The Return of the Merlin

Posted on December 21, 2012 by admin

Merlin jess digitally removed (Photo by Donald Drife)

The Merlin is a Blue Jay size falcon. The females are noticeably larger than the males. The males are more colorful possessing a blue-gray back as opposed to the brown back of the female. Like all falcons, they have pointed wings, that they beat rapidly, and a long tail. They lack the brownish color of a Kestrel and never hover to hunt. Their faint “sideburns” and the narrow tail-bands distinguish them from the larger Peregrine Falcon. The “sideburns” on Peregrine Falcons are distinct and their tail-bands are much wider than a Merlin’s.

Merlin showing jess (Photo by Joyce Drife)

The photographs are of a captive female bird kept at the Outdoor Discovery Center in Holland, Michigan. This group sponsors many fine educational programs for all ages including birds of prey photo shoots.

Merlins (Falco columbarius) are increasing their breeding range in Michigan. There are two areas near Grayling, Michigan where I regularly see them. However, I have not found a nest or seen young but the birds are around all summer.

Merlin captive female (Photo by Donald Drife)

Historically, they probably nested in the Upper Peninsula. The first nests found were in the mid-1950s. Their population crashed (along with most raptors) in the 1960s due to DDT and other pesticides. The first Michigan Breeding Bird Atlas survey, during the 1980s, recorded Merlins from 72 townships statewide. The second Michigan Breeding Bird Atlas survey, 2002 though 2008, recorded them from 231 townships. A nest was found as far south as Ottawa County. Old breeding records show that Merlins nested in northern Illinois in the early 1800s. Hopefully, this species will continue to expand its range into southern Michigan.

Don Drife

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Works Cited

Haas, S.C.G. Merlin (Falco columbarius). in A.T. Chartier, J.J. Baldy, and J.M. Brenneman, editors. The Second Michigan Breeding Bird Atlas. Kalamazoo Nature Center. Kalamazoo, MI., 2011. <http://www.mibirdatlas.org /Portals/12/MBA2010/MERLaccount.pdf >.

Works Consulted

Clark, William S., Brian K. Wheeler. A Field Guide to Hawks: North American. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1987

Cuthrell, D.L. Special animal abstract for Falco columbarius (merlin). Michigan Natural Features Inventory, Lansing, MI., 2002. <http://mnfi.anr.msu.edu/abstracts/zoology/falco_columbarius.pdf>

Bladdernut (Staphylea trifolia): the “wind rattler”

Posted on December 9, 2012 by admin

Bladdernut pods

Bladdernut buds

One winter day, when I was about ten-years old, my father took me for a walk in Bloomer State Park. It was a cold, clear day with a slight breeze. We were walking quietly along a trail birding and heard a rattling sound. The sound came from brown, papery pods of a shrub that looked like an escaped ornamental. There were 100s of them hanging on striped branches. The rounded leaf buds were opposite and the twigs had false terminal buds. [Opposite buds are in pairs and false terminal buds can be at the ends of twigs but they have a leaf scar.] After returning home, I looked in The Shrub Identification Book by George Symonds and discovered that they were Bladdernut (Staphylea trifolia) pods.

Bladdernut flowers

The following May we visited the Bladdernut colony again to look for flowers. The flowers are greenish-white bells that hang in panicles. A panicle is a group of flowers on a branched stem. Flowers occur when the leaves begin developing. They are a pretty sight in the springwoods. The opposite leaves have three leaflets and fine teeth.

Staphyleaceae is a small family of approximately 50 species worldwide. Michigan’s only member is the Bladdernut. Its native range in Michigan is south of Bay City. The seedpods are buoyant raising the question of their dispersal via water.

Bladdernut twig

This distinctive plant is great in the garden with its attractive flowers, interesting fruit, and striped twigs. It suckers freely and normally forms a dense clump. It grows in medium shade and does not do well at a dry location. Garwood and Horvitz report that this “is a self-incompatible temperate woodland shrub.” This means two plants are required for heavy seed production. However, they provide data that show some pods form with only a single plant. My single plant produces 10-30 pods a year. Bladdernut is best grown from seeds, but they are double dormant. This means that without treatment the seeds require two freeze cycles before they germinate. Seeds planted in the fall will emerge in the second year.

If you are walking along a river or in a floodplain look (or listen) for this plant. I love to find this plant. Maybe I’ll go to Bloomer Park and see if the colony still exists forty-three years later.

Don Drife

Works Cited

Garwood, Nancy C. and Carol C. Horvitz. Factors Limiting Fruit and Seed Production of a Temperate Shrub, Staphylea trifolia L. (Staphyleaceae). American Journal of Botany, Vol. 72, No. 3 (Mar., 1985), pp. 453-466. Article Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/2443538.

Symonds, George W. D. The Shrub Identification Book. M. Barrows and Co: New York, 1963. [This useful pictorial guide for identifying shrubs is still in print. The scientific names are a little dated but this is a minor detail.]

Wolf’s Milk Slime Mold

Posted on November 24, 2012 by admin

Slime Molds are bizarre life forms that were classified as fungus but are now placed in their own kingdom. At one time, every living thing was placed in either the plant or animal kingdom. Currently, most scientists recognize six kingdoms: Plants, Animals, Protists (slime molds and algae), Fungi, Archaebacteria (bacteria found mainly in thermal vents), and Eubacteria; the remaining bacteria.

Wolf's Milk Slime Mold, (Lycogala epidendrum)

Wolf’s Milk Slime Mold, Cummingston Park, Royal Oak

Slime molds belong in the phylum Myxomycota. John Tyler Bonner writes, “[Myxomycetes are] no more than a bag of amoebae encased in a thin slime sheath, yet they manage to have various behaviors that are equal to those of animals who possess muscles and nerves with ganglia—that is, simple brains.”

The life cycle is complex. An over simplified description of the life cycle is that the spores develop into single cell organisms that then congregate into a fruiting mass producing spores. (If you desire a technical description of the life cycle see the UBC Botanical Garden Website)

Lycogala epidendrum, Wolf’s Milk Slime Mold

Wolf’s Milk Slime Mold (Lycogala epidendrum) is also called Toothpaste Slime Mold. It is circumpolar in the northern hemisphere, ranging throughout Michigan. The fruiting bodies congregate on logs (epidendrum means growing on logs), normally in the fall in Michigan. This is a slow moving slime mold taking days to change shape.

The small size of this slime mold makes it easy to overlook but its bright orange color draws your eye. It is easy to mistake this slime mold for a developing fungus of some kind. After a few days this bright orange color becomes chocolate brown and the slime mold disperses spores. Get out and look for it before the days get too cold.

Wolf’s Milk Slime Mold

Sandhill Crane in Michigan

Posted on November 10, 2012 by admin

A Family of Sandhill Cranes

Michigan’s tallest breeding bird is the Sandhill Crane. Cranes and Great Blue Herons are often confused by beginning birders. Adult Sandhills are gray overall, with a white auricular region (the bird’s facial “cheeks”) and a red cap. The red cap is an area missing feathers so the adults have a bald spot. Young birds lack the white cheeks and red cap being brown overall. Cranes never show the bluish cast of the heron. Sandhill Cranes often fly in a v-formation. Their quick wing upbeat distinguishes them, even at a great distance, from other birds. Closer, one can see their outstretched necks. Herons hold their necks in an “s” shape while flying.

The Michigan subspecies is the Greater Sandhill Crane (Grus canadensis subsp. tabida). The genus is Grus, the specific name is canadensis, and the subspecies is tabida (for Mr. Olsen’s class). Greater Sandhill Cranes are five feet tall and weigh approximately fourteen pounds.

Sandhill Crane with Chick

Birds return to southern Michigan in February and start nesting in March. A normal clutch is two eggs but most pairs successfully raise only one offspring a year. The young can fly in about 70 days. They spend the first year with their parents. It takes five to seven years for the young to reach maturity. Captive birds live as long as 60 years.

Barrows’ prediction in 1912 that the species would abandon Michigan never came true. He writes that the population was stressed because “The Sandhill Crane has been a favorite mark for the rifle, its flesh forms palatable food, and its nesting grounds have been lessened through drainage” (Barrows 12). The federal government protected the Sandhill Crane in 1916. In the 1930s and 40s it nested in just 12 counties. By the 1980s, it bred in 44 counties. The population increased two or three times from the first Breeding Bird Atlas of Michigan (1991) to the second (2011) and it now occurs in every county in the state (Hoffman). With the population increase, more states are considering allowing the hunting of this regal bird. Currently thirteen states have an established hunting season.

It was a red-letter day to see this bird when I was growing up, but now on most trips (during the growing season) to our Grayling cabin we see at least a pair of them. It is still exciting to see a migrating flock of these magnificent birds. I hope that the crane’s population will be maintained for future generations.

Greater Sandhill Crane, Ogemaw Co. Michigan

Sandhill Cranes feeding

Works cited

Barrows, W.B. 1912. Michigan Bird Life. Special Bulletin. Michigan Agricultural College. Lansing, Michigan, USA.

Hoffman, R. 2011. Sandhill Crane (Grus canadensis). In A.T. Chartier, J.J. Baldy, and J.M. Brenneman, editors. The Second Michigan Breeding Bird Atlas. Kalamazoo Nature Center. Kalamazoo, Michigan, USA. Accessed online at: <www.mibirdatlas.org /Portals/12/MBA2010/SACRaccount.pdf >.

Witch-hazel Michigan’s late-bloomer

Posted on October 23, 2012 by admin

Witch-hazel flowers

Witch-hazel (Hamamelis virginiana) is a large shrub or small tree that blooms in the fall in Michigan. It grows in the Lower Peninsula and the western half of the Upper Peninsula. Outside of Michigan, it grows throughout the eastern United States reaching its western limit in Texas and Oklahoma. It is the last of our native woody plants to blossom. The flowers appear in most years after the plant has dropped its leaves. The yellow flowers with their four wiry petals form a pretty sight in the fall woods.

Hamamelis virginiana, Witch-hazel, Michigan

Witch-hazel, Oakland Co., Michigan

Witch-hazel, Tenhave Woods, Oakland Co., Michigan.

The seeds ripen about the same time as the plant flowers. The seedpods shoot the seeds ten to fifteen feet. When I was a boy in Middle School, I had a Witch-Hazel branch with seedpods in my bedroom. (Doesn’t every boy go through this stage?) During the night, I heard a strange “Ping.” The seedpods were drying out and shooting their hard BB-sized seeds against my bedroom mirror.

Spiny Witch-hazel Gall

This plant also produces Spiny Witch-hazel Galls. An aphid crawls into a leaf bud and secretes an enzyme. The irritation causes the plant to produce the gall around the aphid. The aphid reproduces within the gall and the gall provides a food source for the young. The life-cycle is more complex than this involving a secondary plant species host and some broods that are solely females. I cut open a gall from my garden, expecting it to be solid, but instead I discovered it was hollow. Several female aphids (the ones with wings) and at least one male were inside.

I love to see these flowers on their bare branches as I walk though the fall woods. Get out into a rich woods and see if you can find these last flowers of the year.

Spiny Witch-hazel Gall with Aphids

A Small “Big” Tree

Posted on October 13, 2012 by admin

Staghorn Sumac Girth

Staghorn Sumac

Big tree hunting is a great sport. Many people find and report large trees but it is the largest of the normally small species that have always interested me. Record small tree species include a 5-inch diameter Witch-hazel, a 6-inch diameter Highbush-cranberry, a 7-inch diameter Red Elderberry, and an 11-inch diameter Pawpaw. Most people walk by trees that are less than a foot in diameter without ever thinking “big tree.”

Recently I found two large Staghorn Sumacs (Rhus typhina) on the campus of Oakland University in Rochester, Michigan. They are along Pioneer Drive southeast of Pawley Hall. The largest one is approximately one foot in diameter. Staghorn Sumac is a common species in Michigan that normally is just shrub size. It gets the name “staghorn” because the hair on the twigs resembles the velvet on the horns of a stag.

These two are not Michigan state champion size but are close. Champions are determined by a point system. The points equal the height in feet, plus the girth in inches (four-and-a-half feet from the ground), plus one-fourth of the average spread. The Michigan state champion Sumac scores 72 points. I measured the height of the largest Oakland University Sumac as 20-feet (by the stick method), its circumference at 4-feet above ground as 37-inches (the tree forks below the four-and-a-half-feet height) and its canopy spread at 26-feet x 23-feet. It scores 63 points. Currently there is no national champion Staghorn Sumac. National champions must be measured every ten years and our state champion’s data is older. The Oakland tree might qualify as a national champion.

The stick method to estimate tree height involves simple triangulation. You hold a straight stick perpendicular to the ground with your arm parallel to the ground and your hand level with your eye. The height of the stick above your hand must equal the distance from eye to the base of the stick. This forms a right triangle with two 45-degree angles. Position yourself so that when you sight over the top of the stick you see the top of the tree. The distance you are from the tree equals the approximate height of the tree.
The Michigan Botanical Club maintains the state’s big tree list and their website explains methods for measuring trees. The group American Forests maintains the national registry.

You never know what you will find in the natural world by just keeping your eyes open.

Two Large Staghorn Sumacs on Campus of Oakland University, Pawley Hall in Background

Note: Both of these trees have been removed. Updated 8/10/2021

Michigan Frog Weekend

Posted on October 6, 2012 by admin

Green Frog, Cheboygan Co., Michigan

Last weekend I traveled north to the Straits of Mackinaw and it turned into a frog weekend. At Mill Creek State Park we found several Green Frogs (Rana clamitans melanota). Green Frogs are easily identified by their rounded eardrum (called a tympanum), a fold of skin (the dorsolateral fold) extending partway down the body, and a green or yellow upper lip. Females have tympanums that are the same size as their eyes and white throats. Males have tympanums that are noticeably larger than their eyes and yellow throats. The overall color of the species varies; Green Frogs can be yellow, brown, green or combinations of these colors. The morning temperature was cool (low 50s F) so the frogs were not too active and very difficult to see among the vegetation.

Leopard Frog, “Green” Form, Emmet Co., Michigan

Northern Leopard Frogs (Rana pipiens) proved to be common at Wilderness State Park and the population contained many color variations. As I reached the park after lunch, the frogs were active in the heat of the day. Leopard Frogs resemble Pickerel Frogs but the underside of the hindleg is white in Leopard Frogs and yellow or orange in Pickerel Frogs. Leopard Frogs have two rows of roundish, dark spots on their backs. These spots are sometimes banded in a lighter color. Leopard Frogs also often have a spot behind each eye.

Leopard Frog, “Brown” Form, Emmet Co., Michigan

I chased frogs for a few hours, getting many photos of empty sand or plain vegetation (and giving thanks that I was no longer shooting film!) but, finally, I obtained a few passable photographs.

On our way home we stopped at Diane’s Bog and found a Wood Frog (Rana sylvatica). This is a small frog—less than three inches long—with a dark mask, underlined in white, extending from the nose to the tympanum (remember the eardrum). It has a fold of skin partway down its side.

Wood Frog, Oscoda Co., Michigan

When I left home for the weekend I was not thinking about frogs. I have learned that the best way to travel is to just go and keep an open mind to the possibilities. You never know what you can find if you just look.

You’ll be lichen this.

Posted on October 5, 2012 by admin

Xanthoria elegans, Elegant Sunburst Lichen

I found a brilliant orange lichen last weekend along the north shore of Lake Huron. It’s Elegant Sunburst Lichen (Xanthoria elegans). Bird excrement provides the needed fertilizer and the lichen grows in spots under likely bird perches.

Lichens are composed of three elements: algae, fungus, and cyanobacteria. Trevor Goward, the noted lichenologist from British Columbia, once remarked, “Lichens are fungi that have discovered agriculture.” He believes that the fungus benefits the most in this relationship. About 800 species of lichens are recorded from Michigan.

Xanthoria elegans, Elegant Sunburst Lichen
close-up

I know Elegant Sunburst Lichen for a different reason; this is the “space lichen.” The European Space Agency sent this lichen to the International Space Station and exposed it to the vacuum of space. After surviving for 18 months by drying up and going dormant, it began to grow when given water upon returning to Earth. These are tough little plants.

Goldenrod Crab Spiders

Posted on September 13, 2012 by admin

: Male Goldenrod Crab Spider

I recently photographed what I thought was a different species of spider only to discover that it is a male Goldenrod Crab Spider (Misumena vatia). The male’s body is quarter the size of a female and they often hide on the underside of leaves. They feed on insects (sometimes ones that the females catch) or nectar.

Female Goldenrod Crab Spider

Crab Spiders get their name because they resemble seashore Crabs. Their front two pairs of legs are much longer than the back pairs and they often move sideways on a flower in a crab-like manner. They do not spin webs but hunt by sitting still, camouflaged on a flower, waiting for insects and grabbing them with those long front legs. They have excellent eyesight and must be approached carefully to avoid startling them.

Individuals change color (slowly over a few days) to match the flower they are hunting from. Their color palette is white, yellow, and rarely pale pink. Red, blue, and purple are outside of their range. Studies show that the coloration does not correlate with hunting success. White spiders have the same success rate on white, yellow, or even blue flowers (See Brechbuhl, Casas, and Bacher).

The presence of Crab Spiders on flowers does change the pollinators that visit the flowers. Smaller bees avoid flowers inhabited by spiders but visits from larger Bumblebees are unaffected. It is presumed that the larger bees are not preyed upon by the spiders (See Dukas and Morse).

Male (smaller) and Female Goldenrod Crab Spider

Although Crab Spiders spin no web, they still produce silk. It is used as a drop line to escape predators and to cover egg sacs. They hide egg sacs, attaching them by silk to the underside of a leaf and then wrapping the leaf around the egg sac to protect it. The baby spiders are mini-copies of the adults and go through several molts before reaching mature size. Immature spiders overwinter and it is bizarre to see them on a warm day walking on the snow.

If you want more information on spiders, consult Larry Weber’s excellent book Spiders of the North Woods, part of the North Woods Naturalist Series. It is published by Kollath+Stensaas Publishing.

Works Cited

Brechbuhl, Rolf, Jerome Casas, and Sven Bacher. “Ineffective Crypsis in a Crab Spider: a prey community perspective.” Proceedings of the Royal Society 277 (2010): 739-746. Web.

Dukas, Reuven, and Douglass H. Morse. “Crab Spiders Affect Flower Visitation by Bees.” OIKOS 101 (2003): 157-163. Web.

Weber, Larry. “Spiders of the North Woods.” Duluth: Kollath+Stensaas Publishing, 2003. Print.

The Michigan Nature Guy’s Blog

To get people looking at, enjoying, and understanding the natural world around them.

Author Archives: admin

The Return of the Merlin

Bladdernut (Staphylea trifolia): the “wind rattler”

Wolf’s Milk Slime Mold

Sandhill Crane in Michigan

Witch-hazel Michigan’s late-bloomer

A Small “Big” Tree

Michigan Frog Weekend

You’ll be lichen this.

Goldenrod Crab Spiders