Skinks

Walk slowly through the forest and you’ll perceive scurrying along the floor. If you’re eyes are quick enough, you’ll catch a glimpse of a reptile tail as it disappears beneath the leaf litter. Sometimes that slither you detect, and the slender tail you catch sight of is a little snake, but more often than not, it’s a lizard called a skink.


There’s a reason these sleek, smooth-scaled herps get mistaken for snakes: the two groups have some similarities. Other than having ear holes, the skink’s head looks just like a snake’s head. The skink’s body is streamlined and – at first glance – you might overlook those telltale legs and feet.


There are six species of skinks in Louisiana. One is found in southeastern parts of the state. Another prefers open fields. That leaves four kinds of skinks scurrying through the forests of Northwest Louisiana: coal, ground, broad-headed, and five-lined.


With an electric-blue tail, the young five-lined skink is by far the most visually stunning lizard in the forest. Obviously designed to make a predator think twice, that shockingly colored tail appears to be a bluff. After a few years the bright blue fades. The five lines fade, too, and an older individual can be mistaken for its broad-headed cousin.


Five-lined skinks are nesting now. To see them in action, scan the forest floor for fallen trees, roll a few logs back, and have a peak. You may discover a mother skink guarding a clutch of a dozen or more eggs. She will stay with them for the next few weeks until they hatch, and then she’ll eat the ones that don’t.




It’s hard out there for a skink. Raccoons, possums, foxes, snakes, and birds are all looking to make a meal out of her and her babies. So, after you've found her, please be kind and roll the log back into place.

Here are a few interesting web resources to explore:

The digital morphology library allows you to examine the animal’s skull inside and out.

Brandon’s Herb Adventure is a series of You Tube videos showcasing reptiles and amphibians found in the Pensacola, Florida area. Brandon is a 15-year-old, walking, talking reptile and amphibian field guide.

If you want a list of all the herps in Louisiana, this one from the Louisiana Gulf Coast Herpetelogical Society, is in a nice portable format, and includes both scientific and common names.

If you're old school like me and want a book to flip through, this one is the most complete resource available for the state (although it's out of print and in limited supply, and old enough that some of the scientific names have changed since its publication).

First of Season

“First of Season” or “FOS” is a notation in a birdwatcher’s records that highlights when migratory birds return from their winter vacations. Baltimore Orioles breed all across the eastern and central United States, from the Dakotas to Maine, and as far south as Louisiana. When they leave us in the fall, they go to southern Mexico, the southern tip of Florida, all the Caribbean islands, and as far south as the northern sections of Venezuela and Colombia. Then they come back in the spring…and the first one I see or hear gets the distinction of FOS.


My FOS Baltimore Oriole this year was April 10.


This year, he arrived at his cluster of Sycamore trees to find them overpopulated with his cousins, the Red-winged Blackbirds. I wonder if he found that to be strange. He will mate and nest in one of those trees (the one in my neighbor’s front yard, most likely). His wife will construct a dainty sock and hang it from a branch that cannot bear the weight of a gray squirrel, at the tippy top of the tree. They will eat insects, nectar, and fruit. They will occasionally drink from my hummingbird feeder, but they have yet to shop at a fruit feeder I put out just for them. Usually, they stay so high in the trees that I have to hurt my neck to try to see them.


Even though orioles and blackbirds are in the same family (as in Kingdom, Phylum, Class, Order, Family, Genus, Species), they have their own niches. Red-winged Blackbirds don’t migrate. They like to hang out in the tall grasses in fields or at water edges. During breeding time, a male will have a dozen or more wives. They often put their nests on or close to the ground. They eat insects and seeds. The ones in my yard frequent my sunflower feeder. In the fall and winter, they flock together by the millions, but Red-winged Blackbirds still roost in small groups in the spring and summer.


My house is not that far from the marshy Quail Creek and two old river bayous. In the past, I have had the occasional flock of Red-winged Blackbirds to visit and empty out my feeder. This year is different. This year they aren’t just stopping by once in a while, they’re making camp.


Why are they sticking around? Kohl’s, JC Penney, Dick’s Sporting Goods TGI Fridays’, Lowe’s, Cost Plus World Market, Linens and Things, Pier 1, Starbucks, Romano’s Macaroni Grill, PETCO, Krispy Kreme, DSW Shoes, P.F. Chang’s, Buffalo Wild Wings, Logan’s Roadhouse, Circuit City, Raising Cane’s…I may be forgetting a few. Shreveport is growing! And it just grew into the fields between Youree Drive and East Kings Highway, where the red-winged blackbirds had lived.


http://www.stirlingprop.com/uploads/122906_BigYearforLocalRetail_ShreveTimes.pdf


http://kscl.blogspot.com/2007_08_01_archive.html


I hope my Baltimore Oriole doesn’t mind sharing his seven sycamore trees with a few hundred distant relatives.

Field Journal for March 14, 2008

Yesterday, I traded a pair of navy slacks for a new perspective on nature. Thankfully, there were no other humans around to happen upon me while I was crawling across the forest floor composing photographs of early blooming wildflowers, emerging Spring leaves, butterflies and a toad. The experience reminded me of an image I saw of Kjell Sandved chest-deep in a bog, camera in hand, capturing a butterfly for his alphabet. I think we would have both looked pretty silly to the casual passer-by.

Though the fruits of my labor shouldn't even be in the same sentence with the word 'Smithsonian,' they're pretty good (if I do say so myself), and they complement my field journal nicely...

Juvenal's Duskywings, Erynnius juvenalis, on Violets,
Viola sp. (I will find out which species and edit here.)

The violets are booming! And getting a lot of attention from some duskywings.

Cardamines, Cardamine bulbosa

The cardamines have peaked and are beginning to fade. (I had no luck getting a Falcate Orangetip to pose for my camera, but they were out in force, visiting both the cardamines and the violets.)

Blueberry bushes. I do not know if they are Vaccinium elliotii or young Vaccinium arboretum. I know both species have been recorded in Walter B. Jacobs Memorial Nature Park. I will probably need to sit down with a dichotomous key to be sure.

The blueberries have just begun to bloom.

Spicebush, Lindera benzoin

Spicebush flowers are opening up.

Pawpaw, Asimina trioba

The Pawpaws are waking up.

**

I think it's safe to say Spring has sprung in Shreveport!

**

By the way, if the name Kjell Sandved doesn't resonate with you, check out who he is and what he's done here: http://www.butterflyalphabet.com/story.html

Snowy Day

Here is proof that sometimes it does snow in Louisiana.

These images were taken at Walter B. Jacobs Memorial Nature Park in Shreveport, Louisiana on March 7, 2008.

Any evidence that it had ever snowed disappeared about an hour later.

Ringing in the New Year

The woods are never completely silent. On cold winter days, you won’t hear buzzes or clicks of insects, or the flute-like song of a wood thrush… but you can hear dried leaves rustling in the wind, water flowing downstream, woodpecker taps and calls, and warbler songs. That’s right. Warbler songs.

You see, bird vocalizations can be categorized as ‘songs’ or ‘calls.’ Songs are almost exclusively performed by the males to establish and maintain territories for breeding. The songs function to simultaneously ward off competitors and attract mates. Calls are simple notes or phrases uttered by males and females to communicate the availability of food, presence of predators, or relative distance from the receiver. Since true bird songs are reserved for breeding season activities, even year-round residents have nothing to sing about in the winter months. Or so you would think.

Pine Warblers set up their territories, mate and breed earlier than most other birds in the forest. In Louisiana, they start singing in the winter, and are nesting by the middle of March. So, on a sunny New Year’s Day at Walter B. Jacobs Memorial Nature Park, the forest rings with the tremulous trills of male Pine Warblers singing in the canopy.

Listen to the Pine Warbler:

http://www.birds.cornell.edu/AllAboutBirds/audio/Pine_Warbler.html

Find good information about the Pine Warbler:
http://www.fs.fed.us/conf/birds/Pine_Warbler_MIS_New_Plan.pdf

conserveonline.org/docs/2001/05/piwa.doc

http://www.birds.cornell.edu/AllAboutBirds/BirdGuide/Pine_Warbler_dtl.html

Peepers in December

The breeding song of the Spring Peeper heralds the spring… in Vermont! Here in Louisiana, peepers fill the December night with song. Just as the deciduous trees close up shop for the year and the wintering birds arrive, cold autumn rains revive the vernal ponds and the peepers begin their chorus.

Almost always heard and not seen, these diminutive frogs are only about the size of a nickel. They spend their days sleeping under logs and in leaf litter on the forest floor. They awake in darkness, and spend their nights eating ants, beetles, flies, spiders… whatever’s available… whatever fits in their mouths. Their cryptic coloration affords them some protection. Still, many fall victim to salamanders, snakes, owls, and larger frogs.

Those that live long enough (3 years) will congregate in the temporary ponds. The males establish small territories and call. The louder, faster callers succeed in attracting females for momentary trysts. Fertilized females then deposit their eggs – one at a time – under vegetation and debris on the bottom of the ponds. Each female lays 900 or so eggs before retiring to higher ground. In four months, her offspring – whom she will never know – join her on the forest floor.

Where will the peepers live when the forest is gone? Where will they breed when their habitat is commandeered for a housing development, and their ponds are filled with soil? Those that inhabit protected areas like the 160 acres of Walter B. Jacobs Memorial Nature Park may not have to find out.

The Night Flier

High in an old pine tree, in an old woodpecker hole, a southern flying squirrel lies huddled with his family. He wakes to a reveille of silence - the pause between the canticles of the day birds and the acoustic strums of crickets and frogs.

Eager to break his fast, he crouches on the edge of his doorway and dives. Freefalling, he flattens his tail and steers his body onto the vertical surface of a tree. He grabs hold and hurries to the opposite side, looking back to be sure his path was not tracked. Throughout the night he flies and lands, always circling around the tree to elude owls, foxes, minks, raccoons, snakes, and others who would eat him.

An accomplished acrobat, he prances along a horizontal branch high above the forest floor. He knows his territory. He knows every available cavity and refuge. When the alarms sound that a predator is near, he can quickly take cover. Now, the chirps and squeaks from his fellow flying squirrels assure him that all is well in their own sections. He, too, twitters and chips, reporting the semblance of safety in his vicinity.

In the next twelve hours he will feast on a banquet of lichens, fungi, seeds, and berries. He will raid rodent nests and devour the infants alive. On shorter, warmer nights, he might steal and eat bird eggs and even baby birds. Now, the growing darkness and falling temperatures prompt him to hoard and hide acorns and pecans. Some he will bury under leaves on the floor. Some he will deposit in communal caches in the cavities of trees.

Before his next jump he expels the baggage from his bowels. The jetsam contains spores and seeds which will grow into new organisms. The fungi he disperses are vital to the forest, fixing nitrogen in the soil so that it can be absorbed by tree roots. The seedlings he plants are equally important. They feed browsing animals and renew the forest.

The pre-dawn intermission in Nature's symphony cues him to return home and rest. He has survived this night and will live to fly again.