The day after I saw the beaver, a even more special encounter..
I saw two otters at a distance, swimming, diving, and apparently fishing. I swiftly headed in their direction, towards a spot which they often use in the wintertime, and just before I reached it I glimpsed one, through the trees, hauled up on a rock devouring a fish. There was a space between two branches at knee height, so I crouched down, slowly, and took these pictures.
It was in deep shade, with the sunlit water at its back, but the photos I hope still give a sense of its pleasure in the meal, and the power of its jaws.
I think it sensed my presence, but it was hungry, so it finished its meal:
The fish, I am told, is a hornpout, another name for the Brown Bullhead, a type of catfish.
In maybe six years of watching otters on this pond, I have never before seen one out of the water eating a fish close by. St. Cuthbert, the patron saint of otters, was watching over me. *
PS St. Cuthbert was a 7th century Northumbrian monk. The historian Bede tells that Cuthbert used to pray standing waist-deep in the freezing North Sea, and the otters used to come and lie on his feet to warm them, then dry them with their soft fur.
Mammals are the hardest things to see in our northern woods. But it’s been a good month for furry creatures, so I thought I’d show you a few.
I have been very worried about our beaver pond, because the water levels are extremely low, and it’s not clear that the dam is being maintained. But this week I saw a beaver, out of the water (rare), sunbathing on dry land in broad daylight, with glossy healthy-looking fur. It was there two days in a row in the same spot at 9am. It must have heard me, but it was far out in the pond on a mound, and felt safe enough to ignore me.
It was grooming too, using its webbed hind feet for a good scratch:
When it eventually moved on, the tail was the last evidence of its presence as it headed off to the right into the grasses:
As I walked on, I crossed a tiny stream that flows into the pond, and to my delight there was a small dam, freshly constructed.
If you look carefully, past the dam, on the righthand shore, there is a sort of landing, where the beaver has been bringing sticks and stripping the bark for a snack.
[I recently posted about slugs eating mushrooms. This is episode two, so to speak, of a series about a mushroom benefiting other species.]
Two Blue-winged Rove Beetles, Philonthus caeruleipennis, were crawling around on the cap of a wine-dark russula mushroom.
Like all 68,000 species of Rove Beetles, their electric-blue wing covers are tiny, leaving most of their body exposed.
The body is jointed and was often curled up like the one on the right::
It looked as though they were eating the mushroom:
except that the chewed up flesh was left lying there, apparently not swallowed. They disappeared periodically into a hole they had excavated in the mushroom.
I took lots of photos, then came home and did some reading. Most Rove Beetles are predators, not mushroom-fanciers. Some do create brood dens by digging out a cavity for their young, but not this species. It seemed they must be hunting, but the beetles are only 0.5″ long, and their prey will perforce be smaller still, and hard to see. Finally, though, I realized that one of my photos contained proof: the beetle below has caught a tiny insect in its jaws.
Apparently being only 1/2″ long does not preclude being a hunter, so long as your prey is even smaller. As Shakespeare said, “Though she be but little, she is fierce. “
PS I do not know what insect had been caught by this Rove Beetle, but a variety of small insects feed on mushrooms as they age. Here are two 0.2″ Pitch-black Collared Ants, Aphaenogaster picea, feeding on a different decaying mushroom:
and a Slender Springtail, Lepidocyrtus paradoxus, 0.06″ long, which was sharing a Russula mushroom with a slug:
And smallest of all, these tiny flies, about .04″ long, fruit-fly sized, on a decaying red mushroom.
As a change from fungi and bugs, I thought you might like a few birds!
The Broad-winged Hawks were breeding by a small pond in our woods. This is a fledgling, still being fed by its parents, and it spent hours on a branch calling insistently for food:
I recorded its plaintive high-pitched call here:
It hoped the pine cone might be edible, but it was out of reach:
It knew I was there, but although it could fly short distances, but it stayed put:
Two weeks later, it was still around, but most of the calling had stopped, and it flew much more:
By the same pond, a heron was hunting in the reeds:
It flew up when I moved:
A mudlarking Solitary Sandpiper caught some sort of crayfish:
In the branches above, two young Bluejays played:
A Ruby-throated hummingbird gorged on a pond-side clump of Touch-me-not (Impatiens capensis) flowers, aka orange jewelweed:
Back in the garden, a Grey Catbird had a scarlet berry trophy, but a female Northern Cardinal landed close by and disturbed its feeding:
In shock, it dropped the berry:
And a song sparrow hopped along the stone wall.
Nothing rare, but being surrounded by such creatures brings me happiness.
The iNaturalist app (iNat) has transformed how I and many others interact with nature. BiN (Before iNat) I would see something, and spend hours with one of a shelf-full of books trying to work out what I had seen. Now, I photograph it, enter a location, and show iNat the picture. And it knows! Or at least it gives me a shortlist of possibilities. It also shows me a map of where else it has been seen. Occasionally, mainly for small insects, it turns out it has hardly ever been seen in Maine, and I think, proudly, that I have documented a rarity. But have I??
Numbers can be low for many reasons other than real rarity; here are some of those reasons:
a thinly populated area, with few observers, true of my corner of Maine
it is only just starting to colonize an area, for a variety of reasons, so it may be locally rare but globally common
it lives in inaccessible environments such as marshes, or high in trees
it is drab and commonplace, so no-one thinks to submit an observation (house spider, ant)
it is hard to see and photograph, because it is very tiny, or well-camouflaged, or never stops moving
its numbers are indeed dropping, for environmental reasons such as climate change or habitat loss
I’ll show you a “rarity” or two, but hang onto that scepticism. One encouraging (but not at all conclusive) indication of rarity is that most of them don’t even have a common name! They have all been recorded 5 or fewer times in Maine. I’ve ranked them by the total number of observations, starting with the ones MOST often recorded, and ending with what might be the rarest:
Harmostes fraterculus has 1161 total observations, 5 in Maine. It is on a Common Boneset flower.
This is compared to 5800 for the closely related Harmostes reflexulus, including dozens in Maine:
Fourteen-spotted Leaf Beetle, Cryptocephalus guttulatus, has 667 total, only 1 other in Maine. This seems to be the extreme northern edge of its range. A result of climate change?
Stictopleurus punctiventris has 198 total observations, mainly in Canada. Only 5 others in Maine, 4 of them this year.
Pissonotus basalis has a mere 29 total observations, from Tennessee to Nova Scotia. None in Maine, except for me. This seems to be the best candidate for a real rarity, but it is very, very tiny, 3mm or o.1″and it also moved fast, so who knows.
To put all this in context, Maine has 370,421 observations of 6114 species of insects, and the most common observation, the Monarch Butterfly, has 4,523 observations. I suspect it would have far more but everyone knows what they are looking at, so they do not think to ask iNaturalist.
Do try it, it is a wonderful app, and you are contributing to citizen science when you upload an observation.
I spent the last three weeks in England, and my first day back in Maine is always special. I settle down into this magical place with a sigh of delight and comfort. Here’s what I saw and heard that first June day: nothing dramatic, but the fabric of my world.
A chipmunk, grooming, not bothered by me so, long as I stayed in my chair and sipped my wine:
Sheep Laurel, Kalmia angustifolia, in flower by the beaver pond:
A minute scarlet jelly fungus, Tulasnella aurantiaca, on a rotting log:
Two garter snakes on my garden wall, a favorite place when the granite has been warmed by a day of sun. Only one was willing to pose:
with sleek bronzed scales:
As evening fell, there were fireflies by the small vernal pool in the field, impossible to photograph, but like having fairies in the garden. The flashes are made by this Say’s Firefly, Pyractomena angulata.
After dark an Eastern Whip-poor-will, Antrostomus vociferus, called from right outside my window. A sort of nightjar, their scientific name reflects the fact that they are very, very loud, but I was delighted to hear it because they have become quite rare, classified as Near Threatened.
It is in the same place every evening, and one dusk it started up while it was still light, so I went out to try and see it. It flew up, and away, and I was sorry I had disturbed it, but it was back the next night. They nest on the ground, and I have looked, to no avail.
And then, at about 4am, a fox barked, sharp and rasping, very close to the house.
A wild and savage sound to welcome me home.
PS In London, foxes wander round Brompton Cemetery in broad daylight:
But here in Maine they are usually wary and I have never heard one bark by the house before.
PPS Google AI produced this excellent summary of how the firefly’s light flash is made:
“Fireflies produce their signature glow through a chemical process called bioluminescence, which operates in a specialized organ called a lantern in their abdomen. This reaction is highly efficient, converting nearly 100% of its chemical energy into light without producing heat. [1, 2, 3]
The mechanism involves four key components mixing in the insect’s light cells (photocytes): [1, 2]
Luciferin: A light-emitting compound.
Luciferase: An enzyme that acts as a catalyst to speed up the reaction.
ATP (Adenosine Triphosphate): The fuel for cellular work.
When the firefly takes in oxygen, the luciferase enzyme facilitates the binding of luciferin and ATP. This oxidation process creates an unstable, high-energy molecule. As this molecule quickly drops back to a lower energy state, it releases the excess energy as a visible flash of light. [1, 2]”
[My final Costa Rica blog post, I think.! Then back to Maine.]
On the Pacific side of Costa Rica, we saw two juvenile White Ibises (or if you prefer, ibes (Latin), ibides (Greek)!), Eudocimus albus. They were hunting for crustaceans in the shallows of a small river:
Their eyes focus on the tip of their beak, but they mostly forage by touch. The left-hand one found something:
and a tussle ensued:
The original finder hung on, and brought up a crayfish:
Drifting around the canals on the Caribbean side, in Tortugero National Park, there was a diverse heron population. My favorite was the Boat-Billed Heron, Cochlearius cochlearius. It has large eyes, and is mainly nocturnal:
It gets its name from the keeled bill:
The unusual bill is used as a scoop: the bill is lowered partly underwater and the bird walks forward, thrusting it in front. No other heron species does this.
We saw many Little Blue Herons, Egretta caerulea. As juveniles, they’re purest white:
poking around on a fallen tree amongst the bromeliad plants:
but more skittish that the Boat-billed Herons:
As they get older, their virginal white becomes splotchy:
until it is entirely displaced by the adult purplish slaty blue grey:
The Bare-throated Tiger Heron, Tigrisoma mexicanum, hung around the dock. This is not a wall-painting, but a real live heron:
From time to time it lifted its head, and gave forth its call:
They sing especially at dusk or dawn, and in the breeding season: listen to this video, which I’ve placed on YouTube in the hope that works (let me know if it doesn’t): https://youtu.be/pwoeHLOaHwM
Perhaps the most technicolor bird was this denizen of the littoral vegetation, the Purple Gallinule, Porphyrio martinica:
Like its drabber cousin, the Gray-cowled Wood Rail, Aramides cajaneus, it walks on floating vegetation and overhanging bushes:
PS Costa Rica’s location means it often serves as the southernmost part of the range for North American Species, like the White Ibis, and the northernmost part of the range for South American species, like the Gray-cowled Wood Rail. But yet other species are limited to Mexico and Central America, like the Bare-throated Tiger heron.
I tend to think of chipmunks as seed eaters, whether from my bird feeder, or straight off the plant. I’ve also posted in the past about them eating my flower buds (grrr..), and adult beetles. The other day (spring here in Maine, after a long hard winter), I saw one sniffing the lawn at the edge of my flower bed:
Then it began to dig, enthusiastically, until its head was underground:
Success. It came up with a grub, which it seemed to find tasty:
The earth on its whiskers, and the hole at its feet, are evidence of the excavation:
In early spring, they’re desperate for protein after a diet of nothing but seeds and nuts all winter. The beetle grubs are beginning to move, and the chipmunks use smell, hearing, and tactile cues via their sensitive noses, to find these grubs. Just so long as it chooses to remove the kind of grub that gardeners dislike, it’s a win-win situation.
So one poor grub didn’t get the chance to grow into a beetle of some kind, but the same day, getting my vegetable beds ready for planting, I disturbed this emerald Six-spotted Green Tiger Beetle, Cicindela sexguttata:
It has large white mandibles, visible here, and hunts for tinier insects and spiders. You’d think that dazzling coloring would be dysfunctional for a carnivorous predator like this, but apparently not. It is quite common, about 1/2″ long, and is easy to see because it likes sunny patches, but it moves fast and rarely stays still, so it’s hard to photograph.
[I’ve been watching my otters as usual, and I am fairly sure I have been peeping in on how they meet up and find a match. Many of these photos are from a long way off, but they nonetheless tell a story that I hope you will find convincing.]
Most of the winter, if I see otters together I assume they are a mother and last year’s young. They behave like puppies, rolling around, diving in, and playing, often fishing out of the same hole in the ice.
Recently their behavior has changed. I haven’t seen two otters together in a while, and when there are two they occupy separate holes and keep their distance.
A few minutes earlier, there had been only one, using the righthand hole, emerging and walking/sliding a short way off to poop. Then he dived and came up in the lefthand hole, where he stayed. Suddenly, a second otter appeared in the right hand hole. He came out and looked towards the other otter with interest.
Then he went over to where the first otter had pooped and rolled, and had a good sniff:
and a roll:
Both otters then continued to fish from their separate holes for a while. This was slightly untypical behavior, but I didn’t think much of it, till today.
At the far end of the pond, on a warm and very gloomy day, were two otters together. One went off to poop by a large rock, and on its return the other one went off to the same place and used the exact same spot. Nothing very unusual about that.
But when they got back together, things got interesting.
One of them spent some time smelling the other one’s head and neck closely:
At one point the right-hand one seemed to bite the neck of the other one, who wasn’t too pleased, but didn’t move away (no photo!). Then the left-hand one rolled over:
and cosied right up:
A little later, they put their heads together:
Time for a nap:
I am not sure I am interpreting all this right, and I will never know, because I had to leave, and now I am away for several weeks. It is the mating season for otters, so I could be right. Males do bite females’ necks during courtship, and rolling around is typical too (but they roll all the time anyway!) One slight doubt: females are about 20% smaller than males but these two don’t seem to have much size difference?
By the time I get back the ice will almost certainly have melted, and any courtship will have long since been consummated, so I end with a link to the only video I could find of river otters mating. It is very, very long, but around six minutes in you can see a commotion in the water, where clearly something is going on, and then they emerge from the water onto land, already conjoined, and making charming chirping sounds. From then on they stay on land, so you can watch and listen for a while if you want.
I have read that they mate in the water only, but other sources say it can be in the water or on land, and this video confirms that!
Minks and otters are both Mustelids, a family of long slender mammals whose name comes from the Latin for weasel, mustela, which in turn by some accounts originates from the Latin mūs + tela for “mouse-javelin”, named after their long elegant shape. They are fierce predators, and will eat anything smaller than themselves.
I watched an otter poking around near a large rock, pouncing on something invisible under a small bush, checking out the mess left by some earlier visitor, and then performing the usual bowel evacuation dance.
Usually they fish under the ice, emerge to eat their catch, perhaps defecate, and go straight back under.
I kept watching, and then a dark shape appeared in the corner of my left eye moving fast away from the rock area. I assumed the otter had surfaced at a new spot, and so I started videoing. But it was small to be the otter, and all dry, whereas the otter had been fishing, and was wet. I wondered if it was a mink?
From time to time it paused and looked backwards, but mostly it was bounding at a fair clip. There was 5″ of fresh snow on top of a much deeper base layer, so it was heavy going at times:
especially when it hits drifts near the lodge:
Seven minutes later it had run nearly 1/4 mile down the pond, stopping occasionally, and disappeared at the base of a beaver lodge. (It had started close to the lodge in the distance in the photo below, and ended up at the much closer lodge on the right.)
So I moved as close to the lodge as I could and watched. Something moved at the top:
I zoomed in, and realized I was being watched by a mink, all glossy brown and fluffy, with a white patch just visible under its chin:
So what was going on? I think the meter-long otter had scented and disturbed the half-meter long mink, which had run for its life. Otters are known to occasionally eat mink, especially if their territories overlap.
This one had found a safe vantage point, and lived to fight another day. By the next morning, it had left the beaver lodge, occasionally giving up and simply tunneling through the deep snow (my snowshoes sank in a full foot); the tunnel between the two arrows below was ten feet long.
PS Mouse-javelin may well be “folk etymology”, and the real source of the word may be more pedestrian. The suffix -ella is diminutive and familiar, as in Cinderella (or indeed Nutella!) so the ending may be a version of that. If you’re curious, there’s lots of ideas out there on the interweb!
