The Darby Accord-10 year Anniversary

Andrew doing a program for the Darby Accord.

On the Darby, celebrating 10 years of the Darby Accord. Small River Sucker here, which demonstrates good water quality.           

                            

Photos from Mary Ellen O'Shaughnessy and The Nature Conservancy.

Yard and Garden Views

Love this view in the yard.  Repurposed green door with dragonfly... Lots of stuff blooming. Dogs loving life.

Aquatics Program

Very passionate about his work and sharing his knowledge today with a group of park employees including the Director-Andrew at Darby Creek teaching aquatics.

Ohio Big Trees

Andrew was interviewed by our local television station recently. This is actually his second stint in a 4 part series about resource management in the parks that will air in its entirety next June.

Here he is with our Emmy award winning Karina Nova from 10TV

And here is the video clip.

Wild Turkeys

A crazy rainy Monday just got a little crazier. Spring has sprung. A turkey wants in the gymnasium. Really?!

On Saturday at the park they were really strutting their stuff. 

Hazelnut Flower

This is a hazelnut flower under magnification.This beautiful little maroon flower is the female part of the hazel nut which later in the fall will produce hazel nuts which are prized by both man and beast. The plant is growing in our back yard and last year humans the humans got zero hazel nuts and the beasts got all. Trust me that this will not happen again. (-: as Andrew is already making plans to put a squirrel proof fortress around the tree.

Ring Around the Moon

The forecast for today in Central Ohio:

"Rain, snow, and sleet, becoming all snow after 3pm. Some thunder is also possible. Temperature falling to around 20 by 5pm. Windy, with a north wind 15 to 20 mph increasing to 25 to 30 mph in the afternoon. Winds could gust as high as 44 mph. Chance of precipitation is 100%. Total daytime snow and sleet accumulation of 1 to 3 inches possible". NOAA Weather

Last night at 9 pm I took puppy out to potty and looked up and saw that the moon was gorgeous and the sky was filled with cloud cover that was swiftly passing across the sky. There were four rings around the moon, which I knew were a sign of an impending weather change. I went inside and got my camera and it took me a few minutes but I finally got a decent exposure.  Wow the things that most people miss while watching television....

It started pouring down rain sometime between 2 and 4 am.  Right now it is sprinkling- probably gearing up to drop a raft of crap on us later this afternoon.

This is what the Farmer's Almanac website has to say about the moon.

"While stargazing, have you ever noticed a large circular band of light surrounding the moon? If so, you have seen a lunar halo.

A lunar halo is caused by the refraction, reflection, and dispersion of light through ice particles suspended within thin, wispy, high altitude cirrus or cirrostratus clouds. As light passes through these hexagon-shaped ice crystals, it is bent at a 22 degree angle, creating a halo 22 degrees in radius (or 44 degrees in diameter). A double halo, sometimes with spokes, may be seen on rare occasions when light reflects off water or ice.

The prism effect of light passing through these six-sided ice crystals separates the light into its various colors, resulting in a halo tinged with very pale rainbow colors with red on the inside and blue on the outside. The phenomenon of a lunar halo is similar to a rainbow produced by sunlight and rain falling between your eye and the sun.

Weather lore says a lunar halo is the precursor of impending unsettled weather, especially during the winter months. This is often proved true, as cirrus and cirrostratus clouds generally precede rain and storm systems.

Lunar halos are, in fact, actually fairly common. So watch the night sky – and keep the umbrella handy".

Combining Forbs

I asked Andrew for a narrative on these photos last night. He said-"we're just combining for forbs".  I told him a needed a descriptive narrative.  Twenty minutes later after I wrote the following. he said, "well I guess it's not just combining for forbs is it"?

Combining forbs (wildflowers) at Pearle King Savanna with a 1973 Gleaner combine that was bought used and has paid itself off numerous time with the forbs that have been picked with it. Jack M. (RIP) and Gordon M. started picking seed at PK in the 80's and used that seed to start parts of the prairie restoration effort at Darby. As the plots at Darby got larger, the resource management team and a variety of volunteers including Inniswood and Jack's family picked seed from those plots over the years which has further expanded the prairies so there was enough seed to bring it back to Pearle King in 2007. That year Tommy S. and Andrew planted a 6 acre buffer around the original savanna remanent. The process has now come full circle as last month James J. and Andrew harvested forbs from plants that may have been part of the original remanent savanna that helped started it all. The forb seeds will be dried and used to expand the Darby Plains prairies even more. At one time the prairies covered most of Madison County and provided habitat for a wide range of wildlife. Come out to the prairies at Darby and see the bison, the savannah sparrow, bobolinks, and even for the first time this year the sand hill cranes have stopped by in the Kulhwein wet prairie. You never know what you are going to see. It's just beautiful.

 Forbs

Seed drying area

The Darby Wetlands

A perfect day yesterday for an outing to the Darby wetlands in Madison County. DH wanted to check on the prairie grass that he planted last season and also the burr oak trees to be sure the deer hadn't rubbed them.  I love clouds and the ones yesterday were spectacular; as were the fall colors which were at their peak.

 A field of prairie grass

 Woolly worms everywhere-gonna be a cold winter!

 The burr oaks are wrapped in the orange deer guards. One tree was lost to deer out of the 25 or so planted

 poison ivy berries

 dove feather

 beautiful fall color

 the waterfowl area

puff ball spewing spores

Fall Colors

We went to Bishop Educational Gardens in Rockbridge, Ohio yesterday.  Fall color was probably about the best we are going to see as snow flurries are predicted for this coming Wednesday and the wind has been blowing so all the leaves will probably be down.  September and October went by in the blink of an eye. Hate to wish my life away but maybe November and December will go by fast too.

The moment one gives close attention to any thing, even a blade of grass it becomes a mysterious, awesome, indescribably magnificent world in itself.
Henry Miller 

Harvesting the Prairie Grasses

Fall is the time for prairie seed harvesting in the Metro Parks and yesterday afternoon's conditions were ideal. The prairie grass seed (big blue stem and Indian grass) is harvested using a specially built seed broom, which rotates and flips the seed into a hopper after which it is then loaded into a truck and taken to one of the park maintenance buildings where it is spread out and dried. On a typical day the yield is around 40 bushels. Timing is critical in this process as if the seed is picked too soon it won't come off the stem and if it is too late in the season there is nothing to pick as the wind blows the seed off the stem onto the ground.

 The seed picker underway

 This photo shows an area where the seed has been picked vs. where it has not been picked.

 The truck bed is lined with a tarp that will enclose the picked seed so it doesn't blow off the truck during transport.

 Close up - separating the chaff and grain. 

 Loading the truck

 Ready for transport

The seed in the drying area which will be used to establish additional acres of prairie.

Luminescent Panellus

This luminescent panellus mushroom is nondescript by day but a dazzler by night. The first time Andrew saw it was in the Red River Gorge in KY in the early 90's. He has been looking for it ever since. He and his colleague were doing a biotic survey on Friday when they found a small quantity -although it is fairly widespread through this area of the state. It looks like a lot of other fungi though, It making it hard to be sure of unless you observe the glow.  According to research we found in our field guide it has some medicinal value (although we don't advise eating any wild mushrooms found outdoors as they could be deadly poison). The luminescence is only visible in pitch darkness. Andrew photographed it in a dark room in the house last evening.

Extraordinary Thursday

This morning the neighbors dogs came bounding out of their house all happy and barking and woke me up at the same time.  It was about 6 am. and I just groaned and rolled over -not wanting to face the day after a late night of movie watching.  Then DH, who had arisen to get ready for work, yelled down the hallway and told me one of my Royal Walnut moths had hatched.  Let's just say I sprang up like a rocket and got to the kitchen in .5 seconds.  For those of you who have not been following this story you can catch up on the action by reading my previous blog posts about how all this excitement began with a gift of eggs, which then hatched, and grew and ate and we photographed them and we played with them and then finally pupated all within the time span of a month and a half. What's the big deal you ask?   It's been almost two years in the making! A brief history:  The Royal Walnut moth lives for about a week and its sole purpose is to mate and for the female to lay eggs.  They don't eat or drink and after mating they die.  What good are they you ask?  They contribute to the over all species diversity of an ecosystem, are environmental indicators, and are a part of the food chain providing food for other animals such as owls and hawks.  What extraordinary about this event?  These insects have an the ability to sense extreme environmental conditions while in the pupal stage and over-winter for an additional year if necessary. Our moths are second year moths. We have been patiently waiting since August of 2011 for their arrival into this world. Remember how it was scorching hot most of last summer in Central Ohio?  This is the likely cause. This doesn't happen that often and it's even rarer that we got to witness it firsthand.  Of the 14 eggs that hatched and survived we retained 4 of them through the pupal stage.  Two of the 4 were still viable. In April I brought their aquarium (filled with an inch of dirt) into our kitchen and I have been dribbling water on them about twice a week since to simulate rain.  Two of them would wiggle when the water hit them and that is how I know they are alive. The other two did not move and weigh significantly less now than then did when they first pupated. (We recorded their weight by using a small digital scale for weighing really lite weight objects.) Their pupal cases feel empty. They have died.  The first moth to hatch was a male.  We know this because the males of most moth species have large feather like antennae. You will be able to see them on the photos below. The adult moth has about a 6 inch wing span. I am hoping to get some photos later this evening and update you all later.

 1. ex•traor•di•nar•y
/ikˈstrôrdnˌerē/
Adjective
1. Very unusual or remarkable.
2. Unusually great.


Synonyms
uncommon - unusual - singular - remarkable - exceptional

Something Suspect

Remember the post I made earlier in the week about the cute Chipping Sparrow family?  Andrew and I both initially thought the baby bird closest to the lens was huge and odd looking. I wanted to investigate further but he was afraid the babies would fledge prematurely or us messing around with the nest would attract a predator.  The doubt about this bird not looking like its parents nagged at us all week and we both should know better. The day after I photographed the chipping sparrows I came home from work at lunch and there was a baby bird on the porch near the chipping sparrow nest.  I picked it up and looked at it and just as I decided that it was a baby robin and not a chipping sparrow momma robin with worm in tow dived bombed me from afar and confirmed my identification. I thought maybe there was a chipping sparrow nest and a robin nest in the same vicinity and that we had gotten into the robin nest, henceforth the bigger baby but that didn't make sense either due to the location of the nest in a bush. Anyway that night we got out the bird id book and looked at those baby chipping sparrows again as Andrew had doubts and swore that one was a cowbird baby.  Ok for the record I have never seen one single cowbird in this yard E-V-E-R.  This evening there was another baby bird on the ground and I was able to get a picture of it.  It was a babycow bird and guess what else?  Along came momma chipping sparrow who landed on the branch next to it and I actually saw her feed it a worm!! Crap!!  I hate that.  And I missed out on the photo of a life time of this tiny mother bird feeding this huge beast baby bird as the auto focus on my Nikon lagged and I missed the shot.