Cicadas !

A periodical cicada out of the ground after 17 years and enjoying his salad days. Click to enlarge. 

I walked through a large swarm of cicadas today in the Mid-Hudson Valley of New York. Everywhere I looked, cicadas were flying from perch to perch in the trees. Plants were covered with them, or with their empty skins. Their whirring chirping songs were as loud as New York City traffic on Broadway at rush hour.

A shed cicada skin attached to a leaf. 

The cicadas emerging around New York now are members of a huge group called Brood II that has a geographic range that includes North Carolina, Virginia, New Jersey, New York, and Connecticut. The cicadas are synchronized to emerge in the same year when the local soil temperature is just right.

They crawl out of the ground in an incompletely developed form called a nymph, then attach to a surface and shed their outer skin (exoskeleton) and emerge as adults.  Males fly off to sing in the trees. Females are attracted to the songs. Couples mate. Females lay eggs on twigs. The adults die after about three weeks. In six to ten weeks, the eggs hatch into tiny nymphs and fall to the ground. They burrow down. And there they stay, sucking on roots, until before you know it, 17 years have passed, it is time for the brood to emerge.

The ground was full of holes recently vacated by cicadas. 

I saw them near the Stony Kill Farm Environmental Educational Center in Wappinger Falls. If you want to look for them, drive north on route 90 past the farm with your windows open. When you hear a loud whirring that suggests a giant spaceship overhead, you have found swarmaggedon. Or was that cicadapocalypse?

There were piles of shed skins and dead adults on the ground. 

We'll be back in 2030! :-) 

Baby Robin !

Last week I found a robin's nest in the garden behind my home in Brooklyn. Click on the photos to enlarge.  

The nest was placed under a lamp, where it was sheltered from rain, heated from the light at night, and supported on a sturdy pole. Clever! 

I tiptoed out after dark and found a vigilant parent motionless on the edge of the nest, watching me. I bet she heard me coming. 

This parent is removing a fecal sac that a chick produced, a little membrane-bound package of waste material that is easily carried away and discarded. 

Robin chicks grow fast. Not wanting to disturb them overly much, I returned a week after I took the photos above, and I found this giant baby.

Action shot! A parent brought food and the baby jumped up enthusiastically, looking sparsely feathered. 

Parent and chick in a classic pose. A few days after this photo was taken,  I went to look at the nest and found it empty. Good luck, Baby Robin! 

Common Grackle

The common grackle, Quiscalus quiscula. Click to enlarge.

The common grackle looks uniformly black from a distance, but when you get closer, and especially in the sunlight, you can see its glossy purple head and iridescent bronze back. Grackles are common in New York City.

Grackles forage in low bushes or on the ground for insects, seeds, and fruit. They sometimes show up at picnics to troll for treats. They are willing to try new foods and they don't mind people, so they do well in cities, suburbs, and rural areas.

The common grackle is about 12 inches long, with long legs and tail, slightly down-curved bill, and bright yellow eyes. 

Happy Memorial Day!

A white-throated sparrow enjoying spring in Central Park. Click on the photo to enlarge.

Detail from a bronze plaque in the Brooklyn Federal Building and Post Office, remembering postal workers who served as soldiers. 

Twig-Mimic Caterpillar

I was walking on the path that circles Pakim Pond in the Brendan T. Byrne State Forest in New Jersey last week. I walked into a gossamer thread that I thought was a spider web. I turned out to be a caterpillar's silken support line. I looked down and saw a "twig" sticking out of my shirt. I was fooled into thinking it was a piece of wood. I tried to brush it off, but it stayed put. I looked more closely. It was a caterpillar!

A twig-mimic caterpillar in the genus Lytrosis. Click to enlarge.

The caterpillar in the photo above is standing on four pro-legs (leg-like stumps with grippy hooks) that are firmly latched to my white shirt. Its head end is sticking out. You can see three pairs of tiny legs just behind the head. If you look closely you can see a thread of silk dangling from the head; it's the caterpillar's belay line. The strand would normally help support the caterpillar's head end while it leaned away from a plant stem, allowing it to stay horizontal to the ground in a twiggish attitude.

Looking like a twig helps the caterpillar evade sight-hunting predators. It will eventually become a small brown bark-camoflaged geometrid moth. I took it off my shirt and put it on the plant below. Looks like a little piece of fallen wood, doesn't it?

Nothing to see here. Fallen twig. Move along. 

Happy Mother's Day!

Canada geese, Branta canadensis. Click to enlarge. 

A Walk in the Park

Central Park is full of pleasant spring sights right now. 

American robin, Turdus migratorius. Click on the photos to enlarge.

Raccoon, Procyon lotor. 

Red-eared slider turtles, Trachemys scripta.

Male wood duck, Aix sponsa. 

"It is spring again. The earth is like a child that knows poems by heart." Rainier Maria Rilke