More Insects from the Backyard Native Plant Gardens

Hyphantria cuneata - Fall Webworm Moth - Hodges #8140

Dark-Winged Fungus Gnat (Sciaridae)

Glyphipterigid sedge moth- possibly the genus Diploschizia

All awaiting I.D.'s via www.bugguide.net

-Tom

Leaf Miner Fly

While most gardeners despise a pest that takes advantage of a prize plant, I relish it.  In fact, I plant natives to provide homes for things like this leaf miner fly in the family Agromyzidae.  Thank you to John Carr for helping place this to family.  Isn't is fascinating?  This tiny fly is resting on the tip of a leaf blade of Mondarda fistulosa, wild bergamont.  I've never observed it before, but it is tiny, no more than a few millimeters from head to folded wingtip.

-Tom

A Syrphid Fly Saturday Night

-Tom

Syrphid Fly

Syrphid fly.

-Tom

Some Type of Plant Bug with Red Eyes

This one is pretty cool!

That's it for now.

-Tom

A Yellow "Inch Worm"

10 points to the whomever guesses what plant this little bugger is eating.  He wasn't any thicker than a mechanical pencil lead.

-Tom

Common Green Bottle Fly

It's time to look for bugs in the backyard again.

-Tom

Three Turtles at Clifton Gorge State Nature Preserve

Northern spiny softshell, northern map turtle, and a midland painted turtle bask in blue hole of the Little Miami River.

Inniswood Metrogardens

Inniswood Metrogardens is a plant lover's paradise. We're lucky to have this sanctuary of both the natural and cultivated located in Westerville. In addition to the snapping turtle and red-eared slider (an introduced species), we saw several pairs of eastern bluebirds. The boys had a blast exploring the various little structures around the grounds. Weston even turned a large gazebo into a rocket ship. It's a great place to spend a Saturday morning. -Tom

It's National Parks Week

I received a nice e-mail from the National Park Foundation reminding me that National Park Week is going on now.  During my winter hibernation riding the spinning bike in the basement, via Netflix, I watched the entire Ken Burns' series The National Parks: America's Best Idea.  We tend to take for parks granted as something fundamental to our nation, but Burns clearly lays out that was not always the case.  In Ohio, we're lucky to have one of country's 58 national parks merely miles from where I grew up- Cuyahoga Valley National Park.  I've been remiss to explore and photograph the park- I need to spend more time there.

One of my favorite National Parks trip was a 2010 trip to Yellowstone.  I have shared a few images from that trip below.



Cherish our National Parks and the people that had the foresight to set aside these areas generations ago so that we could experience some semblance of what a wild North America may have once been like.

-Tom

Easter 2014

-Tom

Slate Run Historical Farm

The Columbus Metroparks' Slate Run Historical Farm is a gem of the Columbus area.  It's close enough to the city to not be too far away, but distant enough that you feel like you're in another world.  An 1880's world. It's one of our favorite places to visit.  If you go now, you'll see a bunch of baby lambs- they were certainly the highlight of this trip.

-Tom

Let's Reset

This is the kind of stuff we do on a cold winter evening!

When I started writing here, I was dating Megan.  We've now been married for 7.5 years.  Brody, our youngest, just turned 3 and Weston will be 5 on Sunday.  I had my 35 birthday on February 16.  How's that for numbers?

As I wrote about here, in 2010, I accepted a position with our state's wildlife agency after seven years with the Ohio Natural Heritage Program.  Although this move was not a move that I chose to make, I set out to make the best of it. Ultimately, my body could not hold up to repeated 2 a.m. wake-up calls and in February 2013, I accepted a position with Ohio's State Nature Preserves.  Remember all the Delaware County posts? I'm now back in the central office surrounded by late 1960's era apartments which have turned into quite the melting pot of Columbus.  

The bottom line is that I am quite happy to be with Ohio's State Nature Preserve System.  I manage its Facebook Page.  I've taken my blogging expertise and poured it all into growing that page.  Ultimately, it fulfills my need to share writings and photographs of nature in the great State of Ohio as well or perhaps better than this blog once did.  

After honing my photography skills, I have finally got my online galleries up and running- I'm quite proud of this body of work. In addition, I have developed a Facebook page that features my photography- please visit and like if you want to see more. 

I'm not slamming the door shut here.  But I want to at least put something here, and let you know where you can see my more recent work.  Thank you for reading.

-Tom

Piping Plover - Litchfield Beach - South Carolina

This past August during our vacation to coastal South Carolina, I awoke early one morning to walk the mile and a half or so to an inlet where a great amount of birds hang out.  I didn't come back with great pictures for my effort that morning, but as I was reviewing my work last week, I stumbled across this banded shorebird.  It was mixed in with a bunch of other things, including many semi-palmated plovers, but this bird looked different.

I'm not up on piping plovers all that much, but I do know they are listed by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service under the endangered species act.  It turns out that there are two listings for the species- The birds that nest along the Great lakes are listed as endangered, while the rest of the birds, including the prairie nesting birds of the northern great plains and those that next along the Atlantic shore are threatened.

Now, if you look at the bird above, it's a bit of a crap shoot trying to discern what exactly the colors are on the left leg.  Purple?  Blue?  Orange?  Red?  The green on the right leg is a little easier.  Being fairly uncertain that this even was a piping plover, I sent the above image to researchers at the University of Minnesota.

Sure enough, I received an e-mail back from Alice Van Zoeren, and after a few exchanges, she did confirm that this bird was a piping plover from the Great Lakes Population.  By identifying the color band combinations, she was able to tell me that this bird, a female, was hatched at North Manitou Island in Sleeping Bear Dunes National Lakeshore in 2012 and returned and returned to breed in Leelanau State Park in 2013, a site which had not seen breeding activity for Piping Plovers in 10 years.

It's always a good idea to pore over all your bird photographs, even those that normally wouldn't be a keeper, to check for bands.  You never know what you might find.  And now, three months later, I can add another bird to my life list.  Plus, I've added just one more bit of information to help the researchers understand more about the Great Lakes populations of this tiny little bird.

-Tom

Want to take a look at the whole uncropped image?  How many species do you see?  Which ones?

A Wider View - Purple Pitcher Plant

July 2013

Looking down into a purple pitcher plant growing in a sphagnum hummock.  Otisfield Maine.

-Tom

A Wider View- The Crooked River

July, 2013

Still shot at 10 millimeters, but without any subject close to the lens.  Yesterday's pickerel frog lived in the woods just above the Crooked River, a fine babbling river in western Maine, just down the road from my in-laws's place.

-Tom

A Wider View - Moving to Maine

Perhaps the best test of whether an ultra-wide photograph is successful is if it looks like an ultra-wide photograph.  Here's an image from the Crooked River in Otifisfield Maine that I took this past July.  While going through my images to create blog posts for this series, it isn't all that difficult to pick out my ultra-wide images.  With this one, however, I had to check the metadata to ensure that it was shot at 10 mm, the widest possible angle of view I can capture with my current camera setup.

Do you know pickerel frogs?  They seem to inhabitat cold places- think headwater streams and cold, boggy forests in Maine, like where I found this young frog hopping about on a rainy July day.

-Tom

A Wider View - Wood Frog

June 7, 2013

While visiting Tummonds State Nature Preserve in Portage County last June, I didn't have my ultrawide angle lens with me, but that didn't prevent me from using the wide-angle closeup technique.  The so-called "kit lenses" that come bundled with digital SLR's can focus quite closely.  With my lens dialed in to its widest setting, I moved in on this frog as close as I could.  The end result is an image that shows the wood frog and its habitat.  To me, this picture provides much more information than a tight shot of the frog only.

-Tom

A Wider View- Common Lupines

May 16, 2013

Burying the camera in a clump of lupines gives us the view that a Karner Blue Butterfly might have as it searches for a mate.  Lou Campbell State Nature Preserve lies in Ohio's Oak Openings Region (which extends into Michigan), one of the the Great Lake's most fascinating ecosystems.

-Tom

Taking in a Wider View - Daughmer Bur Oak Savannah

May 8, 2013

Can you see that small house on the horizon to the right?  What a spectacular place to live, eh?

-Tom

Taking in a Wider View - Daughmer Savannah State Nature Preserve

May 8, 2013

White this is just on the far edge of being a wide-angle closeup, I'm going to count it because I just really like this photo.  The closeup subject in to the right is a type of sedge, possibly Carex lacustris.  Daughmer Savannah is a true gem of Ohio that was dedicated as an Ohio State Nature Preserve in 2012.  A remnant of the Sandusky Plains, a visit here will give you some idea what Ohio's prairie areas looked like at one time.



-Tom

Taking in a Wider View - Large White Trillium

Taking in another ultra-wide angle view at Collier State Nature Preserve in Seneca County.  The large white flowered trillium is our official state wildflower.

-Tom

Taking in a Wider View - Drooping Trillium

Commonly mistaken for nodding trillium, drooping trillium is fairly common in Ohio, excepting the northeast portion of the state, where I can't remember seeing it.  Getting low and close was key again to this shot, which is quite similar to the image of mayapples from Davis Memorial.  These three specimens were growing at the base of a tree along a steep hillside, excluding them from deer herbivory.  Again, I used flash to add a pop to the undersides of the trillium leaves and flowers.

Collier State Nature Preserve, May 8, 2013

-Tom

Taking in a Wider View - Woodland Stonecrop - Not So Wide

Our eyes have lenses that let us see the world at a certain angle of view.  We can't zoom in or out like we can with a camera.  My go-to lens for wide-angle closeup work is Canon's 10-22 mm zoom lens.  This lens lets me get an image like I shared yesterday, which put this small clump of Sedum ternatum in context- it was growing out of the root ball of a tree.  When I zoom the lens to 22 millimeters, I can focus more closely on the plant itself, getting the entire plant in focus, which is very difficult to do with traditional macro lenses.

-Tom

Taking in a Wider View - Woodland Stonecrop

Using all natural light this time, again during a site visit to Davis Memorial State Nature Preserve on May 3, 2013.

-Tom

Taking in a Wider View- Under the Mayapples

Another one of my more successful wide-angle closeup images, this taken while laying on the ground at Davis Memorial State Nature Preserve on May 3, 2013.  To balance the light between the bright background and the shaded foreground underneath the mayapples, I used flash.

-Tom

A Wider View - On the Bog

July 2013, Otisfield, Maine
True acidic bogs are amazing places driven by moss- mosses in the genus Sphagnum.  Incredible little plants, they create the acidity of the bog ecosystem, allowing organic matter to build up over time instead of decay gradually.  We have bogs in Ohio, but ours are glacial relics of a climate we no longer have in Ohio.  In Maine, it's another story.

-Tom

Something I Wasn't Expecting

Throughout all my wanderings in the East, I've never encountered a bat in the leaf litter.  That changed the day I was at Davey Woods this past April 17.  I believe this is an eastern red bat.  They migrate, and although at first I thought it was dead, it was entirely alive.  Hopefully it was just sleeping and resting, ready to move on when the weather improved.

Taking in a Wider View- Dutchman's Breeches

Again, from Davey Woods State Nature Preserve, utilizing a wide-angle closeup approach.

Taking in a Wider View

If you recall, way back in March, I set out to create closeup images of natural subjects that showed their place in the natural system, rather than isolated on a plain, smooth background, as is done in traditional macro photography.  This approach, known as wide-angle closeup photography, uses forced perspective to place the viewer right into the natural world.  The best way to view this type of imagery stick your nose right to the screen and immerse yourself into the scene.

Over the next few days, I'll be reviewing some of that work here, beginning with this image from Davey Woods State Nature Preserve in Champaign County.  This summer, as part of my work with the Division of Natural Areas & Preserves, I attempted to capture unique and interesting views of Ohio's State Nature Preserves.  If you haven't heard of the Division, it has helped protect many of Ohio's most spectacular places since the outset of the Ohio Natural Areas Act in 1970.  And, don't forget to follow us on Facebook.

-Tom

Litchfield Beach Dawn and Dusk

Often when I'm photographing a spectacular sunset or sunrise, I get caught in the moment and focus on what I perceive is the most interesting photographic subject.  On this morning, I was up early and in the surf clicking away.  It wasn't until my father-in-law, who was also out for a walk, tapped me on the shoulder, pointing my attention to the rainbow that had appeared directly behind me.

-Tom

Litchfield Beach Timelapse Video

While I can't say I've become obsessed with making videos, I have made an effort to use my camera to its fullest- and that means capturing time lapse and HD videos with my limited time.  I seem to find that vacations are now my time where I try new photo things- and our trip to Litchfield Beach this August was a perfect place to try time lapse.

Video has a big learning curve.  When I exported this video from Photoshop CS4, it rendered at 6 gigabytes.  Needless to say I received a message from YouTube with a link offering help how to better export my videos for the website.

When I set up my camera, I was expecting these billowing cumulus clouds to continue their upward development, when in fact, the opposite happened.  Although I didn't get what I had visualized, I really like this video- I had to watch it several times before I saw the man cleaning the pool.

-Tom

Suburban Red-shouldered Hawks

I've been well aware that Cooper's Hawks have wonderfully adapted to life in suburban Ohio. In fact, most of my neighbors think that a peregrine falcon prowls "our hood".  Moving to buteos, I would occasionally hear the shreaks of red-shouldered hawks at my parents house in Summit County, but their neighborhood street lies next to a large wooded ravine complete with stream.  A few years ago, I began to see and hear red-shouldered hawks in our Worthington neighborhood.  Relatively densely populated, but with plenty of mature trees that have grown up since the late 1950's, red-shouldered hawks now prowl the area.  Megan and Brody spotted this one early today.  Have you seen an increase in red-shouldered hawks in your "neck of the woods"?

Obligatory Fall Color, 2013

Grab shot- Sitting on the couch, probably watching a football game, I noticed that a pin oak a few houses down was on fire.

-Tom

Mexican Gray Wolf

Mexican Gray Wolf - Columbus Zoo & Aquarium - Powell, Ohio

I was scrolling through my lightroom catalog, browsing for images of State Nature Preserves to keyword properly (for the day job) and this photo of the Mexican gray wolf subspecies caught my eye.  The RAW file was flat as flat could be, due to a smudged and dingy piece of glass that I was shooting through. But I thought the pose was just too good to let it sit on my hard drive.

From my brief bit of research on this subspecies- they were exterminated in the wild, and today, are extremely rare after reintroductions via captive breeding programs.  I typically focus my writings on bugs and birds- things that still exist in a landscape long after people arrive- but wolves are one of those things that would have been roaming the forests of Worthington several centuries earlier. Now, the closest I can get to one is the Mexican subspecies at our local zoo.

-Tom

Chicago

Last week I had the opportunity to attend the National Natural Areas Conference in Chicago.  I'd never been to the "windy city".  In fact, I never really understood what the hype was really all about.  Now I get it. Chicago is a fantastic world-class city.  Here are a few images that I snapped during my stay.

-Tom

Litchfield Beach South Carolina- A Family Vacation

Thanks for watching! :)

-Tom