Saturday, May 28, 2016

Tent Caterpillars On Apple Tree




Tent Caterpillars On Apple Tree

Eastern Tent Caterpillars invade an Apple Tree. This "tent" of caterpillars is easily spot treated with insecticide on this small tree limiting their damage to the foliage.
The eastern tent caterpillar (Malacosoma) is a species of moth in the family Lasiocampidae, the tent caterpillars or lappet moths. It is univoltine, producing one generation per year. It is a tent caterpillar, a social species that forms communal nests in the branches of trees. It is sometimes confused with the gypsy moth and the fall webworm, and may be erroneously referred to as a bagworm, which is the common name applied to unrelated caterpillars in the family Psychidae. The moths oviposit almost exclusively on trees in the plant family Rosaceae, particularly cherry (Prunus) and apple (Malus). The caterpillars are hairy with areas of blue, white, black and orange. The blue and white colors are structural colors created by the selective filtering of light by microtubules that arise on the cuticle.

Tent caterpillars are among the most social of larvae. The adult moth lays her eggs in a single batch in late spring or early summer. An egg mass contains about 200 to 300 eggs. Embryogenesis proceeds rapidly, and within three weeks, fully formed caterpillars can be found within the eggs. The small caterpillars lie quiescent until the following spring, they start to chew their way out of the eggs just as the buds of the host tree begin to develop.

The newly hatched caterpillars initiate the construction of a silk tent soon after emerging. They typically aggregate at the tent site throughout their larval stage, expanding the tent each day to accommodate their increasing size. Under field conditions, the caterpillars feed three times each day, just before dawn, at midafternoon, and in the evening after sunset. During each bout of feeding, the caterpillars emerge from the tent, add silk to the structure, move to distant feeding sites en masse, feed, and then return immediately to the tent where they rest until the next activity period. The exception to this feeding pattern occurs in the last instar, when the caterpillars feed only at night. The insect has six larval instars. At the last stage, the caterpillars disperse and each constructs a cocoon in a protected place. The adult moths, or imagoes, emerge about two weeks later. They are strictly nocturnal and start flying after nightfall, coming to rest within a few hours of dawn.[1] Mating and oviposition typically occur on the day the moths emerge from their cocoons; the females die soon thereafter.

Tent caterpillars, like many other species of social caterpillars, vigorously thrash the anterior part of their bodies when they detect predators and parasitoids. Such bouts of thrashing, which may be initiated by a single caterpillar, radiate rapidly through the colony and may result in group displays involving dozens of caterpillars. Such displays create a moving target for tachinid flies, wasps, and other small parasitoids that would lay eggs on or in the body of the caterpillar. They also clearly deter stink bugs and other timid predators. Groups of caterpillars resting on the surface of the tent constitute aposematic displays. Few birds other than cuckoos find the hairy caterpillars palatable. Cherry leaves are cyanogenic and the caterpillars regurgitate cyanide-laden juices when disturbed.
Tent caterpillars secrete silk from a spinneret wherever they go, and frequently-used pathways soon bear conspicuous silk trails. As the caterpillars move about the tree, they largely confine their movements to these trails. They lay down pheromones along the trails by dragging their abdomens. Caterpillars that find food may overmark the exploratory trails they follow back to the tent, creating recruitment trails. Recruitment trails are much more attractive to its brethren than exploratory trails, and serve to lead the group directly to the newest food source. A single successful forager can recruit the entire colony to its food find.

The exact identity of the trail pheromone of the eastern tent caterpillar has not yet been determined, but the chemical 5β-cholestane-3-one has been shown to be fully competitive with it. Caterpillars readily follow trails of this chemical, even abandoning their own trails in favor of artificial trails prepared with the compound.
source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eastern_tent_caterpillar

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Northern Flicker Woodpecker Calling and Drumming



Male Northern Flicker woodpecker calls and drums to attract a female to the Screech Owl nest box he has claimed as a nest site. He is a gorgeous yellow-shafted variety common to eastern North America with a call similar to a Pileated Woodpecker, but weaker and higher pitched.  The call ringing through the forest almost brings to mind the sounds of a tropical jungle.
This brown woodpecker flashes bright colors under the wings and tail when it flies. Its ringing calls and short bursts of drumming can be heard in spring almost throughout North America. Two very different-looking forms -- Yellow-shafted Flicker in the east and north, and Red-shafted Flicker in the west -- were once considered separate species. 
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Northern Flicker Woodpecker Calling and Drumming

Graveyard Falls North Carolina 4K Video UHD Motorola Droid Turbo 2


Graveyard Falls North Carolina

Graveyard Fields is a very popular hiking spot on the Blue Ridge Parkway (Milepost 418.8). The Yellowstone Prong is the watersource for two waterfalls in a mile-high valley filled with wildflowers and surrounded by Blue Ridge mountains with 6,000-foot peaks. The area got it's name years ago from the tree stumps and surrounding trees that looked like grave stones in a graveyard setting. The trees were toppled by a huge wind several hundred years ago. Then in 1925, an intense fire burned the recently logged area, and the forest has been slow in recovering since. This provides a stark contrast to most hiking in the Asheville area.
- See more at: http://www.romanticasheville.com/graveyard.htm#sthash.3o7zoxpL.dpuf

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Rose Breasted Grosbeak



Rose Breasted Grosbeak

Close-up of beautiful male Rose-Breasted Grosbeak stopping by in the Great Smoky Mountains of North Carolina. This is the extreme southern end of their breeding range.

The rose-breasted grosbeak's breeding habitat is open deciduous woods across most of Canada and the northeastern USA. In particular the northern birds migrate south through the United States east of the Rocky Mountains, to winter from central-southern Mexico through Central America and the Caribbean to Peru and Venezuela. The southern limit of its wintering range is not well known; it was for example only recorded in the Serranía de las Quinchas (Colombia) in the 1990s. In winter, they prefer more open woodland, or similar habitat with a loose growth of trees, such as forest edges, parks, gardens and plantations, ranging from sea level into the hills, e.g. up to 5,000 ft (1,500 m) ASL in Costa Rica.

The first birds leave the breeding grounds as early as August, while the last ones do not return until mid-late May. In general, however, they migrate south in late September or in October, and return in late April or early May. It appears as if they remain on their breeding grounds longer today than they did in the early 20th century, when migrants were more commonly seen in May and August than in April or September. The rose-breasted grosbeak occurs as a very rare vagrant in western Europe. [14] During breeding it is fairly territorial; in winter, it roams the lands in groups of about a handful of birds, and sometimes in larger flocks of a dozen or more.

The rose-breasted grosbeak forages in shrubs or trees for insects, seeds and berries, also catching insects in flight and occasionally eating nectar. It usually keeps to the treetops, and only rarely can be seen on the ground. In the winter quarters, they can be attracted into parks, gardens, and possibly even to bird feeders by fruit like Trophis racemosa. Other notable winter food includes Jacaranda seeds and the fruits of the introduced busy Lizzy (Impatiens walleriana).[15] In grosbeaks from the north-central United States and southern Canada, it was found 52% of the stomach contents were comprised by invertebrates, predominantly beetles; 19.3% was made up of wild fruits; 15.7% by weed seeds; 6.5% by cultivated fruits and plants, including peas, corn (Zea mays), oats (Avena sativa) and wheat (Triticum vulgare); and the remaining 6.5% by other plant material, including tree buds and flowers.[16]


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Friday, May 13, 2016

Screech Owl Versus Blue Jays


Screech Owl uses newly documented scary daytime defensive posture against annoying Blue Jays and Mockingbirds consist of wide eyed blinking and open mouth snapping to look more intimidating. Mother red morph Eastern Screech Owl is trying to take a break outside the nest box in the daytime and let the fast growing owlets have some room and air to cool down. Ordinarily she would never expose herself in the daytime except for nesting season. The Blue Jays are not going to let her rest - they want to harass her until she leaves their nesting area, but she is not going to leave her nest box - thus a standoff. Father Screech Owl sometimes kills songbirds roosting in the trees at night to feed the owlets so you can't blame the Blue Jays. Screech Owls are very small owls and have different techniques to deal with threats including making themselves very skinny like a branch when a real dangerous threat is around like a hawk or big owl or puffing themselves up for some threats they can intimidate like squirrels. These behaviors can be seen in this documentary:
Eastern Screech Owl Camouflage and Defensive Survival Techniques 

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Screech Owl Versus Blue Jays


Red Winged Black Bird Attacks Red Shouldered Hawk


Spunky Red Winged Blackbird attacks large Red Shouldered Hawk hunting on a fence post in marshland. The unprovoked attack seemed like a spur of the moment drive-by! Even though the Blackbird bounced off the hawk and the hawk barely took notice he's still a Boss!

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Red Winged Black Bird Attacks Red Shouldered Hawk