Critter Huntin' With Chris (Day 2, SC 2014)

On the morning of our second day in South Carolina, we visited the farmer's market, and then the Mace Brown Museum of Natural History at the College of Charleston.  The museum was incredible, especially for a small college museum, and they had so much cool stuff that I am in the process of writing a Top Ten post just about the museum.  We will also feature lots of the pictures that I took there in future posts, as a lot of the fossils that they had there are animals that have popped up on the blog, and will likely continue to do so.  Now, though, I'm sure you all are being eaten up from the inside with questions.  "What did you do for the rest of the day, Zack, after you returned from the museum?  I'm sure it was something fascinating, no doubt!"  No doubt.

When we got back, Chris and I decided to go out critter hunting.  The Beckley's live next to a golf course with several small ponds fairly close by, and we decided to look into two of the closest ponds to see if we could find any gators (Alligator mississippiensis) or cottonmouth moccasins (Agkistrodon piscivorous)!  In the first pond, we startled an anhinga (Anhinga anhinga), and it flew up into the trees.  The anhinga is a type of cormorant-like bird, and spends most of its days either swimming through freshwater in search of tasty fish, or sunning itself and preening on the bank.  They are not only very good at swimming underwater due to a reduced buoyancy created by heavy bones and wet feathers, but they are also very good at soaring and riding the thermals, similar in fashion to certain types of raptors.  Turns out, I would be seeing more of this interesting bird on our trip.

In Colorado, it is not altogether uncommon to spot a great blue heron (Ardea herodius) hunting along the banks of a pond or lake, or flying overhead with their impressively elongate neck drawn back in a tight s-curve, reminiscent of certain types of theropod dinosaurs (such as Compsognathus, pictured below).  However, in South Carolina, you can hardly go anywhere without seeing a heron, be it a great blue heron, an egret, or some other type of heron.  Right after spotting the anhinga, we noticed a great blue heron on the opposite bank.  In the picture below you can see the usually majestic bird caught in the not-so-majestic act of shaking itself dry.

A picture of a first generation cast of Compsognathus from the Solnhofen Quarry of Germany.  Although this animal almost certainly lived a very different lifestyle than the anhinga, it is interesting to compare the necks of these two animals.  You can also compare the anhinga's neck with the neck of another theropod dinosaur Coelophysis (who has a neck more similar to a heron's than that of Compsognathus) by clicking HERE to check out a short feature we did on this dinosaur awhile back.  This cast is a first generation cast in the collections of the Morrison Natural History Museum.

As we went around the pond, I got an opportunity to take a shot from much closer.  Check out how long that neck is!!  It always makes me think of other, extinct animals that are thought to be piscivorous, or fish eating.  The protorosaur reptile Tanystropheus, the long-necked plesiosaurs and nothosaurs, and many types of pterosaurs are all thought to be primarily piscivorous, based on studies of their dentition, anatomy, depositional environment, etc.  The long neck seen in many of these animals seems to be pretty similar to the long neck that I see in the great blue heron, which is a pretty good design for catching fish.  If you are trying to sneak up on something, the less of you the animal can see, the better!

The protorosaur Tanystropheus.  Photo Credit: Sam Lippincott

Inevitably, we got a little too close to the great blue heron, and it took off for the far side of the pond.  As it was flying away, almost out of sight, it got dive-bombed by a red-winged blackbird (Agelaius phoeniceus)!  I thought that was kind of interesting.  It's relatively common place to see smaller birds attacking larger predatory birds like hawks or eagles, who potentially might bring them harm.  Apparently, great blues will also eat other birds, but I suspect that would be more of an opportunistic feeding opportunity, and not something the heron would purposely go out with the intention of catching.

As we continued our search, two more members of the heron family (family Ardeidae) graced us with their presence, the reddish egret (Egretta rufescens) and the great egret (Ardea alba).  I'd also like to point out that the egrets aren't really a natural grouping of birds, and is simply just one name, like heron, that is frequently attached to different members of the heron family, family Ardeidae.  For example, both the great blue heron and the great egret are in the same genus, the genus Ardea, while other herons and egrets are in different genera.  Kind of like how frogs and toads are all in the same family, the family Anura, but toads are generally characterized as having dry skin, while frogs are characterized as having wet skin.

The reddish egret.  It's a little tough to see, but the bird is flying roughly in the middle of the photograph, a little more on the left hand side.

The great egret.  It's a little tough to see, but the bird is flying a little below the middle of the photograph, and a tiny but further to the right of center.

With nothing but birds and turtles in the first pond, Chris and I headed over to the second.  The second pond was much more secluded, surrounded by more trees and bushes.  We couldn't really see anything in their either, but we skirted around the edge of the pond through the trees.  Suddenly, Chris spotted some bones a few feet to the right of us.  He had spotted the skeleton of South Carolina's state animal, and only resident species of deer, the white-tailed deer (Odocoileus virginianus)!  This deer is actually the state animal of Illinois and Pennsylvania as well.

I'm definitely not an authority on such matters, but the teeth looked really sharp and not very worn down, so I was thinking maybe it was a younger animal.

The skeleton was pretty well articulated, with the front legs being the only major part of the body that was missing.

We moved on from the deer skeleton, and I promptly walked into a spider web.  Now, the thing about the spiders in South Carolina is that some of them grow nasty-big, and seem to have a propensity to spin their webs in between hip and head height for your average adult human.  I'm specifically talking about the banana spiders (Nephila sp.), or golden silk orb-weavers.  I'm not entirely sure how large the biggest banana spiders get, but I've seen ones that look like they have a leg span of three to four inches.  Disgusting.

Anyways, the one I walked into had spun a web at hip height.  Despite the fact that the web was between two ferns, I did not find the situation to be amusing in the slightest.  For a second, I thought I was going to be alright, and that maybe I had walked through a web without a spider in it.  But of course this was not the case, otherwise I would not be weaving you the tale of woe, much like this particular banana spider wove it's irritating web at hip height right in my path.  The spider started to stir, and crawl towards my crotch, which is one of the top two places that I don't want a spider to be, right after in my face holes.  I started moving my right hand, still holding my camera, away from my body to try and grab a stick to get it the heck off of me, when the spider started crawling up a line of web that it had somehow attached to my camera.  As I continually called out pitifully to Chris for help (he was probably laughing to hard at me to come and help even if he wanted to), the spider continually crawled toward my camera, which was in my hand, strung around my neck, and also several hundred dollars.  Too expensive to drop.  Right before the spider reached the camera, I was able to brush it off onto a nearby leaf.  Then, my desire to get a picture of the disgusting little arachnid overrode my other desire to get the heck out of there, so I was able to snap the picture that you can see above you.  Now you can understand the terror that I had to go through to get that picture.  Enjoy it.  Please.

Before we got out of the woods, I found a raccoon skull with both jaws nearby, as well as some other isolated bones.  I saved the skull, and hopefully I can remember to upload a picture later!  Raccoons are omnivorous, so they have fun teeth, an interesting combination of carnivorous and herbivorous dentition.

We also found a pair of what definitely looked like burrows.  We found lots of bones in the vicinity of the burrows, clearly from different animals, so I think it likely that they were created by a more carnivorous critter, likely a fox.  Gray foxes (Urocyon cinereoargenteus) not only climb trees, but also don't seem to burrow under the ground, unlike the red fox (Vulpes vulpes), so if it is a little carnivorous mammal burrow, I think that the red fox is a good guess as to the den maker!

Chris also spotted a small crushed turtle shell which I also collected, and hopefully I will remember to upload a picture of that specimen, too!

On our way back to the house, I noticed an interesting flower that I later identified as the trumpet creeper (Campsis radicans) which, according to the USDA, can cause itching, redness, and swelling amongst mammals if the leaves and flowers are touched.  Well, later on, I picked up a flower, and did not find that to be the case.  Perhaps I didn't touch it enough, or maybe different people experience different reactions.  I thought they were interesting because I noticed that the long, tubular flowers might be a perfect example of a type of flower that has coevolved (learn about coevolution HERE) with hummingbirds and butterflies, pollinators with the means of reaching nectar from deeper within a flower, and it looks like that might indeed be the case!  Interestingly, for the first half of the trip, I don't remember hearing or seeing a single hummingbird...odd.  The trumpet creeper is a member of the Bignonia family, the family Bignoniaceae.

After we returned to the house, I thought the excitement was temporarily over.  That turned out not to be the case, as I promptly realized my right leg was under an attack from a small arachnid: a tick.  Ticks, spiders, scorpions, and solfugids (amongst others) are all members of the class Arachnida.  I believe that the tick I had on my was an adult female lone star tick (Amblyomma americanum).  The adult female is the only one with the little white dot on her back, which was something that my tick had.  Again, disgusting.  Fortunately, I was able to brush the little bloodsucker off my leg before he could bite.  Jean Ann, Mary Sullivan and I then tried to kill it with our shoes, my laptop, Honey's dog bowl, and Kleenex, but nothing worked.  I eventually just crumpled it up as best I could in several Kleenex, and then shoved it in the trash.  Ticks are tough to kill, they seem pretty well armored, and they are pretty flat, too, which makes them tough to even brush off.

After a few hours of downtime, we went down to the beach as the sun set.  Didn't see much, except part of a molted horseshoe crab shell, the Atlantic horseshoe crab (Limulus polyphemus).  Once they reach adulthood, horseshoe crabs shed their shells annually, usually in July or August.  Arthropods shed their shells, or exoskeletons, as they grow larger, kind of like how snakes will shed their skin as they grow larger.  Turns out, I would also be seeing a whole lot more of these later on, too!

After we got back from the beach, my father, sister and I all went gator hunting.  This was to be our first gator sighting of the trip, although we really couldn't see much.  The small reddish dot in the photograph below is actually the eyeshine of the gator, created by the reflective tapetum lucidum (read more about that interesting bit of eye anatomy by clicking HERE).  So we really couldn't see much unfortunately.

We also saw another American toad (Anaxyurus americanus), possibly the same one that I spotted the previous night!

So as of the second day, here's a faunal list of the animals that I've spotted and identified thus far.  I haven't identified really any of the plants, so I will just include plants that I've included on the blog.  Some of the animals on the list I didn't blog about, usually because I didn't get good pictures.

Amphibians:

American Toad (Anaxyurus americanus)
Green Tree Frog (Hyla cinerea)
Southern Leopard Frog (Lithobates sphenocephalus)

Birds:

Anhinga (Anhinga anhinga)
Carolina Wren (Thryothorus ludovicianus)
Great Blue Heron (Ardea herodias)
Great Egret (Ardea alba)
Mississippi Kite (Ictinia mississippiensis)
Northern Cardinal (Cardinalis cardinalis)
Osprey (Pandion haliaetus)
Red-Winged Blackbird (Agelaius phoeniceus)
Reddish Egret (Egretta rufescens)
Turkey Vulture (Cathartes aura)

Invertebrates:

American Cockroach (Periplaneta americana)
Atlantic Horseshoe Crab (Limulus polyphemus)
Banana Spider (Nephila sp.)
Lone Star Tick (Amblyomma americanum)
Squareback Marsh Crab (Armases cinereum)

Mammals:

Eastern Gray Squirrel (Sciurus carolinensis)
Raccoon (Procyon lotor)
White Tailed Deer (Odocoileus virginianus)

Plants:

Trumpet Creeper (Campsis radicans)

Reptiles:

American Alligator (Alligator mississippiensis)

Mount Pleasant on Dwellable

Works Cited

Brachiosaurus, Riverdogs, and Frog Hunting (Day 1, SC 2014)

Here's a brain teaser: how can you tie the 4th of July to Brachiosaurus, South Carolina, and air travel altogether?  It's probably pretty difficult unless you were with me on the 4th of July when my family and I traveled from South Carolina by airplane, while having a layover in Chicago's O'Hare airport in Illinois, where they have a mounted Brachiosaurus skeleton!

My family unwittingly taking part of a scheme I concocted to have them act as scale bars for my Brachiosaurus picture.  They had no idea that I was manipulating them in such a fashion.

But the connection goes a little bit deeper than that, though.  It was actually on the fourth of July, way back when in the year 1900, when H. W. Menke, an assistant of the paleontologist Elmer Riggs, first discovered dinosaur bones at what would one day be called Quarry 13 in Grand Valley, Colorado.  From this quarry, the bones of a unique sauropod were uncovered.  It wasn't until several years later, in 1903, when Riggs gave a scientific name to this new leviathan, Brachiosaurus altithorax.

Today, a cast of this now-famous dinosaur is mounted in the Chicago O'Hare airport, and we got to see it on our layover!  Here are some pictures of this fantastic beastie!  It was originally at the Chicago Field Museum, but apparently was moved to the airport several years ago, to make room for the most complete Tyrannosaurus rex skeleton known, nicknamed "Sue."

Brachiosaurus, as you can see in the pictures, in an extraordinarily large animal!  A sauropod, or long necked dinosaur, its remains have been discovered in the Morrison Formation from the Late Jurassic Period, deposited approximately 150 MYA.  Brachiosaurus differs from other Morrison Formation sauropods such as Apatosaurus and Camarasaurus in that the fore limbs of the animal are much larger than the hind limbs.  In Apatosaurus, the opposite is true, with the fore limbs about twice as short as the hind limbs.  As a matter of fact, the name Brachiosaurus even means "arm lizard!"  

Myself standing next to the brach of Brachiosaurus!  Photo Credit: Julie Neher

A very closely related dinosaur, now known as Giraffatitan brancai, used to be referred to as another species of Brachiosaurus.  Giraffatitan (whose name literally means "giant giraffe"), an African sauropod, is known from the Tendaguru Beds in Tanzania, a formation which is approximately contemporaneous with the Morrison Formation from the western United States.  Other dinosaurs, such as Stegosaurus from the Morrison and Kentrosaurus from Tendaguru, seem pretty closely related.

The foot of Brachiosaurus. 

We were flying to O'Hare from Charleston in South Carolina.  Although we are back from our trip, I wanted to start with the end of our trip, the Brachiosaurus, as it had that fun little tie-in to the Fourth of July.  But starting from the beginning....

Just from the airport to the rental car place, a pretty short drive, I saw a ton of fun and exciting birds, including cardinals, herons, osprey, and egrets!  South Carolina has a ton of birds, many of which you can see all over the place!  I didn't get any great pictures on the first day, but here we have one of a Mississippi kite (Ictinia mississippiensis)!  I wasn't entirely sure what it was, thinking it might be a harrier, but a quick email to my friend Anne Price, the Curator of Raptors at the Raptor Education Foundation confirmed that it was indeed a Mississippi kite!

This I am almost positive is a Carolina wren (Thryothorus ludovicianus), the state bird of South Carolina!  The only other bird that I think is a possibility is the Bewick's wren (Thryomanes bewickii), but the body coloration of this bird makes me think it more likely that it is the Carolina wren.  It is a little tough to see in the photograph below, but the bird is in the middle of the photo.

We love visiting South Carolina so much so that we can see our very good friends the Beckleys!  Once we got to their house and got settled, I went out back to look around for a few minutes, which is when I took that picture of the possible harrier.  They also have different squirrels here in SC: in Boulder, Colorado, we commonly see the fox squirrel (Sciurus niger), while in SC you see another member of the same genus, the eastern gray squirrel (Sciurus carolinensis).  Apparently, the eastern gray squirrel is the most commonly seen mammal east of the Mississippi River!

Here's a picture of Honey, one of two of the Beckley's dogs!

To celebrate the Fourth of July, our families went to a minor league baseball game featuring the local Charleston RiverDogs (affiliated with the New York Yankees), playing the Rome Braves.  Although the RiverDogs lost, you, the reader, will end up winning, as you get to learn about riverdogs.  

Pete Perez, the pitcher for the Rome Braves.

An awesome RiverDog hat that I got at the game!  On it, you can see that the logo is simply a dog, and not an otter, a salamander, or a turd.  If you are confused, then you are clearly not familiar with the associations that the word "riverdog" has with different people.

At first, I assumed that a riverdog might be a nickname for the otter.  Although the connection seems tenuous (with other, slightly more raunchy suggestions out there), it looks like riverdog might be the nickname for the Hellbender salamander (Crypotobranchus alleganiensis), the largest aquatic salamander in the United States!  The hellbender can often grow to a foot in length, but apparently can sometimes grow to more than two feet!

I thought it was interesting that other salamanders are sometimes given dog-like nicknames, such as "mudpuppy."  Apparently, this nickname is due to the fact that the mudpuppy and waterdogs, all members of the genus Necturus, make a dog-like vocalization.  Like the axolotl, the mudpuppies and waterdogs retain their external gills as they mature.  

Later on in the day, after the sun set, I went out gator huntin' with a flashlight and my camera.  I didn't see any gators, but I saw lots of fun critters on the golf course at night!  First, here we have what I think is a squareback marsh crab (Armases cinereum).  This crab is semi-terrestrial, and I saw it maybe 20 or 30 yards from the nearest pond.

There were also a ton of frogs and toads, many of them concentrated around the sand traps on the golf course, and others in the little sprinkler areas.  I have attempted to identify these frogs to the best of my ability, but I'm not 100% certain about them!  The lighting was weird (it was at night, and I had a flashlight shining on a lot of them), and sometimes the colors of the frogs got washed out.  But I think the frog below is a green tree frog (Hyla cinerea).

I think both of the amphibians below were American toads (Anaxyrus americanus), with the second one actually pretty large, maybe three inches long when sitting like in the picture!

Another little critter that I got a good picture of was the southern leopard frog (Lithobates sphenocephalus).  

Apparently, cockroaches are found in Colorado, but I don't think I've ever seen any of them.  I did see an American cockroach (Periplaneta americana) on my little walkabout, however.  I thought that was kind of cool, because on the airplane today, I read a paper entitled "Cockroaches Probably Cleaned Up After Dinosaurs" (Vršanský et. al.).  The paper discussed how members of the family of proto-cockroaches, the Blatullidae, have been linked to the byproducts of certain types of dinosaurs, using interesting fossil amber from Lebanon.  So I got way more excited about this cockroach then really anyone else would, ever.  

Wild Dunes on Dwellable

Works Cited: