me embrace a lifetime of birding. It’s my responsibility, and ours, to do the same, inclusively, today.

Copyright © by Joseph Wallace

You can watch the two “Birding While Black” panel discussions here: https://www.facebook.com/watch/live/?v=599256750697358&ref=watch_permalink

and here:
https://www.facebook.com/watch/live/?v=250698879684486&ref=watch_permalink

Mosaic-Birds

SMRA

Spring Mosaic

SMRA June 3, 2020

For many of us, the past weeks of spring migration have been glorious, a bounty of warblers, tanagers, and dozens of other species passing through on their way north. By now, though, migration has ebbed…as have the daily jaunts of many local birders.

Yet even compared to the excitement of peak migration, I think what happens next is more fascinating. For those species that do stay in our area to nest, this is the time to divide up and share territories. In doing so, they create one of nature’s most exquisite patterns, a mosaic that deserves the effort needed to witness it in all its beauty.

This spring, my wife and I have spent much of our time at Croton Landing Park. Comprised of a succession of small habitats—riverside, beach, field, cattail marsh, fields with scattered tall trees, forest patches—this little park provides a welcoming home for an intriguing diversity of species.

Some need no effort at all to see. Robins hop, Grackles stalk, and Mourning Doves stroll on the lawns, and there seem to be a singing (or mocking) Song Sparrow and Northern Mockingbird perched atop a bush or fence every ten feet along the path.

But other species aren’t so easy to spot, especially as the bushes and trees fill in with dense foliage. Therefore, if you want to see and try to understand the mosaic laid out before you, it’s important to have some knowledge of the resident birds’ songs.

Yellow Warbler. allaboutbirds.org

One bird most easily found by ear at Croton Landing is the Yellow Warbler whose staccato notes are easily heard near the little marsh and elsewhere along the path. Using them to guide you, a closer look may well reveal the tiny bird flitting around the brush, a spot of bright yellow (or at least yellow-olive) against the green.

Another diminutive resident, the Warbling Vireo, is far harder to spot. Even up close, these mostly gray birds are nondescript at best. Add in the fact that they tend to stay high up in tall trees, and their presence is easy to miss

That is, unless you know their long and bubbly song, which usually ends with a declarative “chip!” Even if you don’t see the birds themselves, listen and you will learn that vireos have made their homes in nearly every one of the tall cottonwoods scattered along the Croton Landing path. (Aren’t familiar with cottonwoods? During the next few weeks, just look for the trees that are “snowing.”)

Baltimore Oriole. allaboutbirds.org

When seen, most easily earlier in the spring when the foliage is sparser, Baltimore Orioles are unmistakable. Yet by looking for the source of their loud, liquid calls, you can glimpse that splash of orange even now in the mature trees where they build their sock-shaped nests.

Orchard Oriole. allaboutbirds.org

Meanwhile, their more subtly colored cousin, the chestnut-and-black Orchard Oriole (whose song is also quieter and more subtle than Baltimore’s) also appears to have found a home here. They can be heard and, with luck, glimpsed, in the trees surrounding the cattail marsh.

Willow Flycatcher. allaboutbirds.org

The marsh’s surroundings are also home to a bird Sharon and I were excited to identify this spring: the Willow Flycatcher. Part of a notoriously hard-to-distinguish genus, Empidonax, some of whose species can be told apart pretty much only by song, the Willows at Croton Landing have been helpfully vocal. Listen for something that sounds a bit like a sneeze (“Fitz-BEW!”) and then see if you can spot the small, dapper gray bird making it. (Willows, like most flycatchers, are not shy, often perching in plain view to emote.)

Cliff Swallow. allboutbirds.org

One species at Croton Landing reveals itself—and its breeding habits—through its unexpected behavior. At the north end of the park, Cliff Swallows congregate on the mudflats that border the river. In an unusual sight among a group of birds that are typically so aerial, they perch on the ground, fluttering their wings and jabbing at the mud with their sharp beaks.

These swallows are not eating: Like the Barn, Tree, and other swallows also found here, they feed on the wing. They’ve landed to gather mud for their elegantly constructed, globular nests, which they are likely building in nearby culverts or on tunnel underpass walls.

In doing so, alongside the other species that nest in our ever-more-crowded region, Cliff Swallows form a crucial piece of the colorful mosaic that characterizes this place in this rich season.  

Copyright © 2020 by Joseph Wallace

Links for more information on the birds mentioned above:

Yellow Warbler: https://www.allaboutbirds.org/guide/Yellow_Warbler

Warbling Vireo: https://www.allaboutbirds.org/guide/Warbling_Vireo

Baltimore Oriole: https://www.allaboutbirds.org/guide/Baltimore_Oriole

Orchard Oriole: https://www.allaboutbirds.org/guide/Orchard_Oriole

Willow Flycatcher: https://www.allaboutbirds.org/guide/Willow_Flycatcher

cicada-killer

SMRA

These are not “Murder Hornets”

SMRA May 22, 2020

One summer night in 1975, I ventured into a movie theater to see Jaws. And Steven Spielberg’s witty, entertaining thriller terrified me—along with millions of others that summer. At least for a while, its story of a rogue great white shark terrorizing a beach community truly did have the effect its tagline promised: “You’ll never go in the water again.” (Despite the fact that there are only about four or five fatalities from shark attacks each year worldwide.)

But besides making a fortune while scaring us senseless, Jaws had other, far darker consequences: an immediate and long-lasting boom in shark-hunting. This indiscriminate slaughter led to the deaths of a vast number of great whites and other shark species.

This has come to mind often over the past few weeks as I’ve been thinking about the Asian giant hornet, colorfully nicknamed the “Murder Hornet.”The breathless headlines trumpeting its arrival in the Pacific Northwest and western Canada could be straight out of a insect version of the film. And their effect may be just as dire.

Like great white sharks, giant hornets are impressive (the queen can be more than two inches long and individuals can fly at 25 miles per hour) and pose a legitimate threat. They aggressively defend their nests, their stinger is long and powerful, their sting is extraordinarily painful, and their venom is toxic. (The stings can be fatal in humans, though this is rare.)

But the giant hornet’s biggest threat is actually to already beleaguered honey bees, to the flowers that depend on the bees as pollinators, and to the beekeepers who tend them. As the headlines have screamed, , a single giant hornet can kill 40 honeybees a minute, and swarms can easily lay waste to entire hives.

But at the moment Asian giant hornets, exist in North America in only exceedingly small numbers and limited areas. If efforts to find and destroy them succeed, the species may never establish itself on the West Coast, and certainly not in the East .

Yet, especially as the spring proceeds, it seems likely that many of our neighbors, freaked out by the media drumbeat about “Murder Hornets,” will do what people often do when freaked out: attack, even before they really know their enemy. In this case, “attacking” will likely mean using pesticides on native wasps, whether they are a threat or not.

This makes it an ideal time to get to know three common species in our region that are not Murder Hornets.


Bald-faced Hornet. Photo: Wikipedia

Bald-Faced Hornet (Dolichovespula maculata)

Rising from a flower to check you out, these large (though barely half the size of Asian giant hornets), black-and-white wasps make for an impressive sight. And if disturbed they can deliver a powerfully venomous sting. (So don’t disturb them!)

By the end of a summer, a bald-faced hornet’s above-ground nest, often located in the crook of a tree branch, can be two feet high and 18 inches wide. An active nest crawling with workers ready to defend it is a sobering sight.

Yet the positive impact that hornet populations have on the ecosystem’s health is significant. The workers help pollinate flowering plants and are themselves an important food source for a variety of mammals, birds, frogs, and praying mantids. They’re even directly beneficial to humans, because along with nectar and sap they prey extensively on flies, especially the horseflies and deerflies that can plague us in summer.

Eastern Yellowjacket (Vespula maculifrons)

The bald-faced hornet’s little black-and-yellow cousin is probably our most familiar—and widely loathed—wasp. All summer long and especially in the fall, yellowjackets seem to be everywhere, especially where someone’s trying to enjoy a meal outdoors. More than one picnicker has drunk from a cup or can of soda and received a painful surprise from the small wasp that got there first.

Further, yellowjacket nests—typically built underground—can be huge, containing up to 5000 workers. Yellowjackets defending their nests are notably aggressive, and, like most wasps, tend to sting repeatedly. So it’s understandable that anyone with a nest in the front yard or under a shingle will want it removed ASAP.

Yet, as with bald-faced hornets, at a time of collapse of honey bee and other insect populations, the abundant yellowjacket serves as a vehicle for plant pollination. Since yellowjackets are also active carnivores (one of their common nicknames is “meat bees”), they naturally control the flies, grubs, and other insects that attack our farms and gardens.

Despite their predatory habits and obvious interest in the burgers we’ve brought out to grill, worker yellowjackets don’t actually eat much meat. (They prefer foods rich in carbohydrates.) Yet the hive couldn’t survive without the protein they bring back.

Here’s how: The process begins when a yellowjacket worker kills an insect. It will then cut its prey up with its sharp mandibles and carry each piece to the nest.

Unlike the adults, yellowjacket larvae need plenty of protein. Back at the nest, the worker will masticate the bug parts and feed them to the larvae.  In turn, the larva’s salivary glands will secrete a sweet liquid for the worker to eat. This elegant process, called trophallaxis, helps insure that both adult and larval wasp will receive the nourishment they need.

I realize that sometimes it’s hard to see the forest for the bees. But fascinating phenomena like trophallaxis—and the whole complex, surprising lifecycle of the yellowjacket—only make me admire them more, and want to learn more about them.

Cicada Killer (Sphecius speciosus)

Of all the wasps that could be incorrectly identified as “Murder Hornets,” the most likely candidate is our most noticeable—yet least aggressive—local wasp: the cicada killer. At up to two inches long, cicada killers are big and stocky. They’re gaudy, too, with reddish wings and black and brown bodies patterned with white patches.

Their behavior is just as ostentatious. Even though they’re solitary wasps, not living in colonies, you’ll frequently find a group of them excavating large burrows in patches of their prime breeding habitat: light-textured, well-drained soil. Among their favorite sites in our area are front walks, at the base of stone walls, in window boxes, and other places close to where we live and work.

Cicada killers are also curious and territorial. At least the males are, often grappling with each other over turf and buzzing around everyone and everything that moves through their territory. As one hovers near you, it might even give the sense that it’s sizing you up.

Admittedly, to be stared at by a large wasp can be a sobering prospect. Here’s the thing, though: The males have no stingers. Buzzing around is all they can do to warn you off.

On the other hand, the females do have a powerful stinger…but they have no interest in you whatsoever. They’re not territorial at all. In fact, you can walk right past—or over—a female cicada as she excavates her burrow, and she won’t pay you any mind.

She’s saving her venom for one specific task: to paralyze the cicadas that will serve as a food source for her larvae. In doing so, she’s helping keep populations of cicadas—which eat sap and in abundant years can damage trees and bushes—in natural balance.


Whether we ever have the right to extirpate a species that might be a threat to us is a debate that plays out whenever humans encounter something potentially dangerous (such as coyotes, venomous snakes, or the great white sharks made notorious by Jaws). Given the outcome of this debate throughout our history, I worry that, in the era of the Murder Hornet, our fascinating and beneficial native wasps may suffer as well. As will we, too, from their loss.

Copyright © 2020 by Joseph Wallace

NOMO_song_wingflash_rsz_wiki

Birding

The Mockingbird’s Meaning

SMRA May 9, 2020

“Mockingbirds don’t do one thing but make music for us to enjoy. They don’t eat up people’s gardens, don’t nest in corn cribs. They don’t do one thing but sing their hearts out for us. That’s why it’s a sin to kill a mockingbird.”

This is perhaps the most famous quote from Harper Lee’s beloved To Kill a Mockingbird. It’s a novel I love, yet from my very first encounter with it as a child, I knew that Lee hadn’t gotten Northern Mockingbirds quite right.

She’d made them sound like some sweet, limpid caroler, a North American nightingale, perhaps. Having been dive-bombed by angry mockers when I approached too close to their (hidden) nest, and woken more than once in the middle of the night by their loud calls, I had a different opinion.

In some ways, I still do. Northern Mockingbirds have always been one of my favorite species because they’re not sweet and limpid. And, as we all know, they don’t carol.

Quite the reverse: Mockers are conspicuous (“rain-cloud gray with bursts of white,” as nature writer Gordon Grice describes them), tough and brassy. The males are fiercely territorial, often engaging in violent battles with potential rivals, and they’re equally fearless in confronting anything that might hunt them or raid their nests.

In his book The Red Hourglass: Lives of the Predators, Gordon Grice tells of a rattlesnake that made the mistake of passing beneath a mockingbird nest, provoking a series of attacks. The bird targeted the snake’s head and eyes, leaving it mortally wounded. Mockingbirds have been known, Grice says, “to keep after a rattlesnake for an hour. They don’t relent even when the snake leaves their territory; they follow and perform an execution.”

Their flashy looks and personalities make mockingbirds one of the most noticeable species in any habitat where they appear. (In this season, there appears to be a new mockingbird territory every thirty feet at Croton Landing.) They seem to demand our attention, often sitting in plain sight on a bare branch or fence top, fixing you with a dark eye as they watch you pass by.

But if they’re usually easy to observe, it’s their song that makes them famous. Of course, it’s not quite a “song,” but mockers’ talent for mimicry that gives them their common name.

Mockingbirds have the ability to imitate the calls of dozens of other bird species. (And not just birds. They’re also good at car alarms and other human-created sounds.) Stop to listen to one perform, and you’re quite likely to hear its take on robins, cardinals, wrens, orioles, and blackbirds, among others.

They do have their own songs, too, whistled phrases that are similar in tone to their mimicked calls. But the vast majority of the birds’ calls are imitations.

So we know a fair bit about mockingbirds. But it turns out there’s also a whole lot we don’t know. In fact, much about the species remains wreathed in mystery.

For example, scientific consensus has long held that mockingbirds learn new songs throughout their lives. Yet when biologist Dave Gammon, a professor at Elon University in North Carolina, tested that theory by repeatedly playing songs of new species for local mockers, he found that they didn’t learn a thing.

Gammon then studied the songs of individual mockingbirds recorded over several years, again finding that the birds’ overall repertoires never changed. So it appears they—like many species—may learn all they need to know as youngsters.

Most young birds learn to sing by listening to their parents. But no one seems to know whether mockers learn from their parents, by listening to other birds, or both. Which leads to another question: If the imitations are handed down through generations, then who was that bird who first added other species’ songs to the repertoire? And why?

Why remains the biggest mystery of all. What advantage does a mockingbird gain by learning dozens of other birds’ calls? In most bird species, males sing as a way of attracting females; strong songs, like larger size and brighter colors, show health and strength. But do female mockingbirds (who sing as well) choose the male with the loudest voice? The one with the most diverse repertoire? No one knows for sure.

I think this is fascinating: We actually understand little about a bird we think we know so well, which has appeared so often in our creative consciousness. Harper Lee is far from the only author to have been inspired by the mockingbird; much more recently, Suzanne Collins named her Hunger Games novel Mockingjay, after a jay-mockingbird hybrid.

Songwriters have turned to the mockingbird even more often. The traditional lullaby “Mockingbird” (“Hush little baby, don’t say a word, Mama’s gonna buy you a mockingbird) is perhaps the most famous, especially since it was transformed (by Inez and Charlie Foxx) into an R&B version covered by everyone from Dusty Springfield to Aretha Franklin and Ray Johnson to James Taylor and Carly Simon.

There’s also Patti Page singing “Mockin’ Bird Hill” (“It gives me a thrill to wake up in the morning to the mockingbird’s trill”) and, recently, singer-songwriter Lindsay Lou’s evocative “Southland” (“Come on, little mockingbird, sing us a song”), among others.

This persistence in our nation’s art has made me understand something new about the meaning of mockingbirds. Far more than just appealing splashes of color and noise around us, they conjure up still, hot summer days, childhood, the peacefulness of less complicated times. They’re also a gateway to the natural world, to a place that can restore us…but that we don’t always remember to slow down and notice.

I’m thinking that I’ve been getting it wrong, and that Harper Lee had it right all along.

Copyright © 2020 by Joseph Wallace

ring-necked-snake-newyorkupstate-com

SMRA

Landscape with Snakes

SMRA April 26, 2020

Many years ago, when my son was about six, he and I went for a quick spring walk around Swan Lake in Rockefeller State Park. In those 45 minutes, we witnessed a whole range of fascinating animal behavior I’d never seen before and have not glimpsed since.

We saw two gigantic male bullfrogs fighting, standing up on their hind legs and engaging in hand-to-hand combat as they emitted horrendous angry groans. We spotted a newly hatched Snapping Turtle, little bigger than my thumbnail, gazing back at us fearlessly. We watched two male Baltimore Orioles fly across the lake towards us, darting at each other the whole way. They were so intent on their rivalry that they crashed headlong into a bush at our feet, only to emerge a moment later, uninjured and glaring at each other.

Northern Water Snake
https://www.inaturalist.org/guide_taxa/928039

And we saw snakes. So many snakes. In the shallow southern end of the lake, at least a dozen Northern Water Snakes had gathered, some intertwined, others nosing around the reeds and water plants. Down the shoreline were others, including one that had decided to make another bullfrog into a meal.

For ten minutes we watched as the snake, opening its jaws as wide as it could, tried to swallow the frog. As the frog struggled to escape, the two creatures toppled first one way and then the other. Finally, either exhausted or realizing that its mission was hopeless, the snake released its hold and the frog swam away, seemingly little worse for wear.

For those of us who love reptiles and amphibians (including snakes!), April marks the month not only when most migrating birds return, but when our cold-blooded residents emerge from their winter slumbers and repopulate our ponds, woods, and shorelines. Painted Turtles and Yellow-Eared Sliders (along with some large, invasive Red-Eared Sliders) stack up on logs and exposed rocks. Terrestrial Red-Backed Salamanders stake out their territories under rotting logs, while Red Efts wander the moist forest floor.

And snakes? Even if most of them stay hidden from view, snakes are everywhere once spring arrives and throughout the warmer months of the year. This includes SMRA’s preserves, where at least eight of New York’s 17 species have been found. You just have to know where—and how—to look.

Garter Snake.
https://www.flickr.com/photos/austinluker

Common Garter Snakes, those small- to medium-sized snakes whose dark bodies are contrasted by multiple lighter racing stripes, are probably the best-known species in our area. They’re certainly the one most likely to appear in suburban gardens, hiding in woodpiles and little-used sheds or sunning themselves atop rock walls.

But the Northern Water Snakes that my son and I saw in such abundance may be the most conspicuous of all local species. Both their size (they can reach more than four feet in length) and their comparative lack of caution in their watery habitat help make them hard to miss.

Dark (they can be almost black, brown, or gray) with lighter blotches or bands, water snakes are most often encountered while they’re foraging in the shallows of ponds or streams. But they’ll also congregate in numbers on exposed rocks to bask in the sun.

Black Rat Snake. By Judy Gallagher https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=54266563

The largest regularly seen snake in our area is the Eastern or Black Rat Snake, which can reach a solidly built seven feet in length. (The usual suspects around here are four or five feet long…big enough!) This species can be quickly recognized by the way that its white lower jaw and chin contrast with its black body.

In more agrarian times and places, rat snakes were always welcome residents of any farm. Ferocious hunters of rats and other rodents, they are no threat to humans unless mishandled. (A trait they share with other snakes, most of which want nothing more than to be left alone.)

Currently Rat Snakes are still doing well, even in our populated suburbs. Yet they are sometimes killed just because of their size and prominence, and due to the general fear—even hatred—of snakes that afflicts far too many people.

For those of us who consider snakes an essential and fascinating part of the natural world, a glimpse of the other, less commonly noted species always counts as the highlight of a hike or nature walk. In SMRA’s sanctuaries and other undisturbed areas, you can find the colorful Eastern Milk Snake, the slender and retiring Ring-Necked Snake, and my favorite, the Eastern Hognose Snake.

I confess that I’ve yet to see a Hognose Snake in the wild. So how can it be my favorite? For its brilliant—or at least enthusiastic—thespian abilities.

Eastern Hognosed Snake. Andrew DuBois.
https://www.inaturalist.org/photos/55054290

If bothered, the Hognose will first try hissing and mock strikes. But if these don’t work, it will play dead, rolling over onto its back and lying there slack-jawed. In fact, it is so dedicated to its art that if you flip a playacting one onto its stomach, it will roll onto its back once again. (“Can’t you see I’m dead?”)

What about venomous snakes? None have yet been reported in any of SMRA’s sanctuaries, but two species—the Copperhead and the Timber Rattlesnake—do live in our region.  

The Timber Rattler—usually tan with darker blotches and bands, with a triangular head, stout body, and, of course, rattle—is occasionally spotted in the area’s wilder parks, such as Harriman and Bear Mountain. There, individuals or small groups can sometimes be seen sunning themselves on the rocky outcroppings or ravines where they make their dens.

The usually rusty-red Copperhead (a rattle-less rattlesnake) is a rare resident of Ward Pound Ridge Reservation, Rockefeller State Park, and other larger protected areas. With this species—as with all snakes—the most important rule of thumb is: Do not approach. They are nearly always far less eager to be seen than many of us are to glimpse one.

During these months, the mere possibility of seeing a snake also reminds us that even amid never-ending suburban development, powerful predators—black bears, hybrid coyote-wolves, bobcats, and venomous snakes—continue to hang on, prowling, stalking, and sometimes sliding silently through the underbrush.

Just as they always have, and just as they always should.

Copyright © 2020 by Joseph Wallace

CrotonPoint-HaverstrawBay-clui-org

SMRA

The Unseen Jungle

SMRA April 16, 2020

In 1609, Henry Hudson sailed his ship Half Moon from what would soon become New Amsterdam upriver in search of the Northwest Passage, supposed gateway to the riches of Asia. About 30 miles north, after the dramatic palisades along the shore softened into rolling hills, he came upon a stretch where the river broadened to more than three miles from shore to shore. He was certain he’d found his holy grail, which he immediately claimed for Holland.

https://www.nationalgeographic.org/activity/life-on-the-half-moon/

Sorry, Henry. In his defense, Hudson was far from the first to let hopes outpace reality during explorations of the New World. But if he’d had thought to ask the local Native Americans who’d been plying this stretch of water since time immemorial, they would have told him that he’d “discovered” the passage to nowhere but hundreds of miles of more river. 

Hudson was right about one thing, though: This, the widest point of the river’s estuary and now known as Haverstraw Bay, was—and is—something special, worthy of celebration if not of “claiming.” (Note: An estuary is a river’s tidal zone, where freshwater from upstream meets the ocean saltwater. Though estuaries are most often found near a river’s mouth, the tides flow—to a greater or lesser degree—into and out of the Hudson for more than 150 miles, all the way to the Federal Dam in Troy.)

As the Wappinger people, who occupied the east bank in this region, also could have told him, Haverstraw Bay—which stretches from Croton Point north for about six miles—is one of the most important habitats along the whole river. (It’s been designated as a “Significant Coastal Fish and Wildlife Habitat” by New York State.)

The bay plays a crucial role in the river ecosystem, and it all starts with its depth, tidal nature, and proximity to the Atlantic Ocean. It’s rarely more than ten feet deep on its eastern side, and the tides carrying a regular influx of salt water into this shallow, often sunlit expanse help create a fertile brackish environment.

Such conditions, explains Tom Lake, Estuary Naturalist in the DEC [Department of Environmental Conservation] Hudson River Estuary Program, create an ideal nursery for young fish. “Unlike the clear water of the Atlantic,” he says, “Haverstraw Bay is generally turbid, off-color with suspended sediments, making it more difficult for predators to find smaller fish. Inch-long river herring in the open ocean would have a very short expected survival time.”

These conditions also help create a riotous growth of aquatic plants, which provide additional hiding places for young fish. It may be hard to imagine as you walk along the path at Croton Landing or look north from Croton Point Park, but it’s a jungle down there.

Baby Sturgeon. Source: www.riverkeeper.org

And, like all jungles, it plays host to a breathtaking variety and abundance of creatures—in this case, ranging from minuscule plankton to massive Atlantic sturgeon, which can weigh 800 pounds as adults. “Perhaps the key role of Haverstraw Bay,” says Lake, “is that it is a nursery area both for young-of-year fish [fish in the first year of their lives] from further upriver—such as striped bass and river herring—and young-of-year fish from the ocean, including bluefish and Atlantic menhaden.”

The symbol of the Hudson River estuary—the Atlantic sturgeon—provides a vivid example of the interlocking roles of Haverstraw Bay, the river, and the ocean beyond.

Sturgeon spawn in the river north of the bay, mainly from Hyde Park to Catskill. The young fish stay in the river for up to eight years, relying—like so many other species—on the bay for seasonal food and shelter. Then they head out to sea, where they spend most of their long lives (up to 60 years) in the ocean, only occasionally wandering in and out of other rivers from Canada to Georgia.

When males born in the Hudson River are about twelve years of age—and females close to twenty—they return to the Hudson to spawn. This drive to spawn where they themselves were born, shared with salmon and other diadromous fish, shows the ultimate importance of continuing to protect Haverstraw Bay, not only now but for future generations of fish and humans alike.

But the sturgeon and other famous Hudson River denizens—like striped bass, Atlantic shad, and alewives, currently migrating in vast numbers upriver to breed—are far from the only oceangoing fish that depend on Haverstraw Bay. In fact, some visitors over the past quarter century must have deeply startled their first human observers.

“In dry summers, the bay can reach near fifty percent salinity,” Tom Lake points out. “This intrusion of salty water can lure tropical species such as crevalle jack, lookdown, and even bonefish into the bay.” They’re joined by more northerly saltwater fish, including summer flounder, northern sennet (a kind of barracuda), and northern kingfish.

And it’s not just fish that rely on Haverstraw Bay and the entire Hudson River estuary. Far from it. A wide variety of marine mammals have also been recorded there in summer, when, as Lake puts it, “Haverstraw is like an all-night deli.”

Harbor Seal, July 2019, Croton Point, spotted by students from The Rewilding School.
Source: www.rewildingschool.com

In the past quarter century, four seal species (harbor, gray, hooded, and harp), three dolphins (bottlenose and Risso’s dolphin and harbor [common] porpoise), and most famously, even a minke (in 2007) and a humpback whale (in 2016) have paid visits. Perhaps most famously, a wandering Florida manatee made the river its home for a time in 2006.

During my regular walks at Croton Landing, I’ve most often thought of the waters of Haverstraw Bay—slate gray or silvery, calm or roiling—as merely part of the scene’s palette of color and movement. But now I find myself always on the lookout for a passing manatee, leaping sturgeon, or a glimpse of any of the other surprising riches the bay has to offer.

Copyright © 2020 by Joseph Wallace

Pileated-Tongue

Birding

The Tongue Tells the Tale

SMRA April 3, 2020

Today I’m going to spend some time marveling at woodpeckers. In fact, I’m going to marvel at just one part of them: their tongues.

Not that there aren’t plenty of other things worth noticing, starting with the fact that woodpeckers are one of the most diverse groups of birds in Westchester. (And one of the most noticeable and familiar: Every species can become part of our backyard-birding experience, especially during migration season.)

Six species are at least fairly common nesters in this region: the ladder-backed Downy and its bigger cousin, the Hairy; that comparatively recent invader from the south, the Red-Bellied; the quiet and little-seen Yellow-Bellied Sapsucker; the Northern Flicker; and the magnificent, crow-sized Pileated.

That’s a lot of woodpeckers. (By comparison, our region hosts just one chickadee and titmouse and two orioles and tanagers.) But woodpeckers offer more than variety and a percussion soundtrack to a walk in the spring woods. They also serve as spectacular examples of adaptive evolution. There’s so much to say that I’ll focus on three of them: the Flicker, Sapsucker, and Pileated. (I pronounce that “PILL-e-ay-ted,” by the way.)

These three species—like all woodpeckers—eat grubs, ants, and other insects, most often obtained through excavation into tree trunks or limbs. To make this possible, woodpeckers share important features: sharp chisel-like beaks, powerful neck muscles, a thick skull, and a brain designed not to be bruised by repeated impacts.

But the differences in their tongues tell us even more. In each case, the tongue’s length and structure helps reveal where each species hunts, the techniques it uses, and even its preferred prey.

A woodpecker’s tongue

Woodpeckers all tend to have surprisingly long tongues, which are usually stored, remarkably, in a chamber between the back of the bird’s skull and its skin. But Pileateds’ tongues are relatively short, and for a simple reason: The birds’ physical strength and powerful beaks allow them to excavate deeply, reaching their prey without needing an extremely long tongue to do so.

Pileateds’ preferred food includes large grubs and carpenter ants, which can reach nearly half an inch in length. To capture these sizable insects most efficiently, the tip of the Pileated’s tongue is covered with backward-facing barbs. In essence, the bird goes fishing, dipping its tongue into an excavation, hooking its prey, and yanking it out.

Norther Flicker feeding on the ground.

Northern Flickers, on the other hand, rarely excavate in wood at all. They’re much more likely to be seen on the ground, digging into ant colonies. Since the ants they eat are of the smaller varieties, Flickers’ tongues are flattened to provide a greater surface area, but have few barbs.

Like anteaters, which also feast on small ant and termites, Flickers have evolved another useful trait: sticky saliva. The flat, sticky tongue efficiently allows the woodpecker to retrieve a large number of ants at a time.

Yellow-Bellied Sapsuckers have yet another approach to food. In fact, Sapsucker adaptations may be the most fascinating and complex of all.

As their name suggests, Sapsuckers actually do eat sap taken from a variety of trees. (Their favorites range from paper birch to swamp maple to pines and other conifers.) But they do more than just eat the sap: They farm it.

Many of us recognize a row of small, circular holes neatly arrayed in lines on a tree trunk as a sapsucker’s work. One tree may have dozens or even hundreds of holes, located from near ground level high up the trunk.

Yellow-bellied Sapsucker at sap wells.

These holes were not drilled in search of insect prey. They are the “sap wells” of a Yellow-Bellied Sapsucker, drilled specifically to give them access to running sap, which the bird eats. Each sapsucker maintains a territory with its own sap well farm, which it will tend each day and defend against others (including other sapsuckers) that might want to exploit it.

Sap is not the only food this woodpecker relies on. As uneaten sap dries and hardens, it can trap small insects, which become part of the bird’s diet. At certain times of year, especially fall and winter when insects are scarce, the sapsucker will augment its diet with seeds, fruit, and bast (the soft inner wood of a tree trunk or stem). But even here the sap wells play a role: The bast comes from the interiors of the holes they’ve drilled.

Adult sapsuckers feed their young sap and insects as well. Remarkably, researchers have observed parent birds catching a butterfly or other insect, then dipping it in the sap before delivering it to the babies. Presumably, this adds nutritional value to the meal.

What do sapsucker tongues have to do with all this? Plenty. Neither the Pileated’s spear- and fishhook-like tongue nor the Flicker’s flattened, sticky one is designed for transferring a flowing liquid to the bird’s mouth.

But the sapsucker’s tongue is exquisitely well suited to the task. The Yellow-Bellied’s tongue has feather-shaped bristles near the tip, converting it into a kind of sap-collecting brush. Importantly, the tongue’s bristles can hold the liquid more readily through the process known as capillary action. (The same way paint spreads between the bristles of a paintbrush.)

Beyond these three species, each of our other familiar woodpeckers also has its own unique story to tell. Meanwhile worldwide, more than 200 woodpecker species—large and small, spectacular and unobtrusive—occupy tropical jungles and boreal forests, high mountain slopes and sere deserts on every continent save Antarctica.

To see how they do it, just take a look at their tongues.

Copyright © 2020 by Joseph Wallace

web_h_americanrobin_03-16-2016-110-adult-male

Backyard Habitats/ Birding

The World Out the Window

SMRA March 23, 2020

In the world we’re living in for now, it’s a source of solace to me to see how little nature seems to notice or care. The willows have greened, crocuses and daffodils are in bloom, and on a warm day, the turtles in the duck pond down the road from where I live are stacked up on a log…no need for social distancing when there’s a sunny spot to be shared.

Of course, even those of us who are spending much time alone—or in the company only of loved ones—still have the balm that going outside provides. Walks, especially in nature, are encouraged…as long as you keep enough distance between yourself and others. This can provide essential succor for the soul.

But even if you are stuck inside, there’s plenty to be seen out the window, especially in this season. Merely scanning the trees in view can reveal the way the changing season is matched by changing bird behavior.

Blackbird Collage. From Bur Oak Land Trust

For example, sporadically through each day, the trees around my house fill with clamorous blackbirds.

Already I’ve identified four freely intermixing species: European Starlings, Common Grackles, Brown-headed Cowbirds, and Red-winged Blackbirds. (I guess that Rusty Blackbirds could be up there, too, but I haven’t glimpsed one.)  

Sometimes the flocks come swooping down to the nearby bushes and lawns on a multi species raid, but much of the time they’re just perched up there, squawking away. (It’s very strange to hear Red-wings giving their familiar “Conk-a-REE!” call from 75 feet above your head.)

But interesting sightings aren’t limited to the treetops. In the past week or so, robins have invaded the neighborhood’s lawns—and they’re not the patchy, skinny birds we see in windblown flocks in the winter, but brightly plumaged and well-fed as they resume their place as perhaps our best-known nesters. The darker, more vivid males are already keeping a close eye on the females.

Other birds have already paired up for breeding season. In fact, the two House Finches that regularly visit our backyard feeder have been a couple for at least a month. Turns out that these little finches are, in fact, among our earliest songbirds to settle into a season-long relationship. This jumpstart on the breeding process allows them to produce multiple clutches each year.  

Female and male House Finch.
From Celebrate Urban Birds.

Something else I learned about House Finches: The males’ lovely reddish color doesn’t come from a pigment they create, but from the food—berries above all—they eat. Females tend to choose the brightest males, scientists believe, because these males are seen as the hardest workers, the ones most likely to bring home the most food for the brood.

My yard’s Mourning Doves have also become a couple. Though they pick at the safflower seeds in our feeder, they like our back deck even better for sunning, spreading out as flat as they can to soak up the warmth.

Something I’ve noted and wondered about—three Mourning Doves flying in what seems to be tight formation—turns out to be a kind of behavioral display. The lead bird is the male of a mated pair and one of the close followers is a single male ousting the potential invader from its territory.

The third bird? The mated female. Why she joins the chase—instead of teaming up with her mate—appears to be unknown. Maybe she’s just getting a moment’s revenge for all the harassment female birds typically receive in this season.

Carolina Wren. From Celebrate Urban Birds

The third paired-up regular visitors to the feeder, either skulking around under the table on the deck or singing loudly from an exposed perch, are Carolina Wrens. It’s hard to believe it now, when the birds are one of our most noticeable permanent residents (and one of the only species to sing regularly all winter long), but they weren’t always common in our region. In fact, they were most abundant in the South. (Hence the name.)

In recent decades, due to both warming temperatures and the combination of deforestation and reforestation (both of which create the brushy tangles they prefer), the wrens have moved steadily northward in both range and abundance. Today, few suburban streets aren’t given the gift of that ringing “teakettle, teakettle, teakettle, tea!” song.

I love all these species for their very familiarity. But as I write this, just past the first day of spring, the show through the window—and on our streets and in nearby preserves—is about to grow far richer. Warblers, tanagers, orioles, and other gems are already on their way, and I can hardly wait.

by Joseph Wallace Copyright © 2020

Green-Darner-Mark-Chappell

Backyard Habitats

Here Be Dragons

SMRA March 15, 2020

Once, when I was very young—and already fascinated by the natural world around me—I plucked a Japanese beetle off a bush and took a closer look. As it marched across my palm, I inspected its gleaming brown wing cases, their iridescence flashing in the sun.

Then I tossed beetle into the air above my head, watching to see it unfold its wings and fly off. Before it could, though, something shaped like a tiny fighter jet came darting into view. As I watched, the intruder snatched the beetle out of the air and carried it off.

The predator was, of course, a dragonfly. A big green one—a Green Darner, I discovered later. I was immediately fascinated by both its grace and its snatch-and-grab hunting technique, but not until much later did I discover how remarkable dragonflies and their cousins, the damselflies (Order Odonata, called “odonates” as a group), truly are. (You can distinguish the two because dragonflies’ wings are fixed roughly perpendicular to their bodies, while damselflies’ wings fold.)

Images Source: https://www.odonatacentral.org

First I learned how many dragonfly and damselfly species exist. With new ones still being discovered, more than 6000 species have been identified worldwide (they’re native to every continent save Antarctica) and around 200 in New York State alone. The largest known species (Megaloprepus caerulatus, a damselfly whose wings whirl like a helicopter’s rotors when it flies) has a wingspan of about 7.5 inches, while the wingspan of the smallest, the dragonfly Nannophya pygmaea, doesn’t even reach an inch.  

And the common names! Unlike ornithologists, who tend to use plainly descriptive or habitat-oriented names (e.g., Black-Capped, Boreal, and Mountain Chickadees), entomologists have allowed the poetry in their souls to guide them. Thus we have been gifted with the Wandering Glider, Eastern Pondhawk, Halloween Pennant, Ebony Jewelwing, Blue Dasher, and many others.

These glorious names give only a hint of how colorful these insects are. And there’s so much more to marvel at: These small, ferocious predators lead extraordinary lives, the most vivid parts of which remain largely hidden from our view.

For example: Different species employ varying techniques to contend with cold northern winters. Most Green Darners, for example (along some other insects, most famously Monarch Butterflies) migrate to escape the cold weather. Like the vast majority of insects, though, nearly all temperate dragon- and damselflies spend their whole lives in the area where they were born, no matter the temperature.

Remarkably, though, unlike butterflies (which winter over as eggs, chrysalises, or adults in a kind of hibernation), the odonates remain active, feeding and growing all winter long…even during the coldest of cold snaps. The secret of their success is a stage of their life cycle that reads like science fiction.

Dragon- and damselflies are among the most aerial of all insects. They can barely walk (at most an awkward step or two), instead merely perching to rest. They hunt and mate on the wing, and many species even lay their eggs while flying. (If you’ve ever seen a dragonfly seeming to dip its “tail” repeatedly into a pond, that’s a female laying its eggs, often on or among leaves just below the water’s surface.)

Once the eggs hatch out, however, a mirror-image phase of the dragonfly’s life cycle begins: the nymphs not only cannot fly, but live an entirely aquatic existence, walking with ease and breathing through gill-like structures on their bodies. It is this phase that allows our northern species to stay active year-round—because, of course, even under a thick coating of ice, most ponds and lakes never fully freeze.

Nymphs (also called the larvae and, in some species, naiads) are even fiercer predators than the adults, and are especially skilled at ambush hunting. They come equipped with keen eyesight and strong, serrated mandibles, and many species have also evolved a powerful weapon to aid them in the hunt: a long, sharp, prehensile appendage called a labium.

When at rest, the labium folds up under the larva’s head and remains locked in place. But when potential prey—creatures as substantial as tadpoles and small fish for larger dragonfly species—comes within range, the labium unfolds and, driven by hydraulic pressure created by the nymph’s abdominal muscles, jabs forward at great speed.

In some species, the labium impales its prey. In others, pincers at its tip grasp the unwary target. Then the appendage draws back in towards the mandibles, providing the young dragonfly with its next meal.

Nymphs spend months—sometimes even years—underwater before emerging and transforming into winged adults. (Unlike butterflies, dragon- and damselflies skip the pupal stage and emerge fully formed through the nymph’s cracked-open skin. Inspect reeds and other emergent vegetation near waterline, and you may spot the nymph-shaped skins that have been left behind.)

So right now, even though it’s been months since we saw adult dragonflies zooming across the sky or damselflies fluttering amid the flowers, their nymphs are moving amid the fish, tadpoles, and other creatures in our ponds, preparing for the approaching spring…and the next stage in their fascinating and surprising lives.

Copyright © 2020 by Joseph Wallace

Skunk-Cabbage-seashoretoforestfloor-com

Birding

Secrets of an Early Riser

SMRA March 4, 2020

Anyone who’s ever spent time walking through Northeastern wetlands in late winter is familiar with skunk cabbage (Symplocarpus foetidus), one of the earliest flowering plants to appear each year. To this lover of spring, its appearance feels like a joyous harbinger of the glories to come.

Even so, I’ve never paid much attention to the plant itself. It wasn’t until I took a walk recently among the swamps, streams, and wet forests of Pruyn Sanctuary and spotted the purple-and-white foliage emerging through patches of snow and ice that a simple question occurred to me for the first time.

How does the skunk cabbage do it?

Or, more specifically: What enables it to be first, growing so luxuriantly when most plants have barely begun to produce their first buds? The answer—as so often with the natural world when we look at it closely—is fascinating, even astonishing.

Symplocarpus foetidus, it turns out, doesn’t emerge earlier than most other wildflowers because of extra-tough leaves, some kind of antifreeze in its veins, or sheer force of will. It erupts through the snow and ice because, unlike any other plant in our region, it carries its own heating system. It actually functions like (for want of a better term) a warm-blooded plant during those cold late-winter days.

Skunk Cabbage in Snow.
Source: www.twbwf.org

The skunk cabbage generates heat through the process known as thermogenesis, which in fact closely resembles the process used by mammals and other warm-blooded creatures. The process begins with starches the plant has stored in its roots and rhizome (the part of the stem that lies underground), all in preparation for the slightly less cold days of late winter.

Often weeks before most other plants are active, the starches begin to break down, a process that produces a significant amount of energy—i.e., heat. It then exudes the heat through its pores (called stomata) in a process called cellular respiration.

Scientists have found that, over the short term (usually a week or two), a skunk-cabbage plant can warm itself and the earth around it dozens of degrees above the temperature of the surrounding air. In addition, this little engine warms the nearby soil, making it more hospitable to the plant’s growth.

In researching this piece, I discovered that the skunk cabbage wasn’t through surprising me. I’d always assumed that the glossy, mottled purple-and-white shoots that emerge first are leaves. They’re actually leaf-like structures called spathes, which enclose spike-like stems called spadices. (Singular: spadix.) The plant’s abundant clusters of yellowish flowers grow on its spadix, and the leaves—a less glossy green—appear later.

Pruyn Sanctuary boardwalk through Skunk Cabbage leaves in May. Photo: Phil Heidelberger

As so often, the answers to some questions about the world around us only lead to more. For example: Given that the skunk cabbage’s flowers are pollinated by insects, are there enough bugs around in late winter to do the job?

There are, in fact, insects that hatch out at the same time that the cabbage blooms, including its pollinators, flies, stoneflies, and bees. By sending out its flower spike so early, the skunk cabbage is functioning as a classic “early bird.”

The plant’s skunkish odor—most noticeable up close—may also help the plant attract its pollinators, many of which typically feast on carrion and rotting vegetation along with nectar. Even in a season where there may be few insects about, the cabbage makes its presence known to the ones that have hatched.

Even the skunk cabbage’s temporary “warm-bloodedness” plays a part in its ability to thrive under challenging conditions. As well as giving the plant a jumpstart on spring, its self-generated heat may help its insect-attracting odor spread more widely through the air. And once the pollinators approach, the greater warmth within the spathe tempts them inside, where the flowers—and pollen—are.

My walk in Pruyn Sanctuary inspired me to learn about this unique native plant. Even so, for me the best thing about seeing its early leaves—I mean spathes—emerging from the winter earth hasn’t changed at all. To me, the early emergence of skunk cabbage will always mean one thing: Spring is coming. Copyright © 2020 by Joseph Wallace

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