NatureZen: Up to the Challenge
Another year of the City Nature Challenge is in the books, and Memphis finished in the top third of cities for the amount of wildlife observations we recorded over a long weekend! Together, we logged 2,652 observations of 954 species…not too shabby for a weekend with challenging weather! We’ll share more below, but first we must answer the burning question: did we beat Nashville? We are happy to report that the answer is YES! Memphis finished 227th out of 671 participating cities, while Nashville came in at 264th. Let’s shake hands on a game well played and do it all again next year.
NatureZen: Up to the Challenge
words and photos by Melissa McMasters
Some folks excel at athletic endeavors, running around the soccer field or pursuing a personal best on the track. I, on the other hand, have always been an embarrassment when it comes to sports. (The time I face-planted during a kickball tournament because I chose to wear flared pants will live in infamy.) So for the past ten years, I’ve always said the City Nature Challenge is my sporting event. Take the most photos of bugs and birds? Give me my championship belt!
And while for the second year in a row, I’ve been beaten out by our own Fields Falcone, I still had a great time running all over Memphis cataloging both familiar creatures and ones that inspired deep Internet dives when I got home. Here are some of my favorite encounters.
Friday, April 25
I started off in Overton Park but was quickly driven from the Old Forest by what can only be described as thundering hordes of mosquitoes. I didn’t fare much better at Shelby Farms Park (spring flooding has consequences!), but I did see an Eastern cottontail doing an excellent impression of my getaway run.
Brown-headed cowbirds are always issuing noisy proclamations.
I ran into my old pal, the goofball red-tailed hawk, doing what he does best: swinging around on trees that are way too small for him.
One of the new-to-me insects of this City Nature Challenge was a smooth-headed mummy wasp. She uses her ovipositor (the black swoosh coming out of her abdomen) to lay eggs inside a caterpillar. After the eggs hatch, the larvae feed on the still-alive caterpillar, causing it to pupate prematurely into what looks like a mummy husk. After the caterpillar dies, the wasp pupates within that husk, and an adult emerges from the mummified caterpillar.
I’m left speechless by this. What a way to go.
Saturday, April 26
The weekend started off cloudy with a chance of mosquito inhalation, and things did not improve much from there. I spent most of the day at Meeman-Shelby Forest State Park, where I was surrounded by a chorus of spring birds that absolutely never showed their faces. So I kept my eyes on the ground and looked for insects.
Top left: I saw a speck of what looked like leaf litter stuck to a flower stem, and upon further investigation, it had a face and a name (keeled treehopper)!
Top right: The bugs were so lethargic without the sun that this fragile forktail damselfly didn’t even protest when I asked for a portrait.
Bottom left: The red clover yielded some pretty pollinators, including this pigweed flea beetle.
Bottom right: This early-instar short-horned grasshopper stood out nicely.
After lunch, and geared up with a permethrin-treated long-sleeved shirt, I ventured back to Overton Park. A lovely assortment of warblers was there to greet me, including the golden-winged warbler in the header image above. I also checked in on this grumpy Fowler’s toad, which has been a reliable presence in a downed log on the Old Forest Loop for several weeks now.
Sunday, April 27
A morning stroll along the Chickasaw Trail at Shelby Farms Park yielded more fun warblers, but the biggest “aww” moment was this itsy-bitsy slider in a pond.
Around lunchtime, the skies absolutely opened and I became concerned that I was about to be trapped in my second flash flood of the month. I calculated that the first place the rain would stop was T.O. Fuller State Park in southwest Memphis, and by the time I arrived the sidewalks were steaming but the precipitation had ended. A ballfield covered in indigo buntings gave way to some whimsical chipping sparrow action on the nature trail.
The common yellowthroats were also in fine form, with males (on the right) bursting into song and lots of individuals flitting amongst the grasses.
There were a couple of hours of daylight left, and I realized with a sinking feeling that the best use of my time was probably to visit the nearby Pits, a.k.a. the sewage treatment facility that’s the most attractive location in Memphis to migrating shorebirds. Lots of local birders visit here multiple times a week because the birding is so good; I can stomach it once every 2-3 years and each time am tempted afterwards to burn my clothing. Such a delicate constitution! I didn’t wind up adding a lot of new species here, but it was fun to see so many soras out in the open. These are usually secretive birds that spend most of their time cloaked in the tall wetland vegetation whose seeds are their main food source.
Monday, September 28
The home stretch! Bedraggled from walking around all weekend (and washing yesterday’s clothes multiple times), I slouched into Overton Park to get some work done, pausing to meet up with Fields for a little birding. This black-and-white warbler was performing its usual maneuver of scooting up and down along branches, searching for insects.
After lunch, I headed back to Shelby Farms Park, where I initially saw more signs of life than life itself: on the left, some near-perfect paw prints from a Virginia opossum; on the right, the mud chimneys created by crawfish as they’re digging their underground burrows.
I returned to this section of the park because during my visit on Friday, I’d run across an aggregation of nests of some of the smallest bees I’d ever seen. I only noticed them swirling around my feet because there were so many of them, and because I’ve trained my eye to see the little holes they dig in the ground. (Like crawfish chimneys, but much smaller!) I couldn’t get satisfactory photos on Friday because the mosquitoes were flying into my eyes, so I made a second attempt. It turned out this was a new-to-me genus of mining bee called Panurginus. I even got the treat of watching a female bring back loads of sticky pollen to her nest area underneath a clump of grass!
I was so absorbed in the bees that I hadn’t noticed I had acquired some American snout hangers-on to my clothes and camera while I was on the ground. These butterflies had come out en masse overnight!
On the way back to my car, I checked the nearby pond for shorebirds, and found five killdeer chicks! I was tempted to take this one home with me, but then I decided his mama would be upset. I mean, overly.
Having resisted the urge to baby-nap a killdeer, I chose as my final stop of the Challenge a section of the Germantown Greenway that’s usually pretty reliable for damselflies. I was quickly rewarded with the expected dancer species, but then I found something extra-cool: a mating pair of stream bluets! I’d never seen a female before, and I love her neon glow.
A true challenge for me would be to name my favorite warbler. They’re all so full of personality and color! But I might have to give the nod to the prothonotary warbler, because they don’t bury their cheerful faces high in the canopy. They hang out in low branches near water, giving a slightly eerie song as they hop about and show off.
I wrapped up my wildlife-observing by clocking this six-spotted fishing spider on the pond. It’s one thing to notice a spider walking along the surface of the water, but it’s just as fascinating to see a critter whose head is so much larger than its body! These spiders encase themselves in air bubbles and dive for prey, sometimes staying submerged for several minutes. The “fishing” part of their name doesn’t just refer to this behavior; they’ve been known to eat small fish in addition to insects!
I hope you’ve enjoyed this snapshot of a couple dozen of the 300+ species I was lucky to see over the weekend, and that you’ll join us next year and help us break the 1,000-species mark!
