New Finds at the Nature Preserve

Every spring I get out the field guides for wildflowers, butterflies, dragonflies and fungi, along with the birdsong CD's, to review and relearn things I thought I knew well last year. Many things I can remember, a few more each year (subject to Senior Moments of course). But sometimes I get lucky on a walk at the Nature Preserve, and something I've never seen before pops up. Then I get out all my field books (we could start our own nature bookstore), turning pages looking for a photo that matches the one I took. Sometimes I just have to send my photo to one of my friends who specializes.

The sweet honeysuckle, invading every path, is visited by a black butterfly with white spots which I've never seen before. Fortunately, the first butterfly book I check shows a picture of this to demonstrate the difference between butterflies and moths, since this is actually an Eight Spotted Forester moth, and not listed in the butterfly book at all. It is a showy, day flying, nectaring moth. It has long bright orange hairs on its two forelegs, which look like collected pollen. It has two creamy-white spots on the black forewings, and two on each hindwing, thus its common name Eight Spotted. Yes! I have a match!

The Woodland Fern Garden at Creasey Mahan Nature Preserve is lovingly planted with native species and exotic examples of the same kind of plant in many instances. However, the deep mulch is not only favored by many fern species, but by fungi galore. Here's one poking through the wood chips with a bright red stalk, and yes, it does look like what you are thinking. I think this is the Elegant Stinkhorn, which is supposed to, well, stink. If it did, I failed to notice it today, and continued on my walk.

Here's another odd sighting. I looked in the fungus book, but my nephew suggested it might be a slime mold.   Ewwww!

Eastern Towhees have a very distinctive song. I must have heard at least 15 of them challenging each other through the brush. Some day we should ask an expert to run a census on the Towhees. I think we have more at Creasey Mahan than any other place I go birding.

Despite many grassy areas, we have never had any Meadowlarks at the Nature Preserve. Tuesday as I made the rounds of the Bluebird nestboxes, I heard Meadowlarks in two separate meadows! Not only did I hear them, but heard and photographed one! Woo-Hoo! Life is good.

Fungi are Fun, Guys!

Bread Dough Mushroom

It's been fairly cool and wet this summer and fall, perfect fungi weather. When we go for a hike, I may not find birds, but the fungi are flourishing fantastically! Now, here's the problem. I don't have a good fungi field guide, and when I try to look online, all I find are Latin names. I don't do Latin, thank you. So I have fun making up my own names if no one else in the group knows. I ordered what looks like a good book, and it won't be here for a while yet, so just enjoy my imagination on these. After all, mushrooms can be as pretty as flowers, can't they?

Chocolate Bread Dough

Yellow Frillies

Witch's Butter (someone else came up with this name) - a jelly fungi. Squeeze and it slimes all over your fingers.

Purple Umbrellas

Dead Man's Finger - That's it's real name, and apparently it's fairly rare since the naturalist was excited to find it. I would have called it Duck Head myself.

Frilly Pumpkin Turkey Tails

Birds Nest - this is the real name. If you brush against them the "eggs" burst and the spores are released to the air.

More jelly fungi

White Branch Straddler - it only grew on the bottom of this small branch.

Shelf fungi are fairly common, but this one was quite large. The naturalists pulled one from the tree trunk to show us its root, which was larger than his thumb, as you can see.

Little Orange Pearls

We found a tree at Bernheim that had 10 or 12 different kinds of fungi along its dead trunk. Between the hurricane in Sept 2008 and the Jan 2009 ice storm, Kentucky has an abundance of dead trees. A real fungi feast! We noticed that the fungi and lichens tended to start growing in the crevasses in the bark. You can see them lined up in rows - first a row of Turkey Tails, then a row of green moss and lichens.

Tortellini Mushroom

One of the nicest things about fungi is their willingness to pose as long as you need for the perfect photo. They don't blow in the wind, and they don't move around just as you take the shot. I appreciate that in nature!

Non-Birding at the New River

What's a birder to do when the sun doesn't shine, and the birds sing only from hidden perches, refusing to come out and be admired? I tend to get distracted by other natural features, and the New River Gorge is chock-full of natural features, as well as an enormous man-made feature, the New River Bridge. The New River Gorge Bridge carries U.S. Highway 19 over the New River at a height of 876 feet, making it the highest vehicular bridge in the Americas, and the second-highest in the world. That's all straight down folks. For someone with acrophobia (namely me) it's a good thing the side of the bridge is concrete, and I can't see over when when driving.

One of our trips went down into the Gorge though, down a narrow, switch-backed road. We stopped at the base of the bridge supports for some birding. I must admit, mountain birding makes it easier to see warblers, since the trees are at eye-level and your neck doesn't hurt as much. The bridge was completed in 1977, and before that everyone just drove the narrow winding road down, crossed the river on a one lane bridge with a wood floor, and drove up another one lane road going up to the other side. I don't think there would be much to make me take this trip too often. But think back to the pioneers who didn't even have bridges or paved roads. Although finding land, homesteading, and raising crops and family on your own is hard enough, imagine the endless isolation. What if a family member is injured or ill? When it's time to give birth, your husband may not be able to return with a midwife in time. No wonder so many women died in childbirth. But the sheer loneliness must have been overwhelming. I'm glad to be an Interstate Highway girl, thanks.

View from old New River Bridge

Do I feel guilty about losing the birding focus? Nah....It's all fascinating. Things with roots always cooperate for the camera. How about a Jack the Referee plant found at Smokey's on the Gorge. Touchdown!

Every forest has a few Ents, if you look for them. I found this one at the Opossum Creek Retreat next to one of the cabins. The uplifted arms, long eyes and very long, open mouth remind me of Edvard Munch paintings of The Scream. A Screaming Ent in West Virginia...

Our guides, Connie Toops and Keith Richards, not only excel at hearing and recognizing bird calls, they know the other inhabitants of the biosphere as well.

Is this a blossom on a cedar tree? No, it's the cedar-apple rust, a fungus. Connie found another fungus that looked like a small orange tipped match growing in a puddle, but I don't remember what she called it.

I'm used to Spanish Moss and other kinds of epiphytic plants in the South. Lichens cover the bark of trees here in the mountains, to the point where you can't see the bark at all. I think this airy thing is some kind of lichen as well.

As the week progressed, we saw spring ebb and flow in the mountains. Along the valleys, the leaves were fully grown. In the higher elevations, most of the trees were still bare. How do you like this one? I call it the Red Velvet Oak for obvious reasons.

Birds are a bright flittering part of the forest, delighting us with their song. All the "small life" is necessary for the forest to provide a habitat for the birds. I love looking at anything with a different shape or color, then trying to find how it fits in the ecology. It would be nice if the chiggers, mosquitos and gnats didn't see me as a potential dinner though. I'm still itching and scratching from their attention.