 a little intro. And I'll direct my attention. I'm going to start ignoring you, Josh, for the moment. Sure. Direct my attention to anyone else who may be watching. Hi, I'm Bill Graben with, excuse me. Can you hear me adequately, Josh? I can hear you. Right when you were saying your name, I think it blanked out on me, but everything else has been clear. Okay, good. I'm Bill Graben with your County Audubon. We're on behalf of our board, and also on behalf of Maine Audubon, of which we are a chapter, a proud chapter. We're happy to welcome you here tonight. Normally, as most of you know, we've had our programs at the Wells Reserve at Law at home, a fabulous organization, facility and property. If you're not familiar with it, we certainly encourage you to check it out. It's in Wells, Maine, 2,200 acres, miles of trails, tremendously varied habitat, a great place to go any time of year. Tonight, we're joining you via Zoom, or actually, yeah, it is Zoom, this app that we're employing. And our program tonight is entitled 23 Reasons to Go Outside. And our presenter is Josh Fecto from a local naturalist, a very dedicated and diverse naturalist. You could say he's kind of a Renaissance naturalist in that his interests are quite varied. A lot of people who are birders in Maine know him as someone who three years ago set a Maine state record for a Maine big year, which for those of you who are not familiar with it, it means an attempt to see as many species as you can within one calendar year. And Josh managed to see 317 species, which set a new record. I'm not sure if that record is still the current one, or if it has been surpassed, I'll defer it to Josh to update the status of that. But it was quite impressive. And so he's very knowledgeable about birds throughout the state, both the ones that are normally here, as well as well as ones that sometimes just show up unexpectedly. Another of his focus areas is edible plants, wild edible plants, native ones in particular. He's taught many programs and workshops on this, again, tremendously knowledgeable. And he has a blog, joshfecto.com, on which he describes and presents quite a few more than 23 reasons to go outside. We encourage you to check that out as well. And with that, Josh, it's all yours to give us some good reasons to go outside. Fantastic. Thanks, Bill. So let's, I guess I should jump and make sure I can start my sharing my presentation here. Let's see. I think I know how to do this. We're going to click this button. All right. Is that coming through for everybody? All right, probably everyone else is in mute. I don't know. Let me. All right, so here we go. So 23 reasons to go outside. My name is Josh Fecto, as Bill said, and thank you for the great introduction and thank you for all the promotion and for putting this program together. I know several of the local papers carried a little blurb about this and hopefully maybe that's how some of you found out about it. So we're just a couple minutes after seven. I know probably people might still be filtering in, but we're just going to go for it here. Click. Here we go. So first slide. I just want to run through my objectives here. First one is to show lots of photos. That should be pretty easy since I made the slideshow. And the purpose of the big purpose of the talk is to hopefully share with you some excellent search images to get your brain working in the background because sometimes you need to see things multiple times before you can recognize them for yourself. And so hopefully this presentation will open some doors for you in that way and maybe a few days or weeks or months from now. You might come upon something in your travels and say, wait a second. I think I might know what that is. So hopefully we'll plant some seeds. Two, I want to spark curiosity. A lot of us probably care a lot about birds. I know I do. And certainly, you know, for York County Audubon birds are the main story. But there's a lot of other cool stuff going on in our neighborhoods. And I'm hoping to introduce you to some of the other characters that we share this space with. So we'll give you a bit of a sampler. We won't be able to sample all the areas there are of interest, but hopefully some and some that might catch your eye. And finally, I want to save some time for questions. So we're going to aim to wrap my presentation up around eight o'clock. And if you have questions, please type them into the Q&A box, which you should find at the bottom of your screen or somewhere in your Zoom app. And Nick or Bill will be sort of curating the questions. And at the end, we will try to answer as many as we can or as I can. Alright, so let's go for it. Reason number one. So reason number one, to go outside. If you've never seen these before, these are black trumpet mushrooms. And black trumpets are just, they're just fantastic. Yes, they're edible. But even edibility aside, they're just super cool. They're these, you know, sort of hollow vase shaped mushrooms that when they pop out, and you know, depending on the year, depending on the rain, depending on the situation, they can just be prolific. And, and they're just so fun. And they can be really hard to see if you've never seen them before. And if you don't quite know what you're looking for. I say some strategies for finding black trumpets are to maybe bring some small people with you, as in children, who are lower to the ground because they have some advantages when it comes to noticing these short mushrooms that just pop up from the soil. And, you know, when you do get to meet these black trumpets, you know, give them a good smell and just enjoy these mushrooms. Now, unlike sort of traditional, a lot of typical mushrooms that you think of, they don't have gills. And they don't have, you know, they're not polypores, they don't have poor, they just have sort of these very subtle ridges on the outside of the fruiting body, where the spores are released. They're just, they're kind of a bizarre relative of chanterelles. And they're just these really cool mushrooms. So there's one shot, here's another shot of, they can be a bit more on the pale side. And part of that might just be my photo as well, making it look a little paler. But it gives you a better look at the, at the ridges on the sort of bumpy outside. There's another look, there's one really tiny one, and then a larger one. Black trumpets. Reason number two, if any of you caught the beginning when Bill and I were just talking, I said, right before, just five minutes before I came on to the Zoom call, I was hearing a barred owl calling out Sam and House. And this summer, I've been lucky enough to hear one of these guys or a couple, a couple of them, which are juvenile barred owl, barred owl. So this is actually a juvenile barred owl. This one I found because it was calling during the daytime. And they make a bizarre sound that can fool a lot of people. And I'm not really good at mimicking them, but it's like this sort of a sound, sort of a shrieking sound. It can be a little bit scary if it's really close to you. You're like, what is making that sound? Who is making that sound, as I like to say. And barred owls with their black eyes. Here's an adult barred owl, their yellow bill, and those just black eyes. Really cool. One of our resident owls and certainly have some nesting in the woods around my home. This was a couple of winters ago. I got to watch one eating snow. It just so happened I was, I was hanging out near a bird feeder. I was watching, watching, you know, chickadees and not hatches and tip mice coming to a bird feeder. And then I just happened to look up in a certain place and a barred owl was just sitting, sitting on this branch. And I was able to watch him for quite a while. And while I was watching him, he just started, started chowing down on the snow, which I thought was, was pretty interesting. It was snowing at the time and he was obviously a bit thirsty. And here's just another, another shot of an adult barred owl, obviously also in the winter. Here's reason number three. Allegheny mound ants. So in New England, as far as I know, there's only one species of ant that makes mounds of this size. So we're talking like two or three feet in diameter, can be quite sizable mounds. This is one example. Here's a spot I found in a clearing in a wooded area that had a variety of mounds, some very old and covered with moss and some fresh at different stages of, of construction, I guess. And pretty neat to see a whole collection of ant mounds. Here's one I found really close to my house this spring. And I'm not sure why I hadn't done it before, but I recommend if you can take a close look because I had never really looked at an Allegheny mound ant, but here are some. And they have this, you know, red and black body. And if you look even closer, you can see they have very cool little tails on their, on their, I'm not even sure what kind of body part, I'm not an entomologist. But anyway, I just think they're really cool. So I encourage you to take a look at them up close if you get the chance. And these guys were busy, you know, they're communal livers and they, they've got a lot of work to do. Reason number four, this is another hyper local one. So I happen to have a little stream that crosses in front of our house. And one day, I can't, I don't know when it was, maybe in February, there was all of this ice that had formed. And oh, 10 hours, probably even just five or six hours later, it was all gone. But boy, when I went out and saw this, it was magical. Actually, I think I have to give Jenny the credit for spotting these, but check out these things. They just looked like jewelry for the stream. Just and they were sort of, I can't capture them, the motion in these pictures, but you get the sense that they were swinging slightly, these, these just amazing ice formations and icicles with the stream running underneath them. Very cool. Coming right off the moss. So pay attention to ice. It can do some amazing things, although it may not always last very long. Here's reason number five. And one that if you live in Maine or in New England, in May and June, if you spend time in New England in May and June, you undoubtedly have heard this bird sing. Oven birds are very vocal, very loud warblers. They're a type of warbler that spends a lot of time on the ground. They walk around in the leaf litter and find their food that way. But the males will also perch up sometimes quite high in trees and sing very loudly. And so here's a shot of an oven bird. And another photo will be able to see his orange crown stripe, which is one of their cool features. But this is a cool thing. I've only had an opportunity to find one of these maybe once or twice. And really not when I really wasn't looking for it, but this is a nest of an oven bird. And they, I think their name is a reference to their nest, which is this dome shaped nest with a side entrance that they build on the ground out of woven grasses. And here's a close up of the nest with the eggs inside. And here's a shot of a male singing. And you can maybe just get a hint of the orange crown stripe. And here's a little better look over the, I think the crown stripe is somewhat controlled by their posture and whether they want to sort of flash it at you or not. So this guy I think was in somewhat of a more relaxed pose. So we don't get a brilliant flash of orange, but you get a good sense in this photo of the sort of chevron shaped markings on the chest. And this is just a really common, frequently heard bird teacher, teacher, teacher, teacher, teacher. Very cool. Reason number six, birch polypore. Here's another mushroom for you. And this is a really young birch polypore that has just busted its way out through the bark of a birch tree. And just imagine the force that these creatures have as they're emerging. Here's some older birch polypores, sort of a top down view. This is in the winter time on a gray birch. As far as I know, they may grow occasionally on other species, but as far as I know, they're pretty much specialists on birch trees. So if you want to find birch polypore, you've got to find birch trees first. Here's a shot from below looking up, and you can see the poor surface. So these guys also don't have gills. Instead, they have sort of an undersurface with very fine, like pinprick sized little holes where the spores come out, which is how they reproduce. So sometimes this mushroom can be quite prolific on trees. You can find many, many, many. And typically, they're going to be found on trees that are either dead or dying. Oh, and I want to say also about birch polypore is I can't talk specifically about it, but I can say that this mushroom is a well established medicinal mushroom. And of course, there are many medicinal mushrooms that are in our woods that can be utilized for a variety of issues, namely for supporting the immune system. And so if that's something of interest, you might follow up with some additional research on that topic. Reason number seven, lichens. And this is sort of like, imagine if I, reason number seven is like birds, like it's kind of a general topic. Lichens are, there's a lot of different kinds of lichens. And lichens are tricky, especially for people who are used to, you know, identifying a bird or a butterfly. That's a pretty straightforward process, identifying a tree. But identifying lichen is tricky. Resources for that are often lacking because they require often, you know, the use of a microscope or using certain chemicals to see how they react with the, with the lichen. You know, if you mix this chemical and you get a certain color that can help you identify it. It's, it's a bit tricky of a thing, but that doesn't prevent you from enjoying them and from noticing them, and from taking a close look at them. So here's a lichen that I found growing specifically on black locus trees. There's, for some reason, I find this particular, and I really don't know what kind this is. But I find it often growing on black locus trees. So they seem to have somewhat of a partnership. Here's a closer view of this lichen. And we see some of the reproductive parts, these sort of saucer-shaped darker gray. I'm not a lichenologist either, but just fascinating. And if you spend some time paying attention to tree bark, which is just one of the places where you can find lichen, you can also find lichen on the ground, on rocks, on bricks, you know, all sorts of places. But just pay attention to lichen on trees and you'll find that there are many, many kinds and many, many colors. And here's just another even closer view of this cool lichen that I, that I am particularly drawn to for some reason on these black locus trees. I just find it really, really stunning. Reason number eight, black locus flowers, speaking of black locus. So in the right season, which is pretty much going to be early June in Maine, and give or take if you're in far northern Maine, or if you're in southern New England, it might be a tad earlier, late, late May, very beginning of June, as the flowers of black locus are edible. And this is kind of maybe just a touch early, but I'm looking for flowers that are like this, or when they first open. If you wait too long, I find they get a bit too flowery tasting for me, a little strong perfumey almost. But at this stage, they're quite nice to just eat. You can like pick the whole cluster. It's almost like a cluster of grapes and obviously they don't taste sweet like grapes, but they're nice. If you've never tried them, I recommend trying to find some black locus for next year. Reason number nine, luna moths. Now this is one I wish I'd, I wish I've seen more of these in my lifetime. Hopefully I get to see some more. This is one I happen to notice going to work one day. It was just sitting on the building that I was about to walk into to start my work day, and there was a luna moth just hanging out. And this one was a little tattered. They only live for seven to 10 days as an adult, so in this form. And this one maybe, I'm not sure what day it was, probably wasn't his first or second day based on the wear of this creature. So maybe getting towards the end of his lifespan, but such a fascinating creature. And these sort of false eyes that I think are there to sort of baffle predators, that sort of looks like a creature with eyes looking at you. It's pretty fantastic. Here's a close up of him sort of looking right at you. Although I'm not really sure where his eyes are, but pretty amazing creature. Reason number 10, eastern coyotes. So coyotes might scare some people, but they're also really cool. We've got wild canines living in and amongst our neighborhoods. This is one that I spotted. I was driving to work, and saw one near the edge of the road, and he ended up crossing the road right in front of me, and I was able to snap this picture. On a different day, Jenny was with me. We were driving somewhere really not far from home, maybe a half a mile from home, and we saw a mammal across the street, and we said, huh, wait a second. Was that a coyote? We were a bit far away, but we were able to slow down and look closely into the woods, and yes indeed, it was actually two coyotes, and I was able to photograph one of them reasonably well while she looked back at us. And I was able to photograph her tracks in the road, which I showed in the last slide. But coyotes are often really hard to see, but they're living their lives right around us, and maybe like with a lot of other creatures, we maybe hear them more than we see them. I've certainly heard them howling many a nights, but it's neat to occasionally get a glimpse. Reason number 11, liverworts, and this is sort of like lichens. It's a big topic that one could probably dedicate a couple years towards even getting a cursory understanding of what liverworts are about, and at a glance you might just say, oh, it's another type of lichen on a tree, but it's not. This is a liverwort, which is a plant, so lichens are actually a combination organism. They're often, it's a fungus that partners with a bacteria or a cyanobacterium, or sorry, an alga or a cyanobacterium, and they're able to work together to live and propagate. Liverworts, on the other hand, are plants. They're very sort of simple plants in terms of their structure and minimalists, if you might call them, and let's take a closer look. These guys sort of looks like just miniature tiny little leaves, overlapping leaves. I don't know. I wish I knew more about liverworts. I've found it challenging to learn much about them because it seems to be a topic that it's hard for lay people to access much about liverworts, but they're all around us, I realized. There's lots of different kinds of liverworts. They're often said to be associated with wet areas, with stream sides, and things of that nature, but I've noticed this particular kind, and maybe there's multiple species here, but this kind that appears to grow on tree bark has sort of caught my attention in recent years, and so here's an example of sort of what it looks like when things are fairly humid. They seem to have this sort of structure. Then recently I took this picture, which the same kind of structure, but you can see this one looks almost a bit desiccated, and I think that's just the nature of how dry it's been that they're sort of waiting for some moisture to return. So here's another shot, and this is one growing on yellow birch or silver birch. So I encourage you to check around the trees near you and see if you can't find some liverworts, and you may very well find trees with liverworts and lichens right next to each other, but see if you can notice the difference, and get up real close and just look for there that fine little like overlapping leaf pattern and these sort of meandering patterns. It's a pretty fascinating creature. Reason number 12, solitary sandpiper. So solitary sandpiper, we were talking a bit about shorebird migration and solitary sandpipers are maybe one of the first shorebirds that I remember when I was the first becoming a birder, when I was living back in Massachusetts, and I didn't live particularly close to the coast. I would occasionally get there, but primarily I was birding right about right around my house, you know, within a mile or two biking distance, and one of the reliable shorebirds that I could encounter away from the coast was solitary sandpiper, and I would find them sometimes in just these very small puddles. I'd just be riding my bike through the woods, or like along a power line cot or something, and there would be, you know, a little puddle, and I would spook a bird, and it took me a while, you know, maybe the next day I would go by that same spot, but instead of biking right through it, I would stop before I got there and slowly approach and then scan with binoculars, and I would be able to see the bird before he flushed, and I was eventually able to identify that I was spooking solitary sandpipers. So they often are solitary, they're fascinating birds. They have sort of these yellow-green legs, that nice white eye ring speckled back, sort of medium-length bill, and a little secret is that they're not always solitary, so this picture shows three of them, a nice little triangle of them, and sometimes you can find several in the right habitat, but often you will just find one or two. They kind of, they don't flock together in giant flocks like the way that you see some birds at the coast, some of the shorebirds, that will just be like 300 birds in a cloud and be wheeling around in the air. These guys definitely have a different strategy of social distancing, perhaps. Here's another look, this one I believe I photographed in Wells. I was able to get really close to this bird for whatever reason he allowed me to come quite close. A really good look at the white eye ring. Reason number 13, this is a cool one. I'm sort of interested in insects a little more these days, and spotted this creature, or the sign of this creature last winter, a pine tube moth, and the larva of a pine tube moth, sort of caterpillar-like creature, that creates sort of glues together, or weaves together with silk or something, makes these little tubes of pine needles, sort of cuts them off, trims them somewhat, and makes this nice little shelter for itself in the pine needles. If you look around enough, you might find several or hundreds even in certain trees, so I would encourage you if you have some white pines near you, take a look and see if you can't find some pine tube moths. I find it's a good activity for a winter time when you're looking for something to do, but really anytime of year you might be able to find some signs of this creature. I think the adult moth is pretty easy to miss, a very small creature, but the sign that the larva leaves behind these little tubes, kind of fascinating. Be neat to make my own little house out of pine needles, right? Reason number 14, Eastern Spicy Wintergreen. This is a plant with many names, you might know it by other names, like maybe just wintergreen, or checkerberry, or teaberry. I like to call it Eastern Spicy Wintergreen. That's one of what, yeah, anyway. Common names are funny. Goltheria procumbens is the scientific name if you're interested. This plant is quite common around me, maybe it is near you. It has these kind of almost waxy thick leaves, and if you taste them, and I typically don't eat them because the texture isn't really such that you want to swallow it, but if you just sort of have it in your mouth and sort of bruise it a bit, you get a really nice wintergreen flavor from it, a little breath mint. This is a look at the flowers of Eastern Spicy Wintergreen that come out in the summertime, and they lead to a fruit that looks like this, this red fruit, and these are also edible, and I certainly don't go out collecting them the way I might collect blueberries, but the occasional trail nibble, as they say, certainly worthy of a taste on occasion. I recommend them. If you haven't tried them, it's pretty cool. Reason number 15, I'll give you a second, see if you can see this guy. A little hard to see where he is, but he's right in front of you. The European Mantis talk about camouflage on this plant. This was a towards the end of fall, this is a golden rod that is starting to die back, and this creature just totally blends in. Here's another look at this European Mantis, and there's some other mantises around the Chinese mantis, European mantis. There may be some native mantises, but I think they're less common near us, but this guy, for identification purposes, look for that black surrounding that white spot in his armpit, and that tells us it's a European mantis. That is just a talk about camouflage and stealth, an amazing part plant, part insect. Really cool. I recommend it for finding them if you don't know where to look. I would say old fields, and maybe again employ the help of a child. They seem to have the ability to find insects, especially really cool ones like walking sticks and mantises, sometimes with ease. Reason number 16, seashells. When I lived in Massachusetts, I wasn't particularly close to the coast, but now I live in Kennebunkport, and I'm about a 10-minute drive to Goose Rocks Beach or Fortunes Rocks Beach in Bideford. I enjoy paying attention to the shells when I go to the beach. What kinds of shells have washed up and can I identify some of them? It can be a bit of a fun game to play, to start recognizing the creatures that you're walking on top of sometimes, or the remnants of them. Of course, most of the time, these are cast ashore shells, not living creatures any longer, but beautiful nonetheless. This one here is a slipper shell. This one here is a horse muscle shell. This can be quite large, three, four, five inches. A lot of times they'll have the holdfast of a seaweed attached to them. This one didn't. These here, this is a look at the top side and underside of a common periwinkle. They have this nice sort of rounded opening and contrast that with this guy here, which can often be found near them. Often, they're slightly larger. This is a dogwinkle, an Atlantic dogwinkle. Notice instead of a totally round opening, they have this little groove at the bottom of the opening. That's how we can tell that it's not a periwinkle, but indeed a dogwinkle. The last one I'll show for shells. This is all part of one reason, but of course, there's many, many, many reasons to go outside. This is a moon snail, Northern moons snail. Quite common around here to see these and all sorts of different sizes, some quite small, but they can be really good size. Maybe I haven't seen one quite as big as a baseball, but certainly golf ball and larger. Reason number 17. This was in my yard this spring. I was paying attention to bracken ferns that day, which is where I found this creature, or maybe Jenny found them. I have to admit, but in any case, this bracken fern was still in the process of unfurling. It just looked like it was holding this crab spider. This crab spider, they're often called the golden rod crab spider because often they'll be found on golden rods, but you can find them on all sorts of flowers. In this case, not a flower, perhaps mimicking a flower or trying to be a flower. I don't know, but it was hanging out in this bracken fern. I believe we went back the next day and he was still hanging out there and spent a couple days on this bracken fern. I'm not sure if he found some food or if he was well fed when he went and hung out there, but pretty amazing creature. What's really cool about these golden rod crab spiders is they can change colors. In certain situations, they can be white. Of course, this is another example where he's not on a flower, but often they'll be near or on flowers, like in this case. He's sort of get the idea that this one sort of works, but he's white, but at least that pink really blends in here with this echinacea that he was hanging out on. Actually, I should say she. All these large crab spiders are all the females. The males are actually, I don't think I've ever seen one, but the males are quite small and easy to miss. The females, they're not huge, but they're quite a bit larger than the males. Here's one that I found on Common Yarrow, and he had, I don't know how they do it, but he had captured this moth and presumably was in the process of poisoning it and probably going to have quite a feast if some other creature didn't come along and steal it. But this crab spider was perhaps the only one I've shown that was fairly camouflaged on the white flowers of Common Yarrow. Look for those crab spiders. Reason number 18, cedar wax wings. Certainly one of my favorite birds of all time, cedar wax wings. I do a lot of my birding by ear, and ever since I first was introduced to cedar wax wings, I've loved the sounds that they make. And I can't mimic them, but it's this buzzy, high pitch sound that no matter where I am, when I hear it, I just, I'm immediately pulled into the moment. And if you're with me and we're walking somewhere and I hear cedar wax wings, I just, everything stops and I'm like, oh, there's wax wings. And of course, this time, if it happens to be August or September, I often want to know, what are they doing? Because cedar wax wings eat a lot of fruit. And often this time of year, if you find cedar wax wings, if you're near cedar wax wings, you're probably near some kind of ripe fruit. So they can, they can often take you to some tasty, not that all the fruit they eat is edible for humans, but some of it is, and as we'll see soon enough. But here's a picture of them, even in the winter time, these are some crab apples, some persistent crab apples of some planted trees. Actually, I used to work at a college. And lots of planted crab apple trees in the parking lot, and that would attract wax wings in the winter. You know, I might not hear a waxing for a couple months, you know, like November, December is like, where are the wax wings? January, where are the wax wings? I don't know. And then all of a sudden, one day in February, you know, I go out on my lunch break for a quick walk or something, and there's just wax wings feasting on these crab apples. So really fascinating bird. They rove around, they move around in these roving bands in the winter time just looking for fruit and fascinating to find them. Here's a look at a young cedar wax wing. This one may be a bit curious. I think I took this picture through a chain link fence, if I'm not mistaken. And he's perched on a rose bush. And they, you know, this guy was getting on in age, so he's starting to lose the chest streaks that the juveniles have and his face patterns starting to come in. But you can tell he's got a, he's a little disheveled. He's molting and he's getting his, his adult looking chest is coming in and already has the nice tail feathers with the yellow edging. Just a fantastic, fantastic bird. Reason number 19, black cherry. So in late August, early September, cedar wax wings may very well lead you to black cherry trees. Black cherries are a really important food source for a lot of creatures and not the least of which are certainly cedar wax wings, but also, well, quite possibly coyotes, certainly foxes, certainly mice. Mice like to eat the, the seeds of the black cherry, but maybe also the flesh. There's a lot of creatures, including humans that enjoy eating the fruit. And if you've never tried a black cherry, I would encourage you to, you know, learn how to properly identify them or find someone who knows how to do that and give them a try. Now, they're not going to taste like, you know, Washington state cherries that you buy at Hannaford, but they are so rich in dark pigments. They're so rich in powerful antioxidants. And some of them can be quite tasty. Now, you might, you may find some trees that are a bit too bitter for your palate, but if you, if you test around, you know, you look around and you, of course, make sure you're, you're finding fruit that's fully ripe. Sometimes an off flavor is, is not a sign that the fruit's bad, but just that it's not ready yet. But if you find some that happens to be ready and plump and juicy, I find black cherries can be quite good. So I encourage you to be on the lookout for black cherries. They're ripe or ripening as we speak and the wax wings know where to find them. In the wintertime, this is a, this is what black cherry stem looks like. I just, a little twig. I just thought I'd share that need looking. Okay. Reason number 20 is chicken of the woods. Many of us perhaps have at least heard of this mushroom. A lot of people also call it just chicken mushroom because there is another mushroom called hen of the woods. And so rather than confuse them, I decided to, to leave it chicken of the woods, but some people avoid that for that confusing reason. But in any case, it's a lattice porous, sulfurous, I believe, chicken of the woods. It's, you know, a fantastic, fantastically orange tree mushroom. And sometimes, like in this case here, will fruit with ridiculous abundance on a particular tree. Now, I didn't actually eat any of these. I was sort of in my beginning stages of learning about mushrooms. And I, I recommend if you're a beginner that, you know, maybe just pay attention to mushrooms where they're growing, when you see them start learning their characteristics. But don't worry so much about how to prepare them and eat them just yet and leave that to, to the experts who have more experience. But, you know, you have to start somewhere. And if we start recognizing them, maybe someday we can start incorporating them into our diets. Here's, here's a much smaller example that I found just on a dead stump of a tree. So sometimes they'll just be on a stump or on a, on a down tree. But this bright orange and the, the porous surface on the underside is going to be a nice yellow. And again, another mushroom that doesn't have gills, but instead has just a porous surface that very small, fine holes on the underside. So no ribbed gills, like an oyster mushroom, or like a, you know, like a button mushroom from the supermarket. And not everyone agrees. Not everyone can eat this mushroom. Some people, there are some people that this mushroom disagrees with. So be aware of that. But worth your study and worth learning about and, and sampling perhaps in the future, if you, if you are so inclined, this one happened to be growing right amongst the plant that you might recognize. This is Eastern spicy wintergreen. And looks like there was actually some of it was growing right through the mushroom sort of enveloped some of the wintergreen. It's amazing what mushrooms, I think sometimes mushrooms grow so fast, they just, it doesn't matter if there's something in their way, they just grow right around it. So that was a case of that here. We're getting close to the end here. Reason number 21, widow skimmers. So I could have also maybe labeled this dragonflies. But I figured in this case, I'll show you a particular one that actually can identify because the lichens, I don't really know what they're called the liverworts, good luck. But dragonflies, well, okay, with a lot of them, it's also good luck. But with some of them, like, like this one here, and like with many of the so called skimmers, they're actually possible to identify sometimes, even with the naked eye. But, you know, having a zoom camera or a pair of binoculars can aid in identifying these guys. This one's fairly straightforward. This is a male widow skimmer. Let's get the dark base of the wings with the sort of nice frosty white edging, sort of in the middle of the wing, and then the clear part of the wing on the on the outer parts, just with that dark, I think it's called a stigma that that little black edge spot on the wings. And the male has this blue or white body. And this is, you know, somewhat similar pattern of the wings, but without the white accents, sort of in the mid wing, this is a female, I believe, based on the terminal appendages, the immature males look fairly similar. But I believe this is a female widow skimmer. And here's another look at a male from above. And you can see that nice pattern on the wings. And, you know, so there's quite a few skimmers that have fairly diagnostic wing pattern, or combination between their head pattern and their body pattern. And so they can be learned. So, you know, keep an eye out around pond edges, slow moving streams, lakes, some in fields. There are some dragonflies that can be quite tricky to identify. Sometimes you can you can only say, well, I don't know, it's one of these, but I don't know which one. But the skimmers, you can often you can often get them right down to a particular species, which can be satisfying when you enjoy putting a name to an individual that you encounter. Reason number 22, red sand spurry. So this is a plant, a very small plant, one that undoubtedly you've stepped on without knowing. We all have. In fact, I did it all the time, because this plant used to grow in my driveway. Well, in fact, it still does. But in my the driveway of my former home was just covered in red sand spurry. And this plant is really, really, really tiny. These flowers, maybe, I don't know, eighth to a quarter of an inch wide. Let's this one deserves a closer look. So here's a shot of the leaves. Now, these are really tiny leaves. We're talking like half inch, maybe an inch. And these fine little spines, spine tips, just really delicate leaves. And of course, they're in amongst the sand. And there's some stickiness on the plant, which means that there's often sand stuck to it. And perhaps that's where the sand spurry comes in. Here's a beautiful close up of the flowers. And again, these are just really tiny. So having the ability to photograph them and blow it up is really worthwhile because they're just beautiful. And here's just one individual flower and then a bud behind it. You can see all those sticky hairs with sand on them. Red sand spurry. For years, I've had it sort of been somewhat fascinated by tiny flowers. And this is one of the tiniest. Of course, there are others. And if you go to my website, joshvector.com, and you do a search for tiny flowers, you'll see several others that I've profiled over the years. But I thought before we got to reason number 23, I wanted to provide reason number one or something of maybe a reason not to go outside or a reason when you can't get outside is to visit my website, joshvector.com. Perhaps those times when you can't get outside, but you want some inspiration or, yeah, you just want to collect some more search images so you can improve your ability to recognize your neighbors. And I have many free resources on my website in terms of I have a Wild Edibles monthly guide that will help you sort of key in on what plants might be available for harvesting at any given time of the year. I also have a listing of books I recommend and different links to websites that I think are fascinating. And you can also check out when I might have a public event like a walk or a talk like this one that I'm giving and et cetera, et cetera. So you can browse around over the years. I've profiled many, many birds and edible plants and trees and just kind of whatever I've been interested at the time, dragonflies, butterflies, insects. And for the last year or so, not sure it's been quite a year, I've been working on this series of doing 237 reasons to go outside. And for some reason I decided I would go in reverse order. So instead of starting with reason number one and going up to 237, I'm doing it in reverse. So I started with reason 237 and I'm up to 155. So we're making progress. I think it'll be another, at least another year, I would think, before we reach reason number one. And I'm not sure what that'll be when we get there, but we're going to see a lot of cool reasons along the way. This most recent one is a very tiny butterfly called a leased skipper that I found visiting the flowers of fall, Danieline, which is a different flower than the common Danieline that we're so familiar with in the springtime. That can also flower in the fall, but this is a different flower specifically called fall Danieline. Anyway, so check out my website. Now back to the final reason, and we're right about on time here at 757, according to my timepiece. Reason number 23, gray tree frogs. I mean, do I need to say anything? I mean, this guy is amazing. So just take that in. I mean, such a cool creature. Over the years, I've been lucky enough to see them in some odd places. This is one that was just hanging out on a fence post one day. And just, I just love the expression of this tree frog. And one thing, you know, if you're probably drawn to it already, but take a look at this tree frog's eye. I mean, his eye is camouflaged. It's just amazing. One of the identifying characteristics of the gray tree frog is often they'll have that white or yellow light spot right below the eye. So that's something to look for. But these guys are just masters of camouflage. They can come in a lot of different colors. Similar to the crab spiders, they have the ability to even change their coloration. So in certain settings, they can be lighter to blend in with the bark of a tree, or they can be darker to blend in with the bark of a different tree. And this guy blended in fairly well with this fence post, but I was able to spot him just because of his shape, I think. But tree frogs, of course, spend a lot of time in the trees. And they have just these really amazing suction cup, like toes that they can use to just climb on any such surface. They're quite phenomenal. So great tree frog. And I should say that this afternoon, there was one talking very briefly outside my house. And great tree frogs are a frog that, a tree frog that you should learn to recognize by sound, because especially for those of us who pay attention to birds quite a bit and are doing a lot of birding by ear, this is a creature that you'll often hear. And I know many a bird, or myself included, who for quite a while thought it was a bird and then realized that I was hearing tree frogs. So it's one that can stump some people, but they're here, they're among us in the trees. And often we don't see them, but they're there. And every so often you get to see one up close. So I hope you get to see some as well. So now we can move to questions. And I can stop sharing my screen. Let's see if I can do that. Does this microphone work for folks? Can you hear me? Yeah, I can hear you. Hey, look at that. Hey, everybody, look at me. I got an old-timey radio man's microphone here, but at least the audio works. So thanks. This is Nick Lund here from Maine Audubon. Just jumping into, well, first of all, I want to thank Josh for that fascinating presentation. I want to run outside and somehow illuminate the area around me so I can see all that stuff. Folks, if you do have questions for Josh, as Bill said up front, there is a Q&A box down below along the bottom line there. Please throw those questions into there. And then we can take them from there. And while you are getting those questions ready, I have some questions myself for Josh. Do you have a blog, which is a fascinating resource? Thank you. Do you also have any other suggestions for blogs or podcasts about natural history for folks out there? Yeah. So, I mean, of course, you can endlessly spend time on the internet looking for such things. But there's a few that I think are really worth looking at. One podcast that comes to mind is very short. I think it's five minutes. It comes out once a week by Hazel Stark and Joe Horn. It's called The Nature of Phenology. And I recommend checking that out. As far as a blog, if you're not already paying attention to this person here who wrote these two books, Mary Holland, she writes a blog Naturally Curious. And she has two books Naturally Curious and Naturally Curious day by day. Just fantastic books just filled with amazing search images. And she is, unlike me, sort of amateur photographer, she's way more of a serious photographer with an amazing setup and probably a lot more money invested. And just amazing skill and her ability to get close to mammals and all sorts of other creatures that I haven't spent time learning how to get close to. I tend to stick to the easier creatures, the creatures without legs. Although, I ventured into birds quite a bit. But otherwise, it's easier to get to know trees and plants and mushrooms because they don't walk away from you. But anyway, yes, Mary Holland, amazing blog and books and worth checking out for sure. The only other one I would mention, because it's super local and you guys already know about him, perhaps through the York County Audubon, because he's done some presentations. And that's Dan Gardoki, who's started doing some YouTube, short YouTube videos featuring learn your bird, learn your birds or something like that. I would encourage you to check those out. Very cool videos. And he is running a business called Lead with Nature. So check him out. Great. And it looks like your video froze for me. Hopefully it's just for me. Are you still there, Josh? Yep. Am I still here? Oh, there he is. Hey, Josh, welcome back. All right. Dodge the bullet. So we got a couple, we got a couple questions here. Let me go first a quick one just not to sell yourself too short on the photography because Jim wants to know what type of lens you use for your macro shots. Yeah. Well, pretty much everything I take. I have one camera that pretty much does it all. It's a Canon PowerShot SX60. It's kind of a bridge camera with a serious zoom lens. But it'll also do macro. So it's a versatile camera. So a Canon PowerShot SX60. I used to have the 50 years ago. And I think there's a 70 now. But it's a fairly small package and it allows me to get close to birds and close to, you know, tiny little Sandsbury flowers. So it's pretty cool. Great. And maybe you could type that in the chat at some point so we can look back on it. And so this is a great question from Sumner, an eight-year-old in Kennebunkport. So you may need to take a minute with this. What is your favorite local animal, bird or fungi that you have seen here? Oh, geez. Impossible. I'll let you do that. I could not answer this question. It's too hard. Too many. It's too hard. It is. That is an unfair question. Sumner, while Josh thinks, do you have one? Type in the chat if you have a favorite local bird or animal or fungi. Maybe that'll spark his imagination. I think if I had to pick one just off the top of my head right now, you know, for when I started as a naturalist, I was living in Massachusetts. And when I came back to Maine, 2012, 2013, when I moved back, one of the birds that just blew me away was the fact that I was living where eastern whipperwills lived. And we still have some in our woods. And they're a really cool bird to me. So eastern whipperwills. And, you know, I went back to where I spent most of my time as a kid, which isn't far from here, just about two miles away in Bitterfors, where I grew up. And before my parents sold the house, I went back there, I was staying with them one night, and I realized that there were whipperwills at that house. And, you know, so in my childhood, I'm sure with the windows, we didn't have air conditioning when I was a kid, I'm sure the windows were open. And I was hearing whipperwills probably all night long when I was a kid. And I just never knew it. And so now I know it. And so I just think that that's really cool. But one other, because I have to a plant that I really love is Sweet Fern. And again, that goes back to my childhood. Probably the first plant I can remember the smell of. And way before I knew its name, way before I knew how to identify it, I can remember the smell of that plant because I used to play on this little hillside where Sweet Fern grew. And so whenever I brush up against it and smell that smell, it just takes me back there. That's great. Good answers. You did well with a tough question. Sumner says that white-tailed deer would be their pick because they are so pretty. Can't argue with that. Indeed. A really nice comment from Jaylene Enrich who said it was really wonderful. And then a question from Kaylee and Grace. How, in your opinion, do you think going outside affects your mental health? Oh, geez. Profoundly, I would say over the years, it's been at times quite crucial to my mental well-being. And sometimes the outdoors has pulled me outside. I've written about it on my blog, I think, early on that one of the real catalysts for me becoming a birder and spending more time outside in a real dedicated way was a common raven that flew over my house when I was living in Massachusetts. Flew over my house three days in a row at basically the exact same time. And I was in bed and it woke me up three days in a row. But on the third day, I was waiting for it because I was like, is this going to happen again? Is this guy's routine? I was looking at my watch and I was awake this time. And when he flew over calling on that third day, I followed him. And in some sense, I haven't stopped following him. And that day, I hopped on the bike and went a couple of miles and saw this raven eating roadkill and just question after question after question came. And I've just sort of been following the trail and really, really relit my internal fire. And, you know, throughout the years since then, you know, there's times where that fire has gotten dim, but inevitably, cedar wax wings fly by or whipper well starts singing or, you know, some creature, some small flower catches my eye or something. And, you know, that spark is, is, you know, is back. So I mean, yeah, the natural world is just it's been absolutely crucial to me. And I think to many of us. And maybe sometimes we don't even, we don't realize it sometimes until many years later. But yeah, there's a lot going on out there. And they're paying attention to us. And we're not always paying attention to them. But, you know, those tree frogs, you know, they're, they're taking it all in. I just love that. That's great. Bill, did you have some questions? Yeah, one, Josh, one of your reasons to go outside tonight was the coyote. Yeah. And do you have any information about the growth of their population of their range? Yeah, throughout Maine. I mean, they seem to be, population certainly seems to be growing. Yeah, I would think so. I can't, I don't think I can speak with authority on that. But, but I think partly because wolves are no longer present in Maine. Well, in some ways, you could say they are present because some people refer to the eastern coyote as, as sort of part wolf. It's definitely, you know, some argue that it's a different mammal than the coyote that's found in some of the Southern U.S. It's a larger mammal. And there's some sense that sometimes they're working in packs. But, yeah, I don't know, they're definitely, they're around. And, you know, they, they're kind of the apex predator aside from humans on this landscape. So yeah, they're, there's probably many more of them than we realize. Maybe some coyote hunters are quite aware of how many there are. I don't know, but yeah. Any last questions from, from folks out there? In digital land. How, how is everything? Well, audio seemed pretty clear for, for everybody. Yeah. Sounded great. Yeah. Sounded great. I had, I had a lot of fun. Thank you. And this is great. And my first time giving a Zoom presentation. So I wasn't quite sure how it was going to go without an audience or with a virtual audience is trying to, you know, not having a face to sort of see if what I'm saying is landing is, is a little challenging. But, but I think, I think we did all right. You passed the test. Thank you. Good night, everyone. Thanks for joining us. Thank you, Nick, very much. Great. We appreciate your help. Thanks to Josh. And see you. Check our website for future presentations. Thank you very much. Excellent. Have a good night.