The Nature Conservancy's 6th Annual Digital Photo Competition -- It's not too late to enter!

The Nature Conservancy is looking for photos...possibly yours! At least 35 photos will be selected as honorable mentions and finalists. The grand prize winner will then be selected from the finalists through a popular vote by the online community. To top things off, the grand prize winner will be featured on the cover of the 2013 Nature Conservancy calendar! If you want to help out the Nature Conservancy, give it a try. There are three ways to enter:

1. Via Flickr -- click here.

2. Via Facebook -- click here.

3. Via an online form and email -- click here.

For rules, terms and conditions, click here. Original digital photos that feature the natural wonders of the lands, waters, plants, animals, and people around the world in nature are all eligible for the competition. The deadline for submitting entries is 11:59 pm Pacific Standard Time on September 12, 2011. Entrants may submit as many photos as they'd like!

Midwest Birding Symposium...hope to see you in Lakeside, Ohio!

Later this month, I'm heading up to Lakeside, Ohio (half way between Toledo and Cleveland) for the 2011 Midwest Birding Symposium! I went to the event two years ago and had a wonderful time. It was the first time I had ever been surrounded by hundreds of people who love birds! It was a totally unique experience. If you love birds, and you're close by, sign up...and look for me!

p.s. If you go to Lakeside, you'll see lots and lots of this gorgeous bird...

Caspian Tern (Sterna caspia) - Watercolor and Graphite Pencil Field Sketch.

I sketched this fellow out quickly near Marblehead Lighthouse at the last Midwest Birding Symposium (9-17-09). It was a gorgeous day and one Caspian Tern after another was flying by.

The Pavilion and Pier at Lakeside, Ohio, on Lake Erie

Lakeside was founded in 1873. The streets are lined with historic Victorian-style homes and buildings. The town is perched on Lake Erie and fabulous birding spots are all over, including Magee Marsh and the Black Swamp Bird Observatory!

...the boardwalk at Magee Marsh at sunset.

...a Green Heron hunting at sunset. He was just off the Magee Marsh boardwalk and the light was fading fast! Click here for more photos of this fellow.

Something new this year, you will find a booth at the back of Hoover Auditorium for the Carbon Offset Bird Project (COBP). COBP is an experimental program put together by birders to help offset all the fossil fuel we burn riding here and there searching out birds. The project is being launched this September at the Midwest Birding Symposium. I might be volunteering at the booth for an hour, so look me up! Click here for more information. The funds generated from this project will be used to purchase additional wetlands for Meadowbrook Marsh (click here for more info on Meadowbrook Marsh). You can also go to Cheryl Harner's blog, Weedpicker's Journal, for more information.

You can print and fill out the following form to help with the Meadowbrook Marsh Carbon Offset Bird Project:

Hope to see you in Lakeside, OH

at the 2011 Midwest Birding Symposium!

The colors of summer...

...one of our most graceful and beautiful summer butterflies, the Eastern Tiger Swallowtail, will continue to fly in our town for a little longer this year spreading her summer colors and tricking me into thinking the warm, sunny days of summer will never end, but today is Labor Day, the unofficial end of summer, and by the end of September, our pretty yellow and black butterfly will have vanished from sight, taking summer and all its colors along with her...

Female Eastern Tiger Swallowtail (Papilio glaucus)

...with bright yellow wings the same color as the flower she's nectaring from, this female Eastern Tiger Swallowtail is a picture of summer. I'll miss her this winter when all is grey...

Male and female Eastern Tiger Swallowtails have yellow wings with black tiger stripes. They also have blue and orange scales on their wings, but females have significantly more blue scaling (as shown above) than males who have only four small blue circles on their hindwing ("Butterflies of Ohio," by Jaret C. Daniels). Females also have a dimorphic dark form..

Dark-form females are mostly black with markings that mimic toxic and foul-tasting Pipevine Swallowtails. Mimicry provides protection from predators.

The blue scaling on dark-form females is prominent...

...and you can often see a "tiger stripe" showing through the black.

The abdomen on dark-form female Eastern Tiger Swallowtails is solid black on top with small yellow and black stripes underneath. This plain abdomen is an easy way to distinguish female dark-form Tiger Swallowtails from Pipevine Swallowtails (the butterfly they are mimicking), because the Pipevines have a blue abdomen with spots (click here for an earlier post on a Pipevine Swallowtail to see its abdomen and read about its toxicity).

The abdomen on yellow females and males is yellow with black stripes.

Click here for an earlier post on Eastern Tiger Swallowtail butterflies with information on butterfly wings and scales. I photographed these little ladies on 7/16/10 at Shawnee State Park in eastern Ohio.

Have a Happy Labor Day!

Turkey Vulture on the Little Miami River...

Yesterday Rick and I took the afternoon off work and headed up to Fort Ancient to go canoeing on the Little Miami. Canoeing is easy on the ankle (I have a "flat" right now), and when it's 100 degrees F, it's nice and cool on the river! We saw lots of birds...and turtles...and snakes...then as we rounded a bend, a horrible odor slammed us. "Oh my goodness...something must be dead," escaped my lips, and as I turned to the left, a Turkey Vulture (Cathartes aura), very busy at his trade, looked up at me...

Turkey Vulture (Cathartes aura) along the Little Miami River

Turkey Vultures are interesting birds to look at. They don't have the "cuteness" of small woodland birds or the fierceness of raptors, but there is something special about them that I like. Their eyes are actually beautiful--soft brown-grey and perfectly round, and the long downward turn to their jawline makes them appear mournful and resolute.

We all know Turkey Vultures are carrion eaters, and their razor-sharp, hooked beaks are perfect for the job, allowing them to slice through muscle with ease, but another adaptation that helps them scavenge dead animals are their very rough and rasp-like tongues, which allow them to "lick" or pull meat off the bones. (Source: "Birds of Forest, Yard, and Thicket," by John Eastman).

...and those crazy red, wrinkly, and bald heads! They are so unusual I have to stop and study them every time I see one. I've know since school days, and you probably do too, that their peculiar-looking heads are an adaptation that allows the birds to root into carcasses without coating feathers with bacteria-rich decomposing flesh...but how can they eat the contaminated meat without getting sick? They possess a "corrosive digestive system" that kills disease-causing bacteria such as Salmonella, E. coli, and the bacteria that causes hog cholera, anthrax, and botulism (Eastman, pg 103).

...so not only do vultures clean up messes for us, they prevent the spread of disease.

I always thought Turkey Vultures found most of their meals by smell, but I recently read they use sight as well and have vision equal to that of hawks. An animal must be dead at least 12 hours before a Turkey Vulture can detect the gasses released by decay, and they prefer "fresher carcasses over badly rotted ones" (Eastman, 102), so they use their sight to detect weak, dying (unmoving animals) and other scavengers or vultures who have already found a carcass.

Our Turkey Vulture had definitely found his meal by smell, as the odor was quite powerful and the carcass was well hidden under a downed tree in a shaded area by the shore. He honed in on it quickly too, as just a few minutes earlier we saw him soar over us and around the bend. Who knew he could find the carcass so quickly once he picked up the scent! There was only one Turkey Vulture at the sight, so it had to have been him.

Buy a piece of history...and support the Ohio State Parks!

Antique Virginia slate roof tiles are for sale at Hocking Hills State Park and Shawnee State Park!

While walking deep in the hollows of Hocking Hills State Park, a park employee stumbled across a large stack of abandoned Virginia slate roof tiles. The tiles, apparently intended for the roof of a large barn, were never used and lay undetected in the woods for over a hundred years! Park officials have rescued hundreds of them with the idea of offering these “pieces of history” to the public to help raise money for the parks.

These historic artifacts are ideal for painters and crafters. Artists literally have a blank slate to work with! Painted slate roof tiles can be hung inside for a rustic look or outside in gardens or on a porch. Welcome signs, house address markers, garden signs, flowers, birds, or woodland scenes all look beautiful on these historic tiles. It’s getting harder and harder to find antique slate roof tiles. Don’t pass up this opportunity to own a piece of history and help out the Ohio State Parks!

...this is a broken slate roof tile I used this summer during a free workshop at Shawnee State Park to demonstrate how to paint birds on slate and rocks. The tiles for sale are huge...more than twice this size, but you can see the lovely patina they've acquired over the past 100 years. Also included with the tiles are eight bird templates adapted from a few of my paintings. You can use the templates to get you started, or create your own designs. You'll find these two Hooded Warblers in the pack, as well as an Eastern Bluebird, an American Goldfinch on a sunflower, male and female Northern Cardinals, a Carolina Chickadee, and an American Bald Eagle.

Tiles are $24.99 and are for sale at:

Shawnee State Park and at the camping store

Hocking Hills State Park at the gift shop

Buy a piece of history...

and support the Ohio State Parks!

A Female Widow Skimmer dragonfly in the high meadow...

Sunday, Rick and I decided to check out the high meadow at Voice of America (VOA) park. I wanted to see if the Bobolinks were still around (I didn't see any...) and if I could photograph a few dragonflies. We also chose VOA because it's a grass field, and grass offers a lot more cushion and therefore less impact on an ankle than cement paths or uneven terrains. I have a reconstructed ankle from an injury back in 1985, and I've developed arthritis in that foot. Every now and then, I do something stupid (like running through a very large parking lot) and severely inflame it. Yeah! Then I have to be careful for a couple of weeks...so grass it was!

Dragonflies were everywhere in the meadow, especially Widow Skimmers, and I was glad when this female flew into camera range and posed right away, resting on a dead stalk. She stayed around for several minutes, flying away for a second or so and then coming right back. Sometimes when she left she nabbed an insect to eat, but mostly she was simply disturbed by the sound of the shutter clicking...

Female Widow Skimmer (Libellula luctuosa) Dragonfly

Female and juvenile male Widow Skimmer dragonflies have dark brown patches at the base of their wings close to their bodies. Adult males do too, but they also have powdery white patches on their wings. Unfortunately a male didn't fly into view, so I don't had a photo of one (click here for a photo on "BugGuide").

Someone once told me Widow Skimmers were named after the wide dark brown/black patches on their wings. These patches were the color of mourning clothes and therefore were called "widow patches." Maybe that's true. I did find a similar reference on the "Living with Insects Blog," here, but I also read that "widow" refers to the fact that male Widow Skimmers leave the females after they lay their eggs (leaving them widows), while males of most other dragonfly species stay with the females (source: Loudon Wildlife Conservancy). That makes sense too, until I read in my dragonfly field guide, "Dragonflies and Damselflies of Northeast Ohio," by Rosche, Semroc, and Gilbert (pg 153), that "males perform territorial battles and hover guard their ovipositing mates tenaciously," which is completely the opposite. So I don't know what to think. Maybe the name "widow" is derived from the Latin "luctuosa," which means "sorrowful" (Latin source: Living With Insects Blog). Whichever the case, thinking of the dark brown patches at the base of the wings as "widow patches" always made it easy for me to remember the name of this dragonfly a long time ago...so I'll stick with that!

Female Widow Skimmers have a yellow stripe running dorsally on their thorax. At the abdomen it splits into two stripes that extend the length of the abdomen. Juvenile males have the same marking.

You can tell this Widow Skimmer is a female and not a juvenile male because of her smooth abdomen. A reference on "The Butterfly Digest" blog, here, explains how to tell the difference between a female and a juvenile male Widow Skimmer dragonfly (with links to BugGuide of photos of the hamule).

...glad you dropped by Widow Skimmer. it was fun photographing you!

Tall Bellflower (Campanula americana)

A lover of shade and moist soils along woodland edges, this tall beauty possesses blossoms that radiate the sweetest shade of summer blue--always a welcome sight in the heat of summer...

With the name Tall Bellflower (Campanula americana), you would expect the flowers of this plant to be either tubular or bell shaped. Instead, they are regular star-shaped flowers that grow up and down long spiky stems. Reaching heights of three to six feet, the plant has an airiness to it and sways gently in any breeze. Long, lance-like leaves enhance its airy feel.

The curved style on Tall Bellflower blossoms is characteristic and is often compared to an elephant's trunk!

Tall Bellflower can be found along the Little Miami River in the shadows and edges along the bike trail. I saw this plant at the end of July on a very steamy and hot day.