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EASTERN BOX TURTLES:

MAYAPPLE'S DESIGNATED DRIVER

#40: 1-15 June 2026

"This Week At Hilton Pond North" is an on-going series of original photo essays—posted more or less weekly—about natural history happenings here in the Blue Ridge Mountains of upper Ashe County, North Carolina. If you want a free e-mail reminder about each new installment, click here to SUBSCRIBE.

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Random observations about Blue Ridge Birds & Nature

● Banded in 2026: 39 species, 1,536 individuals

● All-time (2024-present) banding totals: 74 species, 4,714 individuals

● All-time (2024-present) "Yard List": 93 species

● Local breeding species (based on nests found, banded females with brood patches, or recent fledglings seen or banded): 20

Eastern Wood-Pewees (EAWP, above) are among the most audible summer birds in the southern Appalachians, their plaintive pee-a-wee drifting from the canopy at Hilton Pond North. Typical "sallying" flycatchers, pewees favor open subcanopy perches—dead snags and exposed lateral branches—from which they make repeated aerial forays chasing flying insects, often from the same twig. At our elevation (~2,900 ft) they arrive later than most other migrants, often not claiming territories until late May when they build a shallow, lichen-camouflaged cup nest saddled on a horizontal limb, far out from the trunk.

Separating pewees from look-alike Empidonax flycatchers (Acadian, Least, Willow) and Eastern Phoebes rests on a few reliable cues: EAWP show no obvious eye ring, have longer wings extending well down the tail, show dusky-olive wash across the breast WITHOUT a phoebe's tail-wagging habit, and—most diagnostically in the field—their distinctive call. (Note the bright yellow lower mandible that sometimes is darker in pewees.) Eastern Wood-Pewees are quite long-lived for a small songbird that migrates to South America and back each year; banding records have documented individuals reaching at least 7-8 years of age. Upon its return north a pewee will frequently arrive at the exact same nesting territory year after year, sometimes even refurbishing or building atop the very same nest site.

Unlike Eastern Wood-Pewees with their repetitive song, Gray Catbirds (GRCA, above) are one of the more vocally complex summer residents of upper Ashe County. Their scratchy performance—a continuously changing string of squeaks, whistles, and mimicked phrases interspersed with a cat-like "mew" call—typically comes from dense cover rather than an exposed perch. GRCA have an unusually large vocal catalog. Researchers documented more than 100 distinct song types in one individual's repertoire, but the catbird rarely repeats a phrase, immediately distinguishing it from the Northern Mockingbird's habit of cycling the same snippet several times before moving on. Gray Catbirds, Northern Mockingbirds, and Brown Thrashers are all Mimic Thrushes—Family Mimidae—known for their imitative vocalizations.

GRCA are omnivorous. Insects and other arthropods dominate their diet during breeding season, with a late summer/autumn shift toward fruit: Elderberry, pokeweed, blackberry, dogwood, and a wide range of other soft mast. At Hilton Pond North Gray Catbirds prefer brushy margins and regenerating field edges, building a bulky stick-and-leaf nest low in dense shrubs or vine tangles. They are one of few songbirds known to recognize and eject Brown-headed Cowbird eggs from nests. Discriminating catbirds grab foreign eggs in their bills and toss them out, sometimes within minutes of an egg being laid. This makes them a rare success story in the battle avian foster hosts wage against cowbird parasitism. Catbirds are Neotropical migrants, departing here for the Gulf Coast, Florida, Central America, and the Caribbean. (They were quite common on our Operation RubyThroat study site in Belize.) However, in recent years warmer winters have allowed some Gray Catbirds to spend our cold months further north in the eastern U.S.

For their quarterly visit from Shawnee Hills OH, Amy Girten (left, above) and birthday-girl Kim Pierce Lascola this week brought along a nice specimen of Sweetshrub/Carolina Allspice, Calycanthus floridus, to enhance the native plant garden around our cabin at Hilton Pond North. Kim wields the "ace of spades" while putting in sprigs of Trumpet Creeper, Campsis radicans, that will eventually get a trellis on which the vine can produce those orange tubular flowers that attract Ruby-throated Hummingbirds. Amy gets ready to dig the hole for the Sweetshrub after removing some Wingstem/Yellow Ironweed, Verbesina alternifolia, of which we have plenty. We're ever-grateful for their on-going support, their hard work, and their considerable horticultural expertise.

On Hilton Pond North's highest ridge at 3,055' grows an exceptional patch of Mayapples covering an area at least 30' wide by 150' (above)—by far the largest expanse we've seen in more than a half-century of exploring eastern North American woodlands. (Hard to imagine, but there are reports of near-monocultures of this native plant covering several contiguous acres.) Mayapple is a classic spring wildflower but not a true ephemeral since its foliage persists into early summer; it nonetheless is opportunistic, emerging early and benefitting from warm sunlight before the shady tree canopy closes in above it.

Mayapple, Podophyllum peltatum, is a perennial in the Barberry Family (Berberidaceae) found from southern Quebec and Ontario south to Florida and west to Texas and Minnesota. It spreads extensively by rhizome, often forming dense, even-aged colonies of genetically identical clones that can carpet the forest floor. What looks like a thriving population containing countless specimens is frequently a single individual perhaps decades old whose interconnected rhizomes extend far and wide beneath rich soil!

Single, sterile Mayapple stems bear one deeply lobed umbrella-like leaf. Mature fertile stems (above) are forked, bearing two leaves and—in the axil between them—a single nodding white flower with 6-9 waxy petals. Mayapple produces no nectar at all but offers a heavy pollen load utilized by some long-tongued bees, especially queen bumblebees, Bombus spp. Since any given Mayapple patch is a clone, flowers within it are self-incompatible and unable to fertilize each other despite bee effort; thus, bees must visit a separate Mayapple patch to facilitate pollination—possible at Hilton Pond North because we host several likely unrelated patches on our 35+ acres. Without the reward of energy-rich nectar, however, bees often lose interest in Mayapple and fail to carry pollen to a distant clonal group. This means that within a given patch finding more than a few fruits (below) can be difficult.

Most browsers avoid Mayapple because roots, stems, leaves, and unripe fruit contain podophyllotoxin, but the mature apple—an inch-and-a-half long yellow berry (above)—becomes mostly non-toxic and is often dispersed by Eastern Box Turtles (red-eyed male, below). As circumstantial evidence we once found an old sun-bleached box turtle carapace in our expansive Mayapple patch at the top of the ridge. White-tailed Deer are frequent consumers before fruit is ripe and seeds have matured.

It's worth noting that Mayapple colonies apparently decline when non-native Garlic Mustard, Alliaria petiolata (above), becomes established.This Old World biennial has become invasive across North America, introduced by early settlers for culinary and medicinal use. It's now one of the more pernicious competing forbs of eastern deciduous forests precisely because it thrives in the same rich, mesic, cove and floodplain habitats that support natives like Mayapple. Garlic Mustard—together in some locations with non-native earthworms—disrupts natural soil communities and alters nutrient cycling in ways that can inhibit native woodland plants and, ultimately, the wildlife that depends upon them. Pull it up and destroy it when you can—before it has time to set seed.

By mid-June Mayapple vegetation already disappears from our various patches, but in a nice natural example of "reuse, repurpose, recycle" the plant recovers much of its leaf nitrogen and phosphorus, translocating it down to the rhizome for reuse the following spring by new growth. Whatever compounds aren't resorbed by the plant are released during leaf decomposition in the litter layer, enriching soil nutrients for Hilton Pond North's entire forest community—from nearby trees and ferns to that hungry Eastern Box Turtle that munches on seed-laden Mayapple fruit.