A photo blog inspired by our prairie pond installed in 2021.
All images and text Copyright 2024 Ethan Hirsh but sharing link is appreciated. (Or, give me email addresses and I can add to my distribution list.)
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Look Up! Look Down! Lookallaround!
October 26, 2024
This autumn edition centers on noticing the details of what’s around us, no matter how small or camouflaged they may be. Observation is a skill I began developing as a kid, whether on a hike, exploring the back yard, or walking through a neighborhood. It’s not just being in the right place at the right time, or keeping your eyes open. You have to be watching everything like a hawk. Speaking of…
By chance I was in the right place on the driveway to look up one morning in September and see a veritable cloud of large birds circulating high above the hay field. Pelicans? Vultures? Crows? Eagles? Whoever they were, there were more than I could count. Most were dark, with flashes of white and gray as they wheeled around—but why??
I snapped several photos, then stared at the feathered swarm as it drifted higher toward the west. Not long after, I emailed family member Shawn Hawks (yes, that’s really his last name!) to ask what might be going on. Shawn, science assistant to Missouri’s state ornithologist, soon replied: “You were probably looking at a kettle of broad-winged hawks.” He went on to explain how a huge population of hawks leaves their Canadian and U.S. breeding grounds in an annual mass migration to South America, following a flyway that constricts at its narrowest point near Vera Cruz, Mexico. The birds stay over land where they can seek out thermals. Columns of rising warm air lift them to an altitude at which they can save energy by soaring, instead of flapping, to the next bunch of thermals. Why work when you can coast?
Source: The Cornell Lab of Ornithology
The term “kettle” is said to have come into use because the swirling flight patterns resemble the curls of steam put out by an old-fashioned tea kettle, or just as believable, the roiling water in a pot coming to a boil. Experienced hawk watchers and raptor counters are used to spotting kettles during their bird count duties. By pure serendipity, I saw my first while going to the workshop to fetch a pair of pliers.
To come up with a reasonably accurate count of the kettle I witnessed, I made a print from one of my photos, and counted. It came to 384. Since I captured only about three-fourths of the whole mob, I figure the entire kettle was at least 500 birds! Shawn tells me it’s not unusual for them to number in the thousands.
Here’s a different scene of feverish flight. Resembling an aerodrome busy with biplane traffic, this is a composite image from the pond cam.
The large dragonflies are mostly male 12-spotted skimmers (females lack the white spots). They can exceed two inches in length. Besides mosquitoes, these zooming predators feast on any soft-sided insect, including flies, moths, flying ants and termites. They’re adept at grabbing in-flight meals (without prepaying by credit card before takeoff).
In a serendipitous act of coordinated couture, a yellow-billed cuckoo dropped by to check on things. Note the matching black-with-white-spots motif on its tail! Guess the bird got the memo…
Other aerobatic performers at the pond are the more dainty damselflies. Those pictured are blue-fronted dancers, one of about eight species of dancers in the pond damsel family in Missouri. There are two other families—it gets complicated! In the U.S. and Canada we have about 450 types of damselflies and dragonflies. Worldwide, there are thousands.
Damselflies are smaller than dragonflies, roughly 1.5 inches in length. Their wings are smaller and held near the fuselage when not in flight, while dragonfly wings remain extended while parked. The pair at top are having a reproductive rendezvous after landing on a spatterdock pad.
Damsels are our friends. Like dragonflies, they eat mosquitoes and other small flying insects. Before emerging as adults, the nymphs live underwater, eating anything that moves if they can grab it and chow down.
As the end of butterfly season approached, this high-mileage red spotted purple kept on trucking, in spite of the signs of heavy wear on its flaps and ailerons.
Also ready to take flight are the fluffy seed packs of common milkweed. Parachuting to wherever the wind takes them, the seeds ensure the land will be ready for the next generation of monarch butterflies passing through.
Sadly, flying no more, here’s the eponymous feathery patch belonging to a yellow-rumped warbler.
Its wearer presumably failed to regain consciousness after hitting a window head-on without a helmet. Unless you’re a professional bird bander, you’re not likely to see any warbler this close up.
Here’s a different sort of frequent flyer. What caught my eye was its resemblance to a printed circuit board.
It turned out to be a juvenile green stink bug. The “stink” refers to its chemical reaction when disturbed or attacked. The little stinkers are also unpopular because they damage fruits and vegetables by sucking on them, making the produce not only blemished but also vulnerable to fungus and plant diseases. Like us, stink bugs show up throughout North America.
A fairly mature caterpillar of the black swallowtail butterfly munches one of its favorite foods, parsley. It also likes other members of the carrot family including dill, fennel, celery and Queen Anne’s lace. Because they’re attractive and only hatch in small numbers, we think of them as temporary pets rather than terrible pests.
Another green caterpillar, this one of the red-lined panopoda moth, has a strong defensive move if touched—thrashing about wildly to evade both predators and parasites.
When undisturbed (and less fixated on doing ab work), it feeds on oak leaves. The moth’s range covers roughly the eastern two-thirds of the U.S. as well as eastern Canada. (No caterpillar was harmed during the production of this exercise video.)
Let’s continue to go down the scale in size.
This northern cricket frog was so small and well camouflaged in the garden, I didn’t notice it until it jumped over an irrigation tube. The frog’s coloration and knobby texture mimic the surrounding soil perfectly.
Adults are between an inch and an inch-and-a-half in length. Although technically in the tree frog family, cricket frogs don’t go up in trees. Their name comes from the mating call, a rapid insect-like chirp.
Even smaller still, this baby tree frog is barely half an inch long. The “X” mark on its back means it’s going to mature into a spring peeper. Adults can be pinkish, gray or tan. Their high-pitched peeps announce the arrival of spring and create a pleasant racket off and on for several months after.
What’s small, round, fuzzy, bright orangey-red and lives on oak leaves?
This fuzzy oak gall is an abnormal plant growth brought about by a small oak gall wasp. If you saw the 2004 film Kinsey starring Liam Neeson, you may remember that before he gained fame in 1948 as the foremost researcher on human sexuality, Alfred Kinsey spent more than 20 years at Harvard and in the field all over the world studying tiny gall wasps. The dainty flyers are less than half an inch long.
Dr. Kinsey was a gall wasp fanatic, personally collecting 300,000 specimens. He devised 28 measurements at a microscopic level to differentiate types of gall wasps and came up with 130 species. Kinsey ultimately donated 5 million specimens to the American Museum of Natural History in New York. Today it’s known there are at least 1,500 species of insects (including wasps) and mites that produce galls on plants.
The many types of galls found on leaves and twigs of oak trees are usually created by wasps. The shape, size and color of oak galls vary greatly. The most obvious ones resemble small, tan ping-pong balls. Galls happen when the instigator injects a chemical into a leaf or twig. The tree reacts by producing a gall of plant material that houses and feeds the wasp’s minute larva until it matures. Few cause the trees any problem. These fuzzy oak galls eventually turn brown and fall to the ground.
Keep your gaze down and you may be lucky enough to spot something else red and fuzzy—a velvet ant.
No more than 1.25 inches in length, they’re especially hard to photograph because they never stand still. Ants in name only, they are really solitary wasps. (Ants, of course, are social insects living in colonies.)
The female velvet ant is wingless, so apparently I’ve never seen a male. Relegated to life as a pedestrian, the female seeks out the underground tunnels of ground-dwelling bees, bumblebees and wasps, fights her way in if necessary, and plants eggs on the resident larvae. No wonder she’s always on the run!
Her young have parasitic childhoods. There are nearly 500 species of velvet ant in the U.S. and Canada. The one shown is the red or eastern velvet ant, nicknamed “cow killer.” It’s one of the common species in Missouri. Most species are some shade of bright red or orange, with black legs.
Do NOT try to keep one as a pet. Though not aggressive, they have a fearsome, venomous stinger. A graduate study at Missouri State University concluded that velvet ants “possess a myriad of defenses that render them almost invulnerable to a suite of potential predators including amphibians, reptiles, birds, and small mammals.”* These include a thick exoskeleton, a warning color, chemical and audible alarms, and the aforementioned stinger.
* Gall, Brian G., Kari L. Spivey, Trevor L. Chapman, Robert J. Delph, Edmund D. Brodie Jr, and Joseph S. Wilson. “The indestructible insect: Velvet ants from across the United States avoid predation by representatives from all major tetrapod clades.” Ecology and evolution 8, no. 11 (2018): 5852-5862.
As I exited the workshop one afternoon, movement on the ground caught my eye. A small, mostly black wasp was quickly moving a gray stick much longer than its own skinny body, straddling the stick as it carried it forward.
What would a wasp want with a stick? I took some quick photos (another moving target!) before it disappeared into the weeds. With the images enlarged, I figured out the “stick” was the carcass of an unidentifiable caterpillar. The busy courier was a thread-waisted wasp, a cousin of mud daubers. It attacks prey by ambush, then takes the stunned victim in a paralyzed state into a burrow made of loose dirt. The wasp’s larva gradually consumes the provided stash before emerging as an adult. The mature wasps’ own diet consists of small insects and nectar from flowers.
Another critter rarely seen operates almost entirely underground. A guest happened to spot one working its way across the grass one day as we ate lunch. Having seen one out in the open only about once every 10 or 15 years, I naturally rushed over and knelt down for a quick portrait.
The eastern mole is not a rodent. Instead, it’s in the same family as hedgehogs and shrews. With movements like a human swimming the breast stroke, moles use their front paws to claw their way through the soil. They literally work day and night messing up lawns and gardens all across America. The typical mole schedule of five hours on/three hours off/repeat adds up to a 15-hour workday! And no time off for weekends or holidays…
Their movement through tight tunnels is aided by low-friction, velvet-smooth fur. Moles are mostly blind but can sense light and dark. Their other senses are quite sharp and help them find their meals. They mostly dine on grubs and earthworms, but are also happy to chomp on other underground morsels such as beetles, centipedes, spiders, ant larvae and cutworms. An adult is between 5.5 and 8 inches long, weighs up to 5 ounces, and can eat more than 140 grubs and cutworms a day!
No matter how much you may cuss after tripping over a mound of mole-excavated dirt, conservationists recommend not attempting to eradicate the underground critters because of the huge number of cutworms and grubs (including the larvae of Japanese beetles) they consume. Their tunneling also aerates and mixes soil and allows rainwater to penetrate deeper into the ground.
Once they leave the nest at the age of about four weeks to pursue adult molehood, moles live solitary lives, plowing through their own series of tunnels. Although mostly undisturbed, they do occasionally fall prey to snakes, coyotes, foxes, skunks and raptors, as well as dogs and cats.
Yes, we’ve managed to have some fall colors in spite of the severe drought.
These red leaves (maple and oak) were on trees next to a creek, where they’ve enjoyed continuous access to water, rain or no rain. For a full display of normal autumn beauty, see last year’s post (waaay down below…) from November 20, 2023.
Or, just enjoy a late September sunset, this one looking south, not west.
Til next time…
Ethan
This edition of The Phlog is brought to you by My Search for Jazzbo Jones, available in four formats to match every reading taste—hardbound, paperback, Kindle, and professionally recorded audiobook. To get your copy or read a preview, see below:
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Full-Frontal Flora!
July 31, 2024
In March, I began taking pictures of wildflowers in the Ozarks as they started bursting forth. I kept shooting through July. What you’re about to see is less than one-twelfth of the images I collected. You may remember I paused the project to feature the local cicada hatch in the May issue. Now I can finally share my tribute to the constantly changing parade of flowers we enjoy for more than half the year.
Except for the zinnia above (a fitting stop sign to get your attention), all the plants shown are considered native to Missouri, although some were imports dating back centuries. Originating in Mexico and Central America, zinnias were taken to Europe about 300 years ago. They are now considered native to the southwestern U.S.
I managed to identify all but one of the flowers included here, confirming my finds through more than one trusted source, as a proper journalist should. (In some cases there are one or more lookalikes, so I can’t guarantee 100 percent accuracy.)
Originally I thought it would be fun to do a photo catalog of all the flowers at Green Mountain Farm. The more I shot, the more I saw. Then, I learned that in Missouri there are more than 2,000 species of wildflowers! So what I’ve posted here is less than 3 percent of what’s out there!
The main point of this exercise is to show how much intricate detail we usually miss by not looking closely enough at these amazing floral faces. The fuzz, the curlicues, the textures, the designs, often crammed into a space no bigger than a penny.
Enjoy the show! [One note of caution: These are not dummed-down images, so if you’re on a slow connection, be patient. It will all show up and then you can stream at your leisure.]
Daffodils are among the first flowers to appear in spring. After the Romans took them to other parts of Europe, the bulbs made their way to the Colonies on ships from the British Isles. As in many other states, they have naturalized throughout Missouri.
The violet family includes the bird’s foot violet (shown in two versions) and the Missouri violet (left). There are 17 species in the state.
One of the smallest blooms scattered in lawns and fields is the bluet, also known by several aliases. For scale, I added my forefinger to the second photo.
Spring beauty. Need I say more?
Violet wood sorrel is edible, but not advised for diners with kidney problems due to its level of oxalic acid.
The inevitable dandelion, appreciated by this unidentified butterfly as well as kids who like to blow the decorative seed array.
It’s called dead nettle, but it’s alive.
Bloodroot.
Dogtooth violet.
Wild gooseberry.
Wild plum. (For the purposes of this phlog, trees, too, provide us plenty of wildflowers.)
A knowledgable reader of the Phlog provided the ID for this one. Called lungwort, it’s a type of borage, native to Europe and west Asia, not Missouri. The scientific name Pulmonaria came from the belief several centuries ago that lungwort could cure lung ailments. The plant actually is quite toxic to humans and pets. (I’ll spare you the medical details.) Aliases include Bethlehem sage, Jerusalem cowslip and spotted dog.
Dutchman’s breeches gets its memorable name from the resemblance to pairs of pantaloons or knee-length breeches hanging on a clothesline. Known as an ephemeral plant, it blooms for only a few weeks in the spring, then stays alive underground the rest of the year. Two other characteristics worth noting: Their seeds are processed and spread by ants (a whole ’nother story); and the plants are toxic to cattle and a skin irritant for some people. Besides causing dermatitis, they contain psycho-active alkaloids. If you see drunken cows staggering around, check for Dutchman’s breeches growing in their pastures.
Another ephemeral, trillium (alias wake robin) is a low-growing tri-leaf plant with seven species in Missouri. Colors vary. The one most common in our area has brown blossoms. Like Dutchman’s breeches, trillium gets seed dispersal service from ant colonies.
Missouri’s only annual ragwort, butterweed is a relative of sunflowers, daisies and asters. Its flowers are barely an inch across.
An early sign of spring, wild phlox (alias Sweet William) varies from lavender to magenta.
Yellow rocket or black mustard.
Indian paint brush keeps spreading along our creek banks. Its red color is so intense, it’s difficult to capture the finer details of its flowers.
The redbud is an understory tree mostly found under larger trees in the forest. They join forces with dogwoods to wake the woods with springtime colors.
Missouri has dozens of small yellow flowers with similar shapes. This one is common cinquefoil.
You have to get on your knees to see a May apple flower face to face. A single flower blooms beneath a pair of fairy beach umbrellas.
The Ohio buckeye tree gets its name from its nut, which resembles a deer’s eye. It’s the state tree of Ohio. Missourians don’t seem to mind.
The star of Bethlehem sprouts in our lawns for a month or two each year. It’s fun to look at, but also poisonous and considered invasive.
Blue-eyed Mary is a very low wildflower blooming in large clusters in shady areas.
Our wild columbine sprouts each spring from rocky outcroppings above a creek.
Pawpaw trees, like trillium, have brown flowers. The fruits taste like banana custard but ripe ones are usually eaten by critters before we can get to them.
Hawthorn is the state flower of Missouri.
The oxeye daisy decorates hayfields and roadsides for several months each year. Originally from Eurasia, it’s long been totally established in North America. Many states list it as invasive.
I love goat’s beard not only for its large yellow flowers. Its huge spherical seed array is like a dandelion on steroids.
Spatterdock has pads like a water lily but only a simple round flower.
Smooth spiderwort is the most common of the eight species in Missouri. Flowers can be blue, rose, purple or lavender.
Yarrow has lacy leaves and multiple flowers. Think twice about introducing it to your garden. It will tenaciously try to take over!
Sensitive briar is a miniature creeping relative of the mimosa tree. Its intricate round blooms are only about an inch across.
The grey dogwood is much less showy than its larger cousin, the flowering dogwood, which is Missouri’s state tree.
The wild petunia can be spotted here and there at ground level.
Swamp milkweed is one of 22 milkweed species in Missouri.
Unlike these grey-headed coneflowers, most species of coneflower, or echinacea, are purple.
Wild cherry trees (also called black cherry) can grow to 60 feet.
The musk thistle is one of 29 species of thistle in Missouri. Six are natives and 23 are imports from Europe.
The common dayflower shows up near the ground on viny stems. Its name refers to its one-day tenure. It originated in Asia, where it is often eaten by people. It now has spread more or less worldwide. Its pigment was used by Japanese woodblock printmakers in the 17- and 1800s.
Pale blue flowers of chicory are common in fields and along roadsides from May to October.
The pale purple coneflower is subtly different from the plain-ol’ purple coneflower—skinnier, droopier petals are the tip-off.
I did not notice this colorful insect when taking close-ups of goldenrod. It’s an ermine moth known as the Ailanthus webworm moth, most commonly found in tropical areas like Florida.
These strong-minded flowers are commonly known as black-eyed Susans, but are also called Missouri coneflowers. They are not in the echinacea family, however.
A type of hibiscus, rose mallow is a Missouri native. It comes in white and pink, both with dark red center.
The tall bellflower lives only two years. The second year, numerous blue flowers appear on a 3-to-5-foot spike. Resulting seeds ensure replacement plants sprout the following year.
Missouri ironweed, one of five ironweed species in the state, has between 32 and 60 florets (like the two shown) per flowerhead. The average plant is four to five feet tall.
The cup plant can reach heights of 6 to 9 feet. Its name refers to its leaves’ ability to hold water where it wraps around the large stem.
Slender mountain mint, one of six species in Missouri, attracts large numbers of bees, wasps, butterflies and other pollinators. It grows to about three feet tall. The leaves and flowers are said to be edible in salads and it can also be used for tea. The pulegone oil from the leaves makes a pleasant-smelling insect repellent. However, the FDA has banned its use in smoking products because it’s a suspected carcinogen. Hmmmm.
I’ll close out this issue with a brief story. About 20 years ago, shortly after we acquired an adjacent property that had been logged, we tried every which way to interest someone in the acres of trimmed slab wood (the outer bark of trees run through the sawmill) left behind by the loggers. This mill waste was piled up six feet deep across what was once a hay field. Since there were no takers, we hired two very large Caterpillar dozers to burn the whole mess and bury any leftovers.
Watching the neighboring forest get ravaged before we owned it was bad enough. Our conflagration along the rural highway was both satisfying and somewhat unnerving. “Don’t worry,” I told JoEl. “We’re going to turn it back into a field full of wildflowers.”
Each year since then we’ve worked to control weeds and encourage desirable prairie plants. Gradually the population of various flowers increased. Mowing every winter has added mulch to the topsoil and ensured seeds hit the ground. This spring’s growth was especially lush due to several months with more rain than usual. Bee balm and coneflowers had a — well, field day.
Here’s a photo of the exact same scene, taken July 10, 2024. The wood fence corner is still visible.
Another view looking up the field to the east.
From a higher angle, here’s a blurry drone’s-eye view of the bee balm mixed with grey-headed coneflowers. Maybe not the most diverse prairie you’ve ever seen, but certainly plenty of floral volume!
So how do we feel about all this now? Over in the next field, we’re doing hay bale cartwheelies!
I’m equally excited to have finished my longest phlog post ever. Apparently I get really excited by wildflowers!
I hope you do too.
E.H.
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The Great ’24 Cicada Confluence
June 3, 2024
Even without book marketing eating a lot of my time, it’s always been a challenge to keep the Phlog timely. There’s a constant backlog of images waiting to be phlogified. With this issue we finally come reasonably close to covering a live event. Winter’s bird nests and spring’s wildflowers will just have to wait.
Yes, we have cicadas! This is Year 221—one of those very rare years to witness the dual hatch of two different broods from two different species. Fortunately, Missouri is only getting Brood XIX of the 13-year cicada, while Illinois and parts of Iowa are getting Brood XIII of the 17-year variety. Only a few lucky places get both. In all, parts of 17 states are getting one or the other hatch. The last time the 13’s and the 17’s emerged in the same season, Jefferson was accepting the Louisiana Purchase, Beethoven was unveiling his Second Symphony, and Ohio was becoming the 17th state. If you plan to be around for the next double emergence, set an alert on your phone’s calendar—for the year 2245.
These periodical herbivorous invertebrates spend their first 13 or 17 years underground as larvae.
When they finally emerge for their brief life above the surface, they leave a neat hole slightly bigger around than a pencil.
This specimen was blowing a bubble to get the metamorphic process started. I have yet to find a scientific explanation of this step. (No, I don’t know what flavor gum it’s chewing.)
Before long they work on unzipping their exoskeleton and working their way out of its confines.
Peering inside one freshly shed skin you can see white threads. These are disconnected tracheal tubes, part of the preemergence respiratory system.
At first the newly emerged lack pigment and their wings take time to unfurl. Once they’ve pulled their act together, they head up into a tree to suck tree juice, buzz and sing, and test their wings.
The discarded brown skins, officially known as exuviae, are left behind as litter.
Eventually, the newly emerged get their full coloration and their wings take on the look of cellophane.
The males do most of the noisemaking. Think of it as an insect dating app. While vibrating their abdominal plates, called tymbals, a hollow in their abs helps the sound reverberate. Once they hook up (figuratively and literally), the females make little holes in twigs and branches to hold their eggs. Each female cicada can lay several hundred eggs that hatch in six to ten weeks. Then the nymphs drop to the ground and burrow several inches down for a loooonnnnggg stay. During their underground sojourn, if not eaten by underground predators (only a small percentage survive), they go through five larval stages. For sustenance, they attach to tree roots.
Adult cicadas don’t have normal insect mouths. Instead, they suck liquids from trees and shrubs through a straw-like tube. This doesn’t harm the plant, but making holes in twigs for their eggs can cause the twigs to hang down, or “flag.” That stage will come in a few weeks. It takes six to ten weeks for the eggs to turn into nymphs. By then, the adults’ aboveground time is up. They only live about five weeks.
The exact lifespan varies. Annual varieties (which hatch every year) can live two to eight years. In central and eastern states we have seven species of periodical cicadas. Worldwide, there are more than 3,000 species! Generally they survive through sheer numbers, often emerging billions at a time. Still, in some parts of the world certain cicada species are seriously declining.
For birds and other predators, it’s been a feeding bonanza. We have a family of house sparrows getting fat from the abundance of cicada steak in their diet. The change in food sources pleases the birds, since more of their nestlings are able to survive. It also makes caterpillars happy to have the birds so distracted. They, too, are more likely to survive.
As the predation progresses, discarded cicada wings litter the lawn, the deck, the garden… We often see ants heading home with cicada parts in their grip.
There’s even cicada roadkill!
Of course, if wildlife love them so, why not add some cicada meat to YOUR diet? The Maryland Department of Conservation graciously posts their recipe for roasted cicadas—dipped in semisweet chocolate, of course. Then refrigerate until delectably crunchy. Before you head out to the campfire for cicada s’mores, take note that they recommend harvesting the white ones (just emerged) for a more pleasant dining experience.
Bon appetit!!
E.H.
Potpourri
Almost-Equinox Edition – March 15, 2024
The title for this issue reflects the great variety of scenes and phenomena we find down here in just eight short weeks. This agglomeration of photos and stories is a mix, a medley, a collage, a grab bag, a mishmash—and for the more gastronomically inclined, a gumbo, stew, ragout, or even smorgasbord. Bon appétit!
First, a farewell to winter…
These ice falls appear every year where a hillside spring dribbles over an exposed limestone cliff, upslope from the fen. This year it was particularly photogenic due to lots of freezing weather and plenty of drip.
Walking along the bank of a frozen creek mid-January, we spotted an odd impression in the snow above the ice. Had someone dragged a small log? The pattern recurred several times as we hiked farther. Closer examination revealed the source—a river otter doing belly slides. Perhaps more for fun than to speed his or her commute?
The otter left distinct paw prints at the end of each slide. Snow surfing sounds fun! I may have to try it, but only if the ice gets a lot thicker next year.
Because of the mini-mountain behind the house, we don’t see sunsets directly. Instead, we enjoy a light show on the ridge across the creek to the east.
Winter’s bare trees provide the movie screen as the setting sun sets the forest ablaze for our pre-dinner social hour.
Ice cover on the pond comes and goes several times over the winter. It often contains lots of pretty air bubbles.
But wait—is that actually the bottom we’re seeing??
Yes! Somehow the water has cleared up after a year of murkiness! We hope it’ll stay that way so we can watch water plants grow and wiggly things wiggle.
While weedeating around the pond, I stirred up a mouse each time I went around. Finally exasperated with my repeated intrusion, the little guy decided he’d had enough and headed for the north shore.
It was hard to tell if it was running across the surface or actually swimming. Either way, it made great time, leaving a wake like the remote-control speed boat we had for a little while. Once back on terra firma, Ranger Rodent made himself at home in a puff of grass on the other side.
This oak leaf, like thousands of others, was visually enhanced by some disease or pest. I have yet to identify the artistic culprit. Trees are subject to almost as many ailments as us mammals, but I’ll keep searching for answers. Meanwhile, I love the design.
I once gave a boss a congratulatory Hallmark Shoebox Greetings card giving recognition “To someone out standing in his field.” Now it’s my turn for the accolade.
Lest you think we never have rush hour on our very rural roads, the other day I headed up the county gravel past our fen to exercise the farm car. Just over the next rise I found myself facing such snarled traffic I decided to back up rather than get embroiled.
Of course, I rolled down the window and yelled out, just like on Shawnee-Mission Parkway: “You turkeys!!”
Here’s what a critter sees approaching one of our trail cams. Animals apparently love our trails. They use them even more than we do.
Coyotes, for example. I never get tired of seeing them, but it’s 99 percent digitally, 1 percent in person.
The first photo is one coyote in a composite image. The second is in twilight black and white.
I guess the armadillos followed me from Texas. Like me, they’re here to stay. Unfortunately, one of their favorite activities is digging a hole once every three feet in a nicely mowed lawn, looking for grubs and other yummies. I can usually sneak up while its nose is in a hole and its digging in dry leaves masks any noise I make. I followed this one to its den under a tree root.
In my office at the farm, I have a 33” by 42” framed print of this John James Audubon painting of the awesome pileated woodpecker (picus pileatus), largest of the 22 surviving species of woodpecker in North America. (Head to tail: about 17 inches.) Audubon created more than 400 paintings for his Birds of America collection in the early 1800s. The pileateds are Plate 111 (or, in my edition, CXI in Roman numerals). It’s always special when the print is on the wall behind me and out the window an actual pileated is pecking at the big walnut tree just north of the house. Stereo woodpeckers! (How I rescued the print from a Sedalia antique store remains a story for some other occasion.)
On walks, we often hear these birds criss-crossing the forest blasting their loud cuck-cuck-cuck-cuck-cuck call.
If you watch PBS, you probably know the concept of wildlife camera traps. I’ve always wanted to get photos of a pileated, and recently finally found what I thought might be the ideal setup—a maple stump old enough to be full of the kind of delicacies pileateds love. Carpenter ants make up about half their diet. Well, the stump lured small woodpeckers and mice, but not the big guy. He landed on the decaying, equally delectable trunk lying nearby.
Each of these photos shows one bird in multiple poses. Our posing native bird is of course not to be confused with this similar species, undiscovered until the digital age—the great pixelated woodpecker. Only in the Ozarks, where Darwinism meets digital head-on. (I believe this is referred to by ornithobiologists as E-volution…)
After collecting the cameras’ memory cards, on the base of the stump from the old maple that keeled over a few years ago I spotted a large colony of small pear-shaped puffballs (that’s really their species name).
Already mature, these puffballs weren’t the large white ones we enjoy eating, but could have been equally edible when young. (If the inside isn’t pure white like a marshmallow, don’t risk it. Some lookalikes are deadly!) The little holes told me these guys were ready to spawn.
With a little finger pressure, I set them off in an eponymous puff of smoke, spewing millions of spores around the immediate neighborhood. This should ensure plenty of puffball offspring next season.
I’m excited to report that the famous book is set for public release June 4, 2024!! I will post information about discounted pre-orders as soon as I have it. My Search for Jazzbo Jones will be available through Amazon, Barnes & Noble and many other sources. Formats will include hard cover and paperback (with black-and-white photos), ebook (with color photos), and eventually, audiobook. (And no—Netflix has not yet approached regarding an eight-part miniseries…)
Til next time!
E.H.
o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o
Li’l Bit o’ Everything
January 15, 2024
Why the title? We used to shop occasionally at a crazy store by that name on US 65 south of Sedalia. They pretty much lived up to their name, selling everything from headboards to hatbands, cots to comics, pails to posters… Now the name’s been adopted by a number of thrift stores and websites. It also seems an appropriate label for this month’s GMF Phlog. We need to move a variety of images out the door of the digital warehouse.
Before we do, here are some shots from the frosty morning of January 4. When I saw the unusual spiky crystals that had sprouted everywhere overnight, I set out on a walkabout to capture as much of the scene as possible. Here’s some of what I found.
These are all examples of hoarfrost, an Old English term for ice resembling an old guy’s whiskers. (I’m honored!) Less common than rime ice, it forms little crystalline needles when airborne moisture touches an object without first creating a droplet of water. Both the air and the object it hits have to be 32 degrees or less, and the air has to be moist and still
Now, here’s who’s been showing up on three game cameras placed on trails. We can’t focus on the pond again until the surrounding prairie is mowed. Tall windblown grass makes for thousands of time-wasting, motion-detected but critterless pictures. Pondography will resume in the spring.
One of the most elusive mammals in the Ozarks is the bobcat (Lynx rufus), native to most of North America including southern Canada and northern Mexico. It probably evolved from the Eurasian lynx roughly 2 million years ago.
In nearly 30 years we’ve only seen bobcats in person a couple of times. Usually we’ve had to be content looking at pawprints left in fresh snow. The tracks have four toes with claws usually retracted. Sometimes it’s hard to make out details because the cats often place their hind feet exactly where the front ones were the moment before.
The bobcat’s diet ranges from large insects and small rodents all the way up to deer. They’re largely solitary, with a typical individual range of about five square miles. Rather than being entirely nocturnal, they’re considered crepuscular, meaning they like the four or five hours around twilight, both a.m. and p.m. (Wait a minute! The Twilight Zone?? Nee-nee-nee-nee, nee-nee-nee-nee…)
(One bobcat, composite image.)
I’m thrilled to report several recent trailcam captures. They’re not so great photographically, but it’s still exciting to catch one of the local kitties on camera, not once but several times. He or she seems to love our trails, showing up at various times of night, and occasionally in the daytime. Because it’s small (adult height: 12 to 24 inches) and usually some distance from the camera, bobcat portraits tend to be blurry and splotchy.
(One bobcat, composite image.)
Other shots show the similarities and differences compared to its smaller cousin the housecat. Note the pointed, black-tufted ears.
This daytime photo (one cat, composite image) brings out the actual camouflagenous colors.
A similar view at night, no color.
This next image is one bobcat that must’ve had friends in very high places. Ten years ago Uncle Sam put its face on more than 100 million penny postage stamps!
Coyotes remain frequent visitors year-round. These locals look healthy.
(Two coyotes, composite image.)
This series shows good stop/look/listen behavior.
A coyote postage stamp? Absolutely! In 2000, the USPS issued 30 million of these 33-centers honoring our guys’ famous Arizona ancestor, Wile E. Coyote of Roadrunner cartoon fame. It was fourth in a Looney Tunes stamp series. (When I was a kid, stamps honored presidents, Founding Fathers and statesmen. Today, Looney Tunes may actually be a lot more appropriate representing how our nation is governed!)
Whitetail deer, of course, remain plentiful in spite of the recent hunting season. Missouri hunters bagged a record 326,000 statewide — a little more than the typical annual harvest. Here’s one of our bigger bucks passing through the neighborhood.
Deer don’t always shed both antlers the same day, or month for that matter. This guy keeps on truckin’ in spite of his uneven load. I wonder if the musculature in his neck will need an adjustment…
This young eight-pointer might be about two and a half years old. He doesn’t have the bulk of his older cousin yet. It takes more than four years to reach full maturity.
Rackety Coon et al. are regular visitors almost daily. (Two coons, composite image.)
I can’t tell what this barred owl was up to. By landing within range of the infrared flash, he earned his five minutes of fame.
For this issue’s bonus round, here are some literally moving images from our hike along the creekbank on January 14. With the thermometer barely above zero, it was a treat seeing and hearing the water make its way beneath the icy crust. Enjoy!
Til next time (probably March)…
E.H.
o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o
Leaf it Be!
November 20, 2023
The studio has a rich backdrop of color this time of year. The science of what makes leaves change color and head for the ground involves way more botanical/chemical detail than I have space for, so I’ll keep it brief.
As most of us learned in kindergarten, autumn is called “fall” because so many trees are deciduous, and this time of year their leafy appendages decide to, well, you know… fall. Like this:
Less daylight and lower temperatures are the main triggers, say my biogurus at Missouri Department of Conservation, with each species reacting in its own way. Drought is also a factor. As chlorophyll dwindles, the green in leaves fades, allowing other colors to show through. Carotenoids display yellows, browns and oranges. Anthocyanin (I told you it gets chemical) produces reds and purples.
Abscission, the fancy name for a leaf’s process of letting go, involves cellular and hormonal changes. (Sounds kinda like us!) One day, it all clicks and gravity takes over (yup!), sometimes aided by wind and rain. For oaks, in particular, it may take some heavy weather to denude the limbs. Being either modest or stubborn, they hang onto their outfits as long as possible. Known as marcescence, this behavior is not entirely psychological. It’s also traced to differences in their physical leaf structure.
Fall colors kick in gradually. Then they get more intense. This year the yellows led off.
Pawpaws…
Redbuds…
Ash… Followed by orange and red.
Maples…
Even the poison ivy looks festive.
Every kind of leaf in the forest’s non-evergreen inventory is affected—sycamore, oaks, hickories, mulberries, cherries—they’re all there…
Fragrant sumac, a poison ivy lookalike…
Dogwood…
And outdoing all the rest in brilliance, smooth sumac.
The forest’s palette also makes possible all sorts of fun color combinations.
The oak-hickory slopes have a long season of browns, golds and bronze, a vivid contrast against recently mowed pasture. Two weeks later the trees were 98% bare.
The uncut prairie, meanwhile…
…has gone to seed.
See what I mean?
An expansive patch of goldenrod closes up shop…
…then goes to fluff.
It’ll have a hard time competing with sage grass…
…an even more prolific fluff factory intent on taking over the world.
So where do all the thousands—no, millions… okay, billions of tree leaves go? Everywhere!
They collect on stumps…
They collect on the ground…
But they still have to share the ground with pincushions of moss not willing to give it up to winter…
…providing soft spots of persistent greenery.
You might not think of a creek as the best spot for leaf peeping, but it turned out to be pretty darned good!
Dogwoods arch over Archer.
Horsetail along the bank seems oblivious to the seasons.
Leaves collect in an irregular pothole. And now for the gallery…
Here’s a series of 9 x 16 water canvases I call Natural Expressionism.
Each water scene a natural painting…
…featuring shapes and splashes of color…
Aquatic still lifes…
Leaves soften the appearance of the ribcage of a fallen deer.
Canadians could feel at home here.
Sycamore floats like a boat.
Redbud’s green is all but gone.
Here and there chlorophyll still hangs on.
Purple phase redbud rests on the gravel.
Undersides reveal the pastel version of fall colors.
This cocoon hadn’t really planned on taking a cruise.
Jigsaw puzzle, anyone?
For Mr. Crawdad, leaves provide new possibilities for camouflage.
The foam is from natural trickle action, not soap pollution.
Where the current slows down near a low-water bridge, leaves collect in an arc.
Now let’s go with the flow!
The flotilla gathers around a pothole.
The stream keeps on going.
Water wants to move no matter what.
Rocks provide a resting place.
We had a chilly evening with a nearly full moon. Then on October 27, it began to feel a bit like winter. As if to confirm that, a long string of geese in V-formation went by, so fast I failed to catch their picture. They were honking something about getting to their Airbnb in Texas.
The cold front blowing in behind them told me clearly “Fall’s not over.”
I watched its wind launch another mass abscission. Yup, here they go again…
Waking the next morning after overnight rain, we see misty stripes of color. Everything’s still beautiful.
Clearly, Folks: This is why we call it awetumn!
+ + + + +
Some of you ask “When’s the book coming out?” Best estimate is February 2024. This month we’ve been proofreading and refining the layout.
The first chapter deals with how I experienced the tragic, history-roiling event marking its 60th anniversary this very Wednesday—November 22—and introduces the blind friend from Kansas who was with me in Texas as the turbulence from JFK’s murder swirled around us. Whether you were alive then or only know about it from books and movies, it’s still a gripping story. In more ways than one, it launches My Search for Jazzbo Jones. Later chapters include plenty of escapades, humor, historical figures and socio-political commentary. (And yes—I do find him!)
o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o
The Phlog Returns!
October 10, 2023
Mist settles over a hayfield at dusk, September 22, 2023.
Hi Y’All! The GMF Phlog is back! After four months!!
The hiatus may have coincided somewhat with the writers’ strike in Hollywood, but I was doing plenty of writing. THE BOOK IS DONE (finally) and currently being massaged by the publisher’s layout department. Now I again have time to share what’s going on in our part of the Ozarks.
Fall is still trying to arrive, with only modest success. Not surprising, since this is documented as Earth’s warmest year on record, as well as one of the most violent weather-wise. About eight weeks ago, Green Mountain Farm saw its worst flash flood in probably 40 or 50 years, coupled with randomly destructive winds. We missed the big show and arrived the day after it all happened. The evidence was gobsmacking.
Numerous trees were broken like matchsticks.
This one used to be a 60-foot cherry tree two feet in diameter at its base. The top half now lies on the ground in several large pieces.
We found a heavy layer of leaves, sticks and other forest debris deposited in the undergrowth. Even a log deposited in the middle of a hayfield. Here and there throughout the forest, large hardwood trees twisted off 10 to 30 feet above the ground. Branches torn off. Whole trees washed downstream. Archer Creek for a short time was about 10 feet above normal after seven inches of rain fell in a short time. Fortunately, we had no major building damage, other than a partial ceiling collapse beneath some shingles well beyond their life expectancy. Forest cleanup is ongoing as more brutalized trees reveal themselves when their leaves fall off.
In spite of all this, Nature carries on as if it were still spring, or summer at least. Lawns are thick and green. Beans, melons, cucumbers, and tomatoes are still producing. Flowers are still blooming. Butterflies still visit. One remaining pair of hummingbirds keeps rebooking their flight back to Central America. As we often say, why leave when you’re having fun?
Here’s a close look at veins on a monarch’s wing.
Red clover keeps blooming.
A bumblebee works a nasturtium.
A small thistle stands out from the surrounding prairie. (Look closely and you’ll find a small beetle and a green inchworm!)
Sadly, our first day back we found a black vulture dead on the ground, apparently electrocuted while attempting to land on our main power pole.
Since the birds are federally protected, we contacted our electric co-op about installing a proper raptor guard to prevent a repeat. The next day, as we watched from the breakfast table, they were on it.
Last Sunday morning as our hay crew was finishing up, one of the guys saw a black bear running west under the big power lines, the first sighting in the immediate area since 2020. We’ll see if he (the bear) comes by for a selfie one of these days before hitting the sack for hibernation.
In no time, turkeys were hanging around near one of the hay bales, and not just to feed. A couple of them hopped onto the bale and played king of the mountain. (They jumped off before I could grab the camera.)
Earlier, a red-tailed hawk used the same bale as a lookout perch for scanning the freshly mowed field for lunchable rodents. Another scene with turkeys: A group of them were working their way west in a different field when a bald eagle flew over. Quickly, the turkeys reversed course—at a run. Moments later, the eagle flew over again in the opposite direction but didn’t swoop down. Maybe he was doing what our dog Sundance used to do with the chickens—just stirring things up a little for the sheer fun of it.
Next morning, MODOT came by for an hour to put down a second layer of asphalt on the low-water highway bridge which was pretty badly torn up by the flood. Trees rushing downstream also sheared off all the flood gauge signs (as usual).
A few days later, the hay guys picked up all the bales and trucked them off to someone needing winter feed for cows.
This was the second cutting this year. The first was done earlier than usual when it looked like the fields might dry up during the drought. Okay—enough pictures of heavy equipment already! Back to Nature!
We did a creek walk south of the highway to inspect for general damage. Besides stacks of downed tree trunks here and there, we saw some sections of the creek bed greatly altered.
Relocated gravel created enough dam effect to bring stillness to the water above where it flows underground for a stretch.
The root ball of this toppled tree is about eight feet by ten feet.
This hanger-on is poised to go over in some future flood.
Places the bank is undercut provide perfect spots for beavers to start new dens.
Discarded branches left in the water like gnawed bones show how systematically beavers munch the tasty outer layer.
Willow stumps from past dining usually resprout—a renewable food source!
Plant life along the creek is still abundant. The blue cardinal flower, a Missouri native that prefers wet areas, is also known as blue lobelia.
Unlike its black-eyed cousin, the brown-eyed Susan is partial to wet woods and streamsides.
The dainty white heath aster is one of 24 aster species in Missouri.
River oats aren’t closely related to the oats you have for breakfast. They’re a prolific grass. At city florists you may pay big bucks to add their distinctive flat seedheads to your bouquet when the seeds are at their greenest.
Water cress, a JoEl favorite for salads, requires cold spring water to grow. Ozark streams are the perfect habitat.
A bucket of corn must have washed downstream from someone’s feeder or wildlife food plot. Since the flood, it’s been sprouting all over our gravel bars in the creek.
Whether you call it spearmint, peppermint, or just plain-old mint, the stuff loves growing with its roots in creek water. It originated in other parts of the world and was brought to America from Europe for culinary and medicinal uses. As we say of people, it’s put down roots and plans to stay.
Dogwood berries look a lot like holly.
If you want to see all the red we usually have in the fall, obviously running late this year, see my post “The Hunt for Red (October)” from a year ago on this page. (You can use the search function on your machine to find it without scrolling through a year’s worth of phlog.)
Another sure sign of fall—WALNUTS!!
Traversing the lawn is akin to walking on ball bearings. It’s dangerous! So is lying on a hammock without a helmet and eye protection. Black walnuts are a cash crop in the Ozarks. Wholesaling a pickup load will pay for more than just your gas, if you don’t have to drive too far. This year in Missouri, they’re bringing about $16 per 100 pounds. But before you start filling your grocery bags, be forewarned. The price per pound is figured after the mill shucks the outer hulls.
The nuts are used for ice cream and other food products, while crushed shells are used in sandblasting. Juice from the hulls makes great wood stain. Just ask the squirrels who leave footprints all over the deck boards and patio furniture. One last comment. Best not to visit right now if you have a strong startle reflex. It sounds like a gun going off every time a walnut hits a metal roof.
This woolly bear caterpillar seemed intent on checking out potential spots for a long winter’s nap.
The woolly bear hibernates, then forms a chrysalis in the spring to recycle into an Isabella tiger moth. Whether you can predict the severity of the approaching winter’s weather based on the width of its reddish band or the length of its “hair” is a matter of opinion. In any case, the odds of being correct forecasting by caterpillar are at least as good as flipping a coin. Some even say a woolly bear’s design reflects the conditions of the previous winter. Oh well…
So… back to marketing.
As I mentioned, after proofreading, a few more rounds of edits, and sign-off by the Pentagon (I’m not making this up!), my book is currently being processed by the layout and design folks at my publisher. Here’s a sneak peek at the cover. More teasers, and perhaps trivia contests (but no karaoke) are likely to show up in future issues. Stay tuned!
E.H.
Creekography in Black & White
June 10, 2023
Hi! I’ve missed Y’all! Been working on the book 25 hours a week but want to keep the Phlog going. So what does Hollywood do during a writers walkout? Reruns!! Here’s a piece I did 15 years ago for a book on rivers in the Midwest.
Whether large or small, streams and rivers help sustain life, shape the landscape, and provide an ideal place for man to come face to face with Nature. This is all true of Archer Creek in Benton County, Missouri.
The annual cycle of flowering trees, shrubs and wildflowers along Midwest stream banks lasts fully half the year. Dogwoods are among the first to put on their show.
To get to know a creek really well takes the same effort as getting to know another person. Visit frequently, at all times of day, in all seasons and conditions and moods. Ask leading questions. Admire its change of dress. Be respectful when it’s stirred up. Get to know its other acquaintances. Introduce your family. Provide support where you can. Share your secrets. Spend the night. And always, be a good listener.
Being a photographer of creeks and streams requires most of those steps, and then some. The old railroad crossing sign sums it up simply enough: “Stop! Look! Listen!” You have to do all three to take in the countless small details that deserve a photographer’s time—not all of which will hold still.
The “Stop!” is important. No matter why you’re on or in the creek, always take a break to really take in your surroundings. Breathe the water-charged air, inhale the smells. Set your brain on peak alert. It’s also wise to plan each step carefully, and think what you’ll do to keep your camera dry if (when) you lose your footing.
Be on the lookout for little visual cues. Stripped twigs in the water mean beaver. Crawdad shells say coon. Overturned moss and uprooted grass show force of the most recent flood. For fun imagery, there’s always the interplay of light and moving water. Rapids and ripples. Drips and dribbles. Sparkles and splash.
Sounds can lead you to other visitors. Deer hooves on wet rocks. Ducks bathing beyond a curtain of mist. Captain Kingfisher on his dive-bombing run. A great blue coming in for a landing. An armadillo wading across to the other side.
On some shots you can take all day. Others you have to shoot really really fast. Whatever your luck, shoot often. Better to have too many to choose from than none that’s quite right.
And before you leave, start planning your next date. You’ve just barely begun to be intimate.
In secluded streamways, roles can reverse late in the day. Sycamores look real in reflection, water becomes sky and light shines up.
Even the smallest streams can make white water after a heavy rain. Many waterways lie empty much of the year, coming quickly to life as land around them sheds rainfall.
Most fallen trees sooner or later float downstream during a flood. A few lodge permanently in mud and gravel and stabilize the streambed.
Pausing on the way to its next dining spot, a northern water snake takes a look around. Its diet consists almost entirely of small fish.
Not too small to cast shadows, young fish dart about in just a few inches of water. Their color blends perfectly with the surroundings.
Stretching ahead like a small rural highway, this creek invites the inquisitive to find out what’s around the bend. A little way downstream, Archer Creek joins it.
The Maine lobster’s diminutive cousin, the crawdad is readily found in midwestern creeks and streams, scooting backwards across gravel and hiding under rocks.
Well past surrendering its authority, the warning marker from a state-maintained low-water bridge rests among the rocks several feet under.
After a heavy morning mist has melted away, branches high above the creek put their drips into play on the water’s surface.
Potholes form as gravel scours out cavities in a limestone streambed. The holes grow larger over time, providing hiding places for small creek dwellers.
In gravelly areas, creeks can pull a disappearing act when the water table drops. They go underground for a distance, then reappear in their usual channel.
Startling discoveries often await when you go creekwalking. Lodged in the rocks underwater, this bleached, leathery carcass was once a coyote.
The presence of a water strider translates into bold patterns of shadow and light as the insect speed skates from spot to spot.
Unable to free its wings from the water’s grasp, a butterfly makes waves during its last futile struggle to take flight.
Til next time!
E.H.
Lost & Found (Up a Creek, & Down)
April 21, 2023
Remember winter? Before we totally forget what it was like, here’s a (hopefully) last, quick look. These shots are from a mid-January walk to the prairie pond, returning to the house by a different path to catch views of the snowy woods along Lost Creek.
Tree tunnel fairyland
Elkhorn snow coral
Ozark redwoods (okay… they’re just red cedars)
Prairie pond in winter dress
Bubbles in pond ice
Surface crystals
“This way!” he always said, waiting patiently
Lost Creek running with snowmelt
Below is the same creek two weeks later, with the snow cover gone.
On this next hike I wanted to see how many details I could learn about the private life of a creek. Missouri has 110,000 miles of streams. We are blessed to have a few of them running through our place, some all year and some only after big rains.
We named this one Lost Creek because for years it not only was usually dry but also hidden from view by tangled saplings and brambles. That sort of growth is typical of a transition or succession forest that fills in for the first decade or more after a sloppy logging operation (like the one done by the former owners of the west part of our nature preserve). We’ve been nurturing the land’s recovery for 20 years now.
We often tread on moss carpet
This Lost Creek crossing you can usually step across
At first, Lost Creek was only visible close-up at two locations—where a walking path crossed, and at its outlet to the much bigger and always flowing Archer Creek. In recent years, rainfall has increased and this tributary has running water more frequently. Also, vegetation has matured so we can see into the valley more easily. Lost Creek is definitely found! In fact, it’s become one of our favorite hikes.
On this second exploratory walk I’m starting near the eastern end of the creek and working my way upstream, to the west.
Boulder brought down by weather and erosion
Lost Creek must be a Grand Canyon wannabe. It broke loose this four-foot mini-boulder. A little farther upstream, a half-oxbow curve cut a steep wall eight feet deep. Not bad for a stream that only works part-time.
The Little Grand Canyon
Another nearly full-circle curve.
We always pay close attention to the bottom of a creek since we’re in the northwest corner of the Ozark Plateau. Like much of Missouri, it’s a karst landscape. Groundwater dissolving the rock creates springs and underground drainage systems with sinkholes (the state has more than 16,000 of them) and caves. Karst comes from porous sedimentary limestone and dolomite laid down by rising and falling oceans in the Ordovician period ending roughly 444 million years ago (well before invention of the Internet).
As a result we often find fossils of ocean critters more than twice as old as dinosaur bones, right here on our walks. Which is great—now we don’t feel nearly so old!
Observing the creek bottom can help you understand a stream’s behavior. When coursing through rocky soil the bottom is made up of gravel and small stones, including chert of various colors and chips of limestone and dolomite. Elsewhere the stream hits a large limestone shelf and runs clean for a while.
Especially in late fall and early winter, the water flow may disappear under piles of washed-down leaves.
Or, it may just flat disappear beneath the gravel and reappear downstream. As the magicians used to say, “Now you see it, now you don’t!” Water finds a way to get where it’s going but it may not always be on the surface.
To entertain the wildlife with some extra color, we of course must make time for a new art installation next to Lost Creek in Mayapple Valley.
The valley is indeed full of mayapple plants spring and summer
Hollow tree… Wire frame…
L’Artiste!
Voilá!
That done, back to our amateur science walk…. For some time after a rain, there are lots of seeps and dribbles as water runs off from surrounding terrain. When below freezing, icicles form.
Look closely and you’ll also find other forms of ice oozing up from the sand and gravel lining the creek. The ones shown here are called needle ice and pebble ice.
There’s also light surface ice, and clear unfrozen burbles.
So where are the mysterious headwaters of Lost Creek? Does the creek actually have a starting point? The only way to find out: keep walking upstream. The stream morphs into more of a drainage ditch, with diminishing flow. And finally—a field up ahead.
Yup, it’s the recently mown prairie with the pond.
Creek? What creek??
Runoff and overflow go downhill into the creek’s catchment area
The pond is behind the trees at right
So where does all of Lost Creek’s water come from? Here’s a topo of the watershed. The last photo above was taken from the start of the arrow that’s farthest left on the bottom row.
The proper end of this story is at the downstream end of Lost Creek, where it flows into the far bigger Archer Creek. Depending on recent weather, its final step-down as a tributary can be a gentle drip, a steady trickle or a real stream flow. (Slow internet? The GIFs may take a few moments to load…)
Here’s a still view as the sometimes creek joins the bigger, always-flowing one.
The year-round clear waters of Archer Creek head south
Archer is a tributary to Big Buffalo Creek which creates Big Buffalo Cove of Lake of the Ozarks. (And no, we did NOT watch the Ozark tv show—after the first 15 minutes, anyway. It was filmed in Georgia, for cryin’ out loud!) Eventually our Green Mountain Farm water joins the Missouri and Mississippi rivers so it can drop in on Mardi Gras before mixing molecules with the Gulf of Mexico. (It must not be lost after all—it seems to know exactly where it’s going.)
Now that you’ve seen Lost Creek from stem to stern, you may be wondering “How long is the darned thing?” From the wooded headwaters to its eastern confluence is about 1,000 feet as the proverbial crow flies. It may not sound like much, but that’s a fifth of a mile! Pretty good for a Nature-built ditch to carry storm runoff from a couple of hills and a prairie.
Special Bonus Track:
The Fen is home to insects, reptiles, amphibians, ducks and smaller birds
On the evening of March 5 we went east of the big creek about 500 feet to our fen to take in the celebratory chorus of frogs welcoming spring. The noise can be pretty intense—the volume and overtones literally make your ears rattle!
Listen carefully and you can hear several species at once, including spring peepers, gray tree frogs, leopard frogs and bullfrogs. Fresh from hibernation, the males fill out their online dating profiles and head for the water’s edge to advertise. From there I guess it’s Ladies’ Choice…
The guys were definitely excited. The decibel meter on my iPhone frequently hit between 80 and 90 db, even without the wind noise. It’s enough to harm your hearing if you linger fenside too long at a time. Turn up your volume (if you can stand it) and take a listen.
Well, as the frogs said, it’s officially springtime. We’ve added drip-action GIFs, flowing streamwater, and amphibian audio. With flowers in bloom, we’re now in the lab busily working on our proprietary Smellevision app for the next edition. And of course, the woods around Lost Creek already look totally different. They’re bright GREEN! Sorry the Phlog is often a month or two behind the actual season.
I have to warn you, too, I’ve received a publishing contract for a book that’s been in process more than a decade. It’s due out by November so I’ll probably be cutting the Phlog’s text-to-photos ratio for a while as I budget my time more stringently. This issue was a month later than planned. Nonetheless, I’ve already lined up several future subjects.
As always, stay tuned!
E.H.
I Can’t Help Myself — Back to Macro!
February 14, 2023
The edition before last, A Macro Walk in the Woods posted January 3, got me all revved up. I love macro!! So here’s a brief retrospective gallery with some of the macro work I did about 15 years ago.
Back then I was using a 35mm Canon EOS-1N and later a digital successor, the EOS 20D. Closeup lens was usually a 100mm macro. Lighting was various combinations of daylight, macro ring strobe, and all sorts of other devices.
Some of the most fun photography I’ve done was with that rig mounted on a tripod in a makeshift macro studio on the kitchen counter at Green Mountain Farm. It was a great opportunity to turn Nature’s details into art as composition would suddenly present itself in the viewfinder.
Many of the images wound up in shows as gallery-size framed prints. Several of the ones shown here were shot more recently on the iPhone 13 Pro—but I’m not telling which! I sometimes miss the old heavy hardware, but the best camera is always the one you have with you.
You may wonder how I got so close to some of the animal subjects. Big and small, creatures die for all sorts of reasons. When the remains fall into my lap, I consider it a gift and go to work creating memorable images.
Today’s technology and editing techniques have advanced considerably. I’m blown away (and humbled) almost daily by what I find in favorite macro groups on Facebook, especially super-detailed portraits of flies, bees, dragonflies, beetles and ants.
I also love the occasional macros in Joel Sartore’s ongoing series of Photo Ark books by National Geographic. I can’t recommend his books enough! I’m reading my second volume and waiting eagerly for the newest, due for release in April, which he devotes entirely to insects. Besides amazing images of creatures of every size, Sartore tells the story of man’s daunting race to save species facing extinction.
On with the show…. As always, I hope I’m showing some things you’ve never seen, or at least a new view of something you have.
Flora
There are only about 600(!) hybrid versions of the amaryllis, derived from 90 species native to South and Central America. A similar plant evolved in South Africa. The six stamens led me to focus on the bright pollen loads held by flower parts called anthers.
There are 2,000 kinds of begonias. Mercifully, I’m only going to show you this one.
People have likely been cultivating poppies since civilization began in Mesopotamia at least 7,000 years ago. Today it can be hard to keep all the varieties straight.
Every year the thickets producing these two varieties of thorny wild rose spread by the driveway. Their rate of expansion puts the nearby domestic species to shame. (But they’re not the noxiously invasive multiflora rose I’ve complained about in previous posts.)
Exploring the inner regions of a stargazer lily is like visiting another planet. It could make a great set for a sci-fi flick.
Originally from the Orient, there are more than 350 species of clematis. You’d never guess they’re in the buttercup family.
Their seeds are pretty jazzy, too!
There are more than 30 species of peony. In China they’ve been around since at least the time of Confucius (500 BC). If only cameras could capture the perfume!
The intricate flowers of Queen Anne’s lace turn into an even more stunning seed array in the fall.
Spiky seed capsules of Jimson weed hint at the toxicity of all parts of the plant, a member of the nightshade family. The weed originated in the Americas but has invaded temperate zones around the world. Its other names, depending on location, include thornapple, moonflower, devil’s trumpet, stinkweed and locoweed. It carries varying amounts of psychoactive deliriants that can lead to hospitalization or death (or both!).
Pokeweed goes all-out with its fall color. Although the plant is toxic, proper cooking can make the leaves and young shoots edible as poke salat. The plant’s dark purple berries can be used as food coloring, ink and dye. (We haven’t tried that yet.)
Fauna
If you ever have the opportunity to shake hands with a least shrew (total length 3 inches), be gentle. Here’s what its forepaw looks like. Shrews are more closely related to moles and hedgehogs than to mice. There are six species in Missouri. They eat primarily insects, worms and such and don’t seem worried about excess calories. A least shrew eats from 75 to 100 percent of its own body weight per day! (Don’t try this at home…)
Every so often beavers set up shop in the fen or the creek. Their continually renewable chisel-pointed tools are tough competition for Stihl and Husqvarna. They can take down large oaks and maples, but their favorites for creekside dining are the softer willows and sycamores.
A relative of anteaters and sloths, the nine-banded armadillo has been migrating northward through Missouri in recent years. Its body is thoroughly armored with bony plates (the osteoderm) beneath an outer shell of keratin, the substance in horns and fingernails. Here’s a closeup of one small part of its hide. The shell makes up 10 to 15 percent of the animal’s 11 to 15 pounds.
These smooth scales belong to a male broadheaded skink, one of five skink species in Missouri, 1,280 worldwide. This type can reach a length of about 6 inches. If a predator breaks off its tail, no worries—it can grow a new one. How’s that for a highly rated prepaid appendage protection plan?
Wings of the indigo bunting have more hues than you might expect birdwatching from a distance. Actually, they have no blue pigment at all. The microscopic structure of their feathers takes on a blue appearance through refraction and reflection of the light around them. This seed and bug eater is a relative of the cardinal. It migrates at night using celestial navigation—another good reason to discourage excessive outdoor lighting!
Waiting patiently, Mr. Bullfrog (very much alive) let me lie down next to him in the weeds for this closeup. The largest of Missouri’s eight frog species, bullfrogs are opportunistic omnivores. If it fits, they’ll eat it! They take two to three years to reach maturity after emerging from nearly a year of tadpolehood. A typical clutch laid by the Mrs. is well over 10,000 eggs. Yikes!
Arthropods (Creepy-Crawlies )
One afternoon JoEl returned from a walk in the hills exclaiming “I brought you a present!” It was this beautiful crowned slug on an oak leaf, its favorite food. I couldn’t wait to get the 1.5-centimeter-long beauty into my macro studio. It was alive but, living up to its name, didn’t move much. I was careful not to come into contact with its cactus-like spines.
Again, don’t touch! This flannel moth caterpillar looks soft, but underneath those wavy hairs are poisonous spines that can cause a serious reaction. The pose this specimen struck clinging to his leaf created one of my all-time favorite caterpillar images.
Why the expression “spinning a web?” Look closely at this orb-weaver spider’s spinnerets (the official term) and you’ll note TWO strands of web filament being wound together as the silk fiber is extruded! Orb-weavers work at night so for me this literally was a shot in the dark. I only noticed the double strand later after multiple large-scale editings on my computer.
One evening as we arrived at the farmhouse, I noticed this emerging cicada clinging to its discarded exoskeleton on one of the porch steps. This final molt marked its graduation from nymph to adulthood after spending a couple of years underground. I put off unloading the car, grabbed my macro rig, crouched down next to the steps and fired away. Think a cicada is a cicada is a cicada? There are nearly 200 species in North America and roughly 3,400 worldwide.
You notice I keep mentioning species counts? When I was a kid there were supposedly 600,000 identified species of insects. Now there are at least a million, and that is thought to be only 20 percent of what’s really out there. The diversity of all types of plants and animals is just as mind-boggling.
Here’s an artsy portrait of a tobacco hornworm, about whom I’ve editorialized in previous editions. It eats tomato plants as voraciously as its tomato hornworm cousin.
This closeup is the wingtip of the sphinx moth, parent of the hornworm above. The scales creating the design look like fuzzy shingles but are actually tiny hairs.
The (Inevitable) Humor Department
My postcard to prospective visitors features the notorious scourge of the Ozarks—the lone star tick! (And yes, they are literally waiting for your leg to go by to hitch a ride.)
Zoos and dioramas show plenty of wood ducks, but when have you ever seen the elusive tree-nesting wood duckie? Yup—only at Green Mountain Farm…
And last but definitely not least, this special music collector’s album, released ONLY in the Ozarks, commemorates the iconic quartet’s special one-time-only appearance in the GMF LLC Pavilion plein aire concert venue at the foot of Bear Mountain:
Well, that’s it for another while. I’m phairly phlogged! This was a lot of material to wade through, but with travels coming up, the next issue is likely at least a month away.
E.H.
A World Unto Itselfie
January 29, 2023
When I started this project of sharing wildlife photos, I hoped images would show the character and behavior of our animal subjects. I also vowed to avoid repetition. This issue mostly hits on the way deer interact with the cameras.
They are often very curious. Young ones, especially, frequently approach the cameras and study them intently. Perhaps the motion detectors or shutters make a tiny noise. Judging by the frequency of the adults’ posing for selfies, we can only assume they must be into social media.
“Okay, what makes this thing notice me? Maybe if I wiggle my ears just right… Like this…” [Strobe emits flash.]
Rest assured, no eyeballs were harmed in the production of these images. Infrared wavelengths are invisible to mammals. However, according to National Geographic a few species of insects, bats and snakes include some of the infrared spectrum in their vision.
Another young’n noses the camera.
“Hey Mom—watch this!”
“I know you’re having fun, Junior, but I really didn’t see a thing.”
A young buck sets up for his selfie.
“OK, we’ve got this. In frame… Deep breath… Twitch one ear…”
“Wait til the gang sees this one of me at the beach!”
Although she hasn’t quite mastered the art of focus, this soulful selfie harks back to the love theme from the 1995 Clint Eastwood film The Bridges of Madison County: “Doe eyes; she don’t care for love, she don’t care for mine… So doe eyes, would you let me go?” (Lyrics by actor/director/producer Eastwood and Lennie Niehaus.)
And if that’s not good enough for you, how about this one? “Doe eyes/
Thinking of me as a sweetheart… Doe eyes/Eyes like full moons, satellite dishes, baby” from Doe Eyes, 2021 single by Orchid, British-Iranian songwriter/vocalist/producer and radio host, heralded by one source as “the future of electronic pop.” Orchid apparently is reenergizing the 1990s UKG (UK garage) genre of electronic dance music. (I always learn something doing this blog!)
So you think I’m kidding about the social media stuff? Go online and check it out!
Other kinds of social interaction take place at the prairie pond, face-to-face. Here’s a sample.
“Looks to me like you ran out of doe.”
“Yeah? Well I guess you trying to grow antlers was pretty pointless. Now beat it!”
(Below) During a January snowfall, a whitetail performs Le Ballet des Neiges by Claude Deerbussy.
Which one should be this year’s Christmas card?
Deer aren’t the only visitors, of course.
Approaching at 3:05 a.m. the day after Christmas, Carl Coyote flips on the floodlights and trots onto the frozen surface of the pond to rehearse his routine for the Paws on Ice special (HBO-Max, March ’23).
The Peripatetic Prairie Patrol, a.k.a. P3, looks for tracks in the fresh snow.
Tired of waiting for our cougars and bears to stroll by the pond? So are we! Of course, soon as the snow melted, the usual local crazy (no relation to the studly patrol person in the prior photo) says he spotted our ever-elusive Sasquatch family crossing the prairie.
“I seen the whole famdambly of ’em,” he booms. “Durned if they didn’t turn tail right before they got to either camera!” (What—again?!)
“Daddy Bigfoot was this tall, Momma was this tall, and little Baby all reared up like a grizzly cub was tryin’ real hard to be just this big. Still no tracks or photos, dang it, but I gae-ron-tee they’ll be baaaaaack!!”
Okay, so now you know the real mission of the pondcam project. Just don’t tell no one—right? We don’t want bunches of interlopers or traffic jams an’ such.
You ever near the holler, drop on by. You, too, can be on Candid Camera of the Ozarks.
E.H.
A Macro Walk in the Woods
January 3, 2023
“Macro.” What’s it mean?
I like to think of it as making the very small (or micro) BIG. In my early days of macrophotography, I used a 100mm lens that could put an image onto 35mm film at 1:1, i.e., life-size on the slide or negative. From there you could blow it up, to billboard size, even, without loss of detail. To get much closer than that, you’d need microscope photography, or even electron microscopy—those portraits of ants or flies showing every tiny hair and dimple, for example.
Tiny objects shot with a phonecam may not match the resolution of a high-end DSLR, but they still help you see more detail. The whole point of photography is to help us see things we might miss, or to see routine things in a new way.
Researching smartphone capabilities, I looked at add-on and stick-on lenses. Are they really necessary? As I started poking around testing the native iPhone three-lens camera, I proved that without too much work you can do a fair job of macro without the gizmos. Here’s what I found on my late-November Macro Walk in the Woods.
[For this series of wide triptychs, view best by turning your phone horizontal, or use a big-screened IT implement or TV.]
We had a heavy mast year, meaning a huge crop of acorns and other forest nuts. Some places our paths were literally carpeted with acorns. Look closely and you can see them starting to send out a starter root searching for soil. Even though supposedly winter, five weeks later some of those roots were already six inches long!
Lots of our paths also stay carpeted with a variety of mosses. They come in many shades of green and most are velvety soft to touch. Up close their details resemble shrubs and succulents.
In a layer of mostly maple leaves, one stood out like a lace doily among cloth place mats. Some insect had obviously enjoyed a maple-flavored meal but left the normally invisible network of veins on the cafeteria floor.
A weathered deer bone adorns the path. Look closely and you’ll see signs of chewing at one end. Instead of mineral supplements from the local pharmacy, squirrels and other rodents rely on discarded bones to add calcium to their diet.
Speaking of deer, here’s a recent scrape where a buck rubbed his antlers on a handy cedar tree. Around the trunk’s base is a pile of shredded bark ready to line someone’s hamster cage. Fine stuff! Perhaps we should package it for the local PetSmart.
This plant growing in prairie is probably Canada thistle, which can be very invasive. In the fall its purple flowers turn to fluffy seedheads, shown bejeweled with morning dew.
Walking near a creek, I spotted a piece of fluff stuck in a small tree. A feather? A seed? It looks a lot like an airborne seed of common milkweed, but its wings are more like the feathery down from a duck. Okay—a wildflower-fowl hybrid; I give up. But it sure is pretty!
Leathery bracket fungi have emerged on this branch from a deciduous tree. By breaking down the wood of dead trees fungus serves as a cleanup crew and also returns valuable nutrients to the soil. The fungus began digesting the wood from the inside through a network of cells, then grew the exposed brackets to produce spores by which it will multiply. The surface of the semicircular brackets is more complex than it appears from a distance.
Other forest litter includes the tightly packed seed balls dropped by sycamore trees. They’re covered with little harmless spikes. When ready to distribute their load, the balls come apart easily and the individual seeds are ready to launch.
What are these scraps of gray paper doing on the path? Wait a minute! The grainy pattern looks familiar… These could only have come from a hornet nest. Close up, you can see the individual wood fibers. Stripes of color reflect the different types of wood the queen used in her construction process, mixing the fibers with her saliva.
Just the day before, I had noticed this annual reminder in the Conservation Department wildlife calendar. How timely! But where’s the nest? My forest forensics began with searching skyward, scanning the nearest bare treetops.
There it was—about 50 feet up in a sycamore, well out of reach and no longer occupied.
Looking at the head-on portrait, it’s obvious why this species is named the bald-faced hornet. Some nests wind up with multiple layers in the round structure, which can sometimes reach the size of a basketball.
Ever wonder what’s inside those round paper houses? I decided to give a previously collected nest a colonoscopy to take a look. (No Gatorade cocktail necessary… This must be a healthy one—no polyps.) Once past the nest’s sphincter it looked a lot like a regular wasp nest, with a large nursery made up of hexagonal paper cells. (Left and center photos by Jim Rathert, Missouri Conservation Department. Photo on the right is my first published endoscope image.)
A hornet colony can number in the hundreds. The workers die off late in the year. Only the queen survives the winter. In the spring she has to start over from scratch. The empty nests usually deteriorate from weather or foraging birds. That’s why around Thanksgiving is the best time to look for them.
Well, all this hornet business proves my point. The important thing is to LOOK! Watch carefully for the little things. Let your New Year’s resolution be to see more than ever. That’s “resolution” in the photographic sense—making a subject’s little details discernible—because you never know what you’ll find on your next macro walk!
E.H.
“What the Shiitake?!”
December 1, 2022
Ever wonder what it takes to become a mushroom farmer? In this special Farewell-to-November edition, more edutainment than art and ecology, the GMF Phlog is about to show you!
We recently embarked on a journey toward serious yet decidedly amateur shroomery. We installed — you don’t plant them, exactly — a batch of plugs for shiitake (careful how you spell it!), Strain WR-46, to be exact.
As you’ll soon see, this involves several disciplines at once: Forestry, carpentry, cultivation, and last but not least, meditation.
Like nearly everything these days, it all started with a search online. In no time, our friend from FedEx showed up way out in the boonies with our handy-dandy Shiitake Mushroom Log Kit.
To obtain logs meeting the specified measurement parameters, we marked six-to-seven-inch-diameter oaks that could each provide one or more 36” lengths. Our helper 007 manned a chainsaw in a thicket of young white oaks, all offspring of a towering but deceased ancestor. They needed thinning anyway. His assistant, 006.5, measured for the next cuts.
While supervising, I found a few faces of the forest — a fresh antler rub; an aptly named shag-bark hickory; the unmistakable bark of a persimmon tree, this one much taller than average.
And, the arboreal oddity A Barkwork Orange (apologies to Stanley Kubrick).
There were also numerous reminders of the hillside’s history as a repository for aging automotive specimens. The grille from an early 1950s Chevrolet truck; seat springs; a horn; a battery cable, exhaust pipe and bit of chrome; and to fuel it all, a great gas can…
For mushrooms, you don’t start with seeds. What they send you is “Plug Spawn” resembling those carpenter’s pegs that hold wooden joints together.
After trying a few test holes, I readjusted the provided drill stop to a 1.25” depth. A couple of swift hammer blows put the first peg in perfectly — with a little shiitake juice bubbling up momentarily. (I can’t believe we drilled-and-drove nearly 250 neatly spaced pegs!)
Next, time for the wax job to keep the plugs safe from unfriendly microbes.
Then using leftover oak we laid some base rails in a spare patch of garden and placed the impregnated logs across. Finally, we covered the new shroomlog nursery for shade.
Out in the open it can still get water from rain and snow, or sprinkling if needed. For best results the logs need the equivalent of an inch of rain per week. Now we watch, water, wait, watch, water, wait some more… You’ve heard the expressions “watching the grass grow” or “helping paint dry.” Well, this will take way longer than that. Like maybe 11 months!
If all goes according to plan, in 2023 you’ll get one or more updates right here on the GMF Phlog. Here’s what it’s supposed to look like eventually.
The day after Thanksgiving, we dined out at Seasons 52 for our 28th anniversary. What jumped off the menu? I just had to order the butternut squash soup with crispy-dried shiitakes, chives and spices. Delicious! For our 29th, next year, we’re hoping to whip up the same recipe with all ingredients homegrown at Green Mountain Farm.
Want to become a shroomer? Look on YouTube, or visit our source. (And no, we don’t get a commission.)
Next time on The Phlog: We focus on tiny little things during a Macro Walk-in-the-Woods. Til then…
E.H.
Little Pond on the Prairie
November 11, 2022 :: In this edition we head back to our phlog’s early roots — the game cameras at the pond. Over the past few weeks the cams caught glimpses of all the usual characters: possums, raccoons, rabbits, deer, coyotes, and turkeys. However, we did find a few shots that were unusual. But first (speaking of roots)…
Prairie is shaped by its roots, which in the case of grasses go deeper into the ground than the plants are tall. Yes — often 10 feet or more! This accounts for its resilience after fire or drought. Several years ago we had some tall grass species suddenly reemerge after not being seen for many years. Other, lesser grasses succumbed to lack of moisture but the tall grass species, secretly there all the time, had just been waiting for the right moment to regenerate.
Missouri has about 276 species in the grass family, including well-known crop plants and our native prairie grasses. Many have recognizable, colorful names like big bluestem (a.k.a. turkey foot), Indian grass, prairie cordgrass, switchgrass, prairie dropseed, orchard grass and bottlebrush grass. Distinguishing between some of the species can be difficult. We mostly have warm-season grasses ranging from two to eight feet in height.
One of the most aggressive is the medium-tall broom sedge grass. It was, indeed, once used for making brooms. Often called sage grass, it’s native to Missouri and found all over the Ozarks. Its leaves turn reddish-brown with maturity and stand all winter. It is also downright invasive. Ranchers don’t like it because after the plant’s first year of growth cattle don’t like to eat it.
Today, the prairie around the pond is a battleground to see whose seed will dominate. Each fall, unless we’re in severe drought, the voluminous seed output ensures a thicker and taller prairie the coming year. Sage grass I call Fluff the Magic Dragon. On a windy day you can witness a flizzard as the stuff spreads in mere moments across acres and acres of land.
Much of its fluffless competition relies more on spreading through conventional seed drop, root development through the sod, and (maybe) the assistance of birds. Still, most prairie plants are in for the long haul.
At the pond, if you see a quick neon flash or a short, bright blue matchstick sitting on a stalk or maybe a pad of spatterdock, it’s likely a blue damselfly, a slim and dainty cousin of the dragonfly. There are several other species besides the blue in Missouri. At rest, their four tapered wings are swept back, while the wings of idle dragonflies remain perpendicularly deployed. (While you’re here, can you spot the maturing bullfrog tadpole near the top of the first photo?)
There are 2,600 species of damselfly worldwide, a few dozen in Missouri. Ranging up to 2.5 inches in length, damselfly adults grab mosquitoes and other small insect meals in flight. Their drab larvae are much less glamourous. They live underwater and lie in wait on the bottom, snatching anything of manageable size that happens by. The larvae, in turn, may be eaten by birds, fish, frogs or various water bugs.
The lucky ones who survive to adulthood get to flash fluorescent colors while zooming around above the surface doing aerobatic maneuvers and resting occasionally to sun themselves and pose for peripatetic photographers who blog.
In autumn, as always, the pond’s water is a major draw for other wildlife, both furred and feathered.
The word is out: Thursday is Family Day at the aquatic center.
Then there’s the mirror effect. Apparently humans aren’t the only ones who find ponds a good place for reflection.
“Well, aren’t we looking especially handsome today!”
Mama and her turklets go on parade, early October.
A coyote pair make an unusual afternoon visit.
I’m happy his coat looks so good, like he just got back from the Poodle Parlour on 95th Street. Some years the coyotes are much more bedraggled, perhaps suffering from mange.
At night or in the low light of dawn or dusk, the cameras switch to black-and-white with infrared flash. The results can be striking.
Is he admiring himself, or just getting a drink? Either way, this coyote could easily be mistaken for a runaway German shepherd.
This doe looks like she stepped straight out of a high-contrast Ansel Adams print.
At dusk, a growing buck aspires to be the next model for ads of The Hartford insurance company.
The water was so still, these also look pretty good upside down. Flipped or unflipped, take your pick! (I went ahead and rotated them 180 so you don’t have to stand on your head.)
Til next time, when we report on our intense entry into the whole new world of… Well, you’ll see. Meanwhile, it’s always great to hear your comments. Keep ’em coming!
E.H.
The Hunt for Red (October)
Jack Ryan of the Ozarks here, on an expedition to find and capture reds—any reds—shortly after the first hard freeze in the low 20s. No submarine necessary. As I tramp through forest-lined prairie I hear the constant sound of leaves releasing… falling… landing… Or is it Captain Ramius (Sean Connery) rattling the Kremlin’s cage?
On Tuesday morning, October 18, through the kitchen window I witnessed an entire large walnut tree suddenly let fly with most of its leaf population. Perhaps the sun hitting still-frozen stems caused them all to let go at once. In any case, I’d never seen an entire tree do an instantaneous leaf drop before. There was no time to shoot the scene before it was over. Trust me—it was like a cartoon, or a theatrical production where the prop person flips the above-stage bucket and down they all go in a colorful shimmering shower.
The walnut leaves were mostly yellow and brown. On our expedition we’re only hunting reds—fairly easy to spot with their contrast from drab backgrounds, yet often hard to capture in focus because constantly moving in the wind. From my 85-minute meander, here are some of my trophies, along with a few findings from that section of forest frequented by faeries, trolls, gnomes, hobbits and (last but not least) l’artiste.
All captions careen clockwise from top left.
Sugar maple—Fall colors as famous as their sugar and syrup. As a native Vermonter, I’m of course thrilled to host a large number of sugar maples.
Common blackberry—Fast-growing and thorny, creates colonies. It’s the original wild form from which many of the cultivated versions were derived. Its nutritious fruit is a good source of vitamins and antioxidants, with low glycemic index and no fat—a natural “superfood.” (Chiggers provided at no extra charge.)
Virginia creeper—Common on trees here, often mistaken for poison ivy. It’s non-toxic—unless you eat the berries! (Poison ivy turns bright red too, but did so many weeks ago.)
Fragrant sumac—Crush a leaf to get the fragrance. This non-toxic cousin of poison ivy is a pleasant shrub lining many of our trails.
Sassafras—The traditional flavoring for root beer as well as the thickening agent for Creole gumbo. Roots, leaves, bark and berries all have specific uses in cooking and folk medicine. Unfortunately, the FDA has banned commercial use due to cancer concerns.
Bee balm—Also known as bergamot or horsemint. Indeed, it’s a member of the mint family, loved by many types of pollinators and used by indigenous tribes for medicine as well as seasoning wild game.
White oak—Highly valued as hardwood for many uses, including furniture and wine and whiskey barrels. Our oak-hickory forests support several species.
Penstemon—Native to North and Central America, including more than half the U.S. There are more than 250 species. A common name is “beardtongue” because of the hairy stamen in the center of the tubular flowers.
Smooth sumac—One of four sumac species in Missouri. This one can grow in thickets up to 20 feet tall. It produces clusters of hairy red berries.
Flowering dogwood—State tree of Missouri, known for its spring spectacle. In fall it produces berries as bright as holly. Leaves turn a deep red.
Wahoo—Also known as Indian arrow wood. Thought to have a wide variety of potent medicinal uses, parts of this plant, including these decorative berries, are also toxic. Do NOT try them out on your breakfast cereal!
Buckbrush—Also known as coralberry. Clusters of the tiny fruits stay visible all winter. This woody shrub is usually less than three feet tall but always ready to take over any unmowed field. The colonizing root system can be a serious trip hazard.
Multiflora rose—Asian native once hailed as a hero of soil conservation but declared a noxious weed by the State of Missouri in 1983. And boy, are they noxious!! They grow to 16 feet, create dense thickets and use their thorns to “climb” trees. The hips have seeds that are hard but edible. In a single season one plant can produce thousands of seeds that stay viable 10 to 20 years. (So good luck cutting, spraying or bulldozing them—the fix is truly temporary!)
Spicebush— A member of the laurel family. Some people use dried and ground spicebush berries in place of nutmeg or allspice and make tea from the flowers and bark. The tree even has a swallowtail butterfly named for it.
Sleeping caterpillar—Backlit on a white oak leaf, I spotted this guy napping, head tucked near his abs. It’s the larva of a southern oak dagger moth. His kind typically adopt that posture during the day, resting on the underside of, well, their lunch. I flipped it for a better look with direct sunlight. Its facial design is described as “white snowflake spotting.”
Faerie townhouse No. 3—In case you’re wondering, the red bughouse doubles as a red mailbox, and vice versa. The bugs get very irritated when the mail faerie forgets which is which—or isn’t.
Gnathan Gnome astride his ATV—That stands for Amphibian Transport Velocipede. No further explanation needed.
Forest art Exhibit A—Stretched cotton fabric, wire and beads.
Forest art Exhibit B—Black walnut cord wood, acrylic latex exterior house paint.
Rorschach the Rooster —Chromatically in tune with today’s theme, our garden guardian greets us at hike’s end.
Trivia time—The 1990 movie The Hunt for Red October was created from the Tom Clancy novel loosely based on an actual 1975 mutiny aboard a Soviet ship.
Til next time…
E.H.
The Neon Garden
September 25, 2022 — Many birds and insects are known to see wavelengths of color unseen by mere humans, mostly in the near ultraviolet range. Considering the wild-enough colors in us primates’ visible spectrum, we can only imagine how visually hallucinogenic some flowers must seem to the various tribes of pollinators with tetrachromatic vision. Flowers are saying “Come hither” with some of the most primeval and showy marketing techniques on the planet.
One of the joys in tending our organic gardens of edibles is the range of colors in the blooms that keep expanding year after year in the spaces not occupied by vegetables. This year their diverse brilliance made doing this quilt of neon an irresistible project. It burst its way onto the website as a spontaneous bonus opus.
E.H.
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2022 Equinox Edition
After our August break traveling to several glaciers in Alaska, I’ve begun to resettle into our split-screen life shuttling back and forth between city and country. Today, in honor of the 9/22/22 Equinox, I attempt to catch up on two of my frequent subjects—wildlife activities at the Green Mountain Farm prairie pond and the life cycle of flowers. Today’s honored species: the coneflower.
There are two genera of flowers in our area referred to as coneflowers, with nine species (10 according to some sources) in the genus Echinacea. The name comes from the Greek word for hedgehog and sea urchin, echinos, alluding to the spiny hairs at the base of the plant. Coneflowers have lots of more distant relatives. There are 32,000 other species in its aster or daisy family, including sunflowers.
Three of the nine (or 10) echinaceas were commonly used as medicine by many native American tribes on the Great Plains. Medicinal use spread to other parts of the world in the 19th and 20th centuries. Some species are even considered endangered in the wild due to overgathering to make health products. Echinacea has antioxidants and is valued as a cold remedy and relief from certain types of pain.
Research into the effectiveness, side effects and drug interactions of today’s echinacea-derived herbal supplements is limited and the quality of the products varies a great deal, so we’re not making any medical recommendations. We’re content to enjoy the flowers that continue to spread in our gardens year after year, both city and country, as well as in prairies and along rural roadsides.
Specifically, we’re showing a mix of purple, pale purple and glade coneflowers. Gray-headed, yellow and Missouri coneflowers (all loosely referred to as “black-eyed susans”) also grow on our land but aren’t included in today’s post.
Commercial horticulture has created more hybrid versions of the coneflower than can be tracked, giving gardeners new single- and multi-colored options. They carry jazzy names like Flamethrower, Hot Papaya, Sombrero Salsa Red, Rainbow Marcella and Cheyenne Spirit.
Caveats: Some of the hybrids have rearranged parts that discourage pollinators, most don’t produce viable seed, and many within a few years will revert to their natural ancestral color—purple. We’re sticking with Nature’s originals, thank you very much!
So are all our “natural” coneflowers purebred? Not really! The pollinators are so busy making their rounds they forget to check each flower’s registration papers. The pollen is carried interspecies daily. Yet somehow echinacea’s kissing cousins carry on oblivious to the mongrelization, with no visible side effects.
Coneflowers are a great addition to your butterfly garden. Just ask this spicebush swallowtail…
Or the great spangled fritillary…
Or the common buckeye and, to his left, one of the 275 species of skippers.
The radiant, spiky cone which gives echinacea purpurea (purple coneflower) its common name is hard to the touch after it reaches full size.
Later it dries out, producing a crumbly seedhead to provide you with even more purple coneflowers the following spring. We’re looking forward to the next round.
Meanwhile, back at the pond…
Wildlife traffic slows under some conditions in summer, such as intense heat or high winds. Still, we get a lot of the usual visitors—deer, large and small; occasional birds; raccoons; possums… Unfortunately, the wind causes plants and tree branches to wave back and forth, triggering motion detectors in the cameras. At fairly high speed, I literally reviewed more than 10,000 images to get the ones you see here!
I’m determined not to repeat poses I’ve shown you before. My goal is to capture behaviors showing animals’ personality and individuality. Hopefully these quickie portraits do that. Of course, with trail cams I have no control over the lighting or the shutter speed. Blurred motion becomes part of the story!
Hopefully you don’t have any hangups about anthropomorphism. In the interest of simplicity, I’m going with captions instead of narrative. Feel free to make up your own!
The next images are similar to some past posts, but it’s always hard to pass up bird photos.
By the way, here at 38o19’1” N, 93o6’25” W the sun officially came up today at 7:00 a.m. CDT and set at 7:09 p.m. CDT. That’s pretty darned equinoxical!
Happy autumn, everyone!
E.H.
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August 15, 2022
More FlowerCam!
Today’s subject is the official flower of both Kansas and Ukraine—the mighty sunflower. In our organic garden in the Missouri Ozarks sunflowers are a decorative side crop. Many of the specimens pop up as volunteer progeny from last year’s foreflowers. Here are some brief facts and a quick look at the sunflower’s life cycle. [Note: Photos show more than one plant. Also, for detail these are best viewed on a computer screen, or at least a tablet!]
The buds of sunflowers are hairy sculptural overtures of the blooms to come. There are more than 50 species and many hybrids. Some are small, some are huge. The natural plants are native to North America. They were domesticated by indigenous people at least 4,000 years ago. Sunflowers migrated to Europe in the 1500s when Spanish explorers took seed home. Eventually the plants they introduced became a serious source of oil and seeds.
In 2020 Ukraine and Russia were neck and neck, together producing half the world’s output. The United States provided barely 3 percent. (Sorry, Kansas!) The worldwide harvest of sunflower seed currently totals about 50 million tons. That’s a lot of ingredients for chefs and bakers as well as munchy snacks, whole or shelled, for birds and people. The quantity produced by us amateurs and by Nature in the wilds is of course undocumented.
As a sunflower opens, its composite nature starts to unmask. The ray flowers form a ring of petals, usually (but not always) yellow. Each petal ray is actually a separate flower. The ray ring surrounds a complex disc flower made up of hundreds of individual five-petaled flowers called florets. The florets open first on the outer edge of the disk and work toward the center.
The arrangement of these inner bits follows a complex spiral geometry found often in nature. Each floret is turned the “golden angle” of 137.5 degrees from its neighbor. This creates left and right interlocking spirals that follow the numerical sequence known as the Fibonacci series. Similar patterns occur in pine cones and pineapples, for example.
U.S. Forest Service botanist David Taylor explains online: “This series of numbers follows the pattern 1, 2, 3, 5, 8, 13, 21, 34, 55…, where each successive number is the sum of the previous two. The spiral pattern of the disk flowers/fruits of this species [Common Sunflower] is an example. The fruits are arranged in two groups of spirals, one to the left and one to the right…. If one counts the number of left-hand spirals, and then the number of right-hand spirals, the two numbers will be neighbors in the series (typically 21/34, 34/55, or 55/89).
Why did Nature turn to such advanced geometricity just to make an impressively gigantic flower head? It turns out she found the most efficient possible arrangement to pack as many of those highly nutritious seeds (29 grams of protein per cup) into the circular space allotted. Hmmm. I may need to think about revisiting my sock drawer…
The stalk of a large sunflower is extremely sturdy. It has to be—this one reached a height of nine feet. And that was without Miracle-Gro®! When mature, its seed disk was exactly the size of an LP record. Which is appropriate, since we named this guy Tom Dooley, for obvious reasons, a throwback to Kingston Trio days. (For the Millennials and younger Gen-This-and-Thats among you, there was this folk song, see, called “Hang down your head, Tom Dooley…” back when songs strung together meaningful words in ballad form and told actual stories…) Well anyway, where was I? Oh yeah—we weighed the seed head and it was over three pounds. No wonder the Tom flower hung down like one of those rainfall shower heads you get in fancier hotels.
As the florets complete their mission, the fruit of the sunflower begins to peek out. Soon the seed body is visible in small, then larger groups as the florets fall to the ground. Not only gardeners and photographers notice this development. Soon goldfinches leave the feeder on the maple tree in favor of this other elevated snack bar. They leave empty sockets where seeds once stood in those intricately spiraled rows.
Proof the snacks have been happily consumed—discarded hulls—litter the back side of a flower disk below.
So, next time you’re picking up some salted sunflower seeds at the checkout counter, you can impress the clerk by trying out this line: “Say, can you check with the manager for me? I just want to be sure these were grown using the Fibonacci Protocol. You know, with the 34/55 ratio of spiralometry? I read once on the GMF phlog that those make the healthiest snacks.”
Well, that’s it for now. Til next time!
Ethan
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August 8, 2022
Poppy’s poppies
Every year we enjoy a number of flowers in the vegetable garden. Some we plant by seed, others are seeded by the prior year’s plants. They sprout in designated bloom beds as well as in the walkways, adding enjoyable color for us and a buffet for pollinators.
With minimal text, here’s a sampling from the pink and red spectrum. I’ve always been especially attracted to the underside of poppies. Don’t neglect looking at the flip view of flowers–they’re often every bit as interesting as the petalface.
July 29, 2022
CATTY CAM – LATE JULY EDITION
If you were expecting to see Felix the Cat, Garfield or Thylvethter, surprise! This is all about my favorite little and not-so-little squirmies—caterpillars!
Like so many plants and critters, they’re seasonal. Hatching from tiny eggs left on leaves or stalks by female moths and butterflies, these guys munch the heck out of the host plants for which their tastebuds and digestive tracts are designed. Mama usually picks her targets accurately.
My love of caterpillars started while watching Disney feature films about Nature in the 1950s. Sped-up time-lapse movies of caterpillar mandibles shearing and chomping their way through one leaf after another like giant threshing machines brought both giggles and awe. Later in life, I zoomed in with a Canon macro lens on the intricate detail of caterpillar couture. Spikes, stripes, horns, antlers, whiskers, vents, sneakers… They’ve got it all! And like most critters, they start out very small, about the size of the egg from which they morph.
1 – 3. This tiny guy is a young inchworm or cankerworm, also called a looper. The name is due to its anatomy. With no feet in its midsection, the rear catches up after the front moves forward, giving it a momentary hunched posture, as if taking measure of its surroundings. When ready to pupate, it drops from a tree down to the ground via barely visible silken thread, often creating the illusion it’s floating in midair. After sleeping in a cocoon all winter, it turns into a geometrid moth. If female, the moth is wingless—you could easily mistake her for a spider. It can be hard to pin down the exact inchworm species; there are 1,400 in North America, 35,000 worldwide.
4 + 5. This is the devious character showing up in the nightmares of tomato growers, the formidable and voracious master of disguise, the tomato hornworm. We first became acquainted when I was 11 years old. A pair of them devoured an entire tomato plant overnight. Once properly dispatched, one of the two marauders became my first taxidermy subject—really! I slit it open with a scalpel from my brother’s biology kit, dried the skin, filled it with cotton balls and stitched it up. Due to shrinking during the drying process, it barely resembled the real thing, but it’s made for a good story ever since.
This young one (4) is barely out of kindergarten compared to his older cousin (5). When fully developed, a well-fed hornworm is bigger and fatter than my whole finger. Finding one takes both luck and experience. Every part of their anatomy resembles some part of the tomato plant. And when you try to yank one away from its yummy meal, it can be a real tug of war. I always win, of course. When we had chickens, a fresh hornworm flung toward the flock would always prompt a noisy, intense game of keepaway til the winner gladly gobbled the gooey green goody. (Gee—I mean alas, I always allow all alliteration alittletoomuch…)
6. So how did I know to look for the guy in #5? I noticed its calling cards on the dirt below the tomatoes—a cat-turd-pillar, you might say. Scientifically, the stuff’s called frass. After pupating the caterpillars turn into the five-spotted hawk moth.
7 – 9. On deck boards beneath a young redbud tree I found frass of a different color, indicating another kind of cat must be hanging around somewhere. I went through the leaves above til I found ones with large pieces missing. Yup—there he was, the white furry cat of an American dagger moth. It sports four stiff, black lashes in front, one in back. Beware: touching the hairs or the lashes can cause a severe reaction! When trying to deflect attention, this kind curls its head toward the body as if to say, “Ignore me; I’m not really here!”
10 – 11. This lucky monarch caterpillar hatched in the 2022 milkweed patch. The fore and aft tentacles are sensory organs that aid navigation by using touch to augment the cat’s poor eyesight. In the last of its five growth stages (called instars), the caterpillar can reach a length of nearly two inches. While feeding on buds of milkweed flowers, turdlets and debris were accumulating on a leaf below.
12 – 13. Equipped with abundant bristles, the larva of the milkweed tussock moth (also called milkweed tiger moth) gathers toxicity from milkweed (cardiac glycosides, to be exact) just like the more famous monarchs. And like monarch butterflies, these cats wear black and orange to warn would-be predators “Don’t bother attacking me; I taste terrible.” I found seven young siblings huddling together for a while before setting out to forage on their own. The smaller end is the head—where the chomp-chomp has taken place.
14 – 18. Those tomato chompers aren’t the only big hornworms in the area. There are 120 species in North America and ten times that many worldwide. Some can be four inches long. This one has a diverse menu and will turn into a white-lined sphinx moth. It sports racing stripes, portholes (spiracles) that vent gas, articulated joints, foot whiskers (remember passenger-side curb feelers on cars in the 1950s?), a license plate bracket and rear Bluetooth antenna. Detail from a gallery print I did nearly 20 years ago shows the moth this guy will wake up as after his long winter’s nap.
Well, it took two days to get this one out, but I did it—four editions in one week! That pace will not be the norm, but it did get me almost caught up. It’s been fun!
Ethan
[We’ll eventually archive all the earlier editions of pondcam, birdcam, bugcam, frogcam, cattycam, crittercam and creekcam missives so they can be easily shared as a single link.]