Missouri Master Naturalist Training – Week 2

/

During last week’s class, we headed out to Kickapoo Edge Prairie which is a small area of the Springfield Botanical Gardens that is being managed as a reconstructed prairie.

Along the way we stopped at the rain garden and I got the last good light to photograph some seed pods there.

A paved walk runs through the prairie making it easy to see many native species of grasses and prairie flowers. This time of year, the goldenrods are blooming, and the milkweed pods are fat – not popped open yet. The prairie is surrounded by trees of the garden so keeping woody growth out is challenging; they clip and drip (herbicide on the cut stem) plus do burns periodically. One woody plant they are letting stay so far is Smooth Sumac. They have two sizes of ragweed – a regular sized plant and some giant plants; I was surprised that I did not have any allergy problems after the walk. On a more positive note:  there is a passionflower native to Missouri (Passiflora incarnata) and there was a plant blooming in this prairie!

The class included a discussion of native plants…focusing on plants that do well in yards around our homes.

Our field trip to La Petite Gemme Prairie was last weekend. It is about 40 miles north of the Springfield Botanical Gardens. I took a few pictures at the gardens where we met before heading to the prairies for carpool organization  since parking is limited at the prairie location: a playground silver maple and a nearby yellow poplar…both displaying some fall color. There were also leaves on the ground with interesting nodules (insects?). It was a great day for a field trip – in the 70s, a little breezy, cloudy but getting sunny later.

At the prairie before we started our session I noticed a path mowed through it and took a few pictures before the program started.

We were divided into groups. My first session was about the nature photography. We walked through the tall grass and up a hill (i.e. not the mowed path). I was glad I had my jeans tucked into my socks and some gaiters over that. It was my first experience walking through a prairie!

My favorite flowers of the day were the Prairie Gentians (Gentiana puberulenta)

But several different kinds of goldenrods and blazing stars were great to photograph too.

Our second session was to id as many plants as we could encircled by a hula-hoop. Most of us used the SEEK app although we quickly learned that it is hard to get good focus on the plant to id with all the other plants crowded close together…and the breeze moving everything.

Of course, there are small creatures about too…I managed to photography a grasshopper and a yellow spider.

The third session was an intro to nature journalling. We spred out along the mowed path. I thought about the layering of the prairie…the shortest to tallest plants; the plants are very dense closer to the ground; usually the grasses are the highest although some sunflowers get tall. I noticed a barbed wire fence (probably the boundary of the prairie) and how tall the plants were on the other side…including some woody plants; it takes work to maintain the prairie as it is.

On the way to our fourth session, I photographed a wasp (Great golden digger wasp, Sphex ichneumoneous?) on a goldenrod.

The fourth session was about seed dispersal. The ones that stuck to my clothes mainly during the hike in the first session were champion hitchhikers, but I managed to get most of them off before we headed home. So far, I don’t think I was bitten by anything!

A wonderful way to spend a Saturday morning!

Gleanings of the Week Ending November 25, 2023

/

The items below were ‘the cream’ of the articles and websites I found this past week. Click on the light green text to look at the article.

20 Incredible Winners From the 2023 European Wildlife Photographer of the Year Contest – Lots of natural beauty…captured in photographs.

A known environmental hazard can change the epigenetics of cells – Formaldehyde. It is a widespread pollutant - formaldehyde enters our body mainly during our breathing and, because it dissolves well in an aqueous medium, it ends up reaching all the cells of our body. It is associated with an increased risk of developing cancer (nasopharyngeal tumors and leukemia), hepatic degeneration due to fatty liver (steatosis) and asthma.

How forest schools boost children's immune systems – It seems the benefits go well beyond immune systems.  Hopefully this type of school for 3 to 5 year old will increase in availability/popularity.

Circular Maya Structure Uncovered in Southern Mexico - Similar round structures have been found at the Maya sites of Edzná, Becán, Uxmal, and Chichen Itzá.

Health Care Workers Are Burning Out, CDC Says - The CDC researchers analyzed self-reported symptoms of more than 1,400 adults in 2018 and 2022 who were working in three areas: health care, other essential services and all other professions. Workers’ self-reported poor mental health days in the past 30 days was similar across all three groups in 2022, but health professionals saw the most significant jump, from 3.3 in 2018 to 4.5 in 2022. Reports of harassment at work also spiked among health care workers over the five-year period, going from 6.4 percent to 13.4 percent.

How To Bring Back the Prairie, a Tiny Bit at a Time – The use of “prairie strips” on farms in an effort to restore a portion of the Minnesota’s remnant prairie and to soak up polluted water.

These Ten Stunning Images Prove That Small Is Beautiful – From Nikon’s Small World Photomicrography Contest. My favorite was the cuckoo wasp.

Deforestation in Colombia Down 70 Percent So Far This Year - Since taking power last year, leftist President Gustavo Petro has enacted a slate of new policies aimed at protecting Colombian forests, including paying locals to conserve woodland. The recent gains in Colombia mirror similar advances in the Brazilian Amazon, where leftist President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva has cracked down on forest clearing; deforestation is down 50 percent through the first nine months of this year. In 2021, more than 100 countries, from Brazil to Russia to Indonesia, set a goal to end deforestation by the end of this decade, but so far forest loss has declined too slowly to stay on pace for this target.

European wildcats avoided introduced domestic cats for 2,000 years – About 50 years ago in Scotland, however, that all changed. Perhaps as a result of dwindling wildcat populations and a lack of opportunity to mate with other wildcats, rates of interbreeding between wild and domestic cats rose rapidly.

Why grazing bison could be good for the planet - The shortgrass prairie makes up 27,413 sqare miles of remote land straddling the US/Canadian border to the east of the Rocky Mountains. This rare habitat is in ecological decline. Plains bison co-evolved with the short-grass prairie. In the 12,000 years since the end of the Pleistocene, they have proven themselves to be potent ecosystem engineers. An adult bison eats about 25lb (11kg) of grass a day. The grasses adapted to their foraging. Vegetation across the plains uses the nutrients in their dung. Birds pluck their fur from bushes to insulate their nests. Bison also shape the land literally. They roll in the dust and create indentations known as "wallows" that hold water after rainstorms. After the bison move on, insects flourish in these pools and become a feast for birds and small mammals. Pronghorn antelope survive by following their tracks through deep winter snows. Replacing cattle with bison greens floodplains…setting the stage for beavers.

Our Missouri Yard – August 2023

/

The Crape Myrtles that died to the ground last winter are all out and blooming in our yard. We have 4 (plus 1 or 2 others that have come up from seeds away from the parent plant). They attract insects….and hummingbirds!

There is a stand of Virginia Creeper than I periodically pull off the brick walls…but let continue to drape across the rock of the front flowerbed between the Crape Myrtles.

The Japanese Maple in the corner near our front door is happier than it was last summer; we are a little above normal for rainfall this year whereas last summer we were painfully dry.

There are mushrooms that come up frequently in our front yard where a large tree was cut down several years before we bought the house. Based on the number of mushrooms…there must still be quite a lot of decomposition happening.

There are seed pods on our Kousa Dogwood; unlike last year when the tree struggled to maintain its leaves.

Some plants seem to be robust no matter what. I am encouraging Lamb’s Ear wherever it comes up. One place that has done well was a hole in the turf where a small lamb’s ear appeared last spring; I have been mowing around it and it appears very robust at this point. I dug up a plant that was not in acceptable place and replanted it to fill a corner between the fence and the house. It is growing…slowly.

In the back yard my small ‘meadow’ where I planted wildflower seeds last spring is doing well and the flowers are producing seeds for next year. The leafy green plant in the foreground is pokeweed; I like the way it provides a frame to the meadow.

We generally leave the wasp/hornets’ nests alone unless they are in a place where we might get stung. I found this one on our steppingstones between our patio and yard; it is probably an old nest that fell from wherever it was attached during recent storms.

There was a mushroom that was growing in some mulch that I thought was a flower at first because the cap had split to look like petals. I took a picture from above and below.

There is always something to see in our yard!

Road trip to London, Ontario (and back)

/

When my daughter told me about a conference she was attending in London, Ontario in early October, I volunteered to go too – doing half the driving. Flying directly to the place was expensive and flying to Toronto necessitated some form of transportation from there to the smaller city (rental car, bus, or train). She liked the road trip idea, and I booked a room in the same hotel where she had. We opted to make the 14-hour drive over two days with the 1st day being the long one in each direction. Her employer provided a rental car.

My husband took us to pick up the rental car on the morning we were leaving. My daughter forgot her coat (and the forecast in Canada indicated she would need it) so a stop by her house delayed us a little…but I had an opportunity to enjoy the fall roses near her driveway and

The spectacular pods on her magnolia. Maybe we can harvest some of the pods when they have the red seeds in them to use in December decorations.

The first-day drive was a long slog – over 9 hours – and we passed from Central to Eastern time. We arrived at the hotel at sunset.

We had chosen a restaurant for dinner…but it had closed about 20 minutes before we got there! Fortunately, there was another one nearby that worked out just as well.

The next morning, we were up early. My daughter splurged on a huge cinnamon roll from the hotel’s breakfast. I had my usual dark chocolate then ate the rest of the carrots I had brought for the road (finishing everything that needed to be kept cool). We stopped at the Anna Scripps Whitcomb Conservatory and Belle Island Aquarium…on the island in the Detroit River (more about that in subsequent posts). We had lunch on the patio at Ivy Kitchen in Detroit (Jefferson Street) afterwards. My daughter ordered a mimosa and was challenged for the rest of the lunch with wasps taking an interest.

We made it to London, Ontario by about 4PM having crossed into Canada at Sarnia and unpacked in our home-away-from-home for the next week. Since the rooms had kitchens, we bought a few groceries.

A week later, we go up before the sun. I took a picture of the sunrise just before I headed down to the parking garage with my luggage.

Google Maps routed use toward the border crossing between Windsor and Detroit rather than reversing our previous route. The route was like an interstate the whole way! A few things were different: the road number was on a crown rather than a shield, the ‘food’ symbol on signs included a cup/saucer with the familiar knife and fork, the speed limits were in KM and the gas plumps dispensed L of gas!

My daughter was driving so I was able to take pictures of the Detroit skyline while we went over the Ambassador Bridge back into the US. There was more traffic at the Windsor-Detroit crossing and it took longer than the Sarnia crossing a week earlier, but the ETA that Google had calculated for us must have taken it into account since we arrived at our hotel only a few minutes ‘late.’

The route crossed Michigan, Indiana and into Illinois. We were back on Central time.The next day was a shorter day and we got off early…arrived home in Missouri by noon! Both of us were keen to do laundry and otherwise get back to ‘normal.’

More posts over the next week about what I did in London, Ontario!

Wasp Nests

/

Shortly after we moved to our Missouri house, we noticed a wasp nest in a corner of the garage door frame. It was out of the way and the wasps did not appear to be particularly aggressive. The nest has become something I observe every time I back my car out of the garage…and I have started a project to photograph it for the rest of the season.

When we were having some repair work on the house, the workers discovered a second nest – in a more hazardous place….under the handrail on the stairs between the deck and the patio. They must have inadvertently brushed the nest with their hand as they went down the stairs…the wasps were quick to respond. My husband was going to destroy the nest but several days have gone by and we’ve discovered we can live with the nest where is; we don’t usually take those stairs since we go out on the patio from the basement level of the house and onto the deck from the main floor.

Volunteer Celebration Hike

/

The Howard Country Conservancy chose a great day for a hike in Howard County’s Western Regional Park for their volunteers. While we were gathering in the parking lot, a bald eagle soared overhead….starting the celebration!

It was an easy hike on paved trails for about 1.5 miles. The day was sunny and crisp…perfect for being outdoors. Most of the leaves had fallen but there were still a few trees full of fall color….and even the bare branches looked ‘new’ with their leaves recently blown away.

My attention for most of the hike was more focused on conversations with fellow volunteers than on the scenery of the hike. It was good to socialize…begin to emerge from the limited social interactions that happened during the pandemic.

One sighting in the woods: a large wasp nest high in a tree. It would not have been visible when the leaves were on the trees.  Now that it is no longer maintained by the wasps, it will begin to deteriorate. It seemed precariously attached to the tree branch; I wondered how long it would stay in the tree.

Overall an excellent morning and we all munched on cookies that looked like pumpkin pie slices before heading home!

Wasp with One Wing

/

On a recent walk around my yard looking for insects – I spotted a wasp on an allium in the chaos garden. I took a few pictures with my point and shot camera (zooming).

It wasn’t flying around so I decided to try to some macro shots with my bridge camera. Normally I would have been leery about being that close to a wasp, but it seemed to just be moving around the cluster of flowers. It was good practice.

It wasn’t until I got inside and was looking at the pictures on a large screen that I realized that the wasp was missing a wing! There was no way it was ever going to fly again.

2021 09 x IMG_8563 clip.jpg

On the same walk – I saw a tiny leaf hopper on the nine bark bush. This is a clipped image…a lot more detail and pattern that I could see with my eye.

30 Years Ago – September 1991 (2)

/

The other big event for our family 30 years ago in September 1991 was finding a very large wasp nest in a maple tree near our mailbox. It was concerning to have wasps so close to a place we walked at least once a day. We decided the best thing to do was to spray the nest….wait a few days then cut it down.

1991-6-8 - 1991-9-2_Moment(1).jpg

It took 2-3 applications of the poison over several days before the activity around the hive ceased. Seven days after the first application – I cut down the nest and sliced it open There were layers of hexagonal compartments for eggs – some hatched, some still full of larvae. And there were a lot of dead insects. The nest was very light weight…but strong. My husband videotaped the action (with a 1991 vintage camera) – my 2-year-old daughter was marginally interested. These wasps are among the great architects of the insect world using thin layers of cellulose pulp to construct their nest. I regret that we didn’t keep parts of the nest in a display box.

In the 30 years since, we’ve never had a nest in a problematic place again. These insects are predators – controlling pests – so it’s good to leave them if the nest is not in a location that it could be accidently bumped by a person that would result in a lot of bites!

It seems that the numbers of these insects must be in decline just like many of the other insects. Culturally we usually think more negatively about wasps because of their sting than about other insects (butterflies are beautiful and they are pollinators…honey bees make honey and are pollinators…etc.), but ever insect plays a role in the ecosystem and our indiscriminate killing of them is producing unanticipated consequences. We’re going to need our ecosystems as health as possible to adapt to climate change impacts the world over…and that requires insects!

Found on the Ground

/

I walked around my yard and looked for interesting things on the ground. I was a little surprised at how many things I found! My rule was to not move anything…just take the photo as it appeared on the ground. Toward the front and north side of the yard, I found oak leaves from last fall that had blown into the garage, a wasp nest that had blown down from someplace, an arc of grass clippings, some plants overflowing into the concrete trough below the gutter’s downspout, an anthill, a sycamore leaf and some mushrooms in our neighbor’s yard (I used the zoom for the last one).

In the back and the south side of the house there were tiny yellow flowers (weeds), sycamore leaves (rust and decaying green), a cabbage white butterfly enjoying the tiny yellow flowers, a tulip poplar leaf, the invasive plants under the trees at the edge of the forest, a mushroom, some clover, a cherry leaf and water droplets on a weed.

It was a short walk on a morning that was heating up; already warm enough to have the cabbage whites active. I was glad there were still water droplets too. Overall – I’m always pleased that there seems to always be something interesting in our yard.

Unique Activities for Yesterday:

Looked at a reference from last week’s Zoom meetings… savored The MoMA exhibition Safe: Design Takes on Risk from 2004 (19 short audios and then pictures).

Zooming – July 2019

/

I probably use the zoom on my camera for most of my pictures. It allows me to frame the picture the way I want and to ‘see’ the environment better than I can with just my eyes. Sometimes I am at the limit of what my camera can do. For example – the tiger swallowtails are particularly numerous in my back yard this summer and I kept seeing then flying under the maple tree where my compost pile is located. I used my camera like binoculars to see that the swallowtails were ‘puddling’ in the compost pile after a rain. They must have been enjoying the nutrient rich water!

a 2019 07 IMG_9670.jpg

There was a smallish robin that fluttered down from the maple and sat in the grass – just looking around for a few minutes before returned to the tree. It didn’t look or find a worm! Probably a fledging.

a 2019 07 IMG_9658.jpg

On the hottest day of the summer (so far), a wasp got a drink from our bird bath. Sometimes I find wasps that have drowned in the bird bath but so far it hasn’t happened this year. Maybe they are getting better as just getting the drink that they need.

a 2019 07 IMG_9719.jpg

Now enjoy the slide show of other zoomed pictures from this month:

  • Plane tree

  • Fireworks

  • Pocket prairie plants

  • Yellow crowned night heron

  • Great egret

  • Female cardinal

  • Fawn

  • Goldfinch