Some years back, courtesy of botanist Elizabeth Farnsworth, I became a plant conservation volunteer for New England Wild Flower Society (now Native Plant Trust). Basically you get sent out to look for endangered or rare plants in areas that have been known habitat. It is often a hit or miss thing here in the Berkshires, so generally the idea is to go out to places you normally would not have access to, look for your target plant, find it and survey it or… in the case of this jaunt, don’t find it but do find a lot of other cool stuff.
As a combo place based naturalist artist and natural scientific illustrator the “other cool stuff” often ends up more than making up for the searches that one has to sadly check off the “not found” box on the paperwork. That is what happened back in June, when searching for Showy Ladies Slipper in Sheffield, MA (been asked to not note where by the site managers). Tromping around a rather soggy site, I stumbled on this kind of massive, black, rough looking lump that is about 18” or so tall and completely out of characture for the neighborhood. (Of course I was terrified!!! I mean, ok, it was still, it looked like really impressive top soil, once I got close to it, relieved that it didn’t jump up and chomp me!). As I remember, it looked to be perched over a rock, but the photos don’t show that, so that may not be the case.
I needed some plant identification help, so I went to the Nature Conservancy offices for help. Rene Wendell, who kindly said he’d help but he “really is a herp guy” looked at this photograph and was like “Oh, that? It’s just a fen ant nest.”
Just for the record: fen ants and their nests are as hard to find information about as the anatomy and physiology of veligers… Anybody out there has information, send me links via Contact Us.