Virginia rail (Rallus limicola)

BioBlitz is my favorite day of the year, better than Christmas and my birthday and almost every vacation trip. And it’s coming up again on June 7 and 8. If you’ve never been, make a plan to be there; and if you’ve been even once before, you know the fun of spending the day with 100+ naturalists counting every living creature they can find.

I’m a birder, and my official role at BioBlitz is to count bird species. I’ll be scouring the fields and forests and scanning the shorelines looking to tally as many birds as I can on Friday afternoon – and because I’m competitive about it, I want to be the first to see everything. I’ll also be hunting for owls in the middle of the night and, after too few hours of sleep, up again before dawn to listen for the early-rising songbirds.

But an intense day of birding isn’t why I like BioBlitz so much. What is especially exciting is the opportunity to watch and learn from so many other naturalists. I love watching the small mammal team setting their box traps in hopes to finding as many mice and voles and shrews and other critters as they can, then heading over to whatever body of water is available to see the fish people use their electro-fishing gear to tally aquatic species. That’s about when the herp team returns from their first forays in search of frogs and snakes and salamanders and the like, and they usually bring back a few live creatures for the rest of us to observe. My very first sighting of a milk snake in Rhode Island happened just that way.

Better than that, though, is the nightlife at BioBlitz. No, there is no music and dancing – well, there is occasional dancing in celebration of a great observation, but that’s not what I mean. BioBlitz nightlife starts off with the bat guys setting mist nets at dusk to capture local bats, followed by the bug guys setting up their illuminated traps to capture beetles and other flying insects that are attracted to lights. But if you do nothing else at BioBlitz, make sure you stay up late enough to hang out with the mothman, who puts up a white sheet in the woods and shines bright lights on it to attract moths. Most people think moths pale in comparison to butterflies, but that’s only true if you haven’t spent a night at BioBlitz watching the dozens of species of intricately patterned moths arrive to be counted.

Saturday morning always brings out the dragonfly hunters and the bee team and the mushroomers and the plant people by the dozens. That’s also a great time to hang out at Science Central to watch the tally rise and to look over the shoulders of those staring through microscopes to note the identifying characteristics of a wide range of invertebrates that most of us have never heard of before, let alone seen. It’s an amazing education to just watch and listen to the action, even if you don’t actually count anything yourself.

This year’s BioBlitz is at Canonchet Farm in Narragansett, a setting that has a great mix of terrestrial and marine habitats. It’s going to be a wildlife party that you’re not going to want to miss.

Registration (NOW OPEN):
…with Friday catered dinner and Saturday continental breakfast: $20 RINHS members, $30 non-members
…with no meals: $10 RINHS members, $15 non-members
…latest in the famous RI BioBlitz t-shirt series, this time featuring featuring an illustration of smooth cordgrass (Spartina alterniflora), saltmarsh sparrow (Ammodramus caudacutus), and saltmeadow cordgrass (Spartina patens): $14

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All participants will receive a map, bioblitz instructions, safety notices when they check in. All participants will be required to sign a liability waiver and photo/film release upon check-in at the site.

Sympetrum sp. (?rubicundulum) Ruby Meadowhawk, Wakefield, RI

by David W. Gregg, Ph.D., Executive Director, RINHS

One goal of the Natural History Survey is to support aspiring naturalists to develop their skills, to help them access tools they need to pursue whatever it is they want to, literally, pursue. To that end we determined to feature reviews of important new field guides and reference books. We began with a review of Aaron M. Ellison, et al’s Field Guide to the Ants of New England by RINHS member David Lubertazzi. Now we continue with my response to Dennis R. Paulson’s Dragonflies and Damselflies of the East.

First a disclaimer: There are some really great odonate specialists in our region, in fact one of the best, Ginger Brown, was formerly a scientist at RINHS. Though I’ve worked as a lackey on a couple of odonate projects, I’m an insect generalist not one of those odonate specialists. But if you’re one of those experts, you’ve probably already made up your mind about this book and you don’t need my 2 cents worth. If you’re interested in trying your hand at the Odonata and wondering which guide to invest in then maybe these notes will be of some assistance.

This is definitely the best available comprehensive odonate guide for eastern North America. Advantages over Sidney W. Dunkle’s Dragonflies Through Binoculars (Oxford University Press USA, 2000) include: the damselflies (for a start), plus MUCH better photos, detail photos and line drawings where helpful to illustrate key features, more species-to-species comparisons in both photos, text, and line art to help with difficult IDs, and more accessible and useful natural historical information on each species, often very helpful in determining species.

I really liked the introductory section. It is illustrated using the same high quality work found throughout the book and the anatomical illustrations are just great. I especially like the section on suggestions for future research. It’s great to see such an accomplished naturalist being so encouraging of beginners and non-professionals.

I can’t make up my mind about the page layout. On the one hand, the species are consistently laid out, each with the same sections: Description, Identification, Natural History, Habitat, Flight Season, and Distribution. Each species account starts with a bar color-coded to the genus to draw your eye to the name (common name first, then scientific name in italics followed by measurements in mm). Also a range map and most have both male and female illustrated with large, bright, sharp, well oriented photos. The repetitive structure makes it relatively easy to jump around comparing the same information on each of two or more species that you’re contemplating for an ID. On the other hand, putting so much information and so many pictures into the species accounts means that there are rarely more than two species on any one two-page spread and add in the color bar and short paragraph that heads each genus section and it can be a little hard to sense where you are or build up a head of speed if you’re thumbing around. Sometimes the photo for a species is the next page over from the identification text, which is too bad.

Because Ed Lam, in his Damselflies of the Northeast (Biodiversity Books, 2004), used paintings, he was able to put each species into identical poses, so when you flip through species, you know you’re moving from one to another every time you see another perpendicular display of abdomen and wing. To be fair, it is important when describing dragonflies to communicate their perching posture so you wouldn’t want to digitally wrench the photos around ala Jim Brock’s and Kenn Kaufman’s Butterflies of North America (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2006) just for the sake of order. Also, the designers made a choice to keep the book pocket sized (though at 30 mm thick that’s your call) but still retain rich species accounts. So with all that you have to suck it up on the page layout. Also, the designer clearly tried hard to come up with cues and tricks to help you stay oriented (using color bars for instance). Finally, if I used the book enough to memorize which colors went with which genera, I’d probably feel less disoriented.

I do miss the little lines and arrows that are often used in field guides to point out important features. If you are reading the description and identification text and jumping back and forth to the picture (sometimes across pages) I (at least) had to use a lot of brain power to process the technical words into visual search images then flip to the picture, find the right location, and finally see what the author was talking about. I’m not saying that with more time it wouldn’t go more smoothly, I’m just throwing it out there as an observation.

Speaking of the text, for each species I’d say the text is pretty great throughout, great descriptions and very interesting natural historical remarks. Many of the remarks about behavior were very useful, things such as…if you see a darner doing X, it is probably such and such a species. I did find the contents of each section—description, identification, natural history, and habitat—a little confused or perhaps duplicative. For example, in the Enallagma, the hard core identification needs to be done with language about abdominal segments and humeral stripes, and all that’s in there, but many species accounts also include something such as …predominantly black above and blue below, with more blue distally. I’m sure the author wanted to encourage beginners by giving them a general character but there’s already an Enallagma genus intro paragraph that includes that information and with the species accounts are already pushing onto two pages it’s too late for that sort of generalization.

I have one knock about the illustrations. The species accounts regularly mention regional variations, which is good, but they don’t always give you detailed help in recognizing them. Now that’s fine for a general guide to an area as large as eastern North America, but then it’s too bad that so many of the illustrations are western specimens. Many species are illustrated with Arizona specimens and specimens from parts of Texas not in the guide’s ostensible coverage area. You have to give Paulson some latitude so he can give us the best available illustrations of each species but with the attention to regional variability in the text, it does leave one a little uneasy that he relies on so many photos from a distant periphery of the book’s main focus area.

The range maps are decent sized and readable, but they’re not detailed enough to help distinguish regional variability. The author does say in the intro that range maps are by their nature generalizations and the short but well-chosen biography does refer readers to regional guides where more details would be available.

This is a great book and a long overdue replacement for Dunkle. There are a few things I didn’t care for, most notably the need to jump around from page to page and all the photos from the southwest. However, I recognize that the author and designer made these decisions for good reasons. I also allow that after I became more familiar with the book these might become less noticeable. I describe them here so you get a better picture of the book and can make up your own mind if it would work for you. I’m not sure if I were headed out the door to do some ode’ing I’d grab this book over the excellent A Field Guide to the Dragonflies and Damselflies of Massachusetts, 2nd ed. by Blair Nikula, et al. (Mass. Division of Fisheries & Wildlife Natural Heritage & Endangered Species Program, 2007) and Lam’s Damselflies, but we’re lucky here to have such good regional guides and both appear in Paulson’s bibliography (though I see that it cites the 1st not the much improved 2nd ed of Nikula). If I were traveling beyond my native coastal southern New England and didn’t know the local scene or I were going to an area without a good regional guide, I’d definitely grab Paulson’s new book and it’s probably all I’d need.

Major Edgar A. Mearns, c. 1900, when he was stationed at Fort Adams in Newport, Rhode Island (from Smithsonian Institution archives, in the public domain). From a modern perspective, his spectacular mustache does not seem to be very military. However, according to Nathaniel Philbrick’s biography of George Armstrong Custer, there was a perfectly valid reason for an Army officer to sport such an adornment. In the days before SPF30 lip balm, a big mustache prevented sun-burned lips during long stretches in the hot sun, whether fighting the Sioux and Cheyenne or collecting biological specimens.

The first published list of the state’s mammalian fauna was “The Native Mammals of Rhode Island,” published in 1900 by Edgar Alexander Mearns (1856–1916), an Army surgeon who was stationed at Fort Adams in 1899 and 1900. That paper was essentially a request for information toward the goal of developing a detailed catalog of the state’s mammals, and included two simple listings—the 50 “wild mammals known to have inhabited the State of Rhode Island during the historic period” and another 32 species “whose occurrence … may be looked for with some degree of probability.” Major Mearns was a model of the self-trained amateur naturalist of the Victorian era; he had begun recording his observations of the local plants and animals around his boyhood home in New York’s Hudson Valley around the age of ten. Wherever he was posted during his Army career—Arizona, Minnesota, Texas, Virginia, Yellowstone, the Philippines (twice), or Rhode Island—he took the opportunity to study the local flora and fauna and collect thousands of specimens to ship back to the Smithsonian. While in Rhode Island, he scoured every possible source of local information, and also corresponded widely with the other naturalists and scientists working in the region at the time.

There were two Harvard-educated American naturalists of the Victorian era named “Allen” who both published major works on marine mammals. Joel Asaph Allen (1838–1921) was probably best known for his work on birds. He began his career as an assistant in ornithology at Harvard’s Museum of Comparative Zoology (MCZ), and was the first curator of birds and mammals at the American Museum of Natural History in New York. His major work on marine mammals was a monograph on North American seals, sea lions, and walrus in 1880. He also published a paper in 1908 reviewing information on North Atlantic right whales.

Glover Morrill Allen (1879–1942) was the curator of mammals at the MCZ. In 1916 he published a 216-page monograph on baleen whales—“The Whalebone Whales of New England.” (J. A. Allen wrote a review in Science of G. M. Allen’s monograph, so there are two “Allen, 1916” publications with the same title to forever confuse students doing whale research in the old literature.) Because of their high economic value, the baleen whales historically have been the focus of substantially more scientific effort than other cetaceans. Allen exhaustively reviewed seemingly everything that had been written before him about baleen whales in New England, back to the earliest accounts from the colonial era. J. A. Allen’s 1908 right whale paper was an important source for him. Many of the specific Rhode Island records included in the monograph were provided to Allen in letters from Major Mearns.

Frederick William True (1858–1914) was another well-known American biologist around the turn of the 20th Century. He worked at the Smithsonian Institution from 1881 until his death, and was the first head curator of biology at the United States National Museum. His research specialty was cetaceans (whales and dolphins). He published monographs on baleen whales in 1904 and on dolphins and porpoises in 1889. His baleen whale monograph was another important source for Allen (1916).

Returning to sources specifically dealing with Rhode Island, the second published mammal list following Mearns (1900) was published in 1952 by Roland C. Clement, then director of the Audubon Society of Rhode Island. It was simply a checklist, and included only terrestrial species. The third came a decade later in The Mammals of Rhode Island (first published in 1962, revised in 1968), by John M. Cronan and Albert Brooks. They rightly described their publication as “the first comprehensive study of the mammals of Rhode Island.” It did include marine mammals, and remains the only complete summary of information on all mammals known from the state at the time of publication. Two more checklists were published following Cronan and Brooks. The state Water Resources Board (WRB) published a checklist of all fish and wildlife species in 1976, but like Clement included only terrestrial mammals. August et al. (2001) published a checklist of the state’s mammals, including an up-to-date list of marine species, as a chapter in the vertebrate volume of RINHS’s Biota of Rhode Island series.

Turning to our neighboring states, James Ellsworth De Kay (1792–1841) published the first comprehensive review of the mammals of New York in 1842, although his treatment of the marine mammals was relatively incomplete and relied heavily on second-hand anecdotal sources. Paul F. Connor published a comprehensive review of the mammals of Long Island in 1971, including marine mammals, as one piece of a never-completed region-by-region review of the New York mammal fauna. Connor’s review summarized what was published in available historical sources, evidence from contemporary strandings and other specimens, and reliable reports from fishermen and others.

For Connecticut, Rev. J. H. Linsley (1842) published an early review of the mammals of Connecticut, including marine species. Some of his information drew on correspondence with De Kay, whose treatise was published at about the same time. A century later, G. G. Goodwin (1935) relied heavily on Linsley and De Kay for his review of Connecticut mammals.

Joseph H. Waters and C. Jean-Jacques Rivard published a review of the mammals of Massachusetts in 1962, which was intended for a non-professional audience. The marine mammal accounts were relatively sparse and seemed to be based heavily on anecdotal information. They included a table of cetacean sightings and strandings since 1940 (also extending to Rhode Island). Their primary sources besides those recent occurrences were two checklists published very recently before their summary (Grayce, 1957; Carpenter and Siegler, 1958), Allen (1916) for the baleen whales, and a very small number of recent papers in the primary literature.

One final scientist whose efforts deserve mention is Dr. James G. Mead, a friend and colleague who recently retired as marine mammal curator from the Smithsonian’s National Museum of Natural History. Besides being one of the world’s top marine mammal systematists, he was a pioneer in the use of computers for organizing and archiving biological information. He oversaw the creation of a database of marine mammal occurrence records, which included painstakingly extracting and computerizing all of the occurrences noted in publications such as Allen (1916), Cronan and Brooks (1968), Connor (1971), and many others. The resulting database has been a “goldmine” of historical distribution data.

Coming next in Marine Mammals of Rhode Island: the North Atlantic right whale

References
Allen, G. M. 1916. The whalebone whales of New England. Memoirs of the Boston Society of Natural History 8(2): 107–322.
Allen, J. A. 1880. History of North American Pinnipeds. A Monograph of the Walruses, Sea-lions, Sea-bears and Seals of North America. Miscellaneous Publications, No. 12. U.S. Geological and Geographical Survey of the Territories, Washington, DC. 785 pp.
August, P. V., R. D. Kenney, and T. P. Husband. 2001. Mammals. Pp. 60–66 in: P. V. August, R. W. Enser, and L. L. Gould, eds. Vertebrates of Rhode Island. Biota of Rhode Island, volume 2. Rhode Island Natural History Survey, Kingston, RI.
Carpenter, R. G., 2nd, and H. R. Sigler. 1958. A List of New Hampshire Mammals and Their Distribution. New Hampshire Fish and Game Dept., Concord, NH. 20 pp.
Clement, R. C. 1952. An Annotated Check-list of the Land Mammals of Rhode Island. Audubon Society of Rhode Island, Providence, RI. 8 pp.
Connor, P. F. 1971. The Mammals of Long Island, New York. Bulletin 146. New York State Museum & Science Service, Albany, NY. v + 78 pp.
Cronan, J. M., and A. Brooks. 1968. The Mammals of Rhode Island. Wildlife Pamphlet no. 6. Rhode Island Dept. of Agriculture and Conservation, Division of Fish and Game, Providence, RI. ix + 133 pp.
De Kay, J. E. 1842. Zoology of New York; or, the New York Fauna; Comprising Detailed Descriptions of All the Animals Hitherto Observed Within the State of New York; With Brief Notices of Those Occasionally Found Near Its Borders, and Accompanied by Appropriate Illustrations. Part I. Mammalia. W. & A. White and J. Visscher, Albany, NY. 188 pp.
Goodwin, G. G. 1935. The Mammals of Connecticut. Bulletin no. 53. State of Connecticut, State Geological and Natural History Survey, Hartford, CT. 221 pp. + 33 pl.
Grayce, R. L. 1957. Checklist of New England Mammals. Bulletin of the Massachusetts Audubon Society 41(1): 15-24, 26.
Mearns, E. A. 1900. The native mammals of Rhode Island. Circular of the Newport Natural History Society 1: 1–4.
True, F. W. 1889. Contributions to the Natural History of the Cetaceans; A Review of the Family Delphinidae. Bulletin no. 36. U. S. National Museum, Washington, DC. 192 pp.
True, F. W. 1904. The whalebone whales of the western North Atlantic. Smithsonian Contributions to Knowledge 33: 1–332.
Waters, J. H., and C. J.-J. Rivard. 1962. Terrestrial and Marine Mammals of Massachusetts and Other New England States. Standard-Modern Printing Co., Brockton, MA. vi + 151 pp.
WRB (Water Resources Board). 1976. Fish & Wildlife: Inventory of Rhode Island’s Fish and Wildlife. Water and Related Land Resources Planning, task no. 10. State of Rhode Island, Water Resources Board, Providence, RI. 100 pp.

Bob Kenney

Bob is a marine mammalogist and emeritus marine research scientist at the University of Rhode Island’s Graduate School of Oceanography, and a long-time board member of the Rhode Island Natural History Survey who has served a three-year term as president as well as several stints as secretary.

“Despite the high human population density in Rhode Island, we still have an amazing variety of natural habitats and wild species,” said Bob. “We will only be able to hand that rich biodiversity down to our children and grandchildren through the efforts of the Survey and other committed conservation organizations.”

In addition to his roles on the board, Bob gives numerous presentations to community groups each year on behalf of URI and the Survey on such topics as seals in Narragansett Bay, the history of whaling, right whales, owls, mushrooms in Rhode Island, and “the most disgusting fish in the sea.” He also leads nature walks for the Audubon Society of Rhode Island, serves on the board and coordinates the Wildlife Wednesdays lecture series for the Friends of Rhode Island’s National Wildlife Refuges, and was a board member of the Narrow River Preservation Association for 10 years.

“Teaching is in my genes—my grandmother and all five of her sisters were teachers,” Bob said. “Natural history education gives me the opportunity to combine my innate talents, my deep interest in the natural world, and a borderline obsessive-compulsive need to know the name of every species I encounter.”

Bob Kenney leading a nature walk. Photo by Hugh Markey.

“At the annual meeting of the Right Whale Consortium last November, our ‘report card’ for the year gave our best estimate for the surviving population—509 whales. When I started doing whale research in 1978 there were probably only 200–250, and it’s likely that there were only about 100 or so when I was born,” explained Bob. “Despite their precarious status, the population looks to be growing. There is still hope if we can solve the knotty problems of ship collisions and fishery bycatch.”

Bob’s experience as a scientist and educator provides tremendous value to the Natural History Survey, and as one of its longer-serving board members, his institutional knowledge is crucial to its ongoing success.

Bird Collector Manly Hardy

The Museum of Natural History at Roger Williams Park in Providence is celebrating the 100th anniversary of the acquisition of the Manly Hardy Bird Collection this month. Totaling over 2,000 mounted specimens, the assemblage of mainly North American birds was purchased for the City of Providence’s museum by the Audubon Society of Rhode Island in 1913. Its members felt strongly that this impressive collection would be a major asset for the then-17 year old museum. The Audubon Society itself had no place to publicly exhibit it; its lending library was already housed in the Museum.

Collections of this breadth and size were highly coveted a hundred years ago. Upon Hardy’s death in 1910, his family decided to sell the large collection. In the fall of 1912, Museum Director Harold Madison, accompanied by Rhode Island bird naturalist and collector Harold Hathaway, visited the Hardy family home in Brewer, Maine to examine the collection. Both of these men were Audubon members. Both realized the importance of the Hardy Collection and began to brainstorm how to procure it for Providence. A fund-raising campaign to buy the collection was soon underway. To add an incentive, funds were raised by the Audubon Society in memory of one of its most beloved founding members, Annie Manton Grant. Meeting the Hardy family’s deadline purchase date of October 1, 1912, the required sum of $5,000 was quickly raised.

Manly Hardy

From diminutive hummingbirds to regal raptors and California condors, the Manly Hardy Bird collection spans the full systematic range of North American species. It also includes a wide array of birds of paradise species, a favorite of Hardy’s. Due to its antiquarian vintage, the collection also includes many extinct and endangered birds, including Carolina parakeets, ivory-billed woodpeckers, California condors, and a heath hen from Martha’s Vineyard. This assemblage of so many species quickly became the core of the Museum’s bird collection, as it remains to this day. Hardy built his collection primarily by purchase and exchange, though the birds from Brewer he collected and mounted himself.

A furrier by trade, Hardy had the financial resources to build what was touted in his day as one of the largest privately held bird collections in America. It is historically significant in that many specimens bear collector names of 19th century ornithological luminaries such as Brewster, Merriam, Ridgeway and Bendire.

Today the collection continues to serve the Museum’s audience in many ways. Besides being available by appointment to researchers, it provides resources for the Museum’s many exhibits and educational programs. Whether supporting a K-12 school group workshop, a pre-school learning experience or providing specimens for an adult drawing class, the Manly Hardy Bird Collection enhances and enriches the Museum’s full suite of programs. Specimens from Hardy’s collection may be viewed in several ongoing public exhibits, including his Birds of Paradise and Wandering Albatross in the Museum’s Circle of the Sea (Oceania) gallery. A wide array of his other bird specimens are currently on view in Natural Selections, the Museum’s Victorian gallery.

For further information about the Museum, please visit its website at www.providenceri.com/museum or direct any questions to info@musnathist.com.
The Museum of Natural History and Planetarium in Roger Williams Park, Providence is open seven days a week from 10:00 a.m. until 4:00 p.m.; last admission is at 3:30.

Camponotus pennsylvanicus (carpenter ant)

By David Lubertazzi, Ph.D., Museum of Comparative Zoology, Harvard University

Most people can readily identify a foraging ant as an ant. Some even go as far as distinguishing between different kinds of ants, red versus black or small versus large. Getting beyond this rudimentary level of identification with ants has largely been impossible for most people in Rhode Island – at least up until last November. The newly published Ants of New England provides the curious naturalist their first opportunity to learn about the ants that occur in the state. Prior to the publication of this guide even ant biologists could find little more than an incomplete list of species names for the region. Identification keys, for genera that had them, were scattered in taxonomic publications, fraught with problems and left much to be desired. This book moves us from being unsure about what ants even occur in New England to having what is arguably the most usable regional ant guide ever published.

Beyond platitudes, interested naturalists might like to know what a $30 investment in The Ants of New England might return. The book covers many important ant basics in a way that is easy to read and comprehend. Coverage of topics such as how to collect ants, basic ant biology and New England ant diversity is also quite well done. In sum, all necessary context is provided for anyone that wants to prepare to explore and investigate the local ant fauna.

The bulk of the guide is dedicated to providing identification and biological details about the ant species that occur in New England. This is where this book stands head and shoulders above any other previously published ant book. It is rich with ant and habitat photographs, illustrations and occurrence maps. There are separate dichotomous keys for the six New England ant subfamilies, the 31 genera and all the species within each genus. Such keys are standard fare for many species level guides—and the keys alone are a tremendous advance regarding our understanding of our local ant species—but there is much more. There are innovative matrix keys for tricky-to-tease-apart species groups. Each species treatment includes a list of distinguishing morphological features, details about differences with similar species and an accounting of the habitats where each ant occurs. Lavish illustrations and photographs enhance all the written details. An ant guide that so richly goes beyond the standard dichotomous key format is extremely useful to amateurs and specialists alike. Armed with this guide, a hand lens, and time to spend looking for and at ants, one could become quite adept at identifying Rhode Island’s ants to genus and, for the majority of forms, to species. In identifying ants you collect you will also begin to learn about the fascinating ways that ants manage their intricate social lives.

There are a fair number of specialized morphological terms used for identification, as is the case with many identification guides. Fortunately all the terms are nicely illustrated in the back of the book. With all of the images and drawings included with the keys one can manage to identify many forms to genus without having to learn many specialized terms. Yet identifying some of the more difficult to separate species in this guide can be challenging, requires the use of a stereo-microscope, and will surely require reference to the illustrated guide to the morphological terms. Regardless, that a single book may allow the level of resolution in ant identification that this book does, represents quite an advance.

Rhode Island is the most poorly sampled for ants of all the New England states. Specialists estimate there are about 100 species that should occur here. We are only slightly more than halfway to documenting this number of species with actual collection records. With a predicted total species richness of 153 ant species for all of New England it is now possible, through more collecting, really to begin to understand where Rhode Island stands in relation to the larger regional fauna.

If you are a naturalist who spends time outdoors and are curious about ants, purchasing this guide now means you can study up while the ants are dormant. You will have all winter to prepare for your first ant collecting forays in late spring!

White winged crossbill in Rhode Island, fall 2012

Southern New England is experiencing an invasion of uncommon finches from the north this winter, and those interested in seeing these unusual birds should be on the lookout for them. These six species of birds typically spend their lives in the boreal forests of Canada and northern New England, and they only occasionally venture south when their preferred natural foods – mostly seeds of birch and pine trees — are unavailable.

Pine siskins are perhaps the most common of these birds, as they are the most regular visitors to Rhode Island in winter, though the large numbers seen in the region in November have declined to a scattered few. These small, heavily-streaked birds love thistle seed, so those with feeders built to provide thistle should have a decent chance of attracting a flock of siskins to their yard. Joining the pine siskins at the thistle feeder this year may be small numbers of common redpolls, whose rosy forehead and chest and black chin are distinctive. Redpolls are irregular visitors to Rhode Island, and scattered flocks have been observed in several areas around the state.

Evening grosbeaks have also made an appearance in southern New England this year, and they always generate considerable enthusiasm. A large gold and black bird with a giant seed-crushing beak, they were much more common visitors several decades ago, but their numbers have declined significantly of late and have been scarce in our area. When they do arrive, they often do so in sizable flocks and voraciously feed on sunflower seeds. As much as I enjoy seeing them at my feeders, they can easily double my seed budget if they stay around all winter.

Perhaps the most interesting of the invading finches this year are the red crossbills and white-winged crossbills. As their names suggest, their upper and lower mandibles cross, creating a unique tool for opening up pine cones. Here in Rhode Island, they prefer the cones of pitch pines and plantations of Japanese black pines, which are most easily found along the coast. The birds have been seen feeding in many places where these pines are abundant, especially East Beach in Charlestown, the parking lot around Scarborough Beach in Narragansett, Atlantic Avenue in Misquamicut, and around Succotash Marsh in Matunuck.

The white-winged variety has been most abundant in the area this year, but bird watchers should look at every bird they see to pick out the few red crossbills among them. Crossbills don’t typically visit feeders, so it is unlikely they will be seen gleaning seeds in your yard, but those with pines, in their yard should definitely keep an eye out for them.

Finally, and perhaps rarest of all, a flock of female and juvenile pine grosbeaks has spent nearly a month feeding on crabapple trees in Burrillville. It’s the first time since 1978 that this species has been recorded in Rhode Island. They are primarily berry-eaters at this time of year, so fruit-filled shrubs and trees should be regularly checked for this species, especially in the northern part of the state.

Be on the lookout for all of these northern invaders. They may not be back again for several years.

Red Gate Farm House, Block Is., RI

Red Gate Farm House is a restored 1890s farmhouse with a view of New Harbor and not far from town. It features 7 bedrooms (sleeps up to 14) and 5 baths, and a wrap around covered porch. September is quite possibly the most beautiful time to visit Block Island.

Your View of New Harbor

TO ENTER PRINT AND RETURN THE FORM ON THIS FLYER (PDF:330K), WITH YOUR CHECK OR CREDIT CARD INFO TO:
RINHS, PO Box 1858, Kingston, RI 02881

Whether you win the drawing or not, you’ll be a major contributor to the Natural History Survey’s work in environmental education and science. You will underwrite school kids’ exposure to nature at bioblitz. You will sponsor lectures on environmental issues of the day, such as this year’s series on different ways to measure the benefits of land conservation. You will help gather and disseminate the latest information on rare species and invasive species. You will help RINHS spread the benefits of a natural historical approach and improve environmental management across the state.

This drawing is made possible by a generous member of the RINHS Board of Directors. One entry will be made for each donation of $250 or more or for each person whose cumulative total donations to RINHS in 2012 total at least $250. Donations of $500, $750, $1,000 or more are encouraged but only one entry will be made for each individual donation. If they really wanted to, a shrewd couple or group could each give part of a larger donation and get multiple entries. RINHS staff and board members are not eligible to win. Donations must be received or post-marked by December 31, 2012. The drawing will be held on January 7, 2012. The winner is responsible for any taxes on the value of the prize. If you would like more information or have any questions about Red Gate Farm House or the rules of the drawing, contact RINHS.