Outdoors Maryland; 1605

Outdoors Maryland is made by NPT to serve all of our diverse communities and is made possible by the generous support of our members. Thank you. Coming up the beautiful new multicolored you're born dance of Maryland summertime comes to life. And friends from the underground returned to make their 17 year long. Band. It's into the forest in search of caps and step. Outdoors Maryland is produced in cooperation with the movement Department of Natural Resources. Do you know. Inspired by nature guided by science. Nuke. The earth.

You know. I guess you'd call it accidental fame and some people are accidental tourist but but I've actually become famous as a butterfly expert. He has a Ph.D. in electrical engineering and analyzes secret weapon systems for the Navy at Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Lab. But in a parallel universe unknown to many of his colleagues Richard H Smith Jr. is also Maryland's reigning expert on Lepidoptera. That's butterflies to the average Joe. Complexity. Exquisite beauty. The lure of the chase. It's been the equation for a lifelong

passion that's metamorphosed into scientific pursuit. When the Department of Natural Resources natural heritage program launched Maryland's first rare butterfly survey ever they naturally netted Dick Smith as a coordinating partner in the project. These have been trying years for researchers. Unfortunately one thing I'm finding is that the species that we thought were safe and then had been around for decades are no longer there. We have been been to several sites and we have not been able to find them. Last year we had dry conditions we thought maybe the drought was affecting our populations and modish here. So a lot of rain. It's hard to find a good day but we've been out there on good days too and we still can't find them. So we realize that some have have disappeared from. Habitats and it's going to be even more critical to find where they are appearing.

The two year survey follows early spring to late summer broods tracking colonies and habitats for 24 out of the 40 species that are state listed as rare threatened or endangered. Maryland's Eastern Shore hosts some of the state's most diverse habitats. The early spring floods are of more common species like the gorges found Kate are instead are the surest sign that the butterfly season has begun. Today Dick surveys the fringe of a pine forest with states of all ages Jim McCann project coordinator for the DNR. This ancient arid Sandridge is home to eccentric beauties. On the wish list this late April morning. The tiny state endangered frosted Elfen which actually thrives undisturbed habitat. Logging has obliged the frost of Elfen here ages ago. It was wildfire. Oriented very well. Yeah it was many years of that scene water here the fact you have a few to

get. Into is where you hear. The subtly marked elephants are so rare that sighting two or three in one day qualifies as unbridled success. This will be an exemplary sight. Frosted elephant and mid-Atlantic. The rare sighting helps ease a late morning letdown. No trace of the holy grail of Marilyn butterflies hassels hair streak last confirmed in the state nearly a century ago. Spring wings West a few weeks later at Thompson Western Region ecologist leads volunteers to choice spots in the Green Ridge Mountains of Allegheny County. In these dry rugged mountains flourished surprisingly succulent beauty. Butterflies common and not. Thrive in unlikely patches of rough terrain.

You get so removed. To have. To sort of lose their suit and oh yeah look what you think they were either they were attracted to each other or might be two males fighting. There currently this is the only place in the state you can afford so it has. Been very rich. So we like to track them and keep abreast of the status. The next day Dick Smith and a small army of volunteers join Ed and ecologist Dan feller further west in Garrett County known for high elevations deep forests. Highland bogs. Garrett is as wet as Allegheny is dry. Got Away.

Across an array of landscapes. The researchers spot butterflies beautiful species many locally common in western Maryland. When marking your books. But it's a rare day when Dick Smith sees a new butterfly. A species so recently described that the ink is not yet dry on the scientific guy. That yeah I think it's sort of rectangular with it's one of the first officially confirmed sightings in Maryland of the Appalachian Tiger Swallowtail just recognized as a new species distinct from its close cousin the eastern Tiger Swallowtail. As rain closes in. They pushed for one last stop to lush Potomac state forest. It proves worth every effort. This is the West Virginia White one of the endangered butterflies in Maryland.

It's just a vision is declining mainly because alien we've got mustard. When females lay their eggs on the garlic mustard instead of the increasingly rare plant seen here the two leaf to thwart. The larvae die. As the invasion of garlic mustard progresses. This forest remains one of Maryland's last holdouts for the fragile little West Virginia white. The saga of the West Virginia white reflects the intricacies of the butterfly's life cycle. First there's the astonishing process of metamorphosis. There you have something with just an egg and it was a little cowboy crawled in a planter chrysalis and eventually you have something that is capable of flight you know incredible. Metamorphosis is only the beginning. MANY BUTTERFLIES require completely different plants to host the caterpillar and then butterfly net during phases.

In turn these plants need their own special habitats. When you're looking for butterflies you have to be a little bit of a botanist you have to keep an eye on what the host plant or plants are and in the case are rare butterflies it's usually just one plant which makes it kind of interesting. Then you try and find nectar sources that the adults use. These aren't really called a host plant but the adult butterflies use them to feed and gain energy to carry on a life cycle. So because of that you have really specific habitats that these butterflies occur in by protecting the habitats for rare butterflies. We usually protect habitats for a whole suite of other organisms both plants and animals some of which may also be rare threaten endangered as the summer wears on. Concern grows about a rare butterfly of special interest to this region. The Baltimore checkers spot a Maryland's official state insect. Searching wetlands to the east and west. Researchers have yet to find a single Baltimore

checkers spot in the wild. Meanwhile a thin succession of more common usually more abundant butterflies emerges. But most appear weeks late. I just never remember a year any worse as far as to see in numbers or even the common things. The worst butterfly year I've ever experienced. June 24th. Baltimore checker spots are weeks overdue. DICK SMITH scours a spot check less than 24 hours ago. There's evidence of a culprit they've seen before. Deer have browse the top off the host plant. Devouring check or spotted larvae and dogs. And then. It is so difficult to find them. When you do get charged you up. Are you. Ready to go out. Thanks try again for another year or two.

Thanks. By fall the count is in. In two years colonies have been documented for only half of the 24 species surveyed. Many appeared in disturbingly low numbers like the giant swallowtail. A childhood icon for many enthusiasts. I think swallow tails are the thing that gets most young people interested in butterflies and here we caught a giant swallow tail puddling here woman from the male pack of quality leaves things are rare all Maryland they're uncommon even at this site where they're found you have to look and look. Half a day and finally we find one or two. The disappointing season for butterflies common and rarity raises as many questions as answers. Something is happening in the environment and the decline and disappearance is butterflies telling us this. It's important to maintain a watchful eye on on these little things are happening from year to year and take measures to reverse the trend if we can then

by by doing these little measures all along the way we can maintain large segments of wildlife over. You know. A period of a century or more. I can't imagine a world. Without these little winged creatures. In the spring and summer months. Many Marylanders vividly remember the summer of the seventeen year locust as a remarkable event in their lives. Maybe it was a sudden swarm of the insects during an outdoor graduation ceremony or kindergarten field trip or simply the memory of overwhelming waves of sound on a hot and lazy summer afternoon. For the seventeen year locusts or more accurately cicadas

their periodic emergence is the climax of a long unfolding drama. After nearly two decades underground the cicadas life cycle is compressed to a few weeks in the sun fraught with multiple dangers and potential catastrophe. When where and why cicadas suddenly appear our questions that have vexed the imagination of John Zion since he was a kid formerly a naturalist with the Calvert County Battle Creek cypress swamp. John is in hot pursuit of Maryland's many species of cicadas wherever and whenever they appear in Maryland. He's drafting a one of a kind state cicada map in the group of cicadas there's two different kinds there's annual cicadas that come out every year then there's also what's called periodical cicadas and they come out after long periods of time being underground they can either be 13 year 17 year what makes them interesting is not all of the 17 year

cicadas come out at the same time. Each group that comes out together is called a brood during the year that the periodical cicadas emerge. They come to the surface when the temperature and humidity is just right they come up above ground. Once it emerges it's a little tiny brown looking bug that doesn't look anything like the adult cicada but they will crawl up as high as they can get. They begin to crack out of that old skin and emerge from it. And once they're out of it that's the little tiny brown shell that you see all over the place so it would just shed like a crab or crayfish or something to that nature. Once they merge what's interesting is that they're almost totally white. It's just solid white and the only color they have to them are two black dots on the back of the head which we're guessing are supposed to represent eyes that may scare away a predator because just like a soft crab they're very vulnerable at that time because they're very very soft any insects or our bird can come and pick them off and eat them. Once they emerge out of

that old shed they hang there for a couple hours until they start to harden all the blood goes through all the veins and then it's almost like a butterfly coming out of a chrysalis or a moth coming out of a cocoon. After they have hardened they start to turn black and they can use their wings they'll either crawl up to the top of the tree or fly up to the top a tree and join the rest of the course where all the other males and females are. And even though it seems like they're here for a long time they're generally only here for about 30 to 40 days total as adults. And then they die and then all the eggs are laid they'll start to hatch the larva drop down to the ground by about August and then they burrow down into the ground attach themselves to a root with like their mouthpiece sort of like as a straw and for basically 16 some years they just suck all the juices of that root and then develop until it's time for them to emerge. So the Adult life is really very very short compared to the underground you know juvenile life. Now here's one.

Here's another one this is a 17 year periodical cicadas. You can tell that it's a male by the end of its body sort of a a c shape compared to the female who and sort of at a point because she has it over positive which is a long skinny little stick like structure that goes down her body and that's how she solves a slit into a twig and then lays the eggs. Actually I can pull one out of here and show you. Compare two of them together and you can see her body sort of ends in a point and she has this long over positive that the male does not have cicadas are perhaps most famous for their volume and both numbers and noise. You can tell that this is a male not only by his body shape but the fact that he's making a noise. If you listen you can hear him. Now they make that sound for mating purposes because since they're insects they can fly around

looking for a single mate maybe never find one. But by gathering all the males together high up in the tree tops and everyone making that call you can hear literally for miles it's a very very loud noise and they make that sound. Right behind their legs you can see those little white areas in there. That is sort of like a drum head and he's making the sound inside and that amplifies it. And one is not a whole lot of noise. You get a lot of in Montreux it's very very loud. And these are considered to be the loudest insects in the world. They make the loudest noise for decibels. Cicadas themselves are world wide but the periodical cicadas are only found in the eastern United States. There's like three species of seventeen in the north and there's four species of 13 year cicadas in the south and that's it. All the other ones in the world seem to be like one to five year cycles. It's just a tactic that they devise on how to survive. But why the 13 and 17. We do not know this survival tactic is synchronous with

some secret cycle in nature beyond human comprehension. What we can appreciate is this small niche cicadas hold in Earth's astonishing dance of diversity. And call their song the music of that celebration. It's a bright sunny day in the Catoctin Mountains. John Ella Fritz a retired federal worker leads a small group into the woods and Cunningham Falls State Park. They are hunting for a quarry that is elusive and sometimes dangerous. From slime molds to more palatable fungi. John elephants knows his wild mushrooms. He is a member of the mica logical association of Washington D.C. and he often leads the weekend forays into Maryland's wooded parks.

This year has been excellent mushroom hunting because of the plentiful summer rains. Mushrooms like wet weather. It's not uncommon for the group to find 50 different species in one of their weekend outings. Many of the mushrooms are slightly poisonous. Some even deadly. It could be the deadly gallery which is a small mushroom that contains a chemical poison that can destroy the liver. Like soft speckled jewels adorning the forest floor wild mushrooms take cover among matted leaves spring out from rotting locks and hide around trees. For John I'm afraid this is a spiritual quest. It is very easy to just be totally in the moment totally you know not worrying about anything else and just enjoying what I'm finding.

This one is a strip area through stuff I believe many of the names of the wild mushrooms are in Latin but some of the common names capture the imagination like this small black mushroom called the dead man's finger looks like or this white variety. A good edible called the bear's head 230 round there so tread it most like a frozen water. But wild mushrooms are not always what they seem. After an hour of poking under leaves buddy Kilpatrick a veteran mushroom enthusiast finds a small round mushroom called a puff ball. Looks like a puff ball. He cuts it open. Other ones have a white inside. And people have eaten before those up for man's trouble but I wouldn't advise it because people have been poisoned by this mushroom. So this is one that you don't want to eat.

With the help of field guide books these mushroom hunters can identify hundreds of different species like this resin as Polly pore so named because it's it creates drops of black resin. Or this cup fungus which when you blow on it releases a small cloud of spores. FO Yeah I just saw something I thought you might. It is going to delayed reaction that many species haven't even been named yet but there are probably 5000 in the country I would guess that a poisonous one this may be 10 to 20 or 30 percent of the really good ones the ones worth bothering with more than once are a relatively small percentage. Probably no more than five push and pull. Over these mushroom hunters foraging for wild mushrooms is part of connecting with man's ancient past of hunting and gathering records. For some the reward is a basket filled with edible mushrooms at the end of a weekend outing. But for others it's the thrill of the hunt Bruce Boyer the president of the

club is one of those. You got another target up there. Bruce teams up with John and one of the club's last outings for the season. They jointly lead a mushroom foray into a park not too far from the Chesapeake Bay. Mushrooms are key to forest ecology. They are natural recyclers helping to decompose dead wood. None of us have ever seen anything like this one before. This little shelf mushroom looks like an orange mark for Easter but it's got some different characteristics. We're going to collect it and send it to the Department of Agriculture possibly a new species possibly one that we just can't identify. They can be confusing. Most mushrooms are similar to another species especially common ones. They interbreed and sometimes we find mixtures of types that we think we know that maybe are a little different than we actually are identifying.

But it is precisely that sense of uncertainty that keeps wild mushroom hunters returning to comb the forest floors in an effort to find and analyze their elusive fragrance. Smells are very subjective. What we generally do is get together at the end of a foray spread out what we've got on a picnic table and talk about what we found. I think you'll find that most will be mysteries. Until we have a chance to sort them out sometimes we do and sometimes we don't. Could be a mind magination if they seem to have gotten darker since we picked and I'm sure they have. For these foragers of the woods the world of wild mushrooms is still an unexplored place filled with many mysteries and unexplained wonders of nature and. Lots of bugs in it. The Beatles Love these. Drop into our website at W W W daughter m p t daughter o r g

to send us your comments and suggestions. Learn more about Maryland's diverse natural beauty on our website. And in our magazine. Dno are inspired by nature guided by science outdoors Maryland is made by NPT to serve all of our diverse communities and is made possible by the generous support of our members. Thank you.