Pinery Provincial Park is a great place to visit any time of the year, and Winter is the season when you can get closest to a few of the bird species that make their home there.
We always bring along bird-seed to Pinery when we go in the Winter, because there are a number of birds that will come very close when presented with a nutritious food supply. Some (Black-capped chickadees and White-breasted nuthatches) can be induced fairly quickly to landing on your hand and feeding from it. This year, we were a bit early in the season and most of the birds except a few brave chickadees were too wary to feed from our hands. Despite this, we were able to feed many birds by leaving out a pile of seeds on the railing on our site (we were staying in one of the yurts they have there). If you’re planning to do this yourself, remember to not leave the birdseed out overnight. During the day, you will attract small foraging songbirds but at night, you’ll most likely be feeding raccoons, who can devastate snapping turtle populations in the park, if they overpopulate themselves.
The first birds we attracted to our food supply were the bold chickadees, ever-eager to exploit any opportunity available.
A perched Black-Capped Chickadee (Poecilie atricapillus)
Next came the nuthatches, with their impressive ‘talons’ which they use to grip bark as they scale down tree-trunks to pry out insect food.
White-Breasted Nuthatch (Sitta carolinensis)
Tufted titmice were quite abundant as well. I’ve never been able to feed one from my hand, but they were quite content to fling seeds about in the pile, picking out the ones they desired.
Tufted Titmouse (Baeolophus bicolor)
The final visitor to our railing was a downy woodpecker. Downys are the smallest woodpeckers in Canada, at approximately 15-17 cm (Backhouse, 2005). Still jabbing as though he were piercing bark, the woodpecker walked awkwardly along the railing. It truly appeared strange to be perched and moving horizontally, as they are so superbly adapted for their vertical orientation on tree trunks.
Downy Woodpecker (Dryobates pubescens)
Although only a few landed on our hands to pick at seeds, we were pleased to see these little birds foraging nearby, bringing cheer to the wintry woods of Pinery Provincial Park.
The view of the seed pile being visited by the winter birds.
References:
Backhouse, Frances. Woodpeckers of North America. 2005.
Ocyptamus fascipennis adult, spotted at Algonquin Provincial Park, August 2019
When you’re interested in insects, you’re always going to be running into something new. There is always one more creature that you have never seen before, one more behaviour you haven’t heard of, and that’s because insects are incredibly diverse. Today, I’m going to pick out just one of the many species of insects to zoom in on, and explore its story.
The species I’ve chosen is Ocyptamus fascipennis, or the Eastern Band-winged Hover fly. Let’s start from the top: Ocyptamus fascipennis is a “True Fly”, a member of the Order Diptera, which is a division of the Class Insecta. Diptera means “two wings” which gives you the easiest way to identify this group of insects when you encounter them. Almost all insect groups have 4 wings (two pairs) but these pairs of wings have been modified into very different structures in different lineages of insects. For the True Flies, one pair of wings still provides lift and flight, while the other has been reduced into tiny knobs known as halters. These reduced wings act as stabilizers, giving the flies the ability to perform aerobatic feats of agility (as I’m sure we’re all familiar with in House Flies (Musca domestica)). The halters of Diptera are more than just balancing beams, they’re actually sending complicated signals to the fly about its aerial position.
Ocyptamus fascipennis is part of a Family of True Flies called Hover Flies, or Flower Flies (Family Syrphidae). The Syrphids are common insects in gardens where they feed on nectar and pollinate flowers. Because of this habit, many species of Syrphids have taken on the appearance of more conspicuous flower visitors such as bees and wasps, in order to gain some protection from the classic warning colours of black-and-yellow stripes. O. fascipennis in particular seems to mimic solitary wasps or types of parasitoid wasps with its elongated and narrow abdomen.
So far, we’ve been talking about adults of these flies, but all insects go through multiple life stages, some more dramatically varied than others. Diptera undergo holometabolous growth which is a fancy way of saying that they have life stages that look very different from each other and one of those stages is a transformation phase which is mostly immobile. When young hoverflies (larvae) hatch from eggs, they look very different from the adults landing and lifting from flower petals in gardens. Larval O. fascipennis have no wings, and no legs, and are sometimes known by the name that many fly larvae receive: maggots. O. fascipennis larvae don’t consume garbage or dead animals, but instead are active predators, squirming across leaves in search of their prey: aphids.
Stephen Marshall, in his incredible book about Insects describes Syrphine larvae hunting as this: “at night they move blindly among the aphids, grasping victims using typical maggot mouth hooks, then holding the doomed aphids up off the surface to consume the body contents.” (Marshall, 2006).
A Syrphine larva hunting a herd of aphids (photo credit: Christine Hanrahan)
It seems then that Flower Flies are very beneficial insects to have in the garden. They provide pollination for flowers, and their larvae consume plant-eaters such as aphids and related scale insects.
While I was unable to find very much information pertaining to Ocyptamus fascipennis specifically, one other member of the genus deserves special mention because of its interesting larval habitat: tank plants (Bromeliaceae). The Central American and South American species of Ocyptamus that inhabit these confined aquatic habitats (pools of water within the plant itself) ambush and consume other aquatic insect larvae that live in the plants alongside them. The larvae are even thought to use a paralyzing venom to subdue their prey (Rotheray et al, 2000).
All in all, Ocyptamus fascipennis and its relatives are fascinating flower flies with intriguing habits. I hope you’ve enjoyed taking a closer look at them today.
UPDATE NOVEMBER 2021: Near Point Pelee, Ontario, individuals of Ocyptamus fascipennis were observed apparently migrating. The flies were observed moving East to West along with several other insects including tens of thousands of potter wasps (Ancistrocerus adiabatus) (Skevington and Buck 2021). The authors of the paper note that insect migration is a largely understudied phenomenon, especially in North America, so further study is needed to figure out the details.
Marshall, Stephen. Insects: Their Natural History and Diversity. 2006.
Marshall, Stephen. Flies: The Natural History and Diversity of Diptera. 2010.
Skevington, Jeffrey H., and Buck, Matthias. 2021. “The first documented migration of a potter wasp, Ancistrocerus adiabatus (Hymenoptera: Vespidae: Eumeninae)”. Canadian Field-Naturalist 135 (2): 117-119.
If you’re interested in the living things that inhabit this world with us, then you’ve come to the right place. I’ve always found it fascinating that there are so many different kinds of creatures, living out lives in different ways to us humans. In some cases, it’s difficult to believe that we share the same planet, let alone the same backyard. There are countless species that surprise and delight in your own neighbourhood, and there are many more around the world. I’d like to explore this diversity, and try to share my own excitement about these creatures, whether they are insects, fungi, plants, birds, mammals, or any of the other species that crawl, fly, swim, run or grow across the planet.
To do this, I’m planning on producing posts detailing a specific species or group of species to get a taste of what sort of creatures are out there. I will also occasionally post about my own observations (and photos) of species that I’ve encountered in my own travels in Southern Ontario. Another thing I’d like to do is review books that are relevant to learning about nature, as I have a personal library stocked with some great books about the diversity and wonder of life.
I hope that when you visit this blog you learn a little something, gain a greater appreciation for living things, and get inspired to pay a little more attention to the world of nature that’s all around us.
Norfolk Naturalist 