Strawberry Flowers

 

Woodland Strawberry, Fragaria vesca

Wild strawberries have been blooming sensibly this week in a sheltered glade at Halibut Point where unseasonable weather elements are tempered by wind-breaking trees around a sun-drenched meadow. The flowers presage the pea-sized red fruit that they engender with the help of pollinators on these stems, in late spring or early summer.

Syrphid Fly, Toxomerus marginatus

All manner of insects great and small have hatched or come out of hibernation for their first meal as adults.

Syrphid Fly, Neoascia species

Most of the visitors are Lilliputians on flowers that are only five-eighths of an inch across.

Ants clambering across the stamens looks relatively titanic,

although some miniscule species are scarcely noticeable on the edge of a petal.

Parasitic Fly, Tachinidae

A creature with the proportions of an ordinary house fly looks imposing on one of these flowers.

Ground Beetle, Lebia viridis

Flitting, hovering, crawling, the emergent insects come forth with remarkable features, specializations, and appetites.

Lasioglossum species

Many of the tiny wild bees are classified in the largest of all bee genera, Lasioglossum, highly variable in size, coloration, and sculpture. In one form or another they are the most frequently encountered bees on Halibut Point.

Metallic Sweat Bee, Lasioglossum

This bee is about 3/8" long. The fly below it burrowing into the flower corolla, though miniscule, has all the working parts and functions of familiar insects. 

All the strawberry flowers are facing south, which makes an orderly business for the photographer and keeps the warm sun on his back during motionless vigils. The over-the-shoulder light makes for nice illumination, though it requires care not to cast alarming shadows toward the insect. The best approach is at an oblique angle, steadying and focusing the camera from a yogi master crouch.

Right Whales

One day last week when Kay and I encountered our regular birding friend Ann at the Park entrance, she reported seeing a right whale off the tip of Halibut Point. The whale seemed lethargic and was probably still close by. Don was out at the grout pile monitoring the situation. They were concerned that it might be entangled in fishing gear. We congratulated her on the sighting and hurried on to what we hoped would be our first glimpse of a right whale, a once-common creature in the Seven Seas that was hunted nearly to extinction.

Rockport Harbormaster arriving,
Crane Beach and Ipswich in the background

We found Don at the grout pile as he was guiding the Rockport Harbormasters to the scene by cell phone from the promontory. Scott and Rosemary had made quick time over from Town to assess the whale's situation and relay its position to the monitoring agencies that track and rescue endangered marine mammals. 

The Harbormasters confirmed that this was a right whale, but did not notice any entanglements that might be impeding its movement. They passed the word on to the U. S. Coast Guard station in Gloucester, to the NOAA Whale Center, and to the Division of Marine Fisheries (DMF). All news about this species is valued as the whales move north in their spring migration.

The pair of whales skim feeding in Ipswich Bay
Rockport Harbormaster photo

As they watched another whale joined the first. Clearly the two were communicating at considerable distance through the water. They continued swimming languidly at the surface, their exhale spouts much smaller than if they had been deep diving.

Right whale

This (to us) unexpected floating behavior called for investigation on the website of the Center for Coastal Studies in Provincetown. I found that the peculiarities of this animal's appearance and activity match perfectly, form and function correlating in another of the natural world's splendid evolutions. The right whale's enormous mouth houses a forest of baleen that filters miniscule zooplankton from the water in quantities prodigious enough to sustain its great bulk. The large paddle-shaped fins and tail help it drift through concentrations of these organisms, gulping and straining the microscopic prey. To accomplish this the whale's great head may compose a third of its body length. Those languid movements were its normal surface feeding pattern.

Right whale during the month of March in Cape Cod Bay
Photo from the Center for Coastal Studies website

A DMF spotter plane was soon overhead identifying the whales and plotting their movements north from Cape Cod Bay through the hazards of entanglement with fishing gear and collisions with vessels in shipping lanes. The highly individualized patterns of white callused skin allows monitors to name and monitor each individual. The spotters also provide information that can shape conservation restrictions while the whales are concentrated in particular areas. 

Photographed from above in its natural environment the whale takes on a rightfully graceful look impossible to compose in the drawing.

Song Sparrow

 

The musical utterances of birds are so tied to their rhythms of increase that they produce a sense of wellbeing also in the human ear, particularly with the lengthening of our days when a sense of new life abounds.

Small numbers of song sparrows have been with us all winter, not very conspicuously, as they don't visit elevated bird feeders. They find what they need almost entirely on the ground, usually along brushy edges. You're likely to see them at (their) safe distance along the roadside margins and meadows of Halibut Point almost any time of year. 

You have to get close to enjoy the variegated browns, russets, and grays that mark a Song Sparrow. Its great distinction is the chest striping that converges to a black shield.

Song Sparrows are winter gleaners. They scratch and forage for vegetative bits wherever an absence of snow cover allows.

To see one hunting for weed seeds in the windswept barrens of the grout pile is to admire one of nature's resilient adaptations.

Come spring and the nutritional demands of parenting, Song Sparrows are able to widen their diet to include insects.

Summer landscapes offer many sorts of sustenance. Male sparrows take to high perches to establish family territories.

Their cheery calls in almost any corner of the Park form a counterpoint in the avian chorus of caws, squawks, and chatter. Close observers of the Song Sparrow, and of course the birds themselves, recognize meaningful variations in its colorful repertoire of songs built around a core pattern that suggests:

-an opening assertion ONE, TWO, THREE

-an ascending, sustained buzzing trill

-a clear, exultant yodel I AM, I AM, I AM.

Keep an eye and ear toward promontories on the moors of Halibut Point for the sweet assertions of these energetic soloists.

Departing Ducks

 

Red-breasted Merganser pair

Their extravagance is my thought, not theirs. Certainly it's not a choice. The fancy plumage and courtship behavior, the enormity of migration, are written into every duck's genetic code.

Long-tailed Duck and two Harlequin males

Over the winter season the drakes of many duck species have become adorned with spectacular mating plumage.

Harlequin Duck pair

The courtship activity of Harlequin Ducks often features short dashes by the male toward a flighty female.

Buffleheads, a drake and three hens

This male Bufflehead appears to be well situated as spring ardor unfolds.

Bufflehead female dashing at the male

Inexplicably to an observer, one of the females charges the male. Whether her flurry signals affection, consternation, or some other impulse is understood only in the realm where it matters.

Common Loon, Folly Cove

This male loon's plumage has sharpened into the classic pattern seen in summer on inland lakes. 

Loon pair, female (l) and male (r)

A bit of seductive yodeling has brought the pair together for an intricate display of water ballet.

Horned Grebe

After a shoreline winter in very subdued plumage this male Horned Grebe is properly attired for a lakeside rendezvous at its breeding destination in western Canada or Alaska.

A Microclimate Alive in March

 

Japanese Andromeda, Pieris japonica

Last Saturday balmy weather conditions greeted us on arrival at Halibut Point. Temperatures were in the mid-fifties with very little wind. Down in the hollow where the power plant used to be we found a particularly warm south-facing spot, rimmed protectively on the ocean side by the granite walls of the old quarry train track. In this sheltered arena I spent a long enchantment watching the season's early bug activity on a flowering Japanese Andromeda. This is an exotic shrub, a beautiful introduction that most likely was planted by the Webster family when they owned this place in the '50s and '60s.

Winter Ant, Prenolepis imparis

As I stood there Winter Ants ascended the shrub's branches and foraged over the flowers for whatever it is they find sustaining on the outside of the petals. Their delicate limbs accomplish feats of strength and complexity out of proportion to their tiny structure. This insect species is active outside its nest only during the conditions of late winter and early spring.

Cluster Fly, Pollenia sp

A number of rather housefly-looking individuals zoomed in and out of the scene. They proved to be in the Pollenia genus of Cluster Flies when I queried the BugGuide website. I was informed that ultimate identification to the species level would require examination of the underparts by microscope. Not being a trophy taker for science or other paths of curiosity, I have to be satisfied at the level of genus if not genius.

Kelp Fly, Coelopa frigida

This fearsome-looking fellow turns out to be a Kelp Fly which normally lives, dines, and breeds on the shoreline accumulations of rotting seaweed. It had the genius, I suppose, to take a sojourn from its rough and tumble home to this sanctuary.

Kelp Fly inside a flower

The Kelp Fly was the only insect to actually enter one of the andromeda flower corollas while I was watching. Perhaps it has inborn knowledge or special desires at this time of year.

Versute Sharpshooter, Graphocephala versuta

A harlequin-patterned leafhopper was the most colorful observation during my vigil. Later research revealed that the name 'sharpshooter' comes from the fine stream of droplets it squirts from the back end of its digestive system, and that 'versute' derives from the Latin for 'cunning.'

Quite possibly there is some hilarity behind this naming in the annals of entomologic taxonomy.

Birch Catkin Bug, Kleidocerys resedae

Another early season adventurer is the Birch Catkin Bug, which overwinters in the old fruiting capsules of our native birches and of ericaceous shrubs like the Japanese Andromeda, which it happily found in this unlikely place.

 Digging into the natural history of this bug revealed that, when it emerges from hibernation at this time of year and sets forth to propagate, it emits mating calls using a strigil found on one of the hind wing veins. Perhaps I missed the music because of impaired hearing. Nevertheless there was the novelty of 'strigil' to follow, where I made acquaintance with "a comblike structure on the forelegs of some insects, used chiefly for grooming." In the quiet erudition of classical science this usage comes again from the Latin in reference to "an instrument of bone, metal, etc. used by the ancient Greeks and Romans for scraping the skin during a bath."

 And then there is our fine word "stridulate" which I will give you the pleasure of looking up, if necessary.

Black-capped Chickadee

In the prosaic cycle of life and death at Halibut Point a chickadee appeared alongside me to nourish itself on the emerging insects.

Two days later the temperature crashed thirty-five degrees, postponing my amusements and, perhaps fatally, the avant-garde renaissance of bug life. Or maybe they'll take it in stride, at small sacrifice.

Atmospherics

 

One morning's excursion to Halibut Point this week began with the landscape shrouded in fog. The interplay of earth, air, and water promised eerie possibilities.

Some vistas seemed to lose their tops and bottoms in the shroud. The mist muted colors into its own grayness, the occasional warm tones like glowing embers.

While the rising sun began to clarify the sky overhead the air below held its heavy vapors in the hollow of the quarry. Mysterious patterns emerged and subsided at the watery edge.

The quarry seemed filled with mercury, or silvered like a mirror.

Was it the light, the air, or a damp film on the surfaces themselves that saturated the colors? The effect sharpened, waned, sharpened again as the sun dueled with the fog.

Blue skies or a light breeze would have spoiled the scene. An envelope of pale stillness perfected it. 

Dapper Ducks

 

American Wigeon pair

On Monday of this week a pair of American Wigeons stopped to refuel at Folly Cove on their way to breeding grounds in northwestern areas of the continent. Bright daylight emphasized the subtle gradations in their markings from cinnamon to sepia. The earth tones contrasted with their sky blue bills, tipped ebony.

The drake

Occasionally the drake veered to an angle where sunlight revealed the pride of his plumage, a peacock-green iridescent sweep above and behind each eye saying, Do-you-dare? to potential brides. His gleaming white cap and forehead blaze guaranteed notice.

Two Black Duck drakes and a Wigeon

Festive coloration adorns the male only in his season of attracting a mate. After breeding he molts to sensible camouflage plumage, to resemble these drab Black Ducks that must be wondering what the fuss is all about, and why court trouble with ostentation?

 Human preferences play no part in the matter, except gratify our sense of delight. Mr. and Mrs. Wigeon have certainly done that.

Change of State

A change of state for physical matter marks a transitional behavior point as it absorbs or loses energy over time. Going from one state to another involves a sudden, discontinuous gain or release of energy. The process is entirely reversible. 

Changes of state resemble moods.

Energy cycles into Halibut Point with sunlight, weather, and seasonal rhythms, all in response to solar relationships that especially affect the state of water in its variations as solid, liquid, and vapor. 

In geologic time the mineral elements of Halibut Point, currently frozen into granite, have and will again liquidify when exposed to temperature extremes near the earth's core, and even sublimate directly into gases.

Icicles make theater of water's performance through the script of energy.

In the most remarkable change of state of all, organic life harnesses energy to convert primal substances into the tissues that define itself. The plant flourishes in its season of growth and retreats to its vital core in a change of state to survive hibernation.

Because of water's unusual property of expanding when it changes state in freezing, it is less dense as a solid than as a liquid. Ice floats on water.

Sometimes the elements compose into forms that produce a change of state in the observer, and a sense of beauty comes of their unity.