In the Woods – Page 2 – Brennah's Backyard

Sleepy Squirrel

This fox squirrel I photographed this spring fell asleep while I was taking pictures…

One evening recently while I was in the woods, I noticed some spiderwebs being backlit by the setting sun. As it turns out, my newer lens works great for spiderwebs, and after taking a couple fairly standard head-on pictures, I started experimenting with the angle. I didn’t have very long to work with this scene, though, because the sun was only illuminating each web for a few minutes (there were three webs that I found). I would have enjoyed more time with this subject, but I was happy with this photo.

Harvestmen

A harvestman on elderflowers. This one had especially interesting markings.

I am quite fond of harvestmen (aka daddy long legs). I’m not exactly sure why I like them so much; the best way I’ve managed to describe it is that they just seem like peaceful little forest spirits… although they’re not found only in the woods, but they do seem particularly plentiful there. So, I suppose, much like the woods, they are a calming presence. Getting good photos of them, though, is a bit tricky. It isn’t that they are uncooperative (they’re actually probably more cooperative than most creatures), but super close up pictures of them tend to look pretty awkward with their legs mostly not in the frame, and they like to hang out in fairly dim places, making it hard for their colors and markings to be visible. I am now finally building up a small collection of harvestman photos that I like.

A harvestman on a mossy patch on a fallen tree

Despite being pretty common, easy to find creatures, not many people seem to know what harvestmen are; they are often called spiders, but, though they are arachnids, they belong to their own group. (They’re actually thought to be more closely related to scorpions.) The name ‘harvestmen’ refers to the order opiliones, which is a pretty general category. (For example, butterflies and moths are an order, and beetles are another order. And so are spiders.) So, not surprisingly, there are lots of different kinds of harvestmen. They come in many different sizes, shapes, and colors and have a variety of diets and habits. The harvestmen in these photos are only a tiny fraction of their variety.

Although harvestmen look similar to spiders, they don’t have two distinctly separate body segments as spiders do. They also don’t produce silk or venom. Instead of venom carrying fangs, they have a pair of tiny pincer like claws. (I’ve actually seen them carrying things with these claws, though I haven’t gotten a good look at the claws themselves as they’re tucked under the harvestman’s body.) They also use their second pair of legs (from front) as feelers and I’d noticed them probing around with them (and also that that pair of legs is often extra long) before I was able to find information about it.

Harvestman on a hydrangea flower cluster

I’m always happy to see these little guys even if I don’t end up taking pictures of them, but I do hope I’m able to get better at photographing them.

The Blue Jay

This spring while out in the woods I noticed a blue jay watching me from a branch nearby. The jay’s idle curiosity gave me a generous opportunity to get some photos (I think I even had to switch lenses). I wouldn’t be surprised if this particular bird recognized me as a regular visitor to the woods.

First Butterflies of Spring

There are a couple of fairly common woodland butterflies that I usually start to see right around this time of year: the comma butterfly and the mourning cloak butterfly. It should be a bit of a toss-up which I see first since they start to appear at roughly the same time. In practice, it seems like I usually spot the mourning cloak first. This year was no exception to that; I spotted my first mourning cloak on the 21st (I didn’t have my camera with me at the time, though), and I haven’t spotted a comma yet.

The two species are relatively closely related and have a similar strategy that allows them to be present super early in the spring; both overwinter as adults and can feed on tree sap so they aren’t dependent on flowers blooming to be active.

Mourning cloak butterfly — This mourning cloak butterfly was basking in a patch of sunshine in the woods which might be part of why I was able to creep up on it. Their distinctive colors and markings make them pretty unmistakable.

Comma butterfly on willow catkins — This comma butterfly is perched on one of its host plants (plants their caterpillars develop on), willow.

Oak Portrait

We have some pretty cool looking trees in the woods here, but it can be kind of tricky to get photos of them that really show off their unique character. Getting just the right angle on these massive oaks is a challenge, especially in the woods where you have limited options because there are so many other trees around. This tree is amazing looking and I’ve taken pictures of it before, but this is the first time I’ve been satisfied with the results.

Oak tree with twisted branches

Wildlife Photography Requires Patience…

It occurred to me that in one of my last posts ‘Life in a Dead Tree’, I described the bees I found nesting in the tree, and included the best photo I’d managed to take of one of them, which wasn’t very good. I knew at the time that it wasn’t particularly good, but decided it was better than nothing. That didn’t stop me from trying to get a better one next time their nesting season came around. It took me over a month of attempting whenever the weather seemed good for bees to be active, but I finally managed to get the photos I was after. And some of my ‘failed’ attempts were actually kind of cool in their own right.

nest hole of an augochlora sweat bee with bee antennae poking out — At the time I took this picture, I wasn’t sure whether to be amused or disappointed that only the bee’s antennae were visible… I did not have a proper picture of these bees nesting yet, and the bee seemed to have no intention of coming out the rest of the way. It is kind of cute though, and now I can properly enjoy it knowing I eventually succeeded in photographing these bees.

nest hole of an augochlora sweat bee surrounded by wood dust — This is the nest of the bee I waited for for quite a while (in a not very comfortable position) to come out of her nest. All she ever did was poke her antennae out a bit. I spotted this nest thanks to all the ‘sawdust’ piled around the entrance from recent excavations. All you can really see of the bee in this photo is a tiny glint of green in the hole.

native bee excavating a nest in a log — This is not the species of bee I was after, but it was my first decent photo of a bee emerging from a nest in a log. It isn’t quite as sharp as my next set of pictures, but it does show the bee actively excavating her nest (you can see the chewed up wood in her mandibles) which I think is pretty cool.

Augochlora sweat bee at the entrance to her nest — My first clear shot of an augochlora bee exiting her nest!

Augochlora sweat bee on a mossy log — Another bee scoping out a log. I don’t know if she had a nest here, or if she was looking for a spot to build her nest, but she looked pretty next to the yellow-green moss. Her genus name, augochlora, actually translates to ‘gold-green’.

Life on a Dead Tree

There is a particular fallen tree in the woods that I visit frequently, because there is usually something interesting to see there. When it was still standing, I identified it as a wild cherry, and although I’ve seen others, this one was the largest.

wild black cherry tree (Prunus serotina) — The wild cherry tree when it was still standing

A while after the tree fell, I started to notice a lot of different mushrooms growing on it, and I started to make a habit of checking on it to see if there were any particularly photogenic mushrooms there while I was out taking pictures in the woods.

This spring while out in the woods taking pictures of the various wildflowers and trying to determine what kind of pollinators they were providing for, I noticed new interesting things happening with the downed cherry. At first I noticed the metallic green bees darting around the dark, scaly bark. Then I saw something green and shiny, but it wasn’t a bee…

A six-spotted tiger beetle (cicindela sexguttata)

Even though tiger beetles have a bit of a reputation for being hard to photograph, I found the little green sweat bees to be much more difficult, at least in the circumstances the fallen tree offered. They were attracted to the dead tree as a nesting site and I would see them darting around the wood, but almost anytime they landed, they would immediately disappear into the tiny holes in the wood that were the entrances to their nests.

I’m sure there are more creatures than just the ones I noticed making use of the dead tree as habitat, and I’ll continue to notice more as I keep on visiting the tree.

A toad that was sheltering under the bark of the tree

A seedling growing from a crack in the bark. I don’t know if this is a good place for this seedling to be growing, but I thought it was interesting.

Wanders in the Woods

I went for a walk in the woods yesterday, thinking it was about time to check on the witch hazel and see if it was flowering (it was) and kept getting distracted by other interesting stuff around. So, here’s a selection of what I encountered.

This is a plant I had not seen on our property before. Now I have something new to identify.

One of the biggest trees in the woods, an oak, next to an elm with still green leaves, and a maple.

witch hazel flowers — Witch hazel flowers

witch hazel flowers and leaves — In previous years, the witch hazel flowers have appeared after the leaves had dropped, but this year, a few plants still had leaves on them and were flowering anyway. The cold weather started a little more abruptly than usual, and I wonder if that had anything to do with it.

I found this little fuzzy ball growing from a leaf mixed in with the leaf litter. I have no idea what it is. Some sort of gall, maybe? And I found other strange growths on leaves nearby.

This looks like an alder cone crossed with an anemone seedhead, but it seemed to be growing from a leaf in the leaf litter.

Witch Hazel

Back in the woods right now, the witch hazel plants have already shed their leaves for the winter. The plants would be bare now, except for all the flowers on them. Witch hazel is the only plant I know of that does this. The chrysanthemums and wild arugula are still flowering, but they still have leaves, and when they are done, they will die back to the roots for winter. I first noticed the witch hazel in the November after moving here. It was unexpected to see a flowering shrub in the mostly leafless, dormant woods like that, and it caught my attention. I was able to identify it easily and quickly; besides flowering at a very unusual time, its flowers were very unusual and distinctive looking. The only problem was that everything I had identified it by had to do with the flowers. Would I still be able to tell which one it was in the spring? I was curious to see what the leaves looked like, but I would have to wait several months without forgetting where it was. (These days I suppose I would probably just look something like that up, but at the time I wasn’t very experienced with that sort of thing.) I did notice that the tips of the twigs had a sort of zigzag shape where the leaves had been attached and I used that characteristic to identify several more of them in the middle of winter. By spring I still knew which plants were the witch hazels, and got to know what their leaves looked like. Later, when we planted hazelnut bushes, I realized where the ‘hazel’ part of the witch hazel’s name came from: the leaves of the hazelnuts looked almost identical.

The unusual flowering habits of witch hazels do bring up a question, though. What pollinates a plant that routinely flowers in November? Not surprisingly, I am not the first person to wonder about that. It is obviously an insect pollinated plant, but it blooms when there don’t seem to be insects around. And, as it turns out, its pollinator is also nocturnal, so you aren’t likely to see anything pollinating it. It is pollinated by an exceptionally cold hardy moth, which shivers to warm itself on the cold nights when it is active, similarly to the way that honey bees keep each other warm in the winter. Here is a link to an article that explains more about that: https://www.venerabletrees.org/winter-sex-witchhazel/

Category: In the Woods