Kelleys Island Collective Naturalizing

Rico G. and I are back from our last botanizing trip to Kelleys Island State Park. A few pics from the island. If you'd like to offer an interpretation, please pick a number and go at it. There are some things that we are going to need help with here, especially those two strange cans. These things are all over the island, and the strangest thing is that they don't have any easy way of being opened, and many of them appear to never have been opened. What are these things?

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This weekend, I'm participating for the first time in the "Camera Critters" meme. Welcome new readers.

Tom

Kelleys Island

Thanks to Derek Jensen for releasing this fabulous oblique aerial photo of Kelleys Island to the public domain. You can can get a great feel for how large and still how wild this island is. Let me qualify that: wild for OHIO! We do have 10 million people in this state, so finding any high quality natural areas is quite a challenge. You can see in this photo the quarries. The island is a hunk of limestone with thin soil on top. Much of the limestone has been quarried away. The abandoned quarries make fantastic habitat for many of Ohio's state listed plants. There are also red cedar woods across the island which also make for interesting habitat.

To get to Kelleys, you can take a boat or fly. We take the ferry. Cedar Point roller coasters in back left.

The ferry landing.

To the east quarry to botanize.

Carex viridula, an Ohio potentially threatened species.

Very interesting dragons in the wheel position. Any thoughts?

A tiny american toadlet with vestiges of his tadpolian tail.

Our super invasive non-native Phragmites australis subspecies australis.

A quarry sedge swale not yet invaded by Phragmites.

It supported larval ambystomatid salamanders, perhaps the Kelleys Island salamander.

The clear horseshoe shape lake of the quarry supported a lush growth of pond weed. (Potamogeton)

To the woods, a natural calcareous cliff, perhaps an old shoreline.

A not so natural fence, contructed long ago.

The blue ash, Fraxinus quadrangulata, is not uncommon on the island.

Neither is the honey locust, Gleditsia triacanthos.

And last but not least, the woods was teeming with this damsefly, perhaps an emerald spreadwing. Thank goodness for them. Nature's Bug Spray. Dragons and Damsels.

Tom

Natural Areas Conference

Howdy All,

I've been staying for the past few days in downtown Cleveland while attending the national Natural Areas Conference. Its been great fun listening to presenters speak about all topics natural, and meeting people from around the world. Today I co-led a field trip to Kelleys Island. What a day. We left at 7:00, it rained almost the whole way to the ferry dock in Marblehead, and continued to rain as we traveled across Lake Erie on the ferry. We disembarked, and drove to long point, to see Tom Bartlett's bird banding station. He has been banding birds here for over ten years. He collects information about their sex, age, weight, and believe it or not, the amount of fat they have. If the birds have plenty of fat, the knows they have been on the island feeding, while if they do not have any fat, they probably just arrived from a trip across Lake Erie from Canada. Pretty interesting stuff. The most common bird we saw this morning was the white throated sparrow. We also caught and processed an american redstart, a black throated blue warbler, winter wrens, a marsh sparrow, and even a hermit thrush. All while raining heaving. People were wet, but our spirits stayed dry.

We went to lunch, and then, finally, the sun came out and we had a sunny afternoon exploring the glacial grooves and the north shore alvar state nature preserve. All very good stuff.

Tom

Prairie Fens and Island Alvars

I've been out in the field the last two days. Yesterday, I traveled to Gallagher Fen and Prairie Road Fen State Nature Preserves. Both sites only open by permit through the Division of Natural Areas and Preserves, and both sites pretty darn cool. I've had plenty of experience in the northeastern Ohio fens, but the sites in western Ohio have plenty of prairie plants like prairie dock and blazing star.

Then, this morning, I headed up for Kelleys Island where I met Jim Bissell and crew of the Cleveland Museum of Natural History. I was introduced to several new plants, including the state listed rock elm, smooth rose, and green milkweed. I'm back, exhausted, and ready to go to sleep!

Oh yeah, Megan and I took a little walk down to the Olentangy, and boy was it full of water. Columbus had several hours of rain this morning, and things have really transformed around Kenney Park. I haven't seen the water this high since early May. I hope everyone is getting out in the field. We're having fantastically cool and non-humid weather for this time of year, and this makes for some great prairie viewing. The Ohio Prairie Conference is happening this week at my alma mater, Hiram College. I don't think I'll be making it up for the event, but I'm sure it will be a great botanically themed weekend!

Tom