Baby Animals, Butterflies,and Box Turtles! ( Lick Creek/ Macon County Preserves)

 It was the last weekend before school started, so I decided to spend much of the weekend hiking.

First stop was at the marshes of Lick Creek Wildlife Area,  This rarely-explored nature preserve is one of the best stops for herps (reptiles and amphibians) in Sangamon County.  While somewhat overtaken by invasive species, it nevertheless has large populations of much local wildlife. Mosquitoes, especially, are common.  I'm not going to sugarcoat it;  I had about thirty bites in five minutes of hiking, though they let up after that.  That might be why this preserve is rarely visited.

I'm not sure whether these are cute or disturbing, but they're baby mice likely of an uncertain brown and white mouse species that escaped into a hole.  I went to move the log above the hole, and it broke apart, exposing the poor baby mice.  I snapped only one quick photo before hastily replacing as much as I could.  Hollow logs are favorite places for mice to live and this log on the edge of the marsh would have been excellent for the mice to raise a family.

I trekked out into the marsh, which, in spots, is about two feet deep.  I know this because my rubber boots are not quite that high, and I sunk them a bit too deep into the muck.  This may look like a grassy lawn, but it is nearly impassable.  This marsh is considered to possibly be one of the haunts of the Kirtland's Snake, a shy, small, State-Threatened species.  I've never seen one here, but I have friends who have.  By the way, birders, the Kirtland's Snake was named for the same naturalist as was the Kirtland's Warbler, the Midwest's rarest bird.  Two of the rarest Midwesterners, both named after the same man, Jared Potter Kirtland, whose diverse achievements are described here.  He has a good first name, in my opinion.

There is an even deeper section of the marsh where the cattails grow, but I never made it out that far, as the water would grow too deep for me.  I need to invest in waders.

I did manage to reach a willow pool.  I don't know if there's a technical term, but the willows that grow in the middle of the marsh seem to grow in deeper pockets and shade out the marsh grasses.  It's here, on the root masses of the willow trees, that some of the local animals congregate.

A few plants grow in the soil accumulated around the willow's roots, and on one of these plants, I found an immature Gray Treefrog (Hyla spp.)  Yes, I said GRAY Treefrog.  These frogs are green when they're young, and sometimes on other occasions when they change color to camoflage themselves.  Gray Treefrog is the name for two species here, only distinguishable by call.

Back out in the marsh, I found a pocket of aquatic Liverworts (Ricciocarpus natans), which occupy the ecological niche in this marsh that Duckweeds (Lemna spp.) occupy in Lick Creek itself.  I wonder if this is tied to PH or some other factor.  The water in the marsh is unusually dark, probably acidic in PH.  Despite its depth, I've never seen fish swimming in it, although there are many invertebrates such as crayfish, dragonfly larvae, and water fleas.

Speaking of invertebrates, I found this dragonfly larvae shed earlier in the day.  This is much like the cicada shells that cicadas leave behind, but I found it on the edge of a puddle.

Winding my way along the edge of the marsh to the banks of the main creek, I disturbed something in the undergrowth and investigated further:

Well!  This is a Western Chorus Frog (Pseudacris triseriata), a VERY common frog here back in March and April, but which seems to vanish from the world after May.  Actually, they stop breeding then, and as a nocturnal species, they tend to be harder to find when they're not calling for a mate.

The other reason this frog is hard to find is its brown-striped camouflage, which allows it to blend in with the dead grasses present everywhere on the ground.  My personal guess as to why I found this frog is that the area it was in flooded due to high water levels from the flood a couple weeks back.

Broad-leaved Arrowhead (Sagittaria latifolia) also grows in this marsh, its large leaves giving the plant its name.  Generally, I find it only on the outskirts of the marsh.

Also present along the outskirts of the marsh was this juvenile Dekay's Brown Snake (Storeria dekayi), one of my favorite snakes due to its small size and tameness when caught. I recently had the experience of watching someone play with a large jumping spider, calling it cute as it ran along their hand. I wish I liked spiders more, but I instinctively dislike them, so I thought this person was a little nuts to be handling a perfectly harmless spider.  It occurred to me that other people probably think I'm nuts when I handle the Dekay's Snakes, however.  I do find these little serpents "cute".  After a couple photos, I let the snake go back under its log and hiked off, only to find a second Dekay's in a tarp:

I left Lick Creek shortly thereafter, but I'll come back to a bug I found there in a bit.  The following day, a Sunday, I left after church to visit the three Illinois Nature Preserves in Macon County.  In the order that I visited them, that's Calamus Lake, Spitler Woods (which is also a State Natural Area) and Bois du Sangamon.  I crossed the vast wastelands of cornfields along the Sangamon River Valley to reach Calamus Lake, one of the few remaining intact oxbow wetlands in the Valley.  These are wastelands, after all, barren of most plant life excluding corn and soybeans.

Calamus Lake seemed to be a different sort of "wasteland" altogether.  It isn't a wasteland, but an old-growth wetland not accessible to humans.  I walked along the outer edge, but a wall of Buttonbush, so old as to be entirely covered in slick mosses, growing above water over a foot deep, kept me out of the lake for the most part.  Silver Maples (Acer saccharinum) grew around the edge of the marsh, though the vast majority were fairly young.  Around them, in yet another wall, grew the thickest and tallest Poison Ivy I had ever seen.  Past all of this was a levee with a gravel road on top, and mixed prairie restoration, low woods, and cornfields beyond.

I walked to the top of the levee, where I found this Monarch... no, it isn't a Monarch at all!  Several Viceroy Butterflies (Limenitis archippus) rested on the gravel road, distinguishable from the Monarch by smaller size, darker coloration, and slight differences in wing veining, especially on the lower wings (hindwings).  Only the Viceroy has a diagonal black line on the hindwing that does not bend significantly in the middle.  Viceroy Caterpillars feed on Willows and Cottenwoods, both of which are in abundance here in this swampy wetland.

I returned to the swamp, found a "gap" in the Buttonbush wall, and made a discovery about the place. Calamus Lake,  is no lake at all.  I found no open water that was not covered by Smartweed (Polygonum spp.) Willows (Salix spp.) or Buttonbush (Cephalanthus occidentalis).  This was something different, but it was no lake.  Nor was there any Calamus.  Smartweed Swamp would be a far better name than Calamus Lake, considering that Smartweed makes up most of the plant growth seen in the picture below.

A couple of Dragonflies landed near me, and I decided to try photographing them, whilst sinking deeper into the mire.  If you haven't figured it out already, Calamus Lake is not for ordinary people.  That's fine.  It's a nature preserve for nature, decidedly not for people.

This Eastern Pondhawk (Erythemis simplicicollis) perched on a leaf only arm's length from me.   The sun illuminated every hair and vein on its body.

This other dragonfly, which remained in the shadow, I don't have a name for yet.  Help, anyone?

Having made it into the swamp, it took considerably more effort to get out, as I lost my way several times, staggering under Buttonbushes and through sections of water as high as my boots.  That's not to say I didn't have a good time, as I did hear a Pileated Woodpecker and find this unknown waterlily.  Still, it was with much relief that I made it back to the gravel road, where I found more butterflies:

While the Buckeye (Junonia coenia) is a common butterfly, there were some rarer butterflies also:

This is the uncommon Cloudless Sulphur (Phoebis sennae), a butterfly I've never seen before.  These butterflies, just like Monarchs or Buckeyes, migrate south for the winter, some of the few insects which do.  Among the others are dragonflies, which have one of the least-studied migrations in all of science. Cloudless Sulphers, on the other hand, migrate to Florida and the Caribbean.

In summary of Calamus Lake, there's no lake, there's no calamus, and the most interesting part is the large butterfly population, mostly on the road itself.  On to Spitler Woods went I.

The first notable creature at Spitler Woods was this White-tailed Deer (Odocoileus virginianus), which I startled.  It seems to be suffering from some sort of problem with its fur.   White-tailed Deer are the largest wild mammals in Illinois, to my knowledge (although there are several curious anecdotes about bears, big cats, and Bigfoot roaming the cornfields in small towns in Illinois.)

After watching the deer for a bit, I moved on, finding a Bronze Grape Fern  (Botrychium [Sceptridium] dissectum subsp. obliquum), which is both highly uncommon and badly photographed.  It's a new species for me, in a genus of plants that holds some of the rarest ferns in both Illinois and North America.  These plants only grow in areas of high-quality woodland, where they can use soil fungi (mycorrhizae) to provide them with nutrients.  I went to Spitler Woods partly in search of another mycorrhizal-dependant plant, Indian Pipes, but I was unable to find it.  I'll settle for a new fern, I suppose.  It is one of my life goals to study how plants rely on mycorrhizae, especially in woodlands, to stay alive.  Many of Illinois' rarest and strangest woodland plants depend on an underground connecting web of mycorrhizal fungi to survive.  These fungi connect every plant in the woods underground, transferring nutrients across the soil.

Here, you can see the sporangia, which give this plant its name of Grape Fern by their appearance. For the majority of you, I've probably spent far too long dwelling on this fern, but as a fern, mycorrhizal-dependant, and a plant, it piques my interest.  I moved on from it after a couple of quick photos, and came to a set of bridges over a creek.  Which would I take?

I took neither bridge, and walked along the creekbed itself, looking for strange plants or animals.

Among the growth at the edge of the creek, I found this stem of Jack-in-the-Pulpit (Arisaema triphyllum) berries.  Do NOT eat these, as they contain calcium oxalate crystals. What that means the average man is that they will give you an intense burning sensation in your mouth, severe stomach cramps, and kidney stones. in that order.  It won't kill you, but it would be extremely painful.

I then found a slight hole in the bank, where all but the uppermost layer of soil had washed away, leaving a hole where the roots were exposed.  Nothing lived back here beyond a few insects, so I continued down the creek, flipping stones idly and finding this after a while:

Several Crayfish lived in the creek, hidden under the stones and blending in with the mud and pebbles.  Continuing along the bank, I found several strange objects:

These are the tubers of the Dutchman's Breeches (Dicentra cucullaria) spring wildflower, unearthed by erosion. I wandered about the woodland for a few hours.  Spitler Woods seemed like a small place at the beginning of the hike, but with over two hundred acres of woods here, I could wander all day.

Finally, I found the trail and this unusual bridge over the creek.  I took it back to the parking lot, swiping off four spiders on the way back.  I was too alarmed by their prescence to take a picture.  These were Spined Micrathenas, a common and unusual-looking web-weaving woodland spider.  I found at least a hundred in Spitler Woods, and several at the other locations.  After taking the last spider off me, I went on to the last preserve, Bois Du Sangamon.

Bois Du Sangamon is a woodland just across Lake Decatur, and as a result, it smells like Decatur.  If you've never been to Decatur, it has a corn ethanol plant, which accounts for the smell, a cross between burned popcorn and gasoline.  This smell is occasionally attributed to soybeans.  It's strong enough in this preserve that it nearly made me sick on arriving.  I walked down this tunnel-like old road (barred by a gate), to its end, assuming that this would be an odorous waste of time.

First, I found this fern.  I've seen this species of fern before, but I've never actually identified it.  It looks like some species of Asplenium, possibly Asplenium trichomanes, but I doubt that.  Finding this fern was a sign of how good this area was to prove in a few minutes:

This is the first ADULT Eastern Box Turtle (Terrapene carolina carolina) and the first one I've ever photographed.  I'm fairly certain of my identification of the baby Box Turtle last year, but this was a definite Box Turtle.  He's hiding in his shell, currently, so I picked him up, took a video of him, which will be posted later, and put him back in the tin can he was previously hiding in.

Later,  I returned to the same spot, where the turtle had its head out, showing off its red eyes.  This is a beautiful and rare animal.  People collect these for pets quite often, and as a result the Eastern Box Turtle has become quite rare.  The other reason these turtles are in decline is that they are run over by cars.  It's been a goal of mine this year to find one for months now, and I finally did.

After that encounter, I walked all the way along the path to Lake Decatur, the reservoir of the only dam on the Sangamon River and one of the larger lakes in Central Illinois.  It often has toxic levels of agricultural pollutants thanks to the fertilizers used on crops upstream.  As a result, there are a number of county-level nature preserves along the banks of the river, designed to reduce pollution.

This may look like one moth, but it's actually TWO moths mating, as I discovered when I disturbed them post taking this picture.  I don't know my moths, so no identification.

This butterfly, however, I could identify, as a Red-spotted Purple (Limenitis arthemis), a close relative of the Viceroy shown earlier.  Like the Viceroy, this butterfly is also imitating a poisonous species, the Pipevine Swallowtail.  However, the Pipevine Swallowtail is far rarer in Illinois.

Finally, as I returned to my car on this fine day, I found this in front of me.  The deer vanished as I approached, but it was a nice Fifth Orchid to a fine, laid-back weekend of exploring Illinois nature.