ERS 346 Outing #2

Time and date: 19/09/21 1:00 PM
Duration: 120 minutes
Location: Bruce Peninsula National Park, ON
Weather: 18°, sunny, no precipitation, windy
Habitat: Deciduous forest, Alvar

For our second wildlife outing in the Bruce Peninsula National Park, Shalini and I decided to spend the majority of our time doing observations in the rare alvar habitat and deciduous forest, as there is such an abundance of species to observe in this habitat. This was particularly interesting because alvars are among the most threatened and rare habitats in North America, which means this habitat supports a variety of globally and provincially rare species. It was very interesting to observe the impressive network of ancient white cedars present in this habitat, as this unique alvar habitat supports white cedar trees that can be over 500 years old. We also observed red osier dogwood, which is a shrub that can be easily identified by gently splitting the leaf apart, showing light filaments that are still intact, parallel and attached to both halves of the leaves. Near the trail we found inky caps again, re-confirming our previous ID from our first outing and demonstrating how much this species thrives in disturbed habitats. Next we observed two different species of caterpillars, the first one was fuzzy and bright white, which I believe is in the genus Charadra based on recommendations from iNaturalist. The second species looked more familiar and may be a species of tent caterpillar. We also saw an eastern tiger swallowtail butterfly using its proboscises to collect nectar from a red honeysuckle, which may be representative of a possible pollination syndrome between these two species. Finally, we observed a white flower crab spider poised atop a white flower, ready for attack. This was incredibly interesting to observe as flower crab spiders mimic the flower they are on to capture insect prey that are naturally attracted to the flower, which is a unique generalist predation strategy. The variety of insects we had the opportunity to observe demonstrates the unique assemblage of insects that take refuge in the alvar habitat.

Posted on November 25, 2019 08:39 PM by eswerdfager