Sunday, August 27, 2006

Maine

Soon, I'll be heading to Maine to get married. My brother and I, Tim, got to spend the weekend together. It was great. It will probably be the last time that we get to spend a whole weekend by ourselves.

I've got to do a few exciting things the last week as far as field goes.

First, I have become addicted to smallmouth bass fishing. After purchasing my license through the ODNR's online system, I hit the Olentangy River just a few hundred feet west of my house. I popped on a rubber crayfish on my newly purchase spincast outfit, plucked that baby in the water, and after a little bit, I snatched this beautiful, but admittedly small fish from a shaded, boulder filled pool. My first smallmouth bass.


What else? Megan, who is Maine preparing for our even that we "seal the deal" for us, a.k.a our wedding, sent me a few shots of her parent's backyard. This place is palatial. Our wedding is going to be sweet.

Here is there house, in which we will set up the large "Christian" tent that we are getting for the reception:



Here is the view from the deck and backyard...The body of water is called "little pond" Um, looks like a like to this Ohioan.





So that, is about it. Are you coming to our wedding? It is going to be great.

Tom

Friday, August 18, 2006

Powdered Dancer

The Powder Dancer
8.8.2006

Although I purchased Larry Rosche's Dragonflies and Damselflies of Northeastern Ohio almost two years ago, i didn't really use it until this summer. As a part of my job, I sometimes join NEON, an acronym for Northeastern Ohio Naturalists, on their field trips. It was on these trips that the amazing flying predators caught my eye. This just goes to show the importance of the naturalist—without Rosche, I would not have have had the will or patience to capture the picture below.

On a trip to the Conneaut Creek in Ashtabula county, Rosche pointed out blue fronted and blue tipped dancers, powered dancers, several slender spreadwings, eastern pondhawk, and the Illinios River Cruiser. Just spending a few hours in the field with Rosche, who in a former life taught calculus at my high school, really got me going into dragonflies. A few weeks later, Megan and I were standing in my apartment parking lot, right next to a large grass rimmed retention pond, watching darners zoom about. We kept our eye on one particular mosquito that was sharing the airways with their predators, when, in an instant, a darner swooped in and gobbled up the poor thing. I couldn't tell if I was happy for the dragonfly, sad for the mosquito, or just thankful that another potential west nile vector had been taken out. I was hooked, and so was Megan. Not only are dragonflies beautiful, but their behavior is equally fascinating as well.

Upon moving this Saturday, I have observed three species of Odonates (dragonfliesand damselflies) in my backyard around our water garden/goldfish pond. The first guy I spotted was the very common blue fronted dancer, a damselfly in the genus Argia. I then spotted a blue dasher, a dragonfly, zooming about with a fabulous dusky light blue abdomen. Finally, last evening, a male and female powder dancer spent about ten minutes hovering around the pond and landing on the limestone landscaping rocks. I captured this guy..can you believe it?






What a magnificent creature. Digital photography sure does these guys justice! While I'm writing this using my laptop just feet from the pond, the crickets and katydids are getting louder...I'm hearing a hum in my ear....and a rattling kingfisher just flew over head. Its nice to settle somewhere that still retains some semblance wildness.