Cow-nosed Ray

This past weekend we had a Labor Day party and had an uninvited guest. Not that we were too upset by their appearance.
We had walked out to the end of our pier and were standing around talking while the kids used colored chalk to mark every nail on the pier. Then suddenly several of us saw a fin appear out of the creek. The water was mid-tide rising and has been running a little on the high side all week. The creek is always very muddy so all we could see was the exposed fin; nothing below water. There were a few more sighting over the next couple of minutes.
The only reasonable identification would be a cow-nosed ray. The creek is too shallow for a dolphin and probably too shallow for the sharks found in the bay. Plus, the fin seemed to come up from the side and back down instead of arising straight out of the water.
This is the first ray that we have seen from our pier. I did some a few several years ago while kayaking closer to the bay. They were moving around in shallow water behind Grandview Nature Preserve. At first we thought they must be dolphins, not realizing how come the rays are, but some investigating afterwards convinced us that they were rays. Not least of all was the fact that we always saw two fins come up together. That definitely seemed like feeding behavior.

Sarrecenia

Recently, my wife and I visited the Lewis Ginter Botanical Gardens in Richmond, VA. It was a favorite place of ours to visit when we lived in Williamsburg. It has a beautiful rose garden as well as a wonderful lake with some nice wooded gardens. And the conservancy is one of the key features.
But on this visit we saw something new and wonderful. Part of the lake is now a wetland garden with a prize collection of pitcher plants. Not as well renowned as their friends the Venus flytraps, pitcher plants are also carnivorous plants that collect and digest insects to make up for the low-nutrient soil they grow in. From the Botanical Society of America, I learned that there are many different types of pitcher plants in several different orders while there is only one flytrap species.All pitcher plants have a large tube that attracts the insect. Once inside the pitcher, or pitfall trap, the insect is unable to escape and falls into a pool of digestive juices. The insides of the pitcher leaves are waxy so the insect falls into the pool. On many pitcher plants, there are downward pointing hairs to make escape that much harder.
And while all of this is quite interesting, what really struck us was the flowers. These are some of the strangest flowers we have seen. Again, referring to the BSA for details, the sepals are a burgundy color, instead of the normal green, and stay attached. The petals are fragile and quickly fall off leaving the sepals to look like the petals. And this is only the beginning. The style grows into a shield-like structure. When the petals are attached, the droop down around the edges of this shield. The flower is normally tilted downwards so the shield becomes a collection plate for pollen. Nectar is also dripped onto the inside of the shield. When a fly lands and crawls into the shield, it pollinates the flower.
According to the sign at the gardens, these are all Sarracenia Leucophylla and are native to southeastern US wetlands.
The first photo shows the flower with the petals still attached. Notice how the hang limply. The second is a different one after the petals have fallen off.

Below is another view inside the shield where you can see the stamen.

And finally some nice group pictures. Notice how the flowers and the pitchers come up on separate stalks and slightly separated.

Pacific Loon

About two weeks ago a Pacific Loon was found at a local residential pond. It is a very unusual bird to find on the east coast. The bird hung around for a week so last weekend my wife and I headed down to see if. When we arrived we aw a few birders along one side but we decided to drive around the edge of the pond to see if there was a place to park and what else we might see. On the far side of the pond we found a Horned Grebe in breeding plumage. It afforded us several good looks but a little far for camera range.

Horned Grebe

Common (left) and Pacific (right) Loons

There were also plenty of Lesser Scaup and an American Coot. We then drove back to the front side of the pond where we had seen the other birder when we first arrived. They were packing up but mentioned they had seen the Pacific Loon and it was moving all over the pond. So we set up the spotting scope and starting hunting through the loons that we could see in the middle of the pond. the Pacific Loon isn't a whole lot different from the Common Loons that were in winter plumage. So we had to study each one. Key identifying marks are a thinner bill, browner plumage, and less white on the throat and around the eye compared to Common Loons. The birds were hard to study since they would only stay on the surface for a few seconds before diving. And then they would come up quite a distance away. So we would have to watch for one to surface, get the scope on it and then start looking for the field marks anew since we couldn't tell if it was the one had been looking at or not. Eventually we could start telling that one was different from the rest and finally identify it as the Pacific Loon. It was a fun challenge. Plus, there was one Common Loon that was most of the way to molting to breeding plumage; something we seldom see here in the south.

Here are a few pictures of the Pacific Loon and breeding Common Loon.

Pacific Loon

Common Loon in breeding plumage

And this turned out to be a three loon winter as I also saw Red-throated Loons on the Christmas Bird Count.

Be sure to check out the other outstanding bird photographs at Wild Bird Wednesday.