Summer Green and the Little Miami River at Clifton Gorge...

With a dew point of 77 degrees and the temperature pushing 90, yesterday was decidedly tropical, so it was especially nice to slip into the cool embrace of the steep walls of Clifton Gorge, where summer green filters through the trees and settles on every available surface, and rushing waters create an ancient atmosphere of escape and respite...

The Little Miami River rushes wildly through the green corridor at Clifton Gorge. As you descend the wooden steps at the beginning of the trail, you feel like you're entering another world. 

The profusion of lush foliage and moss is appealing to the senses and almost seems to glow electric in the deep shadows. You want to linger and listen as the river rushes past every plant, moss-covered rock, and watery seep trickling down the cliff.  

...special things grow here, simply put. The riparian corridor at this stretch of the river holds rare boreal relics left over from seeds deposited by the Wisconsinan glacier meltwaters over 10,000 years ago. The steep cliffs of the gorge form a cooler microclimate that allow northern plants such as Eastern Hemlock and White Cedar to survive.

Dark Silurian dolomite limestone walls add drama to an already stunningly beautiful backdrop. 

To the Little Miami River," by William H. Venable, 1836

Romantic the rocky and fern-scented regions,

          Miami, the grots where thy brambles begin,

 By cedars and hemlocks, in evergreen legions,

        With silence and twilight seclusion shut in.

There darkling recesses in miniature mountains

          Recall to my fancy the haunts of the gnome;

     There fabled Undina might rise from  the fountains,

     Or sport in the water-falls glistening foam.

           

Click here for a pdf brochure and map of Clifton Gorge by the Ohio Department of Natural Resources.

Click here for a pdf of "The Ohio Naturalist," Vol IV, February, 1904, for the article "The Topography and Geology of Clifton Gorge," by W. E. Wells.

For information on Ohio's Silurian period, click here for "Geology of Ohio -- The Silurian," by Michael C. Hansen, or here for an article by Ohio History Central.

That bumblebee is the bomb!

"Bombus impatiens" that is. This furry little "bombus" or bumble bee was buzzing around a stand of purple coneflowers in the meadow at Shawnee State Park...

A fuzzy, round bumble bee hovers over its next nectar source, a vibrant purple coneflower. The bumble's loud buzzing was persistent...and one of the wonderful sounds of summer.

I don't know a lot about bumble bees, so that evening I got out my "Kaufman Field Guide to Insects of North America" to see what species this bumble was. From the photo and description, I'm deducing Common Eastern Bumble Bee (Bombus impatiens). Bombus impatiens' field marks include a thorax covered in yellow pile (or fuzz) with a small bald spot on top, and an abdomen with only the first segment covered in yellow pile...

In this photo, it looks like just the first segment of the bee's abdomen is covered in the yellow fuzz, which identifies it as a Common Eastern Bumble Bee (Bombus impatiens). If the second segment was also covered in the yellow fuzz, it would be an American Bumble Bee (Bombus pensylvanicus).  The Common Eastern Bumble Bee (Bombus impatiens) is one of the most common bumble bees in our area and in the eastern United States. 

A pollen basket (or "corbicula") is a smooth surface on the hind leg of a female bumble bee or honey bee. Males do not have pollen baskets. Bumble bees and honey bees use pollen baskets to carry pollen back to the nest. Click here for an earlier post that explains how pollen baskets work. Click here for other ways to tell female and male bumble bees apart. Another difference between a male and female bumble bee is the stinger. Females have them, males don't. Unlike honey bees, who die after stinging because they have a barbed stinger that is left in the victim, bumble bees can sting more than once because their stinger is smooth. Click here for more info on a bumble bee's stinger.

...let's zoom in a bit to look at the ocelli (three primitive eyes) on the top of his head. These eyes help the bumble bee see ultraviolet light, and are also used for stability while flying by helping the bee detect the horizon. To read more about ocelli, click here. To see the ocelli on a grasshopper (from an older post), click here. 

Bumble bees have long tongues encased in a hard sheath. The tongue is reddish, and the tip is hairy and feathery. This modification helps the bumble bee lap up nectar. It is not a sucking tube like a butterfly's proboscis. (Source: "The Natural History of Bumblebees, a Sourcebook for Investigations," by Carol A. Kearns and James D. Thomson, pg 30.) For a close-up photo of the feathery tongue, click here.

Bees in the late summer sun 

Drone their song 

Of yellow moons 

Trimming black velvet, 

Droning, droning a sleepysong.

                    --Carl Sandburg

The yellow pile looks as soft as a bunny's fur, but the fuzzy "hairs" are actually finely branched setae. The branching helps pollen stick to the hairs, which function more like our skin in that they contain sensors that let the bee feel wind speed and direction, or detect chemicals. For more on bumblebee hair, click here. For a quick overview of the differences between mammalian hair (keratin) and insect "hair" or setae (chitin), click here. 

Bumble bees are so big, round and fat it seems improbable they could fly with their delicate wings, but they do!  Here this Bombus impatiens hovers over a purple coneflower. She soon lit on the orange spikes to lap nectar, one of her main food sources. Bumble bees eat pollen and drink nectar. They have no other food source.

South winds jostle them--
Bumblebees come--
Hover--hesitate--
Drink, and are gone--
--Emily Dickinson

Did you catch the rainbow yesterday?

...it was one of the brightest, largest, and most defined rainbows Rick and I have ever seen. Rain was falling gently, the sun was shining, and dramatically dark clouds were behind us. To top it off, it was late in the afternoon and the sun was low on the horizon. Perfect rainbow conditions...

...must be a huge pot 'o gold at the end of this rainbow!

...nothing like a dramatic sky to add to a rainbow's beauty.

(...and what a perfect way to ring out 2011 and welcome 2012--Happy New Year!)

532. The Rainbow
William Wordsworth. 1770–1850

MY heart leaps up when I behold
A rainbow in the sky:
So was it when my life began;
So is it now I am a man;
So be it when I shall grow old,
Or let me die!
The Child is father of the Man;
I could wish my days to be
Bound each to each by natural piety.

Arthur Quiller-Couch, ed. 1919. The Oxford Book of English Verse: 1250–1900.

Happy Thanksgiving!

Painting 197. A Tufted Titmouse Outside my Kitchen Window on the Eve of Thanksgiving

(watercolor)

...and a poem for autumn:

The morns are meeker than they were,

The nuts are getting brown;

The berry's cheek is plumper,

The rose is out of town.

The maple wears a gayer scarf,

The field a scarlet gown.

Lest I should be old-fashioned,

I'll put a trinket on.

Emily Dickinson

"The Collected Poems of Emily Dickinson," pg 124

The Beauty and Geometry of the Grasshopper

While studying a grasshopper in late August at VOA park, I was amazed at his (or her) beauty. I don't know much about grasshoppers, but I learned to appreciate their beauty and perfect geometry that afternoon.

As I was studying the herringbone pattern on this Red-legged Grasshopper's back leg, I couldn't help but feel a sense of geometry. Parallel lines in the segmented abdomen added to the geometric feel--even the wings when folded together formed a triangle.

...moving to the head, his or her compound eyes are made of hundreds of hexagonal facets, and the segmented antenna contain more parallel lines.

...even in the center of his face, three ocelli form a perfect triangle (the ocelli are simple eyes that detect light intensity and may help flying insects find sea level for flight stability). Perfectly made, the insect really opened my eyes to the symmetry and geometry that usually went unnoticed around me.

On The Grasshopper And Cricket

By John Keats

The poetry of earth is never dead:


When all the birds are faint with the hot sun,


And hide in cooling trees, a voice will run


From hedge to hedge about the new-mown mead:


That is the grasshopper's -- he takes the lead


In summer luxury, -- he has never done


With his delights, for when tired out with fun,


He rests at ease beneath some pleasant weed.


The poetry of earth is ceasing never:


On a lone winter evening, when the frost


Has wrought a silence, from the stove there shrills


The Cricket's song, in warmth increasing ever,


And seems to one in drowsiness half lost,


The Grasshopper's among some grassy hills.

December 30, 1816