Graceful Descent

John Howard captured this image of myself at Lake Katharine State Nature Preserve:

Birds of Little Pond

While in Maine I had the opportunity to do a little birding. All of these shots are taken from Megan's parent's house at little pond. I'll give a little bit of information about my observations. Feel free to chime in with I.D.'s if I have gotten something wrong.

First up is this nice bird that was perched late in the afternoon high up in a white pine tree. I'm guessing this is a warbler of some type. Anyone have any guesses? The bird was high in the tree tops and this is the best shot I took.



The common yellowthroat, a warbler that I do know well. This individual was quite tame and allowed me to approach within 10 feet.



Ruby-throated hummingbirds were really living it up at little pond. Megan's parents have three feeders full of sugar and water around there house, and we constantly heard the chirps and buzzing of these tiny birds.



I saw this warbler in a tamarack, and managed to get a few shots before it flew off. Its belly looks yellowish. Is this a confusing fall warbler?



Next up is the good old mallard duck. These three individuals liked to alight on the floating dock in little pond. I also alighted on this dock, although I climbed up the ladder rather than flying there. I must say, it is quite a perch with a superb view of the pond. There are also wood ducks on the pond, but they were not seen on this floating duck, just back towards the shore amongst the pickerel weed and water shield.



This, I believe, is a solitary sandpiper. If it is, this was my first sighting of this bird. I don't remember Sibley's exact words, but these birds supposedly like to hang around ponds, and I couldn't think of a better one to hang out at if I also had to be all alone like this crossed-up solitary sandpiper. (Please, correct me if this is another wading bird).



Common ravens, were, well, common around Megan's parent's place. They especially liked to perch on roadside power lines and swoop down to pick fresh meat on the road. This one flew high overhead, and I managed to take a picture before he went down below the tree line.



And, perhaps the raven was the inspiration for this flying creature? I couldn't help but notice the similarities. This old-looking plane broke the silence at little pond late one afternoon.



All in all, not the best photos in the world, but a sampling of the birds and other flying things seen at Little Pond.

Tom

Lake Katharine State Nature Preserve

So after being in Maine, I joined the Ohio heritage naturalists today at Lake Katharine State Nature Preserve in Jackson County. My first time at the preserve, and what a place. The activity of the day was fern searching, and we came up with over twenty species. I'm not sure what the final count was exactly.

Anyways, other interesting things today were:

A southern two-lined salamander.

 


New to me, the banded pennant dragonfly, as identified by John Howard.

 

Next up is the big-leaf magnolia, which has the largest leaves of any tree in Ohio that I have ever seen. Lake Katharine is a hotbed for this state-listed species.

 


Finally, the group gets ready to photograph me just before I descend a steep slope. Hopefully, we'll have pictures of me sliding down. I'm not exactly sure why I was such an interesting subject.
 

Tom

Little Pond, Otisfield, Maine

Megan and I just got back from Little Pond, Maine. Little Pond is about 26 acres. Here in Ohio we'd call it a lake, for sure. In Maine, it is only a little pond.

Here is the location of little pond:

Little Pond at Yahoo Maps

Why did we go there? Megan's parents own (and live in) a sweet place right on the pond. This pond is surrounded by sphagnum bog, white pine and balsam fir forest, and even a small swamp forest. It is quite a place. It is loaded with plants that would be "mega-rarities" if they were in Ohio. This was basically my playground for four days. Some introductory photos to acquaint you with Little Pond. More to come.

       

Tom

Headed to Maine

Megan and I will be visiting her parents in Maine this weekend. We will be flying on upstart Skybus Airlines. I'll have plenty of photos.

Tom

Views from the Ohio State Fair

 

 

 

 

-Tom-

Views from Saturday Morning on the Olentangy

 

 

 

 

Pokeweed

I love pokeweed. I ok, that sounds somewhat funny. Pokeweed is this really interesting plant in the pokeweed family that has very dark purple berries that will be ripening soon. I remember my seventh grade teacher tricking students into squeezing the berries, and once they did this, their hands were covered in a spectalarly sticky, brilliantly magenta covering. What a plant. I also love wikipedia, and there is really quite a nice article about this plant there. What did I learn? People in the south actually eat this plant, even though it is highly toxic to mammals (but not birds, apparently). They'll boil the leaves three times, each time removing the water, and then turning the boiled leaves into poke salad. Wow...sounds interesting. Has anyone eaten poke salad? Anyways, the Latin name for this guy is Phytolacca americana.

 

 

Here you can see the inflorescence of pokeweed, which botanists call a raceme. Its not a spike, since each flower is on a little stalk called a pedicel. Pokeweed berries are not yet ripe, they are still green in Kenney Park here in Columbus. But soon I'll go out and crush some berries is my hand, turning them purple, just for a little memory of being a kid again, but now I'll surely wash my hands, knowing this plant is fairly toxic!

Tom

P.S. Green Deane has an excellent post about pokeweed at his blog. Check it out here:

Eat The Weeds Blog

Another Hackberry Munching Butterfly

So a few days ago, I posted a picture of the tawny emperor butterly, whose host plant was hackberry.

Last week, while on a trip with the Cleveland Museum of Natural History, someone brought up the species of butterflies in Ohio whose host plant is hackberry. It turned out that I had photographed one of these species, the American snout, this past June.

 

This butterfly is not easily forgettable. When I spotted this guy on the banks of the Olentangy, I wasn't sure if it was a butterfly or a moth. The long extension of its head is just odd looking. Sure enough, he's an American snout, Libytheana carinenta.

Tom

Grasshopper!

From our backyard. The place is full of these little green guys!

 

Natural Areas & Preserves at the Ohio State Fair

So, if you are planning a trip to the great Ohio State Fair, don't miss the Ohio Department of Natural Resource's Park, located in the southeast corner of the fair. The division I am gainfully employed by, the Division of Natural Areas and Preserves, has about a quarter acre tall grass prairie planted in the park. I addition, we just set up or new "building", giving us a bigger presence. Megan and I will be manning said building and prairie Sunday August 5th from 2-7. So, again, come to the fair, buy plenty of fried dough, come visit the natural resources park, and last, and most important, check out the prairie and our new building!

Here Come the Composites

So, I haven't been too busy botanizing around Kenney Park, near my house, for some time. I usually skip right any plant and head to the river. However, things are starting to become interesting again, vascular plant wise. There are several things blooming right now that I photographed this evening. All of this plants are in the aster or composite family. All are related to daisies, sunflowers, dandelions, etc.

First up is a Solidago species, or goldenrod. I'm not sure what this one is, but it is early. Of all the Solidago species in the park, this is the only one blooming.

 

Next up we have a Rudbeckia laciniata, or cutleaf coneflower. I remember seeing this last year when Megan and I first moved to the Clintonville area.

 

And then we have giant ironweed, Vernonia gigantea. I've always had a fondness for this plant. You'll see it alot in cow pastures, surrounded browsed grass. The cows don't eat it.

 

Finally, another one of our native composites. I think this one is Rudbeckia triloba, or browneyed Susan, but I could be wrong. This was the only plant I found in the park. This would make a great native plant for the garden, wouldn't it?

 

Tom

Kayaking on the Olentangy

Megan and I registered for a Coleman inflatable two person kayak last year before our wedding. The kayak looked pretty cool on Target's website, and we had just moved to a new house that was in close proximity to the Olentangy River. Sure enough, we received the Kayak as a gift from Megan's brothers, and today, we took it out on the river.

All in all, this was not a bad little kayak. We inflated it with an electric pump, screwed the paddles together, strapped on our L.L. Bean life vests, and headed for the river. We cruised up and down the Olentangy for about an hour. What a relaxing experience! The damselflies weren't afraid of us at all, and we had blue tipped, powdered, violet, and blue fronted dancers alighting on the kayak and on our legs. Perhaps the most interesting thing we saw was the Illinios river cruiser. This large dragonfly searches up and down the river all day long. He approached us several times in the kayak and did a fly-by, and you could see his distinct emerald green eyes, dark body, and large yellow spot towards the rear of his abdomen. What a neat find. The kayak allowed us to get close, within five to ten feet. He treated us as if we were just a log floating down the river. Megan and I were treated to nice views of the common map turtle, both basking on logs and floating in the water.

The Tawny Emperor

Yesterday afternoon, when I returned from work, I was sort of chilling in my bedroom and I looked out the window and noticed a brown butterfly clinging to the screen. I really don't know butterflies very well, so I sort of brushed it off and didn't look at it much further. After my lunch coma ended, I went outside to the Olentangy and stopped and shot a few pictures of the butterfly. Unfortunately, I didn't get any shots of this creature with its wings open. Well, what was I going to do to identify this guy? I turned to Bugguide.net, which came through again. This butterfly is the tawny emperor, Asterocampa clyton. Thanks to Mo Whalen for the identification. After a little more research, it turns out that this butterfly's host plant is hackberry, Celtis occidentalis, which is common in Kenney Park along the Olentangy River.

What's Blooming in Kenney Park, July Style

A few new blooms are appearing along the Olentangy river and throughout Ohio right now. The first, I believe, with some reservation, is yellow leaf cup, so named because this plant's leaves form a little cup where they come together and join the stem. This plant's leaves are a little bit strange. They weren't dissected as much as other members of this species. This is a member of the aster family. Notice the sunflower type blooms.

Then we have the ubiquitous wingstem. This plant, which gets very tall, loves to grow in rich, wet areas pretty much anywhere in Ohio. It has a yellow stem, and tonight in Kenney Park, this small blue butterfly seemed to be using it as a nectar source.

 

 

 

Last, but certainly not least, we have garden phlox. Although this sounds like something that should be non-native, it is actually a native species, although it is cultivated as well. Quite a nice purple flower. And no, Dame's Rocket didn't have a resurgence!

Enjoy the weekend!

Tom

 

The Dusky Dancer, Argia translata

About a month ago, I started seeing a new damselfly on the Olentangy. This one was quite dark, almost black. Very different from the powdered, blue fronted, and blue ringed dancers I had been seeing down on the river. I grabbed my handy dandy Dragonflies and Damselflies of Northeast Ohio by Larry Rosche, and sure enough, this guy turned out to be a male dusky dancer. Quite an attractive little damsel. They are fairly common right now in and along the Olentangy river here in Clintoville.