Door County

Our dog Cassius is a cherished member of our family.  He is kind-hearted and fairly passive, but a true adventurer and a lover of life experiences.  For these reasons, it always makes us feel a little sad when we go away on a trip and have to leave him with family.  I know he loves family, but more than that, he loves to be by our side everywhere we go.  Hanging his big scruffy head out of the car window, walking in the woods, catching a flick at the drive-in, and sniffing out interesting smells along rivers and lakes.  When we planned a short trip to Door County, Wisconsin last month, we planned it such that Cassius could be with us.  A dog-friendly hotel, a movie at a drive-in, restaurants with outdoor seating, etc.  We went for a long walk at Peninsula State Park, where I searched for wood frogs to photograph.  We also visited Ephraim Wetlands Preserve and Whitefish Dunes State Park.  Overall, we had a great trip.

Here's a picture Aimee took of me and Cassius with a multi-trunk tree.

 Aimee and Cassius at the hotel's dock on Green Bay.

 There was some fantastic geology throughout the peninsula.  Here are some features on the hotel property.

 Lots of cedars, mosses, lichens & fungi, talus rock, & karst topography.

 I found this cave at the top of a steep slope.  I decided to explore it...

 A view out from the inside.

 Our trip to Peninsula State Park was memorable.  It was a great day to search for wood frogs (Lithobates sylvaticus), and I was hopeful to see some.

 I stopped by a big fallen tree to admire all the ferns and mosses that were growing on the old root ball.  It was then that I noticed the wood frog!  It turned out to be the only one I'd see on the entire trip.  This is how I came up upon the frog - in-situ.

A closer shot of this plump forest beauty.

I moved the frog to this new pose for a few more shots.

There was no shortage of really cool fungi.  I took so many photos but there is no way I can post them all here, so here are a few select shots.

These little ones seemed to glow.

Vivid orange fungus on large rocks.

We passed this old, long-abandoned mansion and stopped to take photos.  Right on front of the house was a fresh DOR western fox snake (Pantherophis vulpinus).

Back at the hotel, I decided to return to the talus slopes to look for redback salamanders (Plethodon cinereus).

They turned up underneath almost every rock.

These are notoriously difficult to photograph.

We watched Antman at the second oldest drive-in theater in the state.

On the way back home, we stopped at Whitefish Dunes for about an hour and a half.  Here are a few shots from our short visit.

North Branch

When most people think about the Chicago River, they envision a picturesque stream of water that cuts through downtown Chicago, providing framing for many of the city's skyscrapers.  Many think about how important the river is/was for commerce and industry.  Few would consider the river to a safe place to swim and play in, since it has a bad reputation for being filthy.  Though you'll see kayaks on the river downtown, you probably won't see paddlers splashing that water on their bodies for relief from the sun.  In fact, effluence from all types of sources empties into the river, including raw sewage during heavy storms, since Chicago's combined sewer system cannot handle runoff the way other large cities do.  So, though cleaner than it was a century ago, much of the river isn't what I'd consider to be anything more than a thoroughfare for boats.

Upstream on the North Branch, before the river enters the highly-developed cityscape, much of it is wrapped in forest preserve.  Part of the reason for this is because the river has a wide floodplain (for a small river) and building close to the river would be disastrous.  The northern section of the North Branch hasn't been engineered, channelized, or altered nearly to the the extent that the southern portion has.  You can still view the river from the forest preserves and plan on seeing various birds, mammals, herps, and aquatic animals you wouldn't see downtown.  Don't get me wrong - you won't feel like you're in Shangri-La.  There are still huge issues, including erosion, sediment pollution, contaminants, invasive species.  The number of species found is nothing compared to what you'd have found pre-European settlement.  In particular, most of the mussel, fish, plant, and bird species are gone.  However, there's enough decent-quality habitat to support a selection of hardy generalists.  Herps are represented better than many would think, considering the overall quality of habitat.

On August 2nd, I spent about two hours walking along the North Branch of the Chicago River within a forest preserve, counting the number of herp species I found.  In that time, I found six species - all known to occur in disturbed areas, but also indicators that things aren't THAT bad.

First, I saw this great blue heron (Ardea herodias) poking and prodding for aquatic animals upon which it dines.

 I saw something big stirring around near the bank, and quickly realized it was a big common snapping turtle (Chelydra serpentina).  I slowly inched my way onto a big downed tree along the bank of the river to get a better shot, but just as I got situated, the turtle slowly lost interest in patrolling the area, turned, and disappeared into the deeper, darker waters of the river.

 Interestingly enough, neither me nor anyone I know have ever seen painted turtles (Chrysemys picta) in this particular stretch of the river.  Earlier this year, friend and naturalist Jeff Skrentny photographed a common map turtle (Graptemys geographica) here - the first account I've ever heard of one in the area.  What we do see, in addition to snappers, are red-eared sliders (Trachemys scripta).  Though these are native to parts of southern and central Illinois, it is unclear whether or not they make their way up to the Chicago area naturally via rivers and tributaries, or if the ones here are all escaped pets or descendants of those escapees.  Certainly, many of the sliders ARE in fact escaped pets - red-eared sliders are by and large the most commonly-kept (and released) pet turtle in the United States (and possibly the world).  The question is, have the turtles managed to reach the region naturally in small numbers, validating their status as naturally-occurring?  Since this red-eared slider allowed me to get fairly close before she plopped into the water, I'd have to guess this was once someone's pet.

 Maybe the biggest surprise were the northern leopard frogs (Lithobates pipiens) present along the river in wet areas full of tall grasses.  As a young kid, I explored these same forest preserves, and never saw leopard frogs.  I believe that habitat restoration has helped these frogs a lot.  Areas once choked with buckthorn have been cleared and now, the sunlight reaches the woodland floor, where stands of tall grasses grow in wet, marshy areas along the river.  A stroll on the path next to these grasses will result in leopard frogs leaping about everywhere.  I tried to catch a few, but they were too fast.  Luckily, I later found this one, sitting right on the bank of the river.  I was able to kneel down, get a few shots, and get up without alarming the frog.

 Not really surprising was a sighting of a muskrat (Ondatra zibethicus). 

 I usually find brown snakes (Storeria dekayi) in more open areas, but this one was actually under a dense canopy, in the dark under a log.

 I saw another big snapper and tried to redeem myself, but again, this one had no interest in paparazzi and turned and walked away.

 American toad (Anaxyrus americanus) - a classic.

 I'm not a skilled birder but I think this is a cedar waxwing (Bombycilla cedrorum).

 Finally, to top off the walk, were two big, fat bullfrogs (Lithobates catesbeiana) sitting squat in the muddy substrate of the river.  These also let me get pretty close for photos; one did eventually dive for cover, but this one was more tolerant.  Note the water strider photobomb.  These frogs need permanent water to breed in since their tadpoles take two years or more to metamorphose into the adult form.  The only such body of water in the area is the river itself - a slough in the same preserve typically dries out by mid-summer.  The slough holds water long enough to support the toads and leopard frogs most years, but is insufficient for reproducing bullfrogs.

The Butler's garter snake

Just north of what most naturalists would consider the Chicago region lives a snake with a very interesting story.  The Butler's garter snake (Thamnophis butleri) at first appears like any other garter snake found in the Midwest.  To the inexperienced, it may be misidentified as a plains garter snake (Thamnophis radix), with which it can and does hybridize where the two ranges overlap.  The differences between a Butler's garter snake and a plains garter snake are the placements of the lateral (side) stripes and head size.  The Butler's garter snake's lateral stripes at the neck are located on rows 2, 3, and 4, whereas on the plains garter snake, the lateral stripes are located on rows 3 and 4 in the same area.  Thus, the striping is wider on the Butler's than on the plains.  Comparatively, the head of the Butler's garter is smaller than that of the plains garter. The Eastern garter snake (Thamnophis sirtalis) also occurs with the Butler's garter snake in many areas, but is probably easier to distinguish from the Butler's than the plains (by the way, the lateral stripe on the Eastern garter is located on rows 2 and 3).  In my limited experience, I've found that the Butler's garter snake is fairly uniform in appearance throughout its range (at least in Wisconsin), whereas the plains and especially the Eastern garters are highly variable (it must be mentioned that I've examined thousands of plains and Eastern garters throughout the Chicago area and beyond and not nearly as many Butler's).  Due to the high variability of radix and sirtalis, lateral stripe rows should be counted to confirm identification.

Garter snakes are known as dietary generalists.  They aren't constrictors, or truly venomous, so they are usually incapable of overpowering prey such as adult rodents.  The usual fare can include amphibians, annelids (worms, leeches, etc), fish, defenseless young rodents, and possibly soft-bodied insect larvae.  However, multiple studies have shown that the Butler's garter snake is an earthworm specialist (nobody likes them, everybody hates them, guess they'll go eat worms...no?  I tried).  This is interesting, when you consider the fact that many of the earthworms found within the range of the Butler's garter snake are invasive, non-native species such as the nightcrawlers.  Nightcrawlers enjoy a cosmopolitan distribution largely because of humans.  So this begs the question - what did the Butler's garter snake eat before many of the non-native worms showed up?  Did they subsist on other species of worms?  Did they adapt to eating the invasive worms, and if so, how did that affect their numbers?  We may never know, but what we do know is that food is the least of their problems, particularly in Wisconsin.

In my opinion, the single most interesting aspect of the Butler's garter snake is its range.  In the east, it is only found in parts of Ohio, Indiana, Michigan, as well as extreme southern Ontario.  Then, of course, is the isolated, disjunct population in southeastern Wisconsin.  The Wisconsin population is separated from the much larger eastern swath of range by several hundred miles.  Why such a big gap?  The Butler's garter snake is found in wet meadows, prairies, savanna, and other types of habitat (usually in close proximity to water).  There are areas between the two ranges that offer that habitat.  So why aren't the Butler's garter snakes found in those areas?  Certainly, the species once had a contiguous range at one point in the past, so what caused the rift?

Several theories have been postulated that offer suggestions as to how this happened.  My favorite is one presented by Davis (1932).  He looked at the ranges of both the plains and the Butler's garters and noticed something interesting.  The range of the bigger, stronger plains garter snake extends from the west toward Wisconsin, Illinois, and a tiny bit of Indiana.  Bordering the range of the plains garter snake is that of the Butler's - a relatively tiny patch in Wisconsin and then again in and east of eastern Indiana.  When you look at a map of the two species' range, it does seem as though the plains garter snake has slowly been encroaching eastward into the range of the smaller, less-specialized Butler's - and outcompeting it for food and other resources.  It seems to make perfect sense.  It is very likely that the Butler's garter snake once enjoyed a much larger range - one that reached from Wisconsin all through northern Illinois and then eastward toward and into Indiana and beyond.  This could be a case of naturally-occurring displacement that took possibly thousands of years to complete.  In fact, the process, if valid, is probably still happening.

In Wisconsin, the Butler's garter snake is found in parts of only eight counties in the extreme southeastern portion of the state.  They were at one point known from an isolated population in Racine County (Pope, 1944), but today, their southernmost range in the state is believed to include parts of Jefferson, Waukesha, and Milwaukee Counties (Wisconsin DNR).  They have not been found south of the state line (Pope, 1944), and multiple exhaustive surveys in the northern Illinois counties have not produced any (though that does not absolutely rule them out, it's still very unlikely they're here) even though appropriate habitat exists, particularly in southern McHenry County (T Anton, 2015, pers. comm. 19 July).  Due to their small range in Wisconsin, the species was listed as threatened in 1997.  However, for reasons that frustrate me to no end, the state delisted the species on January 1st, 2014, to allow developers to build on land occupied by the snakes.  As a result of the delisting, the species' habitat is even more fragmented, and ideal habitat that once supported the species as well as other wildlife is and will be forever altered/destroyed.

In order to assess the species in the wild, on July 19th, I drove up to a site in Milwaukee County - in fact, within the city of Milwaukee itself - and met with Wisconsinites Mike Day and Sam Fellows.  Sam lives in Beertown and offered to show me a site in the city where the Butler's garters are common.  The site is a small wooded park along a river.  Much of the park is used for recreation/sports, and the natural areas that are left are fairly degraded (as to be expected with a park entirely within a big city).  We hit an east-facing, grassy slope leading to the river, and found about fifteen of the snakes under cover boards Sam laid out as part of a research project with the Wisconsin DNR.

Here's a good-sized adult Butler's garter snake.  Note the placement of the lateral stripe on parts of rows 2 and 4 and all of row 3.

Sam (on left) and Mike posing and photographing a Butler's garter while I get a voucher shot in-hand with my cell phone.

 Also found during our search was this midland brown snake (Storeria dekayi).

 Sam couldn't stay long, so we all decided to leave together.  On our way back to the parking lot, I stepped over a soggy old discarded mattress.  As I did so, Mike shouted, "Snake!".  I didn't see this big female Eastern garter snake (Thamnophis sirtalis) basking in the morning sun.  She was in blue, a few days shy from a good shed.  Contrast this animal with the Butler's shown above.

 Sam knew about a ruby-throated hummingbird (Archilochus colubris) nest and took us to it.  I'm not a skilled birder, so I have a ton of respect for anyone who can spot this diminutive little feature atop a small tree branch. We waited about ten minutes, hoping that a bird would return.  Eventually we saw the nest's tenant, flying around the perimeter of the nest, hopping around every which way, until I guess it determined that we were not a threat.  To give you an idea of the size of the bird, the nest was about the size of a plum.

 Mike and I decided to head to another site known for its Butler's garters.  We hiked all around and searched high and low to no avail.  I noticed some railroad tracks along the perimeter of the preserve, and we decided to head that way in hopes of flipping some old junk.

We weren't having much luck.  There was a lot of old discarded pieces of plastic, metal, and wood, particularly old railroad ties, but no herps.  That is, until after about an hour and a half of flipping, when I turned over a big piece of a railroad tie, and this beautiful milk snake (Lampropeltis triangulum) plopped out from a hollow in the wood.  Check out the bulge in this one!  Whatever this animal ate, it had to have been a struggle, both to kill and swallow.  From the only population of milks in the county.

 Nearby, I found this American toad (Anaxyrus americanus) under an old tie.  It was the only toad we saw.

On our way out, I saw this amazing sight.  It's an old tire maybe 50 feet up a tree near a bridge.  I'm thinking either the tree began growing in the tire while the tire was on the ground and got pushed up over the years, or the tire was placed through a young sapling by someone years ago.  Either way, this is a really interesting illustration depicting the tenacity of trees.  I've seen objects such as fence posts swallowed by trees, but this is on a whole other level.

Toadlets & tigers

In July, all the American toad (Anaxyrus americanus) tadpoles that survived their aquatic life stage morph into their more familiar terrestrial toad forms.  When they leave the water, they are minuscule - the size and appearance of a piece of gravel.  In some areas, they can be seen en masse near the body of water they originated in.  Once they absorb what's left of their tails, they begin to search for and gobble up all the food they can.  If they slack off, they can very easily become outcompeted by their brethren and die or become gobbled up themselves.  Dehydration is another death sentence they face if they don't get enough to eat.  The less body mass they have, the more vulnerable they are to drying up in the increasingly warming summer season.  It is not unusual at all to find these normally nocturnal animals hunting and feeding constantly as toadlets.  During the day, in overcast conditions, they boldly venture out in the open and Pac-Man themselves to the best of their abilities.  Prolonged heat waves force them to retreat to cooler and wetter areas.  If a young metamorph toad gets caught in the open on a hot, sunny day and is unable to reach shelter, it will quickly succumb to the elements.  Toads are r-strategists, which means they produce many offspring, each with a low probability of surviving to adulthood (this contrasts with K-strategists such as humans, who generally produce far fewer offspring that have better chances of surviving).  If toads produced a few eggs at a time, they'd go extinct within a generation.  However, as nature would have it, each female can lay thousands upon thousands of eggs at one time.  Here are a few photos from a site in Western DuPage County.

Cute, but likely a future statistic.

 One of the lucky ones.

 A large tiger salamander (Ambystoma tigrinum) with an interesting kinked tail.

 Self-portrait

Bug'd

A few arthropods from a short hike along an abandoned railroad on the fourth of July.

A honey bee on thistle

 A harvestman on wild quinine (Parthenium integrifolium)

 Katydid nymph on common milkweed (Asclepias syriaca)

 Jumping spider (Phidippus sp.)

 Japanese beetle (Popillia japonica)

 Skipper (Lerema accius?)

 You knew I had to throw in a reptile - an urban midland brown snake (Storeria dekayi).

God save the queen

Being outdoors and enjoying nature is great.  I'd like to think that few can deny this.  Observing natural processes such as reproduction, defensive mechanisms, and feeding behavior can be an infrequent occurrence.  Being at the right place at the right time is key to witnessing struggles to survive.  One might walk through a prairie and rejoice in the presence of butterflies, but stick around longer and pay attention and you might see a bird swoop down and eat the butterfly.  It's a scary world out there.  Danger lurks around every corner, and in this case, from beneath the surface.

On July 3rd, Aimee and I were walking our dog Cassius at a creek in DuPage County, when I saw a snapping turtle (Chelydra serpentina) struggling to subdue and consume a queen snake (Regina septemvittata).  The turtle had a strong grasp on the snake's posterior end and was scraping at it with its strong claws.  It appeared that the snake was still alive, but barely; the snake made weak strides to swim away but was failing miserably.  It was forced underwater and was probably drowning.  The turtle, upon seeing me approach, released its grip on the snake and tried backing into a crevice underneath a large slab of limestone.  I picked up the snake, which at this point was weakly coiled at the bottom of the stream.  It obviously had been struggling with the turtle for some time before I arrived as evidenced by the debilitating injuries.  I placed the snake back into its watery grave where I found it and took the turtle out for a few pictures.  Once I returned the turtle to the water, it proceeded to eat the entire snake.

Queen snake tattered by the snapping turtle.

 With the culprit.

 My interrupting of this reptilian spectacle didn't do much to dissuade the turtle from continuing its meal.  After about fifteen minutes, the last of the queen snake went down the gullet and was history.