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Chorus in the Forest

The maniacal echoes of the owls of spring

Story and Photographs by Todd Pusser

The hoots rang out loud and clear, stopping me in my tracks. Squinting into the midday sun, I stared intently in the direction of a tall pine tree. After a few seconds, the hoots echoed through the branches once again, with distinctive barred owl flare, “Who cooks for you?” I smiled. It was my first time hearing this bird of prey on my great-grandfather’s property in Eagle Springs, near the headwaters of Drowning Creek. Just across the creek, a second owl quickly responded. “Who cooks for you? Who cooks for you allllll?”

Up ahead, a shadowy silhouette launched from the pine and flew across the creek, disappearing into a dense thicket of hardwoods. Loud hoots and screeches erupted as the mated pair of raptors greeted one another. For the uninitiated, a maniacal chorus of courting owls can raise the hair on the back of one’s neck. Their otherworldly calls have led to widespread fear and superstition. Many cultures view the nocturnal birds as omens of bad luck. Hearing one means death is near. For me, the calls indicate a healthy and functioning ecosystem.

Of our region’s three common breeding owl species, the barred owl, eastern screech owl, and the great horned owl, it is the barred owl that is the most ubiquitous. This is partly due to the barred owl’s propensity to announce its presence with questioning hoots throughout the day, unlike their more nocturnal brethren. This is especially true during the warm afternoons of spring, when the owls are in the middle of their breeding season and are busy raising chicks.

Standing nearly 20 inches tall, barred owls are big birds. Their feathers are dense and streaked in colors of coffee and cream. Barred owls possess large ear openings — even for owls — which are set asymmetrically on the sides of their head. This offset enables them to triangulate on sound with near supernatural precision. Unlike myself, barred owls are impervious to age-related hearing loss.

Listening to the owls cackling back and forth to each other I wondered if a nest might be nearby. I quickly glanced around for one. Barred owls rarely build their own nests, choosing instead to raise their families in hollow snags or tree cavities.

Years back, I spent several afternoons watching a pair of barred owl chicks in the broken-off snag of a tulip poplar in the heart of Morrow Mountain State Park. The nest was just 20 feet off the ground and made for easy viewing. From a respectful distance, I spent hours observing, and occasionally photographing, the antics of the chicks and noting the prey items brought to the nest by the adults. I remember being surprised at how many crayfish the adults fed their young.

Barred owls are generalist feeders with diverse tastes. Their menu rivals that of any Cheesecake Factory. They will eat pretty much anything that they can get their talons on. Beetles, bunnies, squirrels, mice, rats, moles, millipedes, cicadas, frogs, even screech owls have been recorded as prey. A 30-year study of barred owls in downtown Charlotte found that songbirds, such as cardinals and bluebirds, featured predominantly in their urban diet. A friend of mine once photographed one eating a rough green snake at Alligator River National Wildlife Refuge. Another friend watched a barred owl catch a large, 2-foot long, eel-like salamander known as a two-toed amphiuma, from a roadside ditch bordering Drowning Creek in the Sandhills. Barred owls like to eat local. 

After a few minutes, the owl chorus died down. The forest was silent once again. I decided to walk toward a spot where I had placed a trail camera on the side of a small tree overlooking the creek. Over the years, this particular camera has captured some unusual barred owl behavior. Of particular interest was an owl that would land on a sunny spot of sand next to the creek, right in the middle of the day. It would lay down flat on the ground and stretch out its wings to either side. Then the owl would close its eyes and throw its head back, obviously enjoying the warmth of the sunlight. It did this for a week, at nearly the same time every afternoon. A biologist later told me that the sunbathing owl was likely trying to rid its feathers of parasites.

I spent much of the afternoon looking for the owl’s nest, traversing from one side of the farm to the other, but to no avail. Unfortunately, work took me away the rest of that spring and I was never able to get back to the property and confirm if the pair of barred owls had indeed raised a family.

These events happened nearly 10 years ago. Capable of living to more than 20 years of age, barred owls are long-lived birds. It is possible the same pair are still hunting the creek down on my great-grandfather’s farm. Perhaps this April, I will make another trip out there and get reacquainted with the owls of spring.

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The Ginger Dogs of Eagle Springs

Surprising encounters with the crafty red fox

Story and Photographs by Todd Pusser

The bite from the frigid December air numbed my fingers as I fiddled with the latch on my trail camera. Mounted to the side of a tree bordering a tiny creek, for the past five years the camera has recorded the comings and goings of the critters that call this Eagle Springs forest home every single day, 24 hours a day, seven days a week. A strong Arctic cold front had pushed through the state the previous evening and the forest was eerily quiet. Not a creature was stirring, not even a cardinal. It was as if all the animals had decided to sleep in on this frosty morning.

Extracting the memory card from the camera, I sat down on a nearby log and loaded it into my laptop. Thumbing through the videos, I quickly noted raccoons foraging in the shallow water on most nights since I last checked the camera 10 weeks prior. On Halloween night, a plump opossum ambled slowly by. Thanksgiving Day revealed two large bucks staring curiously at the camera. There were numerous daytime videos of gray squirrels, turkeys, American robins, even a brown thrasher. A bobcat walked through at dusk in early December. As did a cottontail rabbit.

But it was a video from the night of Oct. 18 that really caught my attention. I paused and stared at the computer screen, not sure if my eyes were deceiving me. I replayed the video to be sure. Just before midnight, a lanky critter entered the camera’s field of view from the left, quickly walked through the frame, and exited stage right. It was only a few seconds of footage but long enough to make out the salient features — a pointed nose, triangular ears, white-tipped tail and four long legs that appeared to be wearing black socks. No doubt about it. It was a red fox, the first I have seen around Eagle Springs in many, many years.

Long believed to be introduced into the South by early European Colonists for sport, a 2012 genetic study revealed that red foxes are indeed native to the region. Turns out, the crafty canids naturally made their way from the boreal regions of North America and points farther west as the vast Eastern forests were cleared for agriculture purposes at the time of our nation’s founding.

When I was young, the red fox was the most ubiquitous of our native canids, and I observed them regularly around the Sandhills. North Carolina’s other native fox, the gray fox, was also around, but I rarely encountered it. With a fluffier tail, tipped in black instead of white, gray foxes are easy to distinguish from red foxes. About the only time I saw them in my youth was during their early winter breeding season, when the occasional individual could be seen skulking along the edge of our yard on moonlit nights.

By comparison, red foxes were seemingly everywhere. I vividly recall observing one dashing across a green of Seven Lakes Golf Club on a bright spring afternoon while teeing it up with my old man when I was around 12 years old. I regularly saw one along the entrance road to Pinecrest High School throughout my teenage years. Up until the turn of the new millennium, it was not uncommon to see the lifeless bodies of red foxes dotting highways throughout the Sandhills, all victims of hit and runs. Soon thereafter, for reasons unknown, I started seeing fewer and fewer red foxes in the region.

The last time I had an opportunity to photograph an Eagle Springs red fox was in the spring of 2003, when I found an active den near my parents’ house. Sitting in a blind nearby, I watched as the adorable pups roughhoused and played on a sand berm beneath a turkey oak while their parents were away foraging for food. Soon after that spring, sightings of the ginger dogs became more and more infrequent. My field notes from that time record no sightings of red foxes for years. It was as if the species had completely disappeared from the landscape. Did a disease, such as distemper or rabies, wipe out the local population?

A clue came the following year, when I saw my first coyote in Eagle Springs, a hefty adult walking across a plowed field on a moonlit night. Soon thereafter, I found a road-killed coyote a half mile from my parents’ house. Around the same time, local hunters began reporting more and more sightings of coyotes in Sandhills forests during deer season.

Like red foxes before them, coyotes arrived in North Carolina from points farther north and west, albeit much more recently. A 1982 study by the North Carolina Museum of Natural Sciences documented only three specimens of coyotes recorded from the entire state. By the early 2000s, it was becoming clear that coyotes were full-time residents in the Sandhills. Did these large, adaptable canids cause the decline of our local red foxes? Possibly. Studies in other areas have shown that the larger coyote will displace foxes from their territories in an effort to tamper down competition for food resources. It may not be a coincidence that red fox numbers plummeted around the same time that coyotes started to show up in decent numbers on the Eagle Springs landscape.

Reviewing iNaturalist (a popular citizen science app), I noted a dozen or so sightings of red foxes in the Sandhills over the past few years. Recent conversations with rangers at Weymouth Woods Nature Preserve and biologists working on the Sandhills Game Land have also revealed sightings. These anecdotes, along with my trail camera photo, offer a bit of excitement for those interested in our local wildlife.

Perhaps the ginger dogs of Eagle Springs are making a comeback. 

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A Few Magical Moments

Sighting a hawk as white as snow

Story and Photographs by Todd Pusser

Several years ago, on a crisp December morning, I found myself traveling down the dusty backroads of Alligator River National Wildlife Refuge under a brilliant blue sky. I had a few hours to kill before a planned meeting at the nearby Outer Banks History Center and thought a drive through the refuge might yield a sighting of a black bear or a river otter — and if I was really lucky, perhaps an endangered red wolf.

About a mile into my drive, I noticed a large white bird lift off the ground from the middle of a freshly plowed field and fly toward some tall pine trees several hundred yards out in front of my car. Based on its size and stiff-winged flight, I could tell it was some sort of bird of prey, but with its unusual white coloration, I could not readily make out the species. Perhaps, I thought, it was a snowy owl, a spectacular resident of Arctic climes, that occasionally ventures south to North Carolina during winter months. 

As I pulled my car up to the pine trees, I was stunned to see something much rarer than a snowy owl. Off to the side of the dirt road, sitting on a branch of a tall loblolly, was a white red-tailed hawk. Its luminous feathers contrasted sharply with the golden needles of the pine and the intense Carolina blue sky. In eastern North America, adult red-tailed hawks typically possess brown backs and white bellies and chests lined by dark streaks. Their tail is brick red, hence the name. The hawk in the pine was anything but typical. It was stunning. In the bright morning light, the pale hawk gave off a surreal, almost otherworldly glow.

Red-tailed hawks are notoriously skittish, and I figured the bird would fly away when I lowered my car window and pointed a large telephoto lens at it. To my surprise, the hawk remained focused on the field from whence it flew and paid me little attention. As I fumbled with my camera settings, adjusting the aperture and shutter speed, the hawk glanced occasionally in my direction. Still, the bird held its position and continued to stare out into the field. 

Unusually white animals have captured human imagination for time immemorial and are frequently viewed as omens of good fortune. Among certain Native American cultures, a white buffalo represents hope and harmony among all people and are considered the most sacred of animals. In Thailand, some believe that white elephants contain the souls of people who have crossed over into the spirit world. In Celtic and English folklore, white deer are frequently endowed with supernatural powers and magical abilities. Exceptionally white animals have even permeated popular culture — none more so than Captain Ahab’s great nemesis, the white sperm whale Moby Dick.

Studying the details of the pale red-tailed hawk more closely through my telephoto lens, I realized the bird was not completely white. Numerous light brown feathers were scattered about its wings and head. Zooming in on the hawk’s eye on the back of my camera’s LCD, I noticed its black pupil, a feature that told me that the bird was not an albino. True albino birds lack any pigment in their feathers and have pink eyes. Genetic mutations that cause abnormally white feathers in birds are numerous and are not well understood. Without a thorough analysis of its blood, the condition causing the unusual white coloration of the hawk would remain unknown.

After nearly 15 minutes of me taking photos, something finally caught the hawk’s attentive gaze. With a crouch and a quick spread of its wings, the raptor launched off the pine and flew low over the ground to the far side of the field. Like some ghostly apparition, the white red-tail disappeared over the distant trees and was gone.

All I have to prove this magical encounter actually happened are a few pixels stored on a hard drive and the pale image etched permanently into my memory bank. To this day, the hawk remains one of the most spectacular and beautiful birds I have ever encountered.

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The Butterfly of Death

Encountering the black witch moth

Story and Photographs by Todd Pusser

“Todd, you’re going to want to see this!” shouts Maurice Cullen from his backyard. “And bring your camera!”

I can tell by the urgency in his voice that Maurice has found something pretty cool. For the past hour, beneath the light of an August moon, I have been standing in his neighbor’s yard trying to photograph sphinx moths nectaring on flowers, and I already have my camera in hand. I race over to his backyard gate, open it, circle the swimming pool and approach Maurice, who is standing in the far corner of the yard, next to a wooden fence.

“Check this out,” he says pointing the narrow beam of a flashlight up into a Chinese privet tree. There, in the center of a large branch overhanging the fence, is an immense brown-colored moth, with sharply pointed wings.

“It’s a black witch,” says Maurice excitedly. “Take some pics before it flies away!”

Fumbling with the controls of my camera and adjusting my flash power, I frame the moth in my viewfinder. Its long proboscis is buried deep within a steady stream of sap leaking from a small crack in the tree’s bark. The sap, a natural sugary concoction that entices all manner of insects the same way blood in ocean water attracts sharks, has been leaking from various cracks along the tree’s trunk and limbs all summer, drawing in such winged wonders as red-spotted purple butterflies and giant cicada killer wasps.

Snapping off a few frames of the witch, I note the distinctive comma-shaped marks on its forewings and a prominent white line running across its hindwings, a telltale field mark identifying this particular moth as a female. Measured from wingtip to wingtip, black witch moths are the largest insects in North America, with some having wing spans that surpass 7 inches. The one that Maurice and I are staring at is somewhat smaller, with a wingspan of “only” 6 inches or so. With such large wings, the moth resembles a bat in flight.

An hour earlier, I had seen a large moth streak across the neighbor’s yard in the fading twilight and had brushed it off as a more common silkmoth, possibly a Polyphemus moth. It was likely the black witch making a beeline for the sap well on the privet tree.

Black witch moths are found throughout the Neotropics, from the Caribbean down to Brazil. The moths are powerful migrators and frequently reach the southern United States and points farther north. Historically, they were rarely observed as far north as Virginia, where we are currently standing. Now that most people have powerful cameras buried within their phones and loaded with a plethora of citizen-science apps, like Inaturalist, black witch moths are being reported more frequently throughout the continental United States. Still, Maurice, at 66 years of age and a lifelong butterfly and moth watcher, has never seen one alive in the state. It’s a cause for celebration, albeit a cautious celebration, as few animals harbor as many myths and superstitions as the black witch moth.

In Colombia, legend states that sorceresses who have died and failed to enter the gates of heaven have been cast back to Earth in the form of black witch moths. In Mexico, the black witch moth is known as the Mariposa de la Muerte, the butterfly of death. It is believed that if one flies into someone’s home, that person will soon perish. In other parts of Mexico, people say that if a black witch moth flies over your head, you will soon lose your hair — a fate some view as worse than death. In Jamaica, the black witch moth is called a Duppy Bat, and is believed to be a lost soul. In other parts of the Caribbean, the moth is thought to be an actual witch in disguise, and to see one means someone has cast an evil spell on you.

Continuing to take photos, I stop briefly to review the images on my camera’s LCD. Glancing back up to the tree limb, the black witch moth is no longer there, having disappeared into the inky black sky like some ghostly apparition. “Ahhh, man, that’s disappointing,” sighs Maurice, who wanted more time to ogle the winged marvel. I laugh nervously, hoping that the moth has not exited the yard by flying over my head.

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Instead, I choose to think about the more cheerful legends surrounding the black witch moth. One in particular stands out above all others. In the Bahamas, folklore calls black witch moths Money Bats. Locals believe that if you are fortunate enough to see one, prosperity will soon follow.

Perhaps tonight on the way home from Maurice’s, I’ll stop at the local gas station and buy a Powerball ticket. 

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Beautifully Common

Being exceptionally ordinary

Story and Photographs by Todd Pusser

When I was 11 years old, my parents gave me a book titled The World’s Whales. Published by the Smithsonian Institution, it was the first coffee table book to illustrate all the world’s cetaceans (whales, dolphins and porpoises) in a single volume. The spectacular photos and life-like paintings nestled within the high-gloss pages instantly captured my imagination. Throughout my high school and college years, I frequently thumbed through its pages, dreaming of one day becoming a marine biologist and making a list of all the whales and dolphins I most wanted to see in the wild.

Like many nature-obsessed kids who grew up reading about dinosaurs or watching Jacques Cousteau, I was fascinated by the strangest, most colorful, most dangerous, and the largest members of the animal kingdom. My list of whales and dolphins that I most wanted to see reflected those superlatives. The immense blue whale, the largest animal ever to inhabit Earth, was near the top of the list. The oddly shaped sperm whale, of Moby Dick fame, with its box-shaped head housing the largest brain in the animal kingdom, was on there, too. As was the aptly named hourglass dolphin of sub-Antarctic waters. The Southern right whale dolphin, a striking black and white animal that completely lacks a dorsal fin, so unlike any other oceanic dolphin, also caught my attention. But the absolute pinnacle of my list was the killer whale, a supremely intelligent apex predator that eats everything from seals to great white sharks.

Fast forward 40 years, and that book still occupies prime real estate in my library. Recently, I pulled it down and flipped through its pages, reflecting on nearly three decades of work on the ocean. In that time, I have been fortunate enough to check off each and every whale and dolphin from my list. It has been a remarkable run that has produced many amazing memories.

I found those blue whales off the coast of California, rolling on their sides and throwing open their cavernous mouths as they swallowed thousands of gallons of water and krill with a single gulp. Due south of Louisiana, in a deep-sea trench known as the Mississippi Canyon, I saw my first sperm whales. Off the rugged coast of Kaikoura, New Zealand, I observed a huge group of 500 Southern right whale dolphins, leaping from tall ocean swells within sight of snow-capped mountains. In Antarctica, I watched enthralled as hourglass dolphins played at the bow of our research vessel. And as for killer whales, I have seen them in oceans around the world, including spotting a small group off my home state of North Carolina in 2014.

Looking back through the book, I paused at the account about common dolphins. For the life of me, I can’t understand why those dolphins failed to capture my childhood imagination. Common dolphins feature prominently in Greek and Roman societies, even appearing on their coins. Aristotle and Pliny the Elder were enthralled by common dolphins and wrote about them frequently in ancient texts. The common dolphin was, in fact, the first species of dolphin to be scientifically described. I think that my youthful lack of enthusiasm for the species stemmed from their name, common dolphin. It wasn’t superlative enough, not like the killer whale.

So many of us tend to ignore the common. It’s human nature to place value on the biggest, strongest, prettiest, weirdest, and especially, the rarest. As a budding naturalist, I ignored the animals and plants that I routinely saw day after day. But as is so often the case, time and experience have a way of changing one’s perspective. As I have aged, I have learned to appreciate the everyday nature that surrounds me, especially the common things, like the grey squirrel in the front yard or the bluebird perched on the powerline.

Common dolphins are aptly named. Scientists estimate their global population to be over 6 million, making them the most abundant dolphin swimming in the world’s oceans. Recently, off the coast of California, I encountered a group of common dolphins that stretched as far as the eye could see. The sea frothed white as thousands of dolphins leapt from the water all at once. It was a truly breathtaking experience. Marveling at the bright yellow hourglass-shaped patterns on their sides, I realized how wrong I was to overlook these animals in my youth. They are uncommonly beautiful.

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The Bass of Summers Past

Largemouths, farm ponds and my old man

Story and Photographs by Todd Pusser

There’s a shallow pond in Eagle Springs where memories run deep. On most summer weekends of my youth, Dad and I would venture out on its clear waters to try and catch a few fish.

Surrounded by a canopy of tall pines and dogwoods, the pond is a picture-perfect postcard of serenity. I still recall the low hum of the electric trolling motor on our old aluminum jon boat as we plied the still waters with Zebco 33 reels in hand. Here and there, turtles would poke their heads above the flat surface. Bluebirds sang from nearby perches. If we were lucky, we might spot a green heron skulking along the shoreline, or a red-tailed hawk soaring overhead.

The cooler would be packed full of Pepsis, Lance crackers and a Little Debbie or two — just enough unhealthy goodness to get us through the afternoon. Dad would attach a Beetle Spin to his line with hopes of catching some of the saucer-sized bluegills that frequented the pond’s deeper waters. My lure of choice was an old standby: a black plastic worm with a weedless hook threaded inside.

While I loved catching bluegills on my lightweight 8-lb. test line, I was after the much bigger largemouth bass that had been stocked in the pond years before. Dad’s high school classmate, whose house overlooked the pond, had caught numerous lunkers there over the years, including one that tipped the scales at nearly 10 pounds. I had youthful aspirations of catching not only a larger bass, but one that would rival the world record 22-pound, 4-ounce fish caught down in Georgia in 1932 by a poor farmer named George Perry — a record that stands to this day.

Largemouth bass are uniquely American, indigenous only to the North American continent, though they have been introduced into waters around the world, from Japan to Australia and Cuba to Brazil. According to the recently published book A Guide to North Carolina’s Freshwater Fishes, largemouth bass are native to every river drainage in the state, except for the New River. Over the years, they have been stocked into nearly every golf course pond, farm pond and manmade lake across the state.

In 1802, French naturalist and politician Comte de Lacépéde bestowed the scientific name Micropterus salmoides upon the largemouth bass, mistakenly believing that the fish was a type of trout or salmon. Ichthyologists today recognize that the largemouth bass is actually a type of sunfish, closely related to bluegills. Despite the misnomer, the Latin name of the largemouth remains.

In the years following its formal description, largemouth bass were considered inferior fish by hoity-toity “sportsmen” of the era, most of whom preferred casting lines toward more upper-class finned quarry like trout. The winds started to change when James Henshall wrote The Book of Black Bass in 1881, an immensely popular tome that espoused, for the first time, that the largemouth bass was a worthy gamefish. Soon thereafter, President Theodore Roosevelt was championing fishing for largemouths.

Today, largemouth bass are instantly recognizable by most of the general public. Fishing for them adds billions of dollars to the economy each year, more so than other gamefish. To gauge just how popular the fish has become, simply walk into any Walmart from California to Florida and count the aisles that are stocked to the brim with rods, reels and countless lures dedicated to largemouth bass fishing. It seems that nearly every week, a largemouth fishing tournament is broadcast on some sporting channel. There are Bass Proshops in virtually every large city up and down the East Coast. Country music songs are even written about them.

I never did catch my record bass. The largest one I ever pulled from that Eagle Springs farm pond weighed no more than 4 pounds, though, depending on the social situation, I might exaggerate a little.

As I have aged, largemouth bass represent so much more than just a trophy. I have come to realize that they were a gateway fish to a lifetime of curiosity about the natural world. And, like so many who have spent time casting a line with their fathers, I have also come to realize those moments are finite and I will never get them back. Every cast, every tug of the line, every sunset I spent with my old man on that pond was precious.

A bass, however, wasn’t the biggest thing I hooked at that Eagle Springs pond. Dad and I laugh about it still, though it wasn’t all that funny at the time. I was 12 years old, give or take, and as always Dad and I would make our fishing trips into a friendly competition, judged by who caught the most fish, as well as the largest.

On this particular Saturday morning, we had just pushed off from shore in our old jon boat. I had a special Rebel Minnow topwater lure, recently purchased from a local bait and tackle shop, tied to my line. The lure, as the name suggests, mimics a tiny baitfish, and possessed a pair of barbed treble hooks at either end, near the head and tail. Dad was steering the boat toward a distant cove. In my eagerness to catch the first fish, I stared out onto the open water and immediately slung my rod far back over my shoulder. I belatedly heard Dad shout “No!” as I quickly followed through with my cast.

For a brief instant, there was a hard pull on the line, and then it suddenly snapped. Puzzled, I turned back toward Dad. To my horror, I saw the Rebel Minnow dangling down between my father’s eyes and resting on the bridge of his nose, a pair of hooks deeply embedded in his forehead. A droplet of blood trickled down over his brow and onto his shirt.

Panicked, I muttered a few choice words and apologized profusely over and over. Dad simply pointed the boat back toward shore. We got out of the water and walked up toward his old Ford pickup parked nearby. Despite me not having a driver’s license and barely being tall enough to reach the gas pedal, Dad handed me the keys and told me to drive over to his friend’s house on the opposite side of the pond.

At the time my father still smoked cigarettes — Marlboro Reds — and he calmly reached into the glove compartment, pulled one out, and lit it. Dad said no words at all. He simply took a few long drags off the cigarette as the fishing lure continued to dangle from his head, occasionally bouncing up and down with each pothole in the dirt road.

In what seemed like an eternity, but in actuality was just a few minutes, I pulled up to his friend’s house. Dad got out and rang the doorbell. I will never forget how all the color drained from his friend’s face when he saw that fishing lure stuck in Dad’s head. He quickly loaded Dad into his car and rushed him straight to the hospital. After a local anesthetic, a couple of stitches and a tetanus shot, Dad was as good as new. No scars at all. Well, at least physically.

Before leaving for the emergency room, Dad insisted I stay at the pond and continue fishing until they got back. I asked him what I should do while he was gone.

“Practice, son,” Dad responded. “Practice.”

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Birdies, Eagles and Fox Squirrels, Oh My!

High-class habitat for our largest tree squirrel

Story and Photographs by Todd Pusser

I was out of the country last June when the U.S. Open rolled into town. With limited internet access, I was unable to follow the championship’s progress. It was only when I returned home in July that I learned Bryson DeChambeau had won.

Not being on any social media platforms, I also missed some of the viral videos posted during the Open — by professional golfers and spectators alike — of the Sandhills’ unique fox squirrels. Judging by the number of stories produced by various media outlets, it seems like the visitors from out of town were not familiar with our local bushy-tailed rodents. Professional golfer Min Woo Lee’s video of a curious fox squirrel approaching his caddie in the middle of a fairway on the famed No. 2 course drew over 300,000 views and was even mentioned by Golf Digest magazine. “Hello Pinehurst. What is this animal?” Lee asks in the video. “Is it a skunk, or a raccoon, or a squirrel?”

It’s easy to understand his confusion. After all, Lee hails from Australia, a continent that is packed full of animal oddities — the platypus and the bilby (Google it, they are adorable) to name two — but has no native squirrels. Nada. Zilch. So it’s easy to imagine Lee’s initial reaction upon seeing an animal with white ears, a white nose, black face and a long bushy tail for the first time. Nearly the size of a housecat, fox squirrels are the largest tree squirrel in North America.

When the inquisitive squirrel approached Lee, he quickly held his club at arm’s length and exclaimed, “Back up brother! Back up!”

Tee it up on any of the local golf courses and chances are you will see a fox squirrel at some point during your round. They are as much a part of the Sandhills landscape as pine trees and blue skies.

Though North Carolina never has listed the species as endangered or threatened, fox squirrels have always been considered uncommon. Throughout the southeastern United States, fox squirrels are strongly associated with the longleaf pine tree. Their large body size gives them a competitive advantage over their smaller cousins, the highly adaptable grey squirrel, enabling them to rip open the large, calorie-rich pine cones of the longleaf. Vast longleaf forests once stretched from southern Virginia down to Florida and along the Gulf Coast to east Texas. Today, over 90 percent of those forests have disappeared, having been converted into everything from agricultural fields to housing developments. The resulting loss of longleaf caused severe population declines to animals that depended on that ecosystem for survival, fox squirrels included.

When I was growing up in Moore County, you would occasionally encounter a fox squirrel here or there. You might spy one sprinting across a backroad around West End or shredding a pine cone on the grounds of Sandhills Community College. We even had them visit our yard periodically in Eagle Springs. But if you really wanted to guarantee seeing one, all you had to do was head to the links.

Throughout my teenage years, my father and I played golf most weekends, wherever we could get a late afternoon tee time (he worked most weekend mornings) and the best rates. No matter where we played, Seven Lakes, Whispering Pines, Foxfire, Deercroft or Pinebluff, I would see fox squirrels. They were always the highlight of my day — well, except for the time I holed that 120-yard shot from the fairway for an eagle at Hyland Golf Club (it was Hyland Hills then), still my all-time best golfing experience. Even on our family vacations to North Myrtle Beach, I would occasionally see fox squirrels loping across golf courses with their distinctive bounding gait.

Fox squirrels are denizens of open forest canopies that are free of dense underbrush, which historically in a longleaf pine ecosystem was the result of frequent fire. Golf courses mimic those old-timey pine forests, in a roundabout way, with their park-like landscapes and abundance of food and nesting trees favored by the multi-hued squirrels. A number of scientific studies have even shown that golf courses may hold the key to survival for fox squirrels in parts of the Southeast, especially in urban areas.

As an example, I recently found myself at Innisbrook Golf Resort, just north of Tampa, Florida, visiting family and friends. The property’s four golf courses are surrounded by a sea of humanity, in the form of  never-ending strip malls, hotels and restaurants. Yet, fox squirrels were thriving in surprisingly high numbers along the manicured fairways bordered by huge pines and oaks. I even saw one sneaky squirrel steal a granola bar from the golf cart of an unsuspecting golfer who was up on the green putting for birdie.

As photography started to become an integral part of my career, one of the first subjects I set out to photograph were fox squirrels. Late Pinehurst resident and golf aficionado Parker Hall was kind enough to help my endeavors, arranging access to the Country Club of North Carolina and providing me with a golf cart to lug around my heavy gear. Over the course of two winter afternoons, I was able to greatly expand my fox squirrel portfolio. Up until that point, I had never seen so many fox squirrels in such a small area.

My last golf course fox squirrel encounter happened over the Christmas holidays. I was visiting my folks for a few days and found myself driving north along Hoffman Road near Foxfire Village. Late one morning on a straight stretch bordering one of the golf club’s fairways, a solid black fox squirrel, with bright white paws and ears, stepped out onto the asphalt. I came to a complete stop, allowing the beautiful mammal to pass safely across the highway into a patch of nearby pines. Watching its long, flowing black tail disappear into the forest, I was reminded of a life lesson instilled in me at a young age: Always be respectful of the locals.

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Sunny with a Chance of Murmurations

The amazing spectacle of blackbird flocks in eastern North Carolina

Story and Photographs by Todd Pusser

A cold, frosty morning gives way to bright blue skies over rural Tyrell County. Vast agricultural fields, interspersed here and there with patches of dense forest, border the dusty backroad. This region, just west of Lake Phelps, North Carolina’s second largest natural lake, is the winter home to an incredible wildlife spectacle.

The road continues straight as an arrow for miles and miles, providing clear, unobstructed views across freshly plowed fields. Far up ahead, above the edge of an immense soybean field, I spy what looks like a plume of black smoke rising up from the ground high into the Carolina blue sky. As I drive closer, the plume morphs into a pulsating cloud that suddenly splits in half, as if cut by an invisible ax, only to rejoin a few seconds later. The cloud rapidly changes shape again, this time looking like a massive black beachball dancing above the horizon. A few seconds later, it transforms into a thin-waisted hourglass. Then, a tornado-like funnel.

I pull off the shoulder of the road and hop out of the car with a pair of binoculars in hand. The amorphous cloud soon reveals its true identity: an immense flock of blackbirds twisting and turning together in perfectly coordinated movements. Scientists describe such behavior as a murmuration. I describe it as jaw-dropping.

Soon, the flock passes directly overhead. The birds’ high-pitched chirps, combined with the sound of thousands of wings flapping together in unison, is almost deafening. For nearly a full minute, the flock flies by uninterrupted and settles into a row of leafless trees on the opposite side of the road. There, they perch and begin to preen their feathers. The bare branches of the trees look as if they are draped in thousands of black Christmas ornaments.

The pause in the aerial acrobatics allows me the opportunity to examine the flock in more detail. Staring through my binos, I note that the vast majority are red-winged blackbirds, a beautiful species in which the males sport jet-black bodies and bright red shoulder patches that glow like campfire embers under the afternoon sun. Scattered here and there among the blackbirds are hundreds of common grackles and brown-headed cowbirds.

Before long, the birds take off from the trees, cross back over the road and land in the middle of the field, where they begin to forage for an afternoon snack. This is the moment I have been waiting for. I pull out my tripod from the back of the car, and grab my camera and telephoto lens.

More and more birds settle down into the field. Soon the ground looks like it is covered by a living black carpet. Experience has taught me that this many birds together in one place will not go unnoticed for long. Hungry eyes will be watching this all-you-can eat buffet.

As if on cue, the arching flight of a northern harrier appears over an irrigation ditch running along the far side of the field. With rapid wingbeats, the hawk suddenly dives toward the ground, near the edge of the flock. Instantly, thousands and thousands of birds launch simultaneously into the air, arching high above the horizon. A new murmuration has formed.

It rolls across the field like a giant black tidal wave. I marvel how each individual bird can instantly change direction to match its closest neighbor. Essentially, a murmuration acts as a single giant superorganism. Scientists have applied all sorts of fancy logarithms and computer modeling to help explain the mechanics of murmurations. Despite their best efforts, the intricacies of such vast coordinated movements of birds remain something of a mystery.

However, one fact is clear. A whirling mass of blackbirds can easily confuse a predator like the northern harrier. And if by chance a predator is successful in procuring a meal, the odds against one particular bird being the victim, out of tens of thousands, is small. There is safety in numbers.

Murmurations in coastal Carolina are often due to the presence of an aerial predator. Over the years, I have witnessed peregrine falcons, merlins, Cooper’s hawks, sharp-shinned hawks and northern harriers all pursuing the vast flocks of blackbirds. Once, I watched a northern harrier successfully knock a red-winged blackbird to the ground. As it stood over the bird, picking feathers off its breast, a bald eagle suddenly swooped in and chased the harrier away, claiming the blackbird as its own prize.

On this occasion, the northern harrier is less successful. As the murmuration suddenly pivots, the harrier falls behind.

Continuing to careen and pirouette across the sky, the avian ballet moves farther away and disappears across the far side of the field, leaving me standing alone. All that remains are a few feathers scattered here and there on the ground, the only clues left behind by one of nature’s most amazing shows.

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The Fly in Wasp’s Clothing

The best costumes are made by Mother Nature

Story and Photographs by Todd Pusser

Staring through a macro lens at the critter resting in the center of my photo tent, I have to constantly remind myself that I am not going to get stung. With large eyes and striking black and yellow markings, it looks for all the world like a wasp — a yellowjacket, to be more precise. Only when it rubs its forelimbs over its eyes does it begin to reveal its true identity. It is a rarely observed type of hover fly and a perfect doppelganger for the venomous wasp.

The day before, Floyd Williams, a retired ranger from Merchants Millpond State Park with a keen naturalist’s eye, captured the fly in his yard in Gates County. Well aware of my interest in unusual animals, he phoned to inform me of his prize, the Sphecomyia vittata. Not being well-versed in the scientific names of flies, a quick Google search revealed a much more manageable common name, the long-horned yellowjacket fly.

Like most people, I have never given flies much thought, other than when I am trying to shoo one out the car window or when I slap a deer fly taking a nibble from the back of my neck. Aside from politicians, and perhaps the Duke men’s basketball team, flies are among the most detested of all living things.

Yet for all the public apathy, flies are vital components of a healthy ecosystem. Need something to break down that pile of dog poop in the backyard? There’s a fly for that. Need something to pollinate those bright flowers in the garden? There’s a fly for that. How about ridding insect pests that raid those same gardens? You guessed it. There’s a fly for that. Sporting an infinite array of shapes and sizes, flies provide a wealth of underappreciated environmental services.

As I fiddle with my exposure, the hover fly begins to slowly walk across the floor of the photo tent. Reaching inside, I gently prod the fly with a toothpick, in an effort to move it to the center of the tent, back into camera range. Upon feeling the nudge to its abdomen, the fly suddenly lets out a sharp and unexpected buzz. I marvel. Not only does this fly look like a yellowjacket, it sounds like one too! The buzz only adds to the illusion. As far as mimics go, this one takes the top prize.

Flies of every kind are eaten by a plethora of animals. Spiders, birds, lizards, small mammals, even wasps relish a juicy fly. If one is going to fly about out in the open, during daylight hours, as hover flies (aka flower flies) do, it pays to look like something unappetizing, or better yet, dangerous.

Defenseless organisms that masquerade as dangerous ones employ an evolutionary survival strategy that biologists refer to as Batesian mimicry. Named for the Victorian naturalist Henry Walter Bates, who spent years trouncing around the forests of the Amazon and first discovered the natural phenomenon, this form of mimicry is surprisingly common. Most of the 6,300 or so species of hover flies found around the world bear a striking resemblance to wasps and bees.

Finishing up my session, I take the photo tent outside and open the side panel. With the toothpick, I gently nudge the wings of the hover fly, coaxing it to take off. In a flash, the fly zips out of the photo tent and lands a few yards away on the purple flowers of a backyard butterfly bush, perhaps needing a refreshing sip of nectar after its glamour shots. A five-lined skink, lounging on the railing of our deck, next to the flowers, pays it no mind. Nor does a cardinal singing nearby.

Later, scrolling through the photos on my computer screen, I find myself full of childlike wonder, once again marveling at the extraordinary resemblance of the hover fly to a yellowjacket. Even zooming in on the details of the legs, antennae and body, I find it difficult to establish that it is indeed a fly.

The optical illusion serves to drive home an important lesson: One need not travel to some distant or remote tropical jungle to discover remarkable wonders in nature. The wild right outside the front door is just as full of extraordinary creatures, if one only stops and takes the time to look.  PS

Naturalist and photographer Todd Pusser grew up in Eagle Springs. He works to document the extraordinary diversity of life both near and far. His images can be found at www.ToddPusser.com.

Yellowjacket
Long-horned yellowjacket fly

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Something in the Water

Diving with sand tiger sharks off the North Carolina coast

Story and Photographs by Todd Pusser

For nearly five minutes, I have been hovering motionlessly off the bow of the Hyde, some 60 feet below the ocean’s surface, staring out into the smoky, blue-gray water. Built in 1945 during the final days of World War II, the Hyde was one of the few ocean dredges outfitted with bullet-resistant steel and large guns. Once it was decommissioned, the North Carolina Division of Marine Fisheries intentionally sunk the ship 18 miles off the coast of Wilmington in 1988 to provide recreational opportunities for fisherman and scuba divers. The Hyde now rests upright on a vast, flat, sandy bottom and is a haven for marine life.

Exhaling into my regulator, I spy a large, dark shape, near the edge of my vision, approaching through a dense school of baitfish. On it swims, ever closer, revealing more of its distinctive features. I note the golden-brown sheen of its skin, sprinkled here and there with black spots. An arched back tapers from a wide dorsal fin down to a narrow snout. On the underside of that snout is a mouth filled with large exposed recurved teeth; an imposing maul that makes the species extremely popular attractions in zoos and aquariums.

Raising my camera up to my face mask, I frame the sand tiger shark in my viewfinder and press the shutter. The shark, 8 feet long, swims closer still, mouth slightly agape. Finally, an arm’s length away, the sand tiger veers to my right and swims slowly by, completely ignoring me. With a few gentle thrusts of its tail, the shark disappears into the blue.

Since the dawn of civilization, humans have been fascinated by sharks. Their likeness features on Phoenician pottery dating back to 3,000 B.C. Aristotle wrote about them, as did Pliny the Elder, of ancient Rome. Many cultures even viewed sharks as deities. However, fascination soon gave way to fear. A vase, discovered in 725 B.C. in Ischia, Italy, depicts a shark-like fish attacking a man. The fear of being eaten alive has persisted through the centuries, eventually culminating in the 1975 movie Jaws. So strong is this fear, it is without parallel, even in a world filled with nuclear weapons and mass shootings.

Sharks have been in existence for a very long time, swimming ocean waters some 200 million years before the dinosaurs walked the Earth. Over 540 species of sharks are currently recognized by scientists. With each passing year, new species are continually being described.

In his 2003 book Sharks, Rays, and Skates of the Carolinas, the late marine biologist Frank Schwartz of the University of North Carolina Marine Sciences Institute, in Morehead City, documented 56 species of sharks swimming our state’s waters. Of the sand tiger shark, he wrote, “Common year-round in the Carolinas, especially July-November in shallow shelf waters.” Their presence in the shallow waters off North Carolina has made the state a mecca for recreational scuba divers and underwater photographers. Believe it or not, people willing to pay good money, flock here from all over the world for the chance to swim with these predators in the wild. North Carolina is one of just a handful of spots anywhere on the planet where divers can safely observe large sharks in their natural environment without the need for metal cages or the use of bait in the water.

Despite their docile demeanor, sand tiger sharks, like all large predators, are capable of inflicting a serious bite, and should be treated with respect. Consider, as well, an interesting tidbit about their unusual reproductive biology. Female sand tiger sharks possess two uteri. Within each of these uteri, the largest embryo consumes all its siblings and any unfertilized eggs that the female produces. Talk about sibling rivalry. With no competition for food, the embryos grow to a large size for the duration of their mother’s 10-month pregnancy. Born headfirst, the pair are over a meter in length (among the largest of all sharks at birth) and come equipped with a mouth of fully functional teeth.

With air running low in my scuba tank, I swim over to the anchor line and begin my slow ascent toward the dive boat drifting overhead. Glancing down, I count at least 20 large sand tigers circling the Hyde, a testament that the moratorium on fishing for large shark species within United States waters is working. Due to the fact that female sand tiger sharks only give birth to two pups at a time, every three years, the species is especially vulnerable to overfishing.

Off to my side, a sand tiger shark, high up in the water column, turns and slowly heads in my direction. The shark casts a curious eye as it swims by just a few feet away. This time, instead of raising my camera, I stop my ascent, and simply watch, fully enjoying the moment.  PS

Naturalist and photographer Todd Pusser grew up in Eagle Springs. He works to document the extraordinary diversity of life both near and far. His images can be found at www.ToddPusser.com.