Yellow-rumped Warblers have been variously known or referred to as Myrtle Warblers, Butter Butts, Dendroica coronata and Setophaga coronata. By whatever name, they’re still the same species and are the most often encountered warbler during North Carolina’s winter season.

As I stood in Catch the Wind on a sunny day during the first week of December I watched a flock of these versatile birds attack a Wax Myrtle, scoffing up the berries with wild fury. Luckily, the myrtle didn’t have many leaves on it allowing me to get a handful of acceptable photos, here’s some of them.

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The following three photos are of the same bird selecting and eating one of the wax myrtle’s berries.

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And finally this last bird gives us a glimpse of where the species name coronata came from.

Although dressed in the dull plumage of winter, there's a hint of what will become a brilliant yellow crown on top of the head.

And that’s all for now.

On the pavement near the Wetlands Overlook (12/10/11).

This (above) is what greeted me as I made my rounds during the morning of 10 December, a Saturday. Obviously, the white and beige colored splatters are bird droppings. But what bird, and what are the larger brown masses?

“Oh good,” I whispered to myself, “another mystery to solve.”

I thought at first that the brown blobs were flattened raccoon scat after being trod upon or run over by one of the Museum vehicles. But there weren’t any subsequent marks on the pavement on either side of the brown blobs caused by the next step of whoever may have stepped on them or by the rotation of a wheel moving over the area.

Getting closer I noticed that there were pieces of crayfish, what looked like small bones, some fur and even some grasshopper parts mixed in with the brown goo.

A closer look.

Crayfish claw (top center), grasshopper femur (just right of bottom center) and at least two tibiae (thin red objects on far left), and various other animal parts can be seen in this close shot.

These brown masses of exoskeleton, fur and other animal parts appear to be a pellet, although a very wet pellet. If you’ve had any grade school biology you may have taken apart an owl pellet before. Typically they are oval shaped objects, dark gray and full of fur and bones. They consist of the parts of animals that a hawk or owl can not digest and which is subsequently coughed up unto the ground. These owl pellets are usually rather solid objects and not wet, flattened masses, as what was before of me on the pavement.

Two grasshopper femurs. The one on the left looks like a Differential Grasshopper leg, the other could be the same or perhaps a Red-legged Grasshopper.

More leg parts of both crayfish and grasshopper and an insect wing, probably a grasshopper (just left of bottom center).

So what ate the grasshoppers, crayfish and whatever else was in the pellet and then sat in the tree above the pavement coughing up and pooping out the leftovers? I think we can eliminate a hawk. The local Red-shouldered Hawk would definitely eat all of the animals represented in the pellet but when hawks void themselves they lift their rear ends and shoot the excrement out at an angle. The splatters on the pavement do not indicate that they were applied at an angle. They appear to have been dropped straight down onto the pavement.

How about a Great Blue Heron? It’s certainly possible. Herons eat all of the above, and more. They cough up pellets. They defecate on our walking paths. What’s more, they do it in the manner displayed in the photos. But so do owls. And these pellets are large enough to have come from either a Great Blue Heron or a Barred Owl.

Great Blue Heron, stalking in the Wetlands.

I’m torn. I want it to be an owl that left these pellets. An owl is much more mysterious than a Great Blue Heron. You don’t see owls every day, unless you work with them as an animal keeper or are a bird rehabber. It’s much more romantic to think that the night before, maybe just a few hours ago, an owl had been sitting on the branch above. Perhaps it was sitting there on that same branch as a crayfish crawled out of the Wetlands, crossed the pavement, was spotted by the owl and scooped up and eaten on the spot. The owl then rested, preened, got rid of some extra baggage, then flew off into the woods at dawn to sleep away the day in a pine tree.

Barred Owl, resting in a pine tree.

As much as I’d like it to be an owl, it was probably a heron that left the stained macadam for me to find that morning. But, I still don’t know for sure. Both Barred Owls and Great Blue Herons are residents here at the Museum. Both have opportunity to eat the same foods and to sit in a tree above the path and cough up pellets. However, the more liquid nature of the pellet makes me lean towards the heron.

Who do you think left the grasshopper, crayfish, and other parts on the path through Explore the Wild?

Hooded mergansers diving for fish. The mergs also take tadpoles, aquatic insects, and even crayfish.

The mergansers sometimes fish in groups from two to four, but often the entire dozen can be seen steaming across the Wetlands diving for fish as they go.

Our mergs are rather shy and don’t allow a close approach, but at times I catch them near shore on the north side of the Wetlands diving among the dense tangle of willows and rushes that reside there. The fish concentrate near the cover of the willows and other plants seeking protection from what would eat them.

I’ve also noticed groups of mergs in the smartweed on the west side of the Wetlands. I know that tadpoles congregate in the smartweed for much the same reason as the fish do in the willows, protection from predators. I assumed that the mergansers that I sometimes flush from that area of the Wetlands were taking advantage of the high concentrations of tadpoles.

Smartweed growing along the boardwalk. I often flush mergansers from the dense weeds and under the boardwalk.

On December 9, as I walked past the area along the boardwalk where the smartweed grows I glanced over the rail, as I often do, and noticed much activity in the water below. I at first thought it was the tadpoles which usually gather in that corner of the Wetlands.

The arrow points to the area of heaviest activity.

A closer look revealed hundreds of fish, Golden Shiners, all crowded up to the shore in just three to six inches of water. There were some tadpoles present, but the vast majority of the commotion was coming from fish.

A seething mass of golden shiners.

A closer look at the boil of shiners, some can be seen gasping for air, or water.

So why are these fish all piled on top of each other in this little corner of the Wetlands? The fish naturally school together and in trying to avoid being eaten by the mergansers who swim across the Wetlands in pursuit of them the school, or shoal, frantically looks for cover. Since there is little or no submergent vegetation in the Wetlands the fish seek out any cover that they can find, like the smartweed along the shore.

Once the fish find a place to hide, in this case the smartweed, they swim into it for the protection that it provides. The mergansers follow behind and push the fish further and further until they can go no further, in effect, herding them into a corner. The fish are crowded up against the shore with nowhere else to go.

Half of the dozen resident mergansers steaming across the water in pursuit of fish.

It’s a feast. For the ducks, it’s like swimming in a barrel full of fish, scooping up the fish at their leisure. For the fish, it’s like being the fish in the barrel.

The local Great Blue Heron and Belted Kingfisher also benefit from the dilemma that the fish get themselves into. After all of the Museum Guests have dispersed and gone home and there’s no one around but the wildlife, the heron and kingfisher sneak over for a meal too.

In a moment of weakness I scooped up some of the fish in a net and released them into deeper water. I felt bad for the fish. It’s difficult sometimes to see an animal in distress and not lend a hand. But, by helping the fish I was making it more difficult for the birds. And besides, those fish got themselves into that mess, they should get themselves out of it, although I doubt that they will. Why, I’d bet that the fish that I caught in the net swam right back into the smartweed
after being released.

Some of the many hundreds of shiners in the shallow water just below the boardwalk.

An added benefit of this fish story is that I was able to get close looks at the fish. All of the fish in this school were about four to five inches in length. They were all golden shiners, so far as I know the only species in the Wetlands. The fish, being the size that they are, are all sexually mature. And, if they aren’t eaten first, each has the potential of laying 200,000 eggs throughout its lifetime. That’s a lot of future shiners!

Thin, and moving very slowly, this treefrog makes its way towards cover.

This is probably the last Green Treefrog that we will see until spring, except for the occasional sight of one in the Butterfly House’s Conservatory, that is. These little frogs have a knack for finding there way into the warm tropical habitat provided for the butterflies in the Conservatory. And what better place to be for an insect-eating frog but in a warm, humid, closed environment with lots of juicy butterflies everywhere you look!

Hopefully, our little frog (in the photos) found a place to hibernate, perhaps under the siding of the Butterfly House, until the “real” spring comes to town.

Scrambling over the leaves in search of food for the nest.

What's this?

Dig a little deeper.

A pine cone.

This one needs a little work.

After a few minutes of striping off some scales and eating a few seeds, it was off to the nest to store the cone for later use during winter.

Pine cone delivered to the nest and stowed, the squirrel is ready for a new adventure.

A wise squirrel prepares for the future.

One of two Crane Fly Larvae seen on 12/2/11 in Catch the Wind.

What’s going on with the wildlife here at the Museum. Ranger Lew saw a Northern Water Snake on Saturday (12/3). Spring Peepers were calling and Yellow-bellied Sliders were out basking in the near 70 degree air of yesterday afternoon (12/6). Neither peepers or basking Turtles are unusual during this time of year though, a few days of warm temps is often enough to bring either of those herps out of hiding, even in the dead of winter.

Although Honey Bees can be seen throughout the cold season a paper wasp flying about Explore the Wild was a bit more atypical, although not unheard of (12/6). More unusual was a Virginia Pine Borer (Chalcophora virginiensis) yesterday on the Dino Trail (at least that’s what  I think it was, it had been stepped upon). I usually don’t see that species of beetle here at the Museum until April. And, the two crane fly larvae that I saw in Catch the Wind last Friday, six days into December, surely seemed out of place.

Crane Flies have a distinctive posterior. The tip of the abdomen looks a bit like a face.

The warm weather (especially the mild nighttime temperatures) following the much colder weather of just a few weeks ago has the wildlife emerging from their winter quarters as if it were spring. That’s about to change though, Thursday is supposed to bring in more typical weather for the season, things should get back to normal.

Enjoy the mild weather while you can. The nighttime lows are expected to get into the thirties and twenties the rest of the week. And although bullfrogs should still be out, you have one more day to go out and see how many peepers, snakes, and insects you can find.

Good luck!

Chilean Rose Hair Tarantula (photo - mural by Rachael Knight).

To give some perspective, the mural is about five feet from top to bottom.

If you’ve ever been to the Butterfly House (BFH) you’ve probably seen the many butterflies, other insects, and scorpions and spiders on display. What you probably haven’t seen is the mural in the above photograph. That’s because the mural is on a wall in a back hallway of the BFH which is not open to the public.

Likewise, if you’ve been to the BFH, you’ve probably met Rachael Knight (Entomology Specialist). Rachael is the artist behind the mural. She worked on the mural after hours, after all of the visitors had gone home and Rachael’s regular tasks for the day were completed, obviously a passion of Rachael’s.

No photo can do justice to a painting, the mural is striking and is worthy of praise.

Rachael has just started working on another mural. I don’t know what it is yet but I think I spotted at least one butterfly wing taking shape.

Not sure but it looks like the wing of a butterfly at the bottom.

Santa's Sleigh, parked for the day.

Rachael, along with Wendy Aldwyn, Art Director here at the Museum, also had a hand in the paint job on Santa’s Sleigh. If you’ve taken a ride on the Santa Train (if you haven’t, you should) you may have seen the sleigh in all it’s sparkling, flashing-light glory on it’s landing pad out by the train tunnel.

Rachael with some of her friends.

Rachael is one of many people whose talent goes well beyond what they do under their official titles here at the Museum. Stop by and say hello to Rachael next time you’re in the BFH. I’m sure she’d be glad to talk to you about insects, or art.

Thanks Rachael.

What are we?

But first, the clues:

Palustris means swamp, swampy, or of the swamp.

Hot, stylish, phat, fly, and coxa are, or can be, other words for hip, although coxa is more literal than the others in that it refers to the hip bone.

So, now we have “swamp hip,” which doesn’t make a lot of sense. I was going to use a clue such as rosa or rouge but thought it a bit too obvious. So, I left it to you to piece it together, to visualize red fruit, hips, swamp…I only know of one fruit that is referred to as hips, and that is the fruit of roses.

Swamp Rose (Rosa palustris) in the Wetlands (5/26/10).

By the way, rose hips are edible, are very nutritious, can be made into tea, soup, jelly, syrup, and wine, among other things, and they have way more vitamin C than do oranges. So go pick you some hips, but make sure that the hips you pick have not been sprayed with some sort of pest or herbicide.

Swamp Rose grows in our Wetlands here at the Museum and is just one of several common species found in our area. It is very similar to Carolina Rose except for the habitat in which it tends to grow and the fact that the Swamp Rose has thorns that are recurved, curved backwards on the stem. The thorns on Carolina Rose are typically straight.

Multiflora Rose is an introduced plant and has many small white flowers, not single blossoms such as the Carolina and Swamp Roses display. Multiflora Rose can quickly take over a meadow or field edge, crowding out native plants.

What are we? (photo - 11/19/11)

Clues:

Palustris

Hot, stylish, phat, fly, also coxa.

If you don’t know, take a guess!

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Answer here.

The next day as I walked along the north side of the Wetlands, I saw a Common Green Darner (Anax junius) sailing over the water. Luckily, the big darner came flying right over my head and landed on a Wax Myrtle not 15 feet away. I was able to get close enough to it, without spooking it, to grab a shot for the Journal.

A fresh looking Common Green Darner clings to Wax Myrtle at the edge of the Wetlands.

As I’ve mentioned many times in this Journal, green darners move south with the weather. This one looks fresh and may have emerged (eclosed) locally due to the spring-like, mild weather.

Monday night into Tuesday morning the mild weather was pushed out of our area and replaced by much cooler air, by no means cold, but cooler, closer to 50 than 70 degrees. Yet, as I walked the path around the Wetlands this morning there in the water was the familiar face a frog staring up at me from the below, a bullfrog.

An American Bullfrog (11/28/11).

See you in the wild.