On my walk late this morning, I was serenaded by the shrill calls of an Eastern Towhee (Pipilo erythrophthalmus), perched in the undergrowth along the roadside. I am not a birder, and have no intentions of beginning a life list. But I am pleased to say that this is a species of sparrow that I had never seen before.
I have always been fond of bumblebees. They have a charming furriness about them, and they are not very aggressive toward humans — certainly compared with paper wasps and yellowjackets. They have such charming alternative early English names, too — the drumbledrane, the dumbledore, or, the one which Charles Darwin knew them by, the humblebee. I photographed this one ambling from one henbit bloom to another on a delightfully mild spring afternoon.
I own half a dozen field guides to flowers. Yet not one of them includes sticky mouse-ear chickweed (Cerastium glomeratum), originally native to Eurasia. Most of my guides begrudgingly include a few of the ten chickweed species found in Eastern North America, such as common chickweed (no surprise there). Newcomb’s Wildflower Guide includes eight species, but goes out of its way to put chickweeds in their place, describing them as “often weedy and insignificant.” Admittedly, the flowers are minute, and easily missed. But is it fair to ignore such a common flower as this one, considering how many of us might encounter it in our own backyards? I am still greatly enamored of native woodland wildflowers, like bloodroot and hepatica, trillium and trout lily. But none of these grows on my property, or even in the adjacent woodlots, while chickweed is everywhere. Apparently it is possible for a flower to be so common that it is overlooked.
But not today. Here is a photograph of the sticky mouse-ear chickweed, in all its glory, just coming into bloom along Piney Woods Church Road.
I saw a marvelous image posted on Facebook the other day — a Venn diagram composed of two overlapping circles, one labeled “Science” and the other one “Art”. The intersection region of the two was labeled “Wonder”. Today’s offering from the Examiner archives is a pair of articles about the great blue heron, one from a scientific viewpoint and the other from an artistic one. Both pieces were originally published on June 15, 2010. The left-hand photograph was taken at Sweetwater Creek State Park, Georgia. The right-hand one was taken in White House Beach, a mobile home community on Indian River Bay in Delaware, where my dad was living at the time. He loved watching sunrises and birds from his deck looking out over the open water, I have always share his delight in exploring nature, a trait he encouraged in me from my earliest memories. Gordon F. Blizard, Jr. passed away in December of 2011; this selection from the archives is dedicated to him.
THE GREAT BLUE HERON AS DINOSAUR
From as far back as this writer can recall into his childhood, he has always been entranced by great blue herons. This fascination is due partly, no doubt, to the fact that the great blue heron (Ardea herodias) is an immense bird, standing nearly four feet tall, and with a wingspan of about six feet. As such, it would dwarf all of the songbirds he might see at the backyard feeder though the kitchen window of his Pennsylvania home. But down the street from his home there were ponds and a creek, and from time to time he would glimpse a great blue heron there. It was nearly always in flight over the treetops or along the stream, body long and streamlined, legs tucked behind, wings flapping loudly. Once or twice, it even uttered a call sounding like “FRAWNK”, in a harsh and gutteral voice that seemed to emerge from evolutionary prehistory. For reasons he did not have the words to capture then, but will venture to do so now, the great blue heron has always seemed to belong to the time of the dinosaurs.
One explanation for this image of great blue heron as dinosaur is that, in fact, birds are descended from dinosaurs. The split appears to have taken place about 160 million years ago, when small, two-legged dinosaurs like Velociraptor began to develop feathers. Oddly enough, paleontologists have identified feathered, ground-dwelling dinosaurs, indicating that feathers likely evolved from modified scales before they could be used for flight, perhaps as a means of regulating body temperature or displaying during courtship. The oldest bird fossil is that of Archaeopterix, dating back about 155 million years, an odd mix of avian and reptilian attributes. This early bird may have gotten the worm, but it did so using a mouth containing teeth. It also possessed three separately-clawed fingers and a bony tail. Like later birds, however, Archaeopterix had wings, fused clavicles, and feathers.
So in a sense, perhaps our recognition of great blue herons as being like dinosaurs is an instinctive recognition of their actual kinship. Surely, then, great blue herons must be among the most primitive birds alive today, and therefore closest in relation to dinosaurs? Amazingly enough, scientists doing protein sequencing analysis have concluded that the closest living relative of the dinosaurs, and therefore our closest point of contact with the Mesozoic, is actually a chicken! “Kentucky Fried Dinosaur” jokes aside, then, why does the chicken fail to evoke more than vague thoughts of farm life and possibly soup, while the majestic heron transports this author to the geologic past?
The answer lies, quite possibly, in the great blue heron’s resemblance to a pterosaur. Pterosaurs were an order of reptiles separate from the dinosaurs, which lived throughout the mid to late Mesozoic era (from 220 to 65 million years ago). The first reptiles to take to the air, pterosaurs had hollow bones like birds, and both soared and actively flew on immense membranous wings. Images of a pterodactyl in flight do resemble flying great blue herons. Since pterosaurs evolved about 80 million years before birds split off from the dinosaurs, however, herons and pterosaurs are only distantly related. So the mystery behind the similarity of appearance has to do with the process of convergent evolution, in which two unrelated organisms both evolve similar body forms and structures in order to meet similar environmental requirements. Both have large wingspans and streamlined bodies because those attributes are beneficial for flight.
On the ground, though, any resemblance between pterosaurs and great blue herons quickly vanishes. Tracks of pterosaurs reveal that they were actually quadrupeds, walking on both their hind feet and their wings in a somewhat ungainly manner, possibly as depicted here. While standing in a stream or along the edge of a pond or bay, however, a great blue heron evokes quite different feelings and images for this writer, ones that tend less toward prehistory and more toward poetry. They will be the topic of another article on herons, soon to be written.
THE GREAT BLUE HERON AS POETRY
The great blue heron stands,
Waiting at the water’s edge;
Avian haiku.
There is something about a great blue heron, poised motionless in the shallow waters of a pond, river, or bay, that is profoundly poetic. It gazes outward, waiting for the slightest ripple to betray the presence of a fish. It stands silent, almost blending into the landscape, its long body connecting water and sky. In particular, it evokes haiku, the lean and elemental seventeen syllables of Japanese verse that contains at once both a single instant and the entire universe. Not surprisingly, there is even an online haiku publication called The Heron’s Nest.
The great blue heron’s pose while waiting for a meal has much to teach Westerners. It embodies patience and being in the present moment, waiting for an opportunity to arise rather than trying to make it happen. Just as it awaits the silvery flash of a fish in the shallows, so the poet sits, waiting for words to form themselves into a poem to surface in her consciousness.
The great blue heron also embodies silence and solitude, standing alone against the elements, aloof in the shallows. It may stand in one place for hours, as the sun makes its way across the sky and sets in the west. Approach too closely and it will abruptly take off with a flapping of wings, searching for a place to fish without disruption, further down the coast of the bay or up the river.
The great blue heron is not always a bird of stillness, though. Indeed, despite the haiku publication title, the heron’s nest can be quite a raucus place. Herons build their nests of sticks lined with reeds, mosses, and grasses high in the trees in wet, forested areas. They nest in dense colonies called rookeries, which can be both smelly (from the abundant bird droppings) and loud (from many squawking birds). As herons return to a rookery year after year, eventually their tree stand is killed off, forcing the birds outward, leaving a bulls-eye pattern with a central core of dead trees and an outer ring of nest trees that are slowly dying. In these nest areas, great blue herons take on a nearly opposite personality to that of the quiet fishers that they appear to be at other times in the year. At the rookeries, herons are loud, argumentative, and destructive. But perhaps the aspects of great blue heron behavior encountered in a rookery might be viewed as a necessity. Maybe their nesting behavior is required in order to balance out their other, more poetic, solitary and silent selves.
This post is in honor of LBJs, or “Little Brown Jobs”, as birders refer to a range of fairly nondescript small brown species. I welcome a correct ID on this particular specimen, who was looking contemplative on a wire beside a fence along Piney Woods Church Road today.
Along Piney Woods Church Road, the earliest to bloom of the red maples have begun producing seeds. These nascent maple keys have not yet developed their final shape, but are merely tiny, oval forms suspended where the flowers used to be.
Along the grassy verges of Piney Woods Church Road, common chickweed (Stellaria media) is coming into bloom. Alas, it has so many strikes against it already: the flowers are minute (maybe half a centimeter across), the plant itself is low-growing and inconspicuous, and it is a common weed inhabiting lawns, road edges, and waste places across all of North America. Do a Google search for chickweed, and the top item on the list is liable to be an ad for weed killer. Common chickweed isn’t even native to these shores; it crossed the Atlantic from Europe. In its travels, it managed to pick up quite a few common names, including adder’s mouth, passerina, satin flower, starweed, starwort, stitchwort, tongue-grass, and winterweed. It does have many uses; it is an edible field green, and can be used to treat coughs when taken as a tea, and relieve itches when applied as a salve. And it makes a lovely portrait, for those who have the patience to sit beside it on the rain-soaked ground and keep taking close-ups, hoping for one that will be more or less in focus.
Spring peeper calling to attract a mate. Spring peepers produce their calls using vocal chords just like people do. They also have throat sacs that they can inflate, which act as resonance chambers to amplify the sound of their calls. Photograph by Valerie Hayes.
It is half an hour after sunset in early spring in Georgia, and the grass is still wet from a downpour earlier in the day. My ears are filled with the shrill calls of spring peepers, hiding in the bushes near the invisible pond, calling out plaintively to attract mates. My wife has her clipboard at the ready, holding a red flashlight so that she can see the page in front of her. We are pulled off to the side of the road, just beyond the entrance to a local Baptist children’s home. A light breeze blows out of the west, and the stars shine brightly in the moonless sky. I listen for other voices among the spring peepers, mostly to confirm my wife’s own observations. Officially, she is the frog monitor, and, I tell friends, I drive the getaway car – plus I have the job of counting cars while my wife documents frog calls. The more cars passing over her five minutes of work, the more difficult it is to get an accurate tally of how many frogs are present, and what kinds. And sometimes, if the pond is close to the road, a passing car or truck will leave a pond full of raucous frogs silent for a time afterward. I stand on the pavement beside the car, debating whether to trudge into the tall, wet, tick-infested grass to where my wife stands. While I consider the pros and cons, a car pulls up beside me. A policeman looks me over, asking if I need any help. “No thank you,” I explain. “I’m fine. My wife and I are just listening for frogs, doing a research project for the Georgia Department of Natural Resources.” I figure no policeman will ever question that story, because it is too odd to make up. “Oh,” he replies. “OK. Goodnight, then.” His car speeds off into the darkness. It is just another night on the Frog Patrol. And this is only the first stop of ten for the evening. Nine to go.
Three nights each year – once in early spring, once again in late spring, and finally in early summer – my wife and I drive a regular beat of perhaps twenty-five miles, stopping at ponds, stream crossings, and roadside wetlands, listening for the calls of frogs. Our frog monitoring route starts just a few miles from home, in Palmetto, Georgia, and ends many miles south, somewhere in the rural hinterlands outside the crossroads community of Sargent. We have been working as volunteers for the Georgia Department of Natural Resources, participant in the North American Amphibian Monitoring Program, for six or seven years now. We do it because we are really worried about the future of frogs – in Georgia, across the United States, and around the world. Frog populations have been in decline around the world, for a lot of reasons, from habitat destruction to water pollution from herbicides and pesticides, and global warming to the chytrid fungus (a disease that has wiped out frogs in the tropical Americas and western US). In many cases, more than one problem, or stressor, is involved. Frogs might get stressed due to unseasonably warm or dry conditions, and that might make them more susceptible to water contamination like the herbicide atrazine. A quick look at the numbers: there are 5,645 known frog species around the world, of which 1,656 are considered vulnerable, endangered, or worse, and another 1,400 are so little-known that scientists aren’t sure of their endangerment status. Georgia is home to 30 different species of frogs and toads, making it the second most diverse state for frogs in the country, after Texas.
A few stops later, my wife and I stand on a highway bridge across a swamp. Here, the spring peepers seem to be absent, replaced by the occasional “jug-a-rum” call of a bullfrog, the loose banjo twang of a green frog, and sounds like metallic marbles being banged against each other, coming from the northern cricket frog. In the distance, dogs bark, and I think I hear a whippoorwill calling. Are those yips coming from a coyote pack? Meanwhile, just off the road along the water’s edge, I hear a snuffling and rustling. It is probably an armadillo – maybe even a mother with babies. Somewhere through the trees, a great horned owl calls – “Who cooks for you?” It is a loud and busy night for Georiga wildlife. Fortunately, this road gets few cars at this hour – mostly pickups that race by us, high beams compelling us to close our eyes. This is one of our wildest stops, and one of my favorites, too. I can’t see house lights anywhere. Now that the quarter moon has risen, I can just make out the silhouettes of trees, and the sparkle of moonlight off the water.
“Why bother with frogs?” one might ask. After all, they don’t have the charisma of bald eagles, grizzly bears, or wolves. Unless you visit a pond, or walk a woodland trail soon after a rain, you may not see frogs very often. They are mostly active at night, because that is when it is more difficult for them to be seen, by both their predators (like most snakes) and their prey (typically insects). Frogs also need to keep their skin moist, and evaporation is much lower at night than during the daytime. Given that we rarely even notice them, are they really that important? It turns out that keeping a healthy and diverse frog population may be extremely important for maintaining vibrant ecosystems. Frogs play vital roles in food webs, both as predators and as prey. They control many insect pests, like mosquitoes. They are celebrated in many cultures, in folk tales and television programs (Kermit the Frog, anyone?). They are sometimes beautiful and always fascinating. Scientists also have found them to be useful indicators of the health of an ecosystem as a whole. Asbioindicators, they tell us about the conditions of our environment. When their numbers decline, there is cause for concern that their habitat has been compromised – perhaps by development in the area, or chemicals in the water. Rachel Carson, the renowned author of Silent Spring, imagined a world without the calls of birds, a world in which toxic pesticides like DDT had wiped out songbird populations. I monitor frogs because I am concerned about another silent spring – a season without frog calls in it.
It is getting late – well past eleven now, and two stops still to go. If the earlier stop was my favorite one for the night, this one is easily my least favorite. Our car sits at the end of a well-lit driveway, in front of an elaborate wrought-iron gate, beside a call box to notify the residents (or possibly their servants) of one’s arrival. I suspect there are hidden cameras installed somewhere, watching us. Lights shine on the brick walls that flank that gate on either side and illuminate the name plate atop the closed gate. Somewhere down the driveway, beside the manicured lawn and in front of the mansion, a pond lies silent. Each year, I wonder anew what this particular stop is for. Yes, there is water there, but never any frogs. My wife and I both suspect that the reason is because of all the lawn chemicals applied to the grass leading up to the water’s edge. Or maybe the homeowners find frog calls annoying and have poisoned the water to kill them all. Stopping here, in the face of such opulence and disregard for wildlife, it is difficult not to feel discouraged. I keep myself occupied by watching for passing vehicles. I don’t even bother getting out of the car.
I live for the other nine stops, the ones where frogs are still present. Every year my wife and I return, and every year we are greeted by a frog chorus – in some cases during all three frog runs, in other cases just on one or two of them. The blend of voices changes year to year and outing to outing. Some frogs – like spring peepers – are active early in the spring, while other ones, such as green tree frogs, start calling later in the spring or even early in the summer. Last year was a severe drought in Georgia, so the calls were fewer and more muted. This year has been much wetter so far, and I have been hearing some northern cricket frogs calling even during some of my daytime walks. I sat sipping coffee in a local market the other day, and was certain I heard the harsh quick trill of a Cope’s gray tree frog coming from the branches of a tree across the street. Over the years of the Frog Patrol, their voices have grown more and more familiar, nowadays, I am more likely to be able to identify correctly a frog’s call than one made by a songbird.
Stop ten at last. Bleary-eyed, I take a last swig of unsweetened peach iced tea (room temperature by now) from my stainless steel water bottle, waiting for the requisite five minutes of frog monitoring to end. By this point in the night, each minute seems to last half an hour. It is after midnight, and the spring peepers’ shrill calls drone on and on, like an all-night frat party. I have come full circle – this early in the season, spring peepers are the only tenants of this roadside pond, though green tree frogs and Cope’s gray tree frogs will likely arrive by early summer. And we will be back to listen for them.
If you are interested in becoming a volunteer frog monitor, there are two national programs that you should consider checking out. The one covered in this article is the North American Amphibian Monitoring Program; you can learn about it at http://www.pwrc.usgs.gov/naamp/ Another one is Frogwatch USA, administered by the Association of Zoos and Aquariums; information about this program may be found at http://www.aza.org/frogwatch/ If you are concerned about the fate of the world’s frogs, visit www.savethefrogs.com to learn more about what you can do to help. If you would like to read more about frogs, a great book is Frogs: The Animal Answer Guide, by Mike Dorcas and Whit Gibbons, available here and at other online booksellers and neighborhood bookstores. And if you would like to listen to the calls of Georgia’s frogs and toads, click here to access MP3 audio files.
This article was originally published on May 25, 2013.
On my late afternoon walk, I discovered the cocoon of a promethea moth (Callosamia promethea), partially encased in a brown leaf and hanging from a shrub along the roadside. Based upon the mass of the cocoon and the absence of any holes in it, I am fairly confident that a moth is waiting inside for the right moment to emerge, later this spring. I wonder if I will be there when it happens?
After an overnight rainfall but before the predicted arrival of cold air and strong winds, I encountered this Carolina mantleslug (Philomycus carolinianus) grazing on a wood ear jelly fungus (Auricularia auricula) along Piney Woods Church Road. This jelly fungus is evidently edible, according to my field guidebooks; related species of wood ear fungi are commonly used in Chinese cuisine. I cannot vouch for it personally, though. And I definitely cannot address the question of this slug’s edibility, or the viability of this particular combination in a luncheon sandwich.
