Nature

[Thumper]

I've been annoying Swift this spring announcing to him every time I see a first bug or hear a first frog of spring. Since for whatever reason I feel the need to keep announcing, I figure I'd give Swift a break and spread the annoyance around. Yesterday, while running the scoreboard at a high school lacrosse game that was being played in a former soybean field, I heard what I thought were frogs in the wet marshy area behind us. I think they might have been tree frogs. Later at home, I heard toads then surprised myself stepping out of the garage as I saw one hop across the sidewalk and into the flowerbed. I love my toads. I especially like finding the baby ones that can comfortably sit on my pinky nail. The guy last night was about as big as my entire thumb. Also showing up now: those big brown flying beetles that flock uncontrollably to the lights in the garage, run into things with big bangs, and then buzz around upside down on the concrete.

[Swift]

I don't find it annoying.

I was up at the Nature Center where I volunteer on Sunday (helping with a hike to train a couple of new volunteers and a new staff person). There is a small man-made wetland behind it, and the toads were going nuts. They were calling like crazy, in the middle of the day. All over the little marsh were balls of toads rolling around. The males just swarm the females and it will look like a warty brown tennis ball rolling around. Every once in a while a new male will pile on, and the ball will roll over to one side.

For everyone who doesn't know American Toad calls
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A6-8pC8o5fw
People are usually surprised a frog is making that sound, especially a toad.

[pumpkinpi]

My favorite sign of spring is when the lilacs bloom. They are abundant in my area of Minnesota, and I bike past many batches of bushes on my commute. It smells so good.

We had two lilac bushes in our yard when we moved in. The first slowly dies, and the second has had a couple rough years. we'll have to figure out where to plant new ones.

[Swift]

I don't know that I have a favorite sign of spring. But spring is my favorite season, and I love checking through them as they come along. Some can be as early as late February, when the skunk cabbage usually pokes its flowers through the snow, or looking through early March for the first turkey vulture of the season. Yes, a lot of my signs are pure nature-geek.

We are well into spring around here. A lot of the really early spring wildflowers are done or at least at or past their peak. The mid to late spring wildflowers, like trillium, Virginia bluebells, or jack-in-the-pulpit are flowering.

The peepers have been going for six weeks, but they'll continue even through May. As noted above, the toads have started and I heard my first tree frog. The green frogs and bullfrogs should be calling soon.

[Thumper]

I don't find it annoying.

I know, you're just the first person I think of when I want to tell someone about "nature geek" stuff.

All over the little marsh were balls of toads rolling around. The males just swarm the females and it will look like a warty brown tennis ball rolling around. Every once in a while a new male will pile on, and the ball will roll over to one side.

I don't know if that's really cool or kind of gross.

I'm pretty familiar with the toad calls. We have them all over around us. The peepers have really declined in their frequency around here. After listening to your link, I looked up tree frog calls. And now I'm sure that's what I heard yesterday up at the game. We have a small man made pond behind the house and we always have resident frogs. I don't know if they're all bull frogs or a mix of species. Last time I walked by, there were at least 10 there.

As for plants, I love when the redbuds come out. They came out strong this year and lasted a long time. Some still look quite brite. We also like lilacs and forsythias.

[Rommie]

Just spent a few days in Slovenia (running out of nearby new countries to visit!) and it was deep in late spring there- all the new green leaves, late spring flowers on the trees and such. Even saw my first chamois while hiking which was awesome- super rare apparently, as the hostel owner has lived his entire life in that area but hadn't seen one in the wild before! This one was a buck, and kept making sharp bleating noises while stamping with his foot to get me out of his forest. He was going for threatening, ended up adorable.

Then came back to Amsterdam, and noticed with a shock yesterday that the swallows are back. It really is amazing how one day you look up in autumn and realize with sadness that they're gone, and look up again one day in spring and they swarm through the air... plus a round trip to South Africa in between. Mind boggling! I felt really out of place when I first moved to Europe not knowing simple things like common flowers and birds- things you just take for granted after years in one place I guess- but I think watching the swallows are my favorite. They're so swift in the air, swooping back and forth.

[geonuc]

It's not all good. I visited a nearby national wildlife refuge* this week and was reminded what spring means around here when you hike. Check for ticks. Sure enough, three of the little buggers had hitched a ride. Soon, the chiggers will be out, too. Mosquitoes are already here.

http://www.fws.gov/piedmont/

[Thumper]

And sticker bushes, and pollen and mud.
But soon the fireflies will be out, and I can stand and gaze in jaw dropped wonder as always.

[Thumper]

And the fire flies are starting to come out. (Or if you prefer: Lightning Bugs.)
There were actually one or two I saw several weeks ago when we had a warm spell. But cold and rain returned and they didn't increase in numbers. But now you can pretty much see several on any given night or early morning.
Yea.

[Swift]

Cool. Haven't seen one around here yet.

And my preferred name for them is "glow butts"

[geonuc]

We should be seeing lightning bugs in the backyard soon. According to an article I read, late hard freezes and drought tend to reduce their population in these parts. We've had neither of those conditions this year.

[Rommie]

I miss lightning bugs. They don't exist here.

[Thumper]

I'd never seen one until I moved to Ohio. I didn't think they really existed. Then I saw them my first summer here. I wait for them every year. I can't imagine a summer without them.
I like "Glow Butts."

[Swift]

A few cool firefly facts:

According to this 1965 paper there are 8 genus and 24 species of firefly in Ohio.

Firefly larve (glow worms) and even the eggs in some species glow. I've seen glow worms once, a summer night hike through a field, where we found a bunch of them on the ground.

Fireflies are carnivorous and some species eat other fireflies. And yes, they will find their victims by looking for their flash pattern or by mimicing the flash pattern of mates of the species they are hunting.

I don't know why Rommie can't find them in Holland, there are certainly European species. I wonder if it is habitat loss. I did find this website and it said this about the Netherlands:

The Netherlands
I have seen glow worms in the Amsterdamse Bos ("Amsterdam Forest") for at least the past five years (but never reported before, not knowing this site). Initially I thought they were at some (darker) locations only – but my current line of thinking is they are everywhere, just slightly harder to see in the lighter locations. They do seem to appear in the sections with broad-leaved trees however (I haven't really seen them in the sections with conifers yet).
The Amsterdam Forest has no artificial lighting, not on its foot or bicycle paths either, however it is surrounded by oceans of light; Schiphol Airport and its runways, the many greenhouses (roses and other flowers) and the sports grounds (hockey/football fields). The Forest seems to be large enough for this glow worm population not to be disturbed by these surrounding lights?

The glow worms are easiest to be seen in the darker sections, especially when there are no clouds, no moon, and in the sections covered by the tree tops. Once there, you can find yourself suddenly and literally surrounded by them - it happened to me (once again), yesterday (8th Oct 2010) – Petra

[Rommie]

Ah, makes sense that they're in the Bos- that is really the only place I know of out here where you can get semi-reasonable dark tree coverage. The rest of the country is just too populated- for example, there's virtually nowhere in this country you can see the Milky Way except some of the barrier islands out in the North Sea.

[Swift]

Well, the fireflies are finally rolling around here.

We've seen a few for the last couple of weeks. But last night, as I was going to bed, I thought I saw more than a couple in the backyard. So we turned out all of the lights and watched them in the backyard through our big living room window. It was a storm of fireflies. They were everywhere, in the wood, over the lawn, up high, down close to the ground. It looked like the yard was full of little green Christmas lights.

I tried to get some photos or video with various devices, but nothing really worked. I assume you'd need a low-light video camera.

[grapes]

Well, the fireflies are finally rolling around here.

Awesome. About this time, they spread out like that late at night in the forest next to my house, like walking through a fairyland.

Last weekend we camped out at a place just off the Blue Ridge Parkway, one of the higher points around. The wind was ferocious in the trees, hardly disturbed the tents at all. When I was walking across the bald in the middle of the night, I thought I saw meteors. Then I realized it was clouded over, and I figured they were cloud-to-cloud lightning strikes. Nope, they were lightning bugs blown so fast by the wind that they looked like meteors. Don't think I'd ever seen that before.

[Thumper]

Yes^ and Yes^^

We looked out the back window a couple nights ago, and it was a flicker/twinkle fest as far as you could see where ever you looked.

[Swift]

Now that spring is rolling around again through the Northern hemisphere, I figured I'd dig up this thread.

We did our first amphibian hike March 10; the similar hike last year was April 2, so it shows how much warmer things are this year. And the warm-up was more gradual this year, so it wasn't the huge numbers of animals we saw last year, like everyone woke up at once. But we did see a very good variety: peepers, wood frogs, red backed salamanders, spotted salamanders, a couple of Eastern newts, one Jefferson.

Seen turkey vultures for a couple of weeks. Only a couple of great blue herons so far, and when we checked the rookery near us a couple of weeks ago, none were nesting yet. Have been seeing and hearing red-wing blackbirds, think it is just the males so far (they come up first).

Saw skunk cabbage back in December (that is very early) and some more in February (that's normal). Seen some coltsfoot (which I just learned is not native, but not considered bad or invasive). Seen trout lily leaves, and a few cut-leaf toothwort leaves, but no flowers.

[SciFiFisher]

Now that spring is rolling around again through the Northern hemisphere, I figured I'd dig up this thread.

We did our first amphibian hike March 10; the similar hike last year was April 2, so it shows how much warmer things are this year. And the warm-up was more gradual this year, so it wasn't the huge numbers of animals we saw last year, like everyone woke up at once. But we did see a very good variety: peepers, wood frogs, red backed salamanders, spotted salamanders, a couple of Eastern newts, one Jefferson.

Seen turkey vultures for a couple of weeks. Only a couple of great blue herons so far, and when we checked the rookery near us a couple of weeks ago, none were nesting yet. Have been seeing and hearing red-wing blackbirds, think it is just the males so far (they come up first).

Saw skunk cabbage back in December (that is very early) and some more in February (that's normal). Seen some coltsfoot (which I just learned is not native, but not considered bad or invasive). Seen trout lily leaves, and a few cut-leaf toothwort leaves, but no flowers.

That's a pretty impressive summary.

[Thumper]

While in Portland, I heard a couple species of frogs out behind my aunt and uncle's. They weren't froggers so didn't know what species they might be. The forsythia is blooming. Still hearing the peepers. I was test driving Mrs. T's car Wednesday evening, listening for a bad sound. Heard something, rolled down the window and it was a wet field full of peepers. Peeked into the fish pond and could make out a goldfish or two that survived the winter. That always amazes me. With the grass greening up and buds coming out, the deer don't need to hang out as close to the house as much, but they're still around, just to say hi. I haven't seen a heron recently. Usually don't see them much around my property, but there are places we usually see them flying by. When the dog and I walked down the road by the cow pasture, we saw a couple of Eastern Bluebirds. Buzzards are omnipresent. And the raccoons are unfortunately annoying, as usual. Oh, there was a morning a couple weeks ago, we had 5 red wing blackbirds in the front yard. We rarely see the females. (At least I don't easily recognize them.)

[Swift]

Went by the rookery today and the great blue herons are back. Saw my first turtle today (slider) and my first spring beauty (wildflower).

[Thumper]

Saw Flickers in the yard coming home Monday. They seem to only show themselves every so often.

[Thumper]

Saw Flickers in the yard coming home Monday. They seem to only show themselves every so often.

[Rommie]

Flickers?