Ohio Birds and Biodiversity

Yesterday was a great day, with lots of field time. It all started with "Bobolinks at Byer's Woods" in Ashland County. This event is organized by Greater Mohican Audubon Society, and has been running for six or eight years. I've got some interesting photos from that and will share some later, along with the story of the festival.

Following the conclusion of Bobs at Byer's, it was off to do some fieldwork at Mohican State Forest and Brown's Lake Bog, where I had specific target animals and plants in mind. We saw lots of stuff, and I made many a photograph of course, including images of some of our rarer orchids. It was a HOT day, with temperatures soaring to 89 degrees and accompanied by high humidity. After a solid nine or ten hours out, it felt good to stay indoors today and catch up on myriad tasks.

As always happens when afield, other interesting species popped up. While exploring a trail along a small stream deep within Mohican State Forest, Marcia Rubin spotted a youngish Northern Watersnake, Nerodia sipedon, basking in a sapling while I was prostrate and photographing a Round-leaved Orchid, Platanthera orbiculatus, in full bloom.

Of course, I wanted to photograph the snake, too, and sprang to my feet to admire the animal. It was in a particularly nice backdrop, and was acting fairly tame, which allowed for some up close images. In addition to capturing some decent photos of an animal that is often found in more cluttered backdrops, I saw an opportunity to explore the camera's depth of field variances.

Note how I am giving you snake-dislikers plenty of time to escape :-) Snakes lend themselves well to exploiting depth of field comparisons with cameras, as we shall see. The following two photos should be instructive.

The watersnake was nice and cooperative in that it was posing about head high. That it was resting on a branch made for, I think, a more interesting pose than if it were on a rock in a stream or a muddy bank. Fortunately for me, I had my tripod along. I rarely use it when going afield for photos, because it is cumbersome and photography is normally only part of my goal - covering ground and locating as much interesting flora and fauna as possible is a big part of my forays. And normally, by using other stabilization methods and photography techniques, I can do fairly well sans tripod.

But the target of this trip was the Round-leaved Orchid, and I knew it would be growing in a situation with very poor light. Hence, the tripod was lugged along. So, when the snake came to light, I was able to set the camera rig up quickly a few feet out from the animal. This was in a heavily forested situation with poor light, and I wouldn't have been able to get decently crisp images of the snake - or orchid - by handholding the camera.

So, the above shot was taken with my Canon 5D Mark III with Canon's 430 Speedlite attached to the hotshoe. The Speedlite was muffled with a Lumiquest Softbox flash diffuser, which is a great aid in softening the flash's glare. Insofar as the snake's composition, I adjusted the camera's focus point so that it was towards the image field's bottom left corner. That way, the focal point was the animal's face, with the body extending into the background. The camera's settings were as follows:

f/6.3
1/8 sec. exposure
ISO 400

Since I had the stability of a tripod, very slow shutter speeds could be used, especially as there was no wind or movement of the subject. Even though the camera will deal well with much higher ISO settings, which allow for faster shutter speeds, I wanted to keep the ISO low for maximum image quality. Note how the snake's face is crisp ( as always, click on the photo to enlarge) but the animal's body quickly diffuses into blurriness.

This shot, in which the composition is identical, was taken with a radically different camera setting:

f/32
3.2 second exposure
ISO 400

Because of the much greater depth of field produced by the greatly stopped down aperture, we can now see the snake's body in far greater detail, and this shot, to me, is vastly improved over the first image. But without benefit of a tripod, there would have been no possible way to make the image at such a ridiculously slow shutter speed. Any movement of the subject would have ruined the shot as well.

Your narrator (R) and Mr. Big Year, Greg Miller, flank Marcia Rubin in front of the sign that informs readers about the Bobolink Mecca in the backdrop. I was in Ashland County last Saturday to participate in the 8th annual Bobolinks at Byers Woods event. We three were a wee part of the some 120 attendees that converged on this 130-acre Ashland County Park District holding to celebrate that most interesting of blackbirds, the Bobolink.

This park has an interesting history, full of the flotsam and jetsam of north-central Ohio society. The majority of Byers Woods - in spite of the silviculturally based name - is an old landfill. It's capped, grassed over, and sprouts methane vent tubes. And Bobolinks, along with other grassland breeding birds, love the place. I first saw the area 16 years ago, before it was a park. Along with Louise Fleming from Greater Mohican Audubon Society, I toured the freshly sealed landfill with a couple of the county park guys and we discussed possible environmentally friendly goals for the site.

Sam Weyrick and the others with Ashland County were keen on making the best of the landfill, Greater Mohican Audubon Society (GMAS) ramped up their efforts to help, and the rest is history.

Thanks in large measure to the current GMAS president, Cheryl Harner, Bobolinks at Byers Woods was hatched in 2006. A major focus of the event was to draw attention to the nesting ecology of Bobolinks and other grassland nesters, and stir interest in Byers Woods as a park and bird conservation area. They've succeeded. Because of the educational outreach of this event, land managers have delayed mowing until late in the year, well after all of the grassland breeding birds have fledged their young. A simple shift in mowing regimes seems like an easy thing to accomplish, but that's not always the case. A major threat to Bobolinks and other meadow-dwellers is early mowings that destroy nests and young birds.

Quite an assemblage of vendors and non-profits attend, and set their tents along the vast meadows of the former landfill. Browsers of the displays are serenaded nonstop by the rich bubbly R2-D2 gurgles of displaying Bobolinks on the other side of the fence. Robert Hershberger of Time & Optics occupied the first tent, and people testing his scopes and binoculars could train them on Bobolinks - not a bad focal point when testing new optical gear.

A big part of Bobs at Byers is field trips. Here, a line of attendees snakes along the fence bordering the capped landfill, while brushland and woods extend off to the right. The bird list was impressive. In just this spot, we saw or heard species such as the oft-mentioned Bobolink, Savannah Sparrow, Eastern Bluebird, Eastern Kingbird, Yellow-billed Cuckoo, Yellow-breasted Chat, Yellow Warbler, Orchard Oriole, Field Sparrow, Red-tailed Hawk, Eastern Meadowlark, Willow Flycatcher, Northern Flicker, Yellow-throated Vireo, Gray Catbird, and more. In all, I tallied at least 63 species - not bad for an old landfill and its immediate environs!

This is the vista that visitors see when strolling the trails at Byers Woods. The only real giveaway that this gently rolling hill was once an active landfill are the white vent tubes here and there. As I understand it, in 14 years both the tubes and the perimeter fence can be removed. Then, one would never know the site's trashy history if not told.

I was basically afield and leading groups from 9 am until 1 pm, and when so engaged I tend to take few if any photos. As the event wound down, I realized that I hadn't even bothered to snap a shot of a Bobolink - sacrilegious indeed! So off I trotted with my little Panasonic point & shoot, and within minutes sighted and snapped a "Bobo" on a fence rail. You just can't miss 'em. Cheryl estimated that about 50 males occupy the grasslands this year, more than in year's past.

Our first group out, which I co-led along with uber-birder Kathy Mock. We had a great time and saw lots of stuff - so much stuff, in fact, that I forgot I was supposed to be back at ground zero to head out with another group at 11 am. Oops! No problem, thanks to a convenient lift on a golf cart, I was only slightly tardy.

Anyway, everyone looks pretty happy in this group shot. I'd like to think they'd be happy no matter what, but everyone was especially elated due to a most obliging Black-billed Cuckoo that came in and posed at close range for extended viewing. Everyone in this group saw the bird, and it was a lifer for most.

Our second excursion focused on insects, and I was pleased to be a co-leader with Cheryl Harner and Lisa Rainsong. Our investigations of the grasslands and wetlands produced many interesting bugs, including several butterfly species including a fly-by Milbert's Tortoiseshell, and two highly cooperative bumblebee mimic robberflys. Not to mention numerous dragonflies, including this stunning female Eastern Pondhawk.

A juvenile Tree Swallow peers from its lair. The numbers and diversity of birds that are produced on this former landfill site is amazing, and Bobolinks at Byers Woods has done an impressive job of showcasing alternate, truly green uses for abandoned landfills. We people leave an incredible amount of rubbish in our wake, and giant landfills are a necessary evil. I think there can be no higher repurposing of a landfill than to grow Bobolinks and other birds on the abandoned spoils of our throwaway waste. A good irony, indeed.

Watch for Bobolinks at Byers Woods next year when June rolls around, and plan to attend. Also, visit Cheryl's blog RIGHT HERE and read her recap of the event - she is thorough in acknowledging all of the players that made Bobos at Byers possible, and it's this team that brought about the conservation of what may be Ohio's birdiest landfill.

This book could be the death of me, I'll tell you. Now, finally, we've got a great guide to the moths (or many of them), featuring excellent full color photos. It's fun (for me) to page through looking at all of the neat moths that fill the pages. To be honest, most of my paging occurs when I'm trying to identify something, and have to flip through nearly every page on the book before making a match. Do that enough times, and you'll get somewhat acquainted with the guide's subjects.

Sometimes, one of the moths jumps from the page and really grabs my eye. For some reason, the species at the bottom of page 147 did just that: Biden's Grass-Veneer, Crambus bidens. The grass-veneers are mostly small and undistinguished, and some are regular visitors to nightlights. I get them on my porch, occasionally. But this veneer was different. It was splashy in a quite unveneerlike way, and I instantly wanted to see one.

Saturday, June 22, 2013 found me in Brown's Lake Bog, Wayne County, ostensibly to photograph blooming Rose Pogonia orchids, Pogonia ophioglossoides, but of course I was attempting to look at everything and anything. Suddenly out popped a little white and brown moth that had been lurking on the underside of a blueberry leaf until I clumsily bumbled into the plant. The moth shot off, me in pursuit, and when it alit - Bingo! I was treated to my first Biden's Grass-Veneer!

A beautiful animal indeed, as I'm sure you'll agree. A bit goofy, perhaps, with that long furry snout and tubular body, but among the veneers, this one gets the tiara. The juxtaposition and patterning of the rufous-brown and show-white is nothing less than stunning.

In Ohio, bogs are rare indeed, and I view all bog-inhabiting organisms with suspicion. Rare habitats support rare organisms, and when I see something that I don't know anything about in such a place, I want to know more.

In the case of the Biden's Grass-Veneer, I quickly hit a brick wall in my quest for knowledge. The map above is from the Moth Photographer's Group, which is probably the best and most comprehensive resource for moths on the Internet. Their map shows no Ohio record. But I do take that with a grain of salt, as gleaning every record of all moths in each state is a tall order indeed. I have a list of some 2,000+ species of moths collected in Ohio that was given to me by a professional entomologist, and Biden's Grass-Veneer appears on this roster. But only its name - no other info at all.

According to the aforementioned book and a few other reliable sources, Biden's Grass-Veneer is a denizen of bogs, but all of these sources list the host plant as "unknown". Most species of grass-veneers eat, duh, grass, as the name would imply. However, grass (of any species) is a fairly scarce commodity in a sphagnum bog such as Brown's Lake Bog, where I found this beast. My hunch is that the Biden's Grass-Veneer's caterpillars do not feed on grasses, but instead snack on some type of bog specialist plant.

I also wonder what this moth's true status in Ohio is. If it truly is confined to peat bogs, it ain't going to be common, because bogs are in short supply. If anyone can shed any light on the mysteries of the Biden's Grass-Veneer, please let me know.

For the first time in a long time, I ran a Breeding Bird Survey route. BBS birding is intense. The surveyor must begin at sunrise (my starting time was 5:32 am), and drive a 25 mile route, stopping for precisely three minutes every half mile. During the three minute stop, the observer is to record all birds seen and heard, and that can be a challenge, especially when the dawn chorus is in full swing. It's great practice, and makes one really look and listen, oftentimes in places and habitats that might not normally be visited. The data contributes to a massive pool - BBS surveys have been ongoing since 1966, and provide an excellent barometer of the health of North America's breeding birds.

My route extends on a north-south trajectory through rural Hardin County, ending at the massive Findlay Reservoir in Hancock County. I made the run last Friday, and tallied about 71 species - not bad for farm country. This rural run reinforced how Vesper Sparrows thrive in highly agricultural landscapes, and how many Red-headed Woodpeckers live in open country interspersed with woodlots.

One stop was at a small cemetery, and upon hopping from the car, I heard the excited chatters of a pair of Carolina Wrens in some dense brush. Glancing over, I noticed the luxuriant growth of some sort of ornamental geranium spilling from a pot hung between two headstones. I figured that's where the wren's nest was, and kept one eye peeled while tallying other birds. Sure enough, it wasn't long before one of the wrens slipped from the brush, and popped into the flowerpot.

Carolina Wrens love to nest in flowerpots such as this. If you've got 'em around, hang a few pots on the porch or wherever, and there's a good chance your geranium basket will grow birds in addition to plants. The Bewick's Wren also likes hanging baskets. One of the last known Ohio nests of this species, which is now likely extirpated here, was found in the early 1990's in Pike County by Dave Minney. Those birds, which I saw, were nesting in a pot pretty much just like the one in my photo. It hung from a rail on a country home's porch, and I think that the house's human inhabitants didn't really understand the hubbub the little birds created among birders, who stood around staring at their geranium pot for extended periods. Nonetheless, the homeowners were gracious hosts and endured the ogling of their wrens by birdwatchers.

Anyway, I had to take a slight break from the rigid three minute stop interval, and tack on a bit of time to snap a quick photo of the nest. There were at least four young wrens in the flowerpot, although I'm not sure of the exact number. I didn't spend much time looking, and didn't want to disturb the nest. Peeking through gaps in the foliage revealed a fuzzy little scrum of infant wrens, downy plumage still obvious but the telltale bold white eyeline already clearly visible.

By now, these baby wrens are probably out and about, and hopefully they didn't suffer too many unwelcome waterings by whoever tends that flowerpot.

This is the scene shortly after entering Cedar Bog via its fabled boardwalk. Most of the plant species in this shot are, if not downright rare, uncommon at best. Cedar Bog is a treasure trove of rarities; a botanical paradise quite unlike any other habitat in Ohio.

I'm giving a presentation on the rare plants of Cedar Bog on Saturday, July 13 at 10 am in their fabulous new visitor's center. It costs a whopping $6.00 ($5.00) if you are a member of the Cedar Bog Association (and you should be!). Proceeds go to benefit the bog and its management, of course. All of the details ARE HERE. I've been visiting and studying the place for years, and will share photos of Cedar Bog's habitats and botanical denizens, as well as the story of its existence and why this habitat and its plants are so rare now, at least in Ohio. Perhaps best of all, following the talk we'll have lunch, then head out the back door and onto the boardwalk to see scores of interesting plants (and animals) in real time.

I was at the bog yesterday morning, and spent some quality time ferreting out interesting flora with Cedar Bog's new manager, Tracy Bleim, and current Cedar Bog Association board vice-president Cheryl Erwin. Following is just a snippet of the cool stuff that we saw on our foray.

A conspicuous beauty - and one you'll see if you make the July 13th gig - is the rare Fen Indian-plantain, Arnoglossum plantagineum. It's having an especially good year and one might not think it rare if Cedar Bog was their only exposure to this plant. But it's only known from a handful of other sites in Ohio.

Grass-pink orchid, Calopogon tuberosus, which is also in profusion at Cedar Bog this year. It is one of ten species of orchids here - 22% of Ohio's total orchid flora. Not bad for a 427-acre wetland!

Cedar Bog is not really a bog - we'll learn more about wetland terminology on the 13th - but is a fen. And fens are dominated by sedges, some of which are showy and quite interesting. This is Twig-rush, Cladium mariscoides, which is rare in Ohio, but not at Cedar Bog. Its only close relative in the eastern U.S. is the saw-grass of the Florida Everglades.

A beautiful flower to be sure, but don't eat it! This is the "Death Camas", or Wand Lily, Zigadenus elegans, and it is toxic.

One of my target plants was one of Ohio's great botanical rarities, and a species I probably hadn't seen for a decade or more. We were a bit past its flowering time, but I found that the fruit, with their long feathery bristles, looked quite fine. This is a state-endangered plant, the Prairie Valerian, Valeriana ciliata, and it is only known from one other locale in Ohio. This is arguably Cedar Bog's most significant plant. In 1838, botanist John Samples discovered Prairie Valerian at Cedar Bog, and it was described to science from his specimen.

Of course, tremendous plant diversity spawns animal diversity, and one cannot stroll Cedar Bog's boardwalk without encountering interesting animal life. This nymph katydid had the temerity to snack on the flowers of Shrubby Cinquefoil, Dasiphora fruticosa, which is a fairly rare plant in its own right.

We were pleased to see several Appalachian Browns, and one of these butterflies cooperated quite nicely for our cameras. There is a lot of butterfly diversity at Cedar Bog, including our largest species, the Giant Swallowtail.

This is the state-endangered Elfin Skimmer, the smallest dragonfly in North America. As always, CLICK THE PIC to see more detail. This is the male, in his chalky-blue finery. Females are just as small, but look totally different. They are wasp mimics, with alternating bands of black and yellowish-white, and even twitch their abdomen like a wasp when at rest. I can about guarantee that we'll see these, and other cool dragonflies on the 13th.

Even the parking lot has its charms. Native plants abound around its edges, and I wandered over to check some blooming Common Milkweeds, Asclepias syriaca. And then spent the next ten minutes capturing images of the charismatic Red Milkweed Beetles, Tetraopes tetraophthalmus, that were inhabiting the plants.

If you've never visited Cedar Bog, I hope that you can make it out on July 13th. And if you have, I hope that you can come again!

If you are smaller than, say, a hummingbird, you don't want to get locked in the sights of this beast. In fact, this is the LAST thing you'd want to find staring at you, hungrily.

I visited some friends' property in Hocking County last Sunday, and we had a tremendous field trip, full of interesting finds (more on that in a later post). At one point, we stood quietly in a woodland clearing, as I had just spotted a basking hairstreak butterfly. Suddenly, with a loud buzzing of the wings, this huge bumblebee mimic robberfly, Laphria grossa, flew in and took center stage.

I find these creatures amazing. Their resemblance to a fuzzy black and yellow bumblebee is uncanny, and that's likely what you would think it was from any distance. Move in, as in this photo, and the fly's jig is up. Huge eyes, only one set of wings, and a longish abdomen that the robberfly curls down in an arc. Finally, there's no peaceful lapping of nectar for this animal - it has a rigid syringelike proboscis mounted to its head.

When a victim - usually a flying insect - is sighted, the robberfly takes off with a noisy whirring of the wings, like a six-legged Sikorsky Skycrane helicopter. It quickly scrambles to its target, and basically enfolds the hapless prey with its long legs and abdomen. Then, the coup de grace is administered. That pipelike proboscis is jammed in, and the equivalent of battery acid is injected. The robberfly will flutter down to a perch with its prey, and when the victim's innards have softened to the consistency of a milkshake, the fly will suck it dry with its versatile proboscis, leaving little more than a dried husk.

I've said this before, and I'll say it again: DON'T come back as an insect.

Photo: John Howard

What I wouldn't give to see one of these, especially if my camera was in tow! John Howard, whose work I have featured here many times and who is always finding COOL STUFF, found this gem of a beetle in Scioto County last weekend. He sent along the photos and was good enough to permit me to share them here.

This is a Delta Flower Scarab, Trigonopeltastes delta. Supposedly it isn't rare, and the adults are summertime visitors to a wide variety of flowers. The larvae are out of sight and out mind, boring about in rotting wood. Common it may be, but I've never seen one, and I believe this was John's first and he's afield a lot. The beetle is quite striking with its heron-foot antennae, hornet patterning on the pronotum and rich ochraceous elytra.

But wait - the beetle was apparently in peaceful repose when John made this image. As he moved in for photos, and the beetle felt threatened, well, you ain't seen nuthin yet!

Photo: John Howard

As the threat - John - loomed closer, the beetle cocked its hind legs forward, canted its body upwards and emphasized the elytra, or upper shell. Voila! It instantly transformed into one mighty scary beast, sort of a hornet with super eyes, and giant white mandibles. I would think the overall effect could readily dissuade potential predators.

I'll be hoping to luck into a Delta Flower Scarab on upcoming forays, and I appreciate John sharing his amazing photos with us.

Photo: Marcia Rubin

I like orchids as much as the next botanist. So, following a fab time at the annual Bobolinks at Byers Woods festival back on June 22, I made plans to visit nearby Mohican State Forest. There, I knew, the interesting Round-leaved Orchid, Platanthera orbiculata, should still be in bloom. It had been too many years since I had made the acquaintance of this orchid, and a visit was long overdue.

Fellow photographer Marcia Rubin joined me, and she was good enough to share this photo of your narrator in the humus and at eye-level with an orchid. Shooting Round-leaved Orchids is a challenge. They grow in the dense shade of summertime forests, and heavy canopy cover excludes much light. Flash is pretty much a necessary evil, and that tentlike thing attached to my camera is a Lumiquest Softbox, which softens the light from the camera's Speedlite. I even brought my tripod - which I rarely do - but I've found that I can steady the camera fairly well by laying on the ground and using my arms as braces.

Even with props, this orchid is tough to shoot, and I didn't like most of my images. Partly it is the plant's morphology that makes a killer shot hard to obtain: big cool-looking leaves flat on the forest floor, with a spindly little stalk with small greenish-white flowers rising eight or ten inches overhead.

Anyway, Round-leaved Orchid is a rarity in Ohio, barely extending eastward into Ohio. Where it does grow, such as in Mohican, there can be plenty though. Those big flashy leaves lay flat on the leaf litter, and the plant won't take much in the way of competition from other plants. It also, like many other orchids, is irregular in its flowering from year to year. We found only this one specimen in bloom, but saw other non-flowering plants.

The big round leaves are very interesting, and fairly conspicuous. They're shiny, thick, and fleshy, as if carved from green meat. Given the gloom of the dark forests in which they grow, it can be rather easy to pass them by, though.

Just about every species of orchid that I've crossed paths with has intricate, interesting flowers, and Round-leaved Orchid is no exception. What they lack in splashy coloration is compensated for by a fascinating structure. The long appendage hanging down is the nectary spur. It contains the sweet stuff that lures in night-flying moths, which are the pollinators. Ohio orchid authority Warren Stoutamire has captured two species of Noctuid moths at Platanthera orbiculata flowers, and other species may be part of this orchid's life cycle as well.

The flowers were beginning to show their age, but we can see the overall shape and structure. A tiny insect of some sort has taken refugia in this blossom. I suspect that Round-leaved Orchids put off a fragrance at night, which lures in their moth pollinators. An interested moth will sidle up to the flower, and work its long proboscis into its center and down into the aforementioned spur. Such close proximity will force the moth's face into contact with the flower's pollinia, and when done the pollen-dusted moth will (hopefully) flutter off to pollinate another orchid.

Pitcher-plant, Sarracenia purpurea

The Columbus Dispatch
July 7, 2013

NATURE
Jim McCormac

Animals are supposed to eat plants, not the other way around. Carnivorous plants turn conventional plant-animal relationships upside down. The world of meat-eating botany is strange indeed, and a few of its practitioners can be found in Ohio.

About 630 species of plants worldwide are carnivores: They attract prey, capture and kill victims, and metabolize their remains. Such a bizarre twist on the usual order of things has long captured people’s imagination. Charles Darwin published a famed treatise on carnivorous plants in 1875: “Insectivorous Plants.” Much later and far more fictitiously, the movie TheLittle Shop of Horrors (1960) featured Audrey the man-eating plant.

Homicidal vegetable matter might seem the stuff of science fiction, but such plants are alive and well. Perhaps the best-known is the Venus’ flytrap, which is commonly sold. Many an owner has marveled at the deadly efficiency of these active “snap-traps.” Venus’ flytraps aren’t native to Ohio, but nine other carnivorous plant species are. Most of our botanical carnivores are rare — inhabitants of imperiled habitats. Three are listed as endangered; three others, threatened.

Carnivorous plants have evolved to cope with life in hostile substrates. Most species grow in soils or water deficient in nutrients, and the plants cope by assimilating nitrogen and proteins from their victims.

The pitcher plant Sarracenia purpurea is confined to a few bogs, including Buckeye Lake’s famous Cranberry Island State Nature Preserve. Pitcher plants are “passive traps.” Their highly modified leaves form tubes that fill with rainwater. Colorful purple stripes at the leaf’s summit lure flying insects; a sweetly scented flange of tissue entices ground dwellers to scale the leaf. Once atop the deadly plant, hungry insects enter the leaf’s gaping maw. Even if the bug wises up, escape might be futile. Stiff downward-pointing hairs encourage easy entrance but deter exit. Eventually, the hairs give way to glassy-smooth interior walls, and the insect slips into the drink.

Pitcher plant “juice” is water with fatal additives. The plant secretes an anti-buoyancy enzyme that reduces the odds of victims escaping. Other chemicals accelerate decomposition and aid in assimilation of the insects’ soft parts. The leaf of a well-fed pitcher plant is full of bug sludge — the residue of scores of six-legged prey large and small.

Two species of sundews occur in Ohio, and the most frequent is the round-leaved sundew (Drosera rotundifolia), which grows on sphagnum moss in peatlands. It is a “flypaper trap.” The tiny leaves are beset with hairs that seem tipped with delicious dewdrops. Thirsty insects, duped by the plant’s tasty appearance, alight only to learn that the sundew sports the botanical equivalent of Elmer’s glue. They are stuck fast, and the leaf slowly enfolds them in a death grip, sucking the life from them.

Finally, we have six species of bladderworts, plants that feature “active traps.” Some bladderworts float in water; others grow in wet soil. All have roots that are dotted with tiny sacs. If an animal jostles a trap, guard hairs are triggered and the door pops open with lightning speed. The hapless victim is instantly sucked inside, and the door slams shut. Digestive enzymes work their magic, the animal is liquefied, and the bladder is open for business again in short order.

Naturalist Jim McCormac writes a column for The Dispatch on the first and third Sundays of the month. He also writes about nature at www.jimmccormac.blogspot.com

Round-leaved Sundew, Drosera rotundifolia

Traipsing through the woodlands in the heat of summer lacks a bit of the charm of a cool spring hike. I've been deep into Hocking County twice in the past two weeks, and on both days the temps hit the 80's (F) and worse yet, the humidity must have been hovering near 100%. After some hill-climbing and bush-whacking, it's as if you've gone for a swim. Couple that with various and sundry biting or otherwise annoying insects, and summertime forays can grow tiring.

But not to me! At least for the most part. One, heat has never really bothered me very much. And I like insects. Suffering a few of the pests in order to have the opportunity to find some really interesting bugs is well worth the annoyance, and unless clouds of mosquitoes or blackflies are part of the equation, you'll seldom hear me complaining about insects.

As for as botany goes, mid-summer carries with it a whole set of fascinating but often overlooked flora. People are less apt to go crashing through the forests in July, for the aforementioned reasons. Too bad, and following is a pictorial snippet of what Ohio's summer forests are growing about now.

A heavily wooded slope awash in the ghostly white spires of Black Cohosh, Actaea racemosa. Some ginseng diggers claim this is a "pointer plant": an obvious easily seen plant that indicates the presence of ginseng. If so, a digger would go ape upon spotting this site.

Black Cohosh is a member of the buttercup family (Ranunculaceae), and its flower buds are food for caterpillars of the beautiful Appalachian Azure butterfly.

Plants in the mint family (Lamiaceae) form a conspicuous component of summer's cast of chlorophyll-bearing characters. This is an easily found species, American Germander, Teucrium canadense.

The pale pink flowers lack an upper lip, and resemble scoops that have been sprayed with lavender dust.

I was pleased to encounter a small population of Hairy Wood Mint, Blephilia ciliata. I find it less commonly than I do our other species, the Downy Wood Mint, B. ciliata (which you can see RIGHT HERE). Note the flashy little purple dots on the flowers - they serve as neon lights to lure in pollinating insects.

This is a big, picturesque mint even if it is clad all in white. It is White Bergamot, Monarda clinopodia, and it likes the shade. There are four species of Monarda that grow native in Ohio, and each comes with a different color of flowers: pink, red, yellow, and white.

This, need I say, is the RED Monarda, otherwise known as Bee-balm, or sometimes Oswego-tea. No matter your choice of common names, it'll always be Monarda didyma. The inflorescence is a botanical fireworks show, and running across a patch of these plants amongst the lesser greenery will give just about anyone pause.

A personal fave among summer woodland wildflowers is the Pale Jewelweed, Impatiens capensis. Entering the flower, to an insect pollinator, must be akin to going caving. Few plants are more succulent than are the Impatiens; it's as if they are made of water. Back in my rabid plant-collecting days, I always found jewelweeds difficult to work with. You've basically got to flatten them on the spot - they don't last long once separated from the earth.

Other than good looks, jewelweeds have edibility going for them. Try the ripe seeds sometime. They taste like walnuts. Just be sure and pop open the pod in your closed hand. The fruit are coiled under pressure, and when the pod bursts they'll go flying.

This little beauty is often overlooked, due to its diminutive stature. You could probably pack a few hundred of those flowers in a coke bottle cap. It's the bloom of Enchanter's Nightshade, Circaea lutetiana, a shade-lover that seldom grows more than 6-8 inches above the forest floor.

Note the bristly ripe fruit in the backdrop. The stiff hook-tipped hairs are for mammalian dispersal. Rabbits and other little animals have probably unwittingly carted untold billions of these tiny fruit around over the eons.

Striped Wintergreen, Chimaphila maculata - always a crowd pleaser! This miniature shrublet, a member of the heath family (Ericaceae) is worth braving the heat and humidity to see. The leaves are evergreen, conspicuous and easily identified throughout the year. But one must venture out in July to observe the amazing little waxy-white flowers, which droop on arcuate filaments, condemned to stare only at the forest floor.

A close ally of the wintergreen is this even tinier heath, the Wintergreen, or Teaberry, Gaultheria procumbens. This fine specimen is in full flower, and it'd be quite easy to pass right by the plant and never notice the little urn-shaped flowers.

By getting downslope and laying on my belly, I was able to secure a passable image of the flowers. It would be interesting (at least to me) to know what insect(s) enter the mouth of this flower for pollination purposes. Discovering such things would require much time prostrate on the leaf litter, and few of us take time for such things (or consider such knowledge important).

Ah! A ghostly plant indeed, arising like a dead man's fingers from the humus. This is the strange Indian-pipe, Monotropa uniflora, and it utterly lacks chlorophyll, hence the lack of greenness. It can shun the sun by tapping into mycorrhizal fungi associated with tree roots, thus it is an indirect parasite of trees.

I would be hard-pressed to name a cooler summer wildflower than this one, the Leather-flower, Clematis viorna. A vining member of the buttercup family, Leather-flower can rather easily be overlooked in its shady haunts. It is well named: those flowers are indeed thick and quite leathery to the touch. Why this plant hasn't been captured and put into the ornamental trade, I do not know. Or perhaps it has, and I'm just unaware.

It doesn't take a rocket scientist to determine the primary pollinators of Leather-flower. Large well-fuzzed bumblebees in the genus Bombus were swarming the blossoms, stuffing their fuzzy selves deep within to access the nectar.

It was with a slight tinge of sadness that I observed this big coarse plant sending forth its pilot flower. When the Cup-plant, Silphium perfoliatum, begins to bloom, you can be assured that summer is near its zenith and will soon show signs of fading. The Cup-plant is Act I in a large and diverse procession of fall composites: asters, sunflowers, goldenrods and more. They are harbingers of winter, ushering in cold weather and dormancy in the plant world.

Write, write, write... I do a lot of it. But no complaints - I enjoy trying to grab up big bunches of words, and make something coherent emerge from the pile. And good writing takes practice. I'm not putting myself into the "good writer" category, but I can try and veer ever closer to some sort of legitimacy :-)

Anyway, in addition to the stuff that I've got going on in my own personal world of writing, I'm in the midst of two large writing projects at work. This means that I'm largely affixed to my desk from 8 to 5, and every now and then a break is in order. Early this afternoon, between our seemingly never-ending storms and showers, I headed outside our building, Canon 5D in tow. Destination: a small planted prairie that's a riot of color from coneflowers, compass-plant, bergamot and other prairie fare.

This brief photographic excursion turned out to be perhaps the brightest idea I had today. Nearly as soon as I clapped eyes on the little prairie, a Hummingbird Clearwing, Hemaris thysbe, shot by! I think these day-flying sphinx moths are just about the neatest things on scaly wings, with the added perk of making for supremely challenging photo subjects.

As soon as the moth darted by, I clicked the camera to shutter priority and notched the control wheel to a speed of 1/1250 - super fast!

Hummingbird Clearwing Photo Tip: If you're out to catch one of these bugs on pixels, use as fast a shutter speed as you can get away with. This'll mean turning the camera off Full Auto, and to Shutter Priority (easiest way). Then, you can easily control the speed at which the camera's shutter opens and closes, and let the camera figure out the other parameters.

Hummingbird Clearwings, when patrolling for nectar, are in perpetual motion. Their wings are a blur, a la hummingbird, and they're nearly always jigging and bobbing. I dare say there are more fuzzy, blurry shots of these moths than the vast majority of insects. A lightning fast shutter speed is essential to freeze them.

This particular Hummingbird Clearwing was smitten with the nectar of Wild Bergamot, Monarda fistulosa. The moth would rapidly approach a flowering head, unfurl its staggeringly long proboscis and deftly thrust it deep into a flower's corolla tube. All in the blink of an eye. And off in a circle the animal would go, plundering its way around the inflorescence and then quickly darting to a new plant.

The nonstop bustle of this moth brings up another Photo Tip: Put your camera on burst mode. Ever had some bird photographer with a huge tripod-mounted lens standing next to you when something cool came along? All of a sudden his/her camera explodes to life with an Uzi-like rapidfire burst of clicks. That's burst mode. My Canon will pop off about six shots a second, and by employing a photographic blitzkrieg, your odds of getting a decent image of a rapidly moving object go way up.

This rather pleasing little shrub is Wild Honeysuckle, Diervilla lonicera, and it is one of the native good guys. Some nurseries stock it, and Diervilla is a plant worth searching out. In addition to its aesthetics, Wild Honeysuckle is a host plant for the caterpillars of Hummingbird Clearwing moths. This is one of myriad examples of why landscaping with native plants is infinitely interesting. Toss the right botanical ingredients out, and you make things such as Hummingbird Clearwing moths.

Should you find yourself near Dayton, Ohio, on Saturday, July 27, stop by the Midwest Native Plant Conference. There'll be vendors galore and scads of valuable native plants for sale. You'll certainly find some flora that will enrich your yard. NOTE: The conference and its various talks and programs is full, but Saturday is open to the public for purposes of visiting our vendors, so feel free to stop by.

This rather charming little caterpillar with the black and yellow horn is the larvae of our other common hummingbird moth, the Snowberry Clearwing, Hemaris diffinis. I made this image last year, in a very urban area not too far from my office. By using the right plants, it isn't too hard to attract such beasts. Plant proper plants, and they will come.

It's high time that I had a bird on here - after all, birds are in the title of this blog! So here's some ornithological eye candy, the American Goldfinch, Spinus tristis. This stunning male was photographed in Adams County, as it plundered thistle feed from one of John Howard's feeders. Goldfinches are nearly vegan, you know.

Goldfinches are late nesters, and kicking it into high gear about now. This is one of our most common bird species, and rare to non-existent is the field trip that doesn't produce "wild canaries". Abundant though they are, American Goldfinch ranks very high on the list of our showiest birds. Males are also noteworthy in that they may have the most conspicuous molt of any of our songbirds. The transformation of the males from somber winter plumage into the Day-Glo electric lemon of summer is noted and remarked upon by scores of backyard bird-watchers.

If you've got wings, and would fit between the one and two millimeter marks on a ruler, I'd advise staying out of the sights of the creature above. This is the tiny but deadly Gnat-ogre, Holcocephala fusca, and I photographed this individual last Thursday at Resthaven Wildlife Area.

Gnat-ogres are robberflies, just on a nearly impossibly small scale. I like this group of carnivorous flies, and have written about them many times. The robberflies are certainly a successful lineage of the massive Dipteran Order, and the various species come in many forms. The largest of their lot in this part of the world is the giant Red-footed Cannibal Fly, Promachus hinei, a true horrorshow. It would take possibly thousands of the Gnat-ogre pictured here to make a cannibal fly.

Small as it may be, the Gnat-ogre is every bit as aggressively predacious as its larger brethren. The animal in my photo has a victim - some sort of small winged creature that would be nearly invisible to the naked eye. Given that the ogre is only 2-3 millimeters in length, you can get a sense of how truly elfin its prey is.

There are predators operating at every level. While the mighty Peregrine Falcon is millions of times larger than this Gnat-ogre, their modus operandi are essentially the same. And each is equally deadly, in their own way.

A while back, I wrote about Black Kingsnakes, Lampropeltis getula, and shared some images of one of these fabulous beasts. You can see that post RIGHT HERE. Kingsnakes are not a widespread animal in Ohio, occurring only in perhaps a half-dozen of our southernmost counties. The snake that was the subject of the aforementioned post was one that John Howard had caught that morning in his Adams County garden; later that same day I went on to find another elsewhere in the county.

A noteworthy quality of the Black Kingsnake is its tameness and gentle nature, at least towards humans. When first captured, a kingsnake might be a bit feisty, but they normally soon settle down and are quite easily and safely handled. I have been around enough kingsnakes to know firsthand of their docile nature; a behavior that seems quite surprising when one learns what true tough guys these reptiles really are.

Last Saturday, botanists Andrew Gibson and Michael Whittemore were exploring Shawnee State Forest when they stumbled across a true battle of the reptilian titans. Andrew (check his great blog HERE) was kind enough to send along some of his characteristically excellent photos, documenting an ophidian fight to the death.

Photo: Andrew Gibson

Can you imagine stumbling across this scene?! It would either be the stuff of which long-lasting nightmares are made, or, if you're like me and many of my friends, a dream come true! Black Kingsnakes are well known for going after, killing, and consuming other snakes, notably venomous snakes. While this bit of interesting herpetological knowledge is well known, it is one thing to read about such behavior in a book, and quite another to actually experience it firsthand!

While cruising one of Shawnee Forest's little traveled back lanes, Andrew and Michael came across this scene, stopped, and obtained what is certainly among the best photo-documentation there is of a Black Kingsnake plying its trade. I don't think that I need point out which of the serpents is the kingsnake; the other is the most common of Ohio's three venomous snakes, the Northern Copperhead, Agkistrodon contortrix (I've written about them HERE, should you be interested).

The kingsnake has engaged the copperhead, and is working to subdue its venomous relative. You'd think an animal with the fortitude to pursue such fare would be a raging, barely containable maniac of an animal, but as I pointed out when in our hands kingsnakes are about as soft and snuggly as a snake can be. That demeanor changes bigtime when on the hunt, obviously.

Photo: Andrew Gibson

At this point in the struggle, the agile kingsnake has gained the upper hand and has the copperhead in a death grip. The copperhead, of course, would have attempted to defend itself with all of its might, but kingsnakes are impervious to the bites of chemically protected snakes such as this, and the copperhead's bites left it unfazed.

Photo: Andrew Gibson

By now, the copperhead is doomed. The crushing death-grip that the kingsnake has on the throat of the copperhead probably brings about its demise fairly quickly, as does the kingsnake's tightly coiled body, which crushes the life from the unlucky victim. Death by constriction, essentially.

Congratulations to Andrew and Michael for a great find, and to Andrew for the excellent photo-documentation, and for allowing me to share his images with you.

There's lots of types of photography, and my bag, obviously, is natural history subjects. Even within that sphere, there is quite a range of topics: birds, bugs, plants, landscapes, etc. To cover the gamut requires multiple lenses, if you are using a DSLR. Of all the possible subjects to found in the natural world, my favorite to shoot are the little things. Macro photography is quite rewarding, at least to me, and good shots can bring to life up close and personal the wee flora and fauna that our eyes largely skip over.

I look at this picture and nearly cringe, thinking how far the photographic addiction has taken me. A short eight years ago, I got my first digital point & shoot, and steadfastly resolved NOT to EVER get into SLR cameras and their interchangeable lens. If things went that far, I reasoned, I would end up devoting more time to photography and less to covering ground and finding the maximum amount of COOL THINGS when afield. Well, no regrets on the burgeoning camera addiction, at least yet.

Anyway, macro photography (shooting small subjects) is often challenging and requires a good combination of gear. The rig above is the best combo I've hit on so far. The camera body is Canon's stellar 5D Mark III, and bolted to it is their superb 100 mm macro lens. That pairing is tough to beat. But one issue that oft arises when engaging in macro work is the need for flash. I've tried several rigs, and finally got the strange contraption that is wired to the camera, above. It is the Canon MT-24 EX Twin Lite flash unit, and so far I love it. The outrigger lamps at the end of the camera barrel can be rotated in any direction, or quickly unsnapped and held anywhere within the range of the power cables. This provides excellent lighting versatility in a fairly portable package.

Last Thursday, I found myself at the Lakeside Daisy State Nature Preserve in Ottawa County, camera and newfangled flash system in tow. I - duh! - wanted to test it out, and knew there'd be scores of suitably tiny subjects at the preserve. The flower above is attached to one of our rarer mints, the highly aromatic Limestone Savory, Calamintha arkansana. Those flowers are only a few millimeters across, and a soft flash allowed me to obtain a steadier image, and send some fill flash up into the flower's innards.

One of the best things about flash is that it allows you to shoot a faster shutter speed - important when photographing objects that are prone to movement. Insect photography can be highly rewarding, but it's also challenging. One must often stalk the subject for some time, and might be lucky to get a few good opportunities for a shot. When an opportunity presents itself, you don't want to miss it.

The animal above is a male Calico Pennant, Celithemis elisa, teed up on the tattered and aging receptacle of one of our rarest plants, the Lakeside Daisy, Tetraneuris herbacea. Following are a few more shots of small stuff, taken with my new rig.

Looking quite different, and arguably even more beautiful, is the female Calico Pennant.

This is a male Band-winged Meadowhawk, Sympetrum semicinctum, with its cherry-red body.

As with many dragonflies, the female Band-winged Meadowhawk is sexually dimorphic: it is visually different than the male. This individual was quite cooperative and allowed me to get right up in her grill. Gusting breezes swayed her perch however, adding to the challenge of making a crisp image.

To me, this was the most pleasing subject of the day: one of our tiniest damselflies, the Citrine Forktail, Ischnura hastata. One of these beasts measures less than an inch long, and they stay low to the ground in the vegetation. It is extremely easy to walk right through a posse of forktails and never notice them. Seen well, the animal is a thing of great beauty. This one is perched on a fairly rare plant, the Narrow-leaved Summer Bluets, Stenaria nigricans. It is consuming some tiny bug so small it is nearly invisible.

Dragonfly/Damselfly Photo Tip: Furtively and discreetly stalk your photographic prey until it catches a victim. Once settled in with a meal, damsels and dragons are less apt to flush, and often allow closer and easier approaches.

The hypnotic mass of Purple Coneflower, Echinacea purpurea, disk flowers seems to move and rotate if you stare straight at it. A good macro setup opens up worlds that would otherwise go largely unnoticed.

Photo: Irene Kohne

Such a woodpecker as this would be sure to cause one to take a second glance, and a third glance, and run fast for the camera. Fortunately, Irene Kohne did just that, and was able to make some nice images of this "Ivory" Woodpecker (No, not Ivory-billed Woodpecker!).

This bark-pounder has been coming to her Brown County, Ohio feeder and is apparently doing just fine. It is a leucistic (loo-kiss-tik) Red-bellied Woodpecker, Melanerpes carolina, and is certainly far from typical for that species. Leucism is a genetic abnormality that causes normally dark melanin pigments to become washed out and pale, leading to such animals as "piebald" White-tailed Deer, or white-patched American Robins.

A quick glance around the Internet revealed a few other examples of leucistic Red-bellied Woodpeckers, but none so fine as Irene's ivory-colored bird. This fellow is nearly wholly white, but notice the small amount of red bleeding through on the crown patch on the forehead, which indicates its maleness, and some brownish coloration bleeding through on the underparts. I suspect the dark-tipped tail feathers are the result of staining from the bird propping itself against various surfaces.

Magnificent animal, and here's hoping it lives long and prospers. Thanks to Irene for sharing!

A typical male Red-bellied Woodpecker.

This strange-looking structure is the main water intake for the City of Cleveland, and it lies about three miles out in Lake Erie (although it's labeled "Five Mile Crib), offshore from downtown. I made this image while assisting with an aerial waterbird survey back in November 2009. In a big lake largely free of other protuberances, the intake structure sticks out like a sort thumb, and everyone asks about it upon seeing it for the first time.

Well, the City of Cleveland was good enough to mount a camera on the "crib", and stream live video to us, the viewers. Cleveland birders Jen Brumfield and Chuck Slusarcyk brought this to our attention the other day via the Facebook Birding Ohio page, and the Ohio Birds Listserv. They report hundreds of Chimney Swifts mustering around the crib, and were able to identify several other species. I will guarantee you that the local Peregrine Falcons also make trips out there to hunt, and perch.

The congregation of swifts is particularly interesting, and curious minds want to know if they somehow roost on the structure. Hopefully someone will find out. The Cleveland lakefront hosts massive numbers of Chimney Swifts in migration, and maybe some of them have found an out-of-the-norm roosting site. Anyway, if you want to view the cam and life three miles out in Lake Erie, CLICK HERE.

An aerial view, courtesy Google Earth, of the intersection of U.S. Route 33 and Clear Creek Road in Hocking County, Ohio. I recently met someone here for a field trip, and suggested the gas station on the corner as a rendezvous point. Not remembering which type of gas station it was and wanting to tip them to the name, I ducked into trusty Google Earth.

Google Earth has made great strides since its introduction eight years ago. Motorized Googleians have driven nearly every road in the Americas, it seems, and this has allowed for an extremely cool feature known as "Street View". Clicking that allows us to come down to the ground and see relatively high resolution images of the roadway and its roadside attractions.

By entering Street View, I quickly saw that the gas station rendezvous site was a Sunoco, and could pass that info to the other party. I was also interested to see that the imagery, which is probably a year or few old, was made in summer.

Knowing that a rare plant, Glade Mallow, Napaea dioica, grew directly across from this intersection, in the ground between U.S. 33 and the Hocking River, I toggled the Google Earth Street View camera in that direction. They make these images with a car-mounted camera that shoots in all directions, and you can scan in any direction from the roadway. So I aimed it into the ditch, and Voila! There was my rare plant. They are the plants capped with white flowers, just left of that area of bare dirt.

Now we're on the ground and your blogger is taking up the camera duties. This image looks north on U.S. 33, and the Glade Mallow grows in profusion between the mowed verge and the trees.

Glade Mallow is a stunner by any botanical standard, and we caught it just as it was entering peak bloom. It is a massive member of the Mallow Family (Malvaceae), and luxuriant stems might stretch six or seven feet skyward. The leaves are roundish and deeply cleft; suggestive of Marijuana on steroids.

The crystalline flowers with pinkish stamens grow in densely capitate clusters. Individually, they seem too small for the robust plant that supports them, but massed in unison all seems in harmony. I personally think Glade Mallow would be an awesome plant for the adventurous gardener, but I rather doubt anyone has taken it into captivity and is cultivating it.

Photo: David Wagner

This rather innocuous tubular green bag of goo is one of the reasons why I'm so interested in Glade Mallow. About 20 years ago, I made a collection of Glade Mallow in Pickaway County, Ohio, and upon returning to the office with my material, I dumped it out to sort things. When I handled my Glade Mallow specimen, a beautiful caterpillar just like this jumped from the foliage. I was interested enough that I took it to a lepidopterist who specializes in moths, and he raised it to adulthood.

Photo: Jim Vargo/Moth Photographers Group

Darned if it didn't turn out to be a major rarity, Bagisara gulnare (a type of noctuid moth; I know of no common name). David Wagner was exceptionally keen to find caterpillars of this species, as no one has reared them or studied the life history. We made attempts to find some last year when Dave was here, but failed. This year, following Mothapalooza, he and I stopped and worked a giant stand of Glade Mallow in Ross County, and within 20 minutes had secured 13 caterpillars. Dave has these livestock in his lab back at the University of Connecticut, and most of them have entered the pupal state. His photo, two images up, is of one of the caterpillars that we captured back on June 16.

Map courtesy of Moth Photographers Group

This map needs updated a bit; at least two Ohio dots are necessary. But you can see that Bagisara gulnare is a great rarity, hence our interest. When I found the caterpillar back in the 1990's, the host plant was unknown, so my discovery cracked that code. Now that we know what the caterpillars eat, and when they are out, it should be possible to find additional sites. I'll probably try and get out and check a few places in early August, when the moths should be on the wing, and see if I can find and photograph them.

The world is awash in beetles, and they come in all shapes and sizes. Few of them can match the intimidation factor of a Pinching Beetle, Lucanus capreolus, though. Those formidable looking mandibles look like they could slice off a finger.

Today was one of those coolly diverse days. I started off down in Fayette County, visiting the farm of a friend. He has restored about 25 acres of wetlands, and the response by the animal community has been nothing short of phenomenal. Blizzards of dragonflies of many species, amphibians galore, and nesting Blue-winged Teal, Pied-billed Grebe, and Sora. Among MANY other things. And all in a short two years. Add water and they will come.

Then, working my way home, I ducked into a Madison County cemetery that has a thriving population of Thirteen-lined Ground Squirrels, and shot images of our native prairie dog. Then, I stopped at a spot along Little Darby Creek, waded on in, and procured some pretty nice shots of various stream bluets and dancers. Finally, I dropped by Kathy Wallace's home, as she had tipped me to the discovery and capture of the protagonist of this story. I asked her if she'd please put the Pinching Beetle into captivity, as I'd like to do a shoot with it, and she was kind enough to do so.

Pinching Beetles are fairly large as bugs go, and coupled with the large mandibles, they're enough to cause an entomophobe to faint. But as nearly all of these things are, they're totally harmless - all bark and no bite. Still, as can be seen by its scale as compared to your narrator's hand, a Pinching Beetle is a whole lotta bug.

This insect also goes by the name of Reddish-brown Stag Beetle, but I prefer the Pinching Beetle moniker. There is an even larger species, the Giant Stag Beetle, Lucanus elaphus, which also has bigger mandibles. I've not seen that one, and have only seen about three of this species. I suspect that they're not that uncommon, but stay largely out of sight and out of mind. The larvae spend their existence burrowing through decaying wood, and the adults are mostly nocturnal. Adults feed on tree sap and probably the sap of rotting fruit, and if all goes well, one of these giant beetles can live for a year or more.

As nasty as those "antlers" look, the beetle can't exert enough force to do anything but give a slight squeeze. I'm not sure what their purpose is; perhaps sparring with other males like deer in rut? Or perhaps intimidating would-be enemies. It may be that the males with the largest rack are the most desirable to females? The girl beetles, by the way, have greatly reduced mandibles that are scarcely noticeable, at least in comparison to those of the male.

Pinching Beetles occasionally come to lights, so perhaps if you are lucky you will have this face staring at you when you step out onto your porch.

Not long ago, I came back to my car, and this little guy darted out from between two body panels. Yes! A jumping spider (species unknown)! He ran over to look at me, and I stared back just as intently. After telling it to wait a sec, I bolted the macro lens onto the Canon, and took a shot.

If ever a spider could be called "cute", it would be a jumping spider. After the shoot, I coaxed him onto my finger and liberated the spider into some vegetation. Hopefully it is still out there wreaking havoc on the lesser beasts.

A serpent comes into focus

Bobolinks at Byers Woods

Biden's Grass-Veneer: a life moth, and a mystery

Carolina Wren, in geraniums

Rare plants of Cedar Bog

A homicidal "bumblebee"

Delta Flower Scarab Beetle

Round-leaved Orchid

Bug-eating Plants Twist Normal Order of Life

A smattering of summer woodland wildflowers

Hummingbird Clearwing moth

American Goldfinch

Gnat-ogre

Epic battle between kingsnake and copperhead!

Macro work - photographing the little stuff

An ivory woodpecker

The Cleveland "Crib Cam"

A rare plant and Google Earth

The Pinching Beetle, a rather brutish looking bug

Jumping Spider!