I Smell Spring and It Kinda Stinks

Winter is wearing on me right now. I have been a bit of a wimp this winter and spent too much time inside. I even got all kinds of winter clothing goodies as gifts this Christmas. I like to blame it on looking for jobs and what not, but the fact remains, I have spent way too much time inside. With that being said, I decided that on a very beautiful and stormy March 8th that I was going to get outdoors despite the rain, wind, and lightning. It was time to go find those wonderful harbingers of Spring that are waking up out in the woods.

On this particular March 8th, I decided to head out to Black Partridge Woods. This wonderful patch of forest is a jewel of the Cook County Forest Preserve system. You can find a beautiful and clean stream that flows even in the driest days of summer. If you get way off of the trail you can find secluded little vernal pools and gurgling spings. There are deep valleys filled with very large trees and there are an abundance of wild edibles.

A view down into the main valley at Black Partridge Woods.

This preserve is one of my very favorite places to visit year round but it truly shines in the Spring. The show of wildflowers here is, I feel, unmatched in Cook or Dupage county. Bluebells, hepatica, shooting stars, spring beauties, wild ginger, phlox, jack in the pulpit, green dragons, and many more species can be found in great abundance. I would mention the mushrooms that can be found here, but like any good mushroom hunter, I will keep those facts secret and well guarded. Sorry.

On this particular visit I knew that the only signs of Spring that I would find would be small and well hidden. Only the most hardy of plants and animals would risk rearing their sleepy heads this early in the year. I was hoping to find skunk cabbage and hear some chorus frogs calling in their vernal pools. I was successful on one of those goals but I did find more signs of Spring than I thought I would.

Skunk cabbage flower.

Skunk cabbage is a pretty nifty plant with one of the most bizarre flowers that you can find in our area. This bulbous and mottled flower is the first to brighten up the forest floor in the Spring in Chicagoland. At any other time of the year this flower would be impossible to find due its low growing tendencies. It would simply be overshadowed. In the early Spring, though, it is simply almost impossible to find. The flowers grow to about three inches tall and are flesh colored. I have a hard time spotting reds so these are a particular challenge for me until I spot my first one, after that they turn into a piece of smelly pie.

Because they bloom so early there are none of your more typical pollinators buzzing around. The ingenious and impatient skunk cabbage must instead rely upon the early scavengers to visit it. It attracts these beasties by emitting an odor similar to that of rotting meat. Mmmmm. beautiful. Besides being bizarre looking and smelly this plant has another amazing feature, it produced its own heat. This plant can actually melt its way through ice in order to reach the surface and bloom. That is pretty darn cool in my book.

While looking for Skunk cabbage I came across a few other treat. Later on in the year Black Pratridge is an amazing source of leeks, garlic, and onions. While looking in closely at the ground, I spotted some of the very earliest growth of the wild onions. I can't wait until they grow up a little and I can use their leaves to flavor all kinds of tasty treats again.

Early onion shoot and roots.

Hepatica is another very early blooming wildflower that can be found in these woods. These little guys were still a wee bit sleepy but you could see their buds starting to swell and burst. These leaves are from last year. They hold them all year long. I will write more about these in a week or so.

Old hepatica leaves.

It was such a warm day (for early Spring) that even this little yellow jacket was starting to wake up. He was not very mobile yet. That being the case, he was very cooperative during his photo shoot.

A sleepy little yellow jacket.

Something that I failed to hear on my little trip out to Black Partridge was the chorus of tiny little frogs. Perhaps it was the torrential downpour and the lightning that had the chorus frogs being silent. Maybe it was just too early still. Despite their silence their pools were still wonderful places to visit. I think that I might go back with a net to see if I might be able to find a few salamanders. I actually found one of these pools this winter on one of my hikes. It was frozen solid and covered with animal tracks. The pool with more grass and the stump was a new find for me on this trip. I can't wait to go back with my audio recorder. Hopefully the frogs will be calling then.

Vernal pool getting a refill.

New found pool.

Well, after I made it out to these pools the rain and lightning were starting to get to me. My camera was wet. I was wet. The weather was steadily getting worse. When I made my way back down to the creek it had obviously grown during my time there. It did not even care where its banks were. Seeing the creek like this was a pretty awesome sight. It made me wonder about the animals that call it home. What happens to the nymphs, crayfish, and fish during washouts like these? I image most of them tuck away as best they can underneath large stones and some of them end up in the Des Plaines river. Anyways, it was time for me to call it a day. The rain was washing me straight back to my car.

Angry waters.

"I don't need no stinkin' banks!"

Some new residents at Black Partridge Woods?
How will beavers alter the stream habitat?
Will they dam the stream?

Sphodros Tubes

Cryptic Little Spiders

(all pictures except the diagram were taken by me)

A perfect example of one of the little curiosities that captured my interest is spiders, particularily the hard to find cousins of the better know tarantula such as trapdoor and purseweb spiders. This interest consumed many hours and dollars before it cooled down to its current level. Over the course of this obsession I amassed a good amount of obscure knowledge, skill, and photographs. 

As a young boy visiting family Oklahoma I had the good fortune of being able to spend a ton of time outside exploring the local woods and creek. In the course of one of my adventures I happened to see an odd little openning in the middle of the trail. I stopped to look more closely at the openning and realized that it was in fact a trapdoor spiders home. I tried to open the door but the spider used its considerable strength to hold the door shut. The poor spiders door eventually got ripped off and the terrified spider retreated down to the bottom of its burrow. Frustreated but now deterred, I found a suitable stick and , like a chimp fishing for termites, I prodded the burrow with my improvised tool. The spider fought back and delivered a might bite to the stick. Unfortunately the spider lodged its fangs in the wood and I was able to pull it out of its burrow unharmed. The spider was unlike anything I had found before. It was a stoutly built, aggressive, and secret animal that I found by pure luck. I carried it back to the house on the tip of the stick and started my first round of intense interest in spiders.

This is not the spider that I found as a child but a species similar to it that was found in western Kentucky. Male Ummidia 2005.

Years went by before spiders became the focus of my curiosity again. I was in college and had recently purchased a very small baby tarantula from the local pet store. In my research on my spider and others that people keep as pets I came across people who were keeping captive trapdoor spiders. They were all exotic species from Africa and other international locales. My interest was sparked yet again except that this time I had much more resources at my disposal, most importantly Southern Illinois University's research library and the ear of an accomplished arachnologist, Joe Beatty. My interest was also focused on the Mygalomorph group of spiders in particular. This group of spiders is an ancient, sometimes considered primitive, sect of spiders that contain the well-known tarantulas and a host of lesser know spiders.

My focus was not on captive spiders from exotic locales that have been removed from their habitats but on the native species from United States. I spent many hours at the library reading, photocopying, and building my own library on the trapdoor and purseweb spiders of the united states. My research and field trips with Dr. Beatty led to me being able to identify suitable habitat and burrows of some of the most cryptic spiders in America. The first of the species that I found was the common trapdoor spider Antrodiaetus unicolor. While common it was still quite difficult to locate the first few times. Once I found a few of them, however, I had a search image and it became much easier.

A portrait of Antrodiaetus unicolor (Ferne Clyffe State Park, Illinois 2004)

Here is another shot of a small Antrodiaetus unicolor (Ferne Clyffe State Park, Illinois 2004)

My interest and skill was building and shifted from the trapdoor spiders to a much more difficult to find and rare group of spiders (at least in southern Illinois), the pursewebs. This group of spiders builds a burrow similar to the trapdoor spiders but instead of building the famous door, they build a sock-like tube that extends for several inches past the burrow openning. The tubes are expertly camoflauged and unlucky insects frequently crawl over them without realizing the danger that is hiding within them. The purseweb spiders wait for vibrations in the tube to alert it to possible prey. When it feels an animal of appropriate size walking on its burrow it thrusts its ridiculously long fangs through the web and pulls its dinner inside.

This diagram illustrates how a purse web spider captures its prey, http://www.xs4all.nl/~ednieuw/Spiders/Atypidae/Atypidae.html

The species that became my "Holy Grail" spider was Sphodros Niger. This small spider is easily one of the hardest to find spiders in the United States. Unlike many of its cousins, this purseweb does not usually attach its tubes to trees but instead either lays them horizontally on the ground under the leaf litter or attaches them under fern fronds on steep slopes. Most of the time people only have the good fortune of seeing the males that leave their burrows to go out looking for love and even these are quite rare to see. Rarer still is finding the burrow of the much larger females. These homebodies never leave their burrows. Ever. Finding a female became my goal and Dr. Beatty became an indispensible resource since he is one of the few people that have successfully done so. 

After many hours of searching in Illinois and western Kentucky, I finally came across several burrows of Sphodros niger. I had struck gold! The first burrow that I found was a juvenile spider's. I raised this spider in captivity for several months. It was very interesting watching it create the famous purseweb and using it to capture its prey. After many meals the spider eventually moulted its last time and emerged as a beautiful male spider. The males are thought to mimic the blueish wasps that specialize in preying on spiders. They are rather slender and move in a nervous and jerky manner similar to the spider hunting wasps. Knowing that the males will not eat once they have left their burrow, I decided that the best thing for me to do was take a ton of pictures and let the spider go in the area that I found it in. 

Several months later I found another burrow. It was located underneath the fronds of a Christmas fern on the steep bank of a stream in western Kentucky. It was another juvenile but it was already much larger than the male that I had found previously. I raised this spider in captivity and after one of its moults, I examined its shed exoskeleton and found it to be a female. Needless to say I was very excited. I had joined a very small group of people lucky enough to have found a burrow of a female Sphoros niger. 

This spider will always have special meaning to me. Because of hard work, research, and dedication I was able to accomplish a lofty goal that I had set out for myself. It is good feeling to have the focus that this spider provided to me at that point in my life.  

A very angry female Sphodros niger (Land Between the Lakes, Kentucky 2005)

Captive Sphodros niger enjoying a mealworm in an unfinished burrow (Land Between the Lakes, Kentucky 2005)