spider webs, Pilewort seedheads and a Stinkhorn

A spider web morning.

When the air is full of moisture on a foggy morning, it suddenly becomes apparent how many spiders there are. The fog literally paints the spider webs white and they are suddenly revealed all through the marsh and into the upland areas -- orb webs, big and small, wherever they can be suspended between plants, and other kinds of webs as well (the web shown in the photo is a sheet web).


But also a Pilewort morning.

These plants, souvenirs of Hurricane Irene last fall, have been coming up everywhere where the vegetation was cleared by Irene or its powerful high high tides. Erechtites hieracifolia is in the daisy family but you'd hardly know it. This rough hardy plant, also known as Fireweed (I prefer to call it Hurricane Weed), bears its flowers in the form of candelabra with flowers that take the form of purplish tubes but never actually open. Instead the outer layers peel off and the seed heads puff out like dandelion heads. There are whole thickets of these things like giant ogre dandelions (most of the plants are between 5 and 6 feet high); Photo #2 shows a Pilewort thicket surrounding the overgrown entrance to the Samuel and Frances Salzman Preserve (note the sign).


And a weird mushroom morning as well.

The third photograph shows one of the phallic stinkhorn mushrooms, probably Mutinus elegans, poking through the leaf itter. You can see the smelly, sticky stuff that attracts insects (which distribute the spores) at the top.

Birds? Yes there were some. A female (or immature) Indigo Bunting was a smallish brown bird with a thick bill but otherwise no obvious field marks (that's it main field mark). This morning's flycatcher was an Eastern Wood-pewee -- like a Willow Flycatcher with a touch of an eye-ring but a little larger with buffy wing bars, a clear whitish throat, a vest on the breast and no tail wagging. The Pewee was hanging with the flock of American Goldfinches which were still in the Tupelos at the head of the marsh and accompanied by an American Redstart, Common Yellowthroat, Catbirds, Titmice, and a Chickadee or two.

Eric Salzman