Ohio Birds and Biodiversity

Yesterday morning's sunrise, as observed from the pier at Lakeside, Ohio. Lakeside was home base for the Ohio Ornithological Society's annual meeting, and I was part of the festivities. This was the 7th annual powwow if I've got things straight, and these "meetings" are always a great time. They're meetings only because the official vote on elected officers takes place, but that's a tiny part of the get-together.

The main focus of an OOS meeting is speakers, and field trips. Being along Lake Erie, as we were, shorebirds were the primary theme, but it could just have well been warblers. The songbirding probably eclipsed the shorebirding, but both were good. Our two keynote speakers were Mr. Shorebird himself, Kevin Karlson, and Lukas Padegimas, who gave a great presentation on his work with shorebirds in Alaska last year.

About 150 people convened for this year's meeting, and all of us went out in the field. Field trips have always been a staple of OO…

Spreading Dogbane, Apocynum androsaemifolium, easily the handsomest of the three dogbanes that occur in Ohio. It's rather local, but widespread, and prefers damp partially shaded sites.

The flowers of Spreading Dogbane are magnificent, at least by dogbane standards. The large whitish corollas are prominently striped with pink, with a prominent outward flare to the corolla lobes.

As with the other dogbanes - and their close allies the milkweeds - Spreading Dogbane has thick milky latex coursing through its veins. Tear a leaf and you'll spark a gusher of the stuff. This latex is fairly nasty, as it is rich in toxic cardiac glycosides. The goo is an effective anti-herbivore defense, and dogbane's chemical arsenal safeguards it from most leaf-noshing caterpillars.

Photo: Alison Hunter/Wiki Commons
But not all herbivores are repelled by dogbane toxins. If you ever encounter a pale brown caterpillar that looks like an escapee from a box of pipecleaners, and it's snacking on …

This gorgeous and productive little wetland graces the grounds where my office building sits, and the elfin marsh spikes the biodiversity of our urban oasis in a major way. Our complex is located in a very urban area of Columbus, with little in the way of natural features close at hand. Thus, our big splotch of greenery serves as a bit of a trap for migrants, whether they be birds, butterflies, or other insects. The total bird list is nearly 140 species, and the wetland has lured such goodies as Black-crowned Night-Heron, Sora, Virginia Rail and much more.

Plenty of interesting animals breed on site as well, in part due to the botanical diversity. The wetland is hemmed in by a variety of wetland plants, including black willow, Salix nigra, sandbar willow, S. interior, and eastern cottonwoods, Populus deltoides. I single these three species out as they are germane to this story.

Every time I find myself walking by the wetland, I make a quick search of the willow foliage. My quest? The…

Photo: Wikipedia Commons
Ah, the tomato. A much beloved fruit, although many enthusiasts of Lycopersicon esculentus might give it a second thought if they knew that it is spawn of the nightshade family (Solanaceae), which contains many very poisonous species. But there's obviously no issues with eating the ripe plump succulent fruit, or our world's population would not be what it is. You'll not want to graze on the foliage, however, as it contains small amounts of various toxins, true to the tomato's nightshade heritage.

There is one very prominent tomato foliage feeder, much to the dismay of hard-working tomato growers. It is the larva of one of our flashiest moths, the Carolina sphinx, Manduca sexta. Its caterpillars are also quite showy, although their good looks don't often win them a pass from peeved tomatoists. Nor from a very deadly parasitoid wasp.

One of my co-workers mentioned that she had plenty of tobacco hornworms noshing on her tomato crop, and that m…

The always eagerly anticipated Ron Pittaway report on the state of the boreal forest's various fruit crops, and his attendant predictions as to what might happen in regards to winter finch movements, arrived today. Ron is with the Ontario Field Naturalists, and he employs a small army of observers to provide him data on the cone and other fruit crops around eastern Canada. Many birders and biologists look forward to the annual Pittawayian Prognostications, as Ron is often pretty well spot on in foretelling the movements of boreal birds.

The forecast is promising. Ron believes that we'll see good southward flights of redpolls, Purple Finch, and as is already happening, Red Crossbill. Birders in Ohio will likely find themselves lurking around cemeteries with lots of mature conifers this winter. Who knows, we may even get a Bohemian Waxwing or Pine Grosbeak this winter.

MINOR GRIPE: The Pittaway forecast - and many other reporters - constantly refer to a lack of cone or other frui…

Our most conspicuous member of the Asteraceae, bar none, is now thoroughly coloring the meadows golden. Canada goldenrod, Solidago canadensis, is sometimes maligned as a "weed", but only by those who don't know its charms. Or its ecological value. Few of our native plants produce the abundant contributions to the food web that this goldenrod does.

A classic fall scene in Ohio. Old fields gilded in yellow, punctuated with the white bursts of boneset and shocking bolts of purple courtesy of New England aster, Symphyotrichum novae-angliae. Insect enthusiasts know to enter the goldenrod fields and search the panicles of showy lemon blooms to find all manner of six-legged wonders. More importantly, myriad predators also hunt goldenrod patches, contributing to an ever upwards spiraling web of life.

One downside, at least for the winter-phobic, is that the golden fields of Solidago will soon give way to frosty nights and Old Man Winter. Goldenrods are the growing season's …

The Grange Insurance Audubon Center, which smacks right up against downtown Columbus, Ohio, takes shape. I made this photo on December 3, 2008, when the center was under construction. It was officially dedicated on August 3, 2009 and is now a vibrant center that hosts lots of events and provides outreach within the urban core of Columbus.

I was there yesterday to present a program as part of a dragonfly workshop - just one example of the varied events that take place at GIAC.

This Google Earth map is a few years old, and shows some of the former uses of the Whittier Street Peninsula, where the GIAC is located. The big parking lots are part of the former City of Columbus Impoundment Facility; many an irate driver had to to make the pilgrimage here to retrieve a misparked vehicle. The impound lot is gone now, moved to a new locale on the south side. Franklin County Metro Parks owns and manages much of the peninsula as the Scioto Audubon Metro Park, and has made great strides in improvi…

A Japanese burrowing cricket, Velarifictorus micado, emerges from the plantain leaves long enough to allow your narrator a photo. The big field cricket-sized animals typically remain well hidden in mulch, cracks in the soil, or other nooks and crevices.

About three years ago, I began to hear an unfamiliar cricket here and there around my hometown of Columbus, Ohio. It didn't take too much sleuthing to determine that the singer was a nonnative Orthopteran - the Japanese burrowing cricket. Their deep rich (for a cricket) series of chirps are distinctive, and always given from the ground. This cricket is strictly terrestrial.

In the three or so years since first identifying this species, they've gone fairly haywire. I now hear Japanese burrowing crickets nearly everywhere I go, including places where I know they weren't present just a year or so ago. I think I heard my first one at the office complex where I work last year; now they are everywhere and I might hear a half-doz…

A Davis's tree cricket, Oecanthus exclamationis, in between fiddles. This little fellow is a contributor to the great musical backdrop of late summer and fall, courtesy of the Orthopteran symphony. Most tree crickets produce long droning trills, and as there are generally many of them in close proximity, tree crickets are major contributors to the sounds of the night.

The males are singing to attract mates, just as songbirds do. Tree crickets and other Orthopterans have their "ears" or hearing organs located just below the "knee" on the foreleg. This odd placement allows the ears to be about as far apart as possible, and that allows the animal to more accurately triangulate on sounds. And in the case of females, to better locate singing studs such as the guy above.

Ah! His melodious charms have worked! He's successfully wooed a mate, and she has joined him on the leaf. That's the female on top, which may seem to be an odd position. They are engaged in …