We have some photos from a new contributor, Christina Pfaff; her notes are indented:
I’ve been looking at the wildlife pictures for a long time, but only recently got a camera that I felt took good enough pictures to send in. Near the end of October, my husband and I went camping at Council Bluff Lake in southern Missouri to enjoy one of the last weekends of fall color. As with many MO lakes, it’s man-made via a dam across the Big River which was constructed about 30 years ago. The first picture I included was shot from the Lakeshore Trail looking down one of the many fingers of the lake.
I’m not as savvy with species names as many of your readers, but I enjoy finding and photographing critters we find on our hiking adventures. I do my best to identify species on the internet, but probably make mistakes sometimes. One of our first sightings on the trail was an Eastern Chipmunk (Tamias striatus), who thought he was doing a very good job of hiding from us in a log. I know chipmunks are a dime a dozen, but this was one of the better shots I’ve ever taken of one.
Can you spot the rodent?
The next two photos are Eastern American Toads [(Anaxyrus americanus americanus). Although they’re very common, they come in so many size and color varieties that they’re always a joy to see on the trail. They usually amble off in a mixture of hopping and tumbling as soon as they hear us coming.
Another common companion on the trail are turtles (fifth photo). I believe this guy is a Three-Toed Box Turtle (Terrapene carolina triunguis) and he was just waiting for us in the middle of the trail. He retracted his limbs a bit into his shell as we walked past, but otherwise seemed unconcerned by our presence.
The last three photos are some of the insects we found along the trail. The Horned Passalus (Odontotaenius disjunctus) is the only Missouri member of the Bess beetle family. The forest around the lake would provide plenty of rotted and decaying wood for them to survive on.
The Banded Woolly Bear is the caterpillar form of the Isabella Tiger Moth (Pyrrharctia isabella). While we found many in the forest, there were even more creeping along the highways on our drive home. I imagine the moth population will be booming come spring!
Finally, we found a Carolina mantis (Stagmomantis carolina) in a picnic area near the lake. She appears to be a female since her wings only extend part-way down the abdomen.
One of the best kinds of ‘trail mix’ — thanks!
Nice pictures. Thank you for sharing your trip to the woods.
Yes, thanks. Great stuff there. Can I ask you a question? How did you learn all this? I’m fascinated by people like you. You can pick out particular types that are “the only X in Missouri,” etc. I live in East Tennessee, and would love to know things like this. How did you learn it? Hope that’s not an overly dumb question.
I don’t know about Tennessee, but the Missouri Department of Conservation has some great materials about the flora and fauna in the area, so I usually start by looking through their website materials. Usually, I just open up every page on a type of critter and narrow down the options using pictures, descriptions of physical characteristics, and the map showing where they live. We’re also looking into investing in some smaller physical field guides that would fit in our packs so we can try and do some on-trail identification!
My minions at work ask me how I can search a sample of smashed up rock, splot impportant things, describe and report thm, in 1/10th the time they take on the same sample.
depresingly (for them), the answer is simple : I’ve looked at tens or hundreds of thousands more rock fragments than they have. All it takes is 6 hours work, every working day for 30 years.
When I started, I looked at more rock samples in my first month of work than I looked at in my university career. Then the second month started. Then the third.
More “ecologically”, my father had spent 30 years looking at the plants of local forests, fields and hedgerows BEFORE he did his degree, and had the parallel experience in his field.
Practice. It’s the only answer. You may be able to substitute machine learning eventually, but that won’t give you the experience that practice will.
I’m sure PCCE sweated blood over interpreting his first gene-analysis chromatogram (it’s something like “Weston Blots, isn’t it?) ; after 40-ish years of doing it, it’s a different matter now.
This is not a nil desparandum message. EVERY time that you work through your references, and do the “if this, then that” thought process, you build your experience. So, get out there, pocket guide in your hand, and exercise those observation and interpretation skills!
Very nice photos. Living only an hour from the town of Council Bluffs, Iowa, I had to quickly look this one up as I had not heard of this lake. Eastern Ozarks of Missouri in the Mark Twain National Forest. Wonder how they came up with this name for the lake? A bit far from the Loess Hills? Council Bluffs’s name was based on the Lewis and Clark, first formal “council” with Native Americans in 1804.
Lots of life going on near that gorgeous peaceful lake. Thank you for sharing your walk through the woods…
Nice photos, especially the box turtle. They are not that easy to come across.
Very good! And you did a great job identifying the critters.
Wonderful photos! Thank you!
The toads are great candidates for stardom in “Find the critter” photos!
Very pretty for an artificial lake. Out west our reservoirs are ugly as hell with “bathtub” lines.
Folk wisdom has it that wooly bears can be used to predict the coming winter. From the look of that one I would say that this winter will be brown in the middle and black on the ends.
Funny!
When looking up the woolly bears to see what the Isabella Tiger Moth looks like, saw this interesting note on Wikipedia:
Recent research[4] has shown that the larvae of a related moth Grammia incorrupta (whose larvae are also called “woollybears”) consume alkaloid-laden leaves that help fight off internal parasitic fly larvae. This phenomenon is said to be “the first clear demonstration of self-medication among insects”.
Oh, cool.
Great assortment of critters, thanks! As a kid (maybe 5) visiting Illinois, I stumbled across a lot of box turtles. They were fun to watch and (slowly) follow around. I think that is the reason why I’ve always been fond of turtles, and actually have 3 red-eared sliders to this day.
The Carolina mantis’ camouflage reminds me of the US army’s modern “digital camo”. I’ve never seen this species before.
Thanks, Christina! I’m impressed with your powers of observation. Walks are so much more rewarding when they’re notice-y like that. 😀
Thanks. That was a nice story. Reminds me to look around here sometimes.
Nice pictures. Thank you!
It always bemuses me that I can see a wooly bear on the road while I’m driving, something that is about 2 inches long.