If you’ve not seen the mystery presented, check out the original posting first

As I mentioned in the previous post, it was only a bit of a coincidence that gave me a plausible idea of what these rubber-egg things were. As you may have already noticed if you scrolled down to see the pictures, in addition to the three that were present on the first post, there’s also one of an earthworm. This earthworm was also under the piece of plastic, but it did not seem to be particularly associated with the mystery eggs. I just grabbed a shot because I already had my camera out and I don’t see earthworms in the forest very often (and I don’t think I’ve ever taken pictures of them before). It turned out to be good that I did.

When I was working on tagging the photos from the day, I looked up earthworms to see how they are classified, so I could put the tag in the appropriate place. As a result, I got to reading the wikipedia page for earthworm and happened to notice a picture on that was captioned “earthworm coccoon”. I had never heard of such a thing, but what I saw in the photo looked pretty similar to what Rowan had found in the forest, so unless/until I hear a better idea, it’s my best guess at the answer to this mystery.

I wrote most of this at the same time I wrote the original post, so at the time had seen no guesses (besides my own). AT this time (a week later) both guesses (as of this posting) were for banana slug eggs. I had not actually considered that as a possibility, in part because the previous slug eggs I’ve seen had been much smaller and there were a cluster of them. Of course those were not eggs of a banana slug (Ariolimax columbianus) but instead one of the smaller slugs that is abundant in yards/gardens. In hindsight, an obvious guess would have been banana slug, as they presumably would have larger eggs. That said, in a brief search on-line, I did not find any pictures that would lead me to conclude one way or the other about whether these were a good match for banana slug eggs. I suppose in the end, the best way to learn would have been to collect them and see what came out. I need to get back that way soon, so perhaps I’ll take side trip and grab them (if they’re still there) to see if they will hatch.

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I’ve been hearing about sea star wasting disease for a year or two, mostly in the context of it devastating some populations along the west coast of Washington, Oregon, and California. However, there has been on-going monitoring for it here. Until the past couple of weeks, there appeared to be only a low level of wasting-like symptoms observed around Sitka sound. However, in the past couple of weeks it seems as though the disease has started hitting hard in at least some areas near town. I took a look at Sealing Cove during a (not very low) tide this past week to see if I could see any signs there.

From one of the ramps I saw what at first I thought might be a bare rock, but after a moment or two realized that it didn’t really make sense for there to be bare rocks there, and not only that but there seemed to be a bit of a purplish cast to them. They seemed to be the size of sunflower stars (Pycnopodia helianthoides), and I concluded that I was probably seeing the remains of a couple that had died from the wasting disease (which has apparently been found to strike this species first).

The Sitka Sound Science Center has been helping with the effort to monitor and on their weblog you can find more information on sea star wasting around Sitka as well as information about who to contact if you observe it happening.

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While walking the Forest and Muskeg trail yesterday, I stopped to take the pictures I’m using on this post. There are two things in particular that catch my eye, one that I noticed at the time (and prompted me to take the pictures in the first place). The second I didn’t notice until I got home and looked at the pictures, but I wish I had been aware of it at the time so I could have looked closer.

What caught my eye initially was the ground dogwood (Cornus sp) growing out of a crack in the park of a yellow cedar (Chamaecyparis nootkatensis). Given that ground dogwoods produce berries, it seemed an unlikely place for a seed to find itself. I suppose it’s possible that a bird or perhaps a squirrel ate berries deposited them up in the tree and one of the seeds subsequently washed down the trunk. I think it’s somewhat more likely that a rhizome grew up under the bark and the plant emerged from it. It would be easy enough to check for this, though I didn’t at the time.

What I noticed only upon inspection of the pictures was the leaf damage on the ground dogwood was due to leaf mining activity. Over the past couple of years I’ve tried to pay more attention to leaf mines and hopefully catch them early enough to be able to capture and raise up whatever is making them. From the looks of the photos, the maker probably had already vacated the leaf, but it would have been good to check. I did notice the leaves were turning dark, so I’m not sure why I didn’t catch the fact that it was due to mining.

Questions

• What eats ground dogwood berries?
• When do ground dogwood berries get eaten? (they are abundant now, but my sense is they don’t persist into winter, though I’ve not paid specific attention. Also, I’m not sure if they get eaten or just fall off and rot.)
• What mined the ground dogwood leaves?
• How commonly are ground dogwood leaves mined? (I’ve so far only noticed a few, and these are by far the most extensively mined)
• What defenses do plants have against leaf miners?

Original post where the mystery is offered. If you’ve not read it already, check it out and then come back here.

Given the uniformity of the trail, my best guess at this time is a gastropod of some sort. Perhaps the periwinkles or limpets that are common at this upper level of the beach. I can’t figure out how they would leave a trail of sand, however. It was not a windy day, so there’s no way I can think of the wind would have blown on a moist trail. The other alternative that comes to mind requires a fair supply of sand sticking to our limpet or snail and being deposited in a fairly uniform fashion as it moved along its several inch path. It’s not clear to me how (or why) the creature would be packing such a supply.

The timing of the track is also a bit of a mystery, though solving it might provide a clue to the ‘how’ question. My first thought was the sand must have been deposited after the water dropped below this section of beach. It seemed obvious enough that a sand trail like this would not survive immersion. However, if I question this assumption, perhaps there is a way for sand to adhere despite being submerged. If the creature laying the trail produced an actual slime trail that held together for a time even when underwater, the sand lifted into the water column by gentle wave action (it was a calm day) could stick to the slime trail. Once exposed to air by the falling tide, the slime could dry and leave a dry sand trail with no obvious means of creation. This possibility actually seems more likely to me, though I still don’t know what created the trails. Some measurements of the gastropods on that part of the beach could narrow down my options a bit.

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With this past weekend’s full moon (which I only saw briefly through the clouds) we had another nice low tide series. I didn’t end up braving the rain to make it down to the beach, but thought I would share this photo from a low tide at John Brown’s Beach earlier this summer. The Pygmy Rock Crab (Glebocarcinus oregonensis) is, as the name implies, fairly small. This one was maybe an inch and a half across the top. It’s also distinguished in part by its bumpy carapace (main shell). I don’t yet have enough experience to know how common (or at least easy to find) they are, but my impression is they are not unusual. Also, it’s my understanding that the brighter red highlights (seen in the photo above) are not typical, with most being a more uniform brick red color.

Questions:

• How common are these crabs?
• Where else can they be found around Sitka?
• What do they eat?
• What eats them?
• How long do they live?

More photos of Pygmy Rock Crabs from that day at the beach.

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Earlier this year I posted about yellow jacket scrape marks on my deck. The activity has continued throughout the summer and I finally got around to trying to capture (digitally) one of the workers. I posted a photo on bugguide and got the Common Aerial Yellow Jacket (Dolichovespula arenaria) back as the id. I still don’t know if there are multiple species, as this is the only one that I’ve documented so far.

Questions:

• How many species are utilizing the deck for fiber?
• Where is the nest?
• What types of wood/fiber do yellow jackets use/need? (clearly they like yellow cedar, but it naturally seems to generate fibrous stuff on the outside, which might make it easier for them to collect/use)
• Does availability of suitable natural fiber limit populations? (I would guess not, with all the dead wood around here.)
• If nothing else degraded the wood on the deck, how long would it take for the yellow jackets to remove it all? How many nests would it make? (I think I’ll submit these to What if?)

Lion’s Mane Jellyfish (Cyanea capillata) seem to be fairly common around Sitka. Sometimes they wash up on shore dead (which is how I usually find them), but this one was fun to watch as it moved up and down through the water column while slowly drifting on the current past Magic Island.

This jellyfish can give painful stings to humans, and I’ve heard about some kind of miserable seine hauls that were full of these (instead of the salmon they hoped for) with tentacles raining down on the hapless crew member assigned to stack the net (at least I think that’s the one that ended up in the tentacle shower – I’m not so familiar with seining operations and I may have misremembered).

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On a late July hike, I noticed what appeared to be some sort of silken egg sack/case hanging from a sedge in a muskeg in Indian River valley. I wondered if it might be from a spider, since I couldn’t think of anything else that might have enough silk to make such a case. Still, it seemed odd that it would be hanging out in the open, most spider egg cases I’ve found before tended to be tucked away (and smaller). I collected it and left it in a container to see if anything might emerge.

It was a week later that I finally saw movement in the container. At least 25 small wasps were flitting about. I posted a picture on bugguide and was told they looked like parasitic wasps from the Microgastrinae subfamily of Braconidae. Apparently wasps in this group are known to form these sort of cocoon balls. It would seem to be a fairly species rich group, with over 2000 species described (and perhaps thousands more as yet undescribed). So, it seems the mystery is at least partially solved, though I have additional questions.

As always, I appreciate the help from the generous and knowledgeable folks on bugguide who have helped me learn a great deal more than I knew before about the terrestrial arthropod life where I live.

• How did these wasps (presumably as larvae) make this relatively case to pupate in?
• How did they get it up on the sedge?
• It sounds like this group mostly (exclusively?) parasitizes caterpillars. What kind would have been large enough to support this many parasites?
• Did they get the caterpillar to do the building before emerging from it? (I couldn’t see evidence that looked that way – though I didn’t pull it apart completely, it looked like a collection of eggs to me)
• How common is this sort of thing around here? (it’s the first I’ve noticed it)

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Normally, when my parents’ early August visit is too early for the blueberries to be ripe on Harbor Mountain. However, with this year’s minimal snow pack and early melt, I thought there was a chance some would be ripe, and had suggested that we go up there an look. After I got back from pick-up ultimate and had a chance to shower and get ready, my parents and I headed out the road (my mom was planning to just stay in the car reading a book or napping).

I needed to change out ibuttons, so while I was doing that my dad looked around at the berry bushes along that section of road. He was finding quite a few ripe berries, but not much in the way of heavy production. Still, compared to Idaho huckleberry picking it was pretty easy and fast. I suggested we hike for a bit to go to a place I’ve seen lots of berries before – though it would require ‘about 45 minutes’ to get there. My dad was hesitant, since he didn’t really want to walk that far only to find that the berries weren’t any better there, but in the end we went for it.

My dad lead the way on what turned out to be a clothes drenching, lung-busting, thigh killing march. I’m not sure why he felt the need to go so fast, but I was thinking the shower had been a waste of time by the end. I’m going to say that it was tiring to keep up with him because we were up close to the elevations he lives at (and nearly two thousand feet higher than I’m used to) and I had already gotten tired from playing ultimate earlier. I’ll just ignore the fact that he’s over 70 and I’m under 40 (or perhaps I should just applaud and congratulate him for being in such good shape at 71 – but that’s kind of hard with my hands on my knees sucking wind).

One high/low light of the way up was getting stung by a yellow jacket. At least I think that’s what it was, I was just walking a few feet behind my dad when I felt a stinging on my lower shin. My initial response was to kind of scratch at it with my foot while looking down, and I didn’t really get a good look. It took a moment to realize I had been stung – as far as I know, only my second time (the first was when a bee got caught between the upper part of my hiking boots and my sock). The sting didn’t swell up or anything, but there was a circle of pain a couple of inches across for the next half hour or so.

After about 35 minutes we made it to the area I had previously seen some heavily loaded blueberry bushes. There was nothing quite like that this year, but the blueberries were more abundant than in the place where my dad had first been looking. He ultimately wished he had brought his berry picker, since many of the bushes were a bit sparse for efficient hand picking, but would have raked up quickly with the picker. For my part, I focused on the dwarf blueberries (Vaccinium caespitosum). Unlike the early blueberries (V. ovalifolium) only about half of them were ripe, but it seems like a good crop this year, so there were still plenty of ripe ones. In the end we (my dad) got maybe a gallon or so of early blueberries and we ended up with probably 3/4 gallon of dwarf blueberries.

As it was getting on toward 8:30, we were trying to pick what we could of the ripe dwarf blueberries in ‘one last patch’ when I heard my dad say “Oh man!” I looked up to see him standing looking away from me and then I heard kind of a snort (like a horse might make), looked toward the sound just uphill to the right of him and saw a bear trotting up and away from us. Just before the bear moved over a high spot and around a corner, my dad said “Oh, there’s a bear!” I had initially assumed that he was speaking about the bear, but it turned out he had seen another bunch of dwarf blueberries that we weren’t going to have time to pick. My guess is he had done this just as the bear was walking down towards us (not realizing we were there), then was disappointed to have his/her solitude broken by the likes of my dad and I. My dad heard the snort, thought I was making it, looked back and me and then up to where I was looking, and that’s when he realized the bear was there. It probably had gotten within 30 feet or less of him. Fortunately, it (presumably) hadn’t made it to the bucket of already picked blueberries that was sitting up near where the bear was walking. It would have been a bummer to have the bear eat them, though I guess it would have made a good story. The other amusing thing to me about all of this, is my dad had just told me a couple of days before that he had never seen a bear while he was out hunting, berry picking, or fishing (the streams) in all the years he had done those things here.

We did make it back to the car as it was getting dusky. I lead the way back and took a slightly less brisk pace, but it also helped that much of it was going with gravity instead of against it.

Other notes: It was interesting to be between the clouds, they moved up and down from below a bit, though mostly we were out of them. It remained overcast above. Also, there were many moths flying around – I was wishing I had brought my net. Perhaps another time.

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Connor has been wanting to get over to Heart Lake to go fishing for trout with his grandpa. The first time they tried (without me), they all turned back after seeing a sign indicating a sow with a cub had charged someone on the trail a day or two earlier. Today we all headed out there, with Connor and my dad planning to fish at Heart Lake with me, Rowan, and my mom hanging out around Thimbleberry Lake.

I wouldn’t have minded going up to look around at Heart Lake, but neither Rowan nor my mom wanted to go that far. Instead, we spent our time where Rowan and Connor had found toads last year while we were on a huckleberry picking trip. Rowan wanted to look for toads again, there was a nearby bench for my mom to sit on, and I was content to just hang out and see what might catch my interest. In the end, Rowan did catch three toads (and saw a fourth), mostly in the same area they were last year. My mom relaxed on the bench in the sun, and I split my time between relaxing, picking berries, and catching insects.

There are a couple of short paths from the bench down to the lake’s edge, with a scattering of logs extending out into the water from shore or laying in the shallows. A lone snag still standing 30 yards out provided evidence that the lake level had risen sometime in the past, though given the level of decay, it was clearly not a recent event. I found a spot to sit on a pair of logs extending out into the water. Situated at the water’s edge among the thigh-high sedges growing abundantly there. With my long-handled insect net, I sat and relaxed in the hot (Southeast Alaska style) sun moderated by a sea breeze moving up the lake.

Several dragonflies, mostly paddle-tailed darners, were patrolling a corridor including the sedge marsh out over the log-strewn shallows. Occasionally I would see them interact in ways that appeared more competitive than amorous. At times I thought there might be additional species of dragonflies, but I at least some of the time that was due the difficulty I had judging the size of them when they were further out over the water. My chosen spot was included in the rounds of at least a couple of the dragonflies, and as one came over and hovered within reach of my net, I was able to quickly swipe up and over to capture it.

Despite the shimmery look of their wings, once fully emerged and hardened, dragonflies are pretty tough. I previously had learned you can hold their wings together between a couple of fingers, allowing for better viewing of the sides (useful for identifying some darners) and avoiding the chance of getting chewed on by their capable jaws. While holding the dragonfly this way, you can feel its muscles vibrating the wings as it tries to get free. Not wanting to detain it for long, I took a couple of pictures with my cell phone (which I’ll probably get uploaded here at some point) before setting it down. Perhaps a bit traumatized, it took a moment or two resting before taking flight to resume its patrols.

The second part of my time there was spent picking huckleberries. Though they were not as abundant as I found last year, I was able to pick a couple of quarts, with plenty of berries left on the bushes (though I did tend to high grade the bigger berries as well as those that were on easier to pick bushes). It did occur to me that I should have brought hand trimmers and done a little pruning to help maintain/enhance the patch. Since it’s in a powerline corridor it will be subject to major cut backs when trees start to get bigger, so I don’t imagine it would be a problem to do a little minor pruning.

While picking, I realized I had been smelling Sitka alder (Alnus viride) warmed by the sun. I think there may have been at least one other scent mixed in, but I couldn’t place it. I also saw what I think was probably a vole crawling around below me. It was dark and furry, but seemed a bit too rotund for a deer mouse.

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Pictures from a walk to Totem Park.

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By mite standards, this one was probably pretty big. After all, I could actually see it and most species are microscopic. That said, I could only just see it, and it approached the lower limits of what I might try to document (especially in the field). As per usual for creatures of such diminutive size, I was not the one to find this particular organism. Rowan somehow spotted it and had me come over to take a look.

I do not know much about this mite. My current guess is that it’s an oribatid. Among other things, they help decompose things in the soil. This one was on rotting wood, and it seems plausible it may have been eating on that, or perhaps fungus or other things growing on the wood.

Research Questions:

• What kind of mite is this?
• How many different kinds of mites of this size live around here?
• What, if any, advantage to those sparse hairs provide?

Questions for Readers:

• Have you ever seen a mite before? What kind(s)?
• What’s the smallest animal you’ve ever noticed out in the field?

Recently we visited Magic Island (out at Halibut Point Rec) during a low tide and I took advantage of the opportunity to photograph some of the more obvious tidepool denizens which, for whatever reasons, I had not really spent much time with before. Prime among these are the giant green sea anemones (Anthopleura xanthogrammica).

As I understand it, the green color comes about either directly from, or through interaction with, symbiotic algae. I’m a little curious how those algae get in there in the first place, but perhaps further reading will reveal someone has investigated that. Individuals growing in dark areas (such as sea caves) may not be green at all. Another interesting trait of these anemones is their habit of gathering rocks about them during the cold and dark time of year.

They favor outer coast with higher energy, and are pretty common at Magic Island on the outer shore. It’s nice to find them in tidepools where it is possible to see them tentacles without the distorting effect of moving water.

We drove out the road today to check on the Swainson’s Thrush nest, but couldn’t see any birds using the nest. There were however many birds active in the brushy area adjacent to the road. Several thrushes were utilizing the ripe elderberries that were abundant on one large bush. In addition there were other smaller song birds such as juncos, chickadees, and warblers foraging in both the brush as well as the taller trees behind.

After spending a little time looking along the road, we went to the south beach of Halibut Point Rec to catch what was left of low tide. There were some interesting things going on there, most of which I’ll post about on their own separately. Highlights included Marbled Murrelets close to shore, ripe trailing currants (Ribes laxiflorum), and various intertidal creatures. There were a couple of kids (accompanied an adult) fishing for rock fish.

On many occasions I’ve noticed Ochre stars (Pisaster ochraceus) gathered up together in semi-protected rock crevices. It’s easy to imagine they do that because it’s a good place to stay together and have protection from pounding surf when thee tide is at that level, and the effects of drying when the tide drops lower. However, on a recent trip to John Brown’s Beach, I noticed several star clusters on the flat gravel beach near the gazebo dock. I am not sure why these have gathered like this, protection from the effects of drying seems plausible. However, it amuses me to think they might also be social creatures who like to get together for a chat (or whatever passes for such in the ochre star world).

Ochre Star cluster questions:

• What is the purpose of their clustering?
• How do they find each other and gather up?
• Do the same individuals end up in the same group?
• How long does the gathering last (more than one tide cycle)?
• How far does an ochre star travel over the course of its life?
• (How) Do ochre stars communicate with each other?

It was a nice day for new moths as well. I found one that I don’t remember ever seeing before (though I could have some photos buried in my to-do pile). After a bit of sleuthing, it seems to be a new-for-the-state range extension, so that’s fun. Also saw two or three very fresh looking Welsh Waves (Venusia cambrica), so I took one of those as well. Finally, there were two of the very dark noctuids that have been giving me trouble. One of them was quite worn, while the other appeared reasonably fresh. Close comparison of the photos led me to conclude they were the same species, but I still haven’t figured out what it is (and I think there is at least one other similar dark noctuid I’ve been seeing, and maybe two).

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This afternoon I was on a brief walk at Totem Park and noticed there were a couple of Caspian Terns out at the end along with some other gulls. I also noticed a moth out the flats. It appeared to be the same kind as one I saw several years ago that got identified as far as genus (Pediasia).

Since it was Thursday, a good chunk of the day was spent on calls. The subject of this weeks calls was (holistic) tracking and the power it has to help folks become more connected (through the cultivation of awareness that’s prompted by tracking).

The ‘arts’ of tracking broken down as the ‘w’ sorts of questions plus a little bonus.

1. (associated with the East) – Who?
2. (associated with SE) – Imitation/body language
3. (S) What (happened)?
4. (SW) When did it happen (including placement within sequence of events)?
5. (W) Why? (ecological perspective and the bigger context)
6. (NW) Internal tracking – how is this landing on me internally?
7. (N) Where (did it lead to)?
8. (NE) How (did this happen)? Grand synthesis of the others, re-telling the story with full sensory memory

Although tracking is often thought of in terms of finding some animal tracks and looking at them, in a broader holistic sense it applies to much of what we do. I think in a simple understanding, it’s just paying attention and trying to understand what’s going on.

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The weekend and today brought some much needed rain, with Sunday alone more than matching the entire total for May, and the three days combined totally about an inch and a half. I woke up a couple of times early Sunday morning to the sound or rain pounding on the roof. It was a welcome sound. Rainy days make it a bit easier to stay inside and do some catching up on things, as despite a theoretically more relaxed summer schedule, it seems like days and weeks are just as full as ever.

I did have some temptation to go wander around in the rain, but opted instead to mostly work on collections and photos. I decided this year to try and be more systematic about what I choose to collect and keep for sending to the university. If I know what the insect (mostly insects), I check with the museum, and if there are already several collections from our area, I let it go. Otherwise, I’ll often collect it. I have mixed feelings about making these collections – I know that collections are an important contribution toward greater scientific understanding, but I am not entirely comfortable with the act of taking animal lives, even of insects. Somewhat hypocritically, I probably end up being responsible for the death of more creatures through neglect (after I capture for photographs), and in many cases those have not even been properly processed so they can at least be teachers.

When I do take the time to intentionally collect, mostly what I do is moths (that are attracted to a light out on the porch), though when I find/capture other things, I will sometimes collect them as well. My preferred method of dispatch is to put them in the freezer. Recently I’ve taken to practicing my Tlingit as I put them in the freezer saying, “Ch’a aadi yéi xhat nayoo. Gunalchéesh, axh eet at yeelatóow.” Roughly meaning “please forgive me (I’m sorry). Thank you for teaching me.” After they are dead, I take them out and ideally while they are still flexible I put them in a glassine envelope for storage (until they get to the museum and are stored for the long term). In addition to taking care of the physical specimen, I like to photograph everything while it is still alive. I post a photo with collection information (date, location, species name, etc.) on the natural history wiki.

After processing all the backlog of recent collections, I took advantage of a break in the clouds this afternoon and got almost everything I had left to get in the ground taken care of. I planted all my strawberry plants (fortunately most of them seem to have survived the long wait to get into the ground) as well as some raspberry starts I got from a neighbor, a couple of crabapple tree suckers, and the last two shrubs that needed transplanting from gallon pots. I find myself wondering what things will look like in the next couple of years, and hoping I didn’t plant things too close together (or too far apart). I imagine it will take at least two or three years before things start to really fill out, and maybe longer.

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While on a recent walk around an Indian River valley muskeg, Rowan and I noticed a pupa in a scuff mark along the trail. I thought maybe it had overwintered in the ground and just been turned up by whatever made the mark, but further examination over the next couple of days made me decide that perhaps it was actually just freshly pupated. I’m keeping it at home in a container, so hopefully it will eclose (fancy word for emerge as an adult) and we’ll be able to identify it.

While up in the cemetery I was distracted by a Wilson’s Warbler that was singing consistently from some bushes. Although I never saw it, I was able to get some sound recordings. There ended up being quite a few different birds singing while I was up there, including Yellow Warbler, Fox Sparrow, and Ruby-crowned Kinglet. I also saw a Pacific Wren carrying food.

Also of interest to me was insect sign – I saw some leaf mining on cow parsnip leaves, and was able to find a couple where the larva or pupa was still in the leaf. I suspect they’re the flies like I found before, but collected them in hopes of verifying. Caterpillars had also chowed down on some of the salmonberries. I collected four that looked like they might be of two different species or perhaps different instars of the same species? Maybe time will tell.

At Swan Lake I saw a lone Greater White-fronted Goose that’s been there for a few days now. It’s not typical for them to linger in to June, but I remember it happening at least once before. I was also able to get some nice looks at the Red-winged Blackbird pair that seems to be nesting not far from the radio station. Hopefully they’re far enough back in the weeds that they won’t be overly disturbed by the kids fishing day this weekend.

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I noticed this little critter making its way through some gravel adjacent to a forested area. I’m not sure where it was going, but I recognized it was a snout beetle of some sort. Some photos posted on bugguide got me the name: conifer seedling weevil (Steremnius carinatus). It’s apparently pretty common on Prince of Wales Island, as there were 700+ collections of this species in the UAF museum database along with a couple from Sitka among other locations along the southern coastal areas over as far west as the Kenai Peninsula and Kodiak Island.

According to the abstract of a 1968 paper on the biology of Steremnius carinatus, this species can live as adults for multiple years, and tend to be a pest on the seedlings of very young conifers in coastal BC.

Questions:

• How common are these on Baranof Island?
• How do these move between islands? Do they have some sort of dispersal phase?
• How much impact do they have in Southeast Alaska? Are they mainly eating on young seedlings that would eventually be crowded out anyway?
• Do they live longer where temperatures are cooler?

This spring I captured an American Angle Shades (Euplexia benesimilis) and kept it in a container for a day or two. During that time it laid quite a few eggs. After reading up on what the caterpillars eat, I learned they are fairly generalist in their diet. Rowan said she wanted to take care of them for a while rather than release them, so she kept track for the week or so until they started hatching and then provided them with some leaves from a blueberry plant. I thought they might just eat the whole leaf, but instead they filled it full of holes, leaving just a frame work of veins. I suspect when they are larger, they will not leave so much. I also suspect that if there had not been so many of them in an enclosed environment with limited resources, they would not have eaten so much of the leaves before moving on.

Some moths (and insects more generally, I guess) seem to lay a bunch of eggs all together, and the larvae then will hang together as well (at least sometimes). In this case, the pattern of eggs suggested the female deposited them mostly separately, and I suspect the caterpillars are more geared toward solitary work and not making themselves an obvious meal for birds.

I’m planning to hold on to these for at least a while longer, but will release them if/when it seems like I’m not keeping up with their care.

Questions:

• What is the feeding strategy of these caterpillars in a more natural setting?
• To what extent is it possible to identify a caterpillar species by its feeding sign? (I imagine it really depends on the species.)
• What is the survival rate, and what is the most common cause of mortality for these caterpillars (in a more natural setting)?

My overall goal for the backlog is to delete photos that are not ones I feel the need to keep (sometimes because they didn’t turn out, others because they’re essentially duplicates), do any image editing (cropping, color/contrast adjustments) that fits, tag the photos, rename them to something understandable, and then give them a title (and sometimes caption) that will be stored in the metadata. After all of that, most photos will get uploaded in to a gallery on this site – I generally have a gallery for each day with pictures (though more recently, I’ve switched to having a quarterly catch-all gallery for days that only have a small number of photos during the current quarter). At that point I create a post for them, and for photos from weeks (or months, or years) I don’t usually remember much in particular about the day, so I just add a short note giving a little context for the pictures.

It looks like I added 9 backdated posts today. Of course they’re buried back in the archives, so it’s unlikely anyone will notice they have been added. The photos will show up in the gallery for each of the tags they carry, however. I also will have several posts getting published in the coming days/weeks that will feature particular pictures that I thought were interesting, most likely with links back to the post/gallery they came from. That way folks can more easily find and see some of the older stuff that’s only now getting posted.

Weather-wise, it started raining this morning. Not a heavy rain, but it was enough to wet everything down. There were at least two periods of this kind of rain during the day, and another after the sun went down. It’s not enough to really get things soaking again, but at this point, probably every little bit helps.

This evening I spent some time photographing a couple of moths I found at the light this morning. One of them was a familiar one that I knew the name for, but the other was one I did not know. I spent a fair amount of time trying to find a matching species and finally came up with a plausible id. I posted a couple pictures to bugguide in hopes of getting some confirmation. It got late before I had a chance to really process all those pictures, so they’ll have to wait until another day for uploading. (Update: Photos now uploaded)

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Thursdays are days when I have calls, and as a result I spent a good chunk of today occupied with them and did not feel like I spent too much time outside. I did go for a walk this afternoon that lasted maybe a couple of hours. I spent a little time in a muskeg before walking around the park.

I checked for blooming Pinguicula villosa, and though I found several plants, I did not see any of them showing evidence of blooming (or having already bloomed). I did not really that much time to look, however. I may try again soon when I have a bit more time.

Indian River is remarkably low – a fact which I noticed when I walked down below the bridge (SMC road) after noticing a dipper fly up under and hearing begging calls. It turns out that Connor and Rowan were right about the dippers reusing the nest this year. When I had checked a month or so ago (but after Connor and Rowan first mentioned it), it seemed pretty quiet, so I wasn’t sure if they would end up using it.

I noticed several other things along the walk that I have pictures to go along with, so I’ll be writing separate posts (which should appear in the coming days) for those things to go along with the photos (though all the photos can be seen here in the gallery below). Among things I noticed but didn’t photograph was the yellow-legged large-ish ichneumon wasp. I think it’s probably one I’ve seen before.

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