📜 EwA Week Highlights: Liverwort, Pine Borer, and Four Birds

[Mike McGlathery]

EwA Highlights January 18, 2025 Hello everyone,  Thanks for reading the January 18th edition of the EwA highlights. Harsh temperatures kept us mostly indoors as they did last week, but just like last week, there were still lots of interesting finds.  📸 One of my favorite winter naturalist activities is looking for insect signs in the forest. In forests where dead tree wood isn’t actively removed, this activity can be more fruitful. A large pine (genus Pinus) stump can be particularly fun to examine, yielding finds such as this old ribbed pine borer (Rhagium inquisitor) hibernaculum. The larvae of this beetle pupate in these shelters (which are roughly the size of a quarter), tucked snugly between the wood and bark of a tree, and then overwinter in them. You can often see traces of these shelters for years after the tree has died and lost its bark. EwA iNaturalist Record (© Bill MacIndewar · Medford, MA · Jan. 16, 2025)  You’ve already heard me tout the winter as a good time to observe hardy little photosynthesizers such as mosses and lichens. It’s also a good time to meet the mosses’ close relatives, the liverworts (division Marchantiophyta). Together, mosses and liverworts are often referred to as bryophytes (even though Bryophyta technically contains only the mosses), and they are some of the earliest lineages of land plants, without many of the specialized tissues for fluid transport that vascular plants have. Claire observed this various-leaved liverwort (Lophocolea heterophylla), with its simple, haphazardly-shaped leaves, in the Middlesex Fells. EwA iNaturalist Record (© Claire O’Neill · Stoneham, MA · Jan. 17, 2025)  There were four different bird species tied for most-observed this week: the black-capped chickadee (Poecile Atricapillus), northern cardinal (Cardinalis cardinalis), downy woodpecker (Dryobates pubescens), and hooded merganser (Lophodites cucullatus, female and male pictured here). Hooded mergansers are a bird I love to watch whenever I can, especially when they’re putting on their striking courtship displays around this time of year. EwA iNaturalist Record (© Joe MacIndewar · Melrose, MA · Jan. 11, 2024)  📊 Thanks to everyone for your great biodiversity records this week, totaling 154 observations of 96 distinct species. If you’re curious about the records from this week that have been validated by the iNat community so far, you can find them » here. 🏆 Running tally: To date, we have recorded 223,158 observations of 12,152 distinct species! Check out our EwA umbrella project, see the details per site/observer, and more » here. 📅 EwA Upcoming Public Events Ewa Field Events » Check the EwA Winter [ Event details and registration » ] Don’t miss some great opportunities to follow the rhythm of the season in our local habitats and in the local wildlife! Space is limited for all our field events. Wildlife ethics is important to us and we seek to avoid putting the pressure on natural habitats which large gatherings unavoidably do. We are asking our audience to register-and-commit (or cancel when you know you can’t come) to avoid no-shows. EwA Fieldwork (and Resources) It’s a great time to join our monitoring programs. Check EwA’s Volunteer Program Calendar 📅  to know when things happen. And if a session is of interest to you, don’t hesitate to reach out to get the rendezvous location. 📅 EwA Sites Map | 🌱 Site Protocols and Guides · Field Rosters · Field Notes » All here! | ℹ️ More about EwA’s Citizen Science Program » Here ❓ Do you have any questions? Don’t be shy. Just email me or reply to this thread.  That’s all for this week—hope you have a good one! -Mike