Fritillary on Echinacea

Instead, point your camera at all things natural. Shoot video or stills. Edit and organize your work, and submit it into our third annual Pfeiffer Nature Center Film Festival!

Puff Balls

Mama Bear & Cubs

The deadline is approaching, but you still have four weeks to get your entry in.

Grab your camera and get outside!

I took Kenton & Rebecca’s suggestion, and this morning captured a few tadpoles in a clear plastic container. Again. For the third time. I carried them to my sugar house, where it’s nice and dark.

And then back out into the early morning sunshine.

It’s now perfectly clear – those tadpoles are indeed iridescent, not luminescent.

I STILL don’t know what kind of frogs they’ll turn into, however, so still looking for your information.

by Peg Cherre, Executive Director

Tadpoles - captured momentarily for this photo opp

There’s a ditch near my house that is home to MANY tadpoles. I stop and watch them every day on my walk. Earlier in the season I would have told you that they were probably either wood frog or peeper tadpoles since I saw both of those little spring singers in that ditch, but I’ve long since changed my mind. 

Why? I think these little swimmers are too big as tadpoles to grow into those small frogs. Also, they’ve been in the tadpole stage since early May, and they’ve only just begun to sprout the smallest of hind legs in the last few days. Although my National Audubon Society Field Guide to Reptiles & Amphibians doesn’t give me information about tadpoles, I think this is too long for wood frogs and peepers.

I’ve worried about them several times, when the water in that ditch was dwindling, but they’ve lucked out each time with a nice rain.

Most amazing of all is the visual for these spermy-looking critters. I first noticed it on my visit to the ditch in late May. It was also late in the afternoon – on my after-work walk with my dog. Some of the tadpoles were swimming up to the surface of the water — to eat, I assumed — and when they did, their little undersides were luminous! They were glowing orange! To me they looked much as bright and clear as the little orange nightlight I have near my bathroom.

Tadpoles glowing in the ditch

I did an online search for bioluminescent tadpoles, and the only reference I found was for a frog that lives out west somewhere. I did find one reference that said that wood frog tadpoles were iridescent.

So I kept visiting the ditch daily, trying to figure out if what I was seeing was iridescence or luminescence. I couldn’t decide. So one day I captured some in a clear plastic container and drove them a few miles to my friend’s house. It was a dreary, rainy day, and the little guys were understandably more than a little freaked out by their kidnapping and transport. We looked at them for a bit and couldn’t decide, so I drove them back home and put them back in their ditch. (I’m guessing they had some great stories to tell their friends, but that they weren’t believed.)

Tadpoles aglow in the dish

I am truly hoping that someone who reads this post will know about these tadpoles, and can fill me in. Please post a comment and give me information!

by Peg Cherre, Executive Director

One day I figured I’d sit out under my back roof overhang. I was surprised when a robin was upset by that, too, until I discovered the third nest – made right on top of a rickety old ladder leaning up against the house. That blocked me sitting there, too.

Robin's egg after the babies hatched

The babies have hatched - 5/27

Robin babies, just 6 days after hatching

The babies are always hungry!

Robins ready to go

I decided to get my old outdoor broom and see if I couldn’t get the baby up on the bristles and lift him out. It really wasn’t too difficult, and he didn’t seem at all frightened. I carried him on the broom and set him back on the nest. Everyone else had already left, and he looked at me like, “Hey, I shouldn’t be here – I have to leave!” I just walked away and left him to his own devices. I haven’t seen any of the babies since.

Leave me a comment – see anybody raising young in YOUR neighborhood?

by Peg Cherre, Executive Director

But, as I’ve mentioned, since it’s not fully light, I rarely see the birds, I have to identify them by sound alone. As you can imagine, this leads to many puzzles. My CDs of birdsong, with about 100 birds in New York State on them, help out a lot. However, since New York is a big state, there are birds on there I’ll never hear near my home, especially the water birds, and others that I do hear but aren’t on the disks. That’s the situation I was in a few years ago.

One morning before dawn I was at the top of my road, near a meadow. I heard a new bird call I’d never heard before. I stopped walking and listened, and it seemed that the bird was flying around directly overhead, and not too high. The sky was light enough for me to see the bats flying, but this was no bat, and there clearly were no other birds in the sky near me. Without the aid of even my eyeglasses, much less field glasses, I saw nothing, and ultimately ended up walking home.

Then next morning, there was the mystery bird again. This time, it seemed that he followed me across the length of the meadow before seeming to fly overhead. Was he attracted by the sound of the bell I wear in the wee hours to warn bear, porcupine, raccoons, and other wildlife to move away? It seemed so. But I never could see anything.

This went on for days. I tried describing the sound to expert birders and interested friends alike. I don’t whistle, and this bird wasn’t making a whistling call anyway. So I’d hum in a particular rising note pattern that the bird made consistently, all the while using my hand to wiggle the skin of my neck. (And doesn’t that paint a pretty picture?!) No one could ID my mystery bird.

I then figured that maybe it would be important to know if the bird was only there in the early morning, or also at other times in the day. So I made several trips up the hill at various hours. My little feathered friend was consistently present at dawn and dusk, but never any other time. By now I’m spending lots of time in the middle of the road at odd hours, sometimes driving up there, but usually walking the two-mile round trip.

My next step was to bring my cell phone on my morning walk with me. Call someone at 5:15 A.M. to see if they can hear a bird call. Go ahead, I dare you! Actually, I had warned my friend that I would do this, and being an early riser herself, she was up for it. But unfortunately the song was soft enough that it didn’t travel through the phone.

Not yet defeated, I borrowed a friend’s little battery-operated voice recorder. In fact, she had two of these little devices, so I borrowed both, not knowing which would be more sensitive. Back up the hill again, I tried both recorders with no luck — all I heard was static when I played the tapes back.

I am nothing if not persistent, and just couldn’t give up. I just kept asking everyone. Finally I asked the right person – a friend who, years before, had lived downhill from where I heard my crepuscular caller. She thought she had not only heard, but also seen my mystery bird, and gave me yet another clue to follow up on, with a potential bird’s name. Now I’m off to the internet, trying to find an online recording of this little guy. Although “common” is in his name, a recording of his voice is nowhere near as common as many other birds. But at last I found one, and did a positive ID.

Common Snipe

Have you guessed what it is yet? It’s Gallinago gallinago, the Common Snipe. If you listen to his voice on the linked page, it’s not his sharp chip I was hearing, but the warbling rise and fall at the end. There’s a swamp nearby, and this long-beaked water bird somehow figured that he’d find a sweetie in the meadow at the top of the hill. I doubt I’ll hear him on my road again, because someone built a house where he’d been, but it sure was a fun time solving that puzzle!

What was your greatest birding mystery?

by Peg Cherre, Executive Director

I know that seems ungodly to some people, but I really enjoy the early morning walks, particularly between April and October. I get to see the moon & stars, watch the sun come up, and listen to the true dawn chorus.

If you’re a birder, you know that the dawn chorus is the pleasant time when the birds sing their morning songs. If you’re a late sleeper, you know that too, although your name for it might be a little less favorable.

Most of my road is wooded, but at the top there are some mowed fields, so I get to hear both woodland birds and meadow birds. Because of the early hour, I rarely see any of them, so I have to rely exclusively on my ears. Not an easy task, at least not for me.

Common Yellowthroat

On the same fine, spring morning that the Common Yellowthroat sang his hello to me, I also heard someone else for the first time this year. With a bright, clear song that I interpret as sweet-sweet-you, it was the lovely Magnolia Warbler. He’s since been singing in my yard, too, making that positive ID easier.

Then on May 13 I heard someone new again in that meadow. The song was consistent, and I believe it to be either a warbler or a thrush, but my online searches have not helped me out yet. It’s sound? Wish I could tell you better, but it was deeee-doooo-trill. The deee was a higher note than the doooo. Pretty unhelpful, isn’t it?! When I get home I’m going to listen to my favorite resource for identifying bird calls, Birds of New York book by Stan Tekiela, with its accompanying CD of actual recorded bird song. There are many other good options out there, this just happens to be the one I have access to.

The latest newcomer to my morning ear was on May 19, when I heard my first Veery of the year. To my ear, it sounds like this little thrush is in the woods playing two notes at once on a tiny wooden pan flute. Their song is so sweet and musical, it draws me into the shaded woods.

Leave me a comment – What birds are you hearing or seeing now?

by Peg Cherre, Executive Director

Last month I couldn’t sit on my porch or take a walk without feeling like I should be averting my eyes. Birds, salamanders, you name it, they were all in the throes of passion. Or attempting to be. Every creature was intent on replicating itself, of passing on its genes to its progeny, ensuring that the species would continue.

Many of those eggs have now hatched.

The ditch near my house is home to wood frog tadpoles that I enjoy watching getting bigger every day. But if we don’t get some continuing rain, those babies will die before they grow legs and leave the water. In dry springs, my kids always wanted to scoop them up and move them someplace wetter. They really didn’t understand, or care about, my lessons on how life works, survival of the fittest, and all that rot. Me, if the water starts drying up, I make it a point not to stop and look; although I won’t interfere, I find it too sad to watch nature take its course.

Phoebes nest under my porch every year. I get to watch them as they make their never-ending rounds of my yard, snapping up all manner of flying things to feed their hungry babes. I find it amazing that I can often hear a quick “snap” when their beaks close on a meal. I can only imagine how hard that beak has to close to make a noise that’s audible to me many feet away!

I could go on about young love and young life, but I’d rather hear what YOU have to say about it! Leave me comments!

Peg Cherre, Nature Center Director