Photographic/Watercolor conservation art exhibit

 

Watercolor artist Juliet Mullett and I have collaborated on an art exhibit focused on flora, fauna, and conservation. It features 51 pieces: Juliet's amazing watercolor pencil portraits, many of which are new (like the box turtle on the poster above), and my photography. It hangs on the walls of the Grange Insurance Audubon Center, just south of downtown Columbus, Ohio. Registration info is HERE.

While the exhibit went on the walls on November 2, the semi-official kickoff is Saturday, November 16. Doors open at 5:30 pm and I will give a talk about conservation, including many of the subjects of our works, at 7 pm. It's free, and I'd love to see you there. Feel free to pass the word!

Support the Big Sit!

The Big Sit! is an effort to tally as many bird species as possible within 24 hours, from the confines of an officially designated 17-foot diameter circle. The Big Sit! concept was formalized by the New Haven (Connecticut) Bird Club in 1993, and later Bird Watcher's Digest stepped in to provide sponsorship. I wrote in more detail about Big Sits in last Sunday's Columbus Dispatch, RIGHT HERE.

Big Sits are a lot of fun, and tax all of a birder's identification skills. They can also be used as an interesting way to raise funds for worthy causes. The Big Sit! occurs this coming weekend, October 11th & 12th, and well over 150 circles will be formed and sat in all across the States and beyond.

The Grange Insurance Audubon Center (GIAC) just south of downtown Columbus, Ohio. The center opened about five years ago, and one of its major missions is to expose kids to nature. Because of the center's location, it draws lots of inner city school kids, and helps to teach them about the natural world. That's a righteous cause, and one that I know of many of us are keenly interested in. Thus, I was flattered to be asked to join GIAC's board, and accepted of course.

The GIAC is about as environmentally friendly a building as one can construct, and that includes the vegetated roof, seen here. One day, I was gazing up at the structure, and the light bulb illuminated over my head. BIG SIT! The rooftop should be an ideal place to set up a 17-foot diameter circle and count away.

Fast forward and the time is nearly upon us. Along with Bill Heck, Columbus Audubon's immediate past president, ace birder Steve Landes (he found the recent mega-rarity Reddish Egret [CLICK HERE]), Suzan Jervey, and probably others, I'll be up on that roof A LOT come this Sunday, October 12th. You're free to join us for as little or as long as you wish, if you want to get in some sedentary birding. Our circle will be on the highest point of the roof, all the way to the back right in the photo. We (at least Bill and I, for starts) will take up position just after midnight this Sunday, and stay there (breaks are permitted!) well into the following evening. If it is a clear calm night, it's amazing how many species can be detected after dark by their calls.

This is the view from our circle, looking north and east. The field and wetlands draw a diversity of birds, and the Peregrine Falcons that hang out on downtown skyscrapers make occasional passes through the area.

Just west of the center is the mighty Scioto River, and its presence should mean lots of birds. This locale is a migratory freeway, and I bet we have a few dozen species checked off by sunrise. Because of the habitat diversity in view of the Big Sit circle, I'd think we will muster at least 60 species, and possibly many more than that. It'll be interesting to see what the total turns out to be.

Progress updates will be posted to the Grange Insurance Audubon Center's website, RIGHT HERE. As we tick new species, Jeff Yost and crew will post them to the site, along with information about the species.

Finally, we hope to raise a few bucks to support the center and its mission. A common way of donating to Big Sits is via a per-species pledge. Maybe it's $5.00 a species, $1.00 a species, or even a quarter a species. Every contribution is appreciated! If you would like to help fund our mission (madness), please visit the Grange Insurance Audubon Center website RIGHT HERE.

If you want more details about the Big Sit! or would like to come up on the roof for a bit, please email me at: jimmccormac35 AT gmail.com

The transformation of an urban wasteland

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 improving the local habitat.

I've long been familiar with this area. Ever since I was a kid, I'd head to this wide spot in the Scioto River - courtesy the Greenlawn Avenue dam - to look for birds. The pooled waters behind the dam are, and were, a beacon for waterbirds. Many a rarity has turned up here over the years, and yours truly has found Great Black-backed Gull and Black-legged Kittiwake here - both major central Ohio rarities.

While we were always interested in the river, birders pretty much shunned the terrestrial habitats of the Whittier Street Peninsula. It was a rough place, peopled by unsavory characters frequenting unsavory habitats. Excepting a narrow fringe of cottonwood, silver maple and a few other riparian trees along the river, there just wasn't much habitat worth exploring.

A Virginian tiger moth, Spilosoma virginica (I think) peers at your blogger. After yesterday's talks had concluded, we split the group up and headed outside to look for dragonflies and other critters. What a change has come to the Whittier Street Peninsula since the pre-GIAC days! Restoration and recovery of habitat has led to an enormous spike in native plant diversity, and with that increase in botanical diversity comes a huge increase in animal diversity.

We only had an hour and a half to poke around, and it went fast. While the dragonflies weren't overly exceptional, although we did see quite a few, there were scads of other interesting animals and we nearly always had something noteworthy in our sights.

A locust borer, Megacyllene robiniae, feasts on goldenrod nectar. What was not long ago waste ground is now reverting to meadow, and much of it is rich with Canada goldenrod, Solidago canadensis. I am an unabashed goldenrod fan; if you want to find fabulously diverse insect communities, just dive into the local goldenrod patch.

A gray hairstreak, Strymon melinus, delighted the group and for a brief time, become a Lepidopteran celebrity with cameras clicking all around. We saw lots of butterflies of many species, including immigrants such as the common buckeye. Metro Parks and GIAC are augmenting the natural flora of the area with native plant plantings, and it's working - the local biodiversity has exploded compared to what it was just a few short years ago.

I was especially pleased to find this gorgeous caterpillar - it is the larva of the snowberry clearwing, Hemaris diffinis. This is one of the day-flying "hummingbird moths".

We saw far more during our brief foray than I can share here. Many species of dragonflies were frequenting the newly created wetlands, and the buffering meadows were full of cool insects. A Pied-billed Grebe and a couple of Blue-winged Teal loafed in the water, and a muskrat put on quite a show, as did a big snapping turtle accompanied by a painted turtle that was attempting to graze algae from the larger turtle's back. Especially exciting was the appearance, directly overhead, of a pair of Peregrine Falcons, probably the local downtown nesters.

The Whittier Street Peninsula will only improve with age. As the wetlands, meadows, and woodlands mature and diversify, the attendant animal life will also improve. Given its location in such a highly urbanized area, the Audubon Scioto Metro Park serves as a major beacon to migratory birds and insects. I suspect some very noteworthy records will be made here in coming years.

It has been gratifying to watch the ongoing restoration of what, not long ago, was pretty much an urban wasteland. The transformation of the Whittier Peninsula from impound lot/industrial refuse to vibrant natural habitats is a great positive for the City of Columbus, and should serve as a model of urban brownfield restoration.

To learn more about this area, CLICK HERE, and HERE.