Juvenile Common Nighthawks

Last year, Dan Adamski sent along a wonderful series of photos documenting the successful nesting of Common Nighthawks on a rooftop of one of the University of Toledo buildings. They're back, Dan's back, and once again he's a gent for allowing me to share his photos. CLICK HERE and you can revisit one of those posts;use the blog's search engine and you can find them all.

Mrs. Bullbat sits tight on gravel rooftop of the University of Toledo Medical Center. This, now, is the preferred nesting substrate of nighthawks over much of their range. They will also use large river gravel bars, extensive burned over forested areas, and sparsely vegetated gravelly soil areas. "Bullbat" is one of their unusual nicknames.

Front on view, showing the bold horizontal striping characteristic of Common Nighthawk. I think she's got something to hide...

This great shot by Dan shows the conspicuous white wing flash.

OK, here they are - two tiny nighthawks! Yes, they are cute. These youngsters can't be but a few days old, and are still heavily downy. The mother is very attentive, and nightjars such as this can be surprisingly aggressive in defending their nests.

In a bit tighter on the juveniles. Nighthawks feed by catching insects on the wing; not an easy thing to learn so these guys have a steep learning curve ahead of them. Sometime in August or September, they'll leave Ohio and head south - way south. Nighthawks winter in South America.

Thanks again to Dan for sharing these great photos!

Painted Mudbug

A most remarkable beast follows; something one certainly doesn’t see everyday. For most – maybe all! readers, I bet this would be a “life crustacean”.

Many thanks to Mark Dilley for not only finding these critters, but letting me share his stunning photographs.

I’ll bet you’ve seen these in your wanderings. Small chimney-like structures of mud, surrounding the entrance to a subterranean cavity. They are the work of crayfish, and there are a number of species that create these dwellings. Crayfish burrows typically are found in more less permanently muddy areas; oft-flooded fields and meadows, wetland margins, springy areas, floodplains and the like. The inhabitants spend the day in the cool, moist confines of the den, emerging at night to lurk at or near the entrance, grabbing any small animal unlucky enough to happen by.

Once in a while, one gets very lucky, as Mark did, and finds one of the armored troglodytes out and about. Bet you’ve never seen a blue crayfish! This is the Painted Mudbug, Cambarus polychromatus, and for something plated and primitive, it is quite the stunner. This one was only described in 2005 and is known in only a handful of states; a great find by Mark.

Studying nocturnal, subterranean crayfish is not easy. One of the methods employed by researchers is the use of a strong pump. Running a tube down into the burrow, they utilize suction to vacuum out the contents and see who is home. This can be done without harming the inhabitants, and has revealed all kinds of interesting information about crayfish and the other critters that share the burrows.

Excellent shot here, showing the mudbug’s formidable pincers. The world of subterranean crayfish is a very poorly known realm, but a fascinating one. For instance, the burrows excavated by the crayfish are inhabited by a great many other animals – everything from tiny invertebrates to large dragonfly larvae. It’s thought that the federally endangered Hine’s Emerald dragonfly’s larvae may make extensive use of crayfish burrows; hence the difficulty of finding them in the larval stage.

We are fortunate to have one of the world’s leading experts on crayfish living in Ohio, Roger Thoma. He helped Mark pin down the ID of the Painted Mudbug, as well as the drab critter above. It is the Little Brown Mudbug, Cambarus thomai, Roger’s namesake! Discovered by Roger, this obscure animal was only described in 1993 and thus far is known only in five Midwestern states.

Jumping Spider Jumps!

After a meeting in Dayton last Sunday, several of us paid a visit to the legendary Cedar Bog, near Urbana. There, we saw many interesting and rare things, both plant and animal. And if you've not been to Cedar Bog lately, or at all, GO! The brand spanking new visitor's center is incredible, and you'll be assured of having a good time.

The boardwalk, which winds through an entrance meadow and on into Ohio's only fen - not a bog! - dominated by White Cedar, Thuja occidentalis. At the time the first settlers colonized Champaign County, the cedar fen sprawled over some 7,000 acres. The preserve encompasses about 435 acres - that's all that's left of this fabulous ecosystem.

The marquee plant this time of year is North America's largest orchid, the Showy Lady's-slipper, Cypripedium reginae. Some enormous clumps dot the meadows, such as the old plant above.

Another beautiful albeit much more diminutive orchid was just beginning to flower, the Grass-pink, Calopogon tuberosus. In a week or so they'll dot the fen meadows pink.

Beautiful flora aside, this little spider was among the stars of the show. It is a Woodland Jumping Spider, Thiodina sylvana, and it put on quite a show for us. Jumping spiders are fantastic little creatures, and next time you see one, try and take a few minutes to watch it operate.

Jumpers don't make webs to catch prey; they stalk their subjects and nab them in a spectacular deadly leap. Such is their jumping ability that a six-foot tall person would have to be able to jump over the equivalent of a large building to match the leaps of a jumping spider. They also have the ability to process and temporarily store locational data. Thus, a spider can spot a potential victim, move out of sight and stalk while hidden behind obstructions, then spring with deadly accuracy from a new position without having eyeballed the soon to be dead prey since the initial visual contact.

Jumping spiders are charismatic, and many people who are died in the wool arachnophobes even find them "cute". It's as if the spiders watch you - they do!- and react to your movements. They often wave their forelegs about as if flashing semaphore signals. The spiders will cock their heads and seem to gaze curiously at you, and do not display much fear.

In the above video, the spider makes a wild leap for my camera lens, misses, and self-rescues via the safety line that he had attached to the leaf prior to the launch. Watch closely at the end and you'll see him rapidly climbing the line back to the leaf.

My cohorts thought the spider disliked me, and was attacking. And it's a darn good thing these jumping spiders aren't the size of Woodchucks! Otherwise, the video above would have looked very different. You'd have seen a large furry blob fly forward and block the camera view like an eclipse, hear me screaming crazily and rapid blurred images of spider legs and foliage whirring around as we tussled, the wild roars of my companions as they raced away in horror, followed by a grim stillness.

But they are not big and we have nothing to fear. This was cool, though. I think that the spider, with its incredible vision, probably saw its own reflection in the lens of my camera. Thinking its image to be that of possible prey, it stalked my camera and when the time was right, leapt. You can see it walk across the lens at the end.

Pretty cool stuff.

Shinleaf and Vireo

Circumstances found me in the immediate vicinity of Mohican State Forest last Saturday, and I had a few hours to explore the woodlands. Mohican, for those of you who don't know it, is one of Ohio's richest forests, characterized mainly by the steep hemlock-cloaked Clear Fork Gorge that bisects the area. Providing the sound track on my foray were the likes of Veery, Blue-headed Vireo, Black-throated Green, Kentucky, Hooded warblers, and many more.


But the flora is incredible, too, and I saw many interesting plants. Chief among them was the above; a diminutive little beauty that almost defies description. It is Shinleaf, Pyrola elliptica. While widespread and scattered throughout eastern Ohio, this species is not usually numerous and always a treat to stumble across. Such are its looks that many a gardener would probably kill and maim to have it growing in captivity, but I suspect that this is not a plant that lends itself well to being corraled.

Note the thick bed of pine needles that the Shinleaf springs from. It really goes for poor, dry, acid soils, and in this instance a small colony was growing under an old plantation of Red and White pines. Exquisite in form and color, the tiny candelabra of flowers stands perhaps six inches high, and the waxy-white blooms set off nicely against the semi-lustrous rosette of papery green leaves.

In times past, Pyrolas were placed in the Heath Family (Ericaceae), but now are considered to constitute their own family, the Shinleaf Family (Pyrolaceae). There are only 50 or so species in a few genera, and only seven occur in Ohio and most are rare. The members of this family are primarily northerners, occupying cool boreal and upland woods. The species at hand, Pyrola elliptica, is the most common of the four members of this genus found in Ohio. The name Pyrola is a diminutive of Pyrus, the genus of pears, due to the alleged similarity in the appearance of the leaves.

The flowers nod on short pedicels so that the blossoms can watch the ground, apparently; this makes for tough going in regards to taking decent photos of the flowers. But even from the rear they are quite showy, and we can see the trangular green sepals that help differentiate this species from the similar Round-leaved Pyrola, P. rotundifolia, which would have oblong-shaped sepals.

Later, as I was strolling along a small bird rocketed from an overhanging young American Beech tree, Fagus grandifolia. That would be the tree on the left side of the photo, with its foliage in front of the large trunk in the dead center. I glanced up and was surprised to see a Red-eyed Vireo nest only six feet off the ground, and directly over this path, along which pass dozens of people daily.

Vireo nests are obvious enough, once you know they're there. But from afar or with just a careless glance, they look a lot like a clump of dead leaves and plant detritus caught up in the foliage.

Seen well, we can admire the vireo nest for the architectural marvel that it is. It'll never cease to amaze me how songbirds can construct such well-engineered affairs, especially without benefit of hands and fingers. As is this nest, the forest-dwelling vireos almost always site the nest in the fork of a slender branchlet far out from any primary trunks. But they usually pick a spot a bit higher off the ground than this.

So low was this Red-eyed Vireo nest that I was able to hold my camera over my head and photograph the contents. Upon reviewing my work on the camera's viewfinder immediately thereafter, I saw that a moral dilemma had been thrust upon me. Two of those eggs are from a Brown-headed Cowbird. They're the larger ones towards the bottom of the nest, heavily ornamented with chocolate blotches.

What to do. Red-eyed Vireos are a valuable part of the forest community and these little birds make an arduous trek all the way from the tropics to summer with us, feast on caterpillars, and contribute their cheery phrases to the symphony of the forest. And red-eyes are heavily hit by cowbirds.

The cowbirds are native too, but man's wholesale changes to the environment have greatly increased their numbers and brought these nest parasites into much more prolific contact with hosts and habitats that they historically would not have infested.

I left them.

I made note of the nest's exact locale, so that I might sneak up and not spook the incubator on my return. Carefully side-stepping soundlessly, she let me come in close, to about 15 feet, and never did flush. With an eye bright as only little birds can be, she curiously watched my every movement but allowed me to take some photos. A bit blurry, I know, but I wasn't about to blind her with the flash and the gloom of the understory didn't allow for fast shutters.

Here's a short video.

White-footed Deer Mouse

Not too many fans of the mice out there, I suspect. They get a bad rap, and generally, mice are tarred with the same brush and equally disparaged.

But not all mice are created equal. Much of the household mischief is caused by a European introduction, the House Mouse, Mus musculus, a truly elfin all gray job. That's not to say that the natives aren't above raiding the pantry, but their normal haunts are outdoors, in our woods and fields.

And with a good look, some of these rodents are quite the stunners.

I see lots of signs of mice when out and about, and less commonly, the beasts themselves. But not usually well enough to get good photographs, but I did today. While exploring a local patch, we came upon two separate White-footed Deer Mice, Peromyscus leucopus. Both of them were under large boards, and had constructed soft nests of plant fibers. They were under there, trying to pass the day in as much tranquility as a mouse can muster, when we came along. But, after photographing them we left them be. These are indisputably beautiful creatures, with huge black eyes, dumbo ears, long whiskers, and white underparts that contrast with the soft brown upper pelage.

This one sits in a temporary nest. One finds white-foots under logs and other objects, and in all manner of cavities. Many a bluebirder is familiar with this species, as they are excellent climbers and readily scale poles to the boxes and stuff them with their nests.

The life of a mouse is fraught with peril, and they are edgy high-strung little critters. With good reason. These are nature's sausages with legs, and nearly everyone wants to eat them. Terrifically abundant, white-foots are very important members of ecological chains, and not just because they provide meals for so many carnivores. They are inveterate seed-eaters, and thus spread plants around.

And when you see one like this, white-foots are undeniably cute.

World's largest tern

I've got Caspian Terns on the brain. One, this spectacular fish-spearers are the logo bird of the upcoming Midwest Birding Symposium. Register here!

Two, I'm putting the wraps on an article on Caspian Terns for Bird Watcher's Digest. It'll be the issue out this fall, to coincide with MBS. This will be my fourth cover story for the mag, and probably the most fun of the lot to write.

As part of my research, I had a great conversation with Dr. David Craig of Willamette University, the guy who may know more about Hydroprogne caspia than anyone, anywhere. Great guy, with loads of wonderful info.

Dave does research on Caspians at the world's largest colony, at the mouth of the Columbia River in Oregon. A mind-numbing 9,000 pairs nest there! Hold your ears and take an umbrella! He's got a treasure trove of wonderful photos, and allowed me to use the first three in this post. Males use fish to charm the females.

An adult offers a scaly treat to a young tern that is carefully being guarded by its mother. Check the little fuzzball in the background. As evidenced by the fuzzy little fellow on the right, they learn to beg loud and hard at an early age!

The above is my shot, of a long-suffering adult accompanied by a young of the year bird. Caspian Terns have one of the longest periods of parental care, with the noisy whistling youth following them for several months and many thousand miles.

Don't want to say much more about these coral-billed jumbos now - read the article when it emerges!

Bindweed and Milkweed

A few weeks back I was in some Adams County, Ohio prairie barrens. These are fabulous habitats full of rare flora and fauna; always interesting observations at every turn. I was quite pleased to see the above in peak bloom. It is perhaps my favorite member of the Morning-glory Family (Convolvulaceae), the Erect Bindweed, Calystegia spithamaea. Don't be put off by the name, which combines "bind" and "weed" to conspire to create the image of some terrible mini Kudzu that wreaks havoc. This one certainly is not weedy, and is quite showy and diminutive in stature.

The flowers are stark bright white, and almost luminescent. Even the reproductive parts are white, but peer down into that corolla and you'll see a blush of yellow. When viewed head on, many morning-glory flowers seem to subtly glow from within, probably a ploy to attract the attention of pollinators.

The whole thing only stands eight inches tall, maybe, and the foliage surpasses the flower. This species occurs sparingly in dry barren openings, and in Ohio mostly in the eastern half of the state. Note the large leaf-like green bracts that cup the base of the flower. This separates bindweeds (Calystegia) from morning-glories (Ipomoea). The latter have much smaller bracts.

A real jawdropper, this one. One of thirteen species of true milkweeds in Ohio, Spider Milkweed, Asclepias viridis, may be the most bizarre. It is quite the rarity here, being confined to just five southern counties and mainly in the prairies of Adams County.

The identification is easy, as the flowers are massive - far larger than any of our other species.

Floral art in real life. The flowers almost defy description. And like all milkweeds, the blooms attract insects galore. While not much can eat milkweeds due to the toxic cardiac glycosides in the sticky white sap, bugs galore flock in to take advantage of the nectar. Note all of the tiny ants in these flowers, if you click on and enlarge the photo.