Hawk-Duck Standoff

A typical day in the backyard, the ducks hanging out, inbetween swims in the miniponds and forays to glean whatever they glean from the lawn when it's moist. The largest is the white Pekin duck on the left, with four mostly grown mallard chicks back under the lawn furniture with their mother.

But one afternoon a few days ago, I saw the Pekin chasing the young ducks into the bushes, as if it were bullying them--something I'd never seen the big duck do.

Five or ten minutes later, my daughter looked out the window to see the ducks gone and a hawk perched on the lawn furniture. Never a good sign, if you have urban poultry, but at least it wasn't giving chase to any of the ducks.

It seemed puzzled about what to do next. We ran out, and the hawk flew off, a little smaller than others, and with a beautiful fresh look to the feathers--all the more beautiful because it was flying away without any dinner.

Judging from how the white Pekin duck quickly spots soaring birds overhead, I'd guess it hadn't been bullying the younger ducks but instead herding them to cover, having spied the hawk before any of the rest of us. The big Pekin lumbers about with an exaggerated waddle, and its periodic attempts at flight are reminiscent of the flying machine the chickens build in the claymation film Chicken Run, but it may be playing the role of guardian, just vigilant and intimidating enough to keep the hawks at bay.

Color Begets Color

If you think of a flowering plant as a slow-motion firework, with a summerlong rise up to a shower of color ("Fireworks" is actually the name of a variety of goldenrod), then the goldfinch in this photo is reminiscent of those fireworks that flash in the sky, then send another ring of color out beyond the initial display, like booster rockets. As I approach, the goldfinches rise up out of the cutleaf coneflowers, flashes of gold headed to a nearby tree limb to wait until I leave.

They don't seem to care if the seeds are ripe or not, descending on the seedheads before all the petals have fallen. Being small and lightweight is an advantage when perching on a slim stem.

Other airborne yellows arrive, like this Clouded Sulphur (Colias sp.),

and a tiger swallowtail, relatively common this year, here on a cup plant bloom.

A red-spotted purple (Limenitis arthemis) showed up one day on the boneset.

This yellow-collared scape moth (Cisseps fulvicollis) is a more frequent visitor.

This is the multiplicating capacity of a wildflower garden, to layer interest upon interest. The boneset in particular are like small ecosystems, creating at least a three-tiered food chain of flower, dozens of kinds of pollinator, plus various predators thereof.

Giant Swallowtail Butterfly

Though it's been an awful year for monarch butterflies (more on that soon), the swallowtails have had a good year. I've seen mostly the yellow swallowtails, but this unusual one showed up in the backyard one day last week, ignoring the ocean of wildflowers in favor of a leaf.

Apparently more typical of the south, the giant swallowtail's caterpillars feed on members of the Rutaceae--the citrus family. Since oranges and lemons don't grow in New Jersey, that leaves lesser known members of the Rutaceae, such as the native wafer ash and prickly ash, to serve as hosts in the giant swallowtail's life cycle. I've never encountered either of these host species growing around Princeton, so the butterfly's presence here is a bit of a mystery.

A discussion group at GardenWeb.com mentions a couple possible causes of its occasional appearance hereabouts. One is that a so-called "big flight year" occurs, in which weather conditions cause butterflies to travel more than usual. Another is quoted from Butterflies of New Jersey by Michael Gochfeld - "The larvae and pupae of this species are sold commercially and the resulting adults are often released, rendering suspect any sighting of this species in New Jersey."

Here's a list of New Jersey butterflies, which includes the giant swallowtail.

Mountain Hunting in NJ--The Sourland Mountains

End of the summer, and realizing we hadn't climbed a mountain yet, it was off to the highish hills of New Jersey. There are a few mountains to choose from, if you use the word loosely. Most mountainesque might be the high rise next to the Delaware Water Gap. Closer to home is Baldpate Mountain (highest point in Mercer County!). South Mountain Reservation, sporting hilltop views of the Newark and NY skylines, sounds interesting.

But my daughter and I decided to head up to the Belle Mead Coop for poultry feed and then over to the Sourland Mountain Preserve.

There you find a large parking lot, a pond, a kiosk that actually has a replenished supply of maps, and a trail up into boulder land. Boulders large and small, to climb up or step around, boulders that beg to be sat upon, the better to gaze out upon the others.

The trees, too, like to sit upon the rocks, having little choice, there not being much actual soil.

When first seen, I thought this scene would be rare, but trees are growing upon rocks everywhere.

Black birches are the ones most taken with the boulders.

My daughter caught this incendiary scene,

just before we reached a linear meadow ablaze with Bidens.

I had read of the Roaring Rocks, and we finally found them at the far end of the five mile trail, roaring very quietly. Maybe they roar more loudly when the stream that flows underneath them is swelled by rains. Even without sound effects, they are impressive, and look fun to climb upon if you don't have a small dog that could disappear at any moment into the cracks between them.

On the way back, a sugar maple bent by age and circumstance. Sugar maples in particular gain character with age, reminding me somehow of a pipe-smoking english professor from college days.

I told my daughter that this polka dot boulder field reminded me of 101 Dalmatians. She said it looked more like zombies to her. What will the next generation see?

The linear meadow offered a shortcut back to the parking lot. Most of these right of ways that criss-cross New Jersey, like the one that crosses the Princeton Ridge, are becoming monocultures of mugwort and/or Sericea lespedeza, but this one still has some diversity,

with at least two kinds of native bushclover that I've never seen in Princeton, some towering sunflowers,

Indian grass bending towards the pathway, and the great yellow sea of Bidens.

The walk lasted four hours, though there were cutbacks if we had wanted to shorten it. Just a twenty minute drive, and for anyone who walks the ridge in Princeton alot, whether in Witherspoon Woods, Woodfield Reservation, or Herrontown Woods, the Sourland Mountains Preserve offers many parallels, some new twists, and a fine zigging and zagging through bulked up boulders.

Hickory Horned Devil and Cicada Killer

A couple local cold-blooded residents offer chills and thrills this time of year.

Two weeks ago, my friend Jim sent this photo, wondering if this scary creature has a name. For scale, that's a quarter lying next to it. I told him it looked like a hickory horned devil, and found a post from four years ago featuring two I had found chomping on a small walnut tree in front of the Veblen House. A splendid creature if you can get past the intimidating appearance.

The other, a cicada killer, can be seen in late summer buzzing low to the ground in search of cicadas to grab out of the air. This photo is from three years ago, when there was a thriving colony of them living on one of the traffic islands in the public pool parking lot. The cicadas need to be a lot more worried about these than we do.

Hawks and Hummingbirds

When a red-tailed hawk flew into the neighbor's spruce tree the other day, the good news for the chickens and ducks was that I happened to be outside at the time. Last fall, after the leaves had fallen, we lost a chicken to a Coopers hawk in very traumatic fashion. The day following the attack by the Coopers hawk, I found a big red-tailed hawk perched above the coop in the early morning, as if it were a customer waiting to be served breakfast. The word was out about our tasty pets. It looked like the backyard would be under siege for the duration, requiring that the chickens live the rest of their days in the protective enclosure of the coop. Instead, the hawks stopped coming, and we gradually returned to the liberal and very convenient routine of letting the chickens out in the morning, to forage freely for insects and worms in our fenced-in yard until dusk.

Why this latest hawk flew into the dense branches of the spruce tree isn't clear, but the local hummingbird was not at all pleased. It flew straight towards the hawk, like a tiny missile, stopping three feet from the evergreen tree, hovering, then returning to another tree to perch. I imagined the hawk munching on hummingbird eggs, but it seemed late in the season to be raising another brood. After a few minutes, the hawk shifted to a nearby oak, posed for a photo, endured more harassment from small birds, and then flew off.

Since then, the hawk has not returned, perhaps intimidated either by my presence or the more constant backyard presence of the big white Pekin duck, which seems clumsy and a little silly to us, but may in size and occasional deep quack give the hawk pause. The hummingbird, too, has disappeared, but that may only be because I'm actually looking for it. Far better to be preoccupied with some task, and let the corner of the eye catch flashes of all the winged visitors.

Mosquitoes and Toppled-Tree Ponds

Part of the legacy of Hurricane Sandy, and other severe storms that have buffeted Princeton in recent years, is a lot of new mini-ponds in the woods. Each uprooted tree leaves a depression in the ground where its root ball had been.

Is this minipond megapuddle a mosquito haven or a mosquito trap? Well, that depends.

Depending on the underlying hydrology, one minipond will last much longer than another. Some dry out after a rain, and if it happens within a few days, any mosquito larvae there won't survive to adulthood. In such circumstances, the minpond serves as a trap, luring adult mosquitoes to lay eggs, then pulling the plug on the resulting wigglers.

Other miniponds in the forest will stay filled all summer if there's no drought. They may be in a floodplain with a high water table, or receive steady seepage from a slope. These also can serve as mosquito traps, because their stable conditions allow predators of mosquitoes to get established, like this frog at Herrontown Woods, and the water beetle

floating half submerged nearby.

Water striders that walk on water (not much luck with the photo) are also able predators of mosquito larvae.

The ponds that offer a haven for mosquitoes are the ones that neither stay full long enough to attract and sustain a food chain, nor drain quickly enough. The only way to figure out which is which is to resist the reflexive association of standing water with mosquitoes, and take a closer look.

The Summer of the Cardinal Flower

Until this year, cardinal flower was a rare sight in the Princeton landscape, surviving in small clusters along the shores of the DR canal, or showing up as a solitary plant lost in deep forest along the Princeton ridge. Plant it in a garden, and it might return the next year, or not, according to its whim.

Those solitary plants are back, like this one in the boulder field at Herrontown Woods. But with plentiful rain, relatively cool weather, and occasionally some human assistance,

cardinal flower has turned the landscape red for much of the summer, from the marshy uplands of Herrontown Woods* in the east,

to the replanted shores of the upper Mountain Lake in the west,

and many points inbetween. Most are wild, like a big stand I hear can be found downstream of Harrison Street along the canal. But a few are planted, such as this streambank on Princeton's campus, in the hidden valley next to Washington Road, where a stream restoration was completed.

The Friends of Princeton Open Space managed to grow hundreds of new plants this summer from the tiny seeds of cardinal flower, the main challenge now being to get them all in the ground.

Even cardinal flowers such as this one planted as part of the parking lot installation at Westminster Choir College, are hanging in there, waiting for someone to do a careful weeding.

And this specimen, planted long ago and given little or no attention among the hundreds of other wildflowers, is flourishing in our mini backyard tributary of Harry's Brook.

The combination of human intervention and unexpected natural abundance is heartening, even more so because plants such as cardinal flower add so much to the quality of life for hummingbirds and other Princeton residents.

*Thanks to Sally Curtis for the second photo in this post.

Inkberry Thwacking Alert

If you plan to head south on the Harrison Street sidewalk towards the bridge over Carnegie Lake, be advised not to wear a nice shirt. A branch of inkberry, which travels in professional circles as Phytolacca americana, but also has been known to go by the more humble name "pokeweed" or simply "poke", has grown out over the sidewalk. Its berries are ripening, and when they do,

as these in the photo have, it's highly likely that any passerby, perhaps distracted by the view or by cars barreling by, or by interesting thoughts, as Princetonians often are, will get thwacked in a way that shirts do not easily forget.

Countless Yellows

Pollinators have been having a field day in our backyard, where yellow dominates every which way you look. It would be easy to assume that all these flowers are the same species, but at least seven different kinds of wildflower are contributing to the overall effect.

Cutleaf coneflower (Rudbeckia laciniata) is the most prolific.

Common sneezeweed (Helenium autumnale), mixing here with the purple of ironweed, doesn't make you sneeze, and it's not common. I've seen it twice in all my explorations of Princeton open space. It has shorter, notched petals and a yellow center.

Tall tickseed (Coreopsis tripteris), bought at either the Bowman's Hill or DR Greenway plant sale and seen growing wild only three times in my life, has distinctive leaves,

divided into three leaflets (thus the "tripteris" in the latin name).

Cup plant (Silphium perfoliatum) is the tallest, reaching 10 feet, rising over the lateflowering thoroughwort in the background. A hummingbird, normally drawn to tubular flowers, was taking sips from these one day.

All the other flowers look like a sunflower. This actually is one. There are many species of native sunflower, many of which spread aggressively underground. Each spring I swear I'll pull every last one out, but a few always survive, to perpetuate the cycle of summer pleasure and spring toil.

Black-eyed Susans are bred for looks. They're of no interest to pollinators,

who prefer the wild, unbred variety.

All the different versions of yellow may seem redundant, but diversity is the basis of resiliency and continuity. Different yellows bloom at different times, claim different ground. One may cater to a pollinator's shape better than another, or thrive in weather that causes others to languish.

Scarce Native Euonymus Found

One of the finer native shrubs you'll almost never see in the wilds of Princeton is Strawberry Bush, also known as Hearts-a-Bustin', or Euonymus americanus. Perhaps without a ten foot square colony persisting in Herrontown Woods, you wouldn't see them at all. These green capsules don't look like much, but later in the fall they'll turn dark red and burst open, revealing bright orange seeds. That's the ornamental part.

The shrub's undoing has been its position high on the list of deer's preferred foods. This one patch survives, badly chewed but with enough leaves to sustain growth and a few flowers, partly because some of the stems have grown high enough to escape the deer's browsing.

Spicebush, another shrub that survived intense browsing pressure only by having a single stem high enough to escape the deer, has made a dramatic recovery in Princeton's woods since deer numbers came down. But deer much prefer the taste of Hearts-a-bustin' to spicebush, and so the native euonymus still gets hit hard even as deer numbers have dropped and other forest understory vegetation has recovered.

I had encountered this rare patch a couple years ago, but hadn't been able to find it again. Only when a few of us recently began clearing trails at Herrontown Wood, which involved cutting down hundreds of the highly invasive Winged Euonymus (also called burning bush, or Euonymus alatus) did I come across it again. It's an excellent example of how an exotic species (winged Euonymus) that is inedible to deer can dominate whole hillsides, while the heavily browsed native euonymus shrub becomes vanishingly rare.

With some careful propagation, along with continued investment by Princeton in keeping the deer population in balance, this shrub could once again populate our woodlands and gardens.

Search for Monarchs--Nature Walk This Sunday

This Sunday at 10am, I'll lead a walk along the DR Canal towpath, beginning at Washington Rd. and walking towards South Harrison Street. Native wildflowers are at their late summer peak along the nature trail loop near Harrison St.--one of the perks of finding yourself in Princeton in late August. If time allows, we'll head up to the university stream restoration, which is packed with cardinal flowers right now.

You can park on the West Windsor (south) side of the canal, in the lot next to the canal on Washington Rd.

Meanwhile, jog your memory. Has anyone seen monarchs this summer? I saw this one in my backyard in early July. Saw another a couple days ago at Mountain Lakes Preserve, in the meadow we planted years back with summer wildflowers. A neighbor says she saw a few. That's it.

There is reason to be worried. All the information I could find online suggests that monarchs are not recovering their numbers during their multi-generational migration north this summer. Winter numbers in the mountains outside Mexico City were down 60% from two years prior. Last year, drought and changing farm practices made for a hard summer. This year, cool temperatures have slowed migration northward. An early August post in Michigan reported low numbers. An in-depth analysis by MonarchWatch is not promising. This link gives a good sense of where the monarchs are. This link offers more up to date news, and a way to report sightings.

The western population of monarchs, which overwinters not in Mexico but along the California coast, isn't doing any better. A Scientific American post states that the western U.S. population has "shrunk from over a million individuals counted at 101 sites in 1997 to less than 60,000 at just 74 sites in 2009."

Click here for past PrincetonNatureNote posts on monarchs, or type the word monarch into the search box at the top of this webpage.