Pileated Woodpecker

Pileated Woodpecker
Originally uploaded by lilysecret42

No blogging today, just a little video I shot of a Pileated Woodpecker excavating a dead tree.


Edited to add:

As I was walking Caldwell Nature Preserve today, just before taking this video, I came across a man out hiking with three adorable little girls, who were probably five years old. They were sitting on a fallen log while the guy chatted into a cell phone. I was kitted out in my usual gear: day pack, binoculars, walking stick. I said hello to them and one of the girls looked at me in wide-eyed amazement, as if she'd just seen a mythical being, and said "You must be - a girl scout!"

Local Food Resources

Epicurious has developed a great interactive map that lets you know what foods are in season in your area, then links to recipes for those foods. It's a nifty tool.

For Cincinnatians, the Enquirer posted a wonderful comprehensive list of pick-your-own-produce farms, community sponsored agriculture and farmer's markets in our area.

Quick Cicada Round Up

As I noted in my previous entry, I did spot a couple of early emerging seventeen-year cicadas when I was kayaking on Sunday. I also received an email from the Cincinnati Nature Center saying their cicadas are emerging and they are hosting a lecture on the insects:

Cicada Lecture at Rowe Woods
Learn all about the 17-year periodical cicadas that will be emerging this summer in Clermont County. Dr. Gene Kritsky, professor at the College of Mt. St. Joseph will share his knowledge of these unique insects.
Other Info:
Age Group:Adults
Date:5/31/2008 Time: 10:00 AM - 12:00 PM
Current/Maximum Registered: 8/50
Cost: $6; with CNC membership $4.

WCPO also posted a small entry on the east side cicadas. Can you spot what's wrong with this quote?

Kritsky says 17-year cicadas have a life span of only about two weeks.

I weep for the state of journalism in my home town.

Summer is here....

The Nighthawks, Ruby-Throated Hummingbirds and Chimney Swifts have all arrived on the scene and the seventeen-year cicadas are starting to emerge out on the east side of town, so as far as I'm concerned, summer has officially arrived.

One of the highlights of the long weekend was a fourteen mile kayak trip down the Little Miami. I arrived on the river at eight in the morning, well before the "cabrewers" showed up. There were simply scads of birds about, including Spotted Sandpipers, Cedar Waxwings, Waterthrush and Black Vultures. I floated past a Great Blue Heron rookery, in which I counted twenty nests, though I'm sure there were more that I couldn't see. In fact, I floated past it three times, since I kept paddling back upstream to take in the sight. I apologize for the poor picture quality, but I'm nervous about taking my good camera out on the river, so I had to settle for my cheap, water-resistant digital with a mere 4X zoom. There are some nice photos and descriptions of heron courtship, breeding and nesting behavior at the Great Blue Heron Rookery website.

More on Furoshiki

I found an interesting site on the many uses of Furoshiki, which are large squares of cloth used in Japan for wrapping and toting a variety of objects. I'm going to have to make myself a few of them. Not only are they environmentally friendly, but your cool factor will rise significantly if you tote a watermelon with a Furoshiki.

Color Me Intrigued...

Mangosteens:


How To Eat A Mangosteen


Now I just have to track them down. I imagine Jungle Jim's will carry them. I'm planning a trip there soon anyway - when I was getting my hair cut the other day, the owner of the salon was going on about how excited he was to have found dried squid in Cincinnati. He was disappointed he's not convinced anyone else to try it and I told him I loved squid and I wanted to try it myself. He went in back and brought out a pack of dried squid and I have to say it was delicious. It was slightly sweet, slightly salty with a nice seafood taste and the texture was more tender than that of beef jerky. He found it at Jungle Jim's in the Asian section, so I need to hunt some up myself. It would make a great snack to take along hiking or kayaking.

Columbine

One of my favorite Ohio wildflowers blooms this time of year. The wild columbine prefers thin soils and can be found clinging to the sides of cliff faces and boulders in woodlands across Ohio. Their flowering coincides with the first arriving hummingbirds, which are well adapted to reach the nectar stored in the upper ends of the long spurs of the blossom.

The flower takes its name from columba, from the Latin word for dove. Some early aficionado thought the flower's unique shape resembled a group of doves perched around a fountain. The genus of the flower also takes its name from a bird; Aquilegia is Latin for "eagle-like" and refers to the resemblance of the flower to an eagle's talons.

In legend, the columbine is considered to be a symbol of foolishness, because the flower looks like the flounced hat of a court jester. It is considered to be bad luck to give a columbine to a woman for this reason. The wild columbine is also associated with a legend of the Virgin Mary. The fallen petals look like tiny slippers and it is said that columbine plants arose wherever Mary stepped on her way to visit her cousin Elizabeth, so sometimes columbine goes by the common name Our Lady's Shoes or the Virgin Mary's Shoes.

There are many domesticated cultivars of columbine, the flowers of most of which are upturned, but my favorite remains the lovely nodding flowers of the wild columbine. The fact that they grow in some of the prettiest spots in Ohio is probably no small factor in my preference.

On Shrews

I was lucky enough to spot this shrew hunting in the leaf litter when I was at Cedar Bog a couple of weeks ago. Shrews have rather poor eyesight, so by moving slowly I was able to get down on my hands and knees on the boardwalk and follow its movements for nearly fifteen minutes. It took a good ten minutes just to get this shot, as it was in constant motion and usually obscured by leaves.

Although they superficially resemble rodents, shrews are insectivores and close relatives of moles. They are voracious predators, possessed of an incredibly high metabolism - some species can starve to death in as little as seven hours. They are constantly on the hunt and their primary prey consists of various invertebrates, including earthworms, centipedes, spiders and insects of all varieties. Some species produce a toxic venom, making them one of the very few venomous mammals in the world.

Judging by its size (two inches long, not including the inch long tail) and the range map in my mammal field guide, I believe the pictured animal is a least shrew, but positive identification is tricky. My guide says the least shrew has thirty teeth, which is of course useless as a field mark. I was quite content to have the pleasure of watching it for a while without taking it apart to identify it.

I had the on-the-water portion of my sailing lessons today! As luck would have it, I was the only person signed up for the afternoon slot today, so I got a three hour private lesson. I acted as helmsman, which means I manned the tiller. My instructor said I did very well and didn't seem like a beginner. He encouraged me to get out on a Sunfish and practice and I think I'm going to do just that.

Again with the bad blogger thing

I've been a tad distracted lately and so haven't composed any blog entries. I'll try to get back into the swing of things this week. Here's a list of things I'm thinking about blogging about soon:

• Shrews
• Bleu Cheese
• The butterfly exhibit at Krohn Conservatory
• Gypsy Moths
• How to make yogurt at home
  
• The perils of vanity sizing in women's clothing

But in excellent news, one of my oldest and dearest friends in the world will be moving into the apartment below me shortly. Thrilled doesn't begin to describe it.

Cedar Bog

I'm not sure how Cedar Bog managed to elude me all the years I've been hiking around Ohio, but it had until today. It's located just outside Urbana and it's largest calcareous bog (actually a fen) in Ohio. I learned from Sally, an enthusiastic and knowledgeable guide, that a bog is a geographic formation characterized by standing water while a fen is flushed at least periodically by fresh water and therefore the soil in a fen is richer in nutrients and less acidic than that found in bogs. Cedar Bog was formed when a retreating glacier left a shallow depression in the earth at the end of the last ice age. It is home to several species of plants and animals seldom found elsewhere in Ohio, including the Massasauga Rattlesnake and the endangered Spotted Turtle.

The preserve is protected by the Ohio Historical Society and there is a nearly mile long boardwalk winding through the fen. The plant life is spectacular and there were loads of wildflowers in bloom today, including Jack-in-the-Pulpit, White Trillium, Bent Trillium, Bishop's Cap, Wild Columbine, Golden Ragwort and Starry False Solomon's Seal. I'm already planning another trip in about four weeks when the Showy Lady's Slipper, one of our native orchids, will be in bloom.

Sunflowers on May Day

Sunflowers in the city
Originally uploaded by Vitó

Today is the second annual International Sunflower Guerrilla Day! Borrowed from Treehugger.com:

Historically May Day has commemorated the coming of spring and a recognition of workers' rights. Here's another cause for its celebration: International Sunflower Guerrilla Day. It's easy, it's fun, it's slightly subversive and it brings joy to all who look upon its fruits. What could be bad?

Here's how to do it: Find a crummy, neglected and sunny public space somewhere near your place. Get some sunflower seeds, the bigger the flower, the better. Take a bottle of water and a little spade, stick or soup spoon with you to the spot. Dig a hole about 3/4 of an inch deep. Drop in a seed and water it. Return every once in a while to water it and clean off the litter. Watch the little seedling grow into full bloom by August. If you want to show your success to the world; take a picture and post it on the community website. Fellow gardeners in Brussels, London and France will be doing it too. Happy May Day, however you choose to celebrate it.

For the less subversive, one might choose to participate in the Great Sunflower Project, a citizen science activity in which people plant sunflowers in their garden and report visits by bees. Here's how participation in the project will help:

Your home, school or community garden and those around the world produce roughly 15-20% of all the food we eat. And for the urban poor, who spend 50-70% of their income on food, these gardens are a real source of good nutrition and an essential route to food security.

Whether your garden contains vegetables, fruit trees, flowers, or even medicinal plants, many of these plants must be pollinated before a fruit forms. And as the headlines for the last year have made clear, bees are under threat. Here is a link to information about some of our bees in peril.

We know very little about bee activity in home and community gardens and their surrounding environments, but we are certain that they are a crucial link in the survival of native habitats and local produce, not to mention our beautiful urban gardens. Our local pollinator populations require our understanding & protection, and to answer that call we need to determine where and when they are at work.

With enough citizen scientists collecting data, we can learn much more, much faster, about the current state of bee activity. We would love to have you join us; let’s learn about pollinators together!