I think sometimes that I get as much fun observing new or interesting behaviors as I do new species, so I thought I’d start a new thread where we can share stuff like that.
I’ll start. I think this cluster fly doing the regurgitated sap glob thing is pretty neat. It makes sense when not much other than some leaking tree sap is available.
Drink sap, fill crop, find a good spot, bring it back out, let the air and sun get the water out. Kind of a sugar-bush selfie.
Now what are some of your favorite behaviors that you’ve seen recently?
can’t say its my ‘favorite’, but definitely fascinating, is ‘gang’ behavior in drake ducks towards females. Brutal. https://www.inaturalist.org/observations/347892979
I didn’t record any observations, as I’m still overwhelmed with observations from 2 years ago, but yesterday I was checking out prairie crocuses here in Calgary. Here are 4 interesting behaviours that we observed:
1. The ecology of Goldenrod galls: My friend is an expert in houseplants (her place is like a jungle), but she didn’t know about Goldenrod galls. She was happy to see various galls, and she was excited to find one drilled out by a bird.
2. Beaver behaviour: On a floodplain peninsula, we explored little beaver dams and small ponds. I wondered why the beavers wouldn’t just tunnel into the soft bank of the Bow River. Why bother building dams? (I found out why)
3. Prairie Crocus behaviour: We noticed these first plants of spring closing their petals as the day got colder and darker. How? Why? And they have almost no scent. Which pollinators are they targeting? (I found out)
4. An ABSENCE of behaviour: We found an ornamental crabapple covered with fruit, which I guess had been fermenting on the tree for 6 months. I tried one. Pretty good! It tasted like a baked apple, with a hint of tartness. But wildlife seemed to have ignored this bounty (I have a guess about why).
This morning I noticed an area where there were Red Winged Blackbird nests, I saw defensive territorial posturing towards other birds - hunched over with spread wings and puffed feathers.
This female Imperial Hairstreak abdomen-dragging on the trunk of an Acacia leiocalyx attended by Iridomyrmex ants, looking for a spot to lay eggs (https://inaturalist.ala.org.au/observations/349177550). The eggs may not hatch until the Southern Hemisphere spring; few adult butterflies survive across winter.
A close second was the male Imperial Hairstreaks battling for position on the same acacia, where a female was apparently due to eclose from her (similarly ant-protected) chrysalis.
Nice list!
Um, is no. 4 because it’s really hard to bite into a frozen solid apple (fermented or fresh)?
Oh, and the Prairie Crocus: aren’t they just trying to protect things from freezing?
Thanks for helping to get this thread going. I find behavioural stuff really helps me solve ID stuff by connecting what we see to what it does. Cool!
Just a couple hours ago, I watched a Tufted Titmouse pluck fur with which to line its nest from a groundhog. The groundhog didn’t seem to mind in the least, despite some pretty earnest tugging from the Titmouse.
Wow! Great story! A capybara, from what I’ve heard, would just roll with that too. Now I really want to know why that groundhog didn’t mind the trim.
Really great topic! On Thursday, we got rain which brought out the yellow crowned night herons. One of them was out in the creek near my house, so as any good birder I went out in the rain to look at it and take pictures. I watched that thing eat like 5 crawfish, they are mesmerizing hunters to watch in action. It’s also really cool to see them eat, because (majority of) birds don’t have the ability to swallow so it was kind of throwing it back into it’s mouth.
Annette knows what I’m about to say, but I didn’t know (or forgot). There is another, pretty cool behaviour implied in what Annette wrote. From the Wikipedia article:
Larvae feed on more than twenty-five species of plants from the genus Acacia. Their specialized exocrine glands then secrete food for attendant ants as a reward for their protection from predators and parasitoids.
…all of which is a bit rough on the acacia. For its part, it has extrafloral nectaries that directly provide nectar to ants, who should in turn protect it from herbivores. Instead, the Iridomyrmex protect the herbivores! If you lean too close, ants sometimes leap off the end of a branch onto you.
It hasn’t been investigated for this butterfly species as far as I know, but caterpillars of some other ant-attended species make squeaking noises like an ant queen in distress. I could believe it happens with this species, given the urgency of the ants’ responses to the caterpillar. They create a pile that moves with the caterpillar as it walks.
I don’t know. Interesting behavior. A couple years ago, I watched a similar interaction between a Titmouse and a Red Fox, and I can tell you the fox didn’t like it one bit, reaching around and snapping at the Titmouse frequently. I didn’t have my camera with me that day. But I watched this interaction for about 10 or 15 minutes, until the groundhog got spooked by a neighbor coming outside.
do you think that there’s any chance that it’s in exchange for some parasite grooming?
Entirely possible, though that didn’t appear to be the case here.
Ducks in muck: another ‘new’ behaviour from yesterday.
This mallard pair were strolling along the side of the road that goes through a large garden that I was strolling through too, looking for pollinators etc. So far, not so strange. But…
They waddled over to the curb and stopped in front of a little pile of leaf muck and then – dove in! Well, the hen did. And here’s a shot when she was done. Note the mucky lower bill.
Then the drake took his turn.
All I can think of is that they were ALSO looking for invertebrates, but with a different method – and purpose. Anyhow – all new to me!
I’ve been watching the hummingbirds collect dandelion fluff for their nests. They tweet the whole time they are gathering and then Zoom! away. They also check out the underside of the picnic table, I’m thinking it’s for spiderwebs.
I saw something new yesterday. Two dark colored lepidopterids met with each other in flight and started flying in a swift upward spiral together that got tighter with altitude - I initially thought this was a courtship behavior but later when reading online I see a similar display is attributed to territorial aggression by this genus of moth that I observed on the same trail within minutes of observing the behavior.
I saw a tussock moth caterpillar feeding on a dead, dry, leaf. Lots of caterpillars fall out of the trees above onto my shed roof. I guess this one was just starving.
