Toad, Tiger Swallowtail and Puffballs

While my husband mowed the grass this past weekend – I took the compost bucket out to the pile and swept the deck (including the stairs down to ground level). The first surprise was at the compost pile: an American Toad. It blends in with the sticks around the bin.

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It’s possible that the toad’s ‘house’ is a cavity under the compost bin since that is where it headed as I tried to get closer. It’s fun to think about the toad being under my daughter’s old turtle sandbox which is about 30 years old and has a great second act as a compost bin/ (maybe)toad home.

I found a tiger swallowtail carcass amongst the leaves on the deck as I was sweeping. It was missing some parts (like the abdomen), but I saved it for some later photography. I see these butterflies frequently in our yard. The tulip poplar tree is a food plant for their caterpillars, and we have a large one at the edge of the forest.

After I finished sweeping, I noticed a white object – about the side of a tennis ball in the grass my husband had just mowed. When I looked at I more closely I realized it was a puffball. There was a slash in the ‘ball’ and it was disconnected from the ground…damage from the lawnmower probably.

There was another tiny puffball nearby that was still attached to the ground and an older one that had been slashed earlier or may already released spores.

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Back to the Tiger Swallowtail….

I took close-up picture then got out the jeweler’s loupe to look at the scales.

The wings were battered (missing pieces, some scales rubbed away) so this was not a newly emerged butterfly when it died. The scales that remain are still vibrant….tiny jewels even after death.

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Unique Activities for Yesterday:

Two tiny leaves on the sweet potato. The sweet potato sprout I planted in the front flowerbed now has two tiny leaves. It appears to be getting comfortable in its new place – set to grow rapidly. The trick will be to keep it moist enough during the hot days we have in the forecast for the rest of this week.

I was checking the plant when I went out to do another round in the yard using the ‘fill the wheelbarrow’ metric. It was a tough hour since my first task was sweeping the driveway. Acorns are hard to sweep into a pile because they roll! And the ones that have been run over by our cars are in pieces that don’t sweep up easily either; the little bit of curve they have seems to help them stick to the surface. I stopped before the wheelbarrow was full this morning…deciding that an hour was enough as the temperature climbed.

Training at Belmont

There was a volunteer training session for the 5th grade BioBlitz field trip at Belmont led by Howard County Conservancy a week or so ago. The short hike back to the woods…to an area along the trail where water seeps out of the ground to create a small stream…gave us an opportunity to see how easy it is to find interesting organisms to document. The trees are obvious.

Looking more closely there are things like mushrooms growing on a moss-covered log, macroinvertebrates in the water,

Crawly things (millipedes, worms, termites, insect larvae, etc.) under logs that can be rolled and sometimes frogs/toads that jump and show themselves. In our case it was a small American toad.

Sometimes even the texture of tree bark can be interesting. This beech tree has wrinkles!

It was a ‘in a few minutes’ type of event…so much found, quickly. We could spend the whole time documenting what we found in that small area. It helps that there is water…since we haven’t had much rain recently and some longs that were mossy and full of fungi last spring are brown right now.

Ten Little Celebrations – September 2019

September was a transition month…the end of the Wings of Fancy exhibit and the gearing up for the Howard County Conservancy’s fall field trips for county schools. That overall theme carried over to almost all the little celebrations I’m featuring in this month’s post.

Beginning yoga. I was surprised that I could do some of the poses with relative ease….and others with a little practice. It’s surprising how quickly the benefits begin to be noticeable.

Question Mark Butterfly. I was thrilled to notice the butterfly in the mulch at Brookside Gardens when its wings were open. I would have never seen it had its wings been closed. I celebrated a second time after I got home and figured out what kind of butterfly it was.

Mount Vernon. What a place for a volunteer appreciation day…and the weather was perfect! I celebrated the place and the people I was meeting all day long.

Longwood Gardens. The place is always special – because of what we see there during our visit and the memories of other visits.

Toad near the stream. There are always those serendipity events that make an ordinary hike extraordinary.  During one of our training sessions at Belmont we hiked to the small stream….and were finding mushrooms and moss and macroinvertebrates….and then a small toad jumped into our midst! Being naturalists…we all celebrated.

Large monarch caterpillar. My milkweed didn’t have many caterpillars this year…but one morning when I looked there was a large one (obviously had been there eating). I celebrated that he was probably big enough to make a chrysalis.

Casemaker caddisfly. We’ve had almost no rain for the past month or so and the stream was low…but we found several casemaker caddisfly larvae! They looked like a small clump of debris at first….and then they moved. It’s good to see living things in the water even when there is not much water around.

Carrot cake. I was celebrating something but the carrot cake itself overwhelmed whatever I was celebrating. Yummy!

Wings of Fancy. The next to the last volunteer shift in the Wings of Fancy exhibit was a light day for visitors and I celebrated some quiet time with the butterflies.

Day at Little Patuxent River. High schoolers in the river….interested and focused. The water was low but they found some macroinvertebrates and they were so organized in the chemical tests of water quality (my station for this field trip) that we finished everything with a little time to spare. Celebrating high schoolers!

Fall Yard Work – Part II

The rain held off last week, so I got 2 rounds of yard work. I’ve already posted about the first one. The second round started with me taking the kitchen scraps and a torn-up pizza box back to the compost bin. I noticed an Eastern American Toad on the way back to the front of the house. I managed to get close enough to get a picture of it with my cell phone before it hoped away.

I finished getting the day lily leaves cut from the front flower bed along with some weeds; that totaled about half a trash can full.

I decided to try the leaf blower to collect and slightly shred leaves. It worked great on the drive way and the gutter at the street but just OK on the front yard. Some of the oak leaves on the yard were too damp to be picked up easily. The leaves from the bag the filled up the rest of the trash can to go back to the compost bin. At the compost bin, I mixed everything up and made holes to connect the layers with the pitchfork…then watered the pile since I wasn’t sure how soon it would rain again. Cardboard and paper shreds soak up the water and help the compost ‘cook.’

The next activity was picking up sticks from around the oak tree; it self-prunes so there are always sticks around it. I collected an armload of sticks and took them back to the brush pile. I don’t put them in the compost because it takes so long for them to decompose without somehow reducing them to small pieces. One stick had a flower like fungus growing on it.

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I took a closer look at the oak tree trunk again and discovered a largish ant. I think it is a False Honey Ant.

The highlight of the morning in terms of wildlife started out as a mystery. I was looking at the lichen on the oak tree and noticed a piece that moved! It wobbled a bit but stayed on the trunk. When I put a leaf in front of it, the movement stopped completely.

I’ve marked the first picture. Can you see it in the others? It is a lacewing larva! I’ll be looking for these little critters from now on. They have great camouflage.