Ribbit! magazine offers informative, engaging material about nature

Columbus Dispatch
January 4, 2026

NATURE

Jim McCormac

A great horned owl, one of Ohio's top-end predators, is featured on the cover of the latest Ribbit! magazine

I’m on a board of The Columbus Foundation called the Green Fund, and each year, we pick grant recipients from a worthy pool of requestors. Our focus is on the environment, including educational initiatives.

Last June, prior to our deliberations, Bettina Cooper came to the Green Fund to make a pitch about a new publication she had started, Ribbit!, a magazine geared toward younger generations.

I was thoroughly impressed by Cooper's presentation and the magazine, and the reasons for producing it. The rest of our board agreed, and we helped with funding.

Cooper kindly sent along a hard copy of the most recent Ribbit! (Issue 6, Winter 2025/26), which features an eye-catching color image of a great horned owl on the cover. That ties to an article inside titled “Amazing Owl Adaptions.”

Being an owl aficionado, I eagerly pored through the article, which was penned by naturalist Kate Brierley, who works at Blacklick Woods Metro Park.

Like all the magazine’s other material, Brierley's owl piece is well-written, engaging and informative. As younger people are the target of Ribbit!, the owl article is easy to understand, explains the basics of owl physiology and behavior clearly and simply, and uses wonderful photography and graphics to punctuate important points.

Other articles in the issue include pieces on the ice age, cold-hardy animals, how to better find wildlife, speaking up for nature, and more. A staple in each issue is “Columbus Nature News,” which informs readers about upcoming events such as Christmas Bird Counts, World Wetlands Day and the Winter Hike Series with Columbus and Franklin County Metro Parks.

A personal favorite in the “Nature News” section was a short note recognizing Squirrel Appreciation Day, which falls on Jan. 21. Squirrels are incredibly important components of ecosystems, but do not get their fair share of love. Going to bat for the underdogs is an admirable trait, and the producers of Ribbit! certainly do that.

Magazine staff strive to get notable authors, and the current issue’s ice age article was written by Daniel Kelley of the Ohio State University and Jamey Stutz of ODNR’s Division of Geological Survey. The geologists do an admirable job of explaining the complexities of the ice age and its impact on Ohio, all in easily understood language.

The six issues to date contain an impressive array of subject matter, and all of them are excellent intellectual fodder for growing minds. And no ads!

Each issue is about 30 pages, features color throughout, and layout and design are superb. Ribbit! is free, with funding coming from a variety of sources. Donations are appreciated and provide a valuable part of the magazine’s funding.

After reading several issues, I feel Ribbit! hits its mark of educating younger people and should be of interest to kids from K-12, and adults, too.

Ribbit! is produced under the auspices of a group called Naturewise Columbus and its eight-member board of directors.

To learn more about the people who produce the magazine, visit their website at naturewisecolumbus.org.

The magazine is available, free of charge, at libraries, community centers, parks and various public events. Interested parties can also view magazines on the Ribbit! website, ribbitmagazine.com.

The next issue comes out March 1.

Environmental education should be part of the basic curriculum for students, and Ribbit! magazine provides a big dollop of that in a very interesting package. I highly recommend it, and please help spread the word.

Naturalist Jim McCormac writes a column for The Dispatch on the first and third Sundays of the month. He also writes about nature at jimmccormac.blogspot.com.

Yellow-rumped Warbler eating poison ivy berries

 

A female Yellow-rumped Warbler (Setophaga coronata) noshes on the fruit of poison ivy (Toxicodendron radicans). Shauna and I found this bird on today's Hocking Hills Christmas Bird Count in Hocking County, Ohio. It was one of 11 "butter-butts" that we located.

Poison Ivy is an important source of wintertime sustenance for this hardy warbler - the only warbler species that winters in numbers at northerly latitudes such as Ohio. The much reviled (by people, not other animals) native vine is relished by many other bird species. At one point today, we saw a Carolina Chickadee eating poison ivy fruit, and I have over the years photographed many other species partaking of this fruit.

Climbing Fern

 

Last Saturday, Shauna and I participated in the Beaver Christmas Bird Count. Our area of the count covers a very remote area of Jackson County, Ohio, and it was quite birdy, at least in regard to species diversity. Overall numbers were not great. Highlights included five Hermit Thrushes and two Eastern Phoebes. In all, we found 43 species. And reconfirmed the existence of this population of Climbing Fern (Lygodium palmatum).

ASIDE: Hermit Thrushes are undoubtedly far more common in wintertime southern Ohio than is generally imagined. One key to finding them is getting an eye for suitable habitat, which is hardly rocket science. They favor early successional habitats with plenty of fruiting sumac (genus Rhus) and most commonly from my experience, Staghorn Sumac (Rhus typhina). The copious and long-persistent sumac fruit is a staple of their wintertime diet. Once in a while, one will hear the easily recognized low chuck call note of a thrush and find it that way, but mostly, the birds remain silent in dense cover and are easily overlooked. But judicious playing of the thrush's call note - not the song - will usually elicit a response, quickly. Had I not done that, we probably wouldn't have found any on this excursion. Had we had more time to just work Hermit Thrushes, we may well have doubled that number.

Back to the fern. The above photo shows Climbing Fern's scrambling growth habit. It isn't hard to spot a colony, but colonies tend to be fairly rare and local and widely scattered. At one time, it was on the Ohio Department of Natural Resources' official list of rare plants but was rightly removed long ago as it isn't rare enough to merit listing.

Map courtesy of the Flora North America

This is the only member of the largely tropical fern family Lygodiaceae that occurs entirely within the Unites States, and by far the most northerly species. Two others, Asian species and both in the genus Lygodium, have been introduced. One of them, Japanese Climbing Fern (L. japonicum) is widely established across the southeastern states but has not yet managed to make it as far north as Ohio. The other is Climbing Maidenhair (L. microphyllum) which thus far is confined to Florida but seems to be rapidly spreading.

Aptly named, Climbing Fern is adept at scrambling up supporting vegetation, and can climb to several feet in height via its spaghetti-like orangish stems. The green conspicuous fronds are the sterile leaves that are long-persistent. The fertile spore-bearing leaves are short-lived and quite different in appearance. Remnants of these can be seen at the bottom one-third of the plant in the image above. They are the lacy brown extensions from the stems.

The fern's specific epithet, "palmatum" essentially means "hand-like" and the fronds certainly suggest hands. In the fern world (Pteridophytes), which encompasses about 80 species in Ohio, Climbing Fern is among our most distinctive species.

I first saw this Climbing Fern colony over 20 years ago, and it's always rewarding to revisit it each year. The general area in which it occurs has a large silica mine that is still operational and has laid waste to lots of interesting and valuable habitats since it started. Hopefully this fern colony and its vicinity will be spared, especially as there are several other rare plant species nearby, including some that are truly endangered.

The fascinating life of the yellow-bellied sapsucker

 

A male yellow-bellied sapsucker tends a well field

Columbus Dispatch

December 20, 2025

NATURE

Jim McCormac

“And you tell him if he don’t show up himself, he ain’t nothing but a yellow-bellied sapsucking coward.”–Denzel Washington as Sam Chisolm in the 2016 remake of "The Magnificent Seven"

Arguably our coolest woodpecker, the yellow-bellied sapsucker has provided plenty of fodder for insults and jokes. Yes, there really is such a bird, and in my opinion, it is the most interesting of the seven common Ohio woodpeckers.

Unlike the other six woodpecker species which commonly nest in the state, the yellow-bellied sapsucker occurs mostly as a migrant and winter resident. It’s a northern species, breeding across the northern boreal forest, from Alaska to Newfoundland. Nearly all Ohio nesting records come from the extreme northeastern corner of the state, which represents the southern edge of the nesting range.

Sapsuckers are normally mostly non-vocal outside of the breeding season, but occasionally deliver their loud cat-like call, which sounds a bit like a feline with its tail caught in a vise. That will draw a birder’s attention to the bird, which otherwise can easily be missed.

Woodpeckers “sing” by drumming rhythms distinctive to their species. The sapsucker’s “song” is an erratic series of taps that sounds like something a drunken Morse code operator would produce. One hears this frequently on the breeding grounds, but sometimes sapsuckers heading north in spring will deliver their peculiar pounding patter.

One reason that sapsuckers can easily be missed is that they spend much time creating and maintaining complex “well fields” on tree trunks. While so engaged, a sapsucker quietly works with the horizontally arranged rows of neat holes in the trunk that it has created. The holes, which might number into the dozens in a single well field, ooze sap. And tree sap is a coveted food for the sapsucker, and the reason for the bird’s curious name.

Sapsuckers will “frack” hundreds of different tree species, in which they construct two types of well fields. In spring, when sap flows upward through the xylem tissue in the bark, the individual wells are small and round. After leaf-out, their sap-mining is concentrated on the phloem tissue layer, in which sap flows downward. These holes are larger and rectangular. The male sapsucker in the accompanying photo is working a phloem well field.

In warmer weather, insects galore are drawn to the sugary sap, and these bugs are eagerly scarfed down by the feathered engineers. For a sapsucker, the perfect food is a gooey ball of sap with bugs rolled into it, an insectivorous nougat for birds.

It isn’t just sapsuckers that benefit from their sap wells. Ruby-throated hummingbirds visit frequently to lap up sap, which can be up to 10% sugar. Evidence suggests that hummingbirds may sync their movements to stay in proximity to sapsuckers, and even nest near active well fields. Long before the first manmade hummingbird feeder was created, yellow-bellied sapsuckers were feeding hummingbirds.

I have spent much time in northern Michigan, where sapsuckers can be the most common breeding woodpecker species. A favored nesting tree is quaking aspen, especially those afflicted with a heartwood decay fungus called Phellinus tremulae. The fungus weakens the inner wood, making it easier for the sapsuckers to excavate their dwelling. The hardworking male sapsucker does nearly all the excavation. By all appearances, the female supervises his work, flying in periodically to inspect progress, while the male looks from the hole and receives instructions from his better half.

Once construction is complete, the female lays four to five eggs, which are brooded by both sexes. About two weeks later, the sapsucker-lets hatch. After the nest is vacated, they are often appropriated by flying squirrels or other cavity-nesting species unable to create their own dwellings.

Sapsuckers begin to move south into Ohio in late September and can be fairly common in October. Many remain throughout winter and become more common southward in the state. The longest distance migrant of our woodpeckers, sapsuckers range south through Central America nearly to South America, and throughout the Caribbean countries. I have seen them multiple times in the jungles of Costa Rica and Guatemala. That was rather a shock the first time, seeing this woodpecker of the northern forests in proximity with manakins, motmots and toucans.

A great local place for migratory and wintering yellow-bellied sapsuckers is Green Lawn Cemetery in Columbus’s south side. The cemetery, Ohio’s second largest, covers 360 acres and is a true birding hotspot. Wandering between the central pond (‘the pit”) and the old bridge and ravine to its west can be especially productive for sapsucker-seekers.

Naturalist Jim McCormac writes a column for The Dispatch on the first and third Sundays of the month. He also writes about nature at jimmccormac.blogspot.com.

A pair of sapsuckers, male below, female above

Northern Coralroot: A wee orchid

I wanted to share some imagery of a really cool little orchid that I made last spring, in the mountains of southern West Virginia. This is a species that is listed as endangered in my home state, and I've never seen it in Ohio. Here, it's known only from a few sites in the extreme northeastern corner of the state.

A quintet of Northern Coralroot (Corallorhiza trifida) arises from the cold, boggy mire of a high-elevation bog in Pocahontas County, West Virginia. It was nearing full bloom on the very early date of May 4 (2025). At that locale, snow is still a likely possibility. The early blooming of this elfin orchid leads to another common name: Early Coralroot.

ASIDE: There is essentially no standardization for plant common names, thus it is vital to know and use scientific names, like Corallorhiza trifida, when researching flora, to ensure that you are harvesting data on the correct species. I prefer Northern Coralroot for this species, as it certainly is that. Although there is other northern species of coralroot, just as there is another eastern coralroot that blooms in spring.

Northern Coralroot is an elfin plant, and that short individual - second from left - in the above photo is probably only 2-3 inches in height. It'd be quite easy to pass this one by, as from an upright position - and I assume most readers are hominids that walk with an erect posture - the plants are easy to miss due to their small stature. Fortunately, when in flower, the tiny petals are a somewhat luminescent yellowish-white and their faint glow can draw the eye.

Here is the overall lower US distribution of Northern Coralroot (map courtesy of BONAP). It barely extends south of the Great Lakes, and the plants in my photos were made in one of the two southernmost counties in West Virginia, both depicted in yellow (which means "rare").

BONAP maps are misleading, insofar as the big picture is concerned, as they don't portray records north of the lower 48 states. This coralroot ranges across Canada and extends north to Alaska and southeastern Greenland and also occurs across Eurasia.

Here is the Flora North America map, which makes clear why I prefer the name Northern Coralroot. This tough plant probably gets stepped on by Polar Bears on occasion!

Northern Coralroot also occurs widely across Eurasia, including Siberia. The species has been cleft into two varieties, and most of the North American plants are apparently Corallorhiza trifida var. verna. I assume the Eurasian plants would be mostly/all the nominate variety (C. trifida var. trifida).

A tight shot of the inflorescence. Very beautiful flowers, but on a tiny scale. All of those floral parts would be measured in millimeters.

Reproduction is interesting in that Northern Coralroot flowers are mostly, maybe often entirely, self-pollinated. When ripe, the pollinia, or pollen sacs, fall off and land on the stigma (pollen receptor). Thus, insect transport agents are not required. A wise strategy for a plant that often blooms when it can still be quite cold. But insects can transfer pollen if conditions allow for their movement. About the only group of insects that I could find reference to are various flies (Diptera). Go flies! There may be no order of animals as underappreciated as the Dipterans. But I'll leave flies for another day.

A botanical reminisce: Gall-of-the-earth (Prenanthes trifoliolata)

About this time of year - early winter - I begin to internally lament the lack of flowering plants. We recently had about five inches of snow, and nighttime temperatures are dipping into the low to md-20's F, with teens soon to come. For the botanically inclined, such as your narrator, this means a few months of a floral dry spell, which occasionally makes me pine for warmer seasons (much as I love winter, snow, cold, diving ducks, raptors, etc.).

I've been spending scads of time with the photographic files, catching up on labeling and archiving a backlog of unprocessed material, and digging out material for a few new projects. In the course of that, I often run across old stuff that brings back good memories, and this post features one of those subjects - one that I never got around to blogging about (I did have a blog in 1997 - the year the word "blog" was coined, although I didn't know to call my site that, then).

On August 26, 1997, I was botanizing a high, dry ridge deep in Shawnee State Forest. This is Ohio's largest contiguous forest at around 71,000 acres, and it is a hotbed of biodiversity, both floral and faunal. Shawnee is truly a state and national gem, and enormously significant to the conservation of scores of species. Many state-listed endangered and threatened species occur here.

WAY back in 1997, the forest was not as well explored botanically as it now is and wasn't as much on the radar screen. Nonetheless, I am sure that rarities remain to be discovered.

Anyway, at that time, I was keen on discovering a plant species that I figured surely must occur in Ohio and constantly kept my eyes open for it. And it was on this date, at the exact spot in the photo above, that I finally discovered it. While the plant in question is quite tall, with some specimens towering to six feet or more, it is a spindly species that can be passed by. Several flowering specimens are in my photo, but good luck spotting them. To compound matters, the plant in question closely resembles another species in the same genus and could easily be dismissed as its commoner brethren.

Here's the USDA Plants Database map of the species in question (click to enlarge, if so desired), which is known as Gall-of-the-earth (Nabalus trifoliolatus). Field botanists pore over maps such as this, seeking likely new native plants to discover in their state. In this case, it seemed that there was a high likelihood that Gall-of-the-earth (weird common name; "gall" means bold or impudent) should be in extreme southern or eastern Ohio, as it ranges right up to our borders in those regions.

I should note that there are two errors on this map, in regard to Ohio. The Ashtabula County record (farthest NE county) is apparently in error, based on a mention in Gray's Manual of Botany. No documenting specimen can be located, so that record must be regarded as hypothetical. The southern county highlighted in green is Adams County. It should be Scioto County, the county immediately to the east. That's apparently an error by the USDA Plants Database.

Anyway, back to the find. As I walked the road banks in the first photo, I saw a number of towering specimens of "wild lettuces" (as members of the genus Nabalus [at the time of this discovery, Prenanthes] are sometimes known. The rub with an easy identification is White Rattlesnake-root (Nabalus alba). It resembles Gall-of-the earth to a great degree and is locally common in Ohio with records from at least 35 counties.

A flower and buds of Gall-of-the-earth. The smoking gun for identification of this species, which is easily enough seen in the field, is the color of the pappus hairs, which subtend the flowers and fruit. I located some mature flowers, mostly past, pulled some of the pappus for inspection, and Voila! The pappus was pale white - quite unlike the cinnamon-brown coloration of the look-alike White Rattlesnake-root. I finally had found Gall-of-the earth in Ohio.

Here's my original specimen of Gall-of-the-earth, collected on August 26, 1997 - the same day I made the above photos. This one is housed at the Ohio State University herbarium. A duplicate specimen is at the Miami University herbarium.

Twenty-eight years have now passed since this find, and no other populations of Gall-of-the-earth have been found. In a good year, the tiny area where it occurs in Shawnee State Forest might host 80-100 plants - a true endangered species, which is how it is listed by the Ohio Department of Natural Resources. You can see that list RIGHT HERE. It'd be awesome if someone could find more Gall-of-the-earth, ideally in another county (or two, or three...).

Finding a new native plant species for Ohio is always a thrill, and the experiences remain etched in my mind. To date, I've discovered or co-discovered a dozen new ones and rediscovered nine extirpated plants - species that no one has seen in at least 20 years, and in most cases, it's been far longer than that.

Winter snowstorm

As always, click the photo to enlarge

I awoke to a winter wonderland. About five inches of powdery snow fell overnight (for us, that is a snowstorm), encasing everything in a blanket of snow. The aftermath of such snowstorms is often ephemeral, so I headed out before daybreak to bask in some real winter, one of my favorite seasons. This is the Olentangy River in Worthington, Franklin County, Ohio.