Sightings

A clump of Inky cap mushrooms were eating themselves outside of Angus Dykman’s ’09 house on Home Avenue on April 24th. Autodigestion in these fungal fruiting bodies turns their moist tan caps into black ink over the course of a couple hours. It’s been said that a marooned sailor once wrote his death letter with the ink of a decaying coprinus mushroom and then starved to death, not knowing that most inky caps are perfectly edible. Later that day Angus witnessed a crow mobbing a red tailed hawk above Olin. Mobbing is when a bird aggressively chases a predator away from its nest to protect the brood. “The Hawk defended itself valiantly,” Angus told me, “and they flew off into the sun and trees behind Foss hill.” Three possums were killed by cars this last week. I saw a couple dead wood chucks on Pine Street, Hannah Overton ’11saw two live ones, and Noa Wotton ’10 saw one woodchuck twice, “roving and sunning in the backyard of Buddhist house.” Christian Skorik ’09 saw a small black bird perched on a light post on Home Ave., presumably a male red winged blackbird, which got attacked by another male of the same bird species. Dean Mcusick caught a pumpkin seed fish at Niantic State Park. Josh Mroz was herping in Wadsworth State Park this Sunday and he saw six pickerel frogs, three green frogs, and two fowler’s toads. “There were also a lot of American toads spawning,” Josh said, “but there were too many to count.” Thanks for the great species list Josh! Angus, Tim Dutcher, and I made an early morning excursion to Miller’s Pond this week to look under ash and dead elm trees for the fruiting bodies of Morchella esculenta, the choice edible morel mushroom. We returned empty handed but we did see a couple bright orange-bellied Baltimore orioles and we were lucky enough to observe a male eastern grey gnatcatcher wooing a female with rapid twitching motions and whistles fluctuating in volume. On a neighborhood tip, Tim Dutcher was enjoying the company of a feral bee colony earlier this week. An opportunistic beekeeper, Tim placed an empty brood box across the street from the wild beehive to try and lure them into a container that he could use to harvest their honey. Upon Tim’s request I rode my bike down Prospect St., where the bees were nesting in a silver maple tree. Foraging female bees were coming and going as constantly as an electrical current runs down a wire. The temperatures were in the high eighties and the bees were engaged in some interesting thermoregulatory behavior. The bees were densely packed together, covering every surface of the entrance to their hive. Each bee had its wings extended behind its body and was rapidly fanning the air. The collective fanning of all these bees was cooling the nest during the hottest part of the day. Tim Farkas (graduate student) was explaining to me the difference between cribellate and ecribellate web building spiders outside of Shanklin when he spotted an orange butterfly with black and white spotted wing tips. Tim told me it was a butterfly in the genus Vanessa, either a painted lady or an American lady. Then, seized by a passion, he strapped on his boots and took off somewhere with his butterfly net. A couple days later he returned a bit bedraggled but with that look in his eyes like he’d seen some really pretty insects. Here is the list of butterflies that Tim saw around 5 p.m. on Mount Higby:

Anthocharis midea (Hubner): the Falcate Orangetip – I chased a single individual for over an hour just to get a couple photos! What a joyful pain.

Polygonia sp.: Could have been an eastern comma, grey comma, or question mark – this individual, wrought with jealousy for want of a mate, was chasing a pair of mourning cloak butterflies from its sunny territory.

Nymphalis antiopa (Linnaeus)  – Mourning Cloak: a number of individuals fluttering around one another; fighting? Mating?

Papilio glaucus (Linnaeus) – Eastern Tiger Swallowtail

Papilio troilus (Linnaeus) – Spicebush Swallowtail – two fluttering individuals