Newsletters
June 2012 - Box Turtle, White Pine, Tiger Beetle
WELCOME TO GREEN FUTURES !
JUNE, 2012
“I understand and sympathize with the reasonable needs of a reasonable number of people on a finite continent. All life depends upon other life. But what is happening today, in North America, is not rational use but irrational massacre. Man the Pest, multiplied to the swarming stage, is attacking the remaining forests like a plague of locusts on a field of grain.”
-Edward Abbey
“And what is so rare as a day in June?”
JUNE DAYS – Only 30 so don’t waste them
Not wanting to miss any beautiful New England June days our newsletter this month will be brief. The woods and waters beckon.
Click on our “Calendar” for activities and meetings.
Here are a few recent news articles on items of concern. If we get a rainy June day or you’re stuck indoors, check them out.
From the American Lung Association find out the state of the air in your community.
http://action.lung.org/site/MessageViewer?em_id=53001.0&dlv_id=66082
Bad Nukes, way past time to shut them down. Entergy’s Pilgrim is not that far away.
Vernon - http://ivn.us/2012/05/23/vermont-yankee-nuclear-plant-aging-leaking-shut/
Seabrook - http://www.unionleader.com/article/20120515/NEWS05/705159981
BP and the Gulf mess. Anyone sent to jail yet?
MEET THE BEETLE – Six Spotted Tiger Beetle (Cincindela seguttata)
Stefani Koorey photo
On a recent Exploring the Bioreserve Walk one of the hikers, Monique, found this bright green beetle. We knew it was a predatory species, but couldn’t exactly identify it.
Arthur Moore, an insect enthusiast, happened to be checking-out our Facebook page and saw the, above, beetle photo and emailed us the identification. Thank you Arthur!
Various species of tiger beetles hunt insect prey from coastal beaches to mountain tops. The tiger beetle discovered on our walk is the six spotted tiger. It lives in a burrow and ventures forth to hunt down and devour ants, springtails (snow fleas), caterpillars and other forest insects.
BIORESERVE FAUNA OF THE MONTH – Eastern Box Turtle (Terrapene carolina)
Male box turtle. Note red eyes.
Box turtles can be identified by their carapace pattern. No two are alike.
SMB female box turtle living dangerously attempting to dig nest in industrial area lot.
The eastern box turtle is New England’s only terrestrial turtle. It is a charming creature found from southern Maine west to Michigan, south to Florida and west to eastern Kansas, Oklahoma and Texas.
As in many other box turtle states, in Massachusetts the box turtle is listed as a “Species of Special Concern.” Box turtles are so charming that many people cannot resist picking them up and taking them home. A turtle-napped box turtle usually ends up dead and even if it should survive as someone’s “pet” it still ends up effectively “dead” … removed from furthering the perpetuation of its species in the wild.
Except when hibernating box turtles are always on the move, often crossing the roads they encounter within their home territory. This sooner or later usually results in a crushed turtle. Add slow to mature to these woes, and laying only five to six eggs each year, and it is easy to see why box turtles have been in a slow, gradual decline for the past fifty years over almost their entire range.
In the Southeastern Massachusetts Bioreserve (SMB) we have a box turtle population following the national trend. Dozens of roads and trails fragment their habitat. Legal motor vehicle use in the SMB and illegal all-terrain and off-road vehicle activity make it impossible for a box turtle to survive from hatchling to adult without being run over or picked up and taken home.
Additionally, in the suburban developments adjacent to the SMB, human commensals …dogs and cats …think nothing of swallowing quarter-size box turtle hatchlings.
Eastern box turtles have a high, dome-like carapace (top shell) and a two-part plastron (bottom shell) connected by a flexible hinge that allows total shell closure. When in danger, the turtle is able to close the plastron by pulling the hinged sections up against the carapace. This shell closing feature protects the box turtle from most forest predators, but offers no protection from our heavy motor vehicles. Aquatic turtle species seek safety in water, so didn’t evolve the box turtle’s neat shell closing feature.
The base carapace color is usually brown or black although some may be yellow. Each carapace segment (scute) has a radiating pattern of yellow or orange lines and blotches. Each individual has a slightly different color pattern. Skin coloration is similar to that of the carapace.
Males are usually more brightly colored than females. Males also have larger heads and longer toenails and tails than females. Box turtle males normally have red eyes. Females usually have brown eyes.
Box turtle males have a concave depression on their plastron that allows them to maintain their position atop the female’s carapace when mating. Female plastrons are flat to slightly convex.
Eastern box turtles are six to eight inches long and have five toes on each front foot and four toes on each hind foot.
Unlike our aquatic turtle species that rarely live longer than a half century, box turtles are very long-lived. They have been known to live well over 100 years.
Henry David Thoreau wrote in his journal about a Middleborough box turtle that he heard about while visiting at Assawompsett Pond in 1854. Average age of maturity for a box turtle is twelve years, so the turtle mentioned by Thoreau was probably at least twelve years old when first discovered, but could have been much older. Here’s what Thoreau wrote:
In the year 1763, Mr. Shubael Thompson found a land turtle in the northeast part of Middleborough, which by some misfortune had lost one of its feet, and found marks on its shell, viz. I. W. 1747.
He marked it S. T. 1763 and let it go,
It was found again in the year 1773, by Elijah Clap who marked it E. C. 1773, and let it go.
It was found again in the year 1775 by Captain William Shaw, in the month of May, who marked it W. S. 1775. It was found again by said Shaw the same year, in September, about one hundred rods distance from the place where he let it go.
It was found again in the year 1784, By Jonathan Soule, who marked it J. S. 1784, and let it go.
It was found again in the year 1791, by Zenas Smith, who marked it Z. S. 1791 and let it go, it being the last time it was found; 44 years from the time the first marks were put on.
Eastern box turtles prefer mixed forest regions interspersed with grassy meadows, old pastures, springs, brooks, and vernal pools where they like to loaf in the mud on hot, humid summer days.
The scutes, boney plates that make up the box turtle’s carapace, continue to grow throughout the turtle's life and develop annual growth ridges, similar to tree growth rings. If not overly worn, these ridges can be counted to determine the turtles age. Most of our aquatic turtles shed their scutes as they grow so this method of determining a turtle’s age does not on work on all turtle species.
Box turtles in our area hibernate for half the year. They enter burrows or just dig into the ground, under woody forest debris or alongside downed tree limbs, in mid-October. They emerge from hibernation in late April or early May.
Box turtles mate throughout the summer. Males may fight over a female, often biting and scratching and attempting to flip their opponent onto his carapace. One mating can provide the female with enough viable sperm for up to three years of egg laying.
Box turtles lay eggs in June. A pregnant female will walk for miles looking for the right sandy/gravely location, with correct sun exposure, in which to lay her eggs.
When the desired location is found, the female uses her hind feet to dig a nest hole. This usually occurs early in the morning. It make take an entire day for the female to dig the nest chamber, lay her eggs and scoop the excavated soil back into the hole.
Box turtle eggs hatch in the fall and the hatchlings may immediately hibernate or over-winter in the nest emerging in the spring.
Requiring protein for growth, baby box turtles are primarily carnivorous eating worms, slugs and most any insect they encounter and can overpower. The will also feed on carrion and road-kill and when dining on the latter often end up road-kill themselves.
Adults are mostly vegetarian with a fondness for wild strawberries, wild grapes, blueberries and other wild fruits. They are also often found feeding on mushrooms.
It is an environmental tragedy that we are losing these unique creatures. If you see one crossing a road or highway stop, if it is safe to do so, and carry it across putting it down facing it in the direction it was going when you picked it up. Our eastern box turtles need all the help they can get.
The eastern box turtle is the official state reptile of North Carolina.
BIORESERVE FLORA OF THE MONTH – Eastern White Pine (Pinus strobus)
The eastern white pine is often thought of as tree of the far north, but its range barely reaches into southern Canada. In Canada it ranges from the Maritimes and the Gaspé peninsula of Quebec west to Ontario and southeastern Manitoba. In the United States its home range extends from southeastern Minnesota and northeastern Iowa east to the Atlantic coast. Eastern white pine continues south through New England and the Middle Atlantic states south down the Appalachian Mountains to northern Georgia and northwestern South Carolina and then west to Tennessee and Kentucky.
Eastern white pine is the commonest evergreen conifer (cone bearing tree) in the Southeastern Massachusetts Bioreserve (SMB). It is also the most valuable local lumber tree.
The eastern white pine can be easily identified by its leaves (needles). The leaves are in bundles of five corresponding to the number of letters that make up the middle name of the tree. “W-h-i-t-e” …which describes the color of its wood …contains five letters. If a New England pine has five needles in a bundle, it is a white pine.
Eastern white pine leaves are a dark green and three to five inches long. Every eighteen months old leaves are shed and replaced by new ones.
In spring eastern white pines produce copious pollen which is dispersed by the wind. Walking through a large eastern white pine grove on a windy spring day can be difficult for people with pine pollen allergies or compromised respiratory systems.
White pine cones are long and narrow, four to seven inches long. The cone’s overlapping scales open when the seeds are fully ripe and the small seeds wind disperse. In years of abundant cone crops, the SMB red squirrels feed almost exclusively on pine seeds.
Old growth white pines are few and far between. As a valued lumber tree there are few old growth pines remaining.
White pines are the tallest native New England tree. When Europeans arrived in New England they found white pines as tall as 250 feet. Unfortunately, they cut them all down.
Many of these early tall and straight pines were branded with a large arrow design as “King’s Pine” by agents of the British Royal Navy. Colonists were forbidden to cut them since these “select” pines were destined for use as masts on English ships.
The tallest eastern white pine in New England, today, is the Jake Swamp Pine in the Mohawk Trail State Forest in Charlemont, Massachusetts. It is 170 feet tall and still growing.
The tallest eastern white pine of them all is the Longfellow Pine at 185 feet. It is living in Cook Forest State Park, Farmington Township, Pennsylvania.
The SMB forest is predominately oak and pine. With the periodic attacks on the oaks from alien gypsy moth caterpillars, alien winter moth caterpillars and native forest tent caterpillars the weakened oaks are being replaced by eastern white pine which the above mentioned caterpillars do not eat.
Eastern white pine does have its enemies. The white pine weevil and pine blister rust, an alien fungus from Asia, can weaken and kill these pines.
Eastern white pine will grow just about anywhere in the forest, however this species prefers well-drained soil and abundant sunlight.
White Pine needles are high in vitamin c and can be brewed as “tea.” The inner white bark (cambium) is edible …if you like the taste of pine. Indians would dry and then grind/pulverize the cambium into a “flour.” This flour would be added to soups and stews as a thickener or mixed with other nut and seed flours and made into bread.
The eastern white pine is the “state flower” of Maine.
Largest white pine we’ve found in the SMB. If you encounter a larger one please let us know.
Stefani Koorey photo.
Liz gives the old pine a big hug.
Enjoy the month of June!
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