Silent nights...

Narrow-winged Tree Cricket, Oecanthus niveus.

I photographed this female tree cricket a few days back, before our weather took a turn for the frostier. Her potential suitors were common in the shrubbery around here, and their songs were part of the great insect symphony. Cold weather has done in just about all of the Orthopteran musicians, and the nights will now be much quieter for some time to come.

The last holdouts of the cricket crowd will be Allard's, Carolina, and Striped Ground Crickets, the latter two of which I heard today, despite a high temperature of only 50 degrees or so. Listen for these three in lawns, sheltered areas of gardens and mulch beds, and other protected sites.

River Otters, family unit

Score another one for the fantastic videography of Laura and David Hughes, who brought us the fabulous Bobcat video of the previous post. Their Monroe County, Ohio game trail is truly a magical place, and there they also captured footage of one of our most interesting animals, the River Otter, Lontra canadensis. The following video shows what appear to be two adults, and two juveniles. What I assume is the adult male makes his departure from the video first, and then we can see the two youngsters, which are slightly smaller than the adult female, apparently attempt to nurse, but they are rebuffed.

River Otters are rather hard to observe in the wild, and few of us will ever get to see a scene such as shown in this video.

Video: Laura and David Hughes

Like the Bobcat of the previous post, River Otters did not fair well with the onset of European colonization of the Ohio country. By 1900 or so, unregulated trapping and habitat loss had extirpated them from Ohio. Beginning in 1986, the Ohio Division of Wildlife embarked on a reintroduction program, and ultimately released 123 animals over a seven year period in several widely scattered locales. The otters took, and flourished. Today, there may be as many as 7,000 of them roaming our waterways, in most of our counties.

Thanks once again to Laura and David for sharing their amazing video work.

Bobcat baby, caught on video!

Now this is just too cool! Laura and David Hughes, who have an almost surreal knack for finding interesting and unusual things, have scored once again and big time. They spend a fair bit of time over in eastern Ohio's Monroe County, and during their wanderings noticed a well traveled game path. So, they set up a Wildgame Innovations trail camera, switched to video mode, and achieved some awesome results.

The following clip shows an adult Bobcat, Felis rufus, ambling down the path shadowed by a kitten. And boy-o-boy is that one cute (and fierce) kitten! To our great benefit and viewing pleasure, the baby Bobcat pauses in front of the camera and roots around a bit before trotting off to catch up with mama.

Video: Laura and David Hughes

It's encouraging to see the comeback of Bobcats in Ohio and adjacent regions. In 2011, there were 136 verified sightings in Ohio - an increase of 30 over 2010. It's thought that these little cats - a big male might weigh 40 lbs. - had become extirpated in Ohio by 1850 - victims of persecution and habitat loss. By the 1960's, a few sightings were being reported, and the number of documented observations very slowly but steadily has grown ever since. Today, there are certainly hundreds of Bobcats - maybe even 1,000+ - roaming the hills of southern and eastern Ohio, and there are even occasional sightings outside of the hill country.

Thanks to Laura and David for allowing me to share their wonderful video work. I'll soon post another of their videos, and believe it or not, this one is even cooler than these Bobcats. It shows, in wonderful clarity, a family unit of River Otters and if you thought that baby Bobcat was cool, wait until you see a pack of otters playing right in front of the camera lens!

Bald-faced Hornet nest

While cruising the roads at Killdeer Plains Wildlife Area last Thursday, I came across many interesting things, as is nearly always the case at this vast place. The verges of this road were loaded with migrant sparrows, mostly White-crowned and White-throated sparrows. When working such bird-rich sites, I usually have the big lens clipped in place on the camera, so as not to miss a good bird shot if one presents itself.

At one point, I glanced over to see this papery football-sized contraption nearly at eye level. A Bald-faced Hornet nest! Naturally, I was pleased to make this find, as the hornets normally place their nests much higher in trees than this, and thus make good photos harder to obtain. I skidded the car onto the road's edge and hopped out, the Canon already rigged with the Sigma 150-500 lens. Such a telephoto is a good idea when dealing with potentially dangerous animals such as these hornets - the smart person can remain at a safe distance, yet still get decent images.

Here's one of the inhabitants up close: Bald-faced Hornet, Dolichovespula maculata. I took this shot a few years ago, with a point & shoot. I was able to get in fairly close - but still didn't get a great image - before signs of aggression by the hornet made me back off.

Bald-faced Hornets rank very high on the scale of fierce insects. After all, they hunt, kill, and eat other beasts like Eastern Yellowjackets! From my experience, they aren't overtly aggressive towards people, though - unless you invade their turf. I am about to invade their turf.

Using the big Sigma lens allowed me to remain 30 or more feet away from the nest, and still zoom to frame fill the shot. But, that wasn't good enough. I kept creeping closer, and progressively unzooming the lens until I was shooting at 150 mm and still mostly filling the image with the nest. By now, I was 15 feet or so away, and on high alert.

All of a sudden - WHAM! A bright white electric pain shot through my right hand. One of the hornets had hit me! It was essentially a drive by stinging. The occasional hornet was coming and going from the nest, and I think one just happened to head off in my direction. Confronted with a strange interloper, it whacked me on its way out. Their sting is quite amazing, actually. The animal never even landed on me - it apparently just hit me in a fraction of a second as it whizzed by. The effect is sudden and extraordinary, though. It's as if you've been stuck with a hypodermic needle heated to 1,000 degrees. Every one of your body's senses immediately fixates on the sting, and the synapses instantly fire off brilliantly intense warning messages to the brain. Within a nanosecond every fiber of your being is telling you to FLEE!

Which I did. Knowing that problems could arise, I had the car as close as possible, door open and windows shut. If need be I could dive in there and seal myself off from the hornets.

CAVEAT: I'd never recommend trying for close-ups of a Bald-faced Hornet nest. You're almost certain to get stung, and that can be a real problem for some people. I viewed this opportunity as a calculated risk and felt that a few factors were in my favor. One, I didn't plan on getting TOO close. Two, the situation was thus that I had a hornet shelter - the car - very close at hand. And perhaps most importantly, based on experience, I have no allergy issues to stinging Hymenoptera. Some people react very badly to stings and go into anaphylactic shock. Stings can be life-threatening in such cases and sensitive people would never, ever want to go anywhere near a Bald-faced Hornet nest.

After trotting back to the car, I - kind of, sort of - reveled in the pain of the sting. While the initial blast is jolting in the extreme, its effects wear off rapidly and within five minutes or so it's as if nothing ever happened. Being that this was my first Bald-faced Hornet sting, I was interested in its impact.

Upon review of my images in the camera's viewing screen, I felt I could do better and should make the most of this opportunity. So, on went the 100 mm macro. This lens, unfortunately, would necessitate a closer approach - probably within 12 feet. It turns out that I was able to, quite stealthily and very quietly, creep to about ten feet away. That enabled close shots of the nest's entrance. Note the hornets swarming about, with many more lurking just inside the doorway. They remained seemingly unconcerned by me although I'm sure they were well aware of my presence.

After making a series of images, BAM! Another one got me on the right hand, in nearly the same place as the other. I took the hint and exited stage right with good speed. No sense pushing my luck, and one thing you do not want to do is bring down the wrath of the entire colony and have the whole gang hot on your heels.

In addition to having a nice opportunity to make images of these interesting insects, it was also informative to experience their stings. One often hears inaccurate or much exaggerated claims about animal bites and stings, and probably the only way to know the truth for certain is to experience it. Not that I'd ever recommend that anyone go all Justin Schmidt and try to get stung, but at least now I can speak with firsthand familiarity should the need to describe the sting of a Bald-faced Hornet ever arise.

Red-headed Woodpecker granary tree

"I would not recommend to any one to trust their fruit to the Red-heads..." [John James Audubon]

An immature Red-headed Woodpecker, Melanerpes erythrocephalus, regards your narrator from his lofty perch in the crown of a massive White Oak. Note the beginnings of his namesake scarlet head-feathering coming in. By next spring, his noggin will be aflame with satiny ruby-red feathers.

While wandering about Killdeer Plains Wildlife Area last Thursday, I heard the raucous kwerrs of a Red-headed Woodpecker coming from a patch of oaks. The calls continued from the same general area for some time, while I focused on sorting through a passel of sparrows along a nearby field's edge.

After a bit, I abandoned the sparrows and wandered over to the vicinity of the woodpecker, with an idea as to what might be afoot. Mr. Red-head was fixated on these two large trees - a sprawling White Oak in the back, and a tall Pin Oak up front.

Many limbed and quite gnarly, the big White Oak was full of the nooks, crannies, and punky-tissued dead limbs that make for an ideal granary tree. A granary, as applied to woodpeckers, is a storage area for nuts that the birds harvest. The king of granaries is the Acorn Woodpecker of the western U.S. and Central America. Acorn Woodpeckers create elaborately engineered and architecturally striking granaries: neat rows of holes bored into trunks with each excavation nearly fitted with an acorn.

Red-headed Woodpecker granaries are more haphazard in design but serve the same purpose. Acorns collected by the birds are stuffed into tree crevices and fissures, into small cavities, and under bark. The purpose? Stocking in supplies for winter, the food to be withdrawn from the larder when times get tough.

Sure enough, my bird was busily provisioning his granary. He (could be a she, I'm not sure) made frequent flights into the crown of the Pin Oak - right next door to the White Oak granary tree - to pluck acorns from the limbs. Twisting about in the manner of a chickadee, the Red-head deftly detached the shiny round marblelike fruit.

From my experience, Red-headed Woodpeckers covet Pin Oak acorns if they're available. Killdeer Plains' thick wet clayey soils support scads of Pin Oaks, and it's no coincidence that Red-headed Woodpeckers also abound at this site. As can be seen from the model's thumbnail (me, thank you very much!), Pin Oak acorns are tiny little affairs - perfect for Red-headed Woodpeckers to snatch, carry, and stash.

Immediately after wrestling an acorn free, our woodpecker would fly back into the crown of his granary tree, and select an appropriate cupboard for his plunder. He had several distinct hiding spots scattered throughout the tree, and I could discern no rhyme or reason for why he would sometimes take an acorn here, then over there the next round. But I, obviously, am not a Red-headed Woodpecker and thus not privy to the inner workings of their keen minds.

Ah! Our boy has found a suitable hiding spot! He prepares to stuff the oak fruit in.

After pushing the acorn into the crevice - this one is probably 25-30 feet up in the tree - he carefully tamps it into position with soft blows from his chisel-like bill.

At this time of year, when the acorn crop is ripe and the winter's cold winds are right around the corner, Red-headed Woodpeckers work double-time at provisioning their granaries. This woodpecker probably made one round trip about every five minutes or so, and likely spent a good chunk of his day at this task. By the time he's done, that old oak tree will probably have hundreds of acorns stuffed throughout its limbs. Its bank vault of acorns will serve the bird well when food becomes lean in the dead of winter.

A beautiful Indian Summer day

This Painted Lady, Vanessa cardui, was one of many enjoying the beautiful Ohio weather today. Skies were sunny and temperatures climbed to the high 70's - possibly our last such day of the year. I did something that, believe it or not, I rarely do - take the day off! Camera gear in tow, I headed up to Killdeer Plains and vicinity to see what I might find.

I wasn't disappointed. Lots of interesting things surfaced, and I made photos of nearly all of it. Got whacked - twice! - by Bald-faced Hornets as I photo-documented a low-hanging nest; shot images of a Great Blue Heron hunting grasshoppers in a field; and watched a Red-headed Woodpecker building his granary.

Too tired to put up anything more right now, but more will follow.

An Explosion of Crane Flies

Charles Alexander was a Crane Fly connoisseur without parallel. Over the course of his career as an entomologist, Alexander did his darndest to delineate the members of the Order Diptera - flies - with an especially tight focus on Crane Flies. By the time he died in 1981, at the grand old age of 92, Alexander had described over 11,000 species of flies, including some 3,000 Crane Flies. That is a truly remarkable accomplishment, and the good Doctor must have been a whirlwind of productivity.

Here's a Crane Fly. I took this photo this evening, by the front door of my house. I'm sure you've seen these insects; they are quite conspicuous, looking somewhat like mosquitoes on steroids. A female of one of the larger species, such as this specimen, can have a leg span of three inches. Many a Crane Fly illiterati has panicked and then pancaked these interesting bugs, thinking them to be super mosquitoes when in reality Crane Flies are utterly harmless and don't bite or sting.

I wish I could tell you exactly which species this one is, but I don't know. Maybe an expert will see this and be able to tell us. Whether one or more species is involved, this has been an absolute boom year for Crane Flies. I've seen scores of them - far more than I recall in other years - and others have made mention of the same thing. Most adult Crane Flies apparently don't feed; they live only to mate and reproduce. Their larvae, which resemble grubs, DO eat and turf grass roots are a target of some species.

Up close and personal. This specimen still has all of its six legs. It's not uncommon to see Crane Flies with missing legs, as these spindly appendages are easily shed. Note the haltere that is visible just below and behind the far wing. Click the photo to expand and you'll see it much better. It's the short filament with a knobbed tip. A haltere is a highly modified wing, and a trademark of flies. Over time, their second set of wings has evolved into these little gyroscope-like appendages that serve to stabilize the animal as it flies.

If anyone knows why there seems to be such an explosion of Crane Flies this fall, please do tell.