Curious people are my favorite

For those of you who haven't been paying attention, I'm currently in West Virginia at the New River Birding and Nature Festival, a week long festival of blissful birding, botanizing and other enjoyments of nature, ecology and natural history.

There are many, many great aspects to this festival, one of which is that we all have one thing in common: a curiosity for the natural world. It might be just birds, or birds and plants, or birds and plant and moths... no matter what the subject matter is, everyone is here to learn something and see something new, and to experience nature in all her glory.

Since I am naturally very curious myself, it makes sense that I like to hang out with other folks who are curious, too. When the curiosity is over a shared interest, then we understand perfectly why a group of people would choose to stand around and look up in the trees for a long, long time in search of a bird.

But for all the time we spend looking up in the trees for birds, we spend almost an equal amount of time looking at the ground for any number of things. Insects. Plants.

Nina photographing cinnamon fern fiddleheads.
Poop Scat.

Geoff Heeter photographs Jim McCormac photographing bear scat.
Not only do we look at poop scat (we need to be adult and professional about this, right?), we get EXCITED about it. This was a big fresh black bear pie. Our field experts estimated it was a few days old, and it was mostly comprised of leafy green vegetation. It didn't take long for the serious investigation to begin. You will notice in the photo above that the fellow in the top left corner is coming at the pile with a stick. It was by prodding into the pile that we could get an idea of what the bear had been eating.

Of course, when you have a find this good, you have to share it with everyone!


Our intrepid scat sniffer and co-trip leader for the day, Rudy Gelis. If you ever want to go birding in Ecuador, Rudy's your man.

So, yeah... curious folk are cool. So is this festival. I'll tell you all the other reasons why in the coming week.

Hickory Horned Devil, encore presentation

I don't resort to many re-runs on this blog. This is a post originally put up almost 1 year ago, but honestly, I didn't have much of an audience at the time, so I figured it's worth another run since the subject matter has a bit of "weird" factor. Also, I now know there are enough nature nuts out there who can really enjoy (or at least tolerate) this post. Have fun!

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Originally posted September 16, 2008:
One great thing about living in the woods is that it's a veritable Discovery Zone. I see so many new things in our woods, and if I'm lucky, I'll see it more than once. For example, spotting frogs and toads is not too uncommon around here. And just the other day, for the second time, I spotted a Red Eft. These pictures were actually taken over 3 years ago, but at least you can see what I'm talking about. The one I saw the other day I actually managed to pick up to let it run around on my hand for a minute.

I am SO outta here!

I also picked up a frog the other day. So it would only seem natural that I would want to pick this up.

Gaaaah! What the...?!


Enhance!

Dave found this the other day, wandering around the base of one of our Shagbark Hickory trees. I wasn't home at the time, but he knew I would want to see it, so he contained it for a bit until I got home. At first I was freaked out, as he told me I would be, but then fascination took over. He had already done some Googling and found out that it's a Hickory Horned Devil.

Here is a description, as found on the Ohio State Unversity Extention Fact Sheet on Giant Caterpillars: "This caterpillar is the larva of the Royal Walnut Moth, also known as the Regal Moth. The larva is not one for a timid person to suddenly discover. It has a scary, frightful appearance resembling a small dragon with up to five pairs of long, curving hornlike structures over the back of its thorax with the rest of the body covered with shorter spikes. The body color ranges from deep blue-green to tan with orange spikes tipped with black. Shorter spikes are black. Though very ferocious appearing, it is quite harmless to handle. They are enormous in size, being five to six inches long and nearly 3/4-inch in diameter. They feed for a period of 37 to 42 days on the leaves of hickory, walnut, butternut, pecan, ash, lilac, persimmon, sycamore, sumac and sweet gum. Larvae mature in late summer, wandering around searching for a place to burrow underground to pupate. Overwintering occurs in the pupal stage."

By the way, I have to take this opportunity to plug state extension offices. Do you want to know what that funny bug is crawling around your house? Do you want to know why the leaves on the Sycamore trees around the county are turning brown prematurely? Want to learn how to raise cattle? Want an analysis of your soil? Your local extension office can help you with these questions. For folks in Ohio, check the Ohio State University Extension website for all kinds of helpful stuff, including links to county offices. For those in other states, just type in "your state here extension offices" in any search engine and you should come up with something. I have found the Athens County Extension office's weekly online updates to be a valuable resource. Now back to the show.

We had seen some pictures of people holding one of these devils in their hand, and I was determined I was going to do the same.

Or maybe not. This was NOT a happy caterpillar - every time I touched it, it would thrash about, and that really freaked me out. I knew it wouldn't hurt me, but it was still alarming just the same. Dave thought it was too bad he didn't get a picture of me when I jumped the first time I touched it. This is as close as I got to holding it. Also, these pictures give you a better perspective of just how big this thing is.

-by the way, I'm not really scared here - just hammin' it up for the camera (imagine that)

Will we ever see one of these again? Who knows. Maybe I'll be a little more brave if there is a next time. Hey, at least I touched it. That's more than I can say for the guy who took all the pictures.

So what makes a creature like this develop such ferocious-looking characteristics? Are there other caterpillars out there that are equally (or more) alarming in appearance? And for those that don't look intimidating, what is their defense against predation (assuming that's why the Hickory Horned Devil is built this way)? Poison in their flesh? Something else?

Other fascinating facts: The adult moths have no mouth parts and so are unable to eat. But they don't need to. Once they emerge as an adult moth, they mate during the second evening after their emergence, eggs are laid the third evening, and then they die. Can you imagine what it would be like to eat like mad as a baby for a few weeks to a few months, hibernate for 1-2 years, emerge full grown and in a completely different form, have sex on day 2, deposit eggs, then die, THE END? This is one of the great mysteries of the animal world that I can't wrap my brain around. I also wonder if the passage of time seems eternal to these small creatures with short life-spans. Maybe an hour seems like days. Or maybe they have no comprehension of time whatsoever, other than the natural rhythm set for them by their ancestors.

Nature's Discovery Zone frequently reminds me about how much I DON'T know, and makes me relish each day as an opportunity for new knowledge, and new questions to ask. I was always fond of school, and I love learning new things. As I grow older, I become more and more excited about being a student of life.

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Back to the present... earlier in the summer, when I was out photographing some cool moths (like the Io and Polyphemus moths), I was really hoping to spot a Royal Walnut moth, but alas, it did not happen (I didn't even see any Luna moths this summer, which is unusual). Perhaps another summer down the road I'll finally get to see the more beautiful manifestation of this creature!

What IS this stuff?

Back in mid-June I found some funky-looking stuff on a heavily decayed log on our property. At first I said, "Ew, gross!" But upon further inspection I said, "Hmmmm.... interesting"

Here's what it looked like the first day I spied it. All I could think of was that it looked like something's eggs.

Look closely and you'll see 2 snails here, one to the right just above the mass, and another one more directly to the right, almost at the edge of the picture. (click photo to enlarge)

When I came back 5 days later, this is what I saw:

With some of this mixed in...

... and some of this by itself.

If anyone has any ideas as to what this might be, I would love to be enlightened. I've seen a few people talking about slime mold on their blogs recently, but I'm not sure if that's what this stuff is or not. I did see a picture on the internets of some stuff that looks exactly like the brown things pictured above on a page discussing slime mold, but that doesn't necessarily confirm that this is slime mold.

I should also note that the brown things gave off a kind of brown "dust" when rubbed (most likely shooting off spores to reproduce?), just in case that helps someone make an ID. Thanks!