The Early Bird

American robins usher in spring

By susA n CA mPBell

It is early spring in central North Carolina and few migrants are this far north, let alone back and ready to breed. Flocks of American robins have been evident all winter, feasting on dogwoods, hollies and other berryladen shrubs. But now they are less interested in eating and ready to start a new family. They are, indeed, the “early birds.”

American robins are found throughout most of the United States and Canada. They are one of the most familiar birds on the continent. In winter, thousands from across Canada and the northern tier of states move southward, not as a response to the drop in temperatures but in search of food. Although robins are insectivorous during the warmer months, they become frugivorous in winter. Flocks of thousands are known to forage and roost together here in the Southeast.

Both male and female robins have long black legs, orangey-red breasts and dark gray backs. Males, however, have a darker head and more colorful breasts. Robins use their thin, yellow bills to probe the vegetation and soft ground for invertebrates in the warmer months. Spiders and caterpillars are common prey as well. These birds use both sight and sound to locate prey. It is not unusual to see a robin standing still and then cocking its head as the bird zeroes in on a potential food item just under the soil surface.

Here in our area, come March, male robins return to the territories they have defended in past summers. In bright, fresh plumage, they will sing most of the day from the tops of trees and other elevated perches, attempting to attract a mate. Their repeated choruses of “cheer-ee-o, cheeree-up” echo from lowland mixed woodlands to high elevation evergreen forests as well as open parklands in between. Females will accept a male for the season, but once summer draws to a close, so does the pair bond.

Females are the ones who select a nest site and build the nest. Suitable locations are typically on a branch lower in the canopy and support a hefty, open cup nest. Twigs and rootlets are gathered and then reinforced with mud, often the soft castings of the very earthworms they love to eat. The nest will then be lined with fine grasses before the female robin lays three to five light blue eggs. Constant incubation by the mother robin takes about two weeks, followed by two more weeks of feeding by both parents before the young fledge. Robins can potentially raise four broods in a season — although rarely do all nestlings survive. And fewer yet (about 25 percent) will make it through their first year, to breeding age.

Surviving young of the year will wander, often with siblings or a parent, until late summer, when they will flock up with other local birds. Small groups in North Carolina may move farther south if winter food here is scarce or if competition with larger northern flocks is too great. But not long after the New Year dawns, the same birds will be on the way back. Increasing day length triggers their return journey. And thus, the cycle will begin anew. PS

stoRy A nd P hotogRAPhs By todd P usseR

Theyear was 1860, and an industrious biologist was busy conducting experiments on a strange carnivorous plant in his backyard greenhouse in Downe, England. Plants that trapped and fed on other living organisms flamed the imaginations of 18th century biologists and the general public alike. Having traveled the world and written about many of its natural wonders, the biologist had recently become enthralled with a carnivorous sundew that grew in a forest near his home. He questioned how such a plant came to rely on the tissues of insects captured within its sticky tentacles for sustenance.

What began as a simple scientific hypothesis quickly blossomed into an obsession. When a friend, Dr. Joseph Hooker, director of the worldfamous Kew Gardens, provided him with another botanical bestiary for study, his obsession became all-consuming.

The plant in question had been discovered 100 years before in the piney woods near Wilmington, North Carolina. The Colonial governor of the Tarheel state at that time, Arthur Dobbs, penned its first description in 1759 and marveled how the “great wonder of the vegetable world” possessed the ability to catch a fly between its modified leaves, like a spring trap. Several years later, that vegetable wonder became known as the Venus flytrap.

And the biologist who was working diligently trying to understand the mechanics of the flytrap’s carnivorous behavior in that backyard greenhouse? His name was Charles Darwin.

Lying flat on my belly, beneath towering pines and the brilliant blue sky of a humid August afternoon, I couldn’t help but think of

Darwin as I closely examined a small grasshopper struggling within the vise-like grip of a large flytrap. With each twitch of the leg, the flytrap pressed its toothy green leaves more tightly around the struggling insect.

The ambient air temperature was somewhere north of ridiculous. Wiping sweat from my brow, I intently focused my camera lens on the miniature drama unfolding down on the forest floor. Grasshoppers had been particularly abundant that day, with hundreds of young nymphs hopping about my feet as I carefully walked across a Brunswick County pine savannah, searching for orchids to photograph. Flytraps had not been on my radar, but when I noticed the botanical carnivory playing out beneath a golden clump of wiregrass, I couldn’t resist snapping a few frames.

The young grasshopper finally stopped struggling, seemingly resigned to its fate. Magnified many times larger by the optics of my macro lens, the fanged snarl that clamped tightly around the doomed insect instantly reminded me of Audrey, the sentient man-eating plant from 1986’s musical/ horror/comedy Little Shop of Horrors, a movie whose lead character design was inspired by the very plant I was currently photographing. It would take days for the flytrap to produce enough enzymes to fully digest this large meal.

It was likely Charles Darwin’s father, Erasmus, who planted the seed, so to speak, for his son’s obsession with carnivorous plants. The elder Darwin had examined, firsthand, the workings of Venus flytraps, not long after the species had been described. Writing in a 1789 poem titled The Botanic Garden, he described how the plant’s leaves possessed “a wonderful contrivance to prevent depredations of insects,” later elaborating “that when an insect creeps upon them, they fold up, and crush or pierce it to death.”

Decades later, his son would place small pieces of meat and drops of sugar water on a flytrap and eventually discover that it took a stimulation of two hair-like structures, nestled on the interior lobes of its leaves, within 20 seconds of each other, to trigger the closing of the trap.

Growing in acidic, nutrient-poor soils where other plants struggle to survive, Venus flytraps are found only within a 100mile radius of Wilmington, North Carolina, and nowhere else on the planet. The reasons for this extreme limited distribution are not known. What is more certain is the fact that these charismatic perennials are becoming more and more rare across the landscape. In North Carolina, Venus flytraps once grew naturally in 20 counties. Today, they are found in just 12. The primary reason for their decline is habitat loss. That portion of the state is rapidly being converted into housing developments, fast-food restaurants and strip malls. Despite carrying a felony offense, poaching also contributes to the flytrap’s demise.

Nevertheless, where populations of the plant persist, their numbers can be surprisingly high. Years back, I had the unique opportunity to visit one such spot deep in the heart of Fort Bragg. Accompanied by a group of biologists and munitions specialists with the United States Army, I was able to examine a sloping hillside literally carpeted with hundreds upon hundreds of flytraps. The plants thrived there due in large part to the persistent fires caused by the frequent bombing of the land by the military.

In 1875, Charles Darwin published his decades-long research on the Venus flytrap and other carnivorous plants in a book titled Insectivorous Plants. Though the volume did not shake the foundations of scientific thought the way his earlier book The Origin of the Species had, it did serve as a template for future studies on carnivorous plants. In the chapter describing the flytrap, the normally reserved biologist and progenitor of the scientific theory survival of the fittest declared the plant “one of the most wonderful in the world.”

Back in the Brunswick County pine forest, I get up off the ground with camera in hand. Flipping through the images on the LCD, I pause at a close-up of a green toothy maw wrapped around the body of the tiny grasshopper and am instantly filled with childlike wonder of this botanical carnivore. I smile and shake my head, trying in vain to process how such a plant evolved. A Venus flytrap is indeed the most wonderful plant in the world. 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.

April 16 • 3 pm

A Forest Unfolding

This magical fusion of music and literature exploring the relations among people and trees will be performed by a chamber ensemble of 8 musicians — voice, strings, harp, wind, and piano — including members of the renowned Ciompi Quartet.

Selected prose passages and poems will be narrated by its co-creator Richard Powers, author of the Pulitzer Prize-winning novel

The Overstory

This event will be held at Emmanuel Episcopal Church 350 E. Massachusetts Ave., Southern Pines with a reception immediately following at Weymouth Center, 555 E. Connecticut, Southern Pines

Members/Non-Members: $25/$35

Visit: weymouthcenter.org

Promoted in partnership with The Country Bookshop. Sponsored by Penick Village and other individual donors.