A Real Snowbird

Here in northern Indiana, some of our birds are summer residents, others pass through during migration, and yet others are here only during the coldest time of the year. I like to refer to the latter group as "snowbirds." One of our more abundant snowbirds, pictured below, is just over six inches long and can be identified by its gray face, rusty cap and eyeline, dark "stickpin" on the chest, and distinct white wingbars. This is an American Tree Sparrow (Spizella arborea), a real harbinger of winter in these parts.


One could only expect that a bird referred to as a "tree sparrow" would nest and/or forage in forested areas. You may be surprised, then, to learn that American Tree Sparrows nest on the ground, forage on the ground, and breed at an elevation above which trees are even able to grow. How, then, did this species get its name? As the story goes, early North American settlers were reminded of the Eurasian Tree Sparrow (Passer montanus) when they initially saw our "tree" sparrows, and thus dubbed them American Tree Sparrows without understanding the behavior and habits of the species.

It's no secret that American Tree Sparrows like it cold. They breed and spend the summer only in the extreme northern parts of North America, where the temperature never gets above 50 degrees Farenheit. While in the harsh environment of the arctic tundra, American Tree Sparrows feed almost exclusively on insects; in the winter, however, their diet is comprised of seeds, especially those of Tall Goldenrod (Solidago altissima) and Canada Goldenrod (Solidago canadensis).

This winter, be sure to listen for the beautiful, high-pitched, tinkling "tweedle-eet, tweedle-eet" coming from old-field habitats, and watch for the characteristic ground-scratching underneath your feeders, and you are sure to see one of our hardiest winter residents, the American Tree Sparrow.

Oh Christmas Tree...

Every year (well at least for the last 11 years we've been together) it has been tradition that Scott and I venture out into the cold in pursuit of the perfect Christmas tree. We love the look and smell of real trees and also enjoy the thrill of the hunt.


We skim through each and every row checking the tree for the perfect height, making sure there are no bare spots, seeing if it has sturdy branches, and don't forget it has to have a nice top in order to place the star.


Scott is obviously still working on perfecting his tree selecting skills. Although his choice does have some "Charlie Brown" Christmas value, there is no way it could fully display the 31 years of ornaments I have acquired. It has always been O'Connor tradition that you get a Christmas ornament each year (many years I have received more than 1). I have oranaments that include everything from Baby's First Christmas, the Campbell's Soup Collection, Valpo University collectors from my years in college, Grandma and Aunt Ruth's homemade specials, to the Irish Santa that takes center stage.


Ahhh, that one is more like it.
(I'm referring to the tree, not the view.)


Complete with lights, ornaments, and the star.


A very Merry Christmas and a safe and Happy New Year from our home to yours!

Mimicking Moths

We have definitely moved into the slow time of the year. It is dark when I drive to work in the morning, and once I get home from work I barely have time to get Bootypants through our trails before they are too dark to see. As a result, I have only taken photos on three days in November and three days in December. Because of this, I was clicking through photos from earlier in the year and came across this one that I thought was worthy of a post...


These are sphinx moths in the genus Hemaris. The best that this botanist can tell, these are Snowberry Clearwing Moths (Hemaris diffinis). I took this photograph in Lake County, Indiana on August 7, 2010. Snowberry Clearwing Moths, which are found throughout almost all of North America, are said to mimic bumblebees, and it is pretty easy to see why someone unfamiliar with these lepidopterans might get confused.

In looking through my old photos, I found the two below of moths in the genus Hemaris.


I feel pretty good about calling the moth in the photograph above another Snowberry Clearwing Moth. This individual seems to fit the description well, with black legs and a very clean margin between the thicker black portion and the clear portion of the forewings. I took this photograph back in May of 2005 in St. Joseph County, Indana.


Here is another old photograph, taken in July of 2006 in St. Joseph County, Indiana. From the descriptions I have seen, I would call this a Hummingbird Clearwing Moth (Hemaris thysbe). This species has lighter-colored legs and a thicker, more ragged-edged reddish-brown forewing margin. As the name implies, Hummingbird Clearwing Moths are often mistaken for hummingbirds, as they hover over flowers while probing for nectar. They are found in North America but seem to be absent from the southwestern part of the continent.

A Serious Swoop of Sandhill Cranes

It's never easy to get up early on a Saturday morning (and by early I mean at 4:30 AM), but when there is good reason, I am all for it. Last weekend, Brian Miller, Lynn Vernon, and I joined Kip Miller and several other members of the Berrien Birding Club on a trip that started out with us meeting at Jasper-Pulaski Fish and Wildlife Area at 7:15 AM. Our purpose? To see a swoop of Sandhill Cranes (Grus canadensis), of course!


We certainly weren't the only lunatics with the idea of braving one of the first really cold mornings of the season. Birdwatchers, photographers, and nature lovers alike flock to J-P annually to witness this event, and sometimes I can't help but wonder if the cranes are there to watch the people.


Just like every other November, the Sandhill Cranes did not disappoint. Each fall (and to a lesser extent in the spring), thousands of Greater Sandhill Cranes flock to the area surrounding Jasper-Pulaski during their migration from Canada, Minnesota, Wisconsin, Michigan, and northern Indiana nesting grounds to their warmer wintering grounds in southern Georgia and Florida. During their stopover, they spend their days feeding mostly on grains and insects in agricultural fields, and their nights roosting in marshes, but the real spectacle is to see them congregate and socialize in Goose Pasture. When we were at J-P, their numbers totaled approximately 13,000. As of November 30, 2010, just two days later, almost 17,000 Sandhill Cranes were tallied. The highest number of Sandhill Cranes ever seen at J-P was in 1991, when 32,000 individuals were estimated.


Lindsay and I have visited J-P several times over the past ten years to see this event, but this trip was different. All of the other times we had made the hour drive to see the cranes, we had done so in the evening, just before sunset. Kip organized this trip for the opportunity to see the enormous, hungry flocks leaving for a day's worth of feeding.


It was definitely worth getting up early, making the long drive, and standing out in the cold!


As the cranes lifted off, their gutteral, rolling, trumpeting chorus blocked out nearly all other sound. As they made clumsy landing approaches with necks, wings, and legs extended, they reminded me of parachutist dropping to the ground.


It is difficult to get an idea of scale in these photographs, but if you've never seen a Sandhill Crane before, these are big birds. They stand approximately four feet tall and have a wingspan of six to seven feet.


As many times as I have been to Jasper-Pulaski Fish and Wildlife Area, I never tire of going back to see the cranes. If you are within a couple of hours of northwest Indiana and you have never been to J-P to see the Sandhill Cranes during migration, I recommend that you make the trip.

Happy Thanksgiving!

I hope that all of you had a wonderful Thanksgiving spent with friends and family, and that your stomachs aren't still as stuffed as mine.

I am thankful for many things this year. One of those things is being lucky enough to get a photo like the one below of Greater Fringed Gentian (Gentianopsis crinita) with my cheap work camera. This photo was taken in September at Miller Woods in Lake County, Indiana.


For more information on Greater Fringed Gentian and some of the species that are similar in appearance, visit my post from September 2009 on Get Your Botany On!.

Sky-white Aster

Sky-white Aster? Say what? Maybe you've heard of Sky-blue Aster (Aster azureus, or Aster oolentangiensis, or Symphyotrichum oolentangiense, depending on who you listen to), but how about Sky-white Aster?


Okay, so I made up the common name, but it seemed silly to call a plant with nothing blue about it Sky-blue Aster. This is the form of Sky-blue Aster with white ray flowers, known as Aster azureus forma albidus (azureus, of course, means "bright blue"; albidus means "white"). This year must have been a good year for white-flowered forms of composites (Asteraceae); earlier in the year, I posted on Get Your Botany On! about two normally pinkish-purple-flowered species of Liatris with white-flowers. Just to prove that this is in fact Sky-blue Aster, I've included a photo below of the characteristic heart-shaped, rough-textured lower leaves from the plant.


A photograph showing the typical color of the ray flowers of Sky-blue Aster is shown below. Sky-blue Aster is a plant of open to semi-open areas with sandy, loamy, or rocky soils, where it is found in prairies, glades, barrens, savannas, alvars, and open woodlands. It is known from a good part of the eastern half of North America, to as far west as South Dakota and Texas, but is absent from the northeast and the Appalachian region.

Only The Coolest Sedge In The World

You could say I'm a bit of a sedgeaholic. I've seen a lot of sedges in my time. I've gone out of my way to see certain sedges on more than one occasion, in fact. I've even pushed the limits of Lindsay's patience by staying out too late looking at sedges. It's a disease, I tell you... a downward spiral.

There is an amazing amount of morphological diversity in this graminoid family (Cyperaceae), and particularly in the multi-sectioned genus Carex, which has been divided into approximately 2000 species worldwide and almost 500 species in North America. Until this summer, Waterfall's Sedge (Carex latebracteata), a Ouachita endemic with inflated bracts that conceal the spikes, was my hands-down favorite. Others high on my list include: Golden Sedge (Carex aurea), a crowd-pleaser with tiny, orange, pumpkin-like perigynia; Ravenfoot Sedge (Carex crus-corvi), a spiky-inflorescenced gem with long-beaked perigynia that look like little golf tees; Northern Long Sedge (Carex folliculata), a charmer with inflated, gradually tapering perigynia in unique-looking spikelets; False Hop Sedge (Carex lupuliformis), an elusive yet distinct character with diamond-shaped achenes that have quite knobby angles; Painted Sedge (Carex picta), a gorgeous dioecious species with showy scales that make it a strong candidate for native landscaping; and Little Green Sedge (Carex viridula), one of the only sedges with a common name nearly as adorable as the inflorescence itself.


However, upon seeing the graceful beaut pictured above and below in Douglas County, Wisconsin this August, I could only fall to my knees and gaze appreciatively at the long awned chocolate-brown scales that much exceed the suborbicular perigynia, assembled into a pistillate spikelet somewhat reminiscent of a rattlesnake rattle. This is Boreal Bog Sedge (Carex magellanica ssp. irrigua, formerly known as Carex paupercula).


Boreal Bog Sedge, a member of Carex section Limosae, is often found with Sphagnum moss in bogs, fens, and marshes of Greenland, Canada, New England, the northern tier of Great Lakes States, a few western states, and Eurasia. The specific epithet magellanica is a reference to the Strait of Magellan, a narrow strip of water near the southern tip of South America. So how did this northern species come to be named for a southern hemisphere passageway? Carex magellanica is a bipolar disjunct species, meaning that it is found at both extremes of the globe - the northern polar regions and the southern polar regions - but not in between. Plants in the cool temperate areas of South America are known as Carex magellanica ssp. magellanica. This unique global distribution, in combination with the elegance of its inflorescence, clearly makes Carex magellanica the coolest sedge in the world.

Zoo Birds II

In March 2009, I posted about some of the interesting birds that Lindsay encountered on a spring trip to the St. Louis Zoo. Last weekend, Lindsay and I were back in St. Louis, visiting Jenny, Frank, and Allison, and we visited the zoo for Boo at the Zoo. After all of the tricks and treats, we walked through some of the exhibits, including a couple of bird exhibits. Below are some of the birds we encountered.


One of the exhibits, located in the 1904 World's Fair Flight Cage, features birds of North American cypress swamps. This was one of the most interesting displays that I have ever seen at a zoo... both the plants and the birds are native to the cypress swamps along the Mississippi River. Usually, zoos seem to feature mostly animals native to far away, exotic places; to see an exhibit highlighting the diversity found just next door was refreshing. The bird above is a Cattle Egret (Bubulcus ibis), a common species that can often be found eating insects off of the backs of cows in pastures within its range.


Another bird we saw in the cypress swamp exhibit was Ruddy Duck (Oxyura jamaicensis), pictured above. This was certainly the best look we've ever had at this cute duck species. One feature that really stands out on this 15" long duck is the long, paddle-like tail that often can be seen sticking straight up when a Ruddy is on the water. Ruddy Ducks are known as divers, and when they are under water searching for food, they use this broad tail as a rudder to propel them towards prey.


"Oh, look... a flamingo!" If I could get just a dollar for each time I've heard this misidentification blurted from the mouths of awestruck observers who have no idea that there could be another species of pink bird, I would be able to blog about long, exotic trips instead of vacations to a zoo! One look at the spoon-shaped bill of this bird (you may need to click on the photo to see this better) tells you that it is not a flamingo at all, but is in fact a spoonbill... a Roseate Spoonbill (Platalea ajaja), to be exact. You can see in the photo above that the nostrils are all the way at the base of the bill. This is very important, as Roseate Spoonbills feed primarily by "head-swinging" (sticking their partially open bills nearly all the way into the water and swinging them back-and-forth in arcs to create currents that bring insects, mollusks, crustaceans, etc. into feeding range). When the spoonbill feels the vibrations of its prey nearby, it closes its bill and scoops up a meal. With nostrils so far back on the bill, Roseate Spoonbills can breath while their bills are almost completely under water.


The bird above was difficult to photograph, even though we knew a covey of them was within 15 feet of us. This is a Northern Bobwhite (Colinus virginianus). Bobwhites are often heard (they produce a whistling "bob-white" song that rises in pitch through the second syllable; but don't be fooled by a mimicking European Starling (Sturnus vulgaris)), but rarely seen. They are often quite well hidden amongst grasses and brushy vegetation.

Although it is much more exhilarating to find these species flying and foraging free in nature, having an exhibit to show the unknowing public some of the beauty and diversity that is within just a couple of hundred of miles is a good idea that can really open the eyes of potentially budding naturalists. I wish more zoos had local exhibits similar to this.

Shhhh... It's a Secret

On our recent trip to Osage Beach, Missouri, Scott informed me that we needed to go past "The Secret of the Indian". A picture of the Indian is posted below. Can you identify his secret????

Endangered No More

On 6-7 October 2010, I was in central Indiana (Hamilton County) helping one of my coworkers monitor a mitigation wetland. As recently as just a couple of years ago, the mitigation site was in agricultural production, as it had been for decades. The plant species present were not very exciting... Ambrosia trifida, Aster ontarionis, Aster pilosus, Aster simplex, Bidens comosa, Bidens frondosa, Carex vulpinoidea, Cornus drummondii, Cyperus strigosus, Echinochloa crusgalli, Eleocharis obtusa, Fraxinus pennsylvanica var. lanceolata, Juncus dudleyi, Lycopus americanus, Penthorum sedoides, Populus deltoides, Rumex crispus, Scirpus cyperinus, Setaria faberi, Sida spinosa, etc., until I found the sedge pictured below.


This is Short-pointed Flat Sedge (Cyperus acuminatus). Up until this May, when the Indiana Department of Natural Resources - Division of Nature Preserves published a revised list of endangered, threatened, and rare plants, Short-pointed Flat Sedge was considered endangered in Indiana; its status has now been downlisted to watch list, meaning that enough occurrences of the species have been found in the state to remove it from the endangered, threatened, and rare lists. I knew this species the second I saw it, in part because I had seen it at Goose Pond Fish and Wildlife Area earlier in the year, but also in part because I had been asked to verify identifications of this species by two other JFNew monitoring biologists, both of whom found the species in mitigation wetlands (wetlands created or restored in areas that were previously upland) this year. One of our biologists found this species at a site in southern Indiana, where it seems to be becoming more and more common, but another of our biologists found it at a mitigation site in Lake County, all the way in the northwest corner of the state. The latter was quite a find, as the only previous record of this species from the northern 1/2 of the state was from Porter County in 1888 (Rothrock 2009). In addition, Rothrock (2009) notes that Short-pointed Flat Sedge is probably extirpated from Michigan and that it is likely limited to southern Indiana.

So why has this species been increasing in Indiana? Could it have just been overlooked for so many years? It is an inconspicuous plant, but this probably isn't the only reason. As Rothrock (2009) notes, its habitat is "wet, often sandy, disturbed soil, especially on pond margins." Short-pointed Flat Sedge is an annual, a pioneer species, a colonizer. Its ecological niche is to provide early cover after soil has been disturbed. It doesn't seem to persist as other plants move in and compete for resources. Disturbed, early successional communities like this are not heavily botanized, so maybe it has been overlooked for this reason. Or maybe there is just more habitat for it now because there is more soil disturbance and conversion of agricultural fields to "natural" communities. It is also interesting to note that Short-pointed Flat Sedge is shown from more than 3/4 of the United States on the USDA/NRCS Plants page, but clicking on the states to see county distributions, there are only a couple of states that show this species as present in half of their counties (USDA, NRCS 2010). Although its range is widespread, its distribution appears to be scattered. I can't help but to wonder if it is increasing outside of Indiana as well.

Rothrock, P.E. 2009. Sedges of Indiana and the Adjacent States: The Non-Carex Species. Indianapolis: Indiana Academy of Science.

USDA, NRCS. 2010. The PLANTS Database (http://plants.usda.gov/, 22 October 2010). National Plant Data Center, Baton Rouge, LA 70874-4490 USA.