Caterpillars are the unsung heroes of nature

 

An elm sphinx caterpillar (Ceratomia amyntor) strikes a "defensive" pose/Jim McCormac

Columbus Dispatch

August 30, 2026

NATURE

Jim McCormac

Something like one-third of Americans believe in reincarnation. Apparently, these wishful thinkers mostly want to come back as animals. Golden retrievers, eagles and tortoises are popular rebirths.

I have a word of advice for the reincarnation crowd: caterpillars. As in, don’t come back as one. I’ll circle back to that in a bit.

Caterpillars are the larvae of butterflies and moths, mostly the latter. Worldwide, moth species outnumber butterflies by a factor of eight. In Ohio, the imbalance is far greater, with moths probably bettering butterflies by a factor of nearly 20.

As George Carlin once said, “The caterpillar does all the work, but the butterfly gets all the credit.” How true that is. People marvel over showy butterflies and cool moths that come to their lights, but many probably don’t even know that they were once a caterpillar.

That’s a shame, as caterpillars are a huge part of our natural world. Believe it or not, they are, by biomass, often the largest group of herbivores in many places. Not white-tailed deer. Take all the deer in 71,000-acre Shawnee State Forest in southern Ohio. I don’t know how many deer that would be, but they’d make an enormous pile.

The bizarre red-washed prominent caterpillar (Oligocentria semirufescens) is a leaf-edge mimic/Jim McCormac

Now somehow harvest every single caterpillar in Shawnee in early September, when their numbers are the greatest. The caterpillar pile would dwarf the deer heap.

Virtually all caterpillars are vegan, and their fare is wild plants. Plants do not want to be eaten, we must assume, and they practice better living through chemistry to battle the ravenous caterpillars.

Plants produce myriad compounds that evolved to ward off caterpillar consumption. Caterpillars continually evolve resistance to these phytocompounds, and some species always crack the chemical code and can eat even the most toxic species.

The best-known local example of this is the monarch butterfly. It only eats members of the milkweed family, and these plants are rich in toxic cardiac glycosides. Excepting the butterfly, milkweed tussock moths and a handful of other moth caterpillars, little can eat these poisonous plants.

Saddled prominent caterpillars (Heterocampa guttivitta) are larval art/Jim McCormac

Milkweeds’ opposite is the white oak (Quercus alba). Over 500 species of caterpillars use it as a host plant, nearly all of them moths. Possibly the oldest plant in the state is the famous white oak in Old Logan Cemetery in Hocking County. That behemoth has spawned millions of caterpillars over its long life.

Humans are beneficiaries of this age-old evolutionary warfare between plants and caterpillars. Many anti-caterpillar phytochemicals are used in foodstuff, medicines, spices, dyes, rubber and much more.

Perhaps the greatest ecological role of caterpillars is transforming plant tissue into an edible form of protein that can be eaten by birds. Few birds eat leaves, but rare indeed would be the bird that would reject a caterpillar. They are nature’s hot dogs; little steaks on legs. They are the major component of many songbirds’ diets. Were caterpillars to vanish, so would orioles, tanagers, vireos, warblers and many others. Forests would fall silent.

Even vegetarian songbirds such as sparrows harvest caterpillars when they have chicks in the nest. Nestlings need rich protein sources to fuel their growth, and caterpillars fit the bill.

It isn’t just birds that hunt caterpillars. A favorite of black bears is one of the most reviled caterpillars by humans. Eastern tent caterpillars make large silken nests in black cherry trees in late spring. Many people despise them, and I have heard of ecological ignoramuses using blow torches to burn them from the trees. But black bears love them, and a bruin can eat up to 25,000 (22 pounds!) tent caterpillars a day.

There are perhaps 100 black bears in Ohio, and their numbers are increasing. This is a wonderful case of a once-vanquished mammal coming back, and caterpillars are helping to fuel their recovery.

Predation rates of caterpillars are astronomical (take note, reincarnationists). Probably only a few percent survive the predatorial gauntlet. Thus, moths and butterflies carpet-bomb reproduce by laying hundreds of eggs to ensure some survive to adulthood. Caterpillars are a base layer of food webs.

Caterpillars are masters of disguise and are incredibly adept at hiding. Furthermore, most species are nocturnal and active when most birds are not. Special tactics must be employed to find them. Caterpillar-hunters must venture into the dark forest and employ special blacklight flashlights. Many caterpillar species fluoresce brightly under ultraviolet light, greatly upping the odds of finding them. Some groups, such as sphinx moth caterpillars, glow so brightly that they appear to be plugged into a light socket.

Moth and butterfly larvae are tubular objets d'art and make fascinating photographic subjects. Hunting them and trying to portray their amazing artistry with a camera becomes addictive.

On Aug. 22, Shauna and I traveled to the backwoods of Jackson County to the 195-acre spread of our friends Julie and Rod Sheets. It was larval madness, and it seemed that every tree produced interesting subjects. Some of my captures from that nocturnal safari accompany this article.

To learn more about caterpillars, visit The Caterpillar Lab at thecaterpillarlab.org.

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.

The smaller parasa caterpillar (Parasa chloris) suggests a hippopotamus/Jim McCormac

A fabulous evening of caterpillaring

 

As always, click the photo to enlarge

An American Dagger (Acronicta americana) moth caterpillar noshes on the leaf of a Red Maple (Acer rubrum). We saw many of this species on this evening. American Daggers are polyphagous - they can eat the foliage of scores of plants. It is often one of the most common caterpillars we find on night prowls, if not the most common.

Last Saturday, August 22, Shauna and I headed southeast and into the hills of Jackson County. This is one of the most biodiverse counties in Ohio. We headed towards the property of Julie and Rod Sheets, friends that we met last spring during a flying squirrel research project that took place on their 195 acres. After traipsing over some nice swaths of the place during the squirrel project, I probably commented to Rod and Julie that "this place would be great for moths/caterpillars!" 

And there we were, returning at a peak time for lepidopteran subjects. While the mothing (if you're new to the term, "mothing" entails luring moths to an illuminated sheet) was a bit tepid, their larvae were quite robust and put on a great show. And some of these caterpillars are featured here.

Usually, between keeping an eye on the sheet for moths, we search nearby habitats for caterpillars. Our efforts are greatly aided by the use of blacklight flashlights ("UV BEAST" is a good brand). A great many caterpillar species fluoresce, often quite brightly, when caught in our purple beams. 

We didn't make it 20 feet from the sheet when Shauna shouted "look!" She had found not one, or two, but three!! Saddleback Caterpillars under a single redbud leaf. That fortuitous find proved to be a good omen, and we went on to find many more interesting larvae. Some photos of those follow.

A Banded Tussock Moth caterpillar (Halysidota tessellaris). This species vies with the American Dagger for the most frequently found cat. It, too, is polyphagous and can seemingly ingest anything. Such a catholic diet is not the norm for caterpillars. Far more caterpillars are specialists, eating only one family of plants, one genus, or even only a single species. Nonnative plants species do very little for caterpillars. Most can't eat them, due to long-evolved chemical compatibly with only their host plant(s).

We were pleased indeed to discover this fully grown Elm Sphinx Moth caterpillar (Ceratomia amyntor). This species is a hyper-specialist, eating only plants in the elm family, and only those in the genus Ulmus. The Sheets' property has plenty of American Elm (Ulmus americana) and Red Elm (U. rubra), and I was watching for one of these four-horned beauties. In my photo, it is rearing up in what appears to be a defensive posture that they often adopt when disturbed. 

If you noticed how leaf-like the Elm Sphinx cat is in the first shot, this one should reinforce that. The larva clearly mimics the elm leaf both in color and venation. I couldn't get this one to cooperate very well, as I was trying to pose it so that its raised white stripe that runs the length of its back was aligned perfectly with the leaf's central midrib. That's how they often rest when not feeding. The caterpillar's angled lateral lines then mesh perfectly with those of the leaves.

This is a Hackberry Dagger Moth caterpillar (Acronicta rubricoma) and it wasn't even on my radar. I'd never before photographed one and can't remember even seeing one. But I don't keep a list and there are LOTS of bugs and I can't remember them all.

Anway, the aptly named Hackberry Dagger is a hackberry feeder, and hackberry is also in the elm family. It also apparently eats elm, and weirdly, it is claimed that they will also consume sumac (unrelated family). I checked Ohio records in iNaturalist, and while the species has been recorded statewide, records were rather sparse and scattered and probably the vast majority of those records were of the adult moth phase rather than caterpillars.

I've long wondered about the vertical stratification of caterpillars feeding in trees, and whether there might be a suite of species that typically feeds in the crowns. It may be that there are certain cats that are hard to clap eyes on because they are usually high overhead and out of sight. Maybe the Hackberry Dagger is one of them. There, now 43 people will tell me about all of the Hackberry Daggers that they encounter :-)

An Io Moth caterpillar (Automeris io) makes an artistic stinging edge to a dogwood leaf. Those envenomating spines will make you rue touching one. I did so accidentally once, and it was akin to an especially potent Wood Nettle (Laportea canadensis), the most painful of our nettles. The Io cat is also polyphagous and probably the most commonly encountered silkmoth caterpillar, at least for me.

We did well with the always interesting slug moth caterpillars such as this Jewel-tailed Slug (Packardia geminata). Some species resemble snails, as this one does. Its head, on the right, is extended; it's frequently not visible.

The reason for the insertion of "slug" into the name of this group is due to their curious method of locomotion. Instead of a series of central prolegs, slugs have sets of paired suckers. They glide along on a thin film of silk, much like a slug moves.

Here's the trio of Saddleback Caterpillar Moth caterpillars (Acharea stimulea) that started off the night prowl. In the words of entomologist and caterpillar expert Dr. David Wagner, slug caterpillars are "more fantasy than reality".

This species has one of the most painful stings of any North American caterpillar, so look but don't touch. Those columnlike extensions are bristling with envenomating spines. There is a venom sac at the base of the spine, and when triggered it blasts the hot sauce into the interloper like an injection from a hypodermic syringe. While stings will probably hurt anyone that experiences it, some people can react very badly.

A Saddleback cat resembles a little tubular chestnut horse draped with a lime-green horse blanket. Unfortunately for the larva in my photo, it is a walking dead caterpillar. Near the top left of its body, where there is a thin band of green, it looks like someone put a tiny cigarette out. That's either an air exchange hole for the larva of a tachinid fly, or its exit hole. Either way, the caterpillar won't survive the internal ravages of the fly maggot. Such parasitoidism is very common in the caterpillar world.

Yet another slug moth caterpillar and it isn't the last (almost, though). This is a White Flannel Moth (Norape ovina), and it is an outrageous insect. Check out those uber-long setae, and the showy jewel-like studding on the body. Those "jewels" are also studded with envenomating spines, and the sting is said to be quite painful (I could talk no one into getting stung so that we could learn about this).

Finally, insofar as the slugs go, here is our grand finale: the utterly bizarre Lesser Parasa Moth (Parasa chloris). Dr. Seuss himself couldn't make this thing up. To me, from certain angles, they look like hippopotami. This parasa is actively feeding and its head is tucked out of sight.

This is a White-dotted Prominent (Nadata gibbosa) and it's primarily an oak feeder. This one is apparently preparing a temporary bivouac by spinning a thick layer of silk. As the silk dries, the leaf will fold over the cat, concealing it. White-dotted Prominents are pretty common but always interesting. When agitated, they can perform an amazing act that suggests snake mimicry. I show a photo of one so engaged and describe that behavior RIGHT HERE.

Saddled Prominent Moth caterpillars (Cecrita guttivata) may be common, but they are quite showy. When one presents itself as nicely as this one did, I find it impossible to resist making photos.

Caterpillars grow through phases termed instars, and each instar stage is separated by a molt. Most of our larger species go through five instars excepting the slug caterpillars which typical have seven or even nine instars.

This is a Sycamore Tussock Moth caterpillar (Halysidota harrissii) and it is fairly young in its growth, probably in its third instar. At this stage, it eats holes from the centers of leaves of its host plant. And that host plant is the Sycamore (Platanus occidentalis). Nothing else will do for this extreme specialist.

Lastly, a fine pair of leaf-edge mimics. This one is the Checker-fringed Prominent caterpillar (Schizura ipomoea). We caught this one in transit, but when ensconced along the edge of a leaf dappled with browning necrotic tissue, the green and brown caterpillar can be quite hard to spot. The jagged back extensions provide further disruptive camouflage.

This one may one-up the previous species in the leaf camouflage department. It is a Red-washed Prominent caterpillar (Oligocentria semirufescens). From any distance, the cat - which usually hangs out on a leaf's edge - can be remarkably difficult to see, as it so greatly resembles senescent browning leaf tissue. 

Major thanks to Julie and Rod for inviting us over to explore, and for all of their conservation efforts which include many fine cats.

Blue-headed Vireo nests

 

A Blue-headed Vireo (Vireo solitarius) with a piece of redtop grass (Tridens flavus). He or she - males help with nest construction, but the sexes look very similar - was constructing a nest nearby. This was in the Monongahela National Forest in West Virginia. I made this image on April 30, 2017.

I gave a talk entitled Natural Ohio: Through the Lens for the Ohio Wildlife Center last Thursday night. We ranged through some of Ohio's best remaining natural areas, and the flora and fauna that make them special. It was a good chance to dust off lots of images from the past, such as the two vireo shots presented here.

I made this shot WAY back when, on May 1, 2011. A pair of Blue-headed Vireos were constructing this nest deep in Shawnee State Forest, in Scioto County, Ohio.

Vireo nests are works of art. I don't think many humans could craft such a fine nest, even with two hands and ten fingers. How these birds do it with their bill, and some assistance from their feet and body, is amazing. The nest is usually located at the fork of two slender twigs, but fairly low in the host tree. They are tough/impossible for many predators to reach, such as Black Ratsnakes (Pantherophis alleghaniensis). 

Yes, I know the snake's name has been changed - so many times it's tough to keep track of. iNaturalist is now calling it the Central Ratsnake. Prior to that, it was the equally stupidly named Gray Ratsnake. C'mon, herpetologists, get your act together. I'd suggest re-renaming it back to Black Ratsnake - the name that it seems most people know and love and persist in using. A nomenclatural rebellion against a particularly dumb series of name changes - an uprisal by the masses that should be listened to.

Anyway, the vireo's artistic cup is cleverly crafted from a variety of grasses and various forbs, and lined with soft plant down and other felty botanical material. Not a bad place for a baby vireo to grow up, and we need all of the baby vireos that we can get.

Upcoming presentation: Natural Ohio: Through the Lens

Sorry for the late notice on this one, but times have been busy and I let it slip. Anyway, this Thursday (August 20) I'll be giving a pictorial lecture about the very best places that remain in the Buckeye State. It'll feature flora and fauna great and small, and sites that are well-known and obscure.

It's for the Ohio Wildlife Center, and it'll take place at their beautiful facility which is not far from the Columbus Zoo in Delaware County. Registration is required, and you can do that at their website: Beautiful Ohio Lecture Series- Jim McCormac - Ohio Wildlife Center

More details, along with registration info, is at the website. Doors open at 6:30 and the talk will commence at 7 pm. Hope to see you there!

As always, click the photo to enlarge

A Sedge Wren (Cistothorus platensis) chatters his mechanical song from the summit of a big bluestem grass in Huffman Prairie. The presentation will feature many such images, covering a wide range of biodiversity.

Frosted Whiteface

 

As always, click the image to enlarge

A male Frosted Whiteface (Leucorrhinia frigida) in repose. On a recent July trip to Michigan's northern limits - the Keweenaw (key-wuh-na) Peninsula, Copper Harbor and vicinity - we saw many northern species that reach their southern limits in northern Ohio. This beautiful dragonfly was one of them, and it was very common in that state up north. So were other northern dragons including the Chalk-fronted Corporal (Ladona julia), which was often in association with the whiteface. Both of these dragonflies are listed as endangered in Ohio, and they occur very sparingly in a few of our northernmost counties.

It isn't hard to see how the Frosted Whiteface got its name. But the name is derived from the appearance of the male, as is so often the case with various faunal species. Females are often showier, though, at least in my estimation, and we shall have a look at a female Frosted Whiteface to see if that might be the case in this species.

Here she is, and she's a showstopper. Look at those gorgeous brown eyes, and black and lemon body. This trip was a wonderful opportunity to become more familiar with these northern dragons, which were everywhere. In Ohio, the odonatologist must make special efforts to clap eyes on a Frosted Whiteface, and he/she will not see very many.

I suspect that this species and its northern brethren that are barely hanging on in Ohio will probably vanish before long, as their ranges shift northward. There is abundant evidence of climate-caused distributional shifts in many insect species, both northern species retreating northward, and southern species rapidly advancing northward. Such range expansions/contractions have always occurred, as climates have always changed. But what we are seeing now seems accelerated and is surely induced by human-caused global warming.

Someday I will try to make time to share more examples of this.

Bristly Sarsaparilla

 

As always, click the photo to enlarge

On our recent trip to northern Michigan, we visited an amazing site known as Wetmore Pond. It's a spectacular natural area near Marquette, in the Upper Peninsula. A fairly short hike takes one back to the wetlands, which is a glacial kettle lake ringed with a wonderful fen. The hike passes through some interesting upland habitats such as the rock outcrops pictured above that overlook the fen.

And who could not notice the showy plant eking out a living in the rocky crevasses? I was quite pleased to see this one, especially in full flower. It is Bristly Sarsaparilla (Aralia hispida), a plant that I had never seen in flower.

The wetlands below, sarsaparilla above. What an incredible site to botanize and anyone with an interest in plants who finds themselves near Marquette would do well to visit Wetmore Pond.

The sarsaparilla is a northern plant, most frequent in a wide east-west belt ranging from about Winnipeg in Manitoba to the east coast, and from the Great Lakes north to the latitude of James Bay. It ranges south sparingly, primarily in the Appalachian Mountains but also in the interior to extreme northern Ohio.

However, Bristly Sarsaparilla has disappeared from some of its southernmost haunts, including Ohio. It has been collected from eight counties in extreme north-central and northeast Ohio but is now known from but one Geauga County locale. I know the Geauga County site, and it is ecologically quite similar to the Michigan locality where my observations were made.

While the flowers and inflorescences strongly suggest a parsley family member (Apiaceae), sarsaparilla belongs to a closely related group, the ginseng family (Araliaceae). 

There is absolutely no question that many southern species are rapidly expanding northward, and perhaps even more are retreating northward from their southern limits. We have lost a number of plant species that barely nipped into Ohio from the north, such as the protagonist of this blog. Long-term natural shifts in mean temperatures have always occurred and have always influenced the migration of plants.

The million-dollar question is how much human alterations and the resultant climate shifts are accelerating plant (and animal) movements. And I wonder how long the sole remaining Bristly Sarsaparilla population in Ohio will survive.

Mothing, along with a talk! Scioto Gardens, August 15

 

A male Polyphemus Moth (Antheraea polyphemus) presents an interesting visage. Big silkmoths such as this are always a hit at the sheets.

Chelsea Gottfried and I will be leading a mothing night on Saturday, August 15th. It'll commence around 8:30 pm, with Chelsea giving a brief program on moths and their importance. We'll have already set up the sheets and lights, and after the talk, we'll head out to see who is coming to visit. We'll stay until at least midnight, but participants are free to come and go as they wish.

The venue, once again, is Scioto Gardens Native Plant Nursery in Delaware County, at 2870 Curve Road. The mothing here is always interesting and can be spectacular. As you might imagine, the grounds are full of all manner of native flora so there are lots of potential host plants.

We'll also use blacklight flashlights to search for caterpillars. "Caterpillaring" is just as fun as the mothing!

One must register for this event with Scioto Gardens, and HERE IS THE LINK to do just that.

Hope to see you there!

The stunning caterpillar of the Io Moth (Automeris io). I'd be surprised if one of these doesn't turn up.

Midwest Native Plant Conference

 

A nymph-stage Snowy Tree Cricket (Oecanthus nivalis) noshes on a disk floret of an Ashy Sunflower (Helianthus mollis). The singing insects (Orthoptera) do not get their fair due for pollination services. This animal has plenty of pollen dusting its face. I have seen pollen-dusted tree crickets snacking on flowers many times.

I took this shot this morning while leading a field trip for the Midwest Native Plant Conference. This was our 17th year for the conference, and as usual it sold out in short order. Thank you to all of the organizers for their hard work in making the conference a success and providing the opportunity to hear lots of interesting speakers, interact with like-minded persons, and access to many of Ohio's top native plant nurseries who bring lots of floral goodies.

Bergamo Center at Mount Saint John in Dayton is our venue and has been for most of the conference's life. It is a perfect site for this type of event, with plenty of lawn space for vendors, a beautiful auditorium, a number of smaller rooms for breakout sessions, dining facilities and lots of lodging. The staff is superb and wonderful to work with. Also, there are plenty of field trip opportunities, both on the expansive grounds and at myriad interesting sites within a half-hour or so of Bergamo.

There were about 150 attendees, in addition to all of the organizers and volunteers. At least nine states were represented, as distant as Delaware and Missouri.

If you have an interest in botany and native plants, I encourage you to attend. The 2027 conference dates have not yet been picked, but it'll be about this time of year. Sometimes it fills with one day of opening registration, so I'd encourage you to use the website to register ASAP. I'll post the 2027 dates as soon as I know them.

The Eurasian Skylarks of Hawaii

 

I made this image on November 20, 2024, on the island of Maui, Hawaii. It is hard to beat Hawaiian sunrises, and even this iPhone snap captures this one well.

Thanks to my buddy Marty Sedluk, we got to go to Maui for a week back in November 2024. He's got a place over there and visits routinely. Shauna and I got to hang out with Marty and Eleanor and see some of the sights of this island. If you search "Hawaii" in the search engine (top left corner of the page) you'll see posts about stilts, turtles, honeycreepers, lizards and probably more.

Hawaii probably struck me differently than it would most first-time visitors. It didn't take long to learn that nearly everything we were seeing (or so it seemed) both floral and faunal was introduced. Especially at the lower elevations; higher mountainous areas seemed much better.

But introduced or not, I wanted to write about the marvelous little creature that inhabits large shortgrass meadows such as the one above. It is the legendary Eurasian Skylark (Alauda arvensis), whose aerial song is one of the great melodies of nature.

A skylark watches his surroundings from a small hillock. From this point - and points like it - skylarks would launch themselves skyward, rapidly ascend to a sufficient altitude, which is often in excess of 300 feet. Especially ambitious singers might rise to over 600 feet.

Once satisfactorily high aloft, the lark faces into the wind and hovers in its aerial display song. The complex, beautiful melody is a swiftly delivered babble of buzzy and squeaky notes interspersed with clear whistles and other notes. I find it impossible to adequately describe the wondrous song produced by this amazing lark. One must hear it for themselves, and you can do so HERE.

The skylark returns to terra firma for a well-deserved rest. Incredibly, one song can go on for 20 minutes or more! This propensity for creating aerial music, and lots of it, was the reason that Eurasian Skylarks were exported to foreign lands. The skylark is indigenous to a huge swath of Asia and Europe, but only very rarely showed up in North America as a vagrant.

Attempts were made to introduce the lark to many areas in North America, including Cincinnati, Ohio. Most of these efforts failed, but the skylarks flourished for a time on Vancouver Island, British Columbia. Various land use development has reduced this population to less than 100 birds.

Introductions to the Hawaiian Islands began in 1865, and the birds did pretty well, eventually colonizing all of the islands. They've apparently since disappeared from Kauai Island.

Unlike many invasive species, I suspect introduced Eurasian Skylarks are innocuous in that they probably don't compete much with native species, nor rob the natives of resources. 

Common Butterwort, a very showy carnivorous plant

 

These low cliffs along the shore of Lake Superior host lots of interesting plants, but here I'll focus on perhaps the most amazing of their lot, the Common Butterwort (Pinguicula vulgaris). This location is along the northeastern tip of the Keweenaw (key-wuh-naw) Peninsula of Michigan's Upper Peninsula. Wet seeps provide a steady moisture regime - perfect conditions for this post's protagonist.

Dozens of Common Butterworts brighten the damp rock face. This interesting carnivore is a true northerner, and the northern Great Lakes marks its southernmost occurrences in eastern North America. The plant becomes more common to the north, and Common Butterwort has a circumboreal distribution (worldwide, at northerly latitudes).

The violet-like flowers of this butterwort species are quite striking and often likened to violets in appearance. The oft-used English name, "Common" Butterwort is not a very good one and is derived from the epithet of the scientific name, "vulgaris", which means "common". A far better name, in my opinion - and one that is occasionally used - is Violet Butterwort. That descriptor describes the flowers beautifully, and this species tends not to be very common across large swaths of its range.

There are about 125 Pinguicula butterworts currently described, and unlike the northern species featured here, the largest number of species occurs in Central and South America.

This site almost looked surreal, is if it were some sort of odd, planted rock garden. And a rock garden it is, although no one created this one. The butterworts are highly ornamental in appearance, and it was great to finally clap eyes on flowering specimens.

As I mentioned this plant is a true carnivore, and it belongs to the world's largest family of carnivorous plants, the Bladderwort Family (Lentibulariaceae). There are some 250 species in this group, and about half of them are butterworts, and the remaining majority are bladderworts in the genus Utricularia. A smaller genus, Genlisea (corkscrew plants) make up the remainder of the family.

As always, click the image to enlarge

Unlike the high-tech traps of bladderworts, the butterworts use a simpler bug-killing design. The thick fleshy basal leaves (the genus name Pinguicula is derived from the Latin word pinguis, which means "somewhat fleshy") are quite sticky and about any hapless insect that alights on them will be stuck fast. Tiny hairs on the leaves' dorsal surfaces are capped with adhesive mucilage. The effect is like flypaper. Glands on the leaf surface generate digestive acids and enzymes that quickly break down the insect's soft parts. Eventually, the plant digests the meat of the bug through tiny pores in the leaves, thus deriving essential nutrients while growing in nutrient-poor substrates.

If you click the above photo to enlarge, you'll see all manner of trapped insects, and other debris.

While a butterwort patch may look like a showy little garden to us, it is a minefield for any insects venturing through. One misstep and their fate is to be eaten by plant, and at least from a human-centric perspective, that would not be a fun way to go.

Black Witches in Ohio!

 

This post dives a bit deeper into this amazing moth than did the last post.

A female Black Witch (Ascalapha odorata) perches on the foliage of Chestnut Oak (Quercus prinus) deep in Shawnee State Forest, Scioto County, Ohio. This is the largest moth, by dimensions, that occurs in Ohio and similar latitudes. The witch in my photo was shot where it was found near a mothing station that was part of Mothapalooza, on July 17, 2026. Amazingly, a sharp young attendee, Yann, found this one off in the woods, some distance from the illuminated sheets that most of us were inspecting for easier moth fare. A truly great find.

This Black Witch turned up Friday night - a truly epic night for mothing - and amazingly, another turned up a few miles away the same evening, at a mothing station at the Shawnee State Park Lodge. Diana Malas later contacted me to tell about yet another witch that appeared at her house in Dayton. Amazing! Three witches in one day, in Ohio! One must wonder how many that were out there went unreported.

Female Black Witches can have a wingspan approaching 9.5 inches, which is utterly huge for an insect (males are somewhat smaller). The only regularly occurring moth in the Midwest that rivals that is the Cecropia Moth (Hyalophora cecropia). It may outweigh - slightly - a Black Witch but falls short in the wingspan department.

The Black Witch is a tropical species, and the Rio Grande Valley of Texas and the southernmost reaches of some of the Gulf states is as far north as it typically reproduces and occurs in any numbers. But this species is a powerful flyer and well known for its northward wanderings. I believe they are becoming more frequent northward. Following are the iNaturalist records for Ohio for the last decade:

2026 - 12 (so far, there will likely be more to come)
2025 - 13
2024 - 8
2023 - 5
2022 - 7
2021 - 6
2020 - 5
2019 - 5
2018 - 2
2017 - 1

Going back further in the iNat database reveals very few sightings, with no records for many of the preceding years. While a more in-depth analysis of Black Witch records over a broader region would provide a more robust data set to document increases, I think that the Ohio data shows a clear trend in increased sightings in the last decade or so.

Keep your eyes open for Black Witches (they are usually hard to hard to miss). It'll be interesting to watch the continued increase in this species in the north, and to see if they eventually start reproducing regularly at this latitude. The caterpillars feed on various members of the pea family (Fabaceae), including Black Locust (Robinia pseudoacacia) and Kentucky Coffee Tree (Gymnocladus dioicus). The latter is very common statewide, and the former is less common and more range-restricted but is being increasingly used as a landscape tree. They also use various mimosa trees such as Silk Tree (Albizia julibrissin), and some mimosa species may be becoming more frequent in plantings in the north.

If you search "Black Witch" in the search box in the upper lefthand corner of this blog, you'll see other posts about them from years past, including some that have photos of the huge, spectacular caterpillars.

Mothapalooza and the Black Witch

 

Another Mothapalooza is in the books, and it was great. This one was based at Shawnee State Park Lodge in the midst of Shawnee State Forest in Scioto County, Ohio. About 140 people (plus guides, speakers, and organizers) came from nine states, including Washington and Rhode Island.

There were scads of moths and other biodiversity. Friday night was especially good, and a standout mothing station was high on a ridge at Copperhead Fire Tower. This Black Witch (Ascalapha odorata) turned up there (great find by Yann), and another turned up the same night at another locale. Black Witches are largely tropical, ranging from southern Florida and Texas south into northern South America.

Witches are powerful flyers and regularly move northward in summer and fall, with one having made it all of the way to Michigan's Upper Peninsula. A few generally turn up each year in Ohio, but records seem to be on the increase. Diana Malas in Dayton had one last Friday night as well.

This is a huge moth, with a wingspan on 9.5 inches. A truly impressive beast!

Plains Puccoon, impending storm, and Kirtland's Warbler

 

As always, click the photo to enlarge

A storm rolls into the jack pine plains of Oscoda County, Michigan. This is a magical place, with the most famous denizen being the Kirtland's Warbler. While the large pine in the center is a Red Pine (Pinus resinosa), a sprawling stand of young Jack Pine (Pinus banksiana) is in the backdrop. I could hear the rich songs of Kirtland's Warblers from this spot.

That's Plains Puccoon (Lithospermum croceum) in the foreground sporting copious yellowish-orange blossoms. The sandy soils support all manner of interesting and often specialized flora. The plains are, essentially, a well-vegetated desert.

A male Kirtland's Warbler strikes a pose on a Jack Pine branch. This bird was in the immediate area where I made the shot above. Extensive stands of Jack Pine, roughly between the ages of 5 and 20 years old, are required for this extreme habitat specialist. Kirtland's Warbler now could be referred to as "conservation-reliant". If people stopped managing the pines (cutting/replanting) for their favored growth stages, the warbler would soon disappear. Wildfires used to create the successional habitat for them, but fire suppression has mostly put an end to natural management. Kudos to the Michigan DNR and the US Fish & Wildlife Service for all of their management efforts.

Over the years and many visits to Kirtland's Warbler country, I have seen them in all their required age classes of pines. Best are the very young stands - about the size of Christmas trees. It's very easy to observe them in such places.

Male Kirtland's Warblers are anything but shrinking violets, and often rather inquisitive. This bird approached us so closely that it got inside the minimum focus range (19 feet) of my big lens. One time, on a solo trip, I was near a singing male and decided to lay down in the mats of Pennsylvania sedge and just soak in the scene. The curious warbler approached to within five feet of me, singing all the while. At that range, I almost needed earplugs! I thought he was going to hop on my leg at one point!

Oscoda County, Michigan, July 9, 2026.

The magical Twinflower, Linnaeus's favorite plant

 

One of the botanical delights of the summertime North Woods is this stunning little wildflower: Twinflower (Linnaea borealis). It is not rare in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan, where I made these images on July 7, 2026. It often forms small colonies via its trailing stems adorned with tiny round leaves.

Twinflower is, believe it or not, a member of the honeysuckle family (Caprifoliaceae). The flowering stems rise but two inches or so in height, and it's more than possible for a careless observer to walk right by a colony without taking notice.

A diligent plant photographer will spend much time on the ground, ear to the soil, to properly portray elfin species such as Twinflower. I was fortunate to spot a few plants at the crest of a small hummock, which allowed me to put the camera nearly on the ground below the flowers, and shoot up at them.

A number of tiny insects - bees, wasps, flies, beetles - are said to provide pollination services, some of them no doubt lured by the blossom's sweet fragrance.

This was the favorite flower of Swedish scientist Carolus Linnaeus, the father of binomial nomenclature and hierarchical classification. Fittingly, he is immortalized in the scientific epithet of his beloved Twinflower: Linnaea. Linnaea is also a monotypic genus: Twinflower is the only species placed in it.

The Mackinac Bridge

 

As always, click the photo to enlarge

The Mackinac Bridge, as seen the night of July 8, 2026, from the Upper Peninsula. The famous Michigan bridge is a marvel of human engineering. It spans the Straits of Mackinac (mak-in-aw) which separate lakes Michigan and Huron and connects the Upper and Lower peninsulas.

Opened on November 1, 1957, the bridge is five miles long, and those twin towers are 552 feet tall. The straits regularly experience gale force winds, and the center lanes are an open grid of steel mesh to allow air flow through and minimize lift of the deck during gales. The center span can laterally shift a remarkable 35 feet during high winds.

The Mackinac Bridge Authority offers a driver's assistance program, as some drivers are too frightened to drive across (motorcycles, too). I do not know what the drivers do - hide in the trunk? 

Looking for an exciting job? All of those lights on the cables (42 thousand miles of wire in the main cables) are replaced by hand. Workers (steeplejacks) climb the cables to reach the fixtures.

I've been across this bridge many times, and it never grows old. If you want to walk across, the bridge is closed every Labor Day, and anyone that wants to walk across can do so.

PHOTO NOTE: I think the bridge photographs better at night, and not just because the lights are visible and create a cool effect. During the day, big as it is, the bridge can get a bit lost in the mass of water around it. Probably, with certain early morning or late day lighting it could look great, but I've not yet had the fortune to be there at such times. But the Big Mac certainly pops at night.

A wide-angle, such as my go-to Canon 16-35mm f/4, is too wide in my opinion. Even at full zoom, it leaves too much blank water space around the bridge. This is a case where a moderate-range zoom lens is great, and I used my 70-200mm f/2.8 for this shot. I zoomed a bit - to 145mm - to cut off much of the long approach on the left that is on a built-up earthen berm rather than a proper bridge (even though it counts as part of the bridge). Once the camera rig is set up, it is just a matter of zooming and composing to position the bridge so that it looks good to you.

A tripod is an absolute must in order to photograph the Mackinac Bridge properly, in my view. Especially at night, due to the long exposure that will be required. I made this photo at f/22 (lots of depth of field), and ISO 400 (a low ISO is always desirable for clean files, and I could have gone even lower. But the R5 handles higher ISO's very well, and 400 is hardly a high ISO). The shutter speed was a turtle-like VERY slow 4 seconds. But who cares about that - shutter speed is essentially irrelevant if your camera is on a stable platform (tripod) and the subject is not moving.

As almost always when making such long exposure images, I use the two-second timer delay that is built into the camera's drive mode menu. Once I activate the shutter button, I move away from the rig while the camera beep beep beeps... and two seconds later the shot is fired. That ensures that the operator can't accidentally wiggle the rig while depressing the shutter.

Northern Cardinals feeding their offspring

I've been remiss in posting this video I made of the Northern Cardinals that had a nest less than three feet from my kitchen window. I could peek around the blind and watch activities - and make photos and videos - at close range without the birds knowing that I was there. 

While the female did all of the nest construction work, and egg incubation, the male was very supportive and an active participant. He would bring her food when she was on the eggs and constantly sing to her. Female cardinals sing very well, and she would frequently duet with him.

When the chick hatched - there was only one - he would help feed it, as the following video shows. This would certainly be a second nesting, given the lateness of the season, and second broods can be smaller than the preceding brood. But a Brown-headed Cowbird laid an egg in this nest shortly after the first cardinal egg appeared. The cowbird egg somehow disappeared, but that may have dissuaded the female cardinal from laying more.

I had to leave for a trip to northern Michigan about 5-6 days before the young cardinal would be due to leave the nest, and it was gone by the time that I returned. Hopefully the little fellow/girl is doing well. I will keep my eyes open for it.

UPDATE: The little fellow is doing fine. I glanced out the window a bit ago, to see the adult female cardinal with a big beetle in her bill. I knew she'd lead me to the little guy, and she did. He's in the same trumpet-creeper liana where the nest is, well concealed in its foliage. Both adults are delivering food to him, and all looks good!

Anyway, enjoy the video (sorry for the mediocre quality, the uploaded version is fairly low-resolution).

COPYRIGHT ©Jim McCormac. Shot on June 29, 2026, with my iPhone 14. Worthington, Ohio.

 

A northern bog

As always, click the photo to enlarge

We just got back from an epic week-long trip through northern Michigan, from the jack pine plains of between Grayling and Mio to the tip of the Keweenaw Peninsula. Lots of interesting stuff and I'll probably be sharing some more of it here.

Here's a few photos of a gorgeous tamarack bog near Grayling in Oscoda County, from this morning. This one is far along in ecological succession and no longer has open water. The pale whitish (glaucous) plants in the foreground of the first image are Bog Rosemary (Andromeda glaucophylla). It was once found in five NE counties in Ohio but is now considered extirpated. The leafy green shrublet with it is Leatherleaf (Chamaedaphne calyculata). 

This scene is dominated by Virginia Chain Fern (Woodwardia virginica [perhaps now best placed in the genus Anchistea]). The robust fern is common in such places.

More to follow...