Loudoun Wildlife Conservancy

So, last Saturday we were at a picnic in Round Hill celebrating the nuptials of two dear friends.  As we stood in the field sipping lemonade at about 5pm, a number of us noticed all these flying insects.  They weren’t biting and were high enough over our heads that no one was bothered by them. So, we continued with our chats, hoped for some bats to come through and put on a show, and soon forgot about the insects.

The next day, I received an email through our Loudoun Widlife Conservancy yahoo group from Jim W asking if anyone knew about some insects that emerged around 4pm also in Round Hill. He wrote:

“we noticed hundreds of flying insects all throughout our yard, flying near the ground or as high as 10-20 feet above the ground. As we walked into our grass, we noticed lots (hundreds if not thousands) of mounds of ants (we think they were ants), as well as larger insects with wings among the ants. These clusters of ants and insects were everywhere it seemed. The winged insects among the ants were the ones that were flying around. We needed to leave, and when we got back home about 6:30, everything was gone.”

Then, we heard that another member, Beth A., had the same experience in Lovettsville, also on Saturday afternoon.

Curious, we called in the experts (Cliff Fairweather, Phil Daley, Joe Coleman) and inquired.

Cliff responded back with the answer to our mystery of what insects they were:

“I’m sure Phil has already answered the question, but the phenomenon Jim reported was the emergence of reproductive forms of ants. During most of the year, a queen ant produces sterile, flightless workers, but from time-to-time she produces a generation of flighted males and females that disperse in swarms and, if they survive, mate. The males die soon after mating and the females lose their wings. Like other social hymenoptera, fertilized females go on to found new colonies, assuming they survive and find a suitable colony site.”

Jim posted a photo on our yahoo group page for anyone interested: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/loudounwildlife/

Did anyone else notice this occurrance?

Beavers are great members of the wild kingdom – they play such a critical role in our ecosystem, helping develop and maintain wetlands which serve as some of the richest habitats in our area.

I recently received the latest issue of Beaversprite – the newsletter prepared by a great organization called Beavers Wetlands and Wildlife, and in it they talked about International Beaver Day and some ideas on how to celebrate our wetland engineers:

“International Beaver Day on April 7 celebrates the “keepers of the streams.” It is a great time to hike to a beaver pond, read a beaver book, attend or give a beaver program and write a letter to the editor about these amazing animals. Beavers: Wetlands & Wildlife has beaver brochures and other materials available about this keystone species and ways to coexist with the animal that restores our land’s best life support system.”

There’s a beaver pond over at Banshee Reeks Nature Preseve in Leesburg – not sure if the beavers are active there this year but it’s worth a check. 

Check out this latest issue of Beaversprite as well as the Beavers Wetlands and Wildlife website to learn more about living well with Beavers. They’re really cool friends.

So with all this snow, I got to thinking about signs of the seasons (I also got thinking about the snow storm of ’78 when I was a kid up in MA and the fun we had making tunnels! but that would be another blog topic all together).

In addition to snow, of course, there are other elements in nature that are winter through and through and when we think of them we may be brought back to some memory from younger days or think of some activity in anticipation.

So, I decided to make a list of things that make me think of winter and thought I’d share some of them here with you:

- Dark-eyed Juncos with those charcoal eyes and pink beaks
- White-throated sparrows calling “oh sweet Peabody, Peabody, Peabody”
- White-crowned sparrows so regal
- Wildlife tracks that I can clearly follow through a woods in snow
- Icicles forming on eaves
- Structures of trees without leaves
- Leaf buds on tree branches closed up tightly
- Crisp clear night skies with piercing stars
- Birds of prey hunting over farm fields and meadows and more easily seen in trees
- Leaves as insulation
- Roosting, flocking, sleeping in

What are some of the things that jump out for you in winter?

I watched an excellent NOVA program last night called The Lord of Ants.  It’s about the life of E.O.Wilson, one of my personal heroes and sources of inspiration. It’s called The Lord of Ants because of the research on ants that Wilson focused on but Wilson did more than just study ants, he made the linkage from ants to biosystems and teaches us about how life connects to life on our planet and the habitats that we have to protect. 

It’s recognized that we are currently going through a mass extinction and in this program he describes the impact (no, it’s not the end of the world, but the species and diversity of the world will change). With science, rather than emotion, E.O. Wilson makes a call for action in the hopes of saving diversity.

In addition to being really informative and inspiring, there are a couple of things that I especially liked about this program. First, it’s told by him in the present day so it’s current and real. The second is that the program weaves together not only stories that he tells about past research but also present day research that links the past with the present.  He then takes that to the next dimension: turning data into action, turning information into a discussion around the need to protect and preserve habitats. This is something that we strive to do through Loudoun Wildlife Conservancy so I especially grooved on that.

Another part of the program that I really loved was where he points out how you and I can get involved here at the local level. Environmental monitoring programs and activities like a BioBlitz that we do here locally are shown to connect into this big picture tying education and monitoring to conservation. He also talks about the Encyclopedia of Life, which I did a blog post on a week or so ago, and his vision for that.

E.O. Wilson is certainly one of the greatest naturalists of our modern days. I encourage you to check out this NOVA program next time it’s on or watch it online through the link above (it’s just an hour and is not dry at all) and pick up a book or two of his – they are both fascinating and often poetic.

For those who have not seen our winter issue of the Habitat Herald newsletter, it’s been posted to our website both as individual articles that you can download and share as well as the full issue. 

You can find this issue as well as all of our past issues on our Habitat Herald Archives page. 

The Habitat Herald has all sorts of great articles on local Loudoun wildlife, plants, ecosystems and other elements in nature. It also provides updates on our different projects and reports from our monitoring activities.

Many thanks to Liam McGranaghan for writing the lead article on Golden Eagles! (Yes! we do see them in Loudoun!)

I came across this website while reading one of my magazines, OnEarth, recently and it seems really interesting.  The website is called Encyclopedia of Life and was first conceived in 2003 by E.O. Wilson, arguable one of the greatest naturalists of our time.

The goal of the site is to “grant each of the documented 1.8 million species on earth a page featuring a detailed summary of everything known about it: it’s scientific name, habitat and geographic range and distribution, what it eats and is eaten by, and where it is found in the evolutionary tree of life.” So far there are around 170,000 pages set up so it’s coming along.

One of the neatest things about this site (besides great information that we can get on our local Loudoun species) is how it pulls together the pages. There isn’t some poor webmaster sitting there typing all these different pages. Instead, it uses automated indexing similar to how Google functions, to pull in web pages into a standardized format, enabling standalone databases around the world to talk to each other and extract the data. Pretty cool.

Anyway, I wanted to share this with you in case you hadn’t come across it yet since it’s such a good resource as we learn about our local Loudoun wildlife and their habitats.

One of the things I love to do when I go for a nature walk is to look for the “stories” of the wildlife that live in the area that I’m walking through. I’ll confess, it often takes me a long time to walk a short distance because there’s so much to investigate, so many “clues” to see!

This time of year can be especially fun for looking for wildlife tracks and signs – there’s mud or snow to look for tracks and trees and shrubs are mostly bare making it easier to see signs.

So head on out and look for some tracks….perhaps some bird prints in the snow or a mammal track?

Ask yourself some questions…how big are the tracks, what direction are they going in? what would have brought that animal to this spot? Is there food or water nearby? If it’s a mammal track, can you tell if they were just passing through or did they dally there awhile?

You can also look for other signs – perhaps there’s some scat nearby or some feathers or fur or some chewed twigs and or a nest or burrow? Are there shells from nuts or seeds?

The stories will come together as you pull together these great clues, and you may even see the animals as you look for the clues. The other day, I was out taking a stroll and was quietly taking a photo of the deer print above when I heard a commotion coming towards me. A herd of about 9 deer was coming my way…

I was just as surprised to see them as they were to see me so I stood still as they passed by, resisting my urge to get a great leaping deer shot. I then came across a network of trails through the snow, smaller than a deer would make, that leads down a bank to a stream. My guess here is that raccoons and maybe opossums are using this trail. I’ll watch for more tracks and signs.

You can see more wildlife scat, tracks and signs photos from this nature walk on our Loudoun Wildlife Facebook page.

If you enjoy wildlife tracking, there are some great resources that you can use to make your identifications. One really handy book that’s small enough to take on a walk is Animal Tracks of Maryland, Delaware & Virginia by Tamara Eder. It also has a fun running rabbit drawing at the bottom of each page that moves when you flip the pages quickly as well as a ruler on the back cover for measuring the tracks. There’s no scat in this book though. The best overall resource for both scat and tracks is Mammal Tracks and Signby Mark Elbroch – complete with color photos.

You can also come along on our general nature walks. Our field trip leaders are great at helping identify tracks and signs. Check our Programs and Field Trips calendar for upcoming walks.

Our winter issue of the Habitat Herald is out!  It was mailed to members of Loudoun Wildlife Conservancy in early January and has been put out in places around the county (libraries, community centers) where we’ve gotten permission to do so.

If you know of places where we should be putting out copies of the newsletter, please let us know. There are some really great artices in the Habitat Herald each quarter on various aspects of Loudoun nature, wildlife and habitats and and we definitely want to be sharing them with anyone who is interested. 

If you haven’t seen this latest issue, you can download it here: Habitat Herald Winter Issue.  Feel free to forward this to others who would enjoy the articles and other information provided here too.  The lead article for this issue is Golden Eagles, which talks about when we see them here in Loudoun, their migratory patterns and more! 

We also have a great article on Jefferson Salamanders, which will start migrating to vernal pools across the county in the coming weeks (yup, in the winter!). Senia Hamoui wrote another great children’s story for us…..this one is on Owls. And, we have some other really interesting articles on plants (Staghorn Sumac) and insects (the Six-spotted Tiger beetle).

Flying squirrels are all around but are often out and about after we’ve already headed indoors for the evening.  With their big black eyes they can see through the night as they glide from tree to tree! We did a Flying Squirrel podcast and an article on flying squirrels awhile back. 

For more fun with flying squirrels, check out our newest brain teaser….the Flying Squirrels crossword

More puzzles and other information on Loudoun nature and wildlife can be found on our Educational Resources page.

We see them in our yards throughout Loudoun, running through woods, poking their heads out from special hiding places, diving into burrows, gathering tasty morsels like acorns and berries. Eastern Chipmunks are a key part of our environment and are lots of fun to watch.

See how much you know about this fiesty little friend by trying out our Chipmunk crossword puzzle.  You can also check out our chipmunk article from the Habitat Herald a few years back for some highlights on this species.

More puzzles on Loudoun wildlife and nature can be found on our Educational Resources page.