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.