A pollinator is an animal (not all pollinators are insects) that visits flowers and carries their pollen to other flowers.  Bees, butterflies, moths, flies, beetles, and wasps are all practitioners to some degree. Hummingbirds pollinate a few flowers (like wild columbine), and in the Southwest, a few bats do, too. 

We’re well into National Pollinator Week now, and the news isn’t wonderful, so the BugLady is off-setting it with pictures of some really spiffy pollinators.

How can we help insects, including pollinators? Plant an array of native wildflowers, shrubs, and trees that will bloom from spring through fall, reduce or eliminate pesticides, provide brush piles and other shelter, don’t be a tidy gardener, and set out a bird bath (birds will appreciate this, too). In Wisconsin, plug into our �����Ի� monitoring programs.

Meanwhile – it’s National Pollinator Week – celebrate appropriately.

The BugLady

The post Closed for June 3 – More Pollinators appeared first on Field Station.

Howdy, BugFans,

This episode was adapted from an article that the BugLady wrote in 2007 for the BogHaunter, the newsletter of the Friends of the Cedarburg Bog. 

Wanted: Colonists to settle in wide open spaces. Must be adaptable, able to put down roots in submerged or soggy soil, and stand firm in the face of wind and waves, rodents and carp. Temporary accommodations only.

It turns out that cattails are ideal candidates for this not-so-attractive job description. Their tall, strap-like leaves and conspicuous “wiener-on-a-stick” female flower and seed stalks emerge from standing water and from damp pond and stream edges. The leaves’ slender shape is typical of “sun-catchers” in open spaces. They are designed to bend without breaking via a series of internal veins or “struts” that divide the leaf’s interior into flexible cells.

But the infrastructure of a cattail marsh is as impressive as what appears above the waterline. That mass of leaves is anchored by a dense, interlocking mat of rhizomes (a rhizome is an underground/underwater stem that puts out both shoots and roots). Each fruiting plant may produce as many as 200,000 seeds called “nutlets” – this windborne fruit launches colonies, and seeds can sit in the seedbank for decades waiting for the right conditions to germinate. Though a new plant doesn’t flower until its second summer, it develops, during its first year of life, a rhizome system that may span 10 feet in diameter and produce 100 shoots. This botanical exuberance allows colonies to advance, like an amoeba, as much as 15 feet annually.  

Once a colony gets started, it spreads primarily by vegetative means, through the growth of the rhizomes. Plants that sprout from the same rhizome are called clones; a dense cattail stand is an impossibly intricate interweaving of clones from many rhizomes, so crowded that there is no opportunity for its own seed to germinate. Unless openings occur between the closely-packed cattails, there are few other large plants in the community.

But, what a cattail marsh may lack in plant diversity, it more than makes up for in animals. Oxygen is added to the water during photosynthesis, and the forest of submerged stems is habitat for myriad aquatic critters. Carp root at the rhizomes, breaking them up and aiding vegetative spread. Other fish, including sunfish, spawn and shelter there.

Muskrat lifestyles are bound to cattails; the shoots and rhizomes are eaten, and the leaves and stalks are made into lodges. These lodges, in turn, provide nest platforms for ducks and geese; and, by harvesting cattails, muskrats create open water for waterfowl. Many marshland birds like rails, coots, bitterns, grebes, Marsh Wrens, and waterfowl find food, nesting material, nest sites, and cover in the cattail thickets. Large flocks of blackbirds roost there and enrich the community with their droppings, and cattails are also used by frogs, beavers, painted turtles, and even moose. 

Insects? Cattails attract a variety of moths, aphids, and caterpillars that feed on its rhizomes, leaves, sap, stem, and flower/seed spike, and their predators are attracted as well. The female sac spider bends a leaf around herself to form a pyramid-shaped box. Inside, she lays eggs and guards them there until she dies; her carcass provides her young with their first meal. In winter, the cigar-like seed heads host the pupating caterpillars (birds pecking at seed heads are looking for this protein); the stalk is home to a variety of beetles, and the rhizomes conceal the larvae of cattail mosquitoes.

Common or Broad-leaved (Typha latifolia) grows on the damp soil and shallow standing water by a pond’s edge. It is less tolerant of pollution but is found in a wider range of soil acidity. Its base is fan-shaped, and the male and female flowers touch. Narrow-leaved cattail (T. angustifolia), which may have come from Europe in the 1800’s) can grow in deeper, more polluted water, and prefers more alkaline locations. Its base is cylindrical, its leaves narrower, and there is bare stem between the male and female flowers. The two species grow side-by-side, and they hybridize, and both the Narrow-leaved and the hybrid can out-compete the Broad-leaved cattail. 

If cattails are community builders, cattail marshes are communities in transition. They generally grow with land on one side and open water on the other, and their decomposing vegetation makes soil (the take-home – every lake is a dying lake), readying the marsh for eventual colonization by plants with dryer preferences. As the land encroaches, cattails move farther out into the wetland. Wetlands are among the most productive ecosystems in the world, rivaling tropical rainforests in their production of biomass (biomass is the measurement of the weight or volume of biological material produced in an area). For more information about wetland issues,

Are cattails good for anything? The BugLady once read that wars were fought over wetlands, and cattails are certainly worth fighting for! Some part of the plant is edible 12 months of the year, from the starchy rhizome (cooked like potatoes or pounded into flour) to the pollen (a flour substitute) – one report says that an acre of cattails could produce almost 6500 pounds of cattail flour. Both the rhizomes and flower heads were used medicinally.

American Indians wove the leaves into mats, baskets, and walls, used the fluff for diapers (the settlers stuffed quilts with it and caned chairs with the leaves). A jelly that was made by pounding the rhizome was used to seal leaky boats. Today, research suggests that the food value of cattails approaches that of corn and rice. Quikrete users please note – a mixture of cattail seeds, ash, and lime sets up harder than marble.

So, if the wildlife likes it, what’s the problem?  As one researcher said, narrow-leaved cattail can be beneficial to a wetland community “in limited quantities.”&�Բ�����;Broad-leaved cattails form dense stands, but there are breaks in the stands where other vegetation can grow and open water can be found. Narrow-leaved cattail crowds out native vegetation by forming impenetrable monocultures, and monocultures reduce food sources and don’t support a very diverse array of wildlife. 

On the up-side, cattails keep pond edges from eroding (while it’s eating the pond).

The BugLady once worked at a Nature Center where thinning the cattails in a small pond by the Education building was an annual task. Here’s what she learned: when you pull on cattails, they pull back.

The BugLady

The post And Now for Something Different – Cattails appeared first on Field Station.

Howdy BugFans,

The BugLady hangs out on a tower by Lake Michigan from the beginning of September until the end of November, logging migrating raptors as they navigate south along the shoreline (up until this week, she was still seeing a few Monarchs and Common Green Darners, too). She already misses the comforting presence of Turkey Vultures – 99.9% of this fall’s migrating Vultures have made their way past the hawk tower – she loves looking way out over the fields and seeing them rocking back and forth over the woods, taking care of business. 

She wrote this biography for the newsletter of the Lake Michigan Bird Observatory (the organization formerly known as the Western Great Lakes Bird and Bat Observatory), an organization that would appreciate your support.

A sit on the hawk tower in mid-October of 2021 turned out to be a religious experience. Though they are not technically birds of prey, we do include migrating Turkey Vultures (TVs) in our Hawk Count, and of the 789 raptors of 10 species that passed by the tower on that amazing day, almost half were TVs! The vultures approached in groups of 15 to 30 birds, circling on warm updrafts as they moved south. As one group passed, two or three more could be seen approaching us from the north.  

Turkey Vultures get their name from dark plumage and bald, red heads that are reminiscent of Wild Turkeys. They’re also called buzzards. “Vulture” probably comes from the Latin “vellere,” which means “to pluck or tear,” and their scientific name, Cathartes aura, means “golden purifier or cleanser” (being eaten by a vulture after death was believed in some cultures to cleanse and release one’s soul). The Cherokees referred to TVs as “Peace Eagles” because although they look like eagles, Turkey Vultures don’t kill their food.    

Turkey Vultures are one of six species in the New World Vulture family Cathartidae, and they are not related to the vultures of Europe and Asia. Three of those New World species — the TV, Black Vulture, and California Condor — are found in the US. Turkey Vultures are the most widespread of our vultures, found from southern Canada into South America, and data suggest that their range is spreading to the north.

They’re generally found in open or semi-open country rather than in heavily wooded areas, and they are tolerant of human activity and of landscapes altered by man. Construction of Wisconsin’s interstate highway system began in the late 1940’s, and one source pointed to the subsequent increase in road kills as a cause of higher numbers of TVs here in the second half of the 20^th century.   

These are big birds, with bodies about 30” long and wingspans of six feet. They are about three-quarters the size of a Bald Eagle, but at a maximum of four pounds, they are less than half an eagle’s weight, and they lack the strong, gripping talons of eagles and hawks. Most of their feathers are dark brownish gray, and in flight, the leading edge of their wing is dark and the trailing edge is silvery. Males and females look the same, and young TVs have gray heads. They do lots of soaring and not much flapping, their wings held in a wide “V” called a dihedral for stability, and they often tip back and forth.  

Turkey Vultures don’t have a voice box (syrinx), so their vocalizations are mainly  and  that are used to startle intruders. 

Although they bathe frequently, people who get close to them will testify that vultures stink — partly because of their diet, and partly because when they’re hot, they excrete urine on their legs, which cools them as it evaporates and also disinfects their legs (it’s called “urohydrosis“).  

TVs are scavengers (“recyclers”) that mostly feed on dead mammals, though they will eat other dead vertebrates, and they are thought to eat more than 100 pounds of meat a year. They also feed on vegetation. They use their keen eyesight to locate carcasses, but vultures are also one of the few birds that have a good sense of smell, and they count on both senses as they fly low over roads and fields (and dumps and dumpsters) — they can sift out the odor of decay from a mile away. Like owls, they spit up pellets of indigestible bones and fur. TVs rarely take live prey, but Black Vultures do kill some newborn livestock and the occasional small pet.  

The amazing thing about Turkey Vultures’ food habits is that no matter how old the carcass or how riddled it is with bacteria, botulism, cholera, or other such organisms, their immune systems protect them from getting sick. Even more amazing is the fact that pathogens that are neutralized by the vultures’ highly acidic digestive juices (the pH is less than 1) are not present in their droppings! And, according to an article on the National Audubon Society website, “immensely powerful acids in the vultures’ gut begin digesting the flesh so thoroughly that they even destroy the prey’s DNA.” In addition, while they destroy some microbes, the birds apparently filter out some of the ingested bacteria and put it to work in their guts. The end result is that vultures reduce the amount of highly toxic pathogens in the environment, so, the cultural idea of being cleansed by being eaten by a Turkey Vulture has some biological truth.

During courtship, a group of TVs gather on the ground and hop around in a circle in a stylized dance with their wings spread (something this writer would dearly like to see!). They also perform “follow flights” in which one bird leads the other through elaborate aerial maneuvers. Pairs stay together for a long time, both on their breeding and their wintering grounds. 

Turkey Vultures lay one to three eggs in a slight depression that they scrape into the ground under bushes, in caves, hollow logs, and old buildings. They will use abandoned hawk nests, and they’ll reuse successful nest sites. Incubation lasts about five weeks, and after they hatch, the chicks are fed regurgitated food by both parents. They can fly at nine or ten weeks and are soon independent.

While their populations seem to be stable, Turkey Vultures are susceptible to collisions with power lines and other structures, with fences, and with cars as they gather at road kills. Poisoned baits, lead shot ingested from dead animals, and deliberate shootings are also mortality factors. They are protected by the Migratory Bird Treaty Act. 

Fun Facts about Turkey Vultures:

• Through the years, the New World vultures have been classified with the falcons, with the storks and herons, and in their own order, but the latest DNA-sequencing seems to put them, for now, with the non-falcon birds of prey. 
• When predators approach, TVs, young and old alike, defend themselves by projectile vomiting, sending a stream of caustic, semi-digested rotten meat as far as 10 feet away.
• They may perch with wings outspread to warm up in the morning, to cool off during a hot day, or to dry wet feathers.
• TVs like company –- they roost, soar, and migrate with other TVs. 
• They are smart and curious, and in captivity will play games with their caretakers (in Wisconsin, you must be licensed to take a wild animal from the wild).

The BugLady is looking forward to their return in spring.

The BugLady

The post And Now for Something a Little Different XVI – Turkey Vulture appeared first on Field Station.