Michigan landscapes

It seems like it's been a lifetime since I was up in Michigan to attend the Nettie Bay School of Birding. Much has happened since then, and it turns out that Life has taken precedence over my blog. It lingers in the back of my mind, and I often think to myself "Maybe tonight I'll get a blog post done," only to realize that before I know it, bed time is upon me with nothing to show for my mental nod toward blog-land. I admire those who can keep a steady blog regardless of the bumps and curve balls that life might throw at them.

But I digress. I'll take you back to late May, when spring migration was just falling off its peak, and I was falling in love with Michigan landscapes all over again. Dramatic sunsets, birch bark, pristine lakeside beaches... all nostalgic memories of that great state up north. Enjoy.

Porcupine encounter

I recently spent a week up in Michigan, and the primary purpose of my visit was birding. And bird I did, along with a small group of several other folks who signed up for the Birding School hosted by Nettie Bay Lodge in Presque Isle County. But as is often the case when I participate in nature expeditions like this, we often tend to veer off-topic and turn our attention to anything that might turn up and catch our fancy. The leader of our group, Jim McCormac, had been informed of the location of some porcupine dens during his time leading the birding group at Nettie Bay in 2011, and he was eager to share the dens with us this year. You can read more of what Jim had to say in 2011 about the dens and their residents HERE.

I've never seen a porcupine den other than in Jim's photos, so I was excited to make this trip. There were 2 trees within walking distance of each other, but we were satisfied to examine the tree that was closest to the road. The easiest way to find a porcupine den, I would say, is to look for a developing mound of poo at the base of a tree. This indicates a den that has been used for a good number of years. My National Audubon Society Field Guide to Mammals seems to indicate that the tree dens are used primarily during winter months, but if you read Jim's post about the tree den they encountered last year (in late May), there was indeed a porcupine in residence. In addition to using trees for shelter, they will also use crevices and caves.

Most scat I choose to poke at with a stick. This stuff, however, was so dry that I had no qualms holding it in my hand.
Porcupines are strict herbivores, so there's not really much that would make their poo smell bad. In fact, this scat had no real odor to it at all. I have no idea how fresh it was, though, so it's possible that any smell it may have given off had faded long ago.

Yessir, this is what being a naturalist is all about. Not only holding the poo in your hand, but being willing to go on record with a picture that shows that it is, in fact, YOUR hand that is holding it! No snide remarks from the peanut gallery, okay? It doesn't show up well for some reason, but please note the "No Trespassing" sign on the tree. The porcupine, if it was in there, may have been annoyed by us rooting around in its toilet, but we did have permission from the property owner to be there.

Nina got in on the poo exploration, too. Have you ever seen two ladies so happy to be surrounded by scat?

Here's Jim sticking his camera into the entrance hole of the den, in hopes of finding someone home (I haven't yet heard the verdict on that photo), while Nina examines the pile of excreta.
As I mentioned above, porcupines are herbivores, and in addition to feeding on leaves, twigs, and plants such as lupine and clover, they are also fond of tree bark, especially the inner layer of the bark (known as the cambium). Here's an interesting fact presented by the aforementioned Audubon guide to mammals:

"Fond of salt, the Common Porcupine has a great appetite for wooden tool handles that have absorbed human perspiration through use."

Better keep your wooden-handled trowels and shovels locked safely away in the shed if you live in porcupine territory, which covers most of the western United States, almost all of Canada, northern Michigan, and most of Pennsylvania, New York and New England. (Interestingly, there was no mention of how they otherwise work salt into their diet.)

After we had thoroughly exhausted our exploration of the mound of excrement, we set off to look for other things. As luck would have it, though, perhaps our greatest find of the evening was a real live porcupine located in the up-most portion of a small, spindly aspen tree. This quilled creature was nowhere near the den we had investigated, so we did not find the resident of that specific den, but this was still a great sight to behold.

I spotted this "porky" up in the tree, and as we edged closer, we fully expected to see the tree simply bend over under his weight. The tree was smaller in diameter than my arm, and the tree - along with the porcupine - swayed easily in the breeze. After reading up on them, I learned that they are adept climbers, and actually spend a lot of their time in trees, sometimes even resting there during the day (they are primarily nocturnal, or active during the night). They are slow and deliberate in their climbing, as our small group observed. This porcupine would back down the tree a few feet, and then inch back up and return to the spot where he was when we found him. He seemed a bit baffled by our presence at first, but soon forgot about us and began foraging on the leaves of a neighboring aspen tree. He would used his long claws to hook onto a nearby branch and then draw it towards him, at which point he commenced stripping the leaves from their stalks.

We watched him feed for at least 15 minutes, wondering if he would ever come down. He never showed any inclination to descend while we had our eyes on him. Dusk was coming on quickly when we found him, so he was probably just beginning his nightly routine. We were very lucky, indeed, to be able to observe him like this. It's certainly an experience I won't soon forget!

Fabulous find at Flora Quest 2012

When I last left you, I penned a post showcasing a cool find from a trip to Adams County, Ohio. That was almost a month ago, and I just found myself in Adams County again this weekend. This time I was at Flora Quest, which took place in and around Shawnee State Forest. The event, which was started in 2007, draws lovers of not only flora, but also fauna, from all around the state of Ohio and beyond. We spent a full day and a half in the field, looking for all of the wonderful gifts that Shawnee and environs has to offer. Given the incredibly warm spring that we've had, many plants are at least 2 weeks ahead of schedule, and many things that would normally be in bloom right now are well past their prime. The upside of this is that there are plants blooming now that we would not normally expect to see blooming until much later in May.

Honestly, I did not get many flower photos this year, partially because a hugely overcast day in a very wooded area made for miserable photo-taking conditions (especially since the flash on my camera is on the fritz), and partially because I spent a lot of time tuning in to the b-i-r-d-s. Nevertheless, my camera was always with me, and I was able to catch quite an incredible event with it.

First, though, a little bit of back story.

When I visited Adams County back in early April, I saw an Eastern Fence Lizard for the first time ever. Actually, we saw two of them that day: first a female, and then a male. One has to move quickly to catch these lizards, as they will immediately run for a tree the moment something starts coming its way. But we had some fast folks on hand that day who were able to carefully grab a specimen for observation (not to mention some very sharp-eyed folks to be able to spot them in the first place). The males and females are sexually dimorphic, meaning that the sexes can be told apart based on appearance. Below you will see first a female, and then a male. The females are more boldly patterned along the back.

If you turn them over, the difference between the sexes becomes more apparent. The female is plain-colored on the underside, whereas the male has a blue band across the throat, outlined in black, with blue also on either side of the belly.

Female fence lizard, with her plain belly showing

Male fence lizard, with blue throat band and blue on the belly
These lizards hibernate during the winter months, and once they come out of hibernation, territories are set up and mating begins. According to the ODNR species account for Eastern Fence Lizards, incubation lasts from 6-8 weeks, and then a clutch of anywhere from 5 to 12 eggs will be laid. Fast forward from April to May, when our Flora Quest group on Saturday was extremely fortunate, in that we came across a female who was laying eggs.

I've been able to make out 11 eggs in this photo, 6 directly behind the female (who is well-camouflaged among the leaves), and 5 more off to her right, near the right edge of the photo. The eggs are small, about the size of an M&M candy, but more oblong in shape. I'm not sure who in our group made this discovery, but we were all just blown away by it. Obviously she wasn't going to scurry away anywhere, since she was in the middle of some very important business. Given the incubation period of 6-8 weeks, that means that the female I photographed in early April could have very well already been pregnant when we caught her. Who knows, she could have been laying eggs on this very same day. (Saturday's lizard was in a location that is quite a distance from the early-April lizard, though, so it's definitely NOT the same lizard.)

Female Eastern Fence Lizard, laying eggs
Of course I felt very fortunate to have witnessed this in person, as I'm sure it's something I'm not likely to come across again. But I could not help but feel that we violated this process for her, and made it very stressful for her. She was right alongside the trail, and luckily she was off to the side enough that we weren't in danger of stepping on her. It was obvious that we had disturbed her, and I saw her draw in at least one very deep breath while I was taking photos of her. Whether that was part of her labor process, or if it was a stress response, I don't know, but I couldn't help feeling like we needed to leave her be as soon as possible. Luckily our group was small, so there weren't too many of us to cycle through, each taking photos. I just hope our presence and the attention that we paid to her didn't draw too much (or any attention) to her while she was in this very vulnerable state.

As we left her, we all wished her well, and thanked her for the story she enabled us to tell. Hopefully later this summer the eggs will hatch successfully, and the cycle will begin again.

More to see than just flowers

Today was a great day spent with great folks among great nature. I traveled over to Adams County to meet up with some like-minded folk for what has become an annual early spring gathering to check out the fantastic flora in that part of the state. As is often the case on outings like this, what was originally billed as a foray to look at spring wildflowers turned out to be much more than that. We enjoyed plenty of flora, to be sure, but all manner of fauna was appreciated as well.

This unseasonably warm spring that we've had has brought lots of butterflies out already. We saw many species today, many of which were in constant motion and impossible to track down with a camera. But there were a few very cooperative specimens, which I will share here.

An Eastern-tailed Blue, Cupido comyntas. Since this one was under the shade of a leaf the colors didn't come out as brilliantly as they might have if it were in the light, but you can still see that it's a charming little butterfly.
We came across another equally charming, but much more brilliant-colored butterfly right after lunch, and this one was a first for me.

This is a Juniper Hairstreak (or Olive Hairstreak, depending on who you ask), Callophrys gryneus. It stayed in this mud puddle for a very long time while we all ooohed and ahhhed over it and shot plenty of photos. Isn't it beautiful? The colors are so saturated that the photographs of it almost look fake.

Here, intrepid blogger and stunt butterfly handler extraordinaire, Jim McCormac, holds the hairstreak on his finger to give a sense of the scale of this tiny creature. I am happy to report that Jim's finger came out of this unscathed. No naturalists (or butterflies) were harmed in the making of this photo.
More fantastic finds coming up!

Mother Nature airs her dirty laundry

I've never been one for pulling pranks on April Fool's Day, and I'm not about to start now. However, after looking at some wildflower photos I took today, I couldn't resist sharing a few images that are joke-worthy all on their own.

One flower that is prolifically in bloom right now is Dutchman's Breeches. Unfortunately, these pendulous pairs of pantaloons can be tricky to photograph. Being white flowers, any imperfections show up very easily, so getting a nice "clean" set of of breeches is somewhat of a challenge. Some fun can be had with the bad shots, though. Due to the way the flowers dangle on the stalk, it's easy to infer the notion of laundry hanging out on the line.


For example, the dingy pair hanging off to the right looks like it was soaked in tea or coffee for a while, and just wouldn't quite come clean. Those stubborn stains!

I call this the "poopy diaper" shot. Shouldn't take too much of a stretch of the imagination to figure out why.
I didn't come away with too many shots of this flower that I particularly liked, but here's one shot where someone got the bleach right and all the pants are clean:

Happy April! Get out there and smell the dirty diapers wildflowers!

The Frost Hunt

tiny buds 
await spring

A recent string of cold nights with clear skies and calm winds made for some delightfully frosty mornings, bringing the landscape into a characteristic state of being right on cue for the first days of December. These frosty mornings occurred, of course, during weekdays, when there was no time for stopping and capturing photos that could be savored later. I eagerly watched the weather forecast for the weekend, and was happy to see that conditions would be ripe for a good frost on Saturday morning. Excellent! Finally, I could go on a Frost Hunt! The title alone conjured crisp images in my mind, and helped me to get myself out of bed early on a morning when I might otherwise prefer to sleep in.

It wasn't until I got outside and really started looking at how the frost clung to leaves and flowers that I realized that it had been far too long since my last truly connected encounter with the land. It ended up being one of those multi-sensory experiences that I truly cherish.

Bee Balm seed head, covered in frost

In addition to each flower or blade of grass that I stopped to admire, there was the singing and calling of the birds. There's that mischievous Blue Jay that wants everyone to believe he's a Red-shouldered Hawk just from the sound of his voice, but I know his true identity. A Pileated Woodpecker sounded off amid the treeline along the ridge top, with a slightly erratic flight that took it out of sight. Song Sparrows gave their raspy call note, and then one daring male took me by surprise with a short song, repeated several times - something I did not expect to hear in early December. His song, combined with the smell of ever-present ground ivy, momentarily tricked my brain into thinking it was spring, but the frost crystals jolted me back to the reality that winter is just around the corner.

My "hunt" took place just across the road from my house, in an area with which I have become very familiar over the years. Photographing the flora had me feeling like I was among old friends, and they welcomed me happily, not caring that I had been away for a while. Each plant has its own "personality," both in the growing season and in the quieter times of fall and winter. Sometimes I think it is easier to appreciate the lines and curves of the plants in the dormant season, because most of the color is drained and withered away, leaving only the bare essentials to draw your attention.


Even so, some color remains to enliven the landscape!

Mysterious features become more prominent with frost glistening on them. I found many of these galls on the stalks of goldenrod plants, most of which had a perfect hole drilled right in the center on one side. Downy Woodpeckers and Carolina Chickadees are known to excavate these galls in order to get to the goldenrod gall fly larvae that is contained within. This is a phenomenon I have yet to observe myself, but one I very much hope to see in the future.

Virgin's Bower is one of my absolute favorite flowers to observe in fall and winter. The feathery fronds, to which the plant's seeds are attached, catch the light of sunrise and sunset with perfection, and frost adds yet another dimension of beauty to them.

Teasel is another flower that presents strong architectural interest in fall and winter. Interestingly, the frost made the seed head look much softer than usual, tuning what normally looks like something akin to a porcupine into an object resembling a soft brush. The bracts at the base of the seed head, however, retained their harsh curls, reminding me of Medusa's head of snake hair.

Next, the sun comes out...

Abstracts in frost

Wordless, abstract Sunday...

Puffballs, part II

Continuing with my puffball adventures, we move from the behemoth to the dwarf. These next mushrooms that I'm about to share are VERY small compared to the large puffballs from my last post. I would gauge these little guys to be around 1/50th the size of that huge puffball that was at least as big as my shoe.

At first glance, you might mistake them for a bunch of nuts on the forest floor. Perhaps we have stumbled upon a squirrel's not-so-secret stash of acorns?

Upon closer inspection it becomes apparent, though, that they are stacked a little TOO neatly to be nuts. Indeed these are mushrooms, and as far as I can tell, they fall into the puffball category.

While most were found existing only in large clusters, a few were visible singly or in pairs. I should have put something next to these to give you an idea of their size, but I would describe them as being as large as a cherry tomato. While I cannot claim with much certainty their identity, I am inclined to say these are probably the pear-shaped puffball, Lycoperdon pyriforme, a species that is known for growing in clusters.



Mushrooms may be one of the easiest subjects to photograph in nature. They are photogenic, they don't fly or walk away from you, and rarely do they blow in the wind. A nice stationary subject, not something you come across very often in nature photography!


I hope you've enjoyed this look into the world of puffballs. I will admit that I know very little about mushrooms and fungi, but the more I photograph them, the more my interest becomes piqued. One more item to add to my list of things to learn about!

Late summer puffballs

Today has been a typical wet, dreary November day. Well, except that the temperatures seem a little above average. Regardless, I am mourning the loss of summer, and have been for a number of weeks. Now would be a good time to go back and reminisce a little. Take a look at some of the cool stuff I found out and about during those verdant, warm, long days.

I would forgive you if you didn't identify this correctly. It's the kind of thing you might not necessarily investigate at close range. Wait, who am I kidding? If you're reading this blog, you probably like getting up close to things in nature! But I would understand if you thought maybe this was a zoomed-in photo of the hide of a giraffe.

I would also understand if you thought this was a close-up of a print of some turkish art. I am reminded of both of these things when I look at these photos.

It is, however, neither of these things. It's a lovely (gigantic!) puffball mushroom. My shoe next to it gives you some idea as to the scale. If there are any mycologists or mycophiles out in the audience who can pin this down to a species, I'd love to hear from you!

Puffball crater

They seemed especially abundant this year, mostly occurring in groupings of 2 or 3 (sometimes more). From afar they all look the same, but up close, you can see how unique each one is.

This grouping caught my fancy. Almost like a family posing for their portrait. I love how there's a line in the middle 'shroom that seems to carry right into the pattern of bottom one.

Ahhh, mushrooms in a field of green with a backdrop of green leaves. I think maybe I can still smell the summer air if I try hard enough...

Beech leaves

The woods on our property consist of a diverse mix of deciduous tree species. I've never attempted to do any kind of survey, but would like to some day. Until then, I cannot say with certainty what the "dominant" species is/are, but we have many specimens of large trees such as oak, hickory, maple, beech, and buckeye as well as a variety of understory trees such as sassafras, redbud, dogwood and paw paw. Trees occurring in smaller numbers are aspen, tulip tree and sycamore. Heavy winds a few weeks back pretty much wiped the branches clean of their dapper autumn-colored leaves, but there are a few lingerers. But even those hangers-on will be bare within a few weeks, save for most of the beeches and some of the oaks.


The beech trees always grab my attention, and a lot of this has to do with the fact that they encircle our house and their leaves are right at eye level from almost any window that you look out of. As fall marches into cooler days and nights, and frost and cold rains start to come into the picture, I attempt to be vigilant in watching their leaves because every year they catch me by surprise. One day they're green and then - POOF! - they've changed. And then a few days later they've changed again. As fall progresses into winter, the leaves hang on the beech trees, but they change in character. They become more and more paper-like. They go from brown to beige. Winter winds whip them ragged, but still they will hang on until the last possible moment in spring. Other tree species will be sprouting new, green growth, while last year's beech leaves will still be there, almost transparent now, clinging to a season that was over months ago.


Today I went out with my camera and attempted to capture the differing stages of change among our beech leaves. This is something that grabs my interest - the leaves on some beech trees seem to turn faster or sooner than others. I've tried to make loose correlations to the age or size of the tree, but have come up with nothing conclusive. At this point, there are very few green leaves left. Most are a nice yellow or orange, or a mottled combination of the two. Some are brown, and a few have even gone into what I call the "paper" stage - they are dry and rolled at the edges, already well on their way to their winter "look."




There is a term, I have learned, for dead leaves that cling into winter. It is marcescence. Okay, so there is a name for it, but no one is quite sure why it happens. The most common theory that I came across had to do with protection from browsing animals such as deer or moose - having these papery and likely unpalatable leaves at the end of the branches could save the tender buds from being eaten. But if that were true, wouldn't all trees employ that same strategy? So many questions, so many things still unknown.