House Wren

Posted on August 11, 2023 by tspuckler

We’ve had at least one of these birds visiting last year and again this year. I put up a birdhouse specifically for it. The male sits on or near the birdhouse, puts twigs in it and frequently calls in efforts to attract a female. A familiar backyard bird, the House Wren was named long ago for its tendency to nest around human homes or in birdhouses.

The House Wren has one of the largest ranges of any songbird in the New World. It breeds from Canada through the West Indies and Central America, and southward to the southernmost point of South America.

Very active and inquisitive, bouncing about with its short tail held up in the air, pausing to sing a rich song, the House Wren adds a lively spark to gardens and city parks despite its lack of bright colors. These birds feed on a wide variety of insects, including beetles, true bugs, grasshoppers, crickets, caterpillars, moths, flies, and many others. They also eat spiders, millipedes, and snails.

House Wrens nest inside tree holes and nest boxes. As the season progresses their nests can become infested with mites and other parasites that feed on the wren nestlings. Perhaps to fight this problem, wrens often add spider egg sacs into the materials they build their nests from. In lab studies, once the spiders hatched, they helped the birds by devouring the nest parasites.

Weighing less than two quarters, House Wrens are feisty and pugnacious animals, considering their tiny size. They are known to occasionally destroy the eggs of other birds nesting in their territory by puncturing their eggshells.

House Wrens range far and wide, spending summers over a large part of the United States and wintering anywhere from Florida to the southern tip of South America. Only a few stay here in cold months, as they are replaced by the aptly named Winter Wren visiting from the mountains.

The House Wren is a plain looking songbird, but its bubbling songs, nonstop activity and willingness to live near people make a pleasure to observe.

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Twelve-spotted Skimmer

Posted on August 4, 2023 by tspuckler

This is a big, handsome, black dragonfly with spotted wings. In addition to its size, the male Twelve-spotted Skimmer is easily recognized by its wing spots. Females have a brown body with yellow lateral stripes with similar wings to the male, but lack the white patches.

These insects have two sets of wings. They have twelve dark brown or black wing spots (three spots per wing) – hence, the name “Twelve-spotted.” The Twelve-spotted Skimmer averages just over two inches in length and their wingspan is just under two inches.

Dragonflies are very efficient hunters and catch their insect prey by grabbing it with their legs. Adult Twelve-spotted Skimmers will eat almost any soft-bodied flying insect, including mosquitoes, flies, butterflies, moths, mayflies and flying ants and termites.

Skimmers are the most common and colorful members of the dragonfly family. Their wings are held flat and extend outward from the body when at rest.

Males typically are very territorial at breeding sites, displaying aggression by chasing competing males in what can be likened to an aviation performance of vertical loops and side-by-side flight displays.

The Twelve-spotted Skimmer is found in southern Canada and in all 48 of the contiguous United States. Its habitat is ponds and nearby fields. As visual hunters, nearly all of a dragonfly’s head is eye, so they have incredible vision that encompasses almost every angle except right behind them.

It is always cool to see one of these fine creatures when out and about. Dragonflies were among of the first winged insects to evolve, some 300 million years ago and had wingspans of up to two feet.

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Obedient Plant

Posted on July 28, 2023 by tspuckler

This is a neat species of flowering plant that is in the Mint Family. It is native to North America, where it is distributed from eastern Canada to northern Mexico.

Sometimes known as “False Dragonhead,” it is more known commonly as Obedient Plant, because when a flower is pushed to one side, it will often stay in that position.

It grows 3 to 4 feet tall and forms dense spikes of white, pink or lavender flowers. Its leaves are opposite, stalkless, narrowly lance-shaped, sharply toothed and up to five inches long.

Obedient Plant occurs in the moist soils of fields, prairies, thickets, woodland openings and borders, along rivers and streams, and lakesides. It is commonly sold as a garden plant.

A sure sign of Summer is seeing the attractive upright spikes of snapdragon-like flowers abundantly borne atop this robust perennial.

Its very attractive flowers persist for a month or more from late Summer into early Fall. The flowers are often visited by by Hummingbirds, Bumble Bees and Carpenter Bees.

As one of our most handsome native mints, it’s hard not to enjoy the beauty of the Obedient Plant.

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Rainbow Trout

Posted on July 21, 2023 by tspuckler

While fishing in the Ohio & Erie Canal, I caught this fine fish. It is widely farmed both as a table fish and to stock lakes and rivers as a sport fish.

The Rainbow Trout is native only to the rivers and lakes of North America, west of the Rocky Mountains, but its value as a hard-fighting game fish and tasty meal has led to its introduction throughout the world. This popular fish has been stocked in almost every one of the United States and on every continent except Antarctica.

Also called Redband Trout, they are attractive fish that derive their name from their beautiful, multi-hued coloration. Their bodies are blue, green, or yellowish, shading to silvery white on the underside, with a horizontal pink-red stripe running from the gills to the tail and black spots along their backs.

Steelhead and Rainbow Trout are the same species, and members of the Salmon Family. Rainbow Trout are freshwater only, and Steelhead are anadromous, or go to sea. Unlike most Salmon, Steelhead can survive spawning and can spawn in multiple years. Adult Rainbow Trout and Steelhead range in size. They can reach 45 inches in length, but are usually much smaller. They can weigh more than 50 pounds, but a more typical weight is 8 pounds.

This is a cool- to cold-water fish species that does best in areas where the water remains below 70°F. Rainbow Trout are carnivores and feed on a wide variety of prey including insects, crustaceans, mollusks, fish eggs and fish. In habitats that are dense with aquatic vegetation, they often have the opportunity to eat arthropods that fall into the stream.

A group of rainbow trout is called a hover.

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Raccoon

Posted on July 14, 2023 by tspuckler

This is a common, but interesting creature that often visits our backyard. A highly successful mammal, I often encounter it on my travels as well. Raccoons are found across southern Canada, throughout most of the United States, and into northern South America. Scientifically known as Procyon lotor, Raccoons are commonly associated with washing their food. Their species name, lotor, means “the washer.”

Three of the Raccoon’s most distinctive features are its extremely dexterous front paws, its facial mask, and its ringed tail. It is noted for its intelligence, as studies show that it is able to remember the solution to a task for at least three years.

Raccoons are usually nocturnal and omnivorous, eating about 40% invertebrates, 33% plants, and 27% vertebrates. In the natural world, Raccoons snare a lot of their meals in the water. These nocturnal foragers use lightning-quick paws to grab crayfish, frogs, and other aquatic creatures.

The original habitats of the raccoon are deciduous and mixed forests, but due to their adaptability, they have extended their range to mountainous areas, coastal marshes, and urban areas, where some homeowners consider them to be pests.

During Winter in cold northern climates, Raccoons sleep for extended periods, although they don’t actually hibernate. To prepare for cold Winters, Raccoons pack on extra body fat in fall. This extra fat helps provide the animal with energy when it’s too cold to search for food.

Raccoons live for around one to three years in the wild. In captivity, where the raccoon doesn’t need to contend with finding food or outwitting predators, some have lived as long as 20 years.

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Purple Martin

Posted on July 7, 2023 by tspuckler

I was able to observe several of these remarkable birds while visiting Ottawa National Wildlife Refuge in northwest Ohio. They are the largest swallow in North America. Despite their name, Purple Martins are not truly purple. The dark blackish-blue feathers have an iridescent sheen caused by light refraction, giving them a bright blue to navy blue or deep purple appearance. Females are not as shiny with some gray on the head and chest.

Purple Martins are considered synanthropic, meaning they have developed an association with humans over time and benefit from living in close proximity to them. Native Americans hung up empty gourds for these birds before Europeans arrived in North America. Purple Martins in eastern North America now nest almost exclusively in birdhouses, but those in the West use mostly natural cavities.

This birds is insectivores, primarily feed by hawking, a strategy of catching insects in the air during flight. A colony of these birds may catch and eat several hundred beetles, horseflies, grasshoppers, dragonflies, and wasps each day. Purple Martins not only get all their food in flight, they also get all their water that way too. They skim the surface of a pond and scoop up water with their lower bill.

Purple Martins suffered a severe population crash in the 20th century widely linked to the release and spread of European Starlings in North America. European Starlings and House Sparrows compete with these birds for nest cavities. Where Purple Martins once gathered in the thousands, by the 1980s they had all but disappeared. The Purple Martin Conservation Association is a nonprofit organization dedicated to the conservation of Purple Martins.

These birds are long-distance migrants, wintering in the Amazon Basin along waterways and wetlands. Graceful in flight, musical in its pre-dawn singing, the Purple Martin is one of our most popular, well-liked birds.

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Spring Fishfly

Posted on June 30, 2023 by tspuckler

While hiking in Cuyahoga Valley National Park, I came across this cool insect. It can be found throughout much of eastern North America. Adults are generally found near the water that their aquatic larvae require and can be found in a variety of aquatic habitats, including ponds, swamps, marshes, and springs.

Fishflies are quite large, with a wingspan of 2-1/2 to 3 inches. Their wings are delicate and very long, much longer than their body. The wings are clear and tinted pale brown, with no dark or white markings apart from the veins. There are two large compound eyes on the sides of the head and three small simple eyes (ocelli) in a triangle on top of the head. The antennae are long, dark brownish-gray, and have many segments.

This is a primitive creature, having appeared on earth more than 260 million years ago. Fishflies, Alderflies and Dobsonflies belong to the insect order Megaloptera, which means “great wing.” Their entire lifespan is several years, but most of this time is spent in their immature aquatic state. They only live up to seven days as adults.

The larvae of both Dobsonflies and Fishflies are called Hellgrammites, and are, famously, sold to fishermen as bait. Hellgrammites are thick and somewhat flattened, dark brown and shiny, with an impressive head, six legs and seven or eight finger-like filaments along each side.

Fishflies lay their eggs upon vegetation overhanging streams, whereby the larvae, as soon as they hatch, drop into the water, and go about preying upon aquatic animals, including vertebrates like minnows and tadpoles, as well as aquatic plants.

These insects practice complete metamorphosis, hatching from eggs, living as aquatic larvae, resting and changing as pupae and emerging as adults. Like many of the insects that develop this way, their appearance, habitat and diet changes radically in their different life stages.

Adults are active at dusk but remain hidden during the day. The wings are held roof-like and to the side of the abdomen when at rest. They are relatively weak fliers. It was super cool to find one of these; there is also a later-emerging Summer Fishfly.

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Greater Yellowlegs

Posted on June 23, 2023 by tspuckler

While visiting Point Reyes National Seashore in California, I noticed a couple of slender, long-necked, small-headed birds with bright yellow legs near the waterway that I was exploring.

Often referred to as a “Marshpiper” for its habit of wading in deeper water than other sandpipers, the Greater Yellowlegs is heftier and longer-billed than its look-alike, the Lesser Yellowlegs. At different times of the year, this bird can be found throughout the United States.

At ponds and tidal creeks, this trim and elegant wader draws attention to itself by bobbing its head and calling loudly when an observer approaches. These birds forage in shallow water, sometimes using their bills to stir up the water. They mainly eat insects and small fish, as well as crustaceans, marine worms, frogs, seeds and berries.

Yellowlegs have also been called “tattlers,” because they would raise a alarm when bird hunters were near. Although shorebirds are now protected from hunting, yellowlegs may annoy birders by spooking other shorebirds with their alarm calls. It is a very noisy bird. It often runs in shallow water and bobs its head up and down when it spots a potential predator.

Despite its familiarity and widespread range, its tendency to nest in buggy bogs in the North American boreal forests make it one of the least-studied shorebirds on the continent.

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Seaside Bird’s-foot Trefoil

Posted on June 16, 2023 by tspuckler

While visiting Point Reyes National Seashore, I noticed this cool flower. It is found in moist open habitats, from the edges of forests out into open meadows and wetlands. It occurs from coastal mountains to the bluffs overlooking the sea.

Native to coastal California, this ground-hugging member of the pea family forms an inch-tall mat and carpets the ground with color. It is a member of coastal grassland and prairie ecosystems.

Seaside Bird’s-foot Trefoil’s flower clusters are made up of several tiny flowers each about half an inch long. The flowers have a bright yellow banner, or upper petal and bright pink or white lower petals.

This plant is perennial, but is Winter dormant, so the aboveground parts die off each winter. As temperatures warm, underground rhizomes re-sprout and new plants spring to the surface.

Seaside Bird’s-foot Trefoil is a nectar source for Painted Lady butterflies and a variety of native bees and other insects.

This plant is also known as Harlequin Lotus, Witch’s Teeth, Harlequin Deer-vetch and Coast Lotus.

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California Night Snake

Posted on June 9, 2023 by tspuckler

While turning rocks and logs in the Santa Cruz Mountains, I came across a couple of these very interesting serpents.

California Night Snakes are a small species, usually about a foot long and pale grey, beige or light brown. They have brown paired blotches on their back and usually three dark blotches on the neck.

These serpents are rear-fanged and slightly venomous. They use the fangs in the back of their mouth to latch onto their prey — typically lizards, frogs, salamanders and even small snakes.

Their fangs inject venom that subdues prey, but overall these snakes pose no threat to humans due to the location of their fangs and their weak venom. As their common name implies, California Night Snakes are primarily nocturnal.

When disturbed, a Night Snake may flatten its head, coil tightly, and vibrate the tail – appearing as a viper. However, it is a gentle species that is easily handled.

This reptile’s habitats include cliffs, talus slopes, grasslands, shrub savannas, shrublands, rivers and riparian wetlands. It tends to be found in found in hot dry areas of the western United States and British Columbia, Canada.

It was awesome to encounter these cool creatures on my visit to California.

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Tim Spuckler's Blog

Reptile Ramblings and More

Yearly Archives: 2023

House Wren

Twelve-spotted Skimmer

Obedient Plant

Rainbow Trout

Raccoon

Purple Martin

Spring Fishfly

Greater Yellowlegs

Seaside Bird’s-foot Trefoil

California Night Snake