Nest Watch

This year's nest watch began with a mystery. When I found my first nest, it was because I had found a robin egg on the ground near it. When I looked up, under the deck, where the egg lay, I saw, not one nest, but four all in a row! It seems so strange to me, that robins would nest all together like that. I will be watching this nest very carefully througout the season. The Chart below explains the situation of the nests. We have so many robins in our yard, that I can't tell which are sitting on the nests here, or if it's more than one pair that have created these nests. Could it be the same robin for all four? Anyway, There are two eggs, one in each of the outer nests, as of June 28th. I will check the nests again on June 30th. Double click the diagram to get a larger, clearer view.

Meat the Family of Diptera (Flies)

The following are my best ever close up (also known as macro shots, if taken with a macro lens, which these are not) ever taken by me before. I hope you enjoy reading about the insects as much as I did. That's one of the really neat things about taking photos--the ID and bio of each tiny insect is sooooo amazing!

The "Flesh Fly" is the fly that lays it's eggs in things like animal feed, dead bodies of animals, and rotting material. Maggots are what hatch from the eggs. It is named "Flesh" fly, because the larvae (maggots) eat the flesh of the dead animal it has hatched into. The flies, after they complete their larval stage, do not eat flesh, but sweet things like nectar from flowers. Like all the other members of the world wide family Sarcophagidae, it has tiny adhesive pads on it's feet which allows it to "stick" to slick surfaces such as windows and ceilings.
This iridescent "Long-Legged Fly" of the family dolichopodidae, is responsible for eating all those pesky mites, thrips, psocids, aphids, and insect larvae that eat away at garden plants. Since they naturaly eat pest insects, they play an important role in keeping the pest population down. The Long-legged fly has many variations, some pretty, others dull. This fly eats by crushing the outer body wall and sucking out the body fluids absorbed by it's pseudotrachea.

(Both above photos are the same type of insect.) The "Dung Fly" is just one of those everyday tiny little flies you see in your garden, or anywhere, on or near plants. Some larvae live in dung, others are leaf miners, stem-borers or feed in seed capsules, while others are aquatic predators or predators on other insect larvae.
The "Robber Fly", an opportunistic hunter, perchases itself in a sunny spot, and waits for lunch to arrive. When it does, it will catch it in mid air, and, in flight, spear it's prey with it's probiscus, injecting two enzymes, one, a neurotoxic enzyme, to parralize it, and the other, a proteolytic enzyme, which breaks down the protiens in the body tissue. Upon landing again, the robber fly will slowly suck the liquified proteins out of the paralized insect, and toss the remains aside. Then, with an endlessly voracious appitite, the it will repearch and await another carefree insect.

Grey Tree Frogs

In New Hampshire, this week, I found two grey treefrogs. I am keeping them in one of my terreriums. They are both males, and very similar, so I only spent time in taking pictures of one of them. The other is greener and darker, and slightly larger than this one, below.

The grey tree frog, found in abundance, in the North-East U.S., is a small frog, only about 1 to 2 inches in length. A master at camoflauge, with it's perfect combo of green, brown, and dark, treeish colors like that, it is extrememly hard to spot, when it's sitting still, as it often does. However, when it is frightened or durring a mating fight or show, it will display bright orange or red thighs, which are striking by themselves, let alone on such a subtle colored amphibian. The grey tree frog is not neccesarily grey in every frog. As with most animals, coloring, shape, size etc. differ from frog to frog. It is not uncommon to find two exactly the same, or very different frogs in the same area. Some frogs can be greener, greyer, browner, darker or brighter. It is often confused with the spring peeper, which is much smaller, far less adorned with markings, and lacks the orange thighs. If you are near a pool of water, or a swamp, or pond surrounded by bushes, and thickly leafed trees, you will probubly hear their high pitched trill call. Listen to the call here, and see if you've ever heard it before. I bet you have!

Click the photos to get the huge version!

Baby Ground Hog Inscedent

Last Tuesday, while at the Dilworth's for Spanish class, Monica, Sarah and I were birding in the forest in Monica's back yard. But on tuesday, the birds were very shy, and were hiding way up in the trees where we couldn't possibly see them. We were walking along, trying to find some birds, when we spotted a holed. Monica thought at first that it was a chickmonk hole, but when we all agreed that it was way to big, she sayed, "Then it must be a ground hog hole." Just then, ahead of us, we heard some little russling noises...coming towards us. We stoped talking and stood very still. Suddenly, five tiny groundhogs popped into sight, and came happily hopping in a line towards us. To my astonishment, they neither stoped when they saw us nor were the slightest bit frightened or uncomfortable with our pressence. They just kept hopping and running and bounding towards us! We were so surprised, we were giggling! I kept expecting the five little ones to run away any time now, but no, they stopped about five feet away from us and played around a bit. One came right behind me, so close, I could have bent down and touched it with ease. It sniffed my shoe, and then came back around and bodly faced all three of us. It sniffed the air, and inched a little closser. By this time, we were so happy and excited we were laughing. Then we saw the mother, and began whispering about leaving the place, before the mother got upset by our closeness to her babies. But that wasn't nescessary, because Monica's brother, John, scared them off when he dashed into the forest, yelling, "It's your Turn for Spanish!" We made John promise not to tell anybody about the groundhogs.

Apparently, while we were in Spanish class, the groundhogs came out onto the back lawn, and everybody got to see them. But the kids scared them so much, that, when we went back to the forest after class, we could only find one little baby huddled at the base of a mossy tree, stone still with fear.