nesting titmice, two visitors and a slime mold

Almost every morning I start the day by heading from the house down to the pond before turning onto the trail that follows the edge of the marsh. All spring, I've been aware of the presence of a pair of Tufted Titmice (Titmouses?). It's a slightly unusual spot for this species because this is not their usual woodland habitat but a rather open woodland edge facing pond, marsh and creek. The birds have been there without fail and in the past few days, I've been hearing high-pitched sounds suggesting the presence of fledglings or nestlings somewhere in the area. Tufted Timice, like most of their relatives, are hole nesters but the spindly oaks, Red Cedars and Pitch Pines don't seem to have the knot holes or old woodpecker excavations that these birds supposedly need. Well I solved the mystery today. One spindly oak has split into two trunks about 8 or 9 feet off the ground and the nest is deep in the cavity in between. Mom and dad titmouse go diving into this hole with food in their beaks. They are feeding their offspring in an astonishly vertical position with only the tip of the tail visible at the top of the cavity. Then they somehow right themselves to pop back out and fly off! It looks as though downpours such as those we had last night would have flooded the cavity and drowned the nestlings but at least some of the young in that nest are still alive, still making noise and still being fed by their parents. Possibly the angle of one of the trunks is steep enough to prevent even heavy rain from getting inside. Or maybe the cavity is well drained and the adults could cover the nestlings and slough off the rain with their waterproof feathers. I brought Lorna down to show her the nest site and there, perched at the top of the cavity and as cute as the proverbial button, was a baby titmouse. A very angry adult appeared, holding food in its beak, scolding loudly. After some hesitation, it flew to the nest tree and yelled at the baby, which promptly disappeared, and followed it immediately down the hole. The invisible feeding took only a few seconds before the adult bird clambered back up and whizzed off in search of the next meal.

Two distinguished visitors. On the marsh trail past the titmouse nest there is an old dock washed up by a winter storm and providing a neat observation post. As I was clambering up on this platform, I heard a strangely familiar, difficult-to-place sound coming from the canopy of the tall oak at the corner of the 'front range' of trees facing Weesuck Creek. It was the sound of a male Scarlet Tanager warming up and soon after going into full song. Scarlet Tanagers breed in the backwoods north of town and we see (and sometimes hear) them in May but a June visitor has to be a wandering unmated bird. After a few verses of song, he took off, heading over the creek, perhaps to try his luck on Pine Neck opposite. Another visitor was a Belted Kingfisher zipping over the pond and perching on a tree limb; this is a bird that used to be regular on the creek during breeding season but has become just an irregular flyby, now seen mostly during migration.

Yesterday I described a bright yellow patch glowing on a rotting log in the woods near the house, calling it a mold or fungus. As Jim Ash advises me, it is (or was -- it is no longer visible after the rains) a slime mold, a remarkable product of nature which has been upgraded from being a kind of fungus into a kingdom of its own! Slime molds are now considered to be 'protists' which is neither a plant nor a fungus! Remember how you used to start the game of "20 Questions" by asking "Animal, vegetable or mineral?". Well, now you should ask "Animal, vegetable, fungus, protist or mineral?". That's how different slime molds are from other forms of life! Anyway, this one was a stunningly bright yellow and probably was the yellow slime mold, Physarum polycephalum, or, possibly, Fuligo septica which has the wonderful common name of "Dog Vomit Slime Mold". Ain't nature grand?

Eric Salzman