June Season Watch Podcast: Creative pollination, evolutionary arms races and bountiful babies

Another month, another Season Watch Podcast!

I will be accepting applause, accolades and awards all month: I kept this one under 45 minutes long. That's hard work when you’re as excited about nature as I tend to be and it’s June — there are so many things happening! There’s a profusion of wildflowers, a bumper crop of wildlife babies and beautiful insects everywhere you look.

I hope you enjoy this episode, and please get in touch with feedback or with questions.

Commute

I can’t talk about commuting in June without discussing turtles crossing the road! We cover why adult females are disproportionately vital to the population stability of turtle species, as well as common (and well-meaning) mistakes people make while trying to help our reptilian little friends.

Also in the wildlife category are my Best Beloved Spring Babies: skunklets! Technically, baby skunks are called kits, but that’s much less fun. In any case, striped skunks have their babies in June, and boy, are they adorable. I’ve spotted families of skunks three times, and each time they’ve been on the side of the road when I’ve been driving along. Take a moment to stop and watch (from a safe, scent-free distance) if you meet a family on your journeys: they are curious, charismatic, adorable and just hilarious to watch.

There’s a surfeit of flowers blooming on roadsides. Many are invasive, like the birdsfoot trefoil, dame’s rocket and orange hawkweed. Admire their beauty, then eradicate them mercilessly (or don’t, I’m not your boss). Native species to admire on your commute include the sundial lupine (which I’ve been pronouncing wrong for years), common and butterfly milkweed, and the common yarrow. Enjoy!

While walking

Hopefully, you’ll have a chance to dismount from your gasoline steed to go for a walk this month! Walking is great exercise and “good for your brain,” according to my therapist, but we all know the real attraction: critters. My newly tuned dragonfly senses are on high alert, thanks to John’s inspiration and Dragonflies of the North Woods by Kurt Mead. Even if you have no interest in identifying the lil’ zoomers, take a minute to get a close look at them! They have some truly beautiful colors and patterns.

Another many-legged creature of note are crab spiders (also known as flower spiders or goldenrod spiders). They are tiny spiders with the surprising ability to change their color to match their chosen flower! This can make them hard to find: I recommend searching on pink flowers, as the crab spiders will appear white to our eye. Their prey, however, lack the ability to see red pigment: the spider is perfectly camouflaged in their eyes.

Eastern Wood Pewees are out there helping the dragonflies control the insect population. These flycatchers have a distinctive “Peee-a-weee, peee-a-wee, peee-ooo" call that I particularly enjoy! I’ll admit that part of my enjoyment stems from the fact that it’s an easy call to learn and thus one of my first birding-by-ear successes.

Where multiple species of flycatchers occur in the same area, they divide up the forest by canopy layer. Eastern Wood Pewees occupy the midstory, while Least and Acadian Flycatchers hunt in the lower story. Great Crested Flycatchers swoop up insects daring to flit about in the canopy.

Of course, any woodland walk can only be improved by a nice foraged snack. June has plenty of options, the most popular of which are wild strawberries, raspberries and blackberries. As always, don’t go eating anything you don't recognize as a safe plant!

On the water

Swimming season is upon us, so let me introduce you to the giant water bug. (Full disclosure: I was introduced to this insect just last week by our friends at the Roots and Wings Forest School.) As it turns out, this is likely the critter responsible for some painful stings I’ve gotten while wading through muddy backwaters! Although these ferocious fellas can leave you hurting for a while, they make great dads.

Once the eggs are fertilized, the female glues them on the male’s back and disappears. The devoted dad cares for them until they hatch, protecting them from predators and ensuring that they all get enough oxygen.

Also notable about giant water bugs? Butt snorkels. More on that in the podcast! (That’s what they call a teaser, my friends.)

On a more majestic note, loons! They are in the midst of nesting season and particularly vulnerable to large wakes and human disturbances. Be kind: drive slowly in loon habitat and view them quietly and from a distance!

You’ll be rewarded for your restraint with the lovely sight of a loon chick (or two) riding around on their mom or dad’s back in a few weeks. What cuties! (I also play some recordings of different loon calls and discuss their meanings, but a loon call written out doesn’t give the same ~vibes~ as a recording. For instance, “aaaaoooaaaEEEE, EEEE-EEEE, EEE-EEE" looks more like the shrieks of a chimpanzee than the otherworldly yodel of a territorial loon.)

Near shore, you’ll find waterlilies blooming. Two species are common in Minnesota: the white waterlily and the yellow pond lily. White waterlilies have circular leaves, while yellow pond lilies have arrowhead shaped leaves.

Their flowers are primarily pollinated by beetles. The beetles visit stamen-bearing flowers and get doused in pollen: if they happen upon a female flower, they get trapped in fluid, die and sink into the petals to the stigmas, accomplishing fertilization. Once the flower is fertilized, it sends up pollen-bearing stamens to coat the body of the next unwitting fly or beetle to visit. This pollination strategy is called “entrapment,” and while it’s hard on the beetles, it allows us to enjoy the beautiful water lilies!

Moccasin flowers (or lady-slippers) are also sneaky in their pollination tactics. They lure in bumblebees with a sweet scent, but once inside the “slipper,” the bumblebee finds no nectar to feed on. To get back out, it must crawl out a hole underneath the pollen-bearing stamens. As you might imagine, the bumblebees wise up to this trick after a few tries, so the pollination rate of moccasin flowers is quite low.

However, moccasin flowers are quite long-lived, with some reaching ages of over 100 years. With that kind of lifespan, they can afford to have a slow reproductive rate! You can find these marvelous orchids in swamps, bogs, fens and wet forests: just be sure you leave them where they are. Wild moccasin flowers don’t transplant well, and their population is highly vulnerable to overharvesting. Instead, try your local nursery: some species are becoming commercially available.

In the open

Under the warm June sun, prairie flowers are blooming: enjoy the milkweeds, hoary puccoons and leadplants. Even once they’re done blooming, the show isn’t over: enjoy the feathery plumes of prairie smoke plants! In fields, pastures and roadsides, find John’s favorite June flower: the maiden pink.

You’ll find a frothy little ball on the stem of many of these plants. This is thanks to the work of the larval spittlebug, which create little bubbles while feeding on the sap of forbs. This protective spit sphere keeps them from drying out and safe from the prying eyes of predators. When grown, the spittlebug is called a “froghopper” due to its elongated hind legs.

Bobolinks love to eat insects and find plenty hopping around on prairie grasses. They have a distinctive look and call and are ground-nesting birds. Unfortunately, due to habitat loss and insect declines, these birds are experiencing a steep reduction in their population.

As an evolutionary biologist by training, I can hardly go through June without talking about the fascinating evolutionary arms race between Brown-headed Cowbirds and their host species. Brown-headed Cowbirds are obligate brood parasites: they only lay eggs in other birds’ nests. Their young are large, belligerent and loud, often out-competing their nestmates (the hosts’ biological offspring).

The different tactics host species have developed to deal with these troublesome interlopers are fascinating. In turn, the Brown-headed Cowbirds have evolved ever more complex mechanisms to increase their likelihood of successfully parasitizing a nest. The whole dynamic is well worth investigating: I’d recommend starting with this video.

In the forest

Since I haven’t gotten my fill of evolutionary tricks just yet, my next tangent is about the red-spotted admiral butterfly. You’ll find two different subspecies with dramatically different looks: the white admirals and the red-spotted purples. They vary by one key characteristic: the existence (or lack) of a broad white band that stretches like parentheses across the front and hindwings to meet behind the abdomen. White admirals have these “parentheses,” while red-spotted purples do not.

This difference is driven by evolutionary pressures on the red-spotted purples, which are mimics of the poisonous pipevine swallowtail butterflies. The pipevine swallowtail occurs in Iowa and farther south: thus, there is no benefit for northern butterflies to mimic this species, and they retain their white parentheses. However, the two types hybridize freely, and individuals of both types are common in Minnesota.

Once you’re done admiring the butterflies, look for ripening juneberries. These berries don’t ripen all at once, but only a few at a time. To ensure the birds don’t strip your shrub of all the delicious berries, try covering the plant in some bird netting.

Another wonderful June treat are the flowers of basswood (or linden) trees. These dangle below lime-green bracts (specialized leaves) and can be eaten raw or brewed into a tea. Enjoy!

Finally, I think it’s fun to notice the businesslike attitude of our feathered friends in June. They are hard at work providing for incubating mates or chicks and seem to fly around with a bit more purpose than at other times of the year. Personally, I’m on a seemingly never-ending quest to find a hummingbird nest. I am completely charmed by them, with their spiderweb-and-lichen construction and tiny size. I’ll keep you updated if I find one!

In town

When you’ve returned home from your adventures, you can wind down by watching the fireflies twinkle in the dusk sky. They are joined by luna moths, large green-winged beauties with long forked “tails.” These tails help confuse bats’ echolocation, allowing the moths to swoop around at night with less chance of being eaten.

In addition to bats, chimney swifts hunt the evening sky. Look for their cigar-shaped bodies bracketed by long, slender wings. While their bills are small, their mouths are huge: this is pretty handy for a bird that catches insects out of midair while flying quite swiftly (pun intended).

Finally, keep an eye out for young squirrels venturing out of the nest. They always need a bit of time to grow their full bushy tails, and I enjoy seeing these scraggly youngsters out exploring!

Please get in touch! Tell us what you’re interested in learning, what you find entertaining, how long you want the podcasts to be, or anything else that will help us build something of value to you and the community.

As always, you can get in touch with me at smitchell@kaxe.org, with John at jlatimer@kaxe.org, or with Heidi at hholtan@kaxe.org.

Thanks for listening — I'm incredibly grateful for your support!

For more phenology, subscribe to our Season Watch Newsletter or visit the Season Watch Facebook page.

Audio recordings have been generously provided by Laura Erickson, and supplemented as needed by copyright-free recordings available through iNaturalist.

Funding for this project was provided by the Minnesota Environment and Natural Resources Trust Fund as recommended by the Legislative-Citizen Commission on Minnesota Resources (LCCMR).