Spiders – Tendrils

A Busy House

The female Chickadee (Paridae) has built her nest. I expect by now the eggs have hatched and both the male and the female are out searching for caterpillars, spiders and insects for their young.

A bit of a timeline: One to two days after the female builds the nest, her eggs are laid. She incubates the eggs for about twelve days before they hatch. All this time the male Chickadee takes care of his mate by bringing her food.

Upon hatching, these new birds are naked and blind but within a week, though still with eyes closed, they are growing feathers. The female now goes out searching for food as well.

At eleven days old they have grown their feathers and have opened their eyes. At two weeks, or just a couple days longer, the fledglings are able to fly short distances. After a couple weeks of guidance and feeding by their parents the juveniles are on their own to face the wide world.

Watching The Blueberry Crop

Eastern Towhee (Pipilo erythrophthalmus)

Eastern Towhees are here in the mountains of central Virginia year round. Their diet is primarily insects, seeds and berries and during the summer they tend, of course, to eat more insects. True bugs, beetles, ants, caterpillars, moths, millipedes, spiders and snails are all on the menu. But there’s something special to me, which I share with them. Those blueberries. This fellow is watching over them. Watching how they are growing. Watching and waiting for them to ripen. Just like I am. I wholeheartedly enjoy sharing the blueberries with the birds. For me, the berries mean pies, pancakes, muffins. For them it means breakfast, lunch and dinner. Glad to share.

Winter Arrival of the Hermit Thrush

Seems every day I’m seeing another of my winter birds. This one, my treasured Hermit Thrush (Catharus guttatus). A medium sized bird with a magical, flutelike song which it doesn’t bring along on its winter visit. It saves those lovely notes for summer, choosing to blend in and not make too much of a noticeable presence while in the black and white landscape of winter.

Out of necessity it also changes its diet, going from being an active hunter of yummy crawly things such as beetles, ants, caterpillars, true bugs, grasshoppers, crickets, spiders, and earthworms to what winter offers up to birds of winter, berries.

You can see in these pictures that the Hermit Thrush enjoys Smooth Sumac berries to dine on. Other berries they enjoy include Elderberries, Pokeberries, Serviceberries, Grapes, and Mistletoe berries. These are plants that I have in my yard or would certainly consider adding, just to invite more winter birds to come visit for the winter.

Skinks

Juvenile Skinks enjoy scampering up and down the cedar siding, and running back and forth across the porches of my cabin as they look for their next meal. It’s like having my own personal pest control company on duty! They eat insects, spiders and other invertebrates. As youngsters, my Skinks sport a cool looking shiny tail of a marvelous blue color that can be detached if the Skink is caught by a predator. AND the tail will continue to wiggle as the Skink escapes, frightening, diverting the attention of, or at least entertaining the predator. AND most of the time the Skink is able to grow a new tail. This one is either a Common Five-lined Skink (Plestiodon fasciatus) or a Broad-headed Skink (Plestiodon laticeps). At this young stage these two species are nearly indistinguishable. Whichever it is, I love having them around.

Red-eyed Vireo

The Red-eyed Vireo (Vireo olivaceus) is a summer resident here at my Virginia cabin. They are constantly reminding me that they’re around, though I seldom see them. Their normal place to be is high up in the tree tops while hunting for their meals, out of sight. Their summer diet is predominantly insects of all sorts, including mosquitoes, flies, caterpillars, as well as spiders and small snails. They’ll also eat plant materials like small fruits, and an occasional flower or leaf bud.

They remind me that they’re up there in the tree tops by singing to me. I use a mnemonic to remember the males’ song. They sing over and over again, “Here I am! Where are you?” Keeping that mnemonic in mind makes it easy to recognize their song. Both the male and the female will participate in their calls which are a Catbird-like “myaah.”

The Red-eyed Vireo spends its breeding season across forests of southern Canada and throughout the woodlands of the northwestern, central, and eastern US. As they migrate they fly long distances at night in groups of up to thirty, sometimes including other species like warblers, tanagers and flycatchers. Their fall migration destination is northern South America and the Amazon Basin.

Eastern Towhee

A large sparrow with a long tail. The Eastern Towhee (Pipilo erythrophthalmus) fills the edges of the woods here with their beautiful song of “Drink your teeeeaa” all day long. For me, a constant companion.

Here in Virginia these Towhees have haunting red eyes but in Florida and northern Georgia they will have light straw colored eyes.

The Eastern Towhee is a bird that is here year-round, scavenging in the undergrowth for whatever it can find. Insects, spiders, snails, berries, millipedes, all could be on the menu.

If your bird feeders are close to the understory of the woods you might be fortunate to find a Towhee under those feeders scratching about for sunflower seeds or mealworms. If they feel safe.

Common Snapping Turtle

Much to my surprise it just showed up one day on a path behind my cabin. A tiny Common Snapping Turtle (Chelydra serpentina). They have a reputation as having a combative disposition but this creature was so little I could hardly think of it in those terms.

A short distance from where I first saw this little critter is where I saw him the second time, in my little man-made pond. And from then on, for five years it was a constant resident of the little pond.

Common Snapping Turtles eat a wide variety of things. Insects, spiders, worms, fish, frogs, small turtles, snakes, birds, crayfish, small mammals, and carrion. But their diet is mainly plant material.

These turtles are almost entirely aquatic and spend nearly all their time in water. They’ll emerge and roam on land during mating season and to lay eggs. That’s about it.

Twenty to forty ping-pong ball-sized eggs are laid in May or June in a shallow depression dug by the female turtle using her hind legs. She choses a well-drained, sunny location for the nest which she covers after laying her eggs and returns to the water.

The sex of these turtles is determined after fertilization. The temperature of the developing eggs is what decides whether the baby turtles will be male or female. Eggs in an environment of 68°F produce only females; eggs maintained at 70-72°F produce both male and female turtles; and those kept at 73-75°F produce only males.

I don’t know what happened to that first little Common Snapping Turtle. Maybe one day another will come by to take up residence in my pond.

Common Whitetail Dragonfly

I’m constantly learning things as I dig through my books and page through various sites on the internet. One of today’s new things is the word to describe the color quality of the abdomen of a male Common Whitetail (Plathemis lydia). That word: pruinose, which means frosted in appearance. Makes me think of blueberries which have this same color quality.

But back to this fascinating dragonfly. It can be found across much of North America, including all 48 of the contiguous United States. They eat flies, midges, gnats, termites, mosquitoes, ants, small butterflies and moths, bees and other insects. And they in turn will become a meal for birds, spiders, praying mantises, robber flies and bats.

Remarkable agility, astounding to watch. Four wings that can each move independently, allows the insect to fly up, down, sideways, forward, and backward without changing its orientation. I am so fortunate to be able to see such things.

Hooded Warbler

Hooded Warblers (Setophaga citrina) have been delighting me here in the mountains for many years. They spend the breeding season in eastern North America, and the winter in Central America and the West Indies.

If you feed the birds during the summer, these birds generally won’t come to your feeders. They spend all their feeding moments gleaning insects and spiders from the leaves of the dense understory. And occasionally showing off by catching a flying insect in midair.

My strategy to get frequent glimpses of these beautiful birds is to provide them with a birdbath, including one that has a dripper. The bird at the birdbath in the picture above is a female Hooded Warbler looking a bit disheveled after taking a dip.

And here a male Hooded Warbler considers taking a dive from the dripper into the water.

And here he is dripping wet. Believe me, birdbaths are quite the draw for birds. My birds really need a birdbath, for my sake.

More Eastern Phoebes

That bobbing of the tail and saying its name makes identification of the Eastern Phoebe (Sayornis phoebe) mighty easy. Many bird songs baffle me, but this one is easy. Just think “fee-bee” (Phoebe) and you’ve got it.

I was delighted as I was refreshing my memory about what Phoebes eat to see that they not only eat flying insects which they capture in mid-air but they also eat spiders, millipedes and TICKS! Yay Phoebes! I can’t find a specific reference to it, but now I’m wondering if they also eat brown marmorated stink bugs. Too bad that they are such solitary birds. I’d love to have a big flock of them around.

Not as exciting as the Phoebe eating ticks and BMSBs but they do sometimes even eat small fish from shallow water. Such a talented bird.

As I look through my images thinking of which to include I see this photo of a Phoebe at one of my birdbaths. This reminds me to mention that as a pair goes through the process of selecting a site for breeding, one of their considerations is having a source of water nearby. That is something that I always try to provide in every season. You’ll get many more birds stopping by to see you with that birdbath set up. All four seasons.