Fun with Fungi

Cinnabar Red Polyphore

Recently the Springfield Chapter of MOMS (Missouri Mycological Society) completed its second foray.  We had a whopping 35 members spread out through the woods.  May is not the most prolific month for fungi species but we collected and identified 14 species.
 
Ken Olson was on hand to provide expert identification, supplementing other knowledgeable members.  While we are working at keying species having someone to point us in the right direction is invaluable.   Several species were particularly interesting.

Cinnabar Red Polyphore- Pycnoporous cinnabarinum can produce a yellow dye.  Ken and his wife use this to dye fabric.  It's one of many species which can produce a variety of colors.

Dead Man's Fingers

Dead Man's Fingers - Xylaria polymorpha is found on decaying wood and changes color with age.  Starting with a white to bluish color, it darkens with age to give a spooky dark appearance of, guess what-- a dead man's finger.

King Alfred's Cakes

King Alfred's Cakes - Daldinia concentrica, also called coal fungus and carbon balls, are found on living or dying wood.  The name comes from an old English legend.  According to legend, King Alfred reached the low point in his career, alone and running from the enemy, and hid out in a countryside homestead.  The housewife put him in charge of removing baking from the oven when it was done. He fell asleep and when she returned the cakes were burned.  She scolded him, not knowing he was the king.   Daldinia concentrica is said to resemble a cake left to this fate.

More pictures are at this Picasa site.
Interested in joining MOMS?  Check out missourimycologicalsociety.org/

For an article on the "growing trend" of growing mushrooms at home, see this Wall Street Journal site.

Vulture Eggs

Black Vulture

I took several friends out to the barn to see the barn swallow nests and found a surprise.  As we walked toward the back, something large and black flew out of a side wall and landed on a wooden fence rail.  It took us several seconds to register as we didn't expect to see a black vulture in a barn.

A black vulture finding prey in a barn is unlikely in a species that hunts mainly by sight.  We opened the door carefully and there on the thick straw on the floor lay two large eggs.  We took several pictures and left it alone.  The next day we confirmed that she was back on the nest.

Click to Enlarge

In a recent blog we discussed the differences between turkey vultures and black vultures.  As they hunt by sight instead of smell like turkey vultures, they generally avoid heavily wooded areas.  We occasionally see black vultures soaring but they are much less common that turkey vultures in the valley.

Black Vultures, Coragyps atratus, usually lay 1-3 eggs in cracks and caves along cliffs or in a stump or dense vegetation.  There is no nest built, and the parents take turns incubating the eggs over 37-48 days.   Once the eggs hatch, the young are fed by the parent's regurgitation.  You would think this would encourage them to leave early but they don't take off for around 80 days.

Vulture Society

Unlike turkey vultures, the black's chicks are yellow-tan, with feathers extending over their head.  They will eventually lose the head feathers, going bald like some humans.  This helps keep their head clean when they immerse themselves in their food (no further comment required).

Vultures defense against intruders is to vomit on them "with power and speed."  Having retired from gastroenterology several years ago, I do not intend to intrude on them up close and personal.  However we will cautiously take pictures at intervals.

Chuck-will's-widow

Whip-poor-will are so familiar to us in legend and song that it is easy to miss its cousin, Chuck-will's-widow, Caprimulgus carolinensis.  We always look forward to Chuck-will's arrival a few weeks after the first Whip-poor-will call is heard.

Chuck-will's-widows  Wikimedia

I say call because few of us have seen either bird in the flesh (or should I say feather).  Both are members of the nightjar family Caprimulgidae which hunt by night and sleep during the day.  Your best chance to see them is by slowly driving down a dirt road or lane after dark and watching for yellow or red glowing eyes in the roadway.
If you are going too fast you will catch a fleeting glimpse as the camouflaged bird takes off.  Both birds spend the daylight hours sitting on the ground or laying parallel to a sizable tree branch, effectively hidden by their mottled earth tones.

Whip-poor-wills (Caprimulgus vociferus) get the glory because of their vociferous song.  According to Whatbird.com,  "The record number of calls in a row by a single bird is 1,088, perhaps accounting for their species name, vociferous."  I suspect this record was broken at Bull Creek last summer.  Vociferous is defined as "marked by or given to vehement insistent outcry" although when it starts outside the bedroom window at 5 AM I would define it as "*@&%$#".


Chuck-wills-widow is more restrained, with a slower, lower song which usually ends politely at bedtime.  If you listen carefully to these recordings you will hear the first of its three part song is a "chuck" compared to the "whip" of the Whip-poor-will song.

Both species hunt at night for large moths and flying insects although they are known to swallow whole an occasional hummingbird or warbler when they get hungry during migration.  Although their bill is small, they are able to gape their mouth open two inches.  Their mouth has bristles which help them to catch all size insects. 

They are also called goatsuckers. The name is based on an ancient belief that they fed on goat's milk at night, but their nighttime association with goats and other livestock was probably due to the presence of insects that were attracted to the animals.  I would have called them "noisy-suckers".

There is further information at allaboutbirds.org

Turtle Sniffer

Smokey with tic trefoil

Our schnauzer Smokey loves to sniff around the roads and trails at Bull Mills unless he gets into a stand of tick trefoil as in the picture.  He finds all kind of wonderful scents that I will never understand.  Several times he has sniffed up a box turtle.  Saturday on our walk I hear an unusual hollow "thunk" and turned to find he had picked up a Three-toed Box Turtle and dropped it down on its carapace, saving it from a severe licking.  It turns out that this ability is a marketable skill.

Audubon magazine's Sniff Test describes a study of potentially threatened ornate box turtles in the Upper Mississippi River National Wildlife and Fish Refuge.  To find them they used the sophisticated canine nose.  In ten days, five Boykin spaniels located 97 turtles, ordinarily a full summer's work for olfactory-challenged bipeds like us.

Dogs have at least 200 million scent receptors and in the right conditions can outperform humans seven times.  "Across the country, canines are aiding researchers, from locating grizzly bear scat in Montana to sniffing out invasive wolf snails in Oahu, Hawaii."

If I had just listened closely to Smokey, he could have told me that.  I'll be doggoned!

An interesting blog on box turtle reproduction is at ozarknature.com.

Bird Nests

Baltimore Oriole- Wikimedia

There was a good article on bird nests by Francis Skalicky in yesterday's News-Leader.  He discusses many different types of nests with their advantages and disadvantages.  I have never thought of what an architectural wonder a nest is but as he says, "If you're not impressed by a bird's nest, try building a similar-looking structure using nothing but your mouth and feet and see how well you do."

My Bull Creek neighbor, Judge John Waters, reports that Baltimore Orioles have arrived at his deck.  He brings them in with a plate of orange slices and grape jelly while an expensive Oriole feeder nearby is ignored.

Male Oropendola- Wikimedia

His story brought to mind another bird that builds a hanging woven nest like the Baltimore Oriole.  Their cousins from the deep deep South (as in Central America), the Oropendola is a remarkable bird.  We had a chance to watch the Oropendola perform in the trees around Tikal's Mayan ruins years ago.  In addition to being colorful with a cheerful song, he was obviously having way too much fun.

"A male Oropendola stands on a thin horizontal branch, with his claws wrapped most of the way around it. Then the bird spreads his wings and swings around the branch so that he’s hanging upside down, his yellow tail feathers prominently displayed above him. Sometimes he reverses the motion and springs back to the top, and sometimes he flips all the way around the branch like a gymnast on the horizontal bar. At the same time, the bird lets out its loud, goofy call [ click here to listen]."

These displays really pay off.  Oropendola are colonial nesters, with an average of 30 nests in a colony, but up to 172 have been recorded.  A dominate (and presumably very tired) male breads with almost all of the females. (See video)

Just as impressive was the nest construction itself.  Our guide demonstrated its strength by filling an empty nest from last year brim full with rocks which it supported easily.  These  nests are nearly impossible to clean from both fecal debris, lice, etc.  This is the likely reason they don't reuse old nests in spite of their sturdy construction.

More on Baltimore Orioles here and there are instructions on how you would go about building an Oriole nest at learner.org.  (It sounds like way too much work.)

Lethal Carrot

Queen Anne's Lace- Wikimedia

Carrots are generally considered good for you.  The carrots we eat are cultivars of wild carrot Daucus carota (a.k.a. Queen Anne's Lace).  However there is a black sheep in the dark corners of the Apiaceae i.e. carrot family --- Poison Hemlock.

Early leaves in April

May is the time that the flat mats of Poison Hemlock bolt, rapidly shooting up to their mature height of 5-8 feet.  This growth before other plants have their wits about them ensures that sunlight won't reach the neighbors.  They hang on through the summer, their stems developing purple blotches.

Poison Hemlock (Conium maculatum) is a native of Europe, Central Asia and North Africa.  It is a member of the carrot family, with foliage reminiscent of also non-native Wild Carrot (a.k.a. Queen Anne's Lace).  There the resemblance ends as Hemlock has ridged stems with purple spots and smooth leaves.  There are good pictures at missouriplants.com.

Poison Hemlock was the drug of choice for execution in Greece, made famous by the description of Socrates' death.  It contains coniine, a toxic alkaloid similar to curare, which blocks neuromuscular transmission, leading to progressive muscular paralysis over minutes to hours and eventually death by suffocation.  If only Socrates had CPR by a kind soul and a ventilator, history would have been changed.

Poison Hemlock Root

The dramatic description of Socrates' execution perfectly describes the ascending paralysis.  The same effect is produced in livestock.  Cattle eating 1-2 pounds or sheep with less than a half a pound will suffer the same effects.  Whistles made from hollow
stems of poison-hemlock have even caused death in children.  USDA

For those of us without livestock, this invasive plant can take over a pasture or disturbed soil in several years, shading out all the native vegetation before they get a start.  Missouri University has good information on controlling poison hemlock.

Rose Breasted Grosbeak

Rose-breasted Grosbeak.

This time of year we usually see Rose-breasted Grosbeaks, but today we had a visual treat as they were joined by a male and female Blue Grosbeak, taking turns to perch at the feeder one at a time.  As you might guess, the first thing that many people notice is their gross beaks, somewhat like Jimmy Durante with feathers. 

Rose-breasted Grosbeaks males (Pheucticus ludovicianus) are quite distinctive in appearance.  They are black on the upper body and wings, white below with white wing bars, but most distinctive is the rose triangle on their upper breast.  The females are brown with a speckled underbelly.

Blue grosbeak

Blue Grosbeak  (Passerina caerulea) males are dark blue with rusty wing bars.  Females of both species share the size and shape (slightly larger than a finch) and are brown like a sparrow.  The Rose-breasted female has a prominent white eyebrow.

Grosbeaks are members of the cardinal family.  Both Grosbeaks migrate to central America in winter, although Northern Rose-Breasted species may migrate to Southern states.  They all head North in spring to raise their families, unlike the Northern Cardinal which are permanent residents.  Grosbeaks are found in open woods, scrubby fields, and thickets where they forage for insects, seeds and berries.

The Rose-breasted Grosbeak's song is described in allaboutbirds.org as "like that of the robin, only as sung by an opera singer, being mellower and more sweetly melodic."  You can hear the song there and compare it with the Blue Grosbeak here.