Witch Hazel Capsules Few And Far Between
The deciduous shrub Witch Hazel (Hamamelis virginiana) flowers in the fall as its leaves are dropping, when night temperatures often fall below freezing. This autumn-flowering period is strikingly different than that of most other flowering shrubs, which flower from very early spring to early summer. This unusual timing creates a combination of factors such as more severe weather and fewer pollinators that make fertilization and fruit-setting challenging.
Pollen transfer (primarily by bees and flies still flying in cool weather) occurs during the flowering period in the autumn, but fertilization does not occur until the following spring, around the time new leaves are produced. The percentage of flowers that actually set fruit is extremely low – less than 1% in a study of 40,000 flowers.
Approximately 80% of Witch Hazel flowers fall off the plants by December. Roughly 8% of the initial flowers remain on the shrub by March of the following spring, when fertilization takes place. From 72% to 90% of the fruits/flowers on the plants in March are lost before early July. Those few capsules that remain on the shrub continue to develop through the growing season, reach maturity in late August, and remain on the plant even after the next year’s flowering commences (see photo). The two seeds within each capsule are forcibly ejected as far as 30 feet when the capsule dries and splits open.
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Eastern Bluebird Fall Visitations
Although the breeding season for Eastern Bluebirds is long over, it is not unusual to see them return to nest boxes in the fall. Some are just briefly revisiting their former home, while others may linger long enough to exhibit some courtship behavior and even put grasses and nesting material in a nest box. The presence of bluebirds at bird boxes in autumn could mean that a successful male and female pair who have raised a family are staking an early claim on the box for next spring, or a male may be showing a potential new mate a good nest spot.
This leads one to question whether or not to clean bluebird houses in the fall – would a clean box entice future potential inhabitants? The jury is still out on this question. One study erected 100 nest boxes and after a successful first clutch, half the boxes were cleaned out. Seventy-one percent of re-nesters chose to use a clean nest box. However, another study showed Eastern Bluebirds preferred nest boxes with old nests in them, where parasitic wasps killed blowfly pupae over the winter. The choice is up to you!
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Acorn Weevils Exiting Acorns
If you see an acorn on the ground with a perfectly round tiny hole in it, chances are if you open it you will find very little inside. The hole was drilled by an Acorn Weevil (Curculio sp.) larva. During the summer female weevils bore tiny holes in immature acorns and lay eggs. An egg hatches into a white larva which feeds inside the nut until autumn, when acorns fall to the ground. The larva then chews a round 1/8-inch hole (see insert photo) and emerges, after which it tunnels into the soil where it stays for one to two years before emerging as an adult. The cycle then repeats itself. (Photo by Alfred Balch)
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North American River Otter Sign
In this photograph you can see part of an old, abandoned beaver lodge on your left. To the right of the lodge, In the center of the photograph, the soil is darkened and littered with lighter-colored scat. Even if the beaver lodge were active, the scat wouldn’t be that of beavers, as they defecate only in water. A close examination of the scat would reveal a plethora of fish scales, something you would not find in beaver scat, but you would in North American River Otters’.
As otters move about their home range, they rarely create their own burrows. Instead they use a variety of temporary dens made by other species, especially beavers and muskrats, but also woodchucks and foxes, as well as natural cavities in riverbanks and in woody debris.
Otter dens are commonly located near a latrine site. These sites are called “brown-outs,” a reference to the blackened area where otters repeatedly defecate over an extended period of time, so much so that the vegetation is killed by the otters’ acidic urine and scat.
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Dark-eyed Juncos Migrating
Dark-eyed Juncos are present year-round in the Northeast. Some of the juncos that breed here remain through the winter, while others migrate relatively short distances in the fall. However, the number of juncos swells during the spring and fall, due to the fact that those that breed in the northern parts of their range, including Canada and Alaska, all migrate, primarily to the southern U.S. These comprise many of the juncos we’re seeing now, most of which are passing through on their way south, but some of which may spend the colder months here.
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Predator & Prey
Although insects are quickly disappearing, some remain active right up until hard frosts occur. These cold tolerant insects include an ambush bug which successfully caught a nectar-seeking butterfly on one of our warmer fall days.
As their name implies, ambush bugs ambush their prey by sitting motionless waiting for prey such as flies, small moths and butterflies, beetle larvae, and other true bugs to visit the plants they sit on. In this case, a Clouded (or possibly Orange) Sulphur butterfly failed to notice a Jagged Ambush Bug (Phymata sp.) which quickly grabbed its prey, delivered an injection of immobilizing and digestive fluid, and then drank the liquefying nutrients from the butterfly’s body. Ambush bugs have their mouthparts arranged into a single knife-like beak and as seen in this photograph, often capture insects much bigger than themselves.
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Crowned Slug Caterpillar
One would be hard pressed to recognize a slug caterpillar as the larval stage of a moth. Sizes and colors of these larvae differ and slug caterpillars are not the typical shape of most caterpillars. While some resemble slugs, others are distinctively different. (See https://naturallycuriouswithmaryholland.wordpress.com/2023/09/18/monkey-slugs/ ) They have suckers instead of prolegs on their first seven abdominal segments and these suckers allow them to glide, rather than crawl, when moving from one spot to another.
After feeding on smooth-leaved trees such as basswood, beech, cherry, maple and oak, slug caterpillars spend the winter in a cocoon in their last larval stage (prepupa). Although many are brilliantly colored as larvae, most slug caterpillars develop into rather dull brown moths.
The pictured species (Isa textula), known as a Crowned Slug caterpillar, has stinging hairs surrounding its body and is only the size of a fingernail. (Discovered by Lily Piper Brown, photographed by Sadie Brown)
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Eastern Chipmunks Savoring & Storing
The list of foods eaten by Eastern Chipmunks is extensive. Nuts, seeds, mushrooms, flowers and buds, berries and other fruit, fungi, insects including butterflies and dragonflies, earthworms, snails, slugs, millipedes, salamanders, young mice, small birds and bird eggs, frogs, small snakes and occasionally star-nosed moles!
Seeds, nuts, acorns and fungi are a chipmunk’s main winter diet. They have roughly one more month to collect and store these foods (as much as half a bushel) in their underground storage chambers.
Come November chipmunks disappear into their burrows where they spend the winter feeding on the food they stored in the fall. Until then, they occasionally interrupt their frantic storage activity to feed on some of the fleshier fruits available, such as the pictured crab apples.
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Young Ruffed Grouse Dispersing
In the fall, young-of-the-year Ruffed Grouse disperse. Research shows that young males are the first to strike out on their own – if they can find territory to claim in the fall, their chances of attracting a female in the spring increase. Most dispersal is done during the day, and on foot. Females start dispersing later than males, but they disperse farther than males – up to ten miles — whereas males only travel between one and two miles.
It’s thought that the trend for males to end their autumn wandering sooner than females may be an evolved survival trait. In the spring, mortality rates for males are higher than for females, due largely to their visible and audible mating displays (drumming on logs). Extended dispersal by females in the fall means that predation on females is greater than on males. In this way, the male-to-female ratio is balanced.
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