Local lore says that morels grow exceptionally well the first year after a fire. Burn scar morels grow in relationship with conifers lying dormant in the soil for decades, just waiting for this opportunity. The fire removes competition and feeds the soil, creating a nutrient-rich environment for the morel mycelium to fruit. With last summer’s fire so close, it’s easy for me to check it out.

As I enter the burn scar, there are no mushrooms on the first south-facing slope: no morels, no little brown mushrooms, nothing. I’m not surprised. Three-quarters of the way along the next slope, I see one. The tiniest little morel I’ve ever seen. Just the size of my thumbnail. I note the location and move on, excited that I was able to find one so small.
A few paces further, a pair is pushing next to a boulder. I will come back to this spot after a day or two of warm spring sunshine. The soil has to warm to about 50° for morels to start fruiting. That usually requires a combination of days in the 60s and nights in the 40s. It’s not been that warm at night yet.

Around the side of this same hill, the ground is covered with stalked bonfire mushrooms. Where they grow in the char, morels are likely to be. And there they are – tiny ones, but the more I look, the more I find.

My husband says, “They’re so small, how do you even find them?!?” Enthusiastically, I replied “I’ve been training my whole life for this!”

So now I know they really are there, and they prefer the pine needle-covered charred earth. I go back two warm days later. There are more, but still too small. Another two days and another doubling of the wrinkly coneheads pushing up.

And then, it rains.

This is just the thing to make them explode! I go back and fill my basket. Mushrooms have never tasted so good!

If you’re interested in purchasing or licensing any images you see here, please email me at SNewenham at exploringnaturephotos.com, and I’ll make it happen.

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The post Patience is a Basket of Morels appeared first on Exploring Nature by Sheila Newenham.

The first snow of the season was a few days ago. Just a couple of inches, not enough to bury the last of fall’s glory yet. Today will probably be the last of the frosty fall mushrooms and leaves. It’s been a prolific fungi season. The sheer numbers of fruiting bodies have left me standing with my mouth agape in awe more than once.

I headed out to nearby English Point State Park. It was spectacular! One and three-quarters miles in three hours. That’s a good wander!

All of the wonderful distractions are tiny. Without a closer inspection, they look ordinary. But get in tight, and they are everything extraordinary! I bought a macro lens just for this time of year (a specific lens for extreme close-ups of tiny things). Now, I just need lighting for the dark forest floor and a short tripod to stabilize my lens… With every hobby or creative endeavor, there’s always just one more thing you need.

I cast my eyes down, scanning the leaf litter, duff and deadfall for interesting mushrooms, lichens, leaves and other tiny treasures.

Frost crystals coat the shaded twigs, fungi and leaves. The mushrooms are frozen solid, yet retain all the appearance of life. This presents the unique opportunity to pick them up whole and place them in a more photogenic location!

The low-angled winter sun peeks through the woods in focal streaks and rays. While the light is a dramatic addition for photography, in this instance, its energy immediately begins to melt the subjects. Frozen mushrooms wilt before my eyes, stems curling under the weight of the saturated caps diving toward the ground.

The frost coats the leaves and mushrooms like coarse grains of sugar. I am endlessly fascinated. I came home with a couple hundred images, about one hundred of which I kept! Clearly, these are some of my favorite things!

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The post A Frosty Fall Day appeared first on Exploring Nature by Sheila Newenham.

You can prepare your property, but you can’t prepare emotionally for when the police come to say, “Get out now!”

I had been driving home from town when I noticed the smoke. It seemed too close to be from existing fires across the lake. The closer I get to home, the closer it looks. Scary close.I turned off the highway onto our frontage road and held my breath. I made another turn and exhaled in a moment of relief. It looks north of my neighborhood. As I bump down the gravel road 3/4 mile to my lane, it again appears to be in the state land right behind my house. I pulled into my garage and checked the Watch Duty app (the source of up-to-date wildfire information). The fire is not listed yet. So I went up the hill to see what I could see.

 My neighbor texts back that only the two roads are under Go Now Level Three evacuations. She hasn’t heard anything else yet. She asks if I can see flames. I show her this picture of the smoke plume on the 1000 acres of state land that borders my property. Then, at 2:20 pm, I received a text from Selkirk Fire and another from the county sheriff, each confirming the same information. The fire was reported at 1:22 pm.

Living in wildland fire country, we’ve prepared for this day. Inasmuch as you can prepare to flee a fire that could leave your home in ashes. I run into the house and grab our “go bag”. I toss in a few essentials from the “get out now” list – computer hard drives, important papers, and medicines and take the bag to my car. I was loading things into the car and clearing burnables off my deck (it turns out that I have a lot of flammable decor) and from the perimeter of the house, when my neighbor, in her car with her dogs, drove up. She says the police are at the end of our lane, telling us to go now! She asks if I need help getting the dogs into the car.

I went back into the house, closed all the windows, and grabbed my cat, who was asleep in his carrier (it’s one of his favorite spots). What a blessing! All I had to do was close the door and carry him to the car. I rounded up the dogs and ushered them into the car as the same neighbor drove back by. The sheriff told her we aren’t on Go status yet, but he thinks it’s imminent.

I let the dogs back in the house, pulled the car up to the front steps, and spent the next hour preparing to leave. My cat was content in the car for now, so I left him there. I pulled the curtains off the windows, moved things that were flammable away from windows and doors. I closed all of the interior doors. I threw some clothes into a suitcase. I moved the furniture off the decks and took down all of the grapevine wreaths adorned with bird nests and other natural curiosities. I watered down the mulch in front of the house and started the sprinkler. I hooked up the hoses for the firefighters and ensured I knew how to turn off the propane tank, which is the last thing I do before leaving. Then I stopped. 

In the hour it took me to make all of these preparations, the fire grew from 5 acres to 20 acres, “rapidly moving south”. I’ve done all of the necessary things. When confronted with “extra” time before having to evacuate for a wildfire, what do you do? Pack more stuff? I think I got all of the sentimental things, the hard-to-replace things, and the essential things. The rest is just stuff. (In the coming days, I will wonder why I have so many things that aren’t so important or necessary and make a trip to Goodwill).

When I stopped, I was flooded with all the emotion that my purposeful movement had kept at bay. Fear, grief, panic, overwhelm, apprehension, vulnerability. I called a friend for support. Blubbering, I let it all out. Then I ate and drank something. I talked to some neighbors. I began to feel better.

The aerial support was instrumental in stopping the spread of the fire. It sounded like a war zone at my house. Fire command deployed eight airplanes and two helicopters. We are lucky to have Pappy Boyington Field in Coeur d’Alene, where the US Forest Service has an air base, making aerial fire responses in North Idaho quick.

• Three Large Air Tankers spreading fire retardant carrying up to 4,000 gallons 
• A Super Scooper designed to operate in mountainous terrain and confined spaces, carrying 1,600 gallons per scoop. Able to fill its tanks in 12-15 seconds, and drop water from just 100 feet above the ground.
• Four Single Engine Scoopers, each carrying 800 gallons of water
• The Skycrane, a heavy-lift helicopter, carrying up to 2,650 gallons, fitted with a snorkel for refilling from shallow lakes
• A Chinook helicopter carrying 600-2000 gallons in a bucket

As evening approached, I walked back out to Lookout Hill to reassess the fire. The smoke and burn scar that I am looking at starts at the hill where I found my first mountain lion kill deer several falls ago, and runs south along the path I walk regularly with my dogs. Despite the Watch Duty surface wind direction pointing northeast, this fire is moving south.

Plane after plane after plane dumps thousands of gallons of Lake Pend Oreille water on the fire.

The skycrane makes pass after pass along the western edge of the fire. This is what’s keeping the fire from moving towards me.

Bright pink fire retardant covers the land along the edges of the fire. I can hear the chainsaws of the ground crews. The charred ground is dotted with occasional small flames. The response is impressive.

I hurry back home to dig my camera out of my packed car to memorialize this incredible fire response and stay on the hill until sunset. The last thing I saw was hand crews scrambling up the rocky terrain between me and the fire.

Nighttime conditions are better for fire control. It’s cooler, the humidity drops (think morning dew), and the winds die down. I’m cautiously optimistic that the fire is not going to blow up overnight. Still, I will also turn on all of the loud, buzzing, light-emitting notifications for text messages that could come from the local fire network, the sheriff’s department, Watch Duty, the fire district, and/or the Idaho Department of Lands. The sheriff’s department also goes door to door in evacuations to make sure everyone is out. We’ll see what tomorrow brings.

The recent 3,000-acre Sunset Fire started on a Wednesday afternoon under red flag warning conditions. The initial fire response corralled it to the lake. The next day, the winds picked up again, and it ran four miles along the lake, torching trees and throwing spot fires up to 1/4 mile away!

The lesson is two-fold: under much worse fire weather conditions than today, the fire response kept that fire from any more structures after it left Sunset Rd. These fire teams are amazing. Secondly, fires can move far, fast. Today’s fire is less than 1/2-mile from my home.

The evening fire update puts today’s fire at 40 acres. The Level 3: Go – Now evacuations are rescinded, and we are all put on Level 1: Get Ready evacuation status. The next morning, 120 people are working on this fire. The aerial support is no longer needed. Still, I take my pets to work with me in my packed car. The fire grows to 48 acres, but by the evening of the second day, all evacuation orders are lifted.

It’s been a week since the fire started. It’s 100% contained, and the fire crews are mopping up, cutting snags, and making sure there are no hotspots that could reignite. Rain is in the forecast. With a rapid, robust response led by the Idaho Department of Lands, this fire stayed on undeveloped land. No structures were lost. The more I see of North Idaho firefighting efforts, the more confident I become in their abilities, even against formidable odds. But I don’t need to see them working this close again any time soon.

Every place has its natural disaster risks: hurricanes, tornadoes, floods, earthquakes, wildfires. We mitigate the risks the best we can. Wildland fire is overwhelmingly the natural disaster risk faced in the West on the wildland-urban interface. Currently, more than 32 percent of homes in the United States stand in a wildland-urban interface. As more people move and build, and the climate warms, more and more people will find themselves in the same situation when fire comes.

If you’re interested in purchasing or licensing any images you see here, please email me at SNewenham at exploringnaturephotos.com, and I’ll make it happen.

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The post When Fire Comes appeared first on Exploring Nature by Sheila Newenham.

Two years ago, a pair of western flycatchers nested above a light under the eave of our garage in North Idaho.

After the chicks fledged, Rob removed the nest. Our research suggested that songbirds prefer not to use the same nest, so Rob thought he was helping by giving them a clear platform to rebuild.

Last year, they nested in the capped stovepipe over the same garage. This year, they found their old nest from two years ago, which I had used to adorn my grapevine wreath hanging on the side of the garage.

Surprise!

One June day, I walked past the wreath, just a foot or two away, and found myself eye-to-eye with a western flycatcher! From that day forward, I gave them a wide berth so they wouldn’t abandon their nest.

They made some repairs and shored up the nest. As with years past, four eggs were laid. Birds typically lay one egg per day and don’t begin sitting on them until they are all laid. Both parents will share incubation duties, which last 13-16 days.

Western Flycatchers (Empidonax difficilis) are small, spectacled songbirds that feed primarily on insects. In the family of tyrant flycatchers, they are common in the Rockies and Pacific states and winter in Mexico.

The Hatchlings

I returned from a trip on July 4th to find three naked, bug-eyed chicks and one egg. The next day, there were four chicks and no remnants of the shell.

For the first two to three days, the chicks live off the nutrients from their yolk sac. After that, the parents feed them constantly. I would keep an eye on the nest as I went about my day, and when the parents were gone, I’d surreptitiously sneak in for a quick iPhone picture.

Temperatures climbed into the upper 90s for a week. The sun hits the nest for an hour or so late in the day; one of the parents would perch at the edge of the nest to shade the chicks during these hours.

The Nestlings

They grow so fast. Look at the difference in size and feathering in two days (July 5 – July 7)! By July 11th, at one week old, they are starting to look like birds. The nestling’s eyes are open, and they are beginning to sprout feathers.

The parents are spending more and more time feeding the chicks. It takes both of them to keep up.

It’s been a banner year for yellow jackets, and I’m pleased to say that the flycatchers fed these to their brood as well. With both parents feeding, they still somehow keep track of whose turn it is to eat. None of the nestlings grew faster than the others or seemed to dominate the nest.

I would sit on my deck and work while keeping an eye on the nest. With the long lens on my camera, I could get pictures of the feeding without interfering.

It’s getting more crowded by the day. It’s easy to attribute emotions to these charismatic little birds.

Observations

I always learn something about the wildlife around me when I can take the time to sit and watch deliberately. Today, I learned how songbirds keep a crowded nest of birds, who, like all babies, are primarily eating, pooping, and sleeping clean.

The parents would often perch with an insect in their mouth before approaching the nest. Maybe they were scanning to be sure it was safe to approach? Perhaps they just need to resituate before presenting the insect to one of the kids? Sometimes, when the meal was really big, they’d place it in the open mouth of a chick and then have to poke it down into their crop!

The Fledging

The nestling period lasts thirteen to fourteen days. Once the birds leave the nest, they are still dependent on their parents for a few days for food and protection as they cannot yet fly. On the surface, it seems like a ridiculous adaptation. But evolution tells us that the risk of a noisy nest full of birds attracting predators is greater.

The first three chicks left early on the fourteenth day. In the evening, there was still one in the nest, maybe enjoying all of that space! By the following morning, July 21st, the nest was empty. I never saw them around being fed by their parents, which is a testament to their survival skills in being so stealthy feeding flightless birds. As fast as I watched them grow in the nest, it’s no surprise that it only takes a few days as a fledgling before they fly off to fend for themselves.

I wonder where they’ll nest next year. I will leave this nest alone for them in case my flycatchers want to use it again!

If you’re interested in purchasing or licensing any images you see here, please email me at SNewenham at exploringnaturephotos.com, and I’ll make it happen.

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The post A Western Flycatcher Nest appeared first on Exploring Nature by Sheila Newenham.

Late last fall, I was on a hike when I first saw it. When it’s intact, it camouflages with the surrounding soil. Footfalls crunch over the top of it like ordinary frozen ground. Yet, it’s far from ordinary.  When you’re not the first to tread over the new day’s ground, you see the footprints of those who came before.  The ice columns tumble but don’t break. What’s left on the ground is an organized crystalline structure so geometric that it hardly looks nature-made.

What is Needle Ice?

A quick lesson in science. Don’t be afraid. When the air temperature at ground level is below 32° F, but the soil temperature is just above 32°, the conditions are set. This most often happens on clear mountain nights when the air temperatures drop precipitously after a warm sunny day. Water in the moist soil is drawn to the surface by capillary action, where it rises to meet the cold air, freezing rapidly. The ice initially forms in small pores and crevices where it continues to collect ice, creating columns that push the ground up. This ice forms as a growing column of crystalline filaments instead of a solid block of ice because of the constant motion of the groundwater.

The needle ice pushes small soil particles skyward, raising the ground level slightly in a superficial crust. It will look like you’re stepping onto solid ground, and it is a bit jarring when your foot falls down a couple of inches deeper than expected.

The sound of the ice needles collapsing sounds like the tinkling of glass chandelier crystals. If you’ve ever walked over crunchy ground on a cold morning, you’ve probably tread on needle ice.

Now, I see this phenomenon everywhere. It forms on the trails in my yard and hikes through the woods near and far. Every time, I stop to marvel at it again. It’s such a strikingly beautiful, delicate, dynamic piece of winter.  Nature’s artistry is literally under our feet!

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The post Needle Ice appeared first on Exploring Nature by Sheila Newenham.

At some point in the summer, I filled the trough and put it at the treeline visible from the house. Rob was concerned about it being a breeding ground for mosquitoes and dumped it. I hadn’t ever seen anyone use it anyway.  When I showed Rob a doorbell video of a moose drinking from a porch fountain in our town, we put the trough back out.

A Lonely Water Trough

This time, I put it along a wildlife trail in our woods and set up the motion-sensor camera to capture whoever might come by. After one week, I checked the camera. There were about 50 pictures – all birds, mostly chickadees and nuthatches. I’d just read about a photographer who uses a water drip in his yard. He raved about how the dripping sound brought in birds in droves.

I fashioned the water drip to attract birds by making a pinhole in the bottom of a gallon jug suspended above the trough. I made it from scrap lumber and wire from the garage. It wasn’t pretty, but it worked.

Water Drip Magic

The following week, when I pulled the trail camera, there were 1100 pictures on it! The deer were grateful for the consistent water source through the hot, dry August. This is a doe with last year’s fawn. We see them regularly, so its no surprise they were the first of many deer to show up for a drink.

New Bird Species

I saw species of birds at the water trough that I’d never seen on our property.

A family of nuthatches makes daily use of the trough for drinking, bathing, and socializing.

A couple of new mammals also stopped by in that first week. I was so excited to see a porcupine here! (I had to talk with the dogs about porcupine etiquette, though).

Squirrel Gymnasium

The pine squirrels spend so much time running about the apparatus and resting on the boards (splooting) that I wonder what they ever did with their time before! Notice how the cotton string unravels and disappears through the series of pictures.

Rob and a friend made a more respectable drip apparatus. I think the pine squirrels preferred the old one, though.  A few more animals visited in addition to the regulars.

A motion-activated trail camera is a fun, affordable way to spy on local wildlife without disturbing them. No matter where you live, you’ll be impressed with what you see!

If you’re interested in purchasing or licensing any of the images you see here, please email me: SNewenham at exploringnaturephotos.com, and I’ll make it happen.

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The post The Water Drip appeared first on Exploring Nature by Sheila Newenham.

Wearing my snowshoes, I carefully climbed off the trail toward the water where a single hole in the ice provided access to the beaver’s underwater world. Their lodge is on the opposite shore at the edge of a vacant lot’s lawn.  On this side, the Forest Preserve provides this buffet; buckthorn and dogwood are the favorites, but elm and honeysuckle grow here, too.  The property owners of the mowed yard may not welcome feasting beavers, but the Forest Preserve does. Especially when they’re clearing invasive buckthorn.  If the beavers stay with this strategy, they may do okay. 

There are cross-country ski tracks ahead of me – the only other marks in the newly fallen snow beside the beaver tracks.  Judging by the stride of his ski poles in the snow, the skier didn’t even slow down. He lives next door.  Maybe he didn’t notice, won’t  notice, the beavers.

After I finish my snowshoeing, and Tybee, my Labrador, is sufficiently exercised, I return alone with my motion-activated camera.  I placed it facing the hole in the ice.

The next few nights would be bitter cold, so I only left the camera out a few days over concerns the batteries would drain quickly.  Usually, I leave it for a week – unless I’m too impatient to see what it may have captured!  Two days later, I retrieved the camera. There were no new tracks near it and just a few images. Disappointed, I tucked it into my jacket and continued my hike.

Only twenty more feet down the path, there are mazes of tracks in and around trees, across the trail and back down to the shore. I back-tracked and ducked into the trees where I spotted a hole in the earth a yard or so from the frozen pond shore.  It’s a tunnel to the waters below the ice!  

I was careful not to approach too closely, unsure what effect my presence might have on the beavers returning to the area.  I placed the camera in sight of the earthen chute and continued gleefully down the path on my snowshoes.  Tybee, who dawdles to take in all of the smells wherever we go, has absolutely no interest in the beavers. 

A week passed before I was able to get out retrieve the camera. There were two pictures of deer, a few mallards, tree squirrels and a single coyote.  And two hundred beaver pictures!  (I need to get a new trail camera that will give me better nighttime images, but still!).

The camera stamps the images with the date, time and air temperature.  It’s interesting to see all of the different times of day and night that they were out.  I assume that I’m seeing at least two beavers, but no images contain more than one beaver and these images don’t have enough detail to differentiate between individuals, so I can’t be sure.

On the day that I picked up the camera, I explored the beaver hole more closely.  It goes straight down a two to three feet before turning toward to water.  I couldn’t see into the turn and didn’t think reaching into it would be wise. I also collected some souvenirs.

I’m excited to see the new beaver family. I hope they continue to feed from the Forest Preserve land, stay away from ornamental trees and stay under the radar of the local landowners.

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The post The Beavers Next Door appeared first on Exploring Nature by Sheila Newenham.

We arrived in June 2009 to a sterile, weedy landscape. Morning glory vines had overrun all of the landscape beds, their long tendril roots anchored firmly through the landscape fabric that smothered the soil. Transforming this property into an oasis of nature in suburban Chicago has been a labor of love so generously rewarded that I don’t even know where to start. Nature just needs a little space, a little relief from human pressure and control, and She will take care of the rest.

We pulled out the morning glory, the Japanese barberry, the privet, buckthorn, garlic mustard, and more. Over the years, I’ve planted natives in their place; Indian grass, little bluestem, prairie dropseed, spicebush, black chokecherry, birches, and oaks.  In the traditional landscape beds, beebalm, prairie smoke, blazing star, coneflowers, woodland sunflower, wild geraniums, and spiderwort bloom in the soil freed from the fabric.  Butterflies and caterpillars come in droves; monarchs, swallowtails, tussock moth caterpillars, dagger moth caterpillars, and swallowtail caterpillars. The songbirds raised brood after brood on this bounty (it takes 6,000-9,000 caterpillars to raise a nest of chickadees). Yet, somehow there were still enough for them to transform into moths and butterflies.

There are chickadees, wrens, house finches, sparrows (white-crowned, tree, white-throated, song, and more), catbirds, blue-grey gnatcatchers, cardinals, juncoes, orioles, goldfinches, nuthatches, downy woodpeckers, red-breasted woodpeckers, flickers, and more.  There are more than 50 species of birds on my backyard list.  Every year, someone new shows up.

I dug up part of the lawn in the front yard to plant ferns, Virginia bluebells, wild ginger,  side oats gamma (grass), butterfly weed, foxglove beardtongue, and New Jersey tea.  Our resident mallard pair nested here in its first year.  A song sparrow laid her beautiful spotted eggs in the low bush of the NJ tea.

Under the bird feeders at night, raccoons, skunks, opossums, and coyotes come out of the shadows the dine on the spilled seed. They were always respectful (even the raccoons!) and never caused trouble (my dogs might disagree).  Grey and fox squirrels planted peanuts in the most unusual places. I let a few plants grow and, in the fall, dug them up and put the new peanuts back in the feeder.

Deer wander through. A rare red fox was always exciting. Coyotes were regular visitors, befriending a couple of our dogs and figuring out the others (all bark, no bite).

We didn’t mow along the pond shoreline initially for erosion control. I started planting prairie grasses and forbs. Rob took to burning it in the spring.  Over the years, sedges and flowers took over and crowded out the turfgrass, morning glory, and canary reed grass.

Mallards and wood ducks came. A pair of geese have raised their family here every year for the last decade. 

Muskrats and beavers came.  American toads have populous spring mating gatherings despite the substantial population of large bullfrogs (they’ll eat just about anything they can get their mouths around).

We have a regular Great Blue Heron who, of all the wildlife here, raises the ire of my Vizsla, Bridger, like no other.  The Great Blue Heron ignores that crazy barking dog and just fishes the opposite shoreline. A pair of osprey have been nesting nearby, and for the last few years, our pond is a regular fishing spot for them.  They soar, hover, and then dive, piercing the water in a spectacle of stealth and power.

I could go on for pages telling the stories of all the ways this land has given back to me, all of the ways its saved me, inspired me, guided me and taught me.

I am writing  today from my front porch in the cool breeze a late March day, a blanket on my lap and my dog curled at my side. The spring sun is hot, warming the ground, spurring all that lies dormant through the winters. A cardinal song floats in from across the street. The bluebird pair is back, checking out their old nest box. A woodpecker calls from my right, always sounding urgent and alarmed.  The crocuses are ablaze in their bright purples and yellows, always the first to pierce the gray of the early spring landscape. The noise from gas-powered engines from distance lawn equipment intrudes into my peace. A house sparrow eyes me from the edge of a naked lilac bush chattering in a one-bird show just for the sake of her song. 

I get up and wander. I can’t help but pull the sprouting lawn grass from the landscaping and the creeping jenny that is so easy to control now, but if left unchecked, it will be a monoculture carpet by July. I do it for the land and for myself. To help whatever is in store next for this place.  A family of five is moving in. Will they be too busy raising little kids or, will they embrace this outdoor classroom. Will they feed the birds? Will they tolerate the coyotes, raccoons, skunks, opossums, and beavers long enough to see that they peacefully share the land. Whatever the future holds here, for a time, it was a thriving habitat, a respite for Nature in the middle of suburban Chicago.

There is something else out there calling me. A new place where I will thrive. A new relationship with the land and the wild to begin. But first, a stop in a rental house on a sliver of congested land. But I hear there’s a resident fox in the neighborhood. And so I leave this land that I love, but take it with me in my heart.

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The post Saying Goodbye appeared first on Exploring Nature by Sheila Newenham.

I fell down a rabbit hole of toad photography one Monday this May. I set out with my camera and journal to sit on a shady bench under my backyard willow.  And I did.  The sounds of amphibians coming from the pond were loud!  I had to find out who was making so much noise.  It was American Toads calling for mates. I snuck up to the pond edge, taking a step every time the sound rose and stopping every time silence fell.  I would pause and let them settle into my presence, and they’d start calling again. And so it went, pretty quickly, until, I was squatting at shoreline eye to eye with the toads.

Only the males call. Each May, the toads come to the pond to call for girls, breed and breed and breed and then retreat to the gardens and woodlands they call home.  I can see eggs laid on the water surface in ropes of black pearls.  Frogs and toads prefer vernal ponds where there are no fish.  I wonder how quickly these eggs will become sustenance for fish, bullfrogs, whoever else may be interested. The next day the eggs are still there.  “I’d love to photograph tadpoles,” I thought to myself.  Through some research, I found that the eggs hatch in about three days.  The thought crosses my mind that if I raised some, I’d get to watch the whole process. I casually mentioned it to my brother. He says, “Do it! What have you got to lose?!  If you tire of the project, you can just put them back where you found them.”

Collecting

That’s how it came to be that I found myself with a bucket collecting tadpoles on a Friday morning.  At first glance, the eggs I’d previously marveled at were gone. I thought a hungry fish beat me to it. I walked along the shore, searching for others, eventually returning to the spot I’d seen them. I scooped some algae, thinking they may have floated underneath.  Dozens upon dozens of the most petite tadpoles filled my bucket!  I added more pond water, removed some mosquito larvae and dragonfly nymphs (I think), and I was on my way. 

The next day I set up a ten-gallon aquarium that I’d kept from a time when I raised mice for a local barn owl reintroduction project.  Two to three inches of pond water, some algae and duckweed with several rocks from the yard and a screen over the top completed the habitat.  I had to thin my collection to fit the size of my enclosure. I scooped out at least fifty (!) tadpoles and gently submerged them back where I’d found them underneath a mat of algae.  Nine tadpoles remained.  Along with three unidentifiable minuscule fish fry, a few crawling water beetle larvae and some unknown squiggle larvae (similar to mosquito larvae, but much smaller).

I am captivated by these guys who sit on a small table in my kitchen.  Because I name all of my backyard wildlife and I cannot tell them apart, they are collectively named Tads and Pollies.  I feed them parboiled spinach from my garden daily in addition to refreshing their algae and pond water weekly. 

I spent an inordinate amount of time at the side of their tank.  They are wonderfully distracting.

The Metamorphosis

There is a clear gelatinous covering over their small bodies. Their beady little black eyes are distinct.  They have a flat, wide face reminiscent of a nurse shark.

Two and a half weeks after I brought them in, their legs sprout.  At first, you have to look closely because they are small enough to be obscured by their thick tails.  In just four days, their legs are too big to be hidden any longer and are bent at the ankles, like toad legs.

One week after their back legs sprout, their front legs appear.  They now have lungs and are coming out of the water up onto the rocks.  No longer tadpoles, my Tads and Pollies are now toadlets. They will digest their tails as they complete their metamorphosis. They do not eat through this stage. Once their tails are gone, and they are tiny toads, they will eat live prey only. It is time for them to go back to the wild. The fish made it to be released, too.

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The post American Toads appeared first on Exploring Nature by Sheila Newenham.

I often get distracted walking past my patio doors by the sights outside: songbirds eating, bluejays demanding their peanuts, ducks waddling in the lawn, a swimming muskrat, a foraging beaver, hunting herons, coyotes passing through, deer, geese, anything and everything.

My camera sits on the table right here, always ready. Today, I paused to watch the two Canada Goose families raising their goslings here. The kids are getting their downy grey feathers transforming from cute yellow fluff balls into ugly ducklings on their way to adulthood. They are nearing my garden. Over the last week, they’ve been venturing further from the safety of the pond as their goslings grow.

I started to photograph the families. The one gosling is about a week older and still subtly larger than the four from the other brood. Even though they hang out together, they never comingle. Suddenly, they flushed. The goslings ran as fast as their little legs would carry them, flapping their near-naked wings to speed them along. Their parents were running right behind. I thought that the dog next door must’ve come outside. A fence restrains her, but she takes delight in shooing the geese. The geese, not ones to take chances, always oblige.

The Pursuit

When I looked up, I saw a coyote coming full speed from the corner of the woods, closing the distance with every stride. The adults could’ve taken to the air and safely made it to the pond, but they wouldn’t leave their goslings running for their lives.   The last goose, an adult, tried to take flight as the coyote lunged into the air with her mouth open. Her jaws caught just enough of the goose to foil her escape. They continued dashing down the incline toward the pond and out of my sight. I could only hear all of the geese honking and squawking in panic.

The Catch

The coyote stopped at the edge of the pond, head down. I could only see her shoulders but could tell by her posture that she had caught one. I thought she’d seized the last gosling – the singleton, the lone survivor of his clutch. It seemed to me that an adult would put up a fight. This was over in an instant. The coyote intermittently looked up and around, feathers protruding from her mouth and sticking to her tongue. She looked like she was feasting right here.

I continued taking pictures, conflicted by the exhilaration of Wild Kingdom in my backyard, the gratitude that I had my camera in hand as this unfolded, and the sadness of empathy for these goose families that I’ve come to know.

The coyote sees me

I’d stepped just outside the door when I first saw the coyote but hadn’t moved any closer. In fact, I’d hardly moved a muscle. She had looked in my direction but didn’t see me until now. She gently gathered up her catch, and it was only then that I saw she’d killed one of the adults. She held a limp, lifeless Ethel in her teeth. The entire sequence lasted just two minutes. 

Canada Geese are surprisingly big birds. This will be a hearty meal. The huntress casually trotted off, turning back towards the scene one last time before disappearing into the woods. I like to think she has a den full of pups that are going to eat well today.

On the water, Fred is honking with his sole gosling by his side. The other family of six geese paddles silently nearby. He’s looking at the shore where he’d last seen Ethel as if waiting, hoping, for her to reappear. It’s heartbreaking to watch. Just a few moments later, Fred is silently preening. His gosling is doing the same. “Is this a displacement behavior?” I wonder. Then, all of the geese casually swim away.

Resilience

I saw them later that afternoon, resting in the adjoining yard. Three weeks have passed since then, and I haven’t seen any of them. It makes good sense. I wonder if Fred and a new mate will return to nest here next year. After all, Mama Duck keeps returning year after year to nest and lay eggs even though she’s never been successful. Having your eggs eaten must be equally traumatic.

That’s just how nature works sometimes. Next spring, I’ll be waiting to see who shows up.

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The post Backyard Drama: Coyote versus Geese appeared first on Exploring Nature by Sheila Newenham.