Black Crappie

Posted on May 29, 2020 by tspuckler

This neat freshwater fish is found in lakes, ponds and sloughs. It prefers cover, usually in the form of vegetation, fallen trees or rocks and water that is clear with a sand or mud bottom.

This creature is silvery and has a pattern of mainly irregularly arranged speckles and blotches. It is a deep-bodied and slab-sided with a large mouth.

Young Black Crappie begin life by feeding primarily on zooplankton. Adults mainly feed on small fish, but also consume insects and crustaceans.

Like other members of the sunfish family, Black Crappie are nest builders. Males construct a nest by fanning out small underwater depressions in and around brush, rocks or vegetation at a depth of between one and five feet deep. Females then lay eggs in the nest.

Populations of this fish can be found in each of the 48 contiguous United States. It is a popular game fish and prized as a food source, so its original range has been artificially expanded by stocking lakes, ponds and rivers across the United States.

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Dutchman’s Breeches

Posted on May 22, 2020 by tspuckler

I recently saw this wildflower while hiking the Ohio & Erie Canal Towpath Trail in northeast Ohio. This native plant is common throughout the eastern United States and also occurs in the Pacific Northwest, though it is less common there.

Dutchman’s Breeches blooms in the early Spring from March to April. Its flowers are white to pink and resemble a pair of pantaloons hanging upside down. It has one or more finely compound leaves that make the plant appear fern-like.

The flowers are pollinated by early bumblebees, which have tongues that are long enough to tap the nectar. Unlike the closely related Squirrel Corn, its flowers lack fragrance.

This plant’s seeds are kidney-shaped, with a faint net-like pattern. Each one has a fleshy organ called an elaiosome that attracts ants. Dutchman’s Breeches is just one of many plants whose seeds are spread by ants, a process called myrmecochory.

The ants take the seeds to their nest, where they eat the elaiosomes and then put the seeds in their nest debris, where they are protected until they germinate.

Dutchman’s Breechess can be found in deciduous forests, especially along gentle slopes, ravines or ledges along streams. This species most often occurs in original woodland that has never been plowed under or bulldozed over. It’s abundance in such places can be highly variable.

It has several common names, depending on which part of the country you find it in. “Bleeding Heart” is one, due to its sometimes pink flowers. Another common name is “Little Blue Staggers,” derived from its ability to induce drunken staggering if cattle graze on it, due to the narcotic and toxic substances it contains.

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Blue Racer

Posted on May 15, 2020 by tspuckler

In my home state of Ohio as well as while visiting the sandhill prairies of Kankakee, Illinois, I came across a few examples of this speedy serpent. Adults tend to range in length between 36 to 60 inches.

These snakes prefer open and semi-open habitat, though it is likely that a mix of habitats is required to fulfill their ecological needs. They can often be seen where the edge of a field meets a wooded area.

Baby and juvenile racers have dark-bordered, brown, red, or grey blotches on their backs and dark spots on their sides. As they grow, the background darkens to produce a basically unicolored reptile.

Adult Blue Racers can be varying shades of blue and gun-metal gray, with white belly scales, black masks, relatively large eyes and often brownish-orange snouts.

Their eyes are larger compared to that of many other species of snakes, due to the fact that they are day-active hunters that mainly use sight to locate their prey.

Adult Blue Racers feed on rodents, lizards, other snakes and frogs, while juveniles eat invertebrates such as spiders and crickets. As their “racer” name implies, they are swift in chasing down prey as well as fleeing from predators.

There aren’t very many blue-colored snakes out there in the world. This is always a fun snake for me to encounter, whether it be in my home state of Ohio, or while doing some out-of-state herping.

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Green Ground Beetle

Posted on May 8, 2020 by tspuckler

I don’t come across these colorful creatures all that often, but they are a sight to behold. They are found throughout the United States and adjacent Canada and Mexico.

These insects are just over half an inch in length. Their entire dorsal surface usually metallic green, though they sometimes appears bronze and also can appear bluish. Their legs and antennae are long and slender.

Green Ground Beetles inhabit a variety of moist habitats and can be found from Spring through Fall. They usually occur close to the borders of standing or running water. I tend to find them under debris along the Cuyahoga River.

They are primarily nocturnal and in the daytime hide under rocks, logs and loose bark. This beetle feeds on other insects and probably consumes a far amount of insect carrion, as it doesn’t seem prone to attack smaller invertebrates that are alive.

This fine creature is known to use the hair on its legs to clean its antennae; the antennae acts as the insects “nose” and is used to sense the smells as well as tastes of the world around it.

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Ganoderma sessile

Posted on May 1, 2020 by tspuckler

This cool looking bowl-shaped mushroom growing in my sister’s front yard is kind of neat. It sprouted out of a buried, decaying tree stump and has been coming up every year.

Although I can’t say I’ve ever seen an example of this mushroom previously, it is reportedly common and found in practically every state East of the Rocky Mountains. Its mature fruiting bodies are shiny and reddish-brown.

Ganoderma sessile has a bright, white, outer edge while growing. This organism is a polypores – part of a group of fungi that form fruiting bodies with pores or tubes on their underside.

This genus of mushroom has long been used in traditional medicine and practitioners of Chinese medicine refer to it as the “king of herbs.”

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Eastern Painted Turtle

Posted on April 24, 2020 by tspuckler

While visiting the East Coast, I had my first-ever encounter with this turtle in the wild. Walking along a quiet waterway in Virginia revealed a few examples of this reptile catching the sun’s early rays.

The first one that I came across was sharing a log with a tiny Coastal Plain Cooter. While they occur in in ponds, lakes, ditches, swamps, rivers, creeks and marshes, this turtle’s preferred habitat has a combination of aquatic vegetation, soft substrate and basking sites.

The Eastern Painted Turtle, along with its relatives the Western Painted Turtle, the Midland Painted Turtle and Southern Painted Turtle, is the most widespread species of turtle in North America.

Like their painted relatives, Easterns eat aquatic vegetation, algae and small water creatures including insects, tadpoles, mollusks, crustaceans and fish.

Although they superficially look similar to the Midland Painted Turtle in my home state of Ohio, Eastern Painted Turtles are the only turtles in the United States with their scutes (large scales on the shell) arranged straight rows across their backs, rather than alternating.

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Northern Flicker

Posted on April 17, 2020 by tspuckler

On a recent visit to Canalway Center, I saw a pair of these cool birds. They are large, brown woodpeckers with handsome black-spotted plumage. Males have a black “mustache.”

Unlike Ohio’s other woodpeckers, Northern Flickers spend a lot of time on the ground hunting for ants and beetles, digging for them with their unusual, slightly curved bill. Northern Flickers probably eat ants more frequently than any other North American bird.

These birds generally nest in holes in trees like other woodpeckers. And like most woodpeckers, they drum on objects as a form of communication and territory defense.

The Northern Flicker’s habitat is open forests, woodlots, groves, towns and farmlands. It has a wide range, from Alaska to Nicaragua, and can be found in almost any habitat with trees; though it tends to avoid dense unbroken forests, because it requires open ground for foraging.

When ants are not available, this bird consumes a variety of fruits and berries, especially in Fall and Winter – it also eats seeds and nuts at times.

Northern Flickers migrate the farthest of all woodpeckers. They often fly to the northernmost parts of Mexico or to the southern parts of the United States. However, depending on the individual, some prefer to stay in the northern regions of the United States.

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White Sucker

Posted on April 10, 2020 by tspuckler

This fish is commonly known as a “sucker” due to its fleshy lips that suck up organic matter from the bottoms of rivers and streams. When full grown, it can reach lengths between 12 to 20 inches.

The White Sucker is native to my home state of Ohio and can be found in every county in the state. They are the most common species of sucker found in The Buckeye State.

Often described as being “torpedo shaped,” it has a broad, rounded head with a prominent downward-pointing, sucker-like mouth. It’s body is cylindrical and is covered with large, prominent scales.

This fish shows little preference for a particular habitat and can be found in nearly every lake, reservoir, river and stream in Ohio. It is very tolerant of pollution, murky water and low oxygen levels.

The White Sucker feeds on a variety of bottom-dwelling organisms, such as aquatic insect larvae, small mollusks, crustaceans, plant material and worms.

While not the most glamorous of fish, it fulfills an important ecological role.

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Great White Trillium

Posted on April 3, 2020 by tspuckler

Trillium is also a much-loved native wildflower in the United States. Its presence above ground is just for a short time each year – after the snow melts, but before the woodland trees leaf out and completely shade the forest floor.

The name “trillium” derives from the plant’s repetitions of three. Each plant produces a whorl of three broad leaves with a three-petaled blossom on a single stem.

Like many other Spring wildflowers, the seeds of the trillium are dispersed by ants. The plant’s seeds contain a food that is attractive to ants. The ants carry the seeds to their nests to feed their larvae, then discard the undamaged seeds. This allows the trillium to produce new plants in nearby locations.

This plant has a lifespan approaching that of a human – it requires some 17 years to reach maturity and may reach 70 years of age.

In 1986, Great White Trillium took its place alongside the Ohio state flower, Red Carnation, as the state’s official wildflower. Ohio’s General Assembly chose this plant because it grows in each of the state’s 88 counties.

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Black Widow

Posted on March 28, 2020 by tspuckler

This dark cobweb weaver is easily identified by the bright, hourglass-shaped mark on its abdomen. It is wildly feared due to its venom.

In humans, bites can cause muscle aches, nausea, and a paralysis of the diaphragm that can make breathing difficult; however, contrary to popular belief, most people who are bitten suffer no serious damage – let alone death.

Like many other spiders, Black Widows puncture their insect prey with their fangs and administer digestive enzymes. The enzymes liquefy their prey’s bodies and the spiders suck up the resulting fluid.

Black Widows are found in temperate regions throughout the world. In the United States, they exist primarily in the South and West. They may be found in dark, man-made dry shelters like barns, garages, basements and outdoor toilets. I have occasionally found them under rocks and logs.

These spiders are primarily solitary, with the exception of late spring when mating occurs. Female Black Widows can live up to three years, while males (which are half the size of females and lighter in color) typically live for one or two months.

Although Black Widows get their name because females practice cannibalism after mating, this has mostly been observed in laboratory situations where the male could not escape being eaten.

Widely considered the most venomous spider in North America (the venom of the female black widow spider is 15 times as toxic as the venom of the prairie rattlesnake), Black Widows are not aggressive and tend not to bite unless thoroughly disturbed.

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Tim Spuckler's Blog

Reptile Ramblings and More

Yearly Archives: 2020

Black Crappie

Dutchman’s Breeches

Blue Racer

Green Ground Beetle

Ganoderma sessile

Eastern Painted Turtle

Northern Flicker

White Sucker

Great White Trillium

Black Widow