Autumn has truly arrived

I feel as though autumn has truly arrived as of today! Gone are the hotter than heck days which are replaced by cool, crisp, and sometimes rain showery days.

Snapping Turtle Hatchlings video

Drew shot video of the hatchlings in all phases of their exodus from the earth to their entry into the water.  Enjoy!

Snapping Turtle babies have hatched out!

For several days, we have seen tiny dimples in the soil atop the turtle nest. At first, we thought it might be from rain showers or ants. Then, we thought that maybe the soil underneath was shifting due to turtle hatchlings, as the eggs were laid 85 days ago.

Finally, today, a hole opened up in the soil and the first turtle emerged. Due to this being all sandy fill, the turtles were coated with sediment.

One after another emerged, and sometimes there seemed to be a race to the surface!

They just kept climbing out of the nest hole, now three at a time! All in all, there were 38 hatchlings. 37 emerged from the nest on Sept. 11th, and one emerged on Sept. 12th. I am going to wait a few weeks before excavating the nest hole to count the empty egg shells, as snapping turtles lay between 20-50 eggs.

We find that turtles can climb well at such a young age, and they were trying to find a way out of the cage that was put in place to protect them from escaping and getting run over in the road.

We were happy to see that they were mature enough to have absorbed all their nutritive yolk as the yolk sacs were no longer in evidence.

These were very healthy and active young snappers!

Drew gathered each wave of turtles into a plastic bin for counting and transport purposes.

He walked each bin of turtles over to the pond for their release.

The turtles were released to the south side of the dock where they encountered moist soil for the first time in their lives.

They had to walk over numerous tree roots to reach the water.

Then, it was time to enter the watery world where they will spend the next 11-19 or so years, until reaching sexual maturity, where they (if female) will then exit the pond to find a suitable nesting spot to lay their own eggs.

Swim away, little turtle! Swim away!

Uh oh... this is not the end of the story...Do you see the cormorant swimming in the cove to the north of the dock? He looks might hungry to me;-) These turtles will fall prey to many animals as they try to find food and shelter in the pond. Survival rate to maturity may be around 1/10th of 1%. Most, if not all, of our hatchlings will be eaten (even by mature snapping turtles out looking for a meal.) But, we do have several large females who lay eggs each year, so there is always the chance that one of our hatchlings will make it. Only time will tell...

Swamp Milkweed is maturing with yet another caterpillar!

The milkweed stems have taken on a new look as yet another monarch caterpillar is happily munching on the leaves. Yay!!!

Aphids have begun swarming the stems of the swamp milkweed and are sucking the life blood out of the plants!

And, we now have a few swamp milkweed seed pods that have developed on one of the stems. I am going to hopefully try to grow more swamp milkweed plants by harvesting the seeds and planting them in peat moss later in the season. And, a friend of mine has requested some seeds as well.

Red humped caterpillar on blueberry plants

Red humped Caterpillar (Schizura concinna)

On a sad note, I have discovered that red humped caterpillars are devouring our blueberry plants. Drew is going to have to pull as many caterpillars off the plants as possible. One plant has already been completely defoliated. I have never seen any caterpillars on the blueberry plants up until now, and these plants are about 6 years old.

Loon Vocalizations to knock your socks off!

We have 3 loons on Caesar Pond this year. They have been extremely vocal all summer long, and especially in the last few weeks. On Sunday, Sept. 1st, Drew put our Zoom H2 audio recorder (which, amazingly, is 11 years old) over at Caesar Pond at 3am. One loon began calling at 6am, and regaled us with many different vocalizations, some of which will knock your socks off! The pond and surrounding trees act like an echo chamber. Some of the calls sound like whales. ENJOY!!!! UPDATE: By the way, this was the last vocalization heard on the pond as this last loon flew off to spend the winter on the ocean.

Did you know that the different loon vocalizations have specific meanings? The website Loon.org is a great loon conservation website for information and audio clips (with their meanings.) I also really liked this quote from the blog of the Cable Natural History Museum in Michigan.

 "Loon Language: The mournful wail of a common loon echoes across the glassy water. From a neighboring lake, another loon replies with the same smooth cry. The loons are keeping track of one another, maybe as neighbors, maybe as mates, maybe as rivals. Sometimes the still night air is pierced by the maniacal laughing yodels of two male loons. This signifies a battle over territory. Home territory means a lot to loons. The longer a male resides in the same territory, the greater his chance of raising chicks to adulthood. The resident male will fight to the death if necessary to defend his island, lake or bay. Even if the invading male wins, the resident female will stay on the territory with the new male. An invading loon, looking for his own place to raise a family, will fly over an occupied territory and first give the wavering tremolo flight call. If the resident male is willing to fight for the prime real estate, he will reply with a yodel. The invading loon can tell by the lowest note in the tremolo approximately how big the defender is, and use this information to decide whether a fight is in his favor or not. If he chooses to fight, the invader replies with his own unique yodel. Loons can tell each other apart by their calls, and even third-graders can tell loons apart by looking at sonograms of their yodels!"

Stone, Emily M. “Natural Connections: Exploring North Woods Nature Through Science and Your Senses-Loon Language.” http://cablemuseumnaturalconnections.blogspot.com/2012/06/loon-Language.html, 26 June 2012.

Just so you don't think making a recording is easy... We have one audio recorder. The loons swim all over the pond and are usually at the end opposite to where Drew has placed the recorder. We have gotten lucky just once this summer. Of course, one of the best nights, a few weeks ago, occurred when we had no charged batteries, and the loons called for about an hour straight. Then, there is the traffic noise. We have the best luck on Sunday mornings when everybody sleeps in and fewer people are going to work. We also need calm mornings as wind noise is not conducive to clean audio. Lastly, we need a good audio converter, and Drew used Audacity (iMovie is useless for this purpose.) After mucking around with Audacity (a very non-intuitive downloadable program), he got the results he was looking for. He then uploaded the file to SoundCloud and created the audio version that we have here.

Giant Ichneumon Wasp video

Giant Long-Tailed Ichneumon Wasp is a parasitoid wasp that lives in close association to its host and later kills it. In this case, the wasp uses its ovipositor to lay its eggs into a hole previously drilled into a tree by the Pigeon tremex horntail (wood wasp). It would be cool to actually see the Ichneumon Wasp actually laying eggs. As for what the wasp is doing here with its ovipositor, we don't know. There are two outer sheaths that protect the ovipositor between them, and maybe she is making sure all parts are properly in place.

Giant Long-tailed Ichnuemon Wasp (Megarhyssa macrurus)

Female Giant Long-tailed Ichneumon Wasp

This morning's temperature was in the low 50's. Drew went outside to water the zucchini plants and found this Giant Long-tailed Ichneumon Wasp on one of the zucchini leaves. It was waiting for the sun to warm it up.

Due to the cool temperature, the wasp was so still that Drew was able to go back inside to grab a camera. He photographed it from many angles.

The wasp eventually moved around and climbed up onto the camera strap. Drew took it up to the deck and put it onto the table for some more photos and a video!

This is a female of the species because of its long ovipositor (egg laying tube) that comes out of its abdomen. These wasps do not sting. They use the ovipositor to deposit eggs into holes inside the bark of the tree that have already been drilled by the Pigeon tremex horntail wasp. 

These wasps are parasitoid on another species of wasp, the Pigeon Tremex (wood wasp), and their larvae feed on the larvae of this second species of wasp. When mature, the newly winged adults come out of the hole in the tree!

She was using her hind legs to continually "preen" her ovipositor. Why, we do not know... By the way, I found this great Insect Identification website that lists Maine insects. Awesome!