Highlights
July 2023 - July Walks, Sunset Bike Ride, Bioreserve Woes
On a Westport River Watershed Alliance Walk to the Headwaters of their river's East Branch
With the summer hot weather tigers have been prowling the forest. Tiger swallowtails that is. Here's one sipping some nectar from a milkweed flower cluster. The tiger swallowtail is the largest butterfly in our neck of the woods.
We've had a rainy spring. Rain brings mushrooms. Liz found these painted boletes (Suillus spraguei) that grow under eastern white pines.
The trail to the Boiling Spring and the forest areas adjacent to the north end of the Copicut Reservoir have some large colonies of Allegheny mound ants. They are fascinating insects that, like us, alter the landscape to suit their needs and lifestyle. We recently ran this article on the mound ant, but for those that might have missed it, here it is again.
When you were a little kid and closer to the ground did you ever watch a battle between red ants and black ants? When outdoors playing did you ever inadvertently stand or sit next to a red ant mound? …OUCH!
From Nova Scotia to Georgia and from Michigan and the Upper Midwest south to Kentucky the Allegheny mound ant is the “red” mound building species you likely encountered.
Although commonly called “red” ants, Allegheny mound ants are actually reddish-orange on the head and thorax and black on the abdomen. Worker ants are about a quarter-inch long, queens a half-inch in length.
These ants build large mounds in which to live and raise their young. These mounds serve as solar collectors providing warmth necessary for egg incubation. Worker ants kill nearby trees and shrubs with injections of formic acid to prevent any shading of their mound.
Mounds are usually located in areas of dry, sandy, nutrient poor soil. As the ants construct their tunnels and chambers they bring up particles of sand and gravel piling them up higher and higher. A thriving Allegheny mound ant colony may have a mound four feet high and four feet underground.
Allegheny mound ants are alert and they post sentries to sound the alarm if their mound is threatened. A large mound contains thousands of aggressive workers ready to lay down their lives in defense of their mound. They are quick to bite and their mandibles will lock on even if their head is separated from their body. The stinging sensation one feels from the bite is due to the formic acid injected at the bite site.
Unlike most ants, Allegheny mound ants can have more than one queen. Young mated queens may stay in their home mound or they may leave to start their own colony. New mounds often have tunnels connecting them to the original mound.
Allegheny mound ants eat small arthropods and insects, including other ants. They also protect and tend aphids and eat the sweet secretions the aphids produce.
A number of spider species and large predatory insects will catch an Allegheny mound ant away from its mound and devour it. Some insect eating birds, especially flickers, enjoy an ant meal. In the SMB striped skunks are known to raid a mound for the eggs and ant larvae until the biting stings of the angry worker ants drive them away.
If out hiking within the range of the Allegheny mound ant watch for their large, obvious mounds. They are a marvel of insect engineering.
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ACTIVITY ALERT - A hike to the highest peak in the South Coast
The state forest fire lookout tower at the top of Copcut Hill. Find more info on the tower here: https://www.firelookout.org/lookouts/ma/fallriver.htm
Upon reaching the spot where you heard the quacking, it stops. All you see is a small vernal pool surrounded by huckleberry shrubs. No ducks in view and had they been there you would have seen them as they flew away. Standing there quietly you hear a “quack,” but it's coming from a small brown frog, not a duck. Soon another quack is heart and as the dozens of wood frogs in the vernal pool get used to your presence they all come out of hiding from under leaves and the mud of the pool and all begin quacking loudly.
Every spring there are numerous individuals walking in the woods that are fooled, some more than once, into thinking they're hearing ducks off in the distance when what they are really hearing are male wood frogs calling for mates.
Wood frogs and a number of other amphibians breed in vernal pools, temporary forest pools filled by spring rains. They have evolved to breed in temporary water bodies to avoid breeding in permanent ones that contain fish that would gobble up their eggs and tadpoles.
Emerging from hibernation in early spring, wood frogs return to the vernal pool of their birth. Once a male's quacking call has attracted a female he climbs on her back and grabs her behind her forearms. He holds her in this manner, called amplexus, until she lays her eggs, usually on submerged twigs and branches, while he simultaneously fertilizes them.
The warmer the water temperature the quicker the tadpoles grow and emerge from their egg. The young tadpoles are vegetarian and feed on algae and other aquatic plants.
As spring turns to summer and their pool begins to dry, wood frog tadpoles develop legs and metamorphose into tiny miniatures of their parents. During the remainder of the summer and fall they forage throughout the forest and when winter arrives hibernate in loose, moist soil under forest litter as full grown frogs.
Adult wood frogs are small frogs only 2 to 3 inches in length. Most are some shade of brown, from a rich chocolate brown to a weak coffee tan. Occasionally one is yellow or pink. Like raccoons that are found in the same habitat and enjoy dining on frogs, wood frogs also have a black mask-like pattern over their eyes.
Wood frogs feed on worms, small insects and spiders.
Wood frogs have many enemies. Most water birds will eat adults as well as tadpoles. Along with the raccoons, already mentioned, adult frogs are eaten by opossums, skunks, minks, weasels, foxes, coyotes. Water snakes, garter snakes, ribbon snakes and milk snakes and any turtle larger than they are will gobble them up too.
Wood frogs require large intact forests for survival. When not breeding they range widely foraging through forested country.
These frogs are tough. They are the only frogs found north of the Arctic Circle and their range extends from Alaska diagonally across North America to the Appalachian Mountains of extreme northern Georgia, South Carolina and Virginia east to the Atlantic coast at Maryland and Delaware and then north to Quebec and Labrador.
How do the survive brutal winters way up north? As the temperature drops in late fall wood frogs produce an antifreeze substance that prevents the water in their cells from turning to ice that would expand and rupture their cells. Around sixty percent of their body can freeze and they will survive. As the forest floor thaws in early spring they rejuvenate, leave their hibernaculum and head to their vernal pool to begin quacking once again.
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Sunset/Moonlight Bike Ride
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INFO ALERT - THROWING IN THE TOWEL
An esker is a long ridge of gravel and finer sediment deposited by glacial meltwater when the glacial ice sheet began its retreat from here 12,000 years ago. The Esker Ridge Trail in the SMB has been heavily damaged by illegal dirt bike and ATV activity. Once the thin layer of topsoil has been ripped off and eroded away by motorized vehicles the sand and gravel soon follow, impacting vernal pools and other sensitive habitat areas. Go see it for yourself. On the Southeastern Massachusetts Bioreserve Trail Map and Guide find the esker off Bell Rock Road where the trails at map markers BR1 and BR2, leave the road heading east to the Esker Trail that on the map is shown as #6 in a white diamond. Rattlesnake plantain orchids were found all along the trail. As far as we know this is the only area in the SMB where they were found. Apparently they have all been destroyed under the tires of off-road vehicles. If you find any in that area or anywhere else in the SMB please let us know at info@greenfutures.org
Once the topsoil is lost to erosion the motorized users are riding on Mother Nature's bones. The eroded material soon damages lower wetlands, vernal pools and water courses. Freetown Con Com should be outraged. On the Southeastern Massachusetts Bioreserve Trail Map and Guide park next to the gate, not in front of it, at the intersection of Bell Rock Road and Ledge Road. Follow the purple legal dirt bike trail and illegal trails in that area between Bell Rock Road, Copicut Road, Route 24 and to the south the Freetown/Fall River boundary line.
Miles and miles of illegally cut trails. Once again, apparently no one at DCR cares. Illegal dirt bike track creators removed sections of historic stonewalls and have cut trees that were in their way. On the Southeastern Massachusetts Bioreserve Trail Map and Guide park on Bell Rock Road at map maker DD1. Half way between DD1 and DD2 there is a new illegal trail that runs north. White diamond shape on the map with a 5 on it is the location of Dr. Durfee's Mill Pond. There is a tremendous amount of local history in the old mill pond and mill area. For some of that history google Dr. Nathan Durfee, Fall River. Some years ago a DCR official proposed erecting an interpretive historical kiosk next to the old mill. We're still waiting.
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Profile Rock being vandalized by, obviously, a vandal. Profile Rock was a natural granite formation on the northeast side of Joshua's Mountain in the Southeastern Massachusetts Bioreserve. It was in a beautiful area of New England hardwood forest, especially attractive on sunny autumn days when the leaves were changing color and dropping. DCR negligence in managing and maintaining that area of the SMB possibly caused the protruding granite profile to fall from the mountain. That occurred on June 19, 2019. And, DCR, four year later, still has the area closed. Ignoring that part of the SMB has allowed vandals to spray paint everything in sight including the asphalt road leading into Joshua's Mountain. Even without Profile Rock, Joshua's Mountain is geologically interesting rising above the coastal plain. Born from the granite batholith that runs from Freetown all the way south to Little Compton, Rhode Island. DCR has the area posted because of "loose rocks." Come on! DCR has many state forests and parks, especially west of Worcester out to the Berkshires loaded with loose rocks and also ledges, glacial debris piles and actual mountains. Once again DCR is unconcerned. They don't want to deal with it so deprive area residents and visitors of local geological history. Come on Freetown, Joshua's Mountain is part of your natural heritage. Tell DCR to clean up the mess and open the area to the public.
“Unless someone like you cares a whole awful lot, nothing is going to get better. It's not.”
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