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Ohio Sustainable Landscapes Symposium - September 12
If you're reading this blog, you probably like plants, and enjoy learning more about how plants spawn animal life. The Ohio Sustainable Landscapes Symposium is for you. Mark your calendars for...
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Some shorebirds, at Funk
Mudflats and shallow pools blanket the landscape just south of Funk Bottoms Wildlife Area in Wayne County, along the north side of Wilderness Road. An active peat mining operation has temporarily...
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A morning spent slaying dragons
Jim Lemon scans for dragonflies along an old quarry in Champaign County, Ohio. Lemon, a former IT guru returned to his entomological roots, made an outstanding discovery here last year. He found the...
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Rough Greensnake
I visited Chillicothe, Ohio, last Monday evening, to deliver a presentation to the Scioto Valley Bird & Nature Club. It's always a treat to visit this city, which is steeped in Ohio history....
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A strange gall, and an unexpected occupant
A lush snarl of Green-headed Coneflower, Rudbeckia laciniata, colors the Junglebrook Marsh at Malabar Farm in Richland County, Ohio. I was up this way last Friday and Saturday to help with the 7th...
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Mystery wasp update
In my last post, RIGHT HERE, I wrote about a curious parasitoid wasp that was attacking the grubs of an equally curious gall-forming midge. I am a large fan of the small and obscure, and set about...
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Dragonfly swarms
I’ve heard reports of massive dragonfly swarms from around Ohio over the past few days. Most of these insects are probably Common Green Darners (the species in the accompanying photo) and Wandering...
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Baird's sandpiper logs a lot of miles
A big stretch from a small Baird's sandpiperBaird's sandpiper logs a lot of milesColumbus DispatchNATUREJim McCormacSeptember 6, 2015One of the most brutish flights an Ohioan can make is to Sydney,...
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A bevy of Buff-breasted Sandpipers
Looking a bit like a clay figurine, a Buff-breasted Sandpiper, Calidris subruficollis, poses on a sparsely vegetated mudflat at first light.A week ago, September 1st, I did what (believe it or not) is...
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Caterpillar mania!
Last weekend, the organizers of the now famous Mothapalooza conference hosted an offshoot caterpillar workshop. We didn't really name it. "Caterpillaralooza" doesn't exactly trip off the tongue, and...
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Caterpillar mania! Part II
In the last post, I briefly described our inaugural trial run caterpillar workshop that was an offshoot of Mothapalooza. More importantly, I shared lots of cool caterpillar photos. I will continue in...
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Caterpillar mania! Part III
OK, this is the last of the tubular crowd for a while. Check the previous two posts, HERE and HERE, for parts I and II. The first one explains where they all came from, and why and how we obtained the...
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Gulls in flight
iPhone 5S photoLast Wednesday, I and about 27 other birders boarded the Miss Cindy in Vermilion, Ohio, and headed out on Lake Erie. This was one of Jen Brumfield's freshwater "pelagics", and she and...
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American Birding Expo: October 2-4
Mark your calendars for the upcoming extravaganza known as the American Birding Expo! It takes place from October 2 thru 4, right here in my hometown of Columbus, Ohio. The venue is the beautiful...
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Mantidfly looks as if built out of spare parts
Mantidfly, Dicromantispa interruptaCOLUMBUS DISPATCHSeptember 27, 2015NATUREJim McCormacScotsman John Hunter was an inveterate explorer and officer in Great Britain’s Royal Navy. A natural scholar,...
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Showy things from here and there
I haven't let much grass grow under my feet of late. I took much of last week off work to help conduct a photo workshop with David FitzSimmons, then it was off to Shawnee State Park at the opposite end...
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The Ohio State University Museum of Biological Diversity is a treasure trove of fascinating subjects. It houses one of the world’s premier insect collections, a vast store of plant specimens from...
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Hackberry Emperors, quadrupled
A quartet of Hackberry Emperors, Asterocampa celtis, adorn a tree at Kiwanis Park in Columbus. This little-known park is nestled along one of the wilder sections of the Scioto River in this otherwise...
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Rare in Ohio, Swainson's Hawk draws a crowd
The famous Holmes County Swainson's HawkCOLUMBUS DISPATCHOctober 4, 2015NATUREJim McCormacOn a summer day in 1827, naturalists John Richardson and Thomas Drummond were exploring uncharted territory...
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2015 Wetlands Summit: October 17, Dawes Arboretum
Cedar Bog, Champaign County. Perhaps the richest biological diversity in Ohio occurs in the fens of Cedar Bog. Wetlands in general fuel major spikes in biodiversity.Mark your calendar for Saturday,...
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