A UVM blog Isabelle Collum’s Wonder Journal

Outback Road Field Guide Poster

A. Black-capped chickadee, Poecile atricapillus
B. Eastern gray squirrel, Sciurus carolinensis
C. House wren, Troglodytes aedon
D. American robin, Turdus migratorius
E. White-breasted nuthatch, Sitta carolinensis
F. Eastern cottontail, Sylvilagus floridanus
G. Northern green frog, Rana clamitans

My wonder blog mini-project is a small poster showcasing the common critters of Outback Road in Fairfax, VT done in colored pencil on sketchbook paper. I debated doing trees, fungi, and insects but decided to stick to the more charismatic species that live here. These species are the ones I’ve seen every single time I’ve stepped outside to do my wonder blogs and wanted to really showcase them. I’d done some drawings before for this class but none in color so I pushed myself to add that. I am so, so proud of this. I love how it turned out. It made me really look at each small detail of the animal; including anatomy, color, and texture.

I did these drawings completely on site, it took me about five total hours. Some are based on photos I took and the birds are based on the info from Guide to Birds of North America (1966) by Chandler S. Robbins, Bertel Bruun, and Herbert S. Zim that I used to make sure I got the identification right. The PDF scanner I used made the background look really clean and white.

I would love to do more of these, with larger fauna (black bear, white-tailed deer, North American river otter, red fox, etc.), insects, and flora (trees, fungi, etc.). The more art I create, the more I realize that I would love to do stuff like this all the time, although I’m sure the market is pretty saturated. Scientific illustrations are very interesting to me (and fun to make!).

Saturday 7/01/2023 2:30 PM

Outback Road, Fairfax, VT

Hazy, 86 °F

It was particularly hot and gross outside today. I did not spend as much time as I typically would have outside because of the lovely heat and air quality combo. My goals were to look for some mushrooms and see if I could get a bird photo (I managed one of these). The birds were, as usual, not pleased when I approached the birdhouses. Today for the first time I heard little cheeps! Congratulations and I apologize to the new mama House Wren I have been agitating for the past few weeks. I stood and ‘pished’ for a while, trying to get a bird to sit still long enough for a photo, to no avail. The water was still high and muddy in the brook, but no minnows or frogs to be seen today, just a handful of water striders. The large mushrooms I found last week were gone. I assume something ate them.

Natural History Mystery:

A mystery I have been wondering about is why so many woodpeckers have a bit of red on them. I’ve noticed this after learning about a bunch of different species in my Ornithology class, and I heard a woodpecker today in the woods which reminded me of it. The red is typically different shapes and in slightly different areas, but it’s a common theme for the woodpeckers to sport black, white, and red.

After doing a bit of research, there doesn’t seem to be a clear answer to this. Scientists have determined that mimicry is the cause for this plumage evolution in different species (https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-019-09721-w) but there doesn’t seem to be a clear reason why it’s red. Perhaps it’s just because that’s what the first woodpecker in the line had and there was no reason to evolve away from that. There is also evidence that male woodpeckers with brighter heads have a higher fitness (https://royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/10.1098/rsos.221096).

We see this happen in other types of birds as well, like how a large majority of warblers are yellow and gray. Maybe in the future we’ll learn more about this!

Five Photos:

The things I photographed made my site seem more alive, especially the small parts. In generally, my photos highlighted things that are typically not easily noticed and made them seem larger than life. I think this is similar to sketching in the way where you take time and appreciate the small details of your subject. Conversely, with sketching, you can take your time and depict it exactly how you want it, where with photography, you are at the whim of whatever you’re trying to capture. If a bird flies away, you can still draw it, but you can’t take a picture of an empty branch and call it a bird.

I had a good time taking these photos. I spent more time looking at things I typically would just walk by, and then approaching them from different angles until I found one I really liked. For all these photos, I took a bunch of different versions and these were my favorites.

Thursday 6/29/2023 6:30 PM

Outback Road, Fairfax, VT

Hazy from wildfire smoke, occasional light showers 74 °F

Part 2: Site Exploration

My dad implored me to check out the garden when I got home. He was concerned about one of his tomato plants. He had six plants, but one of them was severely stunted in growth compared to the rest; at least a foot or two shorter. He asked if it was dead, but it was still completely green so I didn’t think so. Besides the height issue, I noticed that some of the leaves were folding and becoming harder. On the underside of these leaves, I found a bunch of aphids. I know that ladybugs ate aphids, along with some other insects, but I didn’t see any around and I was not about to tell my dad to release ladybugs in the garden. I have a lot of houseplants, and if any have pests, I treat them with a bath, a fancy one including soap and oil (neem). My dad does not have fancy neem oil, so he sprayed them with soapy water and we’ll see if that works.

I continued to wander around for a bit, noticing a bunch of new milkweed sprouting up in the flowerbeds. I heard (and saw) a bunch of birds and decided to make a list:

• Song Sparrow (seen and heard)
• Red-eyed Vireo (heard)
• Northern Cardinal (heard)
• Common Yellowthroat (seen and heard)
• Gray Catbird (seen)

I also heard a few spring peepers that I’ve heard here since I was a kid, so that was comforting and familiar.

I noticed a bunch of little brown mushrooms which I’ll follow up on in Part 3.

The brook is high and murky, with a bunch of water striders, but too opaque to see any fish. There was a small snail on the bridge across the water.

There was a lot of clover popping up everywhere, which I’m sure the rabbit I saw when I drove in was quite pleased about.

My final observations were a couple of large, palm-sized brown/orange mushrooms by the tree line.

Part 3: Deep Dive

I decided to research the small mushroom I saw a bunch of all over the lawn. I looked up a mushroom identification key and it took me a while as I do not know the parts of a mushroom to find my way to the right one, but I believe what I found were Panaeolus foenisecii or “mower’s mushrooms/haymakers”.

Here is the link: https://www.mushroomexpert.com/panaeolus_foenisecii.html

It is one of the most common and widely distributed mushrooms on lawns in North America. It contains the chemical serotonin, but it is not psychoactive or hallucinogenic.

Crucial identifying features for Panaeolus foenisecii include its small size and habitat in the grass, along with the lack of a ring and the hygrophanous cap, which means as the cap dries out, it changes color drastically. However, it is mainly brown with the spore print (the underside of the cap which looks like gills) a darker purplish-brown.

Part 4: Sketches

Conclusion:

I love sketching. It was nice to just sit and zone out and just focus on what was in front of me. Like I mentioned with the water strider, I noticed things I never would have if I was just casually looking at something, For example, that the clover is made up of a bunch of mini flowers or that the water strider has stripes on its back. 3/4 of what I chose to sketch kept moving, so that was challenging but more fun and interesting, I think. On my next visit, I’d like to go back into the woods when it isn’t raining and see how many kinds of fungi I can find, since I didn’t expect to find two just in the grassy lawn today.

Friday 6/24/2023 5:00 PM

Outback Road, Fairfax, VT

Rain, 70 °F

Description: My childhood home. About an acre of mowed lawn, cut in half by a brook. In the back, there is a strip of woods. I spent most of my time today in the woods. It was raining and smelled like wet dirt. Water was dripping through the branches but it was nothing close to the downpour that was happening outside of the trees. I watched a few fat raindrops travel down from the crown of an American Beech, slide down leaves and drip off the tip to plop onto another below, before they eventually fell to the ground or onto my head. The ferns touching my legs were also wet and they were nestled in a thick layer of mostly dead leaves and decaying wood. The only things I could hear were the rain, my boots trudging along, and the occasional mosquito but there weren’t any birds singing that I could hear. They must have all been huddled up somewhere. It wasn’t cold, but it was definitely wet. I noticed a couple different species of fungi on trees, both dead and alive.

When I came out of the woods, I heard a few birds singing. I did a loop around the yard and checked out the brook and the bird houses. A female House Wren started chattering at me when I got close to one so I assume she has a nest in there. I almost tripped over a green frog and looked at a few of the plants around the water, and found some buds on my mom’s apple tree we got her a few years ago. Walking back to the house, I checked out the garden and saw a large cottontail rabbit poking around the beds, under the watchful eye of the fake owl my dad put up to scare the rabbits away (obviously, to no avail).

Question Marathon:

1. How long will this paper birch log take to break down?
2. Do some types of wood decompose much faster or slower than others?
3. Do some leaves decompose faster than others?
4. How deep does the rain permeate the soil/ground cover?
5. What species utilize fallen logs?
6. What kind of soil am I standing on?
7. Why don’t birds sing much in the rain?
8. Do some bird species sing more in the rain?
9. Why were the roots shallow enough to let this tree fall over?
10. What do mushrooms need to grow?
11. Do mushrooms only grow on wood?
12. What species eat mushrooms?
13. Why are mushrooms mainly on one side of a tree?
14. Do birds choose specific trees to nest in based on species?
15. Do birds have tree preferences?
16. What is the difference between moss, lichen, and fungi?
17. Is lichen a type of fungus?
18. How do four-leaf clovers form?
19. Are there ways to encourage four-leaf clover growth?
20. Where do butterflies go when it rains?
21. How long do bird mothers leave eggs alone in the nest?
22. Do birds fight over bird houses?
23. What bird species leaves the nest the fastest?
24. What bird species takes the most time to fledge?
25. Why is there white foam on trees when it rains?
26. What birds can have multiple broods in the summer?
27. How many species of insect are supported by the native plants in the meadow?
28. Do dragonflies eat mosquitos?
29. What does a hummingbird’s diet consist of mainly?
30. How many insects can bats consumer in one night?
31. What’s the top speed a cottontail rabbit can reach?
32. How big do the fish fry grow in the brook?
33. How many different animals feed on the fish in the brook?
34. Will the fish in the brook stay for the entirety of their life span or will they move downstream to deeper waters?
35. Are the crayfish found here the same as those down south?
36. What makes the piles of mud in my lawn?
37. How much milkweed do I need to be beneficial to pollinators?
38. How many kinds of ticks are in Vermont?
39. Does the owl decoy in my parents’ garden actually deter small mammals?
40. Does companion planting actually work?

I chose to research the question “Why is there white foam on trees when it rains?”

I learned that this is a representation of a process called stemflow, which is the downward flow of water along the stems or trunks of plants or trees during rainfall. It occurs when rainwater collects on the branches and foliage and then flows down the stems, eventually reaching the ground. Sometimes, when this happens, the stemflow creates a foam. An assortment of particulates, plant chemicals, and air pollutants mix together on the trunk and accumulate at the base of a tree. This is actually a crude soap, a combination of an alkali metal (usually potassium or sodium) and a mixture of carboxylic acids. This soap flows down and bubbles due to furrows in the trunk. I saw this a few times while out tonight, but apparently it’s not super common. You need the right combinations of a dry span of time for buildup to take place, a furrowed bark, and to catch it when it’s raining or right after.

Mautz, C. (2022) Soapy Trees? Sometimes Trees Need a Shower, Soapy Trees? Sometimes Trees Need a Shower | Brandywine Conservancy and Museum of Art. Available at: https://www.brandywine.org/conservancy/blog/soapy-trees-sometimes-trees-need-shower#:~:text=When%20rain%20collects%20on%20a,turbulence%20on%20tree%20bark%20furrows.

Paradis, J. (2022) Outside/Inbox: What is that white foam that forms on trees when it rains?, New Hampshire Public Radio. Available at: https://www.nhpr.org/nh-news/2022-05-13/outside-inbox-what-is-that-white-foam-that-forms-on-the-trees-when-it-rains

I had never heard about crude soap being found at the base of tree trunks before, and when I initially started researching it, I did not expect it to be soap! I enjoyed taking a nice walk around my childhood house and while I expected to not have a great time due to the weather, I ended up finding stuff that I never would have if it was sunny and dry! I’m excited to see if there will be some eggs/chicks in the bird houses and I’m looking forward to checking out the water when it’s lower and clearer, as it was quite muddy and high today.

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