Special guest appearance by a Trapa natans nutlet

Spiders aren't for everyone and anything larger than a bathroom spider might be a little too horror film for some, but six spotted fishing spiders (Dolomedes triton) are actually relatively docile and won't bite unless they're provoked. Members of the nursery web family, they are similar in size, appearance, and behavior to nursery web spiders you might find in meadows.  True to their name, fishing spiders do fish. They're capable of diving and swimming underwater, and actively hunt their prey rather than spinning a web to catch it.  They can scurry along the surface of the water and can even jump straight up to escape predators, if they need to!

Like their terrestrial cousins, female fishing spiders carry the egg sac in her palps until the eggs are ready to hatch. When they're ready, she spins a special nursery web, often on floating aquatic vegetation, and stays nearby her babies until the spiderlings have all hatched and are ready to disperse on their own.

We found A LOT of adult and baby six spotted nursery web spiders on Carding Mill Pond. Intimidating at first, by the time the Mass Audubon crew moved on to their next work site they had grown accustomed to sharing their boats with these eight-legged friends and were, dare we say, even fond of them?

How could you not love this face?!

 



Wildlife sighting!



Watch out, buddy. Don't you know it's hunting season?

This picture was taken at around 4:30 pm. Did you know that deer are crepuscular?  That means that they're mostly active at dawn and dusk. You may see deer out during the day as well, particularly when it is overcast. Predators are often active either in the middle of the day or primarily at night, so when prey animals, like deer, are active during those in between times of dawn and dusk, they are at a lower risk of getting eaten!

You never know who or what you might run into on your lunch break...



Workplace hazards

Leeeeeeech!

Volunteer Opportunities - Water Chestnut

The harvester at Carding Mill Pond in Sudbury

One of our partners, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, generously lends their big, bright orange, mechanical aquatic harvester to other CISMA (Cooperative Invasive Species Management Area) partners to harvest water chesnut. Fish and Wildlife will be using the harvester themselves from July 23 through August 3rd, and they're looking for volunteers!  If you liked our post about the Water Chestnut Pullathon, have heard people talking about it, or just think that canoeing on the Sudbury River and getting a little messy sounds like fun, then this may be the opportunity you've been waiting for!

The work parties will run from 8:00 am to noon and from noon to 4:00 pm. Volunteers of all ages are welcome, but if you are under 16, please bring a parent or guardian who will also be participating.

Meet them at the public boat launch off of River Road (near its intersection with Route 27) in Wayland, MA. You should bring shoes and clothes you don't mind getting wet and dirty, sunscreen, bug repellent, water, and a snack.  They do have some canoes available, but resources are limited so sign up soon! Volunteers are welcome to bring their own boats. 

All participants must register with Amber Carr prior to the event. Call or email her at (978) 443-4661 ext. 33 or amber_carr@fws.gov.  The dates for the pulls are below:

Monday 7/23
Tuesday 7/24
Wednesday 7/25
Thursday 7/26
Friday 7/27

Monday 7/30
Tuesday 7/31
Wednesday 8/1
Thursday 8/2
Friday 8/3


Hope to see you there!

First Annual Water Chestnut Pullathon!

Water chestnut control is an on-going project here on our rivers and ponds. This year for Riverfest, we tried something a little new. We turned it into a contest!  We challenged high school-aged students to compete with other sites to pull the most water chestnut they possibly could. Three sites participated - Icehouse Pond in Acton, Carding Mill Pond in Sudbury, and near the Route 27 Bridge on the Sudbury River in Wayland. What better way to spend a summer morning than canoeing, kayaking, and pulling some weeds?!  We will be hosting additional water chestnut removal events through until mid-August, so stay tuned for more opportunities!

Over 30 people, from kids to adults, volunteered and helped us pull water chestnut. Students from local schools, including Lincoln-Sudbury, Acton-Boxborough, Concord-Carlisle, and Hudson High participated as well as several girls from a Concord Girl Scout troop. 

Erikson's Ice Cream in Maynard and Eastern Mountain Sports in Acton graciously provided small prize items to our winning team and other participants.

Ultimately, our volunteers in Acton took home the prize, but not without a good run for their money!  Scroll on for some photos from the event!



The winning team with their pile!

Purple Loosestrife update

Remember when we started our pots of purple loosestrife for the beetle rearing project? On March 20, they looked something like this:

Click image to enlarge

Not too exciting, are they? Some dirt, some dead sticks, and a little bit of fertilizer.

Well, with a little bit of time and some careful monitoring, the plants took off! Now, a month and a half later on May 2, our plants look like this:

Click image to enlarge

We have a number of shoots that are already about a foot tall, and as you can see they all look very healthy. Taking almost daily growth measurements of these plants really shows how fast purple loosestrife can grow! They grow more slowly when it's chilly and raining, but a couple weeks ago when it was warm, some plants grew from 3 inches tall to almost 8 inches in just  four days! Can you image if you were able to grow an inch a day?

Click images to enlarge

As soon as the shoots grow to be a foot tall, we start pinching off the apical meritstem, which is the area of cells at the very top of the shoots. The apical meristem is what causes the plants to grow taller, but we want them to be as bushy as possible to feed our beetles. By pinching off the top bud, we force the plants to grow more leaves along its stem.   The same thing happens to your shrubs or bushes at home! That's part of the reason why we prune them.  If no one pruned their rose bushes, the rose stems would grow very long, there wouldn't be as many leaves, and you wouldn't get as many flowers.

Speaking of the beetles, over-wintered adults have emerged! We found some in the wetlands on Monday, munching away on purple loosestrife leaves. Now we just have to wait until our potted loosestrife plants are tall enough, and then we can start collecting the beetles!

Snapping turtles - Cute, but feisty!

The Sudbury, Assabet, and Concord Rivers flow through some pretty developed areas, so you might be surprised to learn what sort of wildlife we have right in our backyards!

This little guy (or lady!) was hanging out by the wetlands near Puffer Pond at Assabet River NWR.  This turtle is a snapping turtle, and you can tell right away that it's a snapping turtle by its shell. Snapping turtles have ridges on and serrated (toothed) edges on their top shell, called the carapace. The ridges are often more evident on younger turtles, like this one here. Snapping turtles have a wide natural range in the United States, extending from the East coast as far west as Montana!  They can also be found even farther west in California, Oregon, and Washington but they didn't naturally occur there. The United States Geological Society calls them "native transplants" because they are naturally found in this country, just not in those states.  Check out this cool interactive map to see where they live!

 

Unlike other turtles you may be used to seeing, snapping turtles don't usually bask on sunny rocks or logs. They are very adaptable though, and frequently go on overland excursions, looking for food or a new watery habitat. They are generalized omnivores, which means that they will eat pretty much anything they can get their beaks on. You can see from the photo above that snapping turtles have beak-like mouths, which helps them grab their prey. They will eat invertebrates, plants, carrion, frogs, fish, and sometimes even small birds!

Anything that wanders too close is fair game, including your fingers! So always be careful if you come across a snapping turtle.  You should always respect wildlife when you come across it, but especially respect animals that could hurt you. You would be most likely to come across a snapping turtle when it is on land, and that is where it is most aggressive. They cannot pull their heads and legs into their shell as a defense, so they must take action to protect themselves. Snapping turtles got their name because they will extend their neck and lunge at a threat while snapping and biting at them. We typically think of turtles as being very slow-moving creatures, but snapping turtles can move quickly! They have long necks and strong beaks so they can reach farther than you might expect. 

Female snapping turtles lay their eggs during the spring and summer in the soil or in piles of vegetation, including muskrat and beaver lodges. Hatchling turtles are only the size of ping pong balls and their nests can be some distance from the water - so watch where you step! The little turtles need to make it to the water quickly so they can find food and stay safe.

 

This turtle is relatively small, only about six inches long, but they can grow to be up to 12 or 18 inches!

Galerucella Beetle Rearing Facility - Just in time for spring!

Happy spring equinox! Over the past few days, Amber at Great Meadows National Wildlife Refuge and Katrina, a Student Conservation Association fellow working with the Refuge and the National Park Service, set up our Galerucella beetle rearing facility.  The pools are housed at the Assabet River National Wildlife Refuge visitor center.

Creating the beetle rearing facility is a multi-step process. First, we must go find existing purple loosestrife plants in the wild that are large enough to survive being transplanted. After those plants are dug up, they are brought back to the facility location.

After we have all of the root balls back to the facility site, we have to wash them to remove all soil, debris, and roots from other plants. We do this because we want to grow the purple loosestrife and raise the beetles in as controlled an environment as possible.

We plant the loosestrife roots balls in large pots within children's wading pools. We will fill the pools part way with water to simulate the loosestrife's natural wetland environment.

Even though purple loosestrife is an invasive species, we want our samples to grow well while they are in the pots. To encourage their growth, we add fertilizer to each pot.

After all of our plants are potted, this is what they look like! It may not look like much, but over the next several weeks the plants should sprout and grow leaves. We will carefully monitor their progress and growing conditions, trying to make them feel right at home!  By May, our cultivated loosestrife plants should be large enough to feed our beetles.

(click image to view it larger)

Muskrats are just one of the many animals who call the rivers home - they are rodents who must always live near water, just like beavers! Above is a muskrat house, called a lodge, on the Sudbury River between Sudbury and Wayland.  Muskrat lodges look very similar to beaver lodges, but they are usually smaller and made out of small brush and aquatic plants like cattails instead of the sticks and logs we usually see in beaver lodges.   Keep an eye out if you're walking along the river banks too - muskrats also dig burrows!

Spring is in the air!

(click image to view it larger)

We may still have a week and a half until spring officially starts, but with our mild winter it seems like it's already in full swing. You've probably noticed that a lot of grass was able to stay green throughout the season, but new growth is starting to wiggle its way up through the turf as well.

Here at Great Meadows in Sudbury, the mosses are getting a jump on things and sending up their sporophytes. Unlike most plants you may be used to, moss produce spores instead of seeds. The spores are contained in the sporophytes, and will fall off to be dispersed by the wind when they are ready.

Mosses also don't have vascular tissue like a lot of plants and trees. That means they don't have tube-like structures in their stems that bring water to all parts of the plant. Without those tubes, mosses have to get their water by letting it absorb from one cell to the next. That is why mosses are low-growing, and you will always find them in wet areas!