This week for Flora and Fauna Friday we have the haunting horned Hoot-Owl: the Great Horned Owl (Bubo virginianus).
The Great Horned Owl is our largest Owl and found in nearly every nook and cranny of the continental United States. This Owl is tall and stocky with a finely mottled plumage of grays, white, and rust. Large sulfur-yellow eyes are set wide and forward facing on a broad face bearing a disdainful to disinterested expression. From its temples arise its namesake horns, black and rounded tufts of feathers our Owl can raise or lower like eyebrows. On the other end of the Owl are fluffy feet bearing savagely hooked talons.
Of our four resident owl species, each has an analogue in the diurnal Falconiform raptors (Eagles, Hawks, and Falcons). The Barred Owl is but a subtler sunset Red-shouldered Hawk. The Barn Owl is a stockier and more horrifying Harrier. The Screech Owl is like a shrunken screaming Sharp-shinned Hawk. The Great Horned Owl is a merciless Eagle. They are the apex predator of the night sky. When the curtains of twilight draw shut, they wield air superiority like a silent surgical sledgehammer.
All our Owls have impressive night vision and exceptional hearing. They also have the power of silent flight, owing to serrated flight feathers that soften their swooping sounds. Great Horned Owls use these talents to hunt anything they please. Even birds bigger than themselves. Great Horned Owls hunt in a similar manner to Eagles. They use their considerable mass, wicked claws, and enhanced perception to tackle prey by surprise. The impact cripples and confuses prey, swiftly dissolving their defenses and leaving them open to a killing blow. A good chunk of the Great Horned Owl’s winter diet comes from wading birds and waterfowl. Ducks are a nutritious and delicious compact meal. Although plentiful, they are often hard to get a hold on. Wading Birds on the other hand are easy pickings but mostly bone and feather. Their lanky frame and slow flight makes them easy targets. Great Egrets are a special favorite here in the Lowcountry. Their habit of roosting over water in tree canopies and their bright white plumage makes them glow in the slightest moonlight. Great Horned Owls are also notorious for raiding bird nests and will snatch fledgling chicks, even Ospreys and Eagles, straight from under the beaks of their parents. Great Horned Owl pairs even make a hobby of stealing Bald Eagle nests for their own use. Throughout winter, breeding pairs will talk to each other with a short sentence of soft echoing hoots.
This week for Flora and Fauna Friday we have a spongy photosynthesizing fungus better known from the great white north but native to some of our more quintessentially Carolina biomes: Reindeer Moss, genus Cladonia.
Reindeer Moss is a genus of fungi found across the globe. There are many species in the genus but today we’re focusing on just the mat-forming species. This lichen grows in spongy blue-green mats. Like a root ball turned upside-down, their minute branches split and taper fractally into a foam-like frothy web of fungus. Reindeer Lichens exist in a plethora of biomes from the Reindeer grazed plains of the Canadian tundra to the fire razed savannas of the South Carolina Lowcountry. Since we’re here and not there, I’ll be talking about our local lichens.
As alluded, Reindeer Moss is commonly found growing on the patches of bare, sandy soil in our fire managed Longleaf Pine savannas. It’s also quite numerous on sandy ditch banks and other dry, nutrient poor soils where little else grows. Reindeer Moss does well here because of its special characteristics as a lichen. A lichen is not your ordinary ‘shroom, this fungus is something much different. Unlike the fungi we’re used to seeing, lichens do not live underground nor do they feed on detritus. Lichens photosynthesize. Well, to be more precise, Lichens are a compound organism. They are composed of a fungus and a colony of single-celled alga or cyanobacteria. The two live together in a relationship a little more advanced than traditional symbiosis, with the fungus being entirely dependent on the alga for food and the alga living entirely within the fungus. Because of this, lichens can grow anywhere there is light. However, unlike plants, the root-like hyphae and unique biochemistry of a fungus allow the lichen to obtain mineral nutrition from practically anywhere. Just like some non-vascular plants, they are very drought tolerant. Many lichens live on tree bark, rocks, or bare soil and rely on rainwater and alluvium for nutrients. Some can even dissolve rock to a limited extent. Reindeer moss is no exception. This allows it to, quite literally, carve out a niche where no plant can!
This week for Flora and Fauna Friday, we have the under-bite champion of the bird world: the Black Skimmer (Ryhnchops niger).
Black Skimmers are a slender member of the same family as Gulls and Terns, Laridae. Black Skimmers are a bird of monochrome pelage with a jet-black back and ice-white belly. This formal coat is accented by legs and bill of deep-orange. Their general body shape is sleek and narrow, much like a tern, but what stands them out from the crowd of sea birds is their beak. Black Skimmers have a long, blade-like bill that’s orange at the base and black towards the tip. What’s unusual is that their lower bill is nearly 50% longer than the upper, blunt like a butter knife at the tip, and thin as wire the whole length. The design is somewhere between sword and airplane wing. The upper bill is similarly strange yet less by comparison. This beak is the key to the Black Skimmer’s feeding strategy.
Black Skimmers are piscivorous. However, instead of plunge diving like a Tern or Pelican for their meals, they prefer to stay out of the surf. Black Skimmer fly flat, true, and swiftly mere inches over the surface of the water. As one levels out it opens wide to lower its rudder beak into the brine. That hydrodynamic shape divides the water as cleanly as the bow of a ship as the bird coasts over a creek. Its long elegant wings power the craft and steer it towards a disturbance in the surface of the water. Fast and silent they ambush their target blind. Their bladed bill broadsides a Killifish at breakneck speed. The scaly thing is wrenched upward on the inclined maw and fatally pinched between two scissor-like jaws. Black Skimmers feed not by sight but by touch, much like a Stork or Spoonbill, but in a much more thrilling manner. They’re common in coastal waterways where small fish school near the surface and they often rest perched on the beach.
This week for Flora and Fauna Friday we have an aggressive and expansive wetland plant critical to our Island: Black Needlerush (Juncus roemarianus).
Black Needlerush is a member of the Rush family, Juncaceae. Rushes are one of the big three “grass-like” families, along with the Sedges of Cyperaceae and Grasses of Poaceae. The quick trick to telling these three apart are their stems. Grasses have flat leaves, Sedges triangular stems, and Rushes tubular leaves. As we all know, biology is the study of exceptions to the rule. So this quick trick can get you quickly tricked, but it at least holds water for today’s Rush.
As stated, Black Needlerush looks similar to a grass but has tubular leaves. These perennial leaves are often three to four foot long and dastardly sharp. Walking unprepared into a sea of Needlerush is never a pleasant experience. Plants grow in bunches and spread laterally by rhizomes. Needlerush blooms in spring to produce an open, palm-sized cluster of mahogany-brown seed capsules. Black Needlerush is the other half of the tidal tag-team that makes up our salt marsh. Smooth Cordgrass tackles the low marsh and Black Needlerush takes the high marsh. Black Needlerush grows naturally in massively expansive single species meadows across sandy marsh lands and salt flats of the Lowcountry. Needlerush grows on higher elevations than Smooth Cordgrass but often in soils just as saline. It grows on the firm sandy substrate rather than the nutrient fluff that is pluff mud. Its perennial nature provides a more permanent home for our marsh birds and rodents during winter. Its tightly woven leaves create a natural sieve to filter and collect eroding soils and tidal flotsam as well as break apart storm surges and wakes.
This week for Flora and Fauna Friday we have a pair of personable Parids: the Carolina Chickadee (Poecile carolinensis) and the Tufted Titmouse (Baeolophus bicolor).
Today’s Titmouse and Chickadee are both members of the Tit family, Paridae, and the only members of said family found here in the Lowcountry. Parids as a whole are small, vocal, social songbirds that inhabit woodlands. This is a description that fits our two birds perfectly. Chickadees and Titmice can be found living in small social colonies wherever trees abound throughout the state of South Carolina. They’re regular neighbors in the backyards of suburbia and staple feeder birds. Both eat a varied diet consisting primarily of insects and seeds.
The Carolina Chickadee is a minute monochrome bird. A small ball of clearly sectioned ivory, coal, and gunmetal with a short beak and round head, they’re hard to mistake for anything else. The Chickadee’s namesake alarm call of “Chick-A-Dee-Dee-Dee…” is far more slurred than the onomatopoeia leads you to believe but is nonetheless distinctive. The Tufted Titmouse is a small, subdued plumage songbird with a small pointed crest for a touch of flare. Their belly is a dingy white and their back an aluminum-gray with subtle chestnut flanks below their wings. Their “Peter-Peter-Peter” song can be heard ringing clearly through the hollow winter canopy. Both species are found throughout our woodlands on Edisto. Chickadees seem to me tolerant of planted pine and swamps and Titmice more plentiful in dense forests. The two species are non-migratory and nest in cavities. Chickadees and Titmice are curious creatures. They will often go out of their way to come fuss at any people or predators they feel are intruding on their turf. Sometimes drawing in a crowd of nearby songbirds who want to know what all the hubbub is about.
Resident Titmice and Chickadees are what are known as a nuclear species to bird watchers. During fall migration, mixed flocks of migratory songbird species move through the Lowcountry. They feed while snaking through the treetops on their journey south. Nuclear species, like our little Parids, attract these mixed flocks. Like tourists stopping to grab a bite and chat with the locals, these migrants collect around and tag along behind a Parid colony briefly before hopping back on the highway in the sky. Because of this, birders like to keep a watchful eye on flocks of Chickadees and Titmice in the hopes that a mixed flock will drop in to say hello.
This week for Flora and Fauna Friday we have a carpeting coastal wildflower: Indian Blanket (Gaillardia pulchella).
Indian Blanket is a species better known generically as just Gaillardia. It’s a low growing wildflower in the Aster family, Asteraceae. It’s soft, seafoam foliage bubbles up from the sand beneath as it spills onto a dune side. Floating up between these leaves light burning pinwheels of flame. A roaring disc of color over a bleak landscape that hovers and flickers on the seabreeze. Indian Blanket is one of our few wildflowers so specialized for our sandy shores. It’s a common sight razing the lots and lawns along Palmetto Boulevard as it consumes the sand and flicks tongues of color into its own updrafts.
Gaillardia is a curious and carefree wildflower that appears to grasp no concept of the seasons. It blooms chaotically and constantly throughout the year and never rests but finally. It is truly neither annual nor perennial and seems to choose it’s time and place to perish of its own accord. Sometimes it sprouts in fall and blooms in spring, other times the opposite. Typically neither but never predictable. It is a statistical plant that must be spoken of in generalities and assumptions for looking at the individual for answers yields none of use. Although it places such emphasis and effort into its floral art it invites few visitors in for exchange. Scarce nectar and sparse pollen entice few but the most mundane of neighbors as their petals pyre and roar to our attention. It is a true artist in its field, absorbed and isolated in its own methods, reveling in the craft of its creation and seeking no approval of others. Its work is meant for its own joy and not for ours. What significance we gleam is but coincidence for it seemingly exists merely for the sake of it.
This week for Flora and Fauna Friday, we have a high-waisted, rattling, regal angler wearily watching us: the Belted Kingfisher (Megaceryle alcyon).
The Belted Kingfisher is a stocky, compact bird found throughout the continental United States. It’s the only member of the Kingfisher family with a substantial range in our country. They can be found in the Lowcountry for most of the year but vanish in spring only to return in mid-summer. Belted Kingfishers nest in caverns that they tunnel into the side of river bluffs. When breeding season rolls around, they mostly leave our relatively level coast to head for more exaggerated geology further inland.
Kingfishers are about a foot in length with a robust build, blade-like bill, and a tall cranial-crest of feathers. Their mantle and mask are a watery shade of aluminum-blue that wraps across the breast and extends down to the flight feathers. Their primaries and tail feathers are a slate-gray and checkered by bars of white. In contrast to their dark backs are their icy-white bellies. Like their fellow angler the Osprey, female Belted Kingfishers sport a ruddy-brown waistband across the upper belly. The call of our Kingfisher is a loud rattling cry of rapid, aggressive, low-pitched squeaks. They issue this distinctive call universally in response to all manner of disturbances, be they greeting a mate, defending territory, or alerting to danger. Belted Kingfishers are notoriously hard to approach but easy to spot and observe from a distance.
Belted Kingfishers are piscivorous. They eat almost exclusively fish. In our tidal creeks, the ever present Mummichog is most often their target. Kingfishers hunt by sight. They perch atop a tree limb, shrub, or dock and scan the water for anything fishy. When something catches their eye, they burst from their perch and ascend into a hovering flight above their target. They linger in the air for a moment before diving headlong into the surf. With a splash they split the water, stabbing or snapping their bill into any unsuspecting fish that crosses their path. Using their natural buoyancy, they pop back to the surface and clap their wings against the water to launch themselves back into the air, returning to its preferred perch to enjoy a meal with a view. Kingfishers swallow their prey whole. So they make sure to thoroughly wallop their unlucky catch against their perch before gulping it down, bones and all.
This week for Flora and Fauna Friday we have a pleasant, laid back late season wildflower: Camphorweed (Heterotheca subaxillaris).
Camphorweed is a bushy perennial wildflower partial to sandy open habitats and found throughout the southern United States. It loves to grow in fallow fields, abandoned lots, roadsides, and beach dunes. It’s even a plentiful component of our wildflower meadows at the Hutchinson House. Camphorweed grows well where many other plants struggle to survive, making it a welcome addition and burst of color on many an idle acre. The flowers of Camphorweed are about three quarters of an inch in size, yolk-yellow, and with an unremarkable aster-like appearance evenly spaced across the surface of the plant. As its appearance suggests, it is a popular plant among pollinators. Although its flowers are rather run of the mill, the foliage helps define this plant from its peers. The foliage of Camphorweed is a silvery, bluish-green. The leaves themselves are roughly triangular, covered in a fine coat of hair, and, lacking a petiole, cling directly to the stem. Overall the plant has a very coarse, scraggly appearance in my experience. Although, its growth form is quite variable. Most often on Edisto it can be seen as a short bush but it can also grow as a small forb or a tall, organized stalk. As the name suggests, the plant contains camphor oil. Camphor is the compound that gives Vicks VapoRub its signature scent. However, Camphorweed does not contain its namesake chemical in any substantial amount. So the scent is fairly faint.
This week for Flora and Fauna Friday it’s everyone’s favorite bivalve, our snotty Lowcountry delicacy: the Eastern Oyster (Crassostrea virginica).
Our Eastern Oyster of the Lowcountry is a translucent, salty morsel sandwiched between two razor sharp shells of calcium-carbonate, one freely flapping and the other glued permanently into an amalgamated cluster of other Oysters. Our Oyster is found only in saline waters and is a bivalve just like a mussel or clam. Oysters are notable for their behavior of spitting at low tide. It’s a behavior that’s purpose is not well known but whose tune is trademark to our creeks; a melodious nasty habit of a dirty habitat. They attach to structures as free-swimming larvae and grow larger year after year, layer by layer. Overtime, more oysters cling to the oldest oysters as the community develops into a cluster. The cluster sheds and blossoms as it expands into a reef and eventually a bed in a larger system of beds that blanket the banks. These beds are centuries old and litter the shores of our rivers and creeks throughout the Lowcountry.
The Eastern Oyster is not just delicious, it’s an ecosystem engineer. A species of such utmost importance that its mere existence brings wealth and health to the environment surrounding it. Oysters are sessile. They swim through the water as larvae before attaching to a structure and staying put. The favorite thing for an Oyster larva to stick to is another Oyster. This makes good sense. Oysters can’t move so if it sticks to another Oyster, it’s probably someplace where an Oyster can live well enough. This tendency to self-adhere creates an oyster reef, a piling up and accumulation of decades of Oyster shells along the bank of a tidal river or creek. Spires of bleached shells tile and summit over each other above a foundation of pluff mud. These oyster reefs are critical habitat to many of our estuarine species. Stone Crabs, Mummichog, Terrapin, and an untold variety of fry nestle into this limestone mountain at high tide; its jagged peaks and deep ravines warding off the predators that encircle their retreat.
Oyster reefs not only nurture life on their shoulders but shape the very terrain around them. Oysters are filter feeders, they inhale surf filled with silt and plankton, strain it through their bodies, and exhale clean water. This filtration acts to do two things of great benefit to us. It removes potentially harmful bacteria from the water column, that the Oyster then eats, and sequesters sediment onto the Oyster reef. Oysters eat plankton, which is a catchall term for little critters that float in the water and can’t get around too good. This includes harmful bacteria, like fecal coliform, that we pollute our waterways with. However, Oysters don’t eat sand, silt, or most detritus. So they spit that out, where it falls into and behind the oyster reef. This serves to clear the water and build up the bank of the creek beneath and behind the oyster reef. This effect is strengthened by another passive effect of oyster reefs, wave-breaking. Oysters reefs are large, broad, vertically chaotic structures made of mortar that functionally act as a breakwater. Boat wakes and windblown waves crash and shatter against the oysters, scattering the sediment they carry behind the shells. Over time the bank builds up behind the oyster reef enough that the Smooth Cordgrass can send down its roots to stabilize it. The Oysters and Cordgrass work in tandem to close that gap and solidify the stream-edge against erosion.
This is why restoration and proper management of our oyster beds is critical to the health of our tidal creeks. Oysters clean the water of harmful contaminants that close our fisheries and restrict swimming. Their reefs buffer the pluff mud against boat wakes and storms, protecting and bolstering the Cordgrass that protects us from storm surge. Oysters need other oysters to establish and thrive. If we degrade our oyster beds with unsustainable harvesting and boat traffic, then that supply will evaporate in short order.
This week for Flora and Fauna Friday is the slithering fear of fishermen, the Cottonmouth (Agkistrodon piscivorous).
The Cottonmouth, or Water Moccasin, is a modestly sized viper at up to three feet long and fairly bulky. Their scales have a corrugated, studded appearance that takes on a deep brown coloration in adults. In contrast, younger snakes show disorganized lighter bands of tan or greenish-brown that contrast their umber scales. Cottonmouths are an aquatic snake prolific in our freshwater rivers, streams, ponds, swamps, ditches, and marshes across the Lowcountry. They’ll also patrol soggy fields and wet meadows in search of a meal. Their favorite foods are fish and frogs but they’ll eat birds and rodents when given the chance. Unlike Copperheads, Cottonmouths will gladly make their presence known when they feel threatened. They’ll coil their bodies to face the trespasser, vibrate their tail, spit a sickening hiss, and throw open their jaws to flash a palate of ghostly white gums. The contrasting blink of white signals their discontent and is usually sufficient to let most mammals know to back off.
A Cottonmouth’s preference in most cases is to remain motionless to avoid detection. If that fails their next course of action is to escape to the nearest body of water. Cottonmouths are clumsy on land but masterful swimmers; if they can swim away they will. Confrontation is used as a last resort when cornered or startled. However, they are not ill equipped for a fight as their bite is venomous and more potent than their coppery cousin. If you encounter a venomous snake in the wild, the best course of action is to leave it well enough alone. The number one cause of envenomation is attempting to move or handle a viper. They’d rather not waste their venom on you to begin with, you’re too big to eat. So to alter an idiom, let coiled snakes lie.
