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Category: Animals

Beech bark disease

Beech bark disease

Beech bark disease causes defects and mortality in American beech trees. In North America, this disease is tied to a combined effect of fungi and insect attackers. The introduced beech scale insect, Cryptococcus fagisuga, begins the cycle by feeding on the bark of a beech tree. Feeding activities of the scale insects create tiny wounds such that the tree becomes susceptible to two different species of Neonectria fungus: N. faginata and N. ditissima. Once the bark is wounded by the scale insect,…

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Pumpkin Party

Pumpkin Party

Although most people are deep in a Christmas planning mode right now, we’ve just finished up a late fall pumpkin party in our backyard.  What do you do with your old Halloween pumpkins? Typically we just toss them in our compost bin, but this year after cutting the pumpkin in half to expose the seeds inside, we set it out in our back woods and trained our trail camera on it to see who would come to partake. Over a…

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Cecropia moth cocoon
“Unboxing” a mystery cocoon

“Unboxing” a mystery cocoon

On a recent walk at Mass Audubon’s Tidmarsh Sanctuary, I noticed something out of the ordinary attached to the stem of a shrub a little ways off the trail. It sort of resembled a brown dried leaf, but there was something just different enough about it that it caught my attention. Closer inspection revealed that it was a cocoon of some sort. I immediately had two conflicting thoughts: 1) I want to cut it open so I can see what’s…

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Nature Notes from the North Woods – Part 2

Nature Notes from the North Woods – Part 2

After a few days in the Pittsburg, NH area (see the previous blog post for Pittsburg area photos: Part 1) we moved onto Bethel, ME. Since arriving on Friday evening, we’ve done a ton of hiking, including trails in Grafton Notch State Park and Evans Notch in the White Mountain National Forest. Some brief photo highlights from the last few days are below.

Raccoon play time

Raccoon play time

Northern raccoons (Procyon lotor) are mainly nocturnal, so we seldom get to observe their antics outside of their exploits with residential trash cans. But I recently captured an entertaining scene of two young raccoons, called kits, chasing each other up and down a tree in a local tupelo swamp on my game camera.  Females typically bare between 2 and 5 young, which are born blind and only lightly furred, although even in these first moments their “masks” are already visible….

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Early to the Party – the Pharaoh Cicada on Cape Cod

Early to the Party – the Pharaoh Cicada on Cape Cod

I must admit, I was a little jealous to hear that the Brood X cicadas that everyone’s been talking about in New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania and Maryland would not extend as far north as Massachusetts. So I was surprised, and quite delighted, to discover this Magicicada (periodic cicadas) in my yard last week. Unlike some of the swarm-like photos coming out of NY/NJ, I found just a single female beside its exuvia – the cast-off outer outer skin of…

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Fisher – Not a Cat and Doesn’t Fish

Fisher – Not a Cat and Doesn’t Fish

Perhaps second only to coyotes, fishers (Martes pennanti) are often vilified and blamed for a whole host of occurrences and noises. Fishers get a bad rap as “aggressive” or “dangerous” animals. They are predators, so these animals probably seem fairly aggressive to rabbits, squirrels and mice, but they generally want to keep to themselves as far as humans are concerned. Although often referred to as “fisher cats”, that name is incorrect; these animals are not closely related to cats at…

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Odd Couples: March fly mating in May

Odd Couples: March fly mating in May

To me, spring is one of the most exciting times of year in nature. It seems that just about every day there’s a new flower blooming, a new tree leafing out, a new bird arriving back (or passing through) from its wintering area, or a newly emerged insect. With respect to insects, over the last couple weeks I had been noticing two fairly common and unique looking flies around my yard. Both had jet black bodies with noticeable red legs…

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White-tailed deer (Odocoileus virginianus)

White-tailed deer (Odocoileus virginianus)

Despite a healthy population of white-tailed deer (Odocoileus virginianus) on Cape Cod, and seeing considerable signs of their presence out in the forest (e.g., scat, tracks, hairs that had fallen off where the deer bedded down, etc.) this was the first deer I’ve seen on my trail camera after having it out and about for almost 3 months. To be fair, however, I was targeting coyotes with this particular location, and for that I have been relatively successful in catching…

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Lucky Chukar

Lucky Chukar

The chukar partridge, or more simply chukar, (Alectoris chukar) is native to Eurasia. It was brought to the United States as a game bird in the 1800s and has since established wild populations in the arid western areas of the country, where they can find their preferred habitat: sparse, arid terrain. Although a wild population of these birds does not exist in here Massachusetts, chukars have been introduced to nearly every one of our fifty states, including Massachusetts, where they…

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