Killing time

Geoff has been writing a corporate history for a company headquartered in Versailles, Ohio. He has been visiting there off and on gathering interviews with past and present employees, and this time we all went along for the ride.
Versailles, Ohio (that's "ver-sails", not "Vair-sigh") is a quiet and tiny town on the western edge of the state. One hotel, one gas station, no Starbucks....you get the picture. Geoff talked me into the trip by telling me all about the "nature places" and his non-birding opinion that the place would be "birdy".

We arrived in the early morning on Monday and as Geoff headed off to do his job, the girls and I headed to a nearby reserve to kill time.


Stillwater Prairie Reserve:

It's 380 acres of prairie loveliness. Full of native Ohio wildflowers, it's a butterfly and dragonfly heaven. With two ponds and a wetland, it's a frog and bird paradise.
Let's go to the photos:


Milkweed was everywhere. More than I have ever seen in one place. Common, swamp, spider milkweed...all full of juicy milk and crawling with milkweed bugs and beetles. And earwigs. And other things I couldn't identify.






Dragonflies and damselflies were everywhere. Pond hawks, widow skimmers, Carolina saddlebags, halloween pennants.





Butterflies were everywhere. Monarchs too busy to land and pose, tiger swallowtails, small sulphurs, tiny blues, clouds of cabbage whites, and this red-spotted purple.


Two ponds in the reserve gave Isabelle many chances to catch frogs (one of her favorite past times).
This peeper landed on Lorelei's shirt, and tried to escape through the "portal."



I was in Native Paradise.
Yellow coneflower, purple coneflower, bee balm as far as the eye can see....adding that to the copious amounts of milkweed, and it was all I could do NOT to strip down and roll through it all naked.



Bird-wise, it was quiet, as expected in mid-summer.
But this kingbird was close enough for the girls to hear its beak "snap" as it zoomed back and forth from its branch to flycatch.



Non-sequiter:
We left the prairie to get some lunch (and returned back TO the prairie after eating) and while driving through the next town, Isabelle say this sign on the post office and MADE ME take a photo:


"Mommy....it's a Puh-Just Office!" (giggles ensue)

I met a celebrity today!

It's not every day you get to meet someone you have only read about. I met someone today...someone who is unlike anyone else I have ever met.

But you have to wait until the end. Read on.


Today's program was for the Midwest Native Plant Conference in Dayton, Ohio.
A native plant thing? I was so there.

Sylvester disapproved of the decor. But he blended in nicely.
(I put him by the fake tree on purpose)

Also in attendence was Lucy the Peregrine (on the right) and Angle the Screech Owl (on the table in front)

*You will notice that I placed the screech owl in front of our display so she couldn't see the GHOW. We don't want a screech owl stroke.*

Non-birders: Screech owls are FOOD for GHOW in the wild. She did catch a glimpse of him while I was holding her, and her pupils dilated so much I thought she might faint. :)
Lucy's perch is so low, I placed her on two chairs so the public could see her.

And though I carefully placed paper towels under her, she sprayed the chairs anyway.
Wonder if the hotel will ask us back after that?

I talked to many excited, interested people today...even a few who recognized me from the RAPTOR newsletter and my blog. Why do I cringe when someone says they read my blog?
Low self-esteem? Unsure of how people take me?

Anyhoo. On to the Celebrity.


I first read about this gorgeous and unique creature here on Jim's blog.
*Go read his account of this fantastic thing.

He does a way better job of describing it, what with all the "radically awesomes" and "pinkiliciousness's".



Yep. That's a PINK katydid.
Non-nature peeps: Katydids are supposed to be GREEN. This is a one-in-a-million bug.
And even better...I got to keep her on my display table. Made us quite popular.





I couldn't help but think of this scene from the musical "Wicked".
A pretty, popular girl in PINK, talking to a drab, unpopular girl who is GREEN:

There's more at RAPTOR than just birds of prey

I was loading the great horned owl today for a program. He kept swiveling his big impressive head around and actually leaning towards me to see over my shoulder. Was he trying to kiss me?

: )

As GHOW's are like feathered satellite dishes, I knew something was up. (Maybe I should take him birding...I bet I could find more birds)
I looking behind me, and saw a very, very, very large BUG caught in a spider web by the door. I tried hard not to do a full-body shiver (I was holding a three-pound owl, you know) and put the bird in his carrier. I peered down at the bug and was delighted to find it was a stag beetle. (Delighted because I had never seen one. And Isabelle is a big-time bug girl, so I was so excited to take pictures of a real live stag beetle for her.)



He was only stuck by one of his hind legs, but stuck he was.

Not one, but two tiny spiders attempted to go in for the kill.

(See the little spider at top left?)

I finished loading all the birds and checked on him. He got free! I debated briefly about helping him out of the web, but as we all know, I am on the predator's side in any conflict.

He was all messy. And PISSED. He's all reared back and full of attitude. I bet he was tired...who knows how long he had been struggling to free himself.


To give you some perspective on how large it was:
Look at your thumb. If he was on your thumb, you wouldn't be able to see your thumb. Ew.


That fringed thing on the left is one of his antennae. A very cool bug, even if he was nightmare-sized. Know what this kind of stag beetle is called? Real complicated name:
The reddish-brown stag beetle.

I lasted one whole day of posting bird stuff. But a ginormous beetle capable of capturing and eating a small child is blog-worthy, right?
To see another post about stag beetles (the exact same kind as this one!), go check out Nina.

***************************
I have to give a shout-out. We may have a new reader on this ol' blog. My Mom's friend got my blog address from Mom today. (They were watching the infamous flatulence video)
Sharon is a big bird-nut (while rescuing a baby robin, she was told by the rehabber to keep it warm, so before putting the baby in the car, she warmed the car up. YEP. She's one of us.)
So, Sharon, if you are reading this, WELCOME! As in, welcome to the nut house!

Mammoth BUGS

So. We're back from Mammoth Cave, KY.
Did we see lots of birds? Nope. (A pair of bluebirds was my best bird moment)
Did we see lots of bugs? Oh, yeah.

It was hot and humid in eastern Kentucky this weekend. With no AC in my car, we are fairly moldy by now. And the hotter it got, the louder the cicadas yelled. Brood XIV has emerged here at home and apparently in Kentucky, too. Everywhere we went, there were cicadas; young ones just emerging from the ground, teenager ones emerging from their old skins, randy adult ones singing their ugly butts off, almost dead ones twitching on the sidewalks, and fully dead ones no longer twitching on the sidewalks.

This morning, as we were checking out of the hotel, a luna moth greeted us.

"Good morning. We hope you enjoyed your stay. Please come again."


Is there a more fantastic moth, anywhere?
Poor guy lost an antenna somehow.

While waiting to go down into the caves for a second tour, this guy was flitting about, and I got him to light on my fingers:

I thought it was a hackberry emperor, but it's not matching any pictures I can find. Who knows what this is? Speak now!

The caves we walked today are at the "wet" end of the cave system (which is the longest cave system in the world, by the way) and thanks to all that water over millions of years, the cave is festooned with glorious stalagmites and stalactites, soda straws, cave drapery, flowstone, and Frozen Niagara, a mass of formations that cascade down from one room of the cave into another.

Mammoth Cave has a sandstone cap that protects most of the system from water wanting to flow into the Green River, but where the cap ends, the formations begin.
The girls were so very unimpressed with all of the information we were getting from the ranger. But I loved it all.

Though there was a very large,unsettling hole in the ceiling. I was afraid to ask about cave-ins.

Many different kinds of critters call the caves home:
Little brown bats
Big brown bats
Gray bats
Eastern pipistrelle bats
Eastern small-footed bats
Cave crickets
Cave salamanders
Blind salamanders
Eyeless cave fish
Cave crayfish
Cave shrimp

While most of the life in the cave was inaccessible to us, we had no shortage of cave crickets. I thought that they were only where the lights were shining (every 20 feet or so) but the ranger started shining his flashlight on the ceiling, we realized that we were surrounded by them.
Thankfully, he saved that bit of info until we were on our way out. I got the creepy-crawlies on my neck as we passed under God-knows-how-many to get back to the outside.

These were mating. How........... cute.

On the way out of the park, I wanted to stop at a pond we saw on the way in.
Boy, am I glad we did, because this was in the parking lot:

A butterfly "bachelor drinking party"!
I just read that only young males engage in puddling. And only certain kinds of butterflies (sulphurs and swallowtails, whose males will patrol territories for females) will collect in puddle parties. Huh. Interesting, eh?

And as we entered the woods around the pond, we found more:

Tiger and spicebush swallowtails, and oodles of blues....summer azures?




I sat down and invited Isabelle to do the same. I showed her how to wipe sweat from her brow (we had no shortage of sweat) and put out her finger to get one to climb on.
When one of the blues accepted her gift and walked onto her finger, she said quietly, in a voice I have never heard from her, "Mommy. This is a dream come true."

She was in transports of joy. I feel like Mommy Of The Year.

The pond was lousy with dragonflies.

Blue dasher


A smallish snapping turtle (about two feet long) swam up to investigate us.
I got some good pictures, but I didn't realize, until I uploaded them, that I got one that looks like he is sticking his tongue out:

It's a leaf. But it makes for a fun photo.

A post without birds

Migrants are flying in all over the state, but I haven't had the opportunity to go see any.
My time has been spent doing all those boring yet necessary things that keep me from birding: Parenting, programs and sleeping. Well, programs aren't boring, but it does tend to cut into my prime birding time.

Some pics from the past few days:


She insisted on wearing this daring ensemble to the grocery store. A high-end dress from an uppity boutique, with red rubber boots. Well, could I argue with that?


The accidental redbud in the yard is in full bloom. This is "accidental" because it looks like the previous owners of our house found this growing along the property line and bracketed it with boards. We almost chopped it down years ago, but we stopped when we saw tiny buds. A dogwood is right next to it, also bracketed by boards. Two of only a few native plants that existed when we bought the place.

When I showed Isabelle how close the chipping sparrows allow us to get, she devised a plan:

...she disguised herself as a tree. (Holding dismembered honeysuckle branches)

While I was tearing out honeysuckle in a native-loving fit, she brought over a few new friends:

Baby centipedes. Great. Now put them back before Mommy has a seizure.


My wisteria, having sat there for 4 years, is almost ready to bloom. Last year, I got to enjoy a few blooms (strangely, in July) for about 12 hours before the flippin' Japanese beetles ate them.
(And Nellie sneaked into the photo, too)


The first tree I looked up in books and actually identified myself:

A hawthorn. I found it 2 years ago while tearing out the honeysuckle in a native-loving fit. It was covered by a huge patch of honeysuckle, and I might have torn it out too, but I got stuck by one of the thorns. The flowers are reminiscent of apple blossoms, and in the fall, are replaced by
golf-ball-sized fruits. I'm not going to hazard a guess as to what kind of hawthorn it is...there are a bazillion different species.

During a walk with Lorelei today at Kelley's Nature Preserve, we were treated to a carpet of wildflowers. (For a very nice, informative post on Ohio's native and non-native wildflowers living at the Cincinnati Nature Center, go see KatDoc here)


Wild blue phlox...a huge flower compared to the Creeping Phlox I planted in the flowerbed a few years ago.


It was nearly 80 degrees today. Sitting by the Little Miami was a pleasurable experience that even Lorelei couldn't find fault with.

The backyard interlopers:

Slugs. Lots and LOTS of slugs. I'm not well-versed in slug ID's, but Ohio has both native and exotic types.
They seem to be enjoying the dandelions, so I can't complain. And I mean, they are on EVERY. Single. Dandelion.


Ever look a slug in the eye? There's intelligence there...I swear it.


This one is shy...."Blushing Slug". Sounds like a bad rock band.


Just to make this picture more enjoyable, imagine this slug singing "Weekend in New England".

And for my Boston-philes out there:

Don't mess with Victor.

Oh, is it ever gonna freakin' rain?
I can only look out on panting, sorry birds for so long. Time to get out the hose.

First was the weeping cherry tree in the front yard.
One of the young cardinals soaked it up big time.

"Do you mind? I'm showering here."

Then it was dragging the hose through the house to the back yard. Since hummingbirds are libel to be knocked out by a large rain drop, they LOVE mist.

And we have a rather assertive hummingbird this year. I have named him Victor.
Victor E. Get it?



He's like on uppers or something.



Nothing like having a cold beverage while taking a shower.
But no one else was getting near that feeder but Victor.
(Look closely at the pics...you can see blurs of other hummers trying to cut in)


"No! Mine!"



"I'll bite you in the tail feathers, punk!"

I added a stick to the top of the feeder, for a staging area. But Vic claimed that, too.



"No! MY stick! Mine!"



"You have a death wish, don't ya, loser?"



"It's mine....alllllll mine!"



Tell the Creationists they can bite me. Ever get a really good look at feathers? When birds evolved from reptiles, they retained the pattern of scales. Birds...living dinosaurs.

By the way, the fight over the feeder lasted for a solid hour, before Victor finally perched, panting, on the top of his stick.



"It's hard work to be so macho."



Grasshopper on the feeder (imagine a really dopey voice): "What happened?"

A video of Victor, as he "rested"...the goofy thing never sat still:

*The bird call you hear in the background is my kitchen clock*