Birdwatching

For the last couple of months we’ve had a bird feeder hanging outside the window beside the kitchen table. As we sit eating breakfast and drinking tea we get to watch the variety of birds that visit, up close. With our handy Bird Guide reference we enjoy looking them up to see who is coming to dine.

We’ve learned two things from these observations. First, while two or three birds may visit at the same time, they are almost always of one species. If another species tries to show up they are chased away. The other observation is that different species tend to visit at different times of day, such that the aforementioned conflicts don’t happen very often.

The first species of the morning is the Red-Breasted Nuthatch. Pretty little things that, at a distance, I had confused with chickadees. They have short tails and beaks that appear to be tipped upwards somewhat. When they fly, they swoop up and down. They like to grab a sunflower seed then scoot over to a nearby evergreen tree to eat it. Then they return for another.

After they’ve had their fill, later in the morning we get the Chestnut Backed Chickadee. Coming from the mainland I’m more familiar with the Black-Capped Chickadee. The former have a lovely vest of chestnut-brown, and their small size makes them very cute.

In late afternoon the Oregon Junco’s arrive. I’ve seen them getting chased away by the nuthatches if they show up too early, so not sure if late days are their regular feeding time or if they’ve adapted to stay away from the early-bird nuthatches. They seem big compared to the other two, their long tails can be recognized even when they are on the other side of the feeder. They are bolder than the other species, content to rest on the edge of the deck and forage down below for dropped seeds.

One of my favourite visitors is the Spotted Towhee. These guys usually show up alone, and when no other birds are around. I first saw one last spring while walking along a nearby trail, and was thrilled with their wing spots and pretty brown sides. They are easily frightened away, so I sit very still when one comes to visit.

Just today I saw a new visitor, around lunchtime. I had to search through my book to identify it, and was pleased to find an answer. With it’s strongly streaked chest and yellowish wing markings, I was able to determine it was a Pine Siskin. It’s not exactly a rare bird, but being new to this birdwatching thing it was a “new to me” bird, and just as exciting as any rare find by a seasoned birder!

We’re looking forward to continuing our birding education through the spring and into summer and fall. Hopefully we’ll meet some new friends along the way. In the meantime, we’re definitely getting our money’s worth out of the birdseed!

Trailer of Life

We had a great deal of fun recently getting an up-close look at the insects and other critters that live hidden away on the land. There was a pile of waste materials that had been sitting in a spot on our property for a couple of months. It was things we’d dug up when we first started land clearing: cement blocks, car parts, barbed wire, and stuff like that. I took the ATV trailer up there and loaded the stuff on, then took it towards the house where another pile awaited sorting. As I unloaded the trailer I discovered we’d brought along some amazing hitchhikers.

There was a colony of large ants complete with white larvae. Apparently they’d made a nest in one of the concrete blocks and I picked up most of them with the block. The ants were running around the trailer bottom in a mad frenzy, many of them carrying the larval cases. The kids and I watched as it quite rapidly went from chaos to some form of organization, as scouting ants found something in the trailer that seemed safe and soon led the rest of them over that way (until, of course, that item was lifted from the trailer). It was amazing to watch and we were spellbound for some time.

Besides the ants we had various interesting beetles, slugs, and snails and also a small garter snake in the trailer, which my daughter immediately decided to keep as a pet. She also made a video of the snake. Son was tickled to see a snake up close and even held it for a while. The snake was put into an old fish tank out on the deck but somehow managed to escape overnight (which I was sort of hoping it would).

This seems to have inspired Daughter to create a page in a recent Orca Books publication devoted to life “Under the Ground”. She also has been on regular snake-hunting expeditions around the farm to find a replacement for “Scaley”. Son isn’t as much of a nature buff as she is but he stuck around for some time as well observing the ants and the snake. So much fun in a trailer full of yard waste!

Giant (Predaceous) Diving Beetle

Daughter has done it again. She seems to have a knack for finding bizarre insects. Last week while Husband and I were tearing apart an old greenhouse to salvage the roof for our new pig-house, Daughter was exploring the overgrown gardens when she shouted excitedly about finding a really huge beetle. I assumed it was a Common Black Ground Beetle, which are plentiful around here. We continued with our work. It wasn’t until much later that Daughter showed us the beetle, which she had caught in her butterfly net. I’d never seen a bug like this before!

It was larger than a ground beetle and had paddle-like hind legs. It reminded me very much of the Giant Water Bug she found last summer. After some Googling we finally found out it was a member of the Dysticidae family: Giant Diving Beetles, aka: Predaceous Diving Beetles. Thing is, this creature lives in water and there are no ponds or lakes anywhere nearby. Mind you, I suppose it depends on your definition of “nearby” and how far a beetle like this can fly. Still, I suspect this fellow was way off course!

TreeLearning

Like my daughter, I have a fascination with Nature and a desire to categorize things. When we moved to our property I wanted to learn about the trees and plants we had around us. So for the first few weeks that we’ve been here, Daughter and I have been collecting samples then bringing them home for identification.

I love the fact that identification of flora and fauna tends to follow a flowchart-like process, with each step further defining a category. For example, in our mushroom-hunting adventures, armed with All That the Rain Promises, we learned how to proceed along a flowchart to identify mushrooms. First, look for gills versus pores, then break the stalk to see if it is fibrous or snaps apart like chalk, and continue along as the book describes. As you follow the steps you get closer to identifying your specimen. And after a while we get to learning the various groups so that we can at least narrow it down some before having to check with the book. Daughter can tell a bolete immediately just by looking under the cap.

We’ve learned that identifying plants, particularly in the winter, follows a similar process. In this case our indispensable tome is Trees in Canada. The book is divided into 11 groups of trees based on leaf characteristics. Daughter and I have learned that leaves can be opposite or alternate, simple or compound. If the trees have leaves and are fruiting or going to seed that makes identification much easier. But we are only just getting buds at this time of year, and when we first got here many of the trees were bare. So we learned to look at the Leaf Scars. These are literally scars on the branches where last season’s leaves fell off. New leaves sprout from this area. Leaf scars can be shaped like a shield, heart, chevron, oval, etc. And then inside the leaf scars are little spots called vein scars. The number of vein scars is a distinguishing feature for many species.

And so it went along: take a branch and look to see if the leaf scars are opposite or alternate. Look at the size and shape of the leaf scar, then count the vein scars. You can identify a lot of trees around here just by performing those three simple steps. We’ve had a lot of fun doing this, but I suppose you have to be the type of person who gets off on categorizing things. Fortunately, both Daughter and I are that sort of person. And when you are done with your identifications, you can use your samples to make Nature Art!

Red-Breasted Sapsucker

While at the park the other day the kids were playing with a bunch of other children near a small wood when I noticed this little fellow calmly sucking up some tree sap. I was amazed at how little he was bothered by the noise of the children, and how close he let us come. I snapped this photo with my iPhone, which has no zoom function on the camera. I was probably 3 feet away at this point. When we got home Daughter and I looked him up in our Birds of Southwestern BC book. He was easy to find given his beautiful colouring.

It’s Mushroom time again!

Daughter has been a fan of mushrooms for a few seasons now and we are always excited when Fall comes around and brings out the mushrooms. I confess I greatly share her excitement at collecting and identifying our Forest Fungi ! Here is a description of a recent hunt, excerpted from this week’s Learning Report:

We collected mushrooms on our hike and spent the next morning identifying them. We had found a large specimen of Short-Stemmed Russula, (Russula brevipes) which we learned were some of the earliest mushrooms of the season. Daughter was particularly excited to identify this because we were able to most certainly check off every description on the list (sometimes we are not sure about a feature or two). Usually I read out each description in the list (using our wonderful book All that the Rain Promises and More) and Daughter says “yes” or “no” while she examines the specimen.

She has come to know that Russulas and Milkcaps have stems that break like chalk; they are also very common in our forests and by far represent the majority of our finds. We don’t find as many milk caps, however, and she finds the fact that they exude a milky substance when broken to be particularly “cool” so she’s hoping to find one (we did once last year). We also found a great many Russulas with pinkish caps, and were interested to find out that they were Emetic Russulas (Russula emetica; also called the Sickener Mushroom and pictured in the above photo), which as the name implies causes vomiting if ingested. We knew these were not Rosy Russulas, which look similar, because ours had white stalks and the Rosy’s have reddish stalks. Here is a photo of one specimen we did not pick as a Banana Slug was enjoying it as lunch. Daughter commented that apparently slugs “did not mind” the poisons!

Note: in trying to find a link to the Rosy Russula I came across this page. It seems our specimen may, in fact, be Russula silvicola since we were most definitely not in a sphagnum habitat! Such are the problems of identification. We really should use the Internet more but it’s not handy to have a computer next to a bunch of dirty, insect-laden mushrooms! Plus we both enjoy looking through the books. We’ll have to keep our eyes open for more Mushroom Manuals (one that comes recommended by our “all the rain promises” author is Mushrooms Demystified, which I think will be on an upcoming Amazon order!).

We also found a lovely specimen that was tall, all pale grey, with a distinct volva (Daughter always giggles when she hears this word, thinking it is interesting that it is so close to the word “vulva” when it has such a different function!). At first we thought we’d found a Death Cap (Amanita phalloides) but upon reading further we realized our specimen was most likely a Grisette. It definitely fit the description of “exceedingly handsome”, and apparently they are edible, so much more benign than the Death Cap. We compared the descriptions for two Grisettes, Amanita constricta and Amanita vaginata and Daughter decided ours was the former, the more rare of the two species. It was hard to tell because our mushroom’s volva had been damaged in transit and the distinguishing feature is whether the volva is pinched at the base. Daughter was certain it was when we found it, but I think she liked the idea of having the less common species!

Given our findings of poisonous (and almost poisonous, in the case of the Death Cap) we were pleased to recall that, at the Ecology Centre, we’d been told that even poisonous mushrooms need to have their fibres broken down to release the toxins, so merely touching them cannot transmit the poisons.

We planned to make spore prints but unfortunately they were full of maggots (which Daughter found adorable and fascinating but I insisted absolutely could NOT be kept in the house – I like insects, but maggots creep me out!) so we put them outside and then promptly forgot about them. It rained heavily the next day turning them into mush. However, I collected some more today so next week we’ll report on what we found and the spore prints we made!

Giant Water Bug

Last week while camping in the Okanagan, a friend noticed a huge bug lumbering along in the short, dry grass. I thought it was a cockroach and was amazed at its size, not to mention I knew that giant cockroaches are not found in this part of the world and wondered if someone had lost a pet. We kept it to take home (because neither Daughter nor I can resist collecting a fascinating specimen!). It seemed injured and confused when we caught it and so we were not surprised when it died on the 6 hour journey home, trapped in a tupperware container with lots of sugar (I thought being a cockroach it might enjoy that).

Today we finally got around to photographing and identifying the bug. It took me a short time to rule out “cockroach” and much longer to figure out what it actually was. Fortunately, my fave site for such things, What’s That Bug, happened to be featuring our specimen as one of this month’s bugs. However, it was a ways down the page and it really didn’t occur to me that I’d be so lucky, so it took me a while to find it.

Our little (dead) fella is a Lethocerus americanus, aka Giant Water Bug, also known as a Toe-Biter. They are one of the largest bugs in Canada and live in freshwater lakes, ponds, etc. We were camped right next to the shores of a huge lake and apparently these guys like to seek out bright lights at night (of which there were many in the campground) and often get disoriented or injured. Normally they are in the water catching such largish prey as frogs and fish. Checking out the large forearms of our specimen I can see how that would work. They are called Toe-Biters because if handled aggressively they can deliver a painful bite. Fortunately none of us had the guts to try and touch our find!

Fascinating Finds: Giant Crane Fly

Yesterday while puttering around outside, I heard Daughter yell from the garage, “Mama, you have to come and see this! It’s a walking stick bug!”. My first thought was that it couldn’t be since I was quite sure we don’t have walking stick insects in our area, and as I was in the middle of adding some compost to my herb garden, I was tempted to ignore her. Yes, it’s true, even devout unschooling parents have those kinds of days!

But then I put myself in her place, felt the excitement in her voice, and imagined what a typical adult party-pooper sounds like to a child. Realizing that was about to be Me, I mustered up some enthusiasm and said “Cool! I’ll be right down!”. 

In the garage, up against a wall, was the largest insect I have ever seen in my life. I’d only been staring for a few minutes when it launched into flight, spinning around rather chaotically and landing higher up on a window. It freaked out my poor six-year-old wannabe Naturalist, and I had to spend a few minutes calming her down. The thing was the size of a small hummingbird! 

Now fully caught up in the excitement of discovery myself I ran upstairs to get a jar. Once caught, we took it upstairs and grabbed our well-worn copy of Insects of the Pacific Northwest. Eventually we learned that we’d found a Giant Crane Fly: Order Diptera, Family Tipulidae. Scientific name Holorusia rubiginosa. 

It died overnight, giving us good opportunity to examine and photograph it. That’s it above, next to a penny for relative size. From tail to snout our specimen measured a whopping 4.5 cm! (Wikipedia describes this species as “reaching up to 3.8 cm”)

H. rubiginosa is one of the largest flies in the world. Pretty cool that it lives here on the West Coast and not in the tropics (they usually get all the cool bugs!). Turns out it’s a “she”. The males are considerably smaller, with thinner abdomens. This discovery helped answer a question that had been nagging at me, too. Growing up I called crane flies “daddy long legs”, but when Daughter became interested in insects we learned that this is a name for a Harvestman insect (an eight-legged insect that is not an arachnid). I then wondered: what was that creature I called a daddy long legs, and why did I get the name wrong? Well, turns out to be a regional thing, of course. In Canada and the UK crane flies are commonly called daddy long legs, whereas in the US it’s the harvestman that’s given the nickname. 

Daughter was particularly interested in the crane fly’s vestigial wings, called halteres, because of their paleontological significance. Initially, all flies had two pairs of wings; as they evolved some lost their second set completely whereas others retained them as halteres, which are used to provide stabilization during flight. You can see them better in this photo:

That’s why this Order is called Diptera, because they have two wings.

Finally, Daughter was quite grieved to learn her fly had died overnight, despite providing air holes in the tin foil lid, and a piece of popcorn “in case it got hungry”. Turns out she did nothing wrong: adults only live long enough to mate, and many don’t feed at all during this time. Our fly seems to have died a natural death, though we’re not sure if she had a chance to lay her eggs before her time had come. I’m tempted to dissect the abdomen to find out, but Daughter is too emotionally attached at this point to consent to an autopsy.