Sightings

The Connecticut River valley was slowly warming after a mild frost on the night of Sunday, April 12^th. The self-named “Suburban Sleuth” Dan Schniedewin ’12 saw a Virginia Opossum outside the Graduate Liberal Studies building and a Red Fox on vine Street. A Red Tailed Hawk looked at Sally Norris from a European Beech tree in the Westco courtyard. Eliza Perlmutter ’12 and I followed a loud rapping noise In the Wes Furhman nature area to a skinny standing dead maple where an adult female Hairy Woodpecker was foraging for arthropods. Aaron Greenberg ’11 watched two Gold Finches form a pair bond in a Spruce at Butternut Hollow. Chino Kim ’10 was enjoying the rapid twitching tail feathers of a Red Winged Black Bird. The waterfowl near Professor John Kirn’s home were mating. The Canadian Geese at the Cross Street pond were performing ritualized courtship dunking, in which males and females alternate submerging their heads and shaking out their neck feathers. Sometimes, males were forcefully mounting female geese, dunking them, and nipping their necks when they tried to come up to breath. Christian Skorik ’09 had the pleasure of running into a Black Swallowtail Butterfly that was resting on a pansy. “One tail was a little broken,” Skorik said, “but it looked pretty good otherwise.” Moths were eclosing from the pantry in Buddhist house, according to Noah Wotton ’10. Tim Farkas ’08 saw some adult Mayflies. These insects, which are in the same family as the Dragonfly and the Damselfly, have unusually large eyes and legs used in mid air grasp and mate attempts. A Leaf Cutter Bee with thick grey hair landed on Michelle Markowitz’s ’10 shirt outside of the Zilkha gallery. Honeybees were collecting dark orange pollen. Hymenopteran activity was on the rise since many flowering trees are now in bloom. Magnolia trees have white, sometimes purplish, overlapping petals and large. Cherries are blooming white or pink, rarely red, with many small flowers. Spice Bush is blooming beautifully in the ravine with two clumps of four yellow flowers at each axillary bud. Some Red Oaks were beginning to leaf out and so were others, including the lanky American Larch.  I picked an attractive Ganoderma tsugae, a polypore mushroom that persists over winter.

If you have more sightings to report, contact me at ilichtermarc@wesleyan.edu.