Polychaete worms make up one of the largest classes of marine invertebrates with well over 300 species found along the Atlantic shore. The polychaete clam worm species Nereis virens, also known by the scientific name Alitta virens, has 4 to 5 pairs of tentacular cirri (the antenna-like appendages on its head), 1 pair of short blunt palps (sensory appendages near the mouth) and four eyes. It also has two pincer like jaws that are capable of delivering a painful bite…
Although I had no intention to look for fungi while I was out on my walk this morning (I was hoping to find some early wildflowers blooming), when you come across something this bizarre looking, you have to stop and investigate further. A fairly atypical look for fungi, these mushrooms had pale yellow hollow bulbs perched atop a thick branchy stalk. Most of the “bulbs” were already split open, but the few that weren’t had the appearance of a baby…
The diminutive flowers produced by many tree and shrub species in the spring are often overlooked relative to the showiness of flowering plants like trailing arbutus, purple deadnettle, and pink lady slippers, but the delicate details are worth taking a moment to slow down and notice. The female flowers of beaked hazelnut (Corylus cornuta), for instance, are little more than a cluster of fine red “hairs”, which are actually the flower’s pistils. Beaked hazelnuts are native to most of North…
Each type of lichen is actually a composite of two different organisms: a fungus and an alga (or less commonly a fungus and a yeast or a cyanobacterium). The fungal partner within each species of lichen is unique, but a single species of algae can be found in many different lichens. It is therefore the fungal partner, also known as the mycobiont, from which the lichen’s name is derived. To help differentiate lichens from each other, it’s helpful to consider…
I’m not going to lie. I’m incredibly excited by all the signs of spring I’ve been coming across lately. But I’m also trying to take in as much as I can of some of our winter visitors, like this Common Goldeneye (Bucephala clangula), before they migrate back north to their breeding grounds in the boreal forests of Canada and Alaska. During the winter, Common Goldeneyes frequent shallow coastal bays, estuaries, harbors and ponds around Cape Cod, and throughout much of…
While birding along the Cape Cod Canal on Saturday, I noticed a fairly large clearing filled with green, densely branched low-growing shrubs. Upon closer inspection, the stems were strongly angled with alternately arranged pinkish-brown buds. Even without leaves or flowers, it did not take long to identify this shrub as Scotch broom (Cytisus scoparius). This non-native shrub flourishes in full sunlight in dry, sandy soils, making it no surprise that it was so abundant in this Cape Cod clearing. Scotch…
Although Saturday’s weather forced the rescheduling of the Upper Cape Naturalists Club’s winter bird walk, I ended up getting antsy prior to the end of the snow storm and decided to head out for a walk anyway. Tucking my binoculars inside my jacket to shield them from the majority of the wet snow that continued to fall, I set off down the Sagamore Hill trail at Scusset Beach State Reservation. On the edge of the trail, motionless in the grass,…
This is the time of year when I start looking for signs of spring: black-capped chickadees singing “spring’s here”, skunk cabbage flowers poking up through the ground, and buds swelling on trees and shrubs like this swamp azalea. But I can still appreciate the benefits of winter, namely that I can easily traverse a frozen swamp (rather than sinking into shoe-sucking mud) without getting devoured by mosquitos. During yesterday’s frozen swamp exploration, I ran into one of the many evergreen…
Yesterday’s snow managed to stick long enough for a lovely winter walk (unlike the last few snow storms that transitioned to rain before they were over and washed away all evidence of the snowfall by morning). One of the interesting things about a walk in the snow is that the stark white background makes the stalks, stems and seed heads of last year’s wildflowers even more evident. Among the much taller common evening primrose and sweet fern, even remnants of…
Males are distinctly marked with a black head, neck, chest and back, and a clear white and gray patch on their sides. Despite their name, however, the ring-necked duck’s most visibly distinctive “ring” is a white ring around an otherwise dark gray and black bill. While I personally would have named this bird a “ring-billed duck”, its common name, as well as its scientific name “collaris,” actually refer to the difficult to see dark chestnut-colored collar on its black neck….