Wednesday Wild: Yellow-bellied sapsucker

© Loree Griffin Burns

My daughter and I made our first observations for MassAudubon’s Big Barn Study yesterday. We had seen barn swallows around the yard and suspected they were living in our big, old barn. What we didn’t realize was that they were entering the barn through the garage. (These doors are closed much of the day. Should we leave the garage doors open? Will they abandon these nests if we don’t? Will we be allowed in the garage once eggs are laid?) Or that they were building nests in not-so-safe places. (Like on top of a live electrical outlet.) As usual, closer observation has piqued our interest, and we’ve got a lot to look into.

We also learned that barn swallows are very hard to capture on film. We never saw one rest or perch, and trying to follow one in flight was a dizzy-making exercise.  Luckily, we saw a lot of other birds while we were observing the swallows … including this yellow-bellied sapsucker. (We’d seen the strange holes on this tree–a European mountain ash–but weren’t sure who was responsible. Now we know.)

Favorite fact for this bird, mined from iBird Explorer North: A group of sapsuckers are collectively known as a slurp. Who knew?

Happy Wednesday!

Got Barn Swallows?

© Loree Griffin Burns

In the forefront of this picture is my newly dug garden. (More on that another time.)

In the background is our big, old barn. Which lately I’ve been looking at as more of a laboratory.  The sort of place where I could do this.

(How wicked cool is that?)

Stay tuned …

Twice-stabbed on an Apple Tree

© Loree Griffin Burns

Yesterday, in central Massachusetts, the sun came out. In celebration, my daughter and I spent a couple of hours outside after school. She did her homework on the picnic table, I scoped out one of our two apple trees. I’ve been reading a truly inspiring book on tree-watching–SEEING TREES, by Nancy Ross Hugo and Robert Llewellyn–and have decided to take up the sport. Somewhere between noting the gorgeous pattern of the bark (it was spongy and wet, mottled dark and light all over and then sprinkled with moss and lichens) and checking out the leaves, I found some critters. Not surprisingly, I was distracted. Ants. Slugs. And a ladybug! Not just any ladybug, mind you, but one I’ve not yet seen in the wild.

Can you see it up there in the photo?

That, my friends, is a Twice-stabbed Ladybug (Chilocorus stigma). Or maybe its a Once-squashed Ladybug (Chilocorus hexacyclus)*? I will never know for sure, because when I tried to catch it for a closer look at its chromosomes**, it dropped down into the grass. Lost forever. But I did manage this picture, which I’ll submit to Lost Ladybug Project soon.

So, eleven different species on my ladybug life list now. Hooray for the sun, and for tree-watching, and for ladybugs!

* I am not making these names up, I swear. They are from this excellent ladybug field guide.

**Okay, now I’m making things up. The only way to distinguish the two species is to examine the chromosomes, but I had no intention of doing so. I’m not that geeky. Plus, I don’t have the proper microscopes yet.