Ohio Birds and Biodiversity
A romp through the diverse flora and fauna of Ohio. From Timber Rattlesnakes to Prairie Warblers to Lakeside Daisies to Woodchucks, you'll eventually see it here, if it isn't already.
Thursday, April 11, 2024
Northern Flicker, violets, and ants
Monday, April 8, 2024
A white Eastern Gray Squirrel
Monday, April 1, 2024
Yellow Trillium, and lots of it!
An amazing stand of Yellow Trillium (Trillium luteum) blankets a rich forest in the Great Smoky Mountains National Park in North Carolina. This morning.
I'm working my way back north following a wonderful time at the Gardening for Life festival in Tryon, North Carolina. I was there to speak about moths. This region is a botanical hotspot and I've been soaking up the early spring flora, but have also seen bear, elk, and many other interesting things.
More on all this later, when time permits.
Thursday, March 21, 2024
Spring Botany Blast! New River Gorge, West Virginia, April 11 - 14
The inaugural Spring Botany Blast! takes place this April 11 - 14 in and around the incredible New River Gorge in West Virginia. This region is a plant aficionado's paradise. A diversity of habitats, mostly wooded, in stunning mountain environs, harbor scores of wildflower species, often in great profusion. We'll be based at Hawk's Nest State Park, which is convenient to all of the special hotspots that we'll be visiting.
Spring Botany Blast! was started as an offshoot of the New River Birding & Nature Festival, in which I have participated as a guide and speaker for about 20 years. So, I feel I know the area pretty well, but my co-leaders Rosanna Springston, Jodi French-Burr, and Mitchell Dech know the region even better, as locals, and are also intimately familiar with the flora (and fauna).
CLICK HERE for more details, and registration information. It'll be a whirlwind weekend filled with great botanizing amid some of the showiest scenery in the eastern U.S. Following are some shots of some of the wildflowers that we'll see, but this is just a tiny snippet of what to expect. Photo ops will abound, and I'm glad to work with anyone on improving their tactics for making plant imagery.
There aren't many spaces left, so I'd suggest acting soon. Hope to see you there!
Sunday, March 17, 2024
Eastern Red Bats, moths, and leaf litter
Hi all, and thanks as always for reading! Sorry for the long (for me) lapse in posts. Things have been a bit busy of late, and it's been tough to carve time out to sit down and craft a new piece. But here we are, and away we go.
An Eastern Red Bat (Lasiurus borealis) nestles among the leaves of an American Beech (Fagus grandifolia). This species is the consummate tree bat, and its range mirrors that of the great eastern deciduous forest, which spans the eastern half of the U.S., stretching from the Gulf Coast into southern Canada.Monday, March 4, 2024
Bewick's Swan: An Ohio First
I attended the annual Ohio Bluebird Society's annual meeting last Saturday, March 2, to speak about moths. Little known fact: The majority of the Eastern Bluebird's non-winter diet is moth caterpillars. Shauna and I had a great time, met lots of people, and I saw scads of friends that I haven't seen in a while. The Society is quite active and about 140 people were in attendance.
Afterwards, Shauna and I took the long way home, in order to visit Killbuck Marsh - one of the largest interior wetland complexes in Ohio. Killbuck lures scads of migratory waterfowl in spring, including large flocks of Tundra Swans (Cygnus columbianus). On February 23, Josh Yoder located a "Bewick's" Swan in a large flock of Tundra Swans, and I'd wanted to get up there to see it ever since. That bird was our primary target on this trip, and it wasn't hard to find, especially as many birders were on the scene.
The Bewick's Swan is now (mostly) considered to be a subspecies of the Tundra Swan (Cygnus columbianus bewickii). However, it has been considered a separate species in the past, and the American Ornithological Union didn't lump it into the Tundra Swan until 1983. While most authorities dealing with avian nomenclature and taxonomy consider it to be a subspecies at present, Avibase separates the two.
A pair of Tundra Swans drops in, landing gear extended. Don't expect National Geo-caliber imagery in this post. The flock of Tundra Swans that our target fraternized with was a LONG way across the marsh. Maybe 200 yards or so, so it took some photographic oomph to even get the documentary shots that I did. I used my Canon 800mm coupled with a 1.4x extender (1120mm) and that's generally not the ticket for sharp vibrant shots on a heavily overcast day. Nonetheless, the rig did allow me to capture diagnostic details of the bird in question.Thursday, February 29, 2024
The first wildflowers erupt
Ivy-leaved Speedwell (Veronica hederifolia) was in full bloom on south-facing slopes of the Ohio River last Saturday, February 24. Shauna Weyrauch and I visited the deep south of Ohio last weekend seeking, among other things, early flora. This species was not a primary target. Little Eurasian weeds such as this speedwell are always among the first flowers to bloom, and some of them, such as Dandelion (Taraxacum officinale) can be found in flower any month of the year. On this excursion, native plants were our goal, but I could not resist an image of the showy speedwell flower.Our first stop was the Arc of Appalachia's Chalet Nivale Preserve in Adams County. The "Nivale" in the name refers to Trillium nivale, or Snow Trillium. Thousands of the tiny lily relatives occur there, and it is the first of Ohio's seven trillium species (used to have eight. Trillium cernuum is considered extirpated and was only documented once, in 1879 in Lake County) to bloom.
A brave Virginia Bluebell (Mertensia virginica) thrusts forth a flower and several buds. Our next stop was the Arc of Appalachia's Ohio River Bluffs Preserve, which overlooks the Ohio River and the hills of Kentucky. The steep south-facing wooded slopes always spawn early wildflowers, often a week or more before other sites in southern Ohio.
Unsurprising but always welcome was the aptly named Harbinger-of-spring (Erigenia bulbosa). The elfin parsley is to be expected by late February, but while there were scores of rosettes, this was one of few flowering specimens that we saw.