Nature Nick's Notes

Nuthatches: Cute and Tough as Well

noreply@blogger.com (Nature Nick) — Wed, 23 Nov 2022 17:19:00 +0000

You've really got to love nuthatches. Next to the Black-capped Chickadee they're probably the most common small native songbird that Albertans are likely to see in parks and backyard feeders, but nuthatches are still enjoyable to watch and worth getting to know better. There are two species in Alberta that we'll touch on, as well as one just over the border and another more cryptic nuthatch-like bird.

Nuthatches are a bird family of their own, the Sittidae, and in general are small, stubby woodland birds with chisel-shaped bills for getting inside seed casings. They're little balls of energy too, always zipping around looking for food or defending their territory from other breeding pairs. Nuthatches cling to tree trunks almost like tiny woodpeckers. Alberta's two nuthatch species are the Red-breasted Nuthatch (Sitta canadensis) and the White-breasted Nuthatch (Sitta carolinensis). Luckily for novice birdwatchers, they're easy to tell apart. While both are small seed-eating woodland birds that scamper up and down trees, even a quick look can tell you which one is at hand.

Red-breasted Nuthatch. By Nick Carter

White-breasted Nuthatch. By Nick Carter

First off, at 13-15.5 cm in length the White-breasted is noticeably larger than the Red-breasted (10.2-12.4 cm long). The Red-breasted Nuthatch is a little round bird with a long beak and stubby tail. Its white head is barred with black eyelines and crown. The upper parts beyond the nape are a simple blue-grey colour, while nearly the whole underside is a pale rusty shade. The slightly more elongate White-breasted Nuthatch has a clean white face and belly, aside from some chestnut patches on the lower abdomen and undertail. The top of the head and neck are black, and like the Red-breasted the dorsal side is bluish grey.

In both species the call is a soft, nasally yank sound, but it tends to be more high-pitched in the smaller Red-breasted Nuthatch. These calls are an easy way to detect nuthatches while out on a walk. Once you hear that distinctive sound, pause and look up on the surrounding trunks and chances are you'll see one scurrying across the bark or flitting from tree to tree. To find nuthatches, especially during the winter, I often find it easiest to look for chickadees first. Flocks of Black-capped Chickadees make no secret of their presence as they buzz around the woods foraging. Oftentimes, especially with urban park chickadees used to being fed by people, they'll fly in to check you out and just as often as not, they'll have a nuthatch or two accompanying them. Since both birds share a similar diet, wherever the hard-working chickadees are finding success, nuthatches can probably get a meal as well. Plus, chickadees make and excellent alarm system if a hawk or owl decides to drop by.

Also like chickadees, nuthatches will happily visit backyard feeders and other such places for easy winter meals. After sifting through the offerings for a seed, they take their morsel up to a branch where the stout beak pecks through the shell to get at the nutritious seed within. This habit, though shared with other birds, is where nuthatches get their name. They'll also stash seeds in wooden crevices and such for later.

White-breasted Nuthatch with a seed. By Nick Carter

Nuthatches will happily grab seeds from the ground as well as up high. By Nick Carter

Nuthatches are renowned for their ability to scurry up, down, and sideways across tree trunks with ease thanks to their impressively large, hook-shaped claws. Their flexible neck-bending pose while gripping upside-down to the bark is a classic nuthatch image. Unlike woodpeckers, though, they don't brace themselves against tree trunks with their tail feathers. Red-breasted Nuthatches show an interesting behaviour during the nesting season in which they smear sticky tree resin around the edge of the nest cavity. It's thought that this might deter predators from sneaking into the nest.

Classic nuthatch pose. By Nick Carter

Alberta residents in most major towns and cities can expect to see both nuthatch species year-round, though they tend to be more noticeable in the winter once the flashier birds are gone and they need to work harder to find food. Despite their size, nuthatches manage to endure our coldest conditions with admirable fortitude. Like other year-round songbirds, nuthatches stay alive thanks in part to their thick, insulating down feathers (which are even warmer than mammal fur) and feeding often throughout the day to power their highly energetic metabolisms. Sheltering in a hole or notch in a tree keeps them out of nasty storms.

It's not uncommon to see both Red-breasted and White-breasted Nuthatches right in the same spot where their ranges overlap. Despite Red-breasted probably being the more common species, I find I tend to see White-breasted slightly more often.

Nuthatches will even sift through leaves on the forest floor for seeds that might wind up there. By Nick Carter

While the ranges of both birds overlap significantly, Red-breasted Nuthatches are more widespread, occupying just about every corner of Alberta from the far-northern boreal forest to the dry southern prairies. White-breasted Nuthatches are more confined in their ranges, generally sticking to the poplar woods of Alberta's parkland regions as well as the central and southern Rockies. This means that folks from Peace River down through Edmonton, Red Deer, and Calgary can bet on seeing this species, but folks in the more coniferous far north will be more hard-pressed. It's interesting to note how our understanding of the range of the White-breasted Nuthatch has changed over the years. Early guides such as Salt and Wilk's The Birds of Alberta from 1958 found little in the way of data on this species from the province at all, and subsequent range maps indicate their presence more and more in central and western Alberta. Were they really all but absent from the province until the past 60 years or so, or were they always abundant and people never took much notice until relatively recently?

Nuthatches. By Nick Carter

Just over the border in south-central British Columbia is Canada's third nuthatch species, the Pygmy Nuthatch (Sitta pygmaea). This small species, at 9.4-11.3 cm in length, can be found in the warm ponderosa pine woods of the Okanogan Valley. I was pleased to spot a pair myself just south of Vernon a couple years back. They're a relatively plain-coloured nuthatch, with a white throat, tan belly, brown head and blue back. Their size can make them hard to spot in the giant pines, so listen for their high, piping calls chittering away up high.

Pygmy Nuthatch. By Nick Carter

One final bird that might look like a tiny nuthatch but isn't one is the Brown Creeper (Certhia americana). It's member of a different family, the Certiidae. Roughly the size of a Red-breasted Nuthatch, they range from 12.5-14.5 cm long. Like nuthatches, the Brown Creeper 'creeps' up tree trunks in that horizontal woodpecker-posture. Instead of seeds, however, creepers mostly hunt for small insects that take shelter in the nooks and crannies of tree bark using their long, curved beak. A closer look at a creeper reveals a bird that resembles a wren more than a nuthatch in appearence, with its curved beak, longish tail, mottled brown top side and pale white underside. Like woodpeckers, creeprs use their stiff tail feathers as a climbing support.

Brown Creeper. By Nick Carter

Their small size and cryptic colouration means that Brown Creepers can be frustratingly hard to find, as they blend right into the bark of the big, mossy trees they prefer to climb. They frequent old growth forests across the central Alberta parkland and mountains, but due to their secretive nature their full range has long been a bit of a mystery. I've seen them as far north as Grande Prairie. To find a Brown Creeper, go on a winter walk in your nearest old, quiet forest and either wait to spot what looks like a fleck of bark shimmy up a tree or listen for the thin, high-pitched whistle of a nearby creeper. It's just a matter of patience, sharp eyes, and luck. That said, creepers can also appear in strange places. My best creeper sighting was when one randomly appeared in the trees outside my apartment window and just stuck around for much of the day. You never know.

Photographing nuthatches leads to some interesting views. By Nick Carter

So that's nuthatches and nuthatch-like things for you. Sometimes birding is about tracking down that elusive, rare species that you've been dying to see for ages. And sometimes it's about enjoying the everyday, reliable ones that are always ready to bring some cheer to the neighborhood. Enjoy both.

Alberta Palaeontology, a Summary

noreply@blogger.com (Nature Nick) — Mon, 08 Aug 2022 12:07:00 +0000

Alberta, more than any other part of Canada, is renowned for its dinosaur fossil record. In fact, it's one of the top places in the world to find dinosaur bones, a fact that too often escapes many citizens of the province who take it for granted.

When it comes to the science of vertebrate palaeontology in Alberta, there's so much to explore and appreciate. From The history of dinosaur hunting in the province, its prehistoric ecology, the biology and lives of the creatures preserved here, and the geological processes that not only fossilized them but exposed them to our eye today... All of this is worth learning more about, and as a lifelong fossil fanatic, I can't wait to begin.

To be clear up front, this is far from a totally complete overview of the vast science of palaeontology in Alberta. For starters, we'll be keeping to the province's Mesozoic fossil record, meaning the time of the dinosaurs, and will leave the 'Ice Age' stuff for, hopefully, its own entry. While I've done my best to keep this summary current and accurate, and to back up as many facts as possible with references, please leave a comment if you have anything to add.

Geology and Geography

The science of palaeontology is really a pairing of two other fields of science: biology and geology. Biology is the study of living things- how they live, evolve, and interact. Geology is the study of the physical components of the Earth, namely rocks and minerals, and the processes that shape and them. Palaeontology, therefore, is the study of fossils- rocks that were once living things, or represent their presence at least, millions of years ago.

To understand how fossils got here, what their environment in life was like, and where they fit into the history of life on Earth, we need to study the rocks they're found in. Fossils are generally found in sedimentary rock, which if you remember your grade 3 is formed by tiny mineral particles eroded from other rocks, deposited in layers by water or wind, and hardening into formations over millions of year. The remains of living things that become buried by these depositing sediments can become mineralized in one way or another, which turns them into a fossil.

Dry Island Buffalo Jump Provincial Park. By Nick Carter

We divide units of sedimentary rock into distinct formations based on their physical characteristics like age, location, and types of sedimentary rock found within. Different formations generally represent distinct ecosystems, and the type of rocks and fossils present in a formation gives us clues as to what kind of environment the formation was laid down in. For example, sandstone and mudstone layers tend to indicate rivers flowing through the area, carrying and depositing sand and mud particles as they went. Coal seams and amber tell us the area was forested. Shales or chalk mean the environment was a marine one at the time. It gets more refined and complicated than this, but rest assured that folks with training in geology can tell a lot about a prehistoric environment by simply looking at a rock exposure.

Different parts of the world have rock exposures from different points in time in different places. This is due to many things, including the movement of landmasses and erosion affecting certain areas in particular ways. Even though Alberta has rocks going all the way back to way before the dinosaurs, such as Cambrian rocks exposed in the mountains, most of the really famous and productive rocks come from the late Cretaceous period, spanning the Campanian and Maastrichtian ages. This is around the end of the age of dinosaurs. Older rocks are further down, and younger rocks are higher up. That's one of the fundamental rules of geology. Rocks from slightly earlier in time are certainly found here, but their fossil assemblages are poorly understood. So, no offense to the Smoky Group or Dunvegan Formation, but we'll save things like that for later.

Many of the dinosaur-bearing late Cretaceous formations in Alberta were deposited along the western shore of the Western Interior Seaway, the great inland sea that run up and down much of central North America, connecting the Gulf of Mexico to the Arctic Ocean. Further west, the Cordillera mountain ranges were continuing to rise in towering uplands. The modern Canadian Rockies are part of that mountain chain. Rivers flowed from the western highlands eastward towards the sea, carrying eroded sediments with them that were deposited as sandstone and mudstone layers inland, and marine shales at and beyond the shore. All sorts of plants and animals thrived in the coastal lowlands as well as in the seaway itself, and when they died, many were washed away by moving water, buried within layers of sediment, and fossilized. Did dinosaurs also live further inland towards the western highlands? Certainly, but the relative scarcity of late Cretaceous exposures combined with the more complicated geology of the Rockies makes finding evidence of them more difficult.

One of the oldest rock formations with a good deal of vertebrate fossils known from Alberta is the Milk River Formation. This formation can be seen, naturally, along the Milk River where it bends northwards just inside the far southern edge of the province. Writing-on-Stone Provincial Park is a handy place to see it. The Milk River Formation's lowest section starts in the older Santonian age about 84.1 million years ago, and it ends at about 83.6 million years ago. While the Milk River Formation might be harder to find in Alberta than other rocks we'll touch on later, its important because it tells palaeontologists more about what sorts of animals were living here before the more well-known faunal assemblages from later on, filling in our understanding of how the environment and species of Cretaceous Alberta changed over time.

The next rocks of note to vertebrate palaeontologists are a group of formations together known as the Belly River Group. This group spans from about 78.5 million to 75.8 million years ago, and exposures of varying ages can be found throughout central and southern Alberta. The oldest formation in the Belly River Group is the Foremost Formation. Relatively scarce outcroppings can be seen along rivers in the deep southeastern part of the province, and although much of the material from this formation has been less than complete, palaeontologists over the last two decades or so have been working hard to study the fossils from this formation and have described several interesting species of dinosaur from these remains.

Overlying the Foremost Formation in southeastern Alberta is the Oldman Formation, named for Alberta's Oldman River. It spans from about 77.5 to 76.5 million years ago, and overlaps in time with the Two Medicine Formation further to the southwest, which is mostly found in Montana and just over the Alberta border, and is famous for its fossilized dinosaur nests. Many different dinosaur species have been found in the Oldman and, while they might not be at the top of most people's favourite dinosaur lists, Oldman Formation species can be seen on display at world-class museums like the Canadian Museum of Nature and Royall Tyrrell Museum.

In terms of geology and fossil record, the Oldman is superficially similar to the overlying Dinosaur Park Formation. This rock unit, which is about 76.5 to 75 million years ago is also exposed in places throughout southeastern Alberta, but the best location to explore it would have to be its namesake, Dinosaur Provincial Park. While other rocks listed here can be abundant in scientifically valuable fossils, the Dinosaur Park Formation exposures in Dinosaur Provincial Park are a staggering treasure trove of late Cretaceous fossils. Words really can't do it justice. I was once lucky enough to be driving the great Argentinian palaeontologist, Rudolfo Coria to the airport in Grande Prairie, after showing him the fossil collections of the Philip J. Currie Dinosaur Museum, and asked him what the best fieldwork location he's ever visited was. Without much difficulty he told me it was Dinosaur Provincial Park. A glance at the Dinosaur Park fossil record shows practically a greatest hits-list of late Cretaceous North American dinosaurs, minus only Triceratops and Tyrannosaurus. We'll touch on that more later on.

Dinosaur Park Formation badlands at, naturally, Dinosaur Provincial Park. By Nick Carter

During this time, the water levels of the Western Interior Seaway continued to rise, until the sea covered nearly all of eastern and central Alberta. This is the time of the marine Bearpaw Formation, from about 75 to 72 million years ago. This created an environment where most dinosaurs, aside from ocean-going birds, couldn't continue living. Further inland at this time, though, dinosaurs from remaining terrestrial locations, represented in places like the upper part of Montana's Two Medicine Formation, would occasionally wash out to sea after dying, likely carried by rivers after bloating due to gas buildup from microorganisms within the carcass. Examples include a specimen of the duck-billed dinosaur Prosaurolophus which was already known from the Dinosaur Park Formation. All sorts of marine animals from ammonites to mosasaurs and more dwelt here as well. One notable Bearpaw exposure is south of Lethbridge where a commercial mine digs for ammolite, a gemstone that arises from fossilized ammonite shells. Many impressive marine reptile skeletons have been found in quarries like this.

Eventually the time of extra-high sea levels began to end, and from this time we find terrestrial deposits in the Alberta prairies again. Overlying the Bearpaw is the Horseshoe Canyon Formation, spanning till about 67 million years ago into the early Maastrichtian era, the final section of the Cretaceous period. The southwestern Alberta rocks of the St. Mary River Formation is of a similar age. The Horseshoe Canyon Formation is the rock that many Albertans probably think of when they envision the classic Alberta badlands. This is because the town of Drumheller, Canadas dinosaur capital, as well as the surrounding area sit in a valley along the Red Deer River that is bordered by iconic Horseshoe Canyon Formation exposures. Truth is, the other formations listed here are also found in badland-type landscapes, and I honestly must say the older Dinosaur Park Formation badlands further east along the Red Deer are more impressive. In addition to that, you can also see the Horseshoe Canyon Formation exposed in more than just badlands. Edmontonians only need to look at the south side of the North Saskatchewan River- the greyish-brown rock exposures that can be seen in places along the river's south bank are Horseshoe Canyon Formation. The Edmonton Group, which the Horseshoe Canyon Formation is the oldest member of, gets its name from this fact. In any case, this rock unit has also yielded no shortage of beautiful and iconic dinosaur fossils as well as all sorts of other Cretaceous animals. These fossil creatures are related to earlier forms found in the Dinosaur Park Formation, but represent different species in a different kind of assemblage. What happened between these two times?

Horseshoe Canyon Formation exposure outside the Royal Tyrrell Museum near Drumheller. By Nick Carter

We need to look to the north. At this point we've covered a lot of well-studied rock formations ranging from the Edmonton area down to the far-flung grasslands of deep southern Alberta. But did you know that plenty of fossils are also now being found hundreds of kilometres to the northwest? It's true. Ranging from just over the border into northeastern B.C. and across parts of Alberta's Peace country, particularly the area around Grande Prairie, the Wapiti Formation can be found. Spanning from about 80 to 68 million years ago from the Campanian to the Maastrichtian eras, the Wapiti Formation overlaps in time with much of the rock we've already covered. Its northwesterly position means that this inland formation wasn't interrupted by the incursion of the Western Interior Seaway. This not only means that it allows palaeontologists to figure out what was living further inland and to the north in late Cretaceous Alberta, but some particularly important fossil sites were actually deposited while the rest of the province was under water during the Bearpaw times, meaning we can start to piece together what kind of land-based and freshwater animals lived in Alberta during the gap in the fossil record between the Dinosaur Park and Horseshoe Canyon Formations. The disadvantage is that, because of remote outcropping locations and extensive plant coverage, there's less Wapiti Formation exposures to explore for fossils in than we'd like. Vertebrate trackways, however, are interestingly abundant in this formation. You can see productive outcroppings in places like the Redwillow and Wapiti Rivers and the Kleskun Hills, Alberta's northernmost badlands.

Wapiti Formation exposure at the Kleskun Hills near Grande Prairie. By Nick Carter

Skipping over the relatively unproductive Battle and Whitemud Formations, we come to the youngest member of the Edmonton Group and the end of the Age of Dinosaurs with the Scollard Formation. You can see this exposed in places along the Red Deer River near Trochu, and it's also present in patchy areas above the Wapiti. This rock actually crosses the Cretaceous-Palaeogene boundary, and you can actually see that transition point in the rock where a layer of iridium can be found. In southwestern Alberta, the Scollard grades into the Willow Creek Formation, and belongs to the same broader environment also seen in Saskatchewan's Frenchman Formation as well as the American Hell Creek, Denver, and Laramie Formations. Beyond that, the Paskapoo Formation can be found across swaths of southwestern Alberta, including around Calgary. The Paskapoo is from early in the Palaeogene period, a time when avian dinosaurs (birds) were beginning to really diversify, but by this time all other dinosaurs had gone extinct.

Palaeoenvironment

Much of what we know about the climate and environment of late Cretaceous Alberta comes from sites that were deposited in a low-lying plain where meandering rivers and braided streams flowed down from the Rocky Mountains and drained into the Western Interior Seaway, bringing down sediments that would eventually become rock. Back then the Rockies wouldn't look very familiar to us today. Instead of the sharp, snow-capped peaks and deep valleys, they were a tall, rolling highland region. As differential erosion caused different rocks to wear down at different speeds, the Rockies eventually changed into what we see today, a bit lower in elevation but a much more dramatic landscape with more dynamic altitude differences between peaks and valleys. It took millions of years and and Ice Age to get there, though.

The environment of Cretaceous Alberta would be both familiar and strange. Many folks tend to generalize the world of the Age of Dinosaurs as a sort of giant tropical terrarium, with palm trees swaying as the ground was gently rocked by earthquakes and volcanic eruptions. In truth, while global temperatures were on average higher than today, and temperature differences between the poles and equator were much less dramatic than they are now, there was still a great variety of habitats, climates, and landscapes back then. That said, we're far from understanding the whole picture at the moment. As it stands, much of Alberta in the Campanian was, climatically-speaking, not dissimilar from today's Mississippi delta in some ways. A flat, swampy land of rivers and bayous near the ocean's shore. Summers were hot and humid. Back then Alberta was actually further north than today, meaning summer days would've been even longer. Dramatic thunderstorms would've rolled in from the sea from time to time, bringing high winds and torrents of rain.

Coal, leaf impressions, fossilized pollen, and petrified wood tell us of the plant life at the time. Coniferous trees mostly included cypresses, podocarps, pines, and redwoods, plus some cycads. Ginkgoes lived here too, as did flowering trees such as figs and plane trees. The undergrowth was a variety of familiar shrubs and smaller flowers. Grass hasn't taken over the plant world at this time, and so much of the ground cover was taken up by ferns and mosses.

Winters would have been a slightly different matter. While nowhere as severe as modern Alberta winters can be, our latitude at the time meant very long, frosty winter nights, probably with the occasional snowfall. It might seem odd to picture dinosaurs going about their business in such conditions, but in manly places today modern reptiles deal with cool and even freezing conditions for part of the year. The environment of Cretaceous Alberta- a temperate to subtropical region that also experienced long, dark winter nights- doesn't really exist to the same degree today. It was once assumed that the more northwestern Wapiti Formation experienced more intense and perhaps even severe winters due to its geographical position, and what was seen as the near absence of fossil turtles and crocodiles was believed to have supported this. However, more recent findings of these reptiles might indicate the region was milder than we'd previously thought.

Despite this generalizing, our late Cretaceous formations show gradual environmental change closely tied with fluctuating sea levels and geographic position. Sandstones and mudstones tell us of rivers and coastal floodplains in the Belly River group and lower Horseshoe Canyon Formation, while the Wapiti indicates an inland environment with rivers and lakes and less marine influence.

Fossil Animals

Listing every fossil animal (and we'll stick to vertebrates here as I'm far less experienced with invert palaeontology) would take a long time, but there are some interesting trends we can see across Cretaceous Alberta. It wasn't all just dinosaurs of course. Plenty of different animals shared the environment at the time, and many of them wouldn't look out of place today.

Starting with fish, it's a well-known fact that cartilaginous or chondrichthyan fish, sharks and rays that is, are much older than the dinosaurs. A variety of sharks are known from Alberta, mostly from their teeth, since the dentine and enamel of teeth fossilize much better than comparatively soft cartilage. Sharks weren't restricted to the marine Bearpaw Formation either, as shark teeth found in nearshore formations indicate they probably swam up into estuaries or coastal bayous. One of the easiest chondrichthyan teeth to recognize is Myledaphus. This animal was a rhinobatid, or guitarfish- a type of ray known for their elongate bodies. Myledaphus teeth are like tiny hexagon-shaped blocks with two little roots at the bottom. The top of the tooth is flat and likely used for crushing the shells of clams and such nabbed from the sea floor. Thanks to a very well-preserved specimen at the Royal Tyrrell Museum in which part of the skeleton fossilized, we actually have a good idea as to what Myledaphus looked like.

Other fish included close relatives of modern sturgeons, bowfin, and gar that patrolled the swamps, as well as the needle-jawed fish Belonostomus out in the seaway which left no close relatives alive today (Neuman & Brinkman, 2005). While beautifully preserved skeletons of Cretaceous sturgeon and gar have been found in Alberta. the most common bits of them to find are things like their distinctive spines and scales.

Amphibians would have been a common site in wetlands at the time (Gardner, 2005). Several different types of salamanders are known, mostly from their thin little jaw bones lined with peg-shaped teeth. Frogs were around too. We also had creatures called albanerpetontids (good luck pronouncing it), part of the extinct Allocaudata order. They looked superficially like salamanders, but the anatomy of these animals tells us they seem to have split off long ago from the same common ancestor that also gave rise to the frogs and salamanders group (Batrachia) and the caecillians.

While the time after the big Cretaceous extinction is often nicknamed the 'Age of Mammals', in reality mammals go back a long way before. True mammals arose in the Jurassic period, and our earlier mammaliaform ancestors arose at about the same time as the dinosaurs. In general, Mesozoic mammals are known for being fairly small by modern standards, ranging from about the size of a shrew to the size of a small dog, give or take. Many folks assume that mammals didn't grow big at the time because dinosaurs would've just eaten them on sight, but it's not that simple. Dinosaurs were able to attain bigger sizes earlier in time than mammals were, and they quickly came to dominate the big land animal ecological roles, or niches. Larger mammals would have to compete with the already established dinosaurs for food and space. So, instead, they stayed on the small side. Many seem to have been gnawing herbivores or predators of insects and other small vertebrates, living under ground and coming out at night to feed and move around. The tricky thing, however, is that Cretaceous mammals from Alberta are mostly known from teeth attached to fragments of jaw bone. The reason for this is because the environment at the time with all that moving water and big animals stomping around favoured preservation of larger animals with hard, sturdy bones. That's why remains of small dinosaurs are fairly rare in Alberta, even though they were here. Since teeth are harder than bone, the delicate skeletons of mammals would get crushed or swept away, while their teeth stood a better chance of being preserved.

Fossil mammal jaw at the Royal Tyrrell Museum. By Nick Carter

Mammals from Cretaceous Alberta include a now extinct group called the multituberculates. These were a diverse group at the time, ranging from the Jurassic to just after the dinosaurs in the Eocene. Species from Alberta include Cimolomys, Cimolodon, and Mesodma, among others (Fox, 2005). Multituberculates looked remarkably similar to modern rodents, and ranged in shape and size from little mouse-like creatures to marmot-like burrowers and squirrel-like climbers. They were sort of like Mammalia's earlier stab at a rodent-style life, but instead of the chiseling incisors of modern rodents, multituberculates had an enlarged lower premolar for slicing off pieces of food before it was ground up by the teeth further back.

Alberta was also home to metatherians, a group that includes modern marsupials (Fox, 2005). Species like Alphadon and Eodelphis were small carnivores/omnivores that may have looked and behaved not dissimilar to our modern opossums. We also had the slightly larger and more powerful carnivore Didelphodon (Fox & Naylor, 1986). Some early placental mammals, the same group that most mammals today belong to, would've also been around.

On to reptiles. One of the more common reptiles from Cretaceous Alberta were the choristoderes. They don't seem to have any close living relatives, but choristoderes somehow managed to survive the Cretaceous extinction before vanishing in the Miocene era. One of the better known choristoderes is Champsosaurus, several species of which are known from different formations from late Cretaceous Alberta. Perhaps the most commonly said thing about Champsosaurus is that it wasn't a type of crocodile, but that disclaimer is important because Champsosaurus looked, superficially at least, very much like a small crocodile or gharial. Okay, so what was it? Well, they were small aquatic predators that dwelt in wetlands, presumably feeding on fish, amphibians, and other freshwater animals (Erickson, 1985). This lifestyle, by necessity, led them to evolve their gharial-like appearance. Unlike crocodilians, however, Champsosaurus had palatal teeth, small pointy teeth on the roof of the mouth, that assisted in gripping prey while swallowing.

Champsosaurus at the University of Alberta. By Nick Carter

Various types of plesiosaurs, those marine reptiles with flippers, long necks, and tiny heads (though some species were built rather differently) have been found in marine and nearshore deposits throughout Alberta. The most impressive is probably Albertonectes from the Bearpaw Formation, which had the longest neck of any known plesiosaur at 23 feet long (Kubo et al., 2012). Plesiosaurs swam the prehistoric seaways feeding on schools of small fish. Those long necks probably helped them get their long teeth and snapping jaws close to their prey without their large bodies betraying their presence.

Elasmosaurus, a type of plesiosaur, at the University of Alberta. By Nick Carter

A variety of lizards inhabited Cretaceous Alberta (Caldwell, 2005). Prehistoric beaded lizards and whiptails were among them, as was the large varanid Palaeosaniwa, which could grow to the size of a modern Komodo dragon. There were even bigger lizards in the seaway, too. These were the mosasaurs- giant marine lizards that evolved fin-shaped limbs and tail flukes for a completely aquatic lifestyle. The best rock to find mosasaurs in is Bearpaw Formation rock, and many wonderfully complete mosasaurs have been found in ammonite mines near Lethbridge. Mosasaur species found in Alberta include Mosasaurus missouriensis (Konishi et al., 2014) and Prognathodon overtoni (Konishi et al., 2011). Mosasaurs were among the most dangerous predators of the Cretaceous oceans, and seem to have fed on just about whatever the felt like, from ammonites and turtles to sharks and plesiosaurs. Probably other mosasaurs, too.

Mosasaur display at the Royal Tyrrell Museum. By Nick Carter

Several extinct turtle groups, such as the baenids, adocids, and nanhsiungchelyids inhabited the wetlands of Cretaceous Alberta, alongside relatives of modern trionychid softshell turtles (Brinkman, 2005). Many of these probably looked similar to the modern pond turtles we're used to. The huge Basilemys, however, was a big, flat-shelled species and probably lived on land like a modern tortoise (Mallon & Brinkman, 2018). There's also a sea turtle known from the Bearpaw called Nichollsemys.

The top wetland predators were crocodilians, true crocodilians this time. Well, more accurately they were more closely related to alligators. Species like Leidyosuchus, Albertochampsa, and Stangerochampsa inhabited the province (Wu et al., 1996) (Wu, 2005). These would have strongly resembled modern crocodilian species, presumably living a similar lifestyle, indicating the warm, swampy nature of southeastern Alberta at the time. Did they prey on dinosaurs? Probably smaller ones, along with turtles, mammals, and any other smaller animals that wandered close to the water's edge. Alberta's crocodilians grew to a fairly modest size- we haven't found any traces of Mesozoic giants like the southern Deinosuchus yet from the province.

Pterosaurs, the flying reptiles closely related to dinosaurs, were also present in Alberta, though they're comparatively rare due to their hollow, fragile bones. The best known and coolest Alberta pterosaur must be Cryodrakon, the giant stork-like predator from the Dinosaur Park Formation (Hone et al., 2019). Like its famous Texas relative Quetzalcoatlus, this long-necked animal likely hunted on the ground, stalking unwary prey before snatching them in its long toothless beak. Despite its size, it was likely still capable of flight.

Now we get to the dinosaurs. Different types of these magnificent creatures came and went throughout the late Cretaceous, and different formations had different assortments of dinosaur species. We can actually see trends in different groups becoming more or less common and diverse over time.

Some of the most common large plant-eating dinosaurs were the hadrosaurs, or 'duck-billed dinosaurs'. These were generalist herbivores that could travel around and feed at different levels, from the forest floor to the lower canopy. Their specialized tooth arrangement at the back of the jaws, known as a dental battery, kept a constant armament of chewing teeth at the ready, new ones always ready to replace worn-down ones. Bone beds indicate that at least some hadrosaur species travelled in herds. Hadrosaurs came in two subfamilies: the lambeosaurines, which sported hollow and often elaborate head crests, and the saurolophines, which either had solid flat or spike-shaped crests, or no bony crest at all. Lambeosaurines were more common and diverse in the older Campanian times, and included charismatic species like Corythosaurus, Lambeosaurus, and Parasaurolohpus. Hypacrosaurus from the Maastrichtian Horseshoe Canyon Formation appears to have been Alberta's last known lambeosaurine. Campanian saurolophines include Brachylophosaurus, Gryposaurus, and Prosaurolophus. The closely-related Saurolophus existed in the Horseshoe Canyon Formation, as did perhaps Alberta's most common hadrosaur, Edmontosaurus. This classic duckbill is found from the Drumheller badlands to Edmonton to west of Grande Prairie and beyond, making it widespread if nothing else (Bell et al., 2013). At least one possibly new lambeosaurine is known from Wapiti Formation sites, but without complete adult skulls so far, it's hard to tell exactly what we've got there (Holland et al., 2021).

Edmontosaurus with an Albertosaurus skull at the Royal Alberta Museum. Check out the mural of the environment at the time behind the display. By Nick Carter

The other common large herbivores are the horned ceratopsians. Like the hadrosaurs, they were beaked plant-eaters with chewing dental batteries, but their narrow jaws were more suitable to browsing on rough foliage. They too come in two different families: the centrosaurines which tended to have smaller, rounded frills bearing more elaborate spikes and studs, and the chasmosaurines with their longer snouts and rectangular frills. There were also the pig-sized leptoceratopsids as well, a more basal group of smaller, hornless browsers. Some centrosaurines travelled in large to enormous herds, as evidenced by bone beds that seem to represent huge groups of these animals that were likely killed by the flooding effects of violent storms. Several bone beds of Centrosaurus and Styracosaurus are known from the Dinosaur Park Formation (Eberth & Getty, 2005) and at least two Pachyrhinosaurus bone beds, each probably representing a different species, have been found in the Wapiti Formation (Currie et al., 2008). The more productive of these two, a super dense bone bed containing the species Pachyrhinosaurus lakustai, holds a special place in my heart. It's remote and muddy, but it was the first place I ever got to help dig for dinosaur bones.

Centrosaurus at the University of Alberta. By Nick Carter

Pachyrhinosaurus skulls at Pipestone Creek. By Nick Carter

While the centrosaurines began strong in the Campanian but eventually burned out in the Maastrichtian aside from Pachyrhinosaurus in the north, the chasmosaurines did the opposite. They were probably solitary and less common in the Campanian, with the different Chasmosaurus species being the most familiar. By the time of the Horseshoe Canyon Formation we had more chasmosaurines than centrosaurines, including Anchiceratops, Arrinoceratops, and Eotriceratops, as well as Regaliceratops in the St. Mary River Formation. By the end of the Cretaceous Alberta was home to the biggest and most famous ceratopsid of them all, Triceratops.

Chasmosaurus skull at the University of Alberta. By Nick Carter

The remaining big herbivores, a group of low browsers, were the ankylosaurs. These dinosaurs had bony studs called osteoderms that grew in the skin, forming a protective suit of armour. These distinctive bits of bone are some of the most commonly found remains of these dinosaurs. In the nodosaurid ankylosaurus, these osteoderms could grow into large protective/display spines. Examples include Edmontonia and Panoplosaurus. The famously well-preserved Borealopelta is also a nodosaurid from older mid-Cretaceous rock far to the north. In their cousins the ankylosaurids, a defensive bony club formed at the end of the tail. Ankylosaurids include Scolosaurus, Anodontosaurus, Euoplocephalus, and the biggest of all, Ankylosaurus itself the the end of the Cretaceous.

Scolosaurus at the Royal Tyrrell Museum. By Nick Carter

Smaller herbivores are less commonly found due to the preservation bias, but were probably abundant back in the day. These included the dome-headed pachycephalosaurs like the dog-sized Stegoceras (not the be confused with Stegosaurus) and the thescelosaurids- small, bipedal distant cousins of the hadrosaurs.

The biggest carnivores were the tyrannosaurids, and several different species inhabited Alberta. These powerful bone-crushers were Alberta's only large predators by the late Cretaceous, usurping previous ecological roles once filled by variety of different carnivores. Shed teeth from these dinosaurs, especially in herbivore bone beds, are relatively common as far as predator remains go, and I can say from experience they make for an exciting find. Tyrannosaurids came in two different varieties here: the bulkier tyrannosaurines, and the lithe, proportionally longer-legged albertosaurines. The oldest known species so far is the tyrannosaurine Thanatotheristes from the Foremost Formation (Voris et al., 2020). Its close relative Daspletosaurus torosus took over in the Oldman Formation. A second undescribed Daspletosaurus species also lived in the Dinosaur Park Formation where is coexisted alongside Alberta's most common tyrannosaur, the albertosaurine Gorgosaurus. The latter genus was a very successful predator, and multiple skeletons ranging from juveniles to adults have been found in Dinosaur Provincial Park. Its close relative Albertosaurus (some argue the two represent different species of the same genera) was the sole large predator of the Horseshoe Canyon Formation, and is known from the southern badlands as well as the Edmonton area and possibly beyond. It has the distinction of being the first predatory dinosaur from Alberta to be described and named.

A famously amazing Gorgosaurus at the Royal Tyrrell Museum. By Nick Carter

Teeth and footprints of albertosaurines are found throughout the Wapiti Formation, but without body fossils, identifying them is nearly impossible. Trackways from relatively high in the formation, overlapping with the lower Horseshoe Canyon, could be from Albertosaurus, but this can't be proved yet (Enriquez et al., 2022). Other remains coeval with the Bearpaw are trickier. Are they late-surviving Gorgosaurus, the earliest Albertosaurus, a bit of both, some transitional form between the two, or something else entirely?

While rarer here than in the United States, Alberta's Scollard and Willow Creek Formations have given us remains of the big daddy dino itself, Tyrannosaurus. Many of the best preserved Tyrannosaurus specimens get nicknames, like Stan, Sue, and Jane. Alberta has one too, the elegant Black Beauty which can be seen on display at the Royal Tyrrell Museum.

Black Beauty's skull at the Royal Alberta Museum. Alberta's best Tyrannosaurus. By Nick Carter

Tyrannosaurids were part of the theropod group- the two legged, mostly carnivorous, sometimes feathered dinosaurs. Not all of them were predators, though. Matter of fact, Alberta was home to a few types of theropods that ate plants. There were the ornithomimids, the 'ostrich mimic' dinosaurs, which included species like Struthiomimus and Ornithomimus. They weren't the direct ancestors of modern ostriches and emus and such, but looked and probably behaved in a somewhat similar manner to them due to leading a comparable lifestyle. These sprinting specialists likely fed on soft plants, seeds, insects, and other such food. While it was suspected for a while that they were feathered, some important finds from Alberta have proven that ornithomimids did indeed have plumed, ostrich-like feathers (Zelenitsky et al., 2012) (Van Der Reest et al., 2016).

Struthiomimus skeleton at the Royal Tyrrell Museum. By Nick Carter

Another interesting family were the caenagnathids. Members of the oviraptorosaur group, these feathered herbivores were amazingly birdlike with their beaks and cassowary-like crests. They're also tantalizingly uncommon, unlike in Mongolia where so many beautifully complete specimens of their oviraptorid relatives have been found. Albertan caenagnathids include Chirostenotes, Apatoraptor, and Caenagnathus.

Birdlike predators can also be found here. The smallest, Albertonykus, represents our sole known alverezsaurid (Longrich & Currie, 2009), which were a family of tiny insect-eating dinosaurs with enlarged claws that may have been useful for digging bugs out of dirt and wood. Speaking of enlarged claws, we also had our fair share of dromaeosaurids, the family that includes dino celebrity Velocriaptor. These were predators of small to mid-sized animals, catching and pinning down prey with their famous 'killing claws' before the teeth did the rest of the work. While Velociraptor itself was confined to Mongolia, Alberta's dromaeosaurids from this time deserve equal attention. The first to be described was the species that gave this group its name, Dromaeosaurus from the Dinosaur Park Formation. This dog-sized predator is relatively uncommon, and its shed teeth are found more often than identifiable bones. The skull of Dromaeosaurus was relatively short and deep, and it seems to have had a pretty powerful bite (Therrien et al., 2005). The most common Alberta dromaeosaurid is probably Saurornitholestes, a Dinosaur Park Formation species which has also given us the province's best-preserved specimen of this group- a nearly complete skeleton missing only most of the tail has shed a lot of light on this animal and dromaeosaurid diversity in the province in general (Currie & Evans, 2020). Other Alberta dromaeosaurids include the microraptorine Hesperonychus form the Dinosaur Park Formation, Atrociraptor from the Horseshoe Canyon Formation, and Boreonykus from the Wapiti.

Dromaeosaurus on display at the Royal Alberta Museum. By Nick Carter

Troodontids, close cousins of the dromaeosaurids, are a bit more mysterious, and their taxonomy is still controversial. They had longer legs, bigger eyes, weaker jaws, and smaller 'killing claws' than dromaeosaurids did, indicating they might have been more specialized for sprinting after smaller, softer prey animals in lower light conditions. Species known from skeletal material include Stenonychosaurus (which was once lumped under the name Troodon) from the Dinosaur Park Formation and Albertavenator from the Horseshoe Canyon Formation. Troodontid teeth, with their large and distinct serrations, are known from these and other late Cretaceous formations across Alberta, as are dromaeosaur-like teeth of unknown origin and other more mysterious small theropod teeth like those of whatever Richardoestesia is.

Last but not least, we come to the birds, a group of feathered theropods that happen to still be around today. A few rare bird fossils are known from Alberta, including remains of hesperornithifoms, an extinct group of large flightless diving birds (Currie, 2005). A feather from a similar sort of bird was also reported from Wapiti Formation amber (Cockx et al., 2020). With their fragile hollow bones, late Cretaceous birds would've been more common than the fossil record suggests.

Conclusion

That brings us to the end of this long summary, but this is far from the last or definitive word on palaeontology in Alberta; there's still plenty out there for fossil enthusiasts to learn about, let alone for palaeontologists to discover. If you want to see and learn more about Alberta's fossil record, here's a shortlist of places where people study palaeontology in Alberta, and where you can see, learn about, and potentially get involved with fossils:

- Royal Tyrrell Museum of Palaeontology

- Royal Alberta Museum

- Dinosaur Provincial Park

- University of Alberta

- University of Calgary

- Philip J. Currie Dinosaur Museum

Catch you in the badlands~

References

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Pierre Cockx, Ryan McKellar, Ralf Tappert, Matthew Vavrek, Karlis Muehlenbachs. Bonebed amber as a new source of paleontological data: The case of the Pipestone Creek deposit (Upper Cretaceous), Alberta, Canada. Gondwana Research, Volume 81, 2020, Pages 378-389, ISSN 1342-937X, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.gr.2019.12.005.

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Takuya Konishi; Michael Newbrey; Michael Caldwell (2014). "A small, exquisitely preserved specimen of Mosasaurus missouriensis (Squamata, Mosasauridae) from the upper Campanian of the Bearpaw Formation, western Canada, and the first stomach contents for the genus". Journal of Vertebrate Paleontology. 34 (4): 802–819.

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Bugs for Birders: Learning to Love Invertebrates

noreply@blogger.com (Nature Nick) — Mon, 27 Jun 2022 20:09:00 +0000

Despite my diversity of interests, I have to admit to having a lifelong vertebrate bias. I've always been much more drawn to things like birds, mammals, reptiles, and their fossil kin than the all the creepy-crawlies buzzing and crawling around. In university I did take an invertebrate zoology course, but I took many more on vertebrates. I also have to admit to being more than a little squeamish around many bugs, worms, and other such animals. Shame, I know.

Some people might argue that it's natural to have a backbone-bias, since vertebrates tend to be A. more noticeable to the human eye given their size and B. more similar to us in their biology (even things like fish have much more in common with us than insects, arachnids, and so on). You also hear it argued that we're evolutionarily programmed to feel repulsed by most invertebrates which might sting, bite, or infect us, however this doesn't seem to stop many human cultures and indeed other primate species from making regular meals out of these animals. Plus the field of entomology, both professional and amateur, is neither new nor small. When you looks at the diversity of animal life on Earth with all its millions of animals species, arthropods (insects, crustaceans, arachnids, centipedes, etc.) make up about 75%. Mollusks come in second. Despite some people's disinterest or even repulsion to these animals, this is really the planet of the arthropods, and vertebrates like us are the weirdos who walk around with their hard parts on the inside.

Okay, so it's one thing to know all this, but how should everyday vertebrate-loving naturalists like us begin finding and noticing our native bugs? Well, I began to get into bugs after I started seriously bird watching. During summer walks through the woods with binoculars or camera in hand, sometimes I just couldn't get a good look at any interesting birds, no matter how hard I looked. However, there always seemed to be insects around. Dragonflies and damselflies zipping around wetlands, butterflies dancing from flower to flower, beetles crawling through the undergrowth or along plant stems... For too long I never took much notice of these animals, dismissing them as less interesting or impressive than the backboned animals I was looking for. After some time, though, I figured "well, if there's nothing else to take pictures of out here today, I'll entertain myself by photographing the bugs at least". This moved on to "well, I might as well try to identify the bugs in these photos", then to "hey, you can actually tell what many of these things are without a dichotomous key and decades of experience! And some of them are pretty cool!". It's all downhill into becoming a true bugster from there.

Nowadays when I'm out in nature, I pay about as much attention to the insects that catch my eye as I do birds, mammals, or amphibians. I'm far from being anywhere near an authority on them (there's still so many to learn!) but hey, you have to start somewhere.

With that said, here's an outline of some fairly easy insects for bird people to become familiar with. It's far from exhaustive, and while I tried to do as much research as possible to make it accurate, there's bound to be errors, so please comment if you have corrections or neat facts to add. Most of my info comes from Bugs of Alberta by John Acorn and Insects of Alberta, plus some of my own observations in the field, personal communication from experts when possible, and good old Wikipedia for the rest. All photos are by me, identifications are provided as specifically and confidently as reasonable.

Butterflies

For vertebrate people, especially bird people, I'd wager the easiest insects to get into are the order Lepidoptera, the butterflies. Many Albertan butterflies are big enough to see from a fair distance, and with their colourful wings and relatively slow flight they're both beautiful and fairly conspicuous. The nice thing about butterflies as well is, in Alberta at least, there aren't so many of them that learning the common species is a hassle. There's a few major butterfly families native to this province that can be distinguished pretty easily, then it's just a matter of getting to know each species.

Some of the easiest Alberta butterflies to find, as well as some of the most beautiful, are members of the Nymphalidae, also called the brush-foots. They might just be my favourite insects. These medium-sized butterflies have lovely colour patters on top side of their wings. However, in many species the underside of the wings are a dull brownish colour, allowing them to blend in with the vegetation when resting. This makes them tricky to see until they take flight, when they become little bursts of colours flittering through the woods. Nymphalids include many familiar species that any butterfly fan should know. There's the Nymphalini tribe, also known as the anglewings, which includes Milbert's Tortoiseshell (Aglais milberti), Mourning Cloak (Nymphalis antiopa), Painted Lady (Vanessa cardui), and the different types of commas (Polygonia). There's the admirals which include the White Admiral (Limenitis arthemis) and the famous monarch-mimicking Viceroy (Limenitis archippus), as well as the vibrant orange-and-black fritillaries (the Boloria and Speyeria genera make up our native species) and tiny crescents (Phyciodes), and the somewhat similar Monarch (Danaus plexippus). Last of the brush-foot butterflies are the Satyrinae, which includes the satyrs, browns, wood nymphs, and ringlets- small brownish butterflies of woodland and grassland areas.

Mourning Cloak (Nymphalis antiopa)

Comma (Polygonia sp.)

Fritillary (Speyeria)?

Northern Crescent (Phyciodes cocyta)

Milbert's Tortoiseshell (Aglais milberti)

White Admiral (Limenitis arthemis)

Then there are the gossamer-winged butterflies in the family Lycaenidae. This includes the blues (Polyommatinae) which have, obviously, vibrant metallic blue colouration on the upper sides of their wings, which are often rimmed with black and white patterns. There are several different genera of blues, The wing undersides are a pale gray with black spots. There's also the rusty-blue coppers (Lycaeninae) and the more subdued, brownish hairstreaks and elfins (Theclinae).

Western Tailed Blue (Everes amyntula)

The whites and sulphurs (family Pieridae) are easy enough to recognize to the family level at a good distance, as Albertan species tend to be fairly plain with mostly white or yellow wings (aside from the marbles with their, well, marbled green and white wings). Common species in Alberta include the Clouded Sulphur (Colias philodice), the Mustard White (Pieris oleracea) and the introduced Cabbage White from Europe (Pieris rapae), which gets it name from the larval form's taste for domestic crops.

Clouded Sulphur (Colias philodice)

Mustard White (Pieris oleracea)

There's also the small yet energetic skippers in the family Hesperiidae. These little butterflies have big eyes, stubby antennae, stumpy bodies, and relatively small wings, giving them a pretty cute look. They come in all different colours and habitat preferences, too. Some skipper species prefer forest meadows, some favour dry open grasslands, and others live in the mountains. Some, like the Persius Duskywing (Erynnis persius) are fairly drab, while others like the Arctic Skipper (Carterocephalus palaemon) have colourful spotted patterns.

Arctic Skipper (Carterocephalus palaemon)

Common Roadside Skipper (Amblyscirtes vialis)

Last of the butterflies we'll cover are Papilio, the swallowtails. Probably our most common and easy to see species would be the Canadian Tiger Swallowtail (Papilio canadensis). These butterflies are big and beautiful, with lovely yellow and black wings sporting blue and orange highlights making them hard to mistake for any other type of butterfly. Look for them fluttering around near aspen woodlands with lots of dandelion meadows where, to the attentive eye, they're hard to miss.

Canadian Tiger Swallowtail (Papilio canadensis)

There are also moths, the fuzzy, often nocturnal cousins of the butterfly. Well, sort of. The term 'moth' is really just what we call all other lepidoterans that aren't in the butterfly group, the Rhopalocera. That means that some moths are more closely related to butterflies than they are to other moths. It also means that there are many, many different species of moths out there. Some are big and colourful, like the Polyphemus Moth (Antheraea polyphemus), while many others are more small and cryptic. I can't say I know moths nearly as well as I know butterflies (and even that isn't saying much) so we'll sadly have to skip them, but keep an eye out for moths all the same, because they're worth getting to know. I sure will. Before we move on, you might wonder how to tell if an insect is a butterfly or a moth, but all you need to do is look at the antennae- butterfly antennae tend to be skinny with those little round nubs on the ends, while in moths they lack the little round tips and are often fuzzy. Moths tend to be more nocturnal than butterflies, or you might think of butterflies as just diurnal moths, but as always in biology, there are exceptions.

Alfalfa Looper (Autographa californica)

Dragonflies & Damselflies

The next most noticeable bugs to most birders would probably be dragonflies and damselflies, the Odonata. These insects spend their time in good birding spots, namely around wetlands and riversides in both forested and grassland areas. Of the two groups, dragonflies are probably the more noticable. After transforming from their aquatic larval stage, these brightly-coloured aerial hunters dart around with amazingly precise flight control, hunting smaller insects on the wing. With their long abdomens, elongate wings, and goggle-like eyes, they're unmistakable little fighter pilots.

The dragonfly family known as skimmers, or Libellulidae, is an easy group to encounter around ponds and wooded marshes. These tend to be brightly coloured in reds and yellows and have relatively short abdomens (for a dragonfly). One common genus I often see is the whiteface (Leucorhinna), which emerge relatively early in the year (late May). Young individuals have yellow markings that turn to red in the male as they age. The face is pale white. Other common skimmers include the Four-spotted Skimmer (Libellula quadrimaculata) and the Variegated Meadowhawk (Sympetrum corruptum).

Whiteface (Leucorhinna sp.)

Four-spotted Skimmer (Libellula quadrimaculata)

Another common dragonfly family are the Aeshnidae, or darners. Most Albertan species belong to the Aesha genus, the mosaic darners, and are found in different areas of the province. These large dragonflies tend to have greenish-blue markings and a long, narrow abdomen which is pinched-in near the base.

Darner (Aesha sp.)

Once you know how to tell damselflies from dragonflies, it's easy to recognize them. Alberta damselflies tend to be fairly small, with long, extra skinny bodies and large round eyes on either side of the head. One common group of damselflies are the bluets, in the genus Enallagma. These little neon-blue insects dash around near wetlands across Alberta. They tend to look pretty similar too, and while identifying them in the field is possible, it takes some practice. There's also the spreadwing damselflies, genus Lestes. Unlike other damselflies, these ones tend to hold their wings slightly outspread when perched, unlike the bluets that fold their wings along their body when resting. Some, like the Spotted Spreadwing (Lestes congener) emerge relatively late in the season and can last as adults into early fall.

Bluet (Enallagma)

Spotted Spreadwing (Lestes congener)

Pond Bugs

When out at an Alberta wetland looking for waterfowl and such, peer down into the muddy water and you might see some invertebrates swimming around. Bring a net and bucket with you next time and you're sure to find an entire, diverse ecosystem of insects, crustaceans, and more in our prairie sloughs and forest ponds. Many insects that live in shallow fresh water do so only during their larval stages. This includes the nymphs, as their called, of the dragonflies and damselflies we just went over. Both are predators of other freshwater invertebrates, with alien-like extendable lower jaws for nabbing prey. Dragonfly larvae are also renowned for their jet-propulsion swimming by shooting water out their backsides. Damselfly larvae, on the other hand, are poor swimmers that lie in wait for prey.

Another group of ferocious pond predators are the predaceous diving beetles (Dytiscidae) and their equally fearsome larva known as water tigers. The larval form has an impressive set of jaws on its big, flat head. Unlike dragonflies and damselflies, when these beetles reaches adult hood it still spends much of its time under water, hunting just about anything it can grab. Diving beetles (there are many different genera and species) aren't exclusively aquatic, though, and will take wing and fly between different ponds. They'll even mistake shiny metal objects for water- I once took a country drive in the spring looking for bluebirds and found dozens of them sitting on the roof of my blue car. Another beetle predator that is a bit cuter and swims in an amusingly erratic way are the little black whirligig beetles (Gyrinus). Watch for them darting around on the water's surface.

Water tiger (Dytiscidae)

There's caddisflies (Trichoptera) and mayflies (Ephemeroptera), two flying insects that also have aquatic larvae. Caddisfly larvae are known for their neat habit of making special 'cases' for themselves out of bits and pieces of stuff they find at the bottom of the pond. This is to protect these small scavengers from the aforementioned predators. Mayfly larvae are also pretty defenseless, but they manage to get by without the body armor. Mayflies are renowned for their day-long adult lifespan, which is spent breeding, laying eggs, and dying. Since they spend much more time as larvae that actually feed and interact more with the world, I like to think of this stage as the 'main' form of the mayfly, if understand me.

Then there are the water bugs. And by that I mean true bugs. We often casually refer to insects and other small invertebrates as 'bugs', but to be strictly scientific the only 'true bugs' are those of the insect order Hemiptera, all of which have a unique set of modified mouthparts that form a sort of extendible 'beak' for sucking up food. Some are cute little paddlers like the water boatmen (Corixidae) or backswimmers (Notonectidae) that zip through the water harmless to us. Others, like the Giant Water Bug (Lethocerus americanus) are big and scary, with painful bites. This impressive bug will even fly around at night and become drawn like a moth to lamps- something to keep in mind when you're standing under the porch light on a summer evening.

Water Boatman (Corixidae)

Garden Bugs

Both cultivated gardens and natural ones like flowery meadows are good places for birders, what with nectar-feeding hummingbirds and many more species that eat insects and seeds. If you spend some time among the flowers you'll certainly notice lots of bugs as well. The closer you pay attention, the more species you'll notice.

Bumblebee (Bombus sp.)

We already covered butterflies, but many other types of insects are drawn to flowers and leaves for different reasons. Some, like our native bumblebees (Bombus) are are easy to spot as they fumble their way towards the center of the flower, clinging on like little winged pandas as they feed. But did you know a whole variety of other insects and other arthropods hang out in and around flowers? Many non-bug people might think of beetles as little metallic things that crawl across the forest floor, but a whole assortment of beetles live and forage on different plant parts. A close look at the center of a flower might give you a glimpse of a lepturine beetle. There are many different species in this subfamily, lots of which have impressive colours and long antennae. Native wild roses are nice and large as far as Albertan flowers go- great to peer into and check for beetles hanging out. Ladybugs (Coccinellidae) hunt for smaller insects like aphids on stems and leaves on different plant species too.

Grammoptera subargentata (?)

Evodinus monticola (?)

Look hard enough and you might also spot the ghostly Goldenrod Crab Spider (Misumena vatia). This pale hunter sets itself up inside a flower and, once an insect comes in looking for nectar, the spider strikes and grabs its hapless prey. In brightly-coloured flowers this small spider can stand out if you pay enough attention to look for it, at least to human eyes, but in pale flowers it can be more difficult to spot. You can understand how some oblivious butterfly might accidentally perch right in front of one, leading it its demise.

Goldenrod Crab Spider (Misumena vatia)

The End, and the Beginning

Well budding bugsters, hopefully this has partially opened some eyes to the massive world of insects and other invertebrates. This is less than the tip of the giant entomology iceberg, though. Learning about insects is a lifetime pursuit, and you can understand why many folks specialize in one particular group. There are good resources out there that can help you become better acquainted with the bugs in your area, but given their overwhelming diversity, there really isn't any one single volume that acts as a comprehensive field guide to all of Alberta's invertebrate life. Adding to the difficulty is that many insects and other invertebrates don't have common names and some take a lot of expertise to identify.

To any bug experts who may read this, I can only ask forgiveness for the errors in facts or misidentifications that I'm sure made their way into this post, and for the audacity to even try. I can only plead that I'm a helpless vertebrate fan (vertebrophile?) trying to learn by teaching others. More folks trying keep a dialogue about Alberta's native bugs in as much of an educated manner as possible can only be a good thing, right?

If you really want to get into bugs as part of your nature hobbies, there are great communities, clubs, and societies of knowledgeable insect enthusiasts around the province, plus social media groups and other such things. Renowned experts at the Royal Alberta Museum and University of Alberta curate world-class entomology collections, and the museum's 'Bug Room' has been popular place to learn about these animals for decades.

And that brings me to my last point. Even though insects, arachnids, crustaceans, and all those other creepy-crawlies might look to alien to many of us, they too are nothing more or less than animals. They've been citizens of this planet much longer than we have, and whether we know it or not they're always there in the background pollinating the plants we rely on, devouring the waste we leave behind, and acting as a vital part of every food web on the planet. Something to think about next time you reach for the fly swatter.

http://scienceborealis.ca.

Quack-Up: A Guide to Alberta Ducks

noreply@blogger.com (Nature Nick) — Fri, 10 Jun 2022 15:21:00 +0000

Have you ever stopped to think about how many ducks are out there in the Alberta wilderness? For a northern, landlocked region, we aren't short on ducks or duck species. While many folks might first think of plain white farm ducks when considering these web-footed birds, our wild ducks come in a great variety of shapes and sizes. While some are widespread and found all over the province, others are more specialized, preferring prairie sloughs, boreal bogs, or swift mountain streams. Let's take a glance over Alberta's different duck varieties.

First of all, what is a duck? Silly question, everyone knows what a duck is. But what makes ducks different from things like geese and swans? All these birds are in the family Anatidae, the duck-billed, web-footed, water-loving group of birds that arose in the late Paleogene period, although duck-like birds existed near the end of the age of dinosaurs. Within this, geese and swans are more closely related to each other, both belonging to the subfamily Anserinae which tend to be larger with longer necks and, barring a few exceptions, prefer northern areas. Ducks are basically what we call all other anatids that aren't geese or swans. There are many different subfamilies and evolutionary tribes of ducks out there, which we'll look at now.

Anatinae - Dabbling Ducks

Your general or basal anatids are nicknamed the 'dabbling ducks', also known as 'puddle ducks'. If you go to your average neighborhood pond or large roadside puddle, chances are you'll see a fair few dabbling ducks. As the name suggest, dabbling ducks tend to dabble at the water's surface for plants, seeds, and aquatic insects. Many of these species were once grouped together under the genus Anas, the Latin word for duck, but more recent DNA evidence has divided them under different names. By far the most commonly seen Anas duck in Alberta is the Mallard (Anas platyrhynchos). Just about any wetland across the province will have at least a pair of these ducks. They're also one of the first to arrive, usually by April. The male Mallard, as with all ducks, is easier to identify with its characteristic green head, yellow bill, and white neck collar. In late summer, though, they molt into their non-breeding plumage and can look almost identical to the females. You can still tell them apart, however, because the male retains his yellow bill while the female always has an orange bill with dark blotches. Mallards are fairly bold and tolerant of people, so they're easy to see near human settlements. They're also not terribly fussy, it seems, when it comes to selecting mates- Mallards have been known to hybridize fairly often with other dabbling duck species as well as some diving ducks. They make that classic quacking noise we most commonly associate ducks with.

A male Mallard Duck flying overhead. By Nick Carter

There's also the Northern Pintail (Anas acuta) which arrives in early spring in massive flocks before dispersing. The male pintail is handsome with his brown head and long, elegant tail feathers. Females are similar to mallards but the bill is blue, not orange and black. Males produce thin, wheezy whistles, females quack like mallards. Look for them staging in huge flocks on agricultural fields during migration, and on shallow marshes with other dabbling ducks in the summer.

Northern Pintail male (left) and female (right). By Nick Carter

Our third Anas species is the Green-winged Teal (Anas carolinensis). It's also our smallest dabbling duck, noticeably tinier and more shy than the Mallard. Sit quietly at your local wetland during late spring, however, and chances are a pair of Green-winged Teals will emerge from the reeds. Both sexes do indeed have a bright green patch on the wing, but the green and brown head of the male is an easier field marker. Males produce a high, piping whistle, while mostly silent females occasionally make a horse, raspy quack.

Male Green-winged Teal. By Nick Carter

Another common dabbling duck genus is Spatula. Yes, just like the cooking utensil. The name comes from the bill shape of the Northern Shoveler (Spatula clypeata) which is longer and flatter at the tip than any other Alberta duck, giving them a slightly comical appearance. Using their spoon-like bills with long keratinous strainers, shovelers filter out plants and insects from the water's surface. They can be mistaken at first glance for a Mallard with their bright green heads, but male shovelers have a white underside with distinctive chestnut patches on the flanks. With females, the best tell is the long orange and black bill. Shovelers are common across the province. Males make a wheezy clucking noise, females give a nasally quack.

Male Northern Shoveler, awkwardly trying to groom himself with that huge bill. By Nick Carter

Two other 'teals' are also related to the Northern Shoveler, though neither look much like it. The Blue-winged Teal (Spatula discors) is a common yet cute little duck of shallow ponds and wetlands throughout the province. In addition to the vivid blue patch on their wings (which is easier to see while in flight), the male has a lovely blue head with distinct white crescents between the eyes and bill (known at the loral region). Blue-winged Teals tend to be early arrivals in spring after the Mallards, pintails, and shovelers have shown up, but they also leave early in the fall as well. Both sexes have high-pitched voices- males make soft squeaks, females quack loudly. The Cinnamon Teal (Spatula cyanoptera), ironically, has bright blue wing patches as well, but the male is a deep rusty colour with blood-red eyes. This makes them easy to tell apart from Blue-winged Teals. Females are trickier. Cinnamon Teals are mostly found in the southeastern Alberta prairies, but sightings around the Edmonton and Grande Prairie areas could indicate they're slowly spreading northwest despite their sadly declining population. Both sexes make various, rattling grunts.

Male Blue-winged Teal. That white crescent on the face gives them away from afar. By Nick Carter

Cinnamon Teal female (right) and male (left). By Nick Carter

Last of the classic dabbling ducks are the plant-eating Mareca ducks, the wigeons. The American Wigeon (Mareca americana) is a fairly common duck throughout the province. Its short blue bill tipped with black, big round head, deep green eye stripes and pale crown make this duck easy to identify. It makes a wheezy squeaking sound a bit like an old rubber duck. Females look fairly similar to the males, just without the pale and green head colouring. There's also the Eurasian Wigeon (Mareca penelope), a visitor from, well, Eurasia that pops up in North America in small numbers each year. A close relative of the wigeons is the Gadwall, a relatively plain-looking duck. Even the males are a subdued mixtures of browns, greys, blacks, and whites. The female looks almost identical to a female mallard, but has a thinner, darker bill. Males produce a funny-sounding burp-like call that my friend Becca thinks sounds like a nasal "hey... hey...". Both species enjoy reedy lakes and ponds during summer.

American Wigeon male. By Nick Carter

Male Gadwall, a subdued duck if there ever was one. By Nick Carter

Mergini - Sea Ducks

Yes, there are 'sea ducks' in Alberta. Some sea ducks like eiders keep near the coasts all year, but many species migrate inland during the breeding season after a winter on shallow saltwater bays. Some populations even spend the whole year inland. Most species dive under water for crustaceans and other invertebrates. Some of them nest in tree cavities a bit like owls or woodpeckers, and will even nest in large enough bird boxes installed in wetland trees.

The most commonly seen sea duck genus in Alberta is probably Bucephala, the goldeneyes. The Common Goldeneye is (Bucephala clangula), indeed, well-represented across Alberta. The Barrow's Goldeneye (Bucephala islandica) is most easily found from the Rockies westward to the Pacific, but they sometimes make their way inland. I used to see them in rare but regular numbers in and around Grande Prairie. You can tell male Common and Barrow's Goldeneyes apart most easily by the white loral patch. In Barrow's it's teardrop-shaped, while in the Common Goldeneye it's fairly round. Barrow's also tend to have less white showing on the wings and flanks. Females are much trickier. The courtship displays of males are fun and funny to observe, with lots of dancing and head-bobbing. Neither species is terribly vocal. Both prefer lakes in forested regions during the breeding season. I normally hear them coming thanks to the sound of the air whistling through their wing feathers.

Male Common Goldeneye (top) and Barrow's Goldeneye (bottom). Can you spot the differences? By Nick Caretr

The third, smaller Bucephala species is the Bufflehead (Bucephala albeola). It's a cute little duck, with its big round head, stumpy bill, and smiling jaw giving it a babyface look. In the males, that face is iridescent with a big white patch on the back of the head. Females are shades of grey with a fleck of white behind each eye. Despite their cuteness, Buffleheads can be fierce. I've witness aggressive fights between males during the breeding season. Nesting females give hoarse squawks, males give raspy grunts.

Bufflehead male, by Nick Carter

The scoters, genus Melanitta, are handsome and mostly black sea ducks. The White-winged Scoter (Melanitta deglandi) is uncommon species found in most of Alberta outside the mountains. In addition to white wing patches, they also have white highlights on the eyes a bit like makeup. The bill is long, sloping, and hooked at the tip. In males, it has a bright pinkish tip. Look for families of this duck on big prairie lakes. Both sexes are mostly silent. The similar Surf Scoter (Melanitta perspicillata) often migrates through much of central Alberta to breeding grounds in the far north. Females are dark brown while males are a matte black with white stripes on the forehead and back of the neck. His huge bill is a brilliant orange, black, and white. They seem to appear during migration for a brief couple days at particular prairie and parkland lakes before moving further north to breed. Courting males make soft gurgling and piping calls.

Male Surf Scoter, photographed in Grande Prairie where flocks of these ducks have been reliably stopping off every spring during migration. By Nick Carter

The mergansers, genus Mergus, are streamlined fish-eating specialists with narrow beaks bearing serrated edges and a hooked tip. The Common Merganser (Mergus merganser) is, naturally, one of the easier species to find. They tend to prefer rivers and streams in forested areas. I mostly see them in the Whitemud creek valley in Edmonton, or similar such places. Males look a bit like a goldeneye with their black-and-white bodies and green heads, but the lack of a white face patch, the brilliant red bill, and elongated shape gives them away. Females are of a similar build but with a greyish body and brown head, complete with a feathery mullet at the back of the head. Aside from raspy alarm or courtship calls, Common Mergansers are normally quiet. The similar Red-breasted Merganser (Mergus serrator) is like the Surf Scoter in that it winters along the coasts, before moving inland and far northwards to breed, so look for it passing through Alberta then. The male Red-breasted Merganser has a lovely black, white, and grey body plumage with a reddish-brown chest and white ring neck. The green head looks quite cartoonish, however, with its wild feathery hairdo and long, curved, skinny bill. The female is quite similar to the female Common Merganser, however it lacks the Common's white chin and breast, and has a longer, skinnier bill. Like the Common, Red-breasted Mergansers are normally silent.

Female (top) and male (bottom) Common Mergansers. By Nick Carter

There's also the smaller, more distantly-related Hooded Merganser (Lophodytes cucullatus), a much more compact little duck that still bears the typical merganser bill and wild head crest. Males are black and white with brown flanks, and have yellow eyes and a great big white patch on either side of their feathery crest. From a distance at first glance, you might mistake one for a Bufflehead. Orange-eyed females are brown with a rusty-tinged crest. In Alberta they can be found on mountain lakes as well as prairie ponds during migration. I've seen them at Pyramid Lake in Jasper in mid October, and even in Grande Prairie in early November. Aside from a few throaty croaks, they too are a quiet duck.

Male (top) and female (bottom) Hooded Mergansers. By Nick Carter

One beautiful mountain-dweller is the Harlequin Duck (Histrionicus histrionicus). These birds enjoy fast-moving mountain rivers where they battle the currents alongside the bravest white-water rafters. They suffer for their lifestyle too, enduring more broken bones than just about any other duck species. The male's plumage is striking, a mixture of blues, whites, and browns that earn it its common name, as does its squeaking. frenzied call. The female is, typically, more subdued in shades of grey and white. Keep an eye out form them along mountain rivers around the Jasper, Banff, and Canmore regions.

Harlequin Duck male (left) and female (right) on the Bow River near Canmore. By Nick Carter

Last is the Long-tailed Duck (Clangula hyemalis), an impressive species that breeds in the high arctic, so northern Albertans must hope to see it pass through during migration. The male is white with smudgy grey and brown patches, a pink and black bill, and long, elegantly curved tail feathers. Females are somewhat similar but lack the elongate tail feathers. They produce rhythmic, honking yodels.

Oxyurini - Stiff-tailed Ducks

The Oxyurini are small, round ducks with stiff, upright tail feathers and big blue bills in the males. Only one species is found in Alberta, the Ruddy Duck (Oxyura jamaicensis). With its dumpy little build and red body with a black head and tail and white face mask, male Ruddy Ducks are comical little things. The quieter brownish female has more of a dignified air. They dive into shallow prairie wetlands for small invertebrates. Courting males beat their bill against the front of their neck, producing a swirl of bubbles in the water. His display call is a trilling click with a little burp at the end. Other than that, they're a quiet species.

Ruddy Duck male. By Nick Carter

Aythyini - Diving Ducks

Diving ducks, also known as bay ducks or pochards, are in the subfamily Aythyini. All species found in Alberta belong to a single genus, Aythya. Livezey (1996) shows an interesting analysis of their relationships. While they're certainly not the only ducks that swim below the water's surface for aquatic bugs and things as we've already seen, they look a lot more like dabbling ducks than most sea or stiff-tailed ducks do. There are, however, important differences in their internal anatomy, behaviour, and DNA.

Probably the most common diving duck you'll see in Alberta is the Lesser Scaup (Aythya affinis). The male has a cookies-and-cream body colouring with a dark head and blue bill with a black tip. Females are more subdued in colour with a white patch at the base of the bill. They're found across most of Alberta, but normally only in the mountains during migration. Males are usually silent but females give off hoarse grunts and barks. There's also the deceptively similar Greater Scaup (Aythya marila). Telling scaups apart might be the hardest bit duck identification in the province, at least when it comes to the males. Lesser Scaups, however, are much more common in Alberta than Greaters are, as the latter rarely if ever breeds in Alberta, generally moving far north for the summer. Outside of migration season, it's usually safe to assume that any scaup seen in Alberta is a Lesser. That said, there are ways you can tell them apart, and the most reliable is the shape of the head. Lesser Scaups have a peak of feathers at the back of the head, descending into a straight lower head and neck. The Greater, on the other hand, has a much more evenly-rounded head. It takes practice to tell these apart, and to be honest I've never 100% confidently identified a Greater Scaup in the wild myself.

Lesser Scaups (top) and... is that a Greater (bottom)? I think, but I'm not sure. By Nick Carter.

There's a third scaup-type duck that's thankfully easier to tell apart. The Ring-necked Duck (Aythya collaris) breeds from the central parkland region northwards. It does have a faint ring on its neck, but don't go looking for that in the field- this feature is normally only visible on dead and stuffed specimens in a lab, which is how this species got its name. Instead, the rings on the bill will tell you. Ring-necked Ducks have a scaup-like colouration but the white rings on the base of the bill and near the black tip distinguish this species. Females are naturally more drab but even in them the bill rings are visible. Ring-necks also have an obvious peaked head which is useful for telling them at a distance. Though less common than Lesser Scaups, if you know where to look for reliable Ring-necked Duck habitat you'll stand a chance of seeing one. At the time of this writing (spring of 2022) there's reliably been at least a couple pairs of this species at the Clifford E. Lee Nature Sanctuary west of Edmonton. They produce short, high-pitched barks and peeps. The Tufted Duck, which looks like a scaup with a mullet, is a rare visitor to the province from Eurasia.

Ring-necked Duck male. By Nick Carter

Then there's the aptly-named Redhead (Aythya americana). With its blue bill, dark breast, and cinnamon head, the male is a handsome duck. Females are a medium-brown with dark eyes and a pale face. Like many other ducks, Redheads winter and migrate in huge flocks, resting on large lakes during their seasonal journeys, before spending the summer on shallow, reedy prairie ponds. Interestingly, Redheads will sometimes exhibit brood parasitism- the habit of one species of bird laying its eggs in the nest of another species, and saddling the hapless host with the burden of raising young that isn't theirs. Apparently, perhaps thanks to the phenomenon of imprinting leading young Redheads to think they're a different species, these ducks sometimes hybridize with other diving ducks. Few duck species are safe from Redhead parents shirking their responsibilities. Courting males produce a funny rising and descending call that sounds a bit like a tiny toy motor revving up. Females make various croaking and quacking sounds.

Redhead male (left) and female (right). By Nick Carter

A somewhat similar relative to the Redhead is the Canvasback. This is a regal looking species with a long, sloping forehead, which is rust-coloured in the male, who also has a dark breast, bright pale body, and vivid red eyes. As usual, the female is similar in shape but more muted in colour, with dark eyes smudged with white streaks. The Canvasback is very similar to the European Pochard, but oddly enough Livezey (1996) found the latter species to be more closely related to the Redhead, with the Canvasback being a sister taxon to these two. Unlike many other diving ducks, Canvasbacks are mostly vegetarian, with tubers of aquatic plants like sago pondweed being a favored food. They're also a bit more shy and vary than scaups and Redheads, so patience is key when scoping out Canvasbacks. They breed in wetlands throughout much of the province east of the foothills, and are usually silent aside from their courtship grunts.

Male Canvasback. By Nick Carter

Odds and Ends

One last duck, an unusual outlier, is the Wood Duck (Aix sponsa). The genus Aix, which also includes the Mandarin Duck (Aix galericulata), is one that scientists haven't been able to place yet within the larger duck family. Aside from that, the Wood Duck is a small but beautiful species. The male is wildly multicoloured with iridescent greens and blues alongside areas of brown, black, and white. The female is a brown but with white eye spots and iridescent wing patches. Both sexes have a distinct, downward, pointing crest at the back of the head. Wood Ducks have an oddly patchy distribution across North America. They live in and around wooded ponds and swamps where they perch in trees and nest in tree cavities. They have strong claws for gripping branches. Outside of some reliable spots around Calgary most notably Inglewood Bird Sanctuary, Wood Ducks are poorly represented in Alberta.

Wood Duck male. I cheated a bit- this one was photographed in Vancouver. By Nick Carter

References

Livezey, Bradley C. (1996-01-01). "A Phylogenetic Analysis of Modern Pochards (Anatidae: Aythyini)". The Auk. 113 (1): 74–93. doi:10.2307/4088937

http://scienceborealis.ca.

The Photographer’s Guide to Nature

noreply@blogger.com (Nature Nick) — Mon, 30 May 2022 17:16:00 +0000

There’s nothing like the thrill of seeing a wild animal in the Alberta wilderness. From spunky little chickadees to the mighty grizzly bear, our native species are all worthy of attention. It’s a natural human instinct to preserve the image of wildlife through artwork. Ancient paintings of Ice Age beasts on cave walls are proof enough of that. These days, the digital camera is one of the preferred ways of capturing the image of wildlife. For some, a low-resolution smartphone shot is enough to preserve the memory of nature. Nothing wrong with that, but I find that the pursuit of closer, sharper wildlife images is a rewarding challenge.

Becoming a nature photographer sounds simple at first, but there are things you’ll learn in the act of doing it that complicate matters. There are the basic rules of photography- lighting, shutter speed, ISO, framing, composition, and so on. As if that wasn’t scary enough, you’re also working in unpredictable conditions far from a comfortable studio trying to photograph subjects that aren’t exactly going to cooperate. Life would be simple if you could just ask the distant bluebird perched across a field to come close and let you to get its good side.

Some of the most beautiful animals can also be the smallest. Big animals are impressive, but the little things out there are more numerous and diverse, so pause and look for them as well.

You’ll need a good DSLR camera body and lens, and to really learn how they work. While a high-quality camera body is good to have, a powerful telephoto lens is even better. Animals are often far off and don’t want you coming any closer, so every bit of zoom power helps. Many beginners start out with a 70-300 mm zoom lens, which is about the minimum you’ll need, before graduating to something bigger. My current lens has a 150-500 mm range, but even more powerful options exist.

A powerful lens (and some creative photo editing) can let you get up close to animals you absolutely shouldn't approach on foot. I photographed this bear from the safety of a car parked along the road, but you wouldn't know it from the photo alone.

You also need to know your subjects. The best wildlife photographers are equal parts artist and biologist. Get to know the species in your area and where to find them. Different animals prefer different habitats and may only be present for a certain part of the year. We’re lucky in Alberta to have a variety of landscapes and natural regions with species that come and go with the changing seasons. Scope out wooded trails, wetland boardwalks, lake shores, and other places that animals tend to be spotted. Picking up a field guide to help find and identify wildlife in your area will help.

Once you have your gear and know where to go, it’s time to take some pictures. Nature photographers have various camera settings they prefer. Plenty of resources exist online to help you with that, but a couple standard practices will allow you to get sharp, detailed shots. As an outdoor photographer, you are at the mercy of the sun. It will make or break your photos. Try to position yourself so that the sun is behind you, shining directly on the animal you’re shooting. Hard lighting is best for getting all the colours and texture details. Leave soft lighting conditions for human portraits. Unless you’re looking to capture a silhouette, avoid backlighting. Problem is, you can’t make wild animals cooperate and move into better lighting, so there’s only so much you can do. Most animals don’t stay still for long, especially birds, which often flit around quickly. Shooting with a very high shutter speed will help freeze those quick movements.

Lighting an posture can add some nice dynamics to your wildlife photos. It's often not within your control, but sometimes circumstances work out in your favour.

Consider the composition of your shot as well. Getting the animal’s eye visible and in focus will connect with the viewer more. So will shooting at the same level as your subject when you can. For example, I tend to crouch down when shooting ducks on the water, so the angle is at their eye level and not above. Try to get the whole animal in the shot and consider the setting of the photo. Natural surroundings tend to look more appealing than human-made structures. It’s also worth trying to capture interesting poses or behaviours. It’s easy to get pictures of animals resting or walking by, but catching them doing things like hunting, fighting, or displaying will add more dynamics to your shot and show viewers something they rarely see.

If you keep still and watch animals closely for long enough, they might just do something really interesting.

I personally shoot in Aperture Priority mode (sorry, Manual purists) with the lowest possible f-number to automatically keep the shutter speed high while letting in a lot of light. A relatively high ISO will help bump up that shutter speed, but you pay the price with more noise in the photo.

Bear in mind as well how you engage with animals physically. Getting physically closer to the animal you’re shooting will get sharper results than zooming in will, but it also risks scaring the critter away. This is bad for you, and bad for the animal as well. Wild creatures need space to rest and feed, and they become stressed when we get too close. The wise nature photographer keeps a respectful distance and puts the safety and comfort of wildlife first.

Setting, weather, and colour can add a distinct mood to photos of even the most common animals.

This will help get you started, but like most other pursuits wildlife photography takes many hours of practice to get the hang of. This makes it a great excuse to take off into nature and immerse yourself in Alberta’s scenic outdoor spaces. The mountains, badlands, prairies, and forests are our studios. Each has their own special feeling, which we can try to preserve. If the wild places and creatures we love don’t last forever, we can hope that our memories of them will.

http://scienceborealis.ca

In the Heart of the City: Natural History in Edmonton

noreply@blogger.com (Nature Nick) — Sun, 08 May 2022 14:07:00 +0000

As a long-time Edmontonian, I figured it would only be right to start this off by talking about the things for a naturalist to see in Alberta's capital city. Edmonton is surrounded by a variety of enticing places for nature lovers willing to take a drive out of town, but many folks might not know that there's a surprising wealth of neat plants, animals, and more to be found right in the city. The most important things are to know what you're looking for, and where to go to find it. Sure, you can spot invasive pigeons and such amongst the skyscrapers and parking lots downtown, but there's more to be found only a short train ride away.

ROCKS and FOSSILS

For those interested in geology and geography, the very shape of the city itself, dictated by the ground it sits on, is noteworthy. Aside from the slopes of the river valley, you might have noticed that Edmonton is pretty darn flat. This geography is thanks to the Ice Age. Tens of thousands of years ago, where Edmonton is now was once the flat bottom of a wide glacial lake. As this lake drained, the subsequent erosion carved out the valley through which the North Saskatchewan River still flows, grinding away at the surrounding rock bit by bit each year.

Speaking of which, if you've ever looked down on the slopes of the river valley in areas that haven't been covered over by buildings and roads, you may have noticed grey and sandy-coloured rock exposures along the valley wall. One of the easier places to see this is from around the Fort Edmonton Park parking lot looking towards the north side of the river. The sand-coloured soil exposed near the top of the valley is the youngest layer here, deposited during the Ice Age. This does indeed mean that fossils of animals like mammoths, giant sloths, camels, horses, American lions, and more have been found in and around Edmonton. You see such fossils on display at the Royal Alberta Museum.

Prehistoric rocks of the Horseshoe Canyon Formation exposed along the North Saskatchewan River near Edmonton. Photo by me

Below this Ice Age deposit, the darker rock further down is actually much older. Edmonton sits on a bedrock of late Cretaceous sandstone, which is actually about the same age as the famous badlands seen around Drumheller, but not quite as dramatic looking. On the north side of the river, this rock is called the Wapiti Formation, which runs all the way up to northwestern Alberta and beyond into B.C. Around the Grande Prairie area, numerous dinosaur fossil sites are being found in the Wapiti Formation. On the south side of the river, the rock is known as the Horseshoe Canyon Formation, which also what makes up the fossil-rich badlands of the Drumheller area. This means that there is potential for dinosaur remains to pop up in Edmonton and, indeed, several people have found dinosaur bones and teeth in the river valley, as well as petrified wood. Many of Edmonton's dinosaur remains belong to a big, common duckbilled dinosaur called, fittingly enough, Edmontosaurus. The University of Alberta continues to excavate an Edmontosaurus bone bed in the city every year, which has also yielded teeth from a tyrannosaurid called Albertosaurus. It's worth remembering that, while surface-collecting fossils on crown land is allowed in Alberta, digging them up is illegal for anyone without a permit to do so, and all fossil in Alberta are the property of the government.

Edmontosaurus on display at the Royal Alberta Museum, alongside an Albertosaurus skull beneath. Photo by me

Plants and Fungi

Rocks and fossils are all well and good, but what if you're interested in looking at things that are still alive? The ecology of the Edmonton area is another interesting topic of its own. The Edmonton area sits in the Central Parkland Natural Subregion, which is a sort of transitional zone between the open grassy prairie to the south and the vast boreal forest to the north. Open meadows with strands of forest made up mostly of trembling aspen trees characterize this region. White spruce, paper birch, and balsam poplar can also be found in this region, as well as marshy lakes and wetlands, black spruce and tamarack in boggier areas, and pine forests in drier parts. There's a whole variety of shrubs and grasses too, including plants like saskatoon and raspberry which yield healthy and delicious fruits. There's nothing like picking a handful of fresh purple saskatoon berries with their sweet, nutty flavour while on a summer stroll through the river valley. The white berries of the red osier dogwood, on the other hand, taste as unappetizing as they look.

Edmontonians with a love of botany should look into the Alberta Native Plant Council, an organization dedicated to studying and conserving our native plant species. It's worth noting that many popular decorative plants we use in our gardens and yards aren't actually from here. Nothing wrong with enjoying some beautiful exotics, but if you want to see more local pollinating animals in your yard, planting more native flora will be appreciated by the critters that stop by.

Saskatoon berries are a staple of summers in the Alberta Parkland. Photo by me

Spend enough time looking at plants and you'll probably notice other living things pretty quickly. Most people probably overlook fungi like mushrooms as just dull brown vegetation, but fungi are neither plants nor are they necessarily all that dull. Sure, most we see don't move much, but they don't photosynthesize to produce their own food like plants do. Instead, they need to consume food outside their own bodies, which for most fungi means decomposing dead things. The vast majority of fungi in the world are tiny microscopic things like yeasts and such, but unless you carry a microscope around at all times they aren't exactly watchable. Things like mushrooms and polypores (those shelf or hoof-shaped fungi that grow on tree trunks) are much easier to look at. Fungi have their own unique anatomy, and what we see of them sticking out of the ground is only a part of the extensive rootlike system of hyphae that makes up most of their structure. Some local mushrooms are apparently edible, while others are dangerously toxic. I couldn't tell you which species are which, and I don't like eating mushrooms to begin with, so make sure you've made a completely positive identification before sampling any mushrooms out there. The Alberta Mycological Society is a good place to learn all about wild mushrooms from other knowledgeable enthusiasts.

Insects

If things that don't move around much aren't for you, Edmonton is home to a great variety of 'bugs', so many that learning them all can keep you busy for years to come. By 'bugs', by the way, I really mean any sort of multi-legged creepy-crawly. Insects, crustaceans, myriapods, arachnids, and so on. In a technical sense, the word 'bug' refers to the insect order Hemiptera, the 'true bugs' according to entomologists. However, so many people use the word' bug' for most types of commonly seen invertebrates, and I can't change that here.

Usually the first bugs people tend to really take notice of are biting pests like mosquitoes. The size and ferocity of these blood-suckers is kind of a source of ironic pride in western Canada. Well, to be fair, it's only the females who suck our blood. The males are pollinating nectar-feeders, but biting mosquitoes are responsible for passing along deadly diseases in many parts of the world, so all in all the effect that mosquitoes have had on humanity has been very mixed indeed. Mosquitoes lay their eggs in shallow, still water, and after the harmless larvae hatch and go about their metamorphosis they emerge fully-winged to drive us bonkers every summer. That's why places with shallow ponds and such tend to be so dense with these annoying bugs.

Ponds and wetlands are more than just biting bugs, though. Bring a net and a bucket to your local pond, scoop up some water and gunk from the bottom, and you'll find a whole plethora of invertebrates living complex lives below the surface. You could find snails, leeches, water mites, and a variety of little freshwater crustaceans like fairy shrimp and scuds. Water bugs (true bugs in this case) include the backswimmers which are easy enough to notice based on their swimming habit, and the water boatman. There are also predatory water beetles which terrorize the smaller creatures of the wetland. Some flying insects like crane flies, caddisflies, damselflies, and dragonflies start out as aquatic larvae. Some of these are harmless vegetarians, but the larvae of diving beetles and dragonflies are carnivores that feed on other pond creatures. Alberta Parks has a handy guide to common pond bugs of the province here, so you can get to know the players as you watch this aquatic drama unfold yourself. Just watch out for the giant water bug. It's big, its scary, and it bites!

Dragonflies and damselflies are watchable and can be identified with some practice, and we also have many kinds of moth and, for braver folks, bees and wasps. Countless beetle species can be found everywhere from under dead leaves to sand dunes to flowers to dead tree trunks and beyond. My favorite flying insects, however, would have to be butterflies. Edmonton is home to a decent enough selection of butterflies that getting to know them isn't too hard. Some prefer to occupy certain areas and at certain times of the year, so you'll have a revolving door of butterfly activity from mid-spring to early fall. The wings of butterflies are big and distinct enough that you can tell them apart just by getting a good look at the wings. While it used to be in vogue to catch, kill, and pin butterflies to make a collection, amateur folks like me are often happy enough to try and get close-up pictures of butterflies instead. For passionate butterfly enthusiasts, the Alberta Lepidopterist Guild is the place to meet like-minded folks.

A mourning cloak butterfly, a species that's both beautiful and easy to find. Photo by me

Amphibians and Reptiles

If vertebrates (creatures with bones) are your thing, there's also plenty to see. Most folks aside from anglers probably wouldn't call fish watchable wildlife, but even in the midst of the city you can spot different species of minnows, sticklebacks, and suckers in clear enough water. Go to nearly any large enough pond or wetland and you'll hear the distinctive call of wood frogs and boreal chorus frogs- these critter are just about always easier to hear than to see. What's the difference between them? Wood frogs quack like little ducks, while boreal chorus frogs sound like someone running their finger nail down the teeth of a comb. Not exactly your classic frog 'ribbit', but hey, it's distinct. The ability for these frogs to freeze solid and survive the winter is legendary thanks to some complicated chemistry, and they're not even our only amphibians. There's also the boreal toad, and we're in the northern range of the tiger salamander. Like frogs and toads, this stripy amphibian starts out as an aquatic larva before morphing into a land-based adult. Tiger salamanders, which are part of the mole salamander family, spend much of their time in damp, shallow burrows. You might spot these burrows in the soil of banks along walking trails in wooded areas. Because of this habit of sheltering in protected underground places, these animals sometimes find their way into people's basements, so keep an eye out for lost salamanders in your home.

Alberta is home to relatively few reptiles species, with only one lizard found in the deep south of the province, but we have a surprising diversity of snakes. Down south you can find large species like the bullsnake and prairie rattlesnake, but around Edmonton your best bet is the red-sided garter snake. It can be identified, naturally, by the red markings present between its bold yellow stripes. Garter snakes eat worms, fish, and other small animals, meaning warm grassy places close to water are good spots to find them. They're fast yet docile little snakes, and are harmless to humans. You might get smeared with a nasty-smelling fluid if you pick one up, though.

Mammals and Birds

From things with scales to things with fur, mammals large and small are found across the city. A walk in any forested Edmonton ravine isn't complete without the scolding chirps of the North American red squirrel from the branches above. These busy and feisty critters must be the easiest native mammals to see around the city. Other local squirrels include tiny chipmunks who hide sheepishly among the undergrowth and the much larger groundhog. Speaking of big rodents, beavers and muskrats are right at home in urban creeks and wetlands. It was beavers, after all, that drove the early settler economy of this city. Beavers can be tricky to spot as they spend much of their time either under water or asleep in their lodge (not to be confused with a dam), but their presence is easy enough to notice thanks to the chewed tree stumps they leave in their habitat. You can find evidence of them in creek ravines like the Wedegewood or Whitemud. Don't be fooled by the docile appearance of a beaver and try to approach it, though. A cornered beaver can be aggressive and deliver a harmful bite with those enlarged teeth of theirs. Another hazardous rodent, the porcupine, can also be found in the city. They spend most of the days asleep up in a tree, normally coming down at night to wander and feed. I remember seeing their tracks in the snow and chew marks on the bird feeders when I worked at the John Janzen Nature Centre. The painful quills of this animal are, of course, safely admired from a distance. A good reason to keep your dog leashed.

The watchdog of the woods, red squirrels aren't picky eaters, feeding on seeds, mushrooms, fruit, and even small birds. Photo by me

Another local mammal that prefers the cover of night are bats. Alberta has a few different bat species, and while some folks might be afraid of these flying mammals, they do us no harm and a lot of good considering how many insects per night they consume. If you keep an eye out for bats in wooded areas after dark, you might find they're easier to catch a glimpse of than you first thought as they whip by above your head. Whenever I'm sitting around a fire pit on a summer evening, once it gets dark I like to simply lean back in the chair, look up at the sky, and sooner or later a bat will sometimes zip by. Want to help out your local bats? Consider getting a bat box to encourage them to hang around (literally).

One of the most common plant-eaters, second only perhaps to the red squirrel in sightings, is the white-tailed jackrabbit. Alberta is home to a few different rabbit and hare species, but this one with its lanky build and long ears is one of the boldest. Places like suburban yards, grassy parks, and even the University of Alberta campus are teeming with these hares. Spring and fall might be the best time to spot them as they're in that awkward mid-way period in their seasonal colour change.

Even larger mammals like deer and moose can be seen around the city, including surprisingly urban areas. The forested parts of the river valley is rich with mule deer, but I've also seen them grazing on lawns along busy roadways. Where there are prey animals there will often be predators as well. Small carnivores like weasels can hide out easily enough in city parks, and I imagine many if not most city residents have spotted a coyote. In eastern cities the red fox is the main urban dog, but out west the intelligent and tenacious coyote rules the streets. This species laughs in the face of persecution by humans, and it's to our best interest and theirs for us to learn to live alongside them. Coyotes help keep the rabbit and rodent populations from exploding, but wouldn't turn their noses up at your garbage or small pet either, so make sure both of these are safe and secured. Neither should coyotes be approached or, especially, fed by people.

Larger carnivores within the city are uncommon, but the river valley does act as a sort of natural highway through town for black bears and even the rare cougar. Both these species are occasionally reported, not often enough that you need to carry bear spray with you on a walk through the park, but hey, just so you know...

Lastly we come to the birds, which are nothing less than a type of dinosaur- the only type to survive the end-Cretaceous extinction. It's fitting that Alberta has a great record of fossilized and living dinosaurs to find. Now the easiest urban birds to see are probably pigeons and House Sparrows, but you should know that neither of these species are native to North America. They were brought over from Europe. For native species, the twin bird icons of Alberta cities must be the Black-capped Chickadee and the Black-billed Magpie. Both can be found in neighborhood yards, parks, and wooded trails, though one is definitely more beloved than the other. Say what you will about magpies, but their intelligence and adaptability means you can't help but respect them. Magpies are nothing if not survivors.

You also have to love chickadees. They zip along through the branches cheerful and conspicuous, whether it's in sweltering July or frigid February. City chickadees often become fairly used to people, which makes them remarkably approachable. Bring a handful of birdseed to the trails in Whitemud Park, hold still and offer it to a nearby flock, and with just a little patience you'll almost certainly succeed in having a chickadee boldly perch on your hand only to grab a seed and flit away. This simple yet wonderful interaction with nature is something to treasure, and we must not abuse it.

City birders have a lineup of common species that are often seen in parks and neighborhood at different times of the year. White-breasted Nuthatches, Downy Woodpeckers, House Finches, and American Robins are common city birds. Mobs of Bohemian Waxwings descend on the city each winter to feed on ash berries, and are replaced by Cedar Waxwings in late spring. Crow-sized Pileated Woodpeckers, with their manic laughing call, pop up in spots with big dead trees, but I've also seen them in old neighborhoods near busy Whyte Avenue. Places with big enough ponds like Hawrelak Park are conquered by Canada Geese every spring, plus the less cantankerous Mallard Ducks. Red-winged Blackbirds sing their metallic screeches from anywhere that cattails grow. Sparrows, warblers, and vireos are easy to hear yet often tricky to spot in the wall of green that overtakes the river valley each summer. In older, more mature strands of forest watch the tree trunks for the tiny, cryptic Brown Creeper scuttling up the bark.

While there are fewer birds around in winter, the lack of greenery makes it easier to see the species that stay, like this White-breasted Nuthatch. Photo by me

Wherever these hapless ducks and songbirds live, there are predators that eat them. Merlins and American Kestrels are our neighborhood falcons- watch for their fighter jet shape and stiff wing beats as they tear by overhead. Larger, rarer falcons like the peregrine have been known to roost and nest on tall buildings in the heart of downtown, and the old grain terminal along the Yellowhead is renowned among birders for occasionally becoming the hunting ground of mighty Gyrfalcons during the winter, sometimes with the addition of smaller Prairie Falcons.

Watch for soaring buteos like the Swainson's and Red-tailed Hawk over open highways. Woodland accipiter hawks like the Cooper’s and Sharp-shinned Hawk hunt for songbirds near feeders, while the larger Northern Goshawk can sometimes be spotted in Whitemud Park. Bald Eagles along the river waiting to snatch up a duck or steal a fish from another raptor.

If you love watching birds, or at least the idea of it, the Edmonton Nature Club is a fairly bird-centric community to join, and in just about any natural area in or around the city you can run into folks with binoculars or giant cameras looking for birds.

All of this is just a sample of the flora, fauna, and geology that you can find within Edmonton without working terribly hard to having a lot of unusual luck. For urban naturalists both new and experienced there's plenty of places to explore and neat things to see here.

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