Gordon Smith
Natural History of the Berkshires
10/06/09
Field Blog #3: Mission Park
On Tuesday when I went to my field site between 4:30 and 5 pm, the weather was partly cloudy, and a slight breeze was blowing through. While I was there, I paid attention to two main aspects: the recent changes that were occurring in my site, and the faunal activity that was going on in the area.
A stroll around my site did not reveal too many drastic changes to the area’s flora. Some changes that I did notice were that one sugar maple on the east edge of the site was much more fully yellow now: I would estimate about three fourths of the leaves were no longer green. Additionally, the sensitive ferns seem much lighter in color than they were a week or two ago, and several patches of goldenrod flowers have mysteriously appeared on the western edge. I say mysterious because I had not before seen any plants even resembling the ones that are now growing happily. Most likely I simply missed them before they started flowering.
In my search for animal life, I first simply sat down by a tree quietly and watched. In a few minutes I had observed several mosquitoes and other flying insects in rays of light, taken note of some deer droppings close by, and seen a number of playful squirrels. These furry critters participated in a large number of different tasks as I continued to observe them. First they were just walking along the ground, traveling from tree to tree most likely for various purposes. At several intervals, I watched them dig in different spots looking for their stores, but none of the digging that I could see yielded any result. They soon tired of this, however, and began playing what seemed to be a game of one chasing the other, then the other turning around and chasing the first. This went on for several minutes before they disappeared into a tree.
At this point, curious that I had seen so few ground insects as I sat and with no large rocks to turn over, I picked up a stick and dug myself a small hole, hoping to see some interesting grubs. The first layer of the ground was about an inch of leaf litter and pine needles that was reasonably damp and stayed clumped together reasonably solidly. Under this layer was the dirt itself, which was dry and rocky. The rocks were small, about the size of gravel, and were of all sorts of different materials. There was also some broken brown bottle glass mixed in, which was interesting to see an inch below the surface, but not altogether too surprising given the college surroundings.
Overall, I dug down about 10 centimeters into the dirt itself, but still found no evidence of ground dwelling grubs or other insects; only roots, rocks, and dry dark brown dirt. At this point I gave up with my little hole, but luckily as I was filling it in, an interesting creature landed on my field journal. It was a sort of tiny, yellowish, translucent worm-like caterpillar type insect. It was about 4-5 millimeters long, and maybe 1 mm wide, and I think it had 10 pairs of feet (I forgot my hand lens, unfortunately). Interested, I played with this grub for a while. His basic reflex if something poked him was to let go of the leaf or whatever surface he was on, and to fall while holding onto the leaf with a strand of silk. This silk, interestingly, seemed to come from his mouth rather than from his tail, (as I would have guessed) assuming that it walks with its head forward. After it lands on some surface, it almost looks as if the caterpillar were eating the silk it used as a falling mechanism: its head moves in a way that makes me think as if it were pulling the string down into its mouth. If this letting go tactic fails to cause the caterpillar to fall, it simply curls up quickly, then immediately fully extends again and moves quickly away.
Eventually, I allowed the likely traumatized bug go on its way, and continued my general observation hoping for another such interesting encounter. Unfortunately, all I saw were a few tiny black ants.
Throughout this time, I had also been listening to the birds, but only two voices called during my entire visit.