A New Topic Presents Itself

It is just as I feared. As soon as I announce the topics I hope to write about when time permits, I take my morning walk and a whole new topic is laid before me. Laced among the trees actually- spider webs. More exactly, the incredible beauty of spider webs on a “misty, moisty, morning”. The miracle of time that is also presenting itself this morning is brought to you by that “misty, moisty” part. We had an outdoor Salt Marsh program scheduled for 9:00, but the skies opened up around 4 am and it is misting still, so its cancellation was inevitable and this window of time seems exactly like a gift from above. It will wreak havoc with the future schedule as we must find free days where there are none, but for now, I see it as God letting some air out of a balloon that was about to pop. Something He has done so consistently in my life. Thank you God.

Then His creation was all glory this morning, so let’s talk about it. You have noticed them surely, on drizzly days, the webs of spiders are bejeweled with raindrops, so that every strand is made visible and in a glance you can guess which type of spider has made it. As soon as I entered the woods, the classic Orb Weaving Spider design was everywhere.
Suspended between oak leaves, knitting together dead branches and why so many, and none as big as they usually get? Because it is Fall, and all those darling little spiderlings have hatched recently, and are now here casting their nets for breakfast in the tried and true way that has worked for many in the Arachnid family down through the ages. Not all spiders use a web, but the Orb weavers, that include that beautiful Black and Yellow Garden Spider you may be familiar with, do.
The web itself spun as strong as steel is made in glands in their body and played out through their spinnerets. The circular strands that make the orb are nice and sticky to trap the victim, but the radial strands are not, so the spider may go and collect its meal without getting stuck itself.

When I got to the railroad tracks, the black gravel along the embankment was covered with Funnel Spider webs. You have most likely seen these also..
Close to the ground, on your grass, or low bushes, or in this case on the rocks, it features a spread out, flat web that actually isn't sticky and a funnel towards the back of it where, said Funnel Spider hangs out, waiting to see who is coming to dinner. Peer in to look at it and it will scoot further back into the tunnel, touch the web gently on the edge or middle and it may come out to see if dinner has arrived.

I didn’t spot any “Bowl and Doily” spiders today, but they are around and you may have seen one.
Thier web is a two-part affair, one part inverted “bowl” and under that the “doily”. The little brown spider hangs between the two, on the underside, so it can watch for an approaching “insect du jour” without becoming someone else’s Blue Plate Special. When a hapless victim comes along, the spider can bite it through the webbing, then go do the spider version of wrapping it in its silken equivalent to Saran wrap to save it for snacking on at another time.

Not all spiders do use webs though, and around here, it is pretty easy to find some member of the Jumping Spiders scurrying along under the pine litter or the wrack at the marsh. These spiders rely on their good eyesight and leapabilty to capture their meals. And man, with eight eyes they have a good track record of “getting their man”, and you have to admit that they are pretty darn cute when seen in enlarged pictures.


Pray for rain then, a drizzly, smizzly sort of rain that will let you know just how many spiders share your yard and paths with you, the way new fallen snow is a dead give away to where the mice play at night. Then if you are blessed with the gift of time, you too can have your regular plans altered in a most delightful way, as I did. Thank you God, it was a real case of seeing the “unseen”. Now, to attend to all those other backed up chores. Also a gift, if I get them done.

Bits of Blogs

Nature is very obliging. Daily it gives inspiration for things to wonder at, for topics to look into and write about. Time however, is far less obliging. Daily the “tyranny of the urgent” takes precedence. And so the blogs start to back up in my brain and can’t seem to find a way out. Today then, with the little amount of time I have, I’ll simply write bits of blogs, with a hope that I can come back and do greater justice to the various topics when the miracle of time becomes available. And it will, eventually.

One blog I have wanted to write since August is “A Little Night Music”, wherein we delve into trying to sort out the trills, from the striations, from the thrumming, from the buzzing sounds of crickets and grasshoppers.

When this topic came to mind, they were making a near deafening racket out my window as “guy meets girl” antics among the Orthopterians was in full swing. Now many voices have dropped out. One could cheerfully assume those quiet ones had managed to meet and mate and were now depositing their grasshopper eggs into the hard packed ground somewhere. But many still continue to call. We won’t think of these as the losers who still haven’t found that certain someone, but perhaps, the late bloomers who came into their adult, able-to-sing-with-their-legs-or-wings, age later than the others did. I do hope to get to this topic though before the first frost when the final curtain goes down on this chorus.

Another, would have been about the fabulous tornado, hurricane, blizzard of swallows that is now, as we speak, present on the dunes of Sandy Neck. About a week or two ago their presence on the bog suddenly ended and my small group most likely became part of the now 1,000’s of tree swallows swooping up one side and down the other of this nearby barrier beach system. I did get to go twice and both times had that thrill of being rushed over by hundreds of wings.
Once was with my granddaughter and my family. When you are almost two, digging in the sand and singing little sand songs is still more riveting than nearly being collided with by hundreds of swallows. If you are on the Cape, I think you may have another week or two to see the show. If you live somewhere along the East Coast, they will be coming to a bayberry covered beach near you in the coming weeks as they make their way south, snacking on the way.

“Who Has Seen the Wind?” is also is waiting to get properly put on paper. We have had such wild windy days of late, that I realize the inanimate elements in nature are just as exciting and glorious as the rest of the animate picture. The hurricane that was a “no show” of a few weeks ago, seems to have met its match in these days where no forecasts mentions anything but “breezy” weather, but just keeping ones footing has seemed challenging. A Christina Rossetti poem keeps rattling in my mind on this one.


And then, one called, “Just an Observation”. Each day we all make observations, something catches our eye out the window, or along a walk, and we stop and watch awhile, and a little bit of life shows itself. Not that we always understand what we are seeing, but being the brainy, human types that we are, I think most of us begin to guess at what is going on. Sometimes we may be right, sometimes completely wrong and other times just stumped. But whichever way, they are observations and they do make the groundwork for the things we learn.

On my walks that happen earlier in the morning, I have been noticing less bird activity then when I go a little later. Of course with nesting and raising the kids done, perhaps there is no real reason to crack the dawn with love songs, or be out there catching the early worm. When I would see my little flock of swallows, it was more likely to be when the sun had been up for awhile. Which, when I think of it, makes sense if you are an insect eater, because insects need the world to warm up a bit to lift up on those warm columns of air, so the ones who eat them might get to sleep in a bit too. I have also been noticing that when robins are in their larger flocks getting ready to migrate, they are one, easily excited, group of birds. Normally they are so “live and let live” with each other, but get them in a gang and much more swooping and chasing goes on. A crazy amount really. A true ornithologist would know why no doubt. Extra zippy hormones kicking in to get them pumped for the long trip ahead maybe? I don’t know, but with the flocks I see it is easy to observe.

Now, those are the topics, if I can just find some time. And not get distracted by new topics that will present themselves with each walk. Fall is one of our busiest times at the nature center. So many classes to teach, so many to prepare for. This week I think I have the joy of doing about 8 classes on microscopic pond life, starting with daphnia and copepods. If you have been reading this blog since last spring, you may remember the “Cuckoo for Copepods” one, which explains what a “joy” it is to sort through pond water for just the right kind of copepod. Actually, it IS fun, but time consuming. OK, times up. Edit, copy, add pictures, print and done.

Mushroom Madness

Ah- what could that title allude to? The madness one might contract from eating mushrooms or the madness one might fall into trying to ID mushrooms? It would, in this case, be the latter. Now that it is approaching fall, mushrooms are multiplying at an amazing rate along my route and the temptation to write about them is strong. Only what to write? Too large a subject to tackle in its dizzying entirety. To lethal to go start dispensing info on what is poisonous and what isn’t. Best to just say how wowed I have always been by them, and try to pass some of that “wowness” on to you.

Some very basic things to know about mushrooms, which you probably already know, are that they are the “fruiting body” of the fungus. In other words, there is some species of fungus creeping underground, or inside the tree, or within the rotting log that is doing a great little job, of decomposing wood that is already dead, or in less helpful manner, occasionally eating at the heartwood. Several other types of fungi are content to live in a symbiotic relationship with the roots of a tree. And then other fungi have nothing to do with trees at all. See how complicated it is getting already! The filaments of this fungus are called “hypha” and together these “hyphae” make up the “mycelium” and from this will come the mushroom, which of course has a technical name, “the carpophore”. And that is the part that will contain the spores that will spread with the wind and make more fungus. Everybody with me so far?

And the most amazing thing about them, is the way they, shazam, show up practically overnight. You are out walking one day, and you may notice a bit of a bump under the pine needles, the next day, a cute little button mushroom, and the next day, a huge mushroom with a 6” cap! It is highly entertaining. Until you try to positively ID them. There is so much to check for; do they have gills or pores? Are those gills attached to the stalk or are they “free” of the stalk? Do they have a “skirt” (technically called a veil) around the top of the stalk? Do they bruise, or change color, or ooze a white substance when you break them? Etceteras, etceteras.

I have a lot of different Russula’s around my woods that are fairly easy to recognize.
Some have bright red caps, others magenta, while others are green or yellow. They are all “gill” mushrooms meaning that if you looked under the cap you would see gills rather than a spongy mass of pores. I also see a lot of “King Boletes” along my walk that are the pore type of mushroom.
Huge brown sticky caps, yellow pores underneath. In late August they lined the path for about 50 yards or so.

Remember the Smurf’s? Well, they made their home under a lovely red mushroom with white patches on the top, a Amanita muscaria , also called a “Fly Agaric” that, if eaten, would “cause delirium, manic behavior and deep sleep, sometimes accompanied by profuse sweating” (Simon and Schuster’s “Guide to Mushrooms”)
Ah, those crazy Smurfs, living life on the edge! On my walk I also see a fair amount of the mushroom called “Destroying Angel”. A lovely white mushroom that would ensure you would be meeting the real angels if you ate it.
The way to recognize this one is to look for a little “skirt” at the top of the stalk and to see if the mushroom itself seems to be growing out of a bulb or eggshell shaped bottom.

A well-named fungus that is common on the Cape is a “Coral fungus” that looks like, well coral. Wouldn’t want to munch on this one either, at least many varieties would make any Ex-Lax type product look mild in comparison. But fun to look at and easy to remember.


Then there is a group of fungi called Polypores or Shelf fungus that grow, like a shelf out of the trunk of a tree. Some bright yellow Sulphur polyporous mushrooms did the shazam, overnight appearance at the base of an oak I walk by. It was a gray day when I spotted them and they absolutely lit up the walk they were so vibrantly yellow.



Soon, both in my yard and in a field I frequently walk in, the “puffball” mushrooms, which dispense their spores through a small hole at the top, will entertain me, puffing out spores like smoke signals whenever a rain drop falls or them, or my poking finger.

All right, I had better stop don’t you think? Although I wish I could take you along later this fall to find the Wood Loving Lycogalas that are natures paintballs. Or have you with me when we are hunting about for the “Pinecone mushroom” that grows under pines and looks like a pinecone itself. Or, yippee, if we find a “Stinkhorn” or something else smelly and slimy looking. Remember I work with a lot of young children and the slimier, the smellier, the deadlier the better.

As I said, it’s tricky to talk about mushrooms. Maybe because you don’t know when to stop! And if you keep going Pat, you will perhaps be driving your readers to Madness!

Yay! The Red Squirrel is Back!

Well, it is probably not the Red Squirrel, but it is a Red Squirrel and it is back in my yard, bouncing its way cartoon like across the deck, scolding me for not having the sunflower seeds out early enough. And I couldn’t be happier. It’s a long story. (Pat, what isn’t a long story with you?)

A few years ago, a couple of Red Squirrels found out what a great free lunch was being offered on my deck and took up permanent residence. And may I say up front that, in my opinion, the Red Squirrel is the closest thing to a cartoon character you are likely to find living in your nearby woods. And I say this as a child of the 50’s, raised on a steady diet of Disney’s Chip and Dale. Chipmunks are cute, no doubt about it. But, it is the Red Squirrel’s tendency to bounce, stiff-legged, on all fours, across the deck when it is tense or excited, and it’s 100% cartoon-like trick of keeping it’s front paws still while it’s back paws are whirling around, that give it that winning edge. They make me laugh out loud.

So, you can imagine my heartbreak when, suddenly, about a year ago, they disappeared. As a rule, this is actually a more reclusive squirrel, so for them not to be seen isn’t that odd, but I also stopped seeing their feeding signs. They strip the scales off a pinecone so neatly, leaving only a few at the top that, in the end, it looks like you have a little pineapple.

They are after the seed that is at the base of each scale. They often eat in the same place, so their pile of discarded scales and stripped cones gets pretty obvious. For that matter, when you find this pile, it is called a “midden”, the same term archeologists’ use for piles of Indian crockery, or shell piles. At any rate, the midden stopped growing.

Then the smoking gun was found. My husband had fixed a low-lying area of the roof where water pooled by putting down a sheet of soft lead. When he went to see how it was holding up, he found, all around the edge of the lead, the unmistakable chew marks of a squirrel. Oh dear, “This is your brain on lead” - no scholarships forthcoming for those squirrels. Unintentional, of course, but we felt absolutely awful about it. And so, a whole year has passed with no scolding, no hand rail antics, no whirling dervishes, as the Red squirrel would take on any Gray squirrel foolish enough to try to feed at the same time.

But then, just last week, I awoke to the unmistakable chatter of a ticked off Red squirrel! Yay! Yay! Of course, this is a different one, and so far there is only one. But that will change soon, for when SHE arrived, she had the shape of a little pear, not the usual shape of this hyper frenetic critter. Two days later, here she is, sleek as a weasel and obviously nursing some young kits, or pups, or kittens (the young go by all three names). More delight on my part. So scold away, steal seed with abandon, I missed your kind and I am glad your back! And next year, if I were the type to remember things, I could even send a birthday card, for they were born, most likely, on August 26th. But oops, I forgot my brother-in-laws birthday this year, also in August, so that might be a tad insulting if I remember these squirrels and forget his. Forget the card part. Either way, color me happy and entertained again as I do the morning dishes.

The pictures that go with the previous blog

Well, for some reason the pictures won't let me insert them with the text, but seem willing to be added to a new one. Here then is the unruffled, unphased after being dived at Kingfisher...






And this would be the attacking Coopers Hawk....

This, the sassy Blue Jay...



And finally the Frigate bird I hope to NOT see after the storm...



As a side note, by the time I did get to the store, they were, of course, out of batteries. Typical.

A Crazy Jay and a Frustrated Hawk

**FOR SOME REASON MY PICTURES WON'T UPLOAD TODAY, YOU WILL HAVE TO USE YOUR IMAGINATION! SORRY, I WILL EDIT IT IN THE FUTURE WHEN IT IS WORKING AGAIN-PAT

Just when I announce that I have so much to do today, every hour accounted for, along comes this amazing little drama/comedy routine on my walk that I can’t possibly let go unmentioned. So, instead of moving things out of harms way, I am blogging. Just don’t tell my husband.

Another unusually warm day, feeling more like a early morning walk in Costa Rica than Cape Cod. I had just rounded the bend to the containment pond when the rattle of a Kingfisher caught my ear. That was followed quickly by the hoarse croak of a hawk, a hawk that was diving down, intent on making this Kingfisher “ la oisueax du jour”. Wiley Kingfisher took a dive straight into the pond, and as this was a Coopers Hawk, not an Osprey, it had no intention of following suit and pulled up at the last second. The hawk returned to a large dead Pitch pine by the trail, and amazingly the Kingfisher resettled on the same bare branch as before, gave a rattle, shook his feathers but, otherwise, seemed nonplussed. I felt like it might just as well paint a bulls-eye on its head, sitting out in the open like that, but another attack didn’t come.

Clearly though, we had a hungry hawk here, always worth watching. In the same craggy tree with him was a Blue jay, going about its business, calm as could be, even though it too is certainly on the top of the menu choices for this hawk. Which, apparently, was what the hawk was thinking, for he made a dive at the jay, but was unable to get through the branches to get to it. Which is maybe what gave the jay such a sense of invincibility for then, incredibly, it hopped to a branch that was even closer to the hawk. On the other side of the trunk, but still, I would say, no more than two feet away. “Are you crazy!” Then it goes a step further and makes a small rush at the hawk, which sets them both to flight, hawk chasing it, but missing again, and they both resettle in the tree. More vocal taunts from the jay and the hawk, counting to 10 perhaps, decides it didn’t come here to be made sport of, flies off to another nearby, also dead, Pitch pine.

I should mention here, in case you didn’t know, that Pitch pines are scraggly trees with a profusion of twisted branches and both of these trees are loaded with dead, but still there, pine cones. Even without any needles, it makes for great cover, and apparently, great quick and easy bug snacks, for it always has birds of one kind or the other in it. But back to the breakfast drama. The hawk seems to be giving up on this jay and moving on, but the jay, again, did it forget to take its Prozac? Or too much Prozac, maybe, and is having suicidal thoughts, flies directly to the hawk’s tree, again, landing only a branch or two away from it. “Buddy, you are asking for it!” but maybe it was just secure in the knowledge that these snaggy branches would continue to keep it out of the reach of the hawks talons even though it was tantalizingly close. More taunts, more chases, and off to another leafed out tree they go, where I thought the hawk almost had him, but no, “Jay, jay, jay” rings out, and, it would seem the jay will live to taunt another day. Amazing. And again, as so often, I think, thank you God, that I can just mosey on down to the supermarket to buy my food and in the aisle the food doesn’t go skittering away.

Another treat on this morning’s walk was the increased number of shorebirds willing to work the mudflats. Fewer tourists here, just me and my dog, it would seem, and the pickings in the slough must be good because today there were 20 or more, small and midsize sandpipers. I was also wondering if other shorebirds might consider sheltering inland during the coming storm. Nice that that lowering pressure warns the birds, with as much accuracy and less hype than the Weather Channel, so I will be curious to see if the numbers increase tomorrow.

I know I am going a bit long here, and I DO have all these things I am supposed to be doing, but may I share a small pet peeve I have? I am always surprised by the glee some birders display when a storm is headed our way. “Maybe we will get lucky and see some tropical birds blown so off course that they end up on Cape Cod instead of Cape Hatteras.” Now, I like to see rare birds too, but this time of year things are heading south, not north, so, think of the huge toll that takes when they check their GPS and see they just added another 1,000 miles to an already arduous trip. Again, I am guilty too, to a degree. I love to check out the ocean at the height of a storm, hoping for pelagic birds to be much closer to shore, practically in the parking lot sometimes. Yes, that must be disorienting for them, but they generally aren't off by 1,000’s of miles. So should some Frigate bird show up or something else crazily off course, I will feel more sorry for it, than delight.
Praying everything and everyone finds shelter in the storm.

OK, back to work Pat. Off to buy the obligatory batteries.

I'd Rather Be Blogging

It’s been really busy, “uber-busy” as they might say in Germany. August was a month of non-stop programs at work, fun programs, but time consuming ones. Come up with 6 hours of experiments on Color and Light, 6 hours of Entomology for 8 year olds, which worked out splendidly even though it rained throughout. The rain and cool weather had the poor Carpenter bees so chilled you could pick them up in your hands and warm them till they vibrated like some electrical toy! Very entertaining to 8 yr. olds.


Plus I even managed to take them to see Air Force One, a long story but worth telling some day. There were programs spun out from Eric Carle books, plus the more usual fare of frogs, snakes and forest trekking. Meanwhile, each day Nature was parading herself before me, offering blog idea after blog idea. However with no time to put them on paper, or on, what do we say, on little electronic blurbs in a box, they just stay rattling around in my mind, keeping me awake at night.

So here, at 4:30 in the morning, I am not actually writing a real blog, but just letting you know I wish I had time to, and hope too soon. Our official summer program ended yesterday and I had this fantasy that today would be a luxurious catch-up day, both at work and at home, but now, pesky little Earl is spinning his way our way and other things need to be tended to. Hadn’t scheduled in “battening down the hatches” but now perhaps I should.


More exciting than Earl arriving from the South, is the arrival of my daughter and granddaughter for a long awaited visit. I drive to Baltimore on Weds to meet them half way, then back to revel in taking Elena to beaches and ponds, woods and Story times etc.etc. Can’t wait to share with her the wonder of air that is full of swallows. Their numbers have been growing exponentially on the bog and soon they will make their move to the nearby beaches. And I know a spot at our pond where one scoop of the net will get you at least a dozen tadpoles. We will have a blast!

But first Earl. Which I suppose means: picking the rest of the tomatoes, moving all my deck plants out of harms way so it can still be a place of blooms and herbs when they come, going to the town well to fill all water jugs, filling bathtubs with water, freezing lots of ice and doing all things electrical that I can. “Uber” busyness continues. But of course, one of those electrical things I hope to do, is get some of these blogs out of my head and into the airwaves, computer waves- whatever they are called so that they will no longer keep me awake at night.

Stay tuned then kind reader, and lets see how much I do manage to accomplish in the two days I have. And if you happen to also have Earl at your doorstep, may your hatches stay battened!