Up A Lazy River

A different idea for a post had this time slot but I realized it had been so long since I had walked along the Ashuelot River in Keene I couldn’t remember when the last time was, so off I went. This is a favorite trail; one I’ve been walking for almost 60 years now. Still, every time I walk it I see something I hadn’t seen before. We’re going upriver.

There was a breeze so the water wasn’t completely still but it was still enough for reflections, and it wasn’t too hot for a change. We’ve been having some brutally hot days lately.

Forget me nots grew here and there right at the edge of the river. They like lots of water, and they find it here.

Blueberries are coming along. Lots and lots of blueberries in fact, so it looks like it might be a good year for them. Those berries feed a lot of birds and animals.

I’m seeing lots of vetch and that’s good, because I always like coming upon it unexpectedly, beautifully twining its way up the tall grasses. It’s like an exclamation point on the word beautiful that is always in my mind when I’m outside.

Hay scented fern is a magic thing that can make a hot day seem cool. I like that about it and luckily I see it just about everywhere I go.

For the first time though, on this day I saw fern balls on the tips of the hay scented fern fronds. Fern balls are common on cinnamon ferns but until this day that was the only fern I had seen them on. Fern balls are created by an insect called a fern leaf roller, also called the fern leaf tier. The rolled up leaves appear at the tip of a fern frond and look like a ball, and inside the ball are the caterpillars of a moth. A web like material holds the ball together, as can be seen here. The caterpillars then feed on the innermost fronds inside the ball. I think each fern has an insect dedicated to its particular species but I haven’t ever been able to prove that.

An electric blue damselfly perched on a deer tongue leaf. It was a beautiful little thing; a common blue damselfly, according to Google lens. Not common enough in my opinion; I’d like to see more of them. If you walk through some tall grasses near water and see them flying around it’s because you’ve stirred them up. Just stand still and watch and they’ll settle all around you on plant leaves, just as this one did. I don’t think it’s that they’re afraid, exactly. I think they just want to be left alone to do their own thing, and you’ve interrupted them. Once they see you’ve stopped moving they’ll forget about you and will perch right up close to you for what can sometimes be several minutes.

This shot is for those who don’t know what poison ivy looks like. If you are going to spend time in nature, you should know it well.

When I was getting shots of the poison ivy I heard a loud cry and a kind of clacking sound coming from the far side of the river. The clacking almost sounded like the sound a bamboo wind chime makes, except louder. As I peeked through the bushes I saw a green heron hunting the shore, and as I watched it caught what I’d guess was a frog or a salamander.

According to Northern Woodlands Magazine (an excellent read) green herons “Will use objects – twigs, feathers, crusts of bread – to lure fish within reach. They are one of only a handful of North American bird species that are known to use tools to capture food.” So these are smart birds.

Whatever this one caught, it went down easy and the bird was clicking its bill together when I took this shot. I was surprised how loud it could be. What I and a few color sighted people I know don’t understand about the bird is why it is called a “green” heron when there isn’t any green on it. Even my color finding software can’t find a single bit of green. I found this online at birdersjourney.org: Audubon.org even implies that the ‘green’ is questionable: “The ‘green’ on this bird’s back is an iridescent color, and often looks dull bluish or simply dark.”

I’ve seen common grackles which are black, in bright sunlight. In the right light they have beautiful glowing iridescent purple and gold head and neck feathers, yet we don’t call them purple grackles. I’m not suggesting that we rename birds; I’m just alerting people who may have never seen one to the fact that a green heron doesn’t necessarily have to have any green on it.

This is one of the few straight stretches of river in this area, as you look upriver. The river is old and winding and has formed ox-bows and setbacks in many places. Viewing the river on Google maps is a good way to see this.

In a dark, still spot a light shined, and how very beautiful it was. When such a scene holds our attention to the point of silencing the mind, we can learn much about our own peace. A lesson in silence, stillness, and peace being taught right here by the river and yet everyone rushes right by, neither looking nor seeing.

Every time I walk this trail I feel that I’m walking in a place where humans have walked for thousands of years, because it isn’t hard to imagine it being originally laid out by Native American fishermen. Archeological digs have shown they were here at least 12,000 years ago and lived along rivers and lakes. Personally, I believe they were here long before that. People still fish all along this trail today, just as I started doing at about ten years old.

I’m starting to see mushrooms appearing here and there. I’d say despite the occasional hot days, temperature and rainfall amounts had returned to just about normal now, so maybe it will be a good year for them. I’d love to find enough to put together another mushroom post.

A slaty skimmer dragonfly perched on a pickerel weed leaf, probably resting what was left of its wings. There was a big piece gone out of the one on the lower left and it’s lucky the bird missed that time. I’m seeing a lot of smaller butterflies with shredded wings now too.

I saw lots of target canker on the red maples out here. It doesn’t harm the tree but causes its bark to grow in circular patterns of narrow plates which helps protect it from the canker. According to Cornell university: “A fungus invades healthy bark, killing it. During the following growing season, the tree responds with a new layer of bark and undifferentiated wood (callus) to contain the pathogen. However, in the next dormant season the pathogen breaches that barrier and kills additional bark. Over the years, this seasonal alternation of pathogen invasion and host defense response leads to development of a ‘canker’ with concentric ridges of callus tissue—a ‘target canker.’” Apparently the fungal attacker gives up after a while, because as the tree ages the patterns disappear and the tree seems to be fine.

I saw a few starter holes made by woodpeckers as well. There is at least one pileated woodpecker out here, easily known by its more or less rectangular holes.

Deer tongue grass grows all along the trail and I saw many plants ready to flower. These are its spikelets, which are what its flowers will emerge from, seen here. Each spikelet is about one sixteenth of an inch in diameter.

And here are the brushy flowers, called stigmata, of the deer tongue grass. The flowers are so small when I took this shot a few years ago I had to put a white card behind them so my camera, on “microscope mode” could find them. I think they must be the smallest things I’ve ever tried to photograph. Deer tongue grass gets its name from its leaves, which can indeed resemble a deer’s tongue.

This bridge is my turn around point, for no particular reason other than knowing what is beyond it.

Daisy fleabane was being taken over by Virginia creeper here and there.

Before I went to the river that day I took a walk along a road to see if I could find some milkweed in bloom. Suddenly up ahead there was a lot of fluttering going on in the grass and when I got closer I found the biggest moth I’ve seen being blown this way and that by a strong gusty wind. It was bigger  than even a Luna moth.

A wind gust revealed the underside of a wing and I clicked the shutter before it fell back. Other than a moth I had no idea what it was but I could see that it was beautiful. I could also see that it must have just emerged from the chrysalis before I got there because its wings hadn’t yet hardened. There were many birds to be heard and I wondered if it would be eaten but I decided to leave nature to itself, and I moved on. I admired its feathery antennae before I left. Later I learned that the male moth detects the pheromones emitted by the female with those antennae, and it is said that he will fly for miles to meet her.

When I got home I looked up the moth and found that it was a giant silk moth (Antheraea polyphemus) which has a wingspan of 6 inches and large eyespots on them. I found this photo of the adult male moth on Wikipedia, taken by someone who goes by the name Kadoka1. It is said to be native and widespread in North America but I had never seen it. I read that the caterpillar can eat 86,000 times its weight at emergence in a little less than two months. I hope it doesn’t like vegetable crops!

If you have a river, then you should share it with everyone. ~Chen Guangbiao

Thanks for coming by. Stay cool.

Read Full Post »

Things I’ve Seen

Ox-eye daisies are plants that always say June. They came over from Europe in the 1800s but they are much loved and many believe them to be native. I can say from experience that these flowers look much better in a field than they do in a vase, because they wilt quickly after picking.

I saw some type of solitary bee (I think) dancing over the petals of an ox-eye daisy. It looked like it was dressed for dancing.

Roses native to New England are the Virginia rose, the Carolina rose, the swamp rose, the smooth rose, the shining rose, and the prickly rose. We also have roses that appear to be wild but which have escaped cultivation, and I believe this might be one of those. All of them are beautiful and are much loved. I’ve never heard anyone say “Oh no, a rose!”

White admiral butterflies, which are one of our largest and most beautiful butterflies, have appeared. They’re not quite as big as a monarch butterfly but big enough to be seen from a distance. They can often be found “puddling” on gravel roads as this one was.

Though I did see one up in a tree the other day if I went back through the years on this blog I think nearly every photo I have of this butterfly would be on gravel. I can’t think of a single time I’ve gotten a shot of one on a flower. Although I’ve read that they drink nectar and sap, they also get moisture from sand and gravel.

Normally I wouldn’t show a shot with blown out highlights but since this is only the second shot of a little wood satyr butterfly that I’ve ever gotten, I hope you’ll forgive the white spots on the leaf. This is one of the “thumbnail size” butterflies and it’s very hard for me to see but I kept up with this one as it leaf hopped and tried to hide in the tall grass. Finally after about 10 minutes of following it, it sat still for more than 15 seconds and I got a shot of something I rarely see. Since the caterpillar of this butterfly eats grasses and doesn’t live off toxic plants like milkweed, the butterfly has no real protection from birds except for its erratic movements, its ability to disappear in tall grass and its eyespots, which may or may not fool a predator. All of that is why seeing one sitting on a leaf like this is a remarkable thing.

Spangled skimmers are still showing off their spangles in the sunshine. In the last post I showed this dragonfly hanging off of some vegetation with its wings spread wide but I didn’t have a side view, so here it is. This is an excellent “starter” dragonfly if you’re trying out dragonfly photography. They’re relatively common, easy to spot and easy to track from a distance due to the bright white spangles on the leading edges of the wings.

Twelve spotted skimmers are a common enough dragonfly but I’ve had quite a time finding one that would sit still this year. In fact all the dragonflies seem skittish this year, but that could just be my imagination. To get to twelve spots on this dragonfly you have to count the brown spots, not the white ones. Only mature males have these white spots; females and immature males have the twelve brown wing spots but not the white. Skimmers usually fly just above the water looking for flies, mosquitoes, beetles, and other flying insects, but the name “skimmer” comes from the way they can scoop up water to help with egg laying by using two flanges on the underside of the abdomen.

Yellow bladderwort flowers rose above its spoke shaped leaves in a local pond. The leaves of this plant have small air filled bladders on them. When an insect touches fine hairs on a bladder a trapdoor quickly opens and sucks the insect in. Once inside, enzymes digest it. Other names for bladderwort are hooded water milfoil and pop-weed. The small flowers on this one were too far offshore to get close to. In the past I’ve found them growing in wet mud along shorelines but so far not this year.

Something I’ve never seen before is a bladderwort so young the flower hadn’t even opened yet. Flower or no, this photo does show the structure of the plant like I’ve never seen it. It was so young its bladders hadn’t formed yet, but you can see some of those on the plant in the extreme lower right corner. You can also see the plant’s main stem, anchoring it to the pond bottom. I’ve pulled these plants up in the past, thinking I could get a better photo of the flowers, but as soon as they leave the water they collapse in on themselves and lose their form.

The eardrum of a bullfrog is external and is called a tympanic membrane. On females the membrane is the same size or just a bit bigger than the eye. On males it is obviously much bigger than the eye. If you’d like to compare the difference you can go back to the previous post. There was a shot of a male bullfrog in it and the difference is striking. I’d say this frog, which I’ve called Zen bullfrog due to its pose, its chosen perch, and the way it was staring off into space, is a female. I’ve read that only male bullfrogs can croak.

NOTE: As a reader has pointed out, this is a northern green frog, not a bullfrog. I was so focused on hearing, I wasn’t seeing what was right in front of me!

I didn’t want to hurt anyone’s feelings so I didn’t say anything, but I did notice that the kingbirds seem to be eating well. In fact the small pond and its surrounding area that was full of dragonflies last year has just a very few this year. The word seems to have gotten out in Birdville that the pond is a great place to dine, and now the trees are filled with chubby kingbirds.

Sleek and fast is what green herons are, and they’ve just returned to some of the places I visit. I saw this one high up on a tree branch staring at the sky one evening. Soon young birds will be learning how to fish and catch frogs. They’ll put up with humans where they’re finding plenty of food but they aren’t quite as comfortable getting close to people as great blue herons are. Neither are they as big. This one looked to stand about two feet tall. They’re quite pretty birds though and are always special to see, because they aren’t something you see every day.

I always try to remember when I walk a rail trail that sometimes I’m walking through someone’s back yard, and that message was reinforced the other day when I stumbled upon a raised garden bed someone had built out of stone. The foxglove flower stalks growing wild outside the flower bed were almost as tall as I was. In old England picking foxglove was unlucky, and its blooms were forbidden inside because it was believed that they gave witches access to the house.

When I was in my late teens I worked for a nurseryman who always called these flowers peach leaved bluebells, so that’s what I’ve always called them. The thing is, I’ve never heard anyone else ever call them that, so I think “peach leaved bluebells” must just be an older name for them. In any event they’re a beautiful blue campanula and I’ve always loved them.

I find that more and more I’m drawn to the simple, uncomplicated things in life and this pretty Japanese iris fit that description perfectly. There’s nothing to ponder or think about; you can just enjoy its simple beauty.

Spreading dogbane has just started blooming with its pretty (but small) candy striped pink and white flowers. It’s closely related to milkweed and attracts many of the same insects that milkweed does, especially butterflies, so if you’re looking to photograph insects it’s a good plant to spend some time with. The bell shaped flowers are just big enough to hold a pea, and very fragrant.

If you pound the stems of spreading dogbane you can tease out the strong stem fibers, and Native Americans used them as a twine for making nets for hunting rabbits, among other things. Ingesting enough of the milky latex sap can stop the heart, but using the right amount can be used to treat heart disease. It is still used in fact, in some countries.

Sulfur cinquefoil has always been one of my favorite weeds, even if it is a bit rough looking. It has a center in its buttery yellow petals that seems to shine like the sun. Sulfur cinquefoil hails from Europe, where it grows as a wildflower. Here it grows in unused pastures and along roadsides and it is considered a noxious weed in some areas because it out competes grasses. It certainly doesn’t do that here; I usually have to hunt around to find it.

Native carrion flower vines are beautiful, almost musical things when they first appear in spring. They’re climbers and their strategy is to grow so tall so quickly they can no longer support their own weight, and then they fall to one side or another. With luck they’ll fall on top of a nearby bush that they can wrap their tendrils around and climb over the top of, getting as much sunlight as they can.

Carrion flowers are small but they’re stinkers that live up to their name. In this shot you can see a green fruit forming below each flower. When ripe they’ll turn deep purple and will do their part in keeping the birds fed all winter.

Crown vetch is a very beautiful thing that is unfortunately also highly invasive. Native to Africa, Europe, and Asia it spreads quickly and chokes out native plants. Since its seed is still used by highway departments throughout the U.S. to stabilize embankments along roadways, its aggressive tendencies are either not known or are being ignored.

Multiflora rose is native to China, Japan and Korea and was imported as an ornamental. Of course it almost immediately escaped and now grows unchecked by insect or disease. I’ve seen it grow 30 feet into trees using the same strategy as the carrion flower vine we saw earlier; it sends out long shoots that eventually fall under their own weight and wherever they fall is where they grow. All that is seen here is one plant growing 15-20 feet long, more or less horizontally, supported by native shrubs like staghorn sumac. Once it grows in and over native shrubs it hogs all the sunlight and eventually kills the shrubs that support it.

The flowers of multiflora rose are small at about an inch across, but there can be so many of them on one plant that their beautiful fragrance can be detected from quite far away. You can quite literally follow your nose right to it. The flower’s anthers start out bright yellow and become darker following pollination. Finally the flowers will become small, bright red rose hips that birds love. Its sale and distribution is banned in New Hampshire but since each plant can easily produce half a million seeds I think it’s here to stay.

Heal all has just started blooming. I call the plant nature’s cheerleader because of the way all the flowers seem to be saying Yay! In the past the plant was thought to be able to heal just about any illness a person could have, and that’s how it got its name. It is also called self-heal, woundwort, heart-of-the-earth, carpenter’s herb, brown wort, and blue curls. It is in the mint family and thought to be native to Europe, Africa, Asia and North America. In China it is used in traditional herbal medicine, so it must be native there as well.

The lowly yarrow was once so prized it was traded back and forth between nations. Once considered one of the nine “holy healing herbs” it was used to stop the flow of blood, and warring armies made sure they carried plenty of it. It has even been found in the graves of Neanderthals, so mankind has had a long relationship with it. I think of these things when I see it after it has been run over on roadsides. Once worth more than just about anything known, it is now a totally ignored weed. How times do change.

What I believe to be a calico pennant dragonfly stood on the tip of a pickerel weed leaf. It was really windy that day and it looked like it was clinging to the leaf with all its might.

It swayed this way and that like a flag, and that’s where the name “pennant” comes from. I sometimes see them hanging on with just their two front legs but on this day the wind was so strong I think it needed extra help. I’ve always had trouble getting a good shot of their wing patterns and this time was no exception. The reflective surface of the wings made a tough shot for the camera but I’m sure it made it easier for birds to see them.

At a glance blue dasher dragonflies look a lot like the spangled skimmer seen earlier in this post but they don’t have the white “spangles” on their wings; only the black stigmata. They are another dragonfly that likes to perch, and will fly off and return to its perch again and again as long as you don’t get too close.

Here is the face of a blue dasher dragonfly. What look like tall, yellow eyes are actually marks on its body. The round turquois bits with white dots on them are its compound eyes. The white dots are highlights from sunshine. I’ve read that they have a nearly 360 degree field of vision and can see 200 to 300 images per second, compared to the 60 per second we see. Almost 80% of their brain is dedicated to sight, so when you get close to a dragonfly it’s because it let you. All those times I’ve gotten close to one and thought I had snuck up on it, I was fooling myself.

To find the universal elements enough; to find the air and the water exhilarating; to be refreshed by a morning walk or an evening saunter; to be thrilled by the stars at night; to be elated over a bird’s nest or a wildflower in spring- these are some of the rewards of the simple life. ~ John Burroughs

Thanks for stopping in. Have a great, beauty filled week.

Read Full Post »

Something Old, Something New

Well, I’ve finally had to buy a new camera. If a camera can survive hanging around my neck in the woods for 4-5 years it’s a tough camera, and the two Cannon PowerShot SX-40s I’ve used for several years performed admirably. But I’ve worn out both of them, so this time I went with the Cannon PowerShot SX-70. These cameras are “bridge cameras,” so called because they bridge the gap between a DSLR and a Point and shoot. This one has a 65X optical zoom with a 20.3 Megapixel CMOS sensor and DIGIC 8 Image processor. In my style of nature study I can’t be carrying a bag full of heavy lenses with me while I crawl around on the forest floor. I want to be ready for anything at any time, and this camera has the finesse it takes for shots of insects as well as the reach it takes for shots of animals. My line of thought is, since I don’t “do” birds I don’t need the great reach of a $5,000.00, 600 mm lens but as you will see in this post, I was going to do birds. Or more accurately, birds were going to do me.

This is the first “blog worthy” shot I took with the new camera: a female wood duck. This encounter was strange, since wood ducks don’t usually sit still and let me take photos. They swim or fly away at top speed. Or they used to anyway. This one just sat on its tiny island and let me move as close as I could and I was happy that it did, because it’s only the second shot I’ve gotten of a wood duck. I love their chubby little cheeks and their beautiful colors. Though the females are pretty the males are amazing, and I hope to get a photo of one of them someday.

I was back in the wetlands when I saw the wood duck. This is a shot I took a while ago with my old Cannon SX-40. I like its dreamy, impressionistic appearance but you don’t always want dreamy and impressionistic; sometimes you want sharp. In any event this place has become one of my favorite places because you just never know what you’ll see here. There are often whitetail deer out there in the distance.

People had told me that there were bitterns here in the wetlands. Bitterns are rarely seen birds and I had no idea what they looked like, so I came home and read about them. What stayed in my mind most of all was how they had stripes and a long neck, so when I saw this bird I thought it was a bittern. I was confused though because it wasn’t a bittern at all, it was a juvenile green heron. I had seen exactly one green heron before and it was an adult in such deep shade my camera couldn’t even find it, so experience didn’t help.

Here is what I believe is a more adult looking green heron with some traces of juvenile color still left on it. At one point there were 5 of these birds in different stages of maturity in this one place and by the time they had all flown away I was confused enough to have not really known what I had seen. So it was back home to do more reading. Green herons are much smaller than great blue herons; just slightly bigger than a crow I think, but like their cousins they can spend quite a bit of time playing statue. If you don’t scare them off like I did, that is.

After all that I felt that I’d had enough of birds for a while but no, here was the World’s Cutest Duck sitting on a log one evening. I took a few shots of it and then, sure it would fly away, I went on looking for other interesting things. This duck was on one side of a tiny pond and I was on the other side. I walked by it several times but it just sat and smiled; the very picture of serenity. The birds I kept running into weren’t behaving like I thought they would and I wondered if maybe this little duck was sick. It was small enough to hold in two cupped hands and cute enough to melt your heart but all I could do was wish it a peaceful night ahead. I still haven’t been able to identify it as anything but a tiny duck.

One of the things I saw while I was stumbling around the duck was this bladderwort; the only one I’ve seen this year. The light was going fast but the camera coped.

I went to a brighter place out in the open where I knew some purple morning glories grow but I was too late and there wasn’t a single open flower. But what beautiful buds! I got out the camera I use for macros, took one shot, and got the dreaded “card full” message. There was nothing to do but try the new camera on them. I doubted it would be able to get a shot of something so small but here it is. I love the way these buds spiral but what really surprised me was the shine. And I hadn’t used a flash.

This is what a morning glory flower looks like when it is finished. It kind of falls in on itself. I was surprised that the new camera could get this shot without being in macro mode.

It also got a shot of a hedge bindweed flower that didn’t have pink stripes.

I finally found an emerald spread wing damselfly hanging on to a pickerel weed stem in sunlight, so now you can see their beautiful colors. The new camera did a fairly good job of reproducing them, I thought.

I was able to crop the photo to give you a better look. I like those big blue eyes and that metallic green. I also wanted you to see the tiny red “blob” under its abdomen. It’s a water mite, which is a parasite in the tick family that feeds on the blood of dragon and damselflies. It / they will eventually drop off when the damselfly is over water.

This shot I took a few years ago shows the immature water mites on a banded wing meadowhawk dragonfly. When one organism transports another organism of a different species it is a symbiotic process called “phoresy.” This information on water mites was confirmed by the folks at Bug Guide.net and Kathy Keatley Garvey and the bug squad from the University of California. Thanks also to Ginger Wells Kay for her help.

I was happy that the new camera was able to shoot dragonflies. The first one I tried was this widow skimmer. I chose this photo for this post because this dragonfly was hanging onto some Joe Pye weed buds. In my experience dragonflies don’t seem to perch on flowers that often.

Later on I ran into yet another bird; this time a great blue heron, wading through the weeds in the Ashuelot River.  I couldn’t understand how it could wade here without tripping over all the growth but it did. A curious thing happened this year; pickeral weeds lined the river banks and bloomed as always, but then it started raining and didn’t stop. The river got so high that it was far over the “heads” of the blooming pickerel weeds, and it killed them all off. All that is left is the mass of dead leaf stalks seen in this photo.

The big heron stuck out its long neck and I thought it was going to make a spectacular catch but instead it froze and stayed that way, as if mesmerized. It seemed like it was ready to play statue, so I thanked it for letting me take photos and left it there staring at its own reflection.

One day I saw a lot of ferns with fern balls on them. Fern balls are created by an insect called a fern leaf roller. The rolled up leaves appear at the tip of a fern frond and look like a ball, and inside the ball are caterpillars of a moth, possibly in the herpetogramma family. The caterpillars pull the tip of the fern into a ball shape and tie it up with silk. Once inside the shelter they feed on the leaflets. Nature is always full of surprises.

Speaking of ferns, here is this year’s example of a royal fern. I like to always show this fern because many people don’t know that it is a fern. I almost always find royal ferns along river and pond banks. They turn a beautiful yellow color in the fall.

The acorn crop looks like it is going to be big this year and I’m so glad that I no longer have to rake them all up.

August is usually the time when our first asters appear. This one is a marsh aster; the first I’ve seen this season. There will be plenty more of them soon. They often grow in or very near the water at pond shores.

The unusual flowers of the ground nut plant also appear in August. They’re very pretty and always remind me of the helmets once worn by the Conquistadors. It always seems odd to me that we have “invented” so many things that have the same form, color, or function as the things found in nature. Nature has to be the inspiration behind many of the things man came up with in earlier times.

Plants release their seeds to the wind not knowing or caring whether or not they’ll fall on fertile soil, but still they grow into beauty like this. It strikes me that a blog is much the same; you let your words flow freely out into the world never knowing where they’ll land or what they might grow into. All one can do is hope that maybe one day something beautiiful might come from them.

If you come upon a spot where it looks like someone dumped a bowl full of orange spaghetti all over the plants then you’ve found a parasitic plant called dodder. It is an annual plant which, once it starts growing, quickly covers plants in what might look like the silly string that used to come in spray cans. Since it has no leaves it is easily seen.

Dodder doesn’t need leaves because it sucks all the life giving nutrients it needs from its host plant. In this photo taken earlier you can see how the orange stem of dodder, just to the left of the tiny flower, has penetrated and entered the stem of a goldenrod. Once this happens it gets all its nourishment from its host and it no longer needs to contact the soil it once grew from. Out in the field as I found it, it does no real harm but it can severly damage crops and for that reason farmers have given it names like devil’s guts, devil’s hair, devil’s ringlet, hail weed, hair weed, hell bine, pull-down, strangle weed, and witch’s hair. It’s hard to control; all the tiny green spheres you see in this photo are seed pods.

The only bird in this post I’ve tried to find is this cedar waxwing, which I found sitting on a stone in the middle of the river one evening. Many of you wrote in after the last post to say how much you loved these beautiful birds so I thought I’d show another one. It sat in the evening sun waiting for insects to happen by. Due to all the rain there are more mosquitoes this year than I’ve ever seen, so the waxwings won’t go hungry.

In the trembling grey of a spring dawn, when the birds were whispering in mysterious cadence among the trees, have you not felt that they were talking to their mates about the flowers? ~Kakuzō Okakura

Thanks for coming by.

Read Full Post »