Recent Sightings of the Blue Ridge

Recent Sightings of the Blue Ridge

By Cade Campbell - Pre-MRNR, Spring 2024

West Virginia White nectaring on Star Chickweed (Stellaria pubera) along Della’s Branch. Photo by Cade Campbell.

As anticipation builds for the 50th Spring Mt. Rogers Naturalist Rally, there are some species reappearing on the landscape to add to the excitement. During our programs for local schools over the past few weeks, the full force of spring has shared some special moments and special residents that call our Virginia mountains home.

The federally-threatened West Virginia White (Pieris virginiensis) butterflies are abundant in the forests behind the Schoolhouse searching for toothwort plants to lay their eggs. They’re easily recognized as the only solid-white butterfly found in the state of Virginia, and the dwindling species is endemic to the Appalachian Mountains. Look for them in sun-dappled areas of cove forest with lots of spring ephemeral wildflowers. The invasive-exotic garlic mustard is lethal to these butterflies but smell like their caterpillars’ favorite foods, other plants in the cabbage family. Our habitats around Whitetop Mountain composed of intact native plant communities are essential for the butterfly’s survival.

A Margined Madtom (Noturus insignis) captured accidentally during an aquatic macroinvertebrates program with Fries School. Photo by Cade Campbell.

Underwater, life is also thriving. Fish are entering the breeding season, moving from deep pools into the shallow waters where they’re easily visible. One of the more unusual fish we’ve been noticing recently with stream ecology programs is the tiny, mildly-venomous catfish known as the Margined Madtom (Noturus insignis). They’re only found in rushing water full of smooth stones with crevices and crayfish burrows. To protect themselves from the wide gape of larger fish, particularly trout, they’re armed with painful, needle-like pectoral barbs. When handled, they can leave a sharp, swollen pinprick, the aquatic equivalent of a bee sting. Margined madtoms are easily distinguished from other native catfish by eel-like, black-fringed fins and a silver, scaleless body, seldom growing more than six inches in length.

The large Dragonhunter (Hagenius brevistylis) nymph, an excellent leaf mimic.

Dragonflies are also emerging. Nymphs are large and ready to climb onto land, shedding hollow exuviae and drying into fast and bloodthirsty aerial predators. The largest native dragonfly, the Dragonhunter (Hagenius brevistylis), is one of the most charismatic. An impressive hunter that mainly captures other dragonflies, they can take down prey as large as a hummingbird. The aquatic nymphs are very different. The palm-sized juveniles are leaf-mimics, and hide flattened in clusters of sycamore and boxelder roots in larger streams where they eat other aquatic macroinvertebrates. Large, spider-like Allegheny River Cruisers (Macromia alleghaniensis) are also preparing to emerge. Both a Dragonhunter and River Cruiser nymph from this spring are pinned in the library collections. In the colder, smaller and more inhospitable waters of Della’s Branch, the delicate, golden-striped Southern Pygmy Clubtail (Lanthus vernalis) is emerging camouflaged against shimmering riffles as the creek flows through dense rhododendron thickets.

The mother Eastern Black Bear (Ursus americanus) beckoning her last cub to escape into the woods, just before the entire family vanished back into the hillside forests of Fairwood Valley.

Black bears are back! We observed a healthy family of bears in Fairwood Valley last week. The mother successfully raised three cubs last year we observed several times throughout the year, and they will remain a nomadic family unit this year. Early mornings and evenings are the best time to see bears foraging, but it is an unusual treat. Unlike other, more populous areas in the Southern Appalachians, the bears found in the Mt. Rogers region are rarely habituated, or accustomed to humans. Most are still very reclusive and fearful of humans, and it’s a unique privilege to see one of these truly wild bears. Since they utilize ancient strategies to find food, instead of raiding dumpsters, coolers, and picnic baskets, black bear signs are abundant. Right now, many black bears survive the surprisingly lean spring season by flipping rocks in streams to hunt salamanders, similar to herpetological adventures at the rally. However, unlike the humans attending our programs, bears are allowed to eat the salamanders.

Be aware of your surroundings, and you may get the chance to see some amazing creatures! The Spring Rally is a wonderful time to explore, with a host of experts to help you identify and understand some of Virginia’s strangest and most biodiverse communities of wildlife on a rejuvenated spring landscape. If you have not yet registered for the rally, you can do so below. The big weekend is almost here, and we hope to see you on the mountain.

June is a Frenzy of Life

Here on our VA Blue Ridge Mountain farm, June is a time of rebirth and renewal in nature.  Creatures seem to be in a rush to breed and of course must consume many resources to raise their young.  It is a life and death struggle but an absolutely spectacular show for the nature lover.

This is haying time on the farm since if you want to have fields, they must be cut periodically to stop woody succession back to a forest community.    As a "wildlife farmer" I must consider the trade-offs that contribute to an intelligent management strategy, but the choices are rarely definitive.   I am trying to allow our beautiful meadowlarks to breed once before mowing, but not wait so long that the fields will not rejuvenate before fall when we sometimes welcome migrating bobolinks which stop to feed.  In other fields which we have allowed to become early successional with blackberries and other woody plants growing in an old pasture, we have breeding blue grosbeaks (which is unusual) plus willow flycatchers, indigo buntings, field sparrows, orchard orioles and other desirable birds.

The nests of birds breeding in grasslands are rarely seen but this bluebird nest in one of our boxes epitomizes the mad rush of all birds to breed.  It also illustrates the fixity of avian reproduction in that birds have a certain nest behavior that rarely varies.  Thus bluebirds nest in cavities but meadowlarks nest on the ground in grasslands of a certain grass height.  Such rigid behavior must have been selected through evolution but seems sometimes to be problematic as humans dominate global ecosystems.  Birds that are more flexible in their behavior have a greater chance of success as the pace of change in habitats varies with human influences.

I especially enjoy watching some of my ponds which are fishless and thus have a number of insect and amphibian species that cannot survive around fish.  The amber winged spreadwing damselfly is one such species and it thrives only in one of our larger ponds from which fish have been excluded.  The males and females pair up and form into the wheel position during which the male grasps the female by her neck and she reaches forward with her abdomen and receives sperm from the accessory genitalia of the male.  It is remarkable how complex this and other reproductive processes are in such primitive insects.  Life for aquatic insects is not without risk despite the absence of fish, as shown by this photo of a fishing spider which has captured an azure bluet damselfly adult.  These ponds also contain amphibian predators as adult frogs; the anuran larvae are herbivorous and tadpoles from last year are now metamorphosing.  I show a photo of a green frog that is beginning to reabsorb its larval tail and transition from aquatic to aerial respiration.

During one of my frequent bike trips on the New River Trail I observed the attraction of a red spotted purple butterfly and a Nessus sphinx moth to carnivorous mammalian feces.  Such "puddling" behavior is due to the need of herbivores for sodium salts.  So what seems disgusting to us is simply filling of a nutritional requirement.  The red spotted purple's distinctive coloration is believed to be mimicry of the toxic pipevine swallowtail.  The sphinx moth is remarkable in its ability to hover like a hummingbird while extending a long proboscis to extract nectar from flowers with long and narrow corolla tubes.

While crossing the New River on an old railroad bridge I noticed a basking milk snake, which is a rare sight in this area in my experience.  The cool nights and warm days make basking an important means of regulation of metabolic rate in animals lacking internal means of heat generation.  This species is remarkable since on the southeastern coastal plain it has bright red bands and apparently advertises a resemblance to the highly poisonous coral snake, which does not occur in VA.  Yet in my area of the mountains it is cryptic in coloration with brownish blotches.  This would seem to be another example, like that of the red spotted purple butterfly above, of Batesian mimicry of a toxic species by a tasty one.  Although there is much we do not understand about this process, it does indicate the amazing effects that evolution can create in coloration.

When the red hot pokers we have planted come into flower in June, we can count on seeing our local orchard orioles feeding on the nectar.  These orioles have a sharp bill that is suited for drinking nectar from short broad flowers or piercing the base of flowers that are too long or twisted for direct drinking of nectar.  They are adept in utilizing flowers of many types, both native and introduced, which is quite useful since they migrate between South/Central America and North America and come in contact with many different species of flowers. 

In June there is so much happening in the natural world that your head can virtually spin around from watching the frenzied activities of the critters  around you.  Enjoy it while it lasts since soon enough it will be over for another year.

Bill Dunson
Galax, VA and Englewood, FL

Calico Pennant

Last Wednesday (5?14/14) my wife and I found a number of active dragonflies at Bass Lake on the outskirts of Blowing Rock, Watauga County, NC. We saw eastern pondhawks, common whitetails, Carolina saddlebags, and Calico pennants. The pennants sat still long enough for me to get a decent photo. Enjoy!