Updates, and a snowman

I.	The mummy returns
II.	Tyvek
III.	Au naturel

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I

Remember the mummified caterpillar from my last post, The craft of the woodpecker?

Well, after taking these photos, I kept the mummy indoors, in a glass vial with a little moistened peat.  And guess what happened just the other day?

That's right...the mummy-wasp emerged!

Fellow Bugguide.net citizen scientist Ross Hill confirmed my hunch that this wasp was in the genus Aleiodes, and he identified it as A. terminalis.  Bugguide's information page for this species says it's "probably the most commonly collected Aleiodes species in [eastern North America]."  Its host range is known to include caterpillars in the family Noctuidae (from the Latin for "owl," probably in reference to the night-flying habit of the adult moths) -- so the mummified larva I found most likely belonged to that family.

Here's an "action shot" of the wasp grooming itself.  (Wasps devote a lot of time to grooming.)

Another group of parasitoid wasps -- the ichneumon (ick-NYOO-min) wasps -- are commonly referred to as "ichneumon flies" in older literature.  However, true flies, such as the house flies that buzz inside your windows during the winter, have only two wings, and belong to the order Diptera ("two-winged").  Ichneumons, Aleiodes mummy wasps, and most other wasps have four wings -- an easy way to distinguish them from flies.  If you like, take another look at the grooming photo above to see the four wings of the mummy-wasp.

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II

In A smart bunch, part 2, I wrote about birds eating gall wasp larvae hidden in stems of a wild lettuce, Lactuca biennis.  I included this dorky self-portrait with an L. biennis stem, photographed in 2015 at Footbridge Farm, home of friends John and Jana.

Fast forward to today (March 6, 2017).  John and I were chatting over the phone this morning about an old oriole nest that hung in a willow tree above his farm's namesake footbridge.  Here's an example of an oriole nest as we humans often encounter it: high up in a tree, exposed by fallen leaves and backlit by the sky.

Oriole nest, Mexico.  Courtesy Jim Conrad and Wikimedia Commons

John mentioned that the Footbridge Farm oriole nest had fallen from the tree recently, and when he picked it up to examine it, he found a number of white plastic fibers woven into it -- fibers that looked strangely familiar.

If you look back at my self-portrait / Lactuca photo above, you'll notice that a synthetic homewrap fills the background.  This "Green Guard" -- presumably a more sustainably-sourced equivalent of Tyvek -- encloses the walls of a guest cabin that John and Jana were finishing at the time (remember, this was in 2015).  Well, as John explained in our conversation today, the homewrap had begun to deteriorate in the time since that photo was taken -- and the orioles had apparently noticed: John recognized the white fibers in the nest as frayed strips of Green Guard!

The weathered homewrap on the cabin walls is long gone, replaced by a more durable material.  However, it's fun to know that even as its time as a human building material came to an end, it found a second life as an avian building material, too.

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While searching for a public-domain oriole nest photo to share with you all in this post, I came across Lauren Schaffer's photo-journal entry here:

Baltimore Oriole Nest -- Birding Pictures

The second image on that page shows a female oriole harvesting plant fibers for her nest.  The opposite branching and elongate, catkin-like seed clusters dangling from the dead stem clearly identify the plant in this photo as a nettle, Urtica sp.  Since the photo was taken in mid-May, the nettle stalk is likely a dead and dry remnant from the previous growing season.  Lauren's next image shows the same female oriole on another dead plant stalk that I assume is a milkweed, Asclepias sp., for in this post Lauren writes, "[The orioles] like to use long plant fibers, some of which they strip from the old dead plants such as milkweed and other weeds."

Why does this matter?  Because nettle and milkweed aren't your average Joes or Jills when it comes to the strength of their stem fibers.  Humans have been incorporating nettle fiber into their textiles since at least A.D. 900; in fact, just a year or two ago my friend Heidi led a nettle twine making workshop right here in Decorah.  And friend Lee recently mentioned that an outdoor program he's involved with was scheduled to make twine out of dogbane -- a relative of milkweed.

Is it a coincidence that Lauren's orioles chose these exceptionally tough-bodied plants to supply fibers for their hanging nest?  *Sigh*...I guess it could be; stinging nettle and common milkweed are both pretty ubiquitous.  But if you're like me, you tire of dismissing observations like this as mere coincidence.  It's more exciting to suppose that the orioles know what they're doing to this extent.  And it's more in keeping with a worldview that imagines animals as complex and intelligent beings, rather than mindless automatons.  Besides...in this same post, Lauren describes the oft-noted behavior in which orioles (and other nest-weavers) gather hair from domestic animals such as horses for incorporation into their nests.  If they're smart enough to identify horsehair as a good building material, why wouldn't they be smart enough to recognize ideal fiber sources in the stems of certain native plants they've lived alongside for millions of years?

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III

This snowman on the Luther campus made me grin and giggle big time when I came upon it today.

I'm told that a professor and her student are mostly responsible for this artwork, and that they describe it as "au naturel."  Indeed, if you look closely, you might recognize the various dormant-season plant parts incorporated.

Which leads me to your challenge for the day: Can you identify at least three species of native or exotic plants built into this snowman?  Hint: With one or maybe two exceptions, you needn't search Luther's carefully landscaped environs to find the plants in these photos -- they're almost certainly growing wild in a forest or a field near you, or in one of Decorah's several reconstructed (planted) tallgrass prairies.

Here's some closer views that should be helpful.

Detail of headdress (note especially the grass seedhead in the upper right corner)

Extra credit: Write a haiku or other poem about our snowy friend that includes the names of some of her planty parts.  (I'll publish my favorite entry here on the blog.)  And the person who correctly identifies the greatest number of snowperson-plants wins a free lunch at the Oneota Co-op with yours truly.  (Just one rule: you've gotta name at least three kinds of plants, using their common names or the genus part of their scientific names.)  Email me, text me, track me down in person, or leave a comment on this page to share your poem or your plant list!