Squirrel Corn’s Pollination & Seed Dispersal Strategies
Finely dissected leaves, white heart-shaped flowers and small, yellow clustered underground bulblets that look like corn kernels – these are the characteristics that identify the early ephemeral Squirrel Corn (Dicentra canadensis).
Sometimes a plant’s strategies for accomplishing pollination as well as seed dispersal can boggle the mind. Squirrel Corn’s fragrance, nectar and pollen attract queen bumblebees who are out gathering food for the first of their larvae. It is a win-win arrangement: young bumblebees are nourished and pollination is accomplished.
Later in the season Squirrel Corn (and many other ephemerals) achieves seed dispersal by once again attracting insects. Each seed has a tiny packet attached to it (elaiosome) which contains fats and proteins, a highly prized source of food for ant larvae. Ants collect the seeds and bring them underground where they extract the elaiosomes and feed them to their young. They then deposit the seeds into their waste pile, a perfect site for germination as it contains fertilizer in the form of ant frass. This type of mutually beneficial seed dispersal is known as myrmecochory.
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Black Bear Cubs Sampling Solid Food But Continue to Nurse For The Next Year
Black Bears only mate every two years, due to the fact that their cubs are not weaned until they are a year and a half old. When born in January, a cub weighs less than a pound and is roughly 9” long. For the next three months it nurses steadily on its mother’s very rich milk (20-25% fat compared to a human’s 3-5%). Depending on the number of siblings a cub has as well as the amount of milk its mother produces, it weighs between four and six pounds when it emerges from its den in April.
Soon thereafter the cub starts sampling the food that its mother eats, but swallows very little. Slowly it begins to eat and digest solid food (cubs are partial to ant brood when very young), but it will still be nursing for the next year, right up until next April or May, when it is weaned by its mother who will then turn her attention to finding a mate.
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Great Blue Heron Ingenuity
I had to laugh this morning about what I witnessed just after posting about male Great Blue Herons collecting and delivering sticks for their nest. It occurred to me that I have seen hundreds of sticks being brought to nests, but I have never actually seen a heron in the act of collecting a stick. Lo and behold, today was my lucky day. At least one heron came up with an extremely efficient and energy-saving strategy for accomplishing this task.
Being largely fish eaters, herons typically raise their young in wetlands where food is plentiful. Many of these wetlands are created by beavers, who set up housekeeping there as well. Herons owe not only their habitat to beavers, but also, in this case, their nesting material. A veritable goldmine of sticks is right underneath the heron nests, free for the taking right in the middle of the heron rookery in the form of a beaver lodge. Fortunately for the beavers, there is a limit to the size of the stick a heron can carry.
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Great Blue Herons Renovating & Building Nests
Great Blue Herons are colonial nesters – up to 500 platform nests or more may be built in dead snags and trees bordering or in swamps, ponds and woodlands. Where trees are not available, they will nest on the ground (this usually occurs only on predator-free islands).
The nests of Great Blue Herons are built of sticks, usually gathered by the males from nearby trees and shrubs as well as the ground. The male heron flies with a stick in his bill back to the nest (see photo) where the female awaits and presents her with the stick. She takes it from his beak, pokes it into the nest and eventually lines the nest with pine needles, moss, reeds, grasses and small twigs. Although nest building and repair is at its height right now, nesting material is added throughout the nesting period.
Nests are often re-used for many years, but not necessarily by the same pair of herons. While nest fidelity is not strong, Great Blue Herons do tend to show a preference for the species of tree in a colony in which they build their nest. Nesting colonies can be used for just a few years, or for as many as 70.
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Spring Beauty Rust
Spring Beauty is one of the early woodland ephemerals that greet us before tree buds have opened and released the leaves that will soon shade the forest floor. With April showers plentiful the ground is often damp, encouraging the growth of Spring Beauty Rust (Puccinia mariae-wilsoniae), a species of rust fungus that grows on both species of Spring Beauty (Claytonia caroliniana and C. virginica) that we have in the Northeast. There are approximately 7,000 species of rust fungi, all of which are parasites of plants from which they obtain nutrients and on which they reproduce and complete their life cycles.
Spring Beauty Rust can be recognized by the scattered clusters of reddish-brown sori (clusters of sporangia, structures producing and containing spores) that cover the surface of Spring Beauty’s leaves, stems and the sepals on the outside of flower buds.
If you survey a patch of Spring Beauty you will see that some are quite white while others have deep pink nectar guides and pollen. As a rule, Spring Beauty Rust infects plants with pinker flowers.
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Male Red-bellied Woodpeckers Calling & Tapping To Attract Mate
One of the best ways to determine if Red-bellied Woodpeckers have chosen to nest nearby is the presence of their persistent and distinctive “kwirr” call. It is given most often now, during the breeding season, when males try to attract a mate to their roost cavity or a partially completed excavation by calling to them. Drumming and soft taps are also performed by males as part of the courtship ritual.
When attracted, the female flies to the male and indicates her acceptance of his cavity by perching beside him while they both engage in tapping behavior. If the cavity is partially completed, the mutual tapping behavior also appears to stimulate the female to help the male finish excavating the cavity. (Photo: male Red-bellied Woodpecker at nest hole; inset: male (left) and female (right) tapping at nest hole.)
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Black Bears Waking Up & Ejecting Fecal Plugs
Black Bears spend their entire hibernation with what is referred to as a “fecal plug” in the last foot or so of their intestines. Scientists used to theorize that bears ate lots of roughage and indigestible plant material in order to form this plug that essentially prevents them from evacuating all winter. This theory has been proven wrong, as investigation has shown that the fecal plug consists mainly of intestinal secretions and cells that have sloughed off the inside of the digestive tract. After stopping eating in late fall, bears do produce a small amount of feces, which are in the plug along with hair and leafy bedding, both accumulated from increased grooming (licking of fur and then swallowing) that takes place before entering hibernation. During winter bears shed the calloused soles, or footpads, of their feet and it’s not uncommon to find pieces of them in a plug, as well.
Most fecal plugs measure 1 ½” to 2 ½” in diameter and 7”-15″ long. Fluids have been absorbed from the plug by the intestinal walls, leaving it relatively dry and hard. Its light scent is reminiscent of fermentation. Should you be fortunate enough to find a plug, it’s likely you’re quite close to its owner’s overwintering den, as bears eject their plug soon after emerging from hibernation. (Many thanks to Metta McGarvey and Stephen Brown for sharing their 9″ x 2″ fecal plug with me.)
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Northern Leopard Frogs Emerging From Hibernation And Males Are Starting To “Snore”
Spring Peepers, Wood Frogs and a variety of salamanders steal the early bird show when it comes to amphibians, but now other species are beginning to appear, including Northern Leopard Frogs which are emerging from the mud at the bottom of the ponds, marshes and streams where they spent the winter. These frogs migrate to their breeding grounds soon after becoming active and before long the males’ sonorous courtship calls will be heard.
During the breeding season males advertise on land and in the water for females with a hoarse snore-like croak followed by two or more clucks. A chorus of them can be fairly deafening. Both males and females also give aggressive calls, males when grasped by another male and females when grasped by a male after they have finished laying their eggs.
To hear a male Northern Leopard Frog’s mating call, go to https://musicofnature.com/calls-of-frogs-and-toads-of-the-northeast/ and scroll down. It’s as distinctive as the Spring Peeper’s “peep” or the Wood Frog’s “quack.”
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Red Maples Flowering
Red Maples (Acer rubrum) are celebrated in the fall for their vibrant foliage, but they produce equally vibrant reds and yellows in early spring when they are flowering. Most Red Maples have dense clusters of either male flowers or female flowers (dioecious). Under certain conditions, a Red Maple tree can sometimes switch from male to female, male to both male and female (hermaphroditic), and hermaphroditic to female.
The showier male, or staminate, flowers contain between four and twelve stamens, with long, slender filaments and red (young) or yellow (mature) anthers at their tips. Both red sepals and petals can be seen at the base of the stamens. A staminate Red Maple in full bloom is a blaze of gold and red. (Photo: mature staminate Red Maple flowers)
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Killdeer Returning To Breeding Grounds
Killdeer are among the first migratory birds to return in the spring. Finding food this time of year can be challenging for this member of the Plover family, especially with the temperature fluctuations we’ve been having, so the Killdeer’s broad diet of invertebrates (grasshoppers, earthworms, beetles and snails, among others) serves it well. When foraging, a Killdeer will often pat the ground or mud in shallow water with one quivering foot in hopes of scaring up a meal.
Active both day and night, you can often hear their “kill-deer” call overhead at night, especially in early spring and in late summer. If you live in or near a town, you may well observe them foraging at night over parking lots and lighted ball fields.
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