Native Tree and Shrub symposium, March 21, Cincinnati Zoo

Original Ann Geise artwork, for this conference. Ann has created numerous pieces for various Midwest Native Plant Society events, and all of them are spectacular. Ann is an artistic Ohio treasure!

Native Tree & Shrub symposium

Look at these fabulous speakers for the Living Landscapes: Native Tree & Shrub Symposium. March 21, 2026, at the Cincinnati Zoo & Botanical Garden. $95 includes a zoo pass, free parking at the zoo, and a sit-down buffet lunch.

REGISTER HERE

When: March 21, 2026, 10:00–4 PM.

Where: Cincinnati Zoo, Frisch's Theater. Zoo pass included for one day and parking. Buffet Lunch included.

Speakers: Jim McCormac, Tom Borgman, Sam Settlemyre, Greg Torres and and Brian Jorg.
Ceu's may be available for attending.

Tom Borgman, Living Life on the Edge
We will investigate some ecological concepts of forest edges and succession. We will also look at the plants and wildlife that inhabit edges and how you can create some edge like habitat on your property. The transition zone at the edges of habitats is where we frequently discover the most captivating flora and fauna!

Brian Jorg, Cincinnati Zoo-Bowyer Farm, Great Native Shrubs for the Home Landscape
We will explore the wonderful diversity of our native shrubs, their culture and wildlife value. From deer resistance to keystone pollinator qualities, we will look at the individual characteristics that make this group of plants valuable to any landscape. From full sun to shade, we will discuss shrubs for any landscape situation.

Jim McCormac, Caterpillars make the natural world go 'round
The biggest group of herbivores in Ohio, by a long shot, are caterpillars. Their collective biomass probably outweighs that of Ohio’s thriving white-tailed deer population. Nearly all of these caterpillars are the spawn of moths: 4,000 species? 6,000? No one knows with certainty, as moths are not nearly as well known as their butterfly counterparts (only 160ish species in Ohio). Native plants grow caterpillars, and caterpillars are the fuel that underpins ecological food webs. We would not have most of our songbirds were it not for native plants growing these tube steaks on legs, and a great many other animals depend heavily on caterpillars. Feeding evidence of caterpillars on one’s plants is by no means a bad thing – it should be a mark of pride for the gardener. Those that grow natives, and by extension the caterpillars that have co-evolved to feed on them, are contributing greatly to conservation. This talk will be a pictorial romp through the crazy and fascinating world of Lepidopteran larvae and the roles that they play. Some caterpillars are nearly beyond belief, resembling sea slugs, tree snakes, bird droppings, plant bits and all manner of other mimicry. Most importantly, we will look at how our work with native flora benefits the natural world around us via the production of caterpillars.

Greg Torres, Planting for Birds
Plants and birds have a long history of working together. As an example of mutualism, this development and relationship between plants and birds has had far reaching consequences, encouraging co-evolution that enhanced the survival of both plants and birds. “Planting For Birds” explores some of these relationships, tips how we can grow plants to create habitats to help birds thrive, as well as resources for selections of beautiful native plants that support our local ecosystem.

Sam Settlemyre, An Introduction to Tree Care & Advocacy
Trees do so much for people, but what can we do for trees? Trees provide people with cleaner air, carbon sequestration, reductions in urban heat island effect, and so much more! While trees do so much for us, what can we do in return for them? In this presentation we will explore the ways in which you can set up trees for success through better planting techniques, regular care and maintenance. We will also explore some of the current threats, disease and otherwise, to trees and what we can do to help. Finally, we will discuss some ways in which we can advocate on behalf of trees in our community and help them live long healthy lives.

Sponsors:
Understory Level
Woodland Cemetery & Arboretum Association
Wimberg Landscaping
Wildflower Level
Natives in Harmony
Quail Ridge Specimen Trees
Herb Layer Level
Western Wildlife Corridor
Wild Birds Unlimited - West
Taking Root
Greater Cincinnati Wild Ones Chapter-meet your chapter members!
Civic Garden Center of Greater Cincinnati

Bobcat talk this Saturday!

Dr. Shauna Weyrauch of Ohio State University

A reminder for those into bobcats (and who wouldn't be into bobcats?). Conservation biologist and educator Shauna Weyrauch will give a program on Ohio's recovering bobcat population this Saturday, February 7 at 1pm at the fabulous nature center at Highbanks Metro Park in Delaware County (Ohio). In addition to all of Shauna's interesting information and photos, there are Purple Finches visiting the center's feeders! Hope to see you there!

Loggerhead shrikes are predatory birds. Why are they endangered in Ohio?

 

A loggerhead shrike hunts from an old fencepost/Jim McCormac

Columbus Dispatch

February 1, 2026

NATURE

Jim McCormac

On my recent trip to Houston, I built in plenty of time to explore areas along the Gulf Coast and vicinity. Once outside of the sphere of Houston, one can get into wide-open, sparsely inhabited places. That’s where we spent our time, primarily looking for birds to photograph.

It wasn’t long before we saw our first loggerhead shrike, perched on a roadside wire. By the time our travels were over, Shauna and I had seen 80 or more of these fascinating songbirds.

The loggerhead shrike is so named because of its disproportionately large noggin – a “loggerhead.” Perhaps more interesting is its scientific genus name, Lanius. That Latin word translates to “butcher.” That relates to an oft-used colloquialism for the shrike: butcherbird.

Put it this way: If shrikes were the size of whooping cranes, we humans could be in a world of hurt. While a loggerhead shrike is only about the size of a catbird, their brutality is on the level of a great white shark.

Their prey can range up to the size of a vole – which weighs at least as much as the shrike. Remarkably, in areas where they occur with 13-lined ground squirrels, shrikes can capture and kill those.

One of these mammals weighs up to 250 grams – five times the heft of a shrike. That’s akin to a psychotically homicidal Pee-wee Herman taking down a passive André the Giant. More common fare includes large insects such as grasshoppers, big spiders and even amphibians and reptiles.

While shrikes have large powerful raptorial bills, they lack the strong feet and talons of raptors. Hence comes the world of hurt part for victims. If you are lucky, the attacking shrike quickly snaps your vertebrae and the end comes fast.

Unlucky victims do not die rapidly and are relocated to a sharp object such as a projecting nail – as in my photo – sharp thorn or some similar skewering implement.

The prey is unceremoniously impaled, with the barbed wire or whatever serving as its substitute talons. Once stuck, pieces can be ripped off the body and eaten at the shrike’s leisure. The stuff of nightmares, so it would seem, but it’s business as usual for the butcherbird.

Loggerhead shrikes once were common, at least locally, in Ohio. While originally more of a southern bird, the clearing of the vast eastern deciduous forest – which blanketed 95% of Ohio – allowed this species of open country to expand northward. They reached their peak here in the first few decades of the 20th century.

At the time, agriculture was far more wildlife-friendly than it is today. Farming landscapes tended to be mosaics of cropland, fallow fields and meadows, and brushy fencerows that supported an abundance of insects, rodents and small songbirds – the shrike’s stock in trade.

In his 1935 publication "Distribution of the Breeding Birds of Ohio," ornithologist Lawrence Hicks noted that loggerhead shrikes were “very common” in some regions of the state and were likely present in every county.

As agribusiness increasingly eliminated non-cropland, increased the use of pesticides and segued to massive planting of monocultures, it greatly reduced biodiversity. Shrikes began to decline by the 1940s and that trend continued to the present.

When I penned my book, "Birds of Ohio," in 2004, I noted that there were perhaps only two nesting pairs of shrikes annually. Twelve years later, I was a co-author of "The Second Atlas of Breeding Birds in Ohio" and authored the loggerhead shrike account.

By this time, the shrike had been listed as endangered by the Ohio Division of Wildlife, a status it still carries. In my account, I noted that it was now one of Ohio’s rarest breeding species.

I suppose one might be forgiven for thinking that perhaps it’s a good thing that such a barbaric predator has been vanquished. But that would be to think in anthropomorphic terms. Shrikes just do what they evolved to do, same as sharks, mosquitoes, snakes, scorpions, and human beings.

While it might appear that all is lost for loggerhead shrikes in Ohio, as agriculture now covers 55% of the state, and the days of shrikes (and lots of other wildlife) in those regions are over, new possibilities have arisen from an unlikely source.

Strip mining – using large machinery to uncover and extract coal seams – began in Ohio about 100 years ago. In total, nearly 450,000 acres were mined – an area larger than Franklin County.

These sites were left as lunar wastelands largely devoid of flora and fauna. In 1972, laws were enacted that required the reclamation of former mine lands. Tens of thousands of acres in southeastern Ohio have been reclaimed, and these sites resemble savannas and prairies – excellent shrike habitat, or so it would appear.

By the time reclamation began to bear fruit, shrikes had already collapsed and thus could probably not populate these sites.

Enter our neighbor to the north, Canada. Loggerhead shrikes formerly occurred in the provinces of Ontario and Quebec but had disappeared there as well. In the late 1990s, Canadian biologists embarked on a captive breeding and release program, introducing shrikes into suitable habitat. This effort worked and has maintained a core shrike population. In 2012, shrikes fledged an impressive 82 chicks.

Perhaps it’s time to emulate the Canadians and consider a similar program to repatriate the charismatic butcherbird back to the Buckeye State.

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.

Rock Pigeons occupy expensive Gulf retreats

I didn't travel to Texas recently to take pictures of Rock Pigeons. Yet I did, and there's an interesting story behind these birds. We spent a lot of time along the Gulf Coast between Freeport and Galveston. The shore is littered with million to multimillion dollar seasonal retreats on stilts (Note: if you have to put your house on one-story tall stilts, it's probably not a smart place to build, and even stilts won't protect against severe hurricanes).

Anyway, as these monstrosities are largely uninhabited in winter, the pigeons move in. The plastic owls people attach to their balcony rails do not deter these clever birds. So, these pigeons are living large in the eaves and rafters of the seasonal pads of the wealthy - go pigeons!

I will note that Rock Pigeons are a personal favorite bird. I'm aware that they aren't native - pigeons were introduced to North America in the 1600's. But insofar as I know, they do little or no harm ecologically - even the smattering of pigeons that return to their wild roots and nest on cliffs in wild places. About all of the "problems" they cause are human-centric. Further, pigeons are gorgeous birds. The flock in the photo contains some of the classic "blue-bar" birds with grayish body and two thick black wing stripes - that's the wild phenotype. Some stunning coal-black individuals are also in the photo, and color variation in Rock Pigeons is wildly variable.

This species has been heavily studied in regard to color genetics, avian orientation (homing pigeons), and flight mechanics. The protein hormone prolactin - which enables mammals (and some other animals, including pigeons) to produce milk, was first discovered in pigeons. The lowly pigeon has made tremendous contributions to science but receives little credit for it.

Clapper Rail

 

A Clapper Rail (Rallus crepitans) peeks from a dense saltmarsh along the Gulf of Mexico. This morning - January 12, 2026 - dawned clear and beautiful, and shortly after leaving the hotel, we passed by an opening in a large coastal saltmarsh that was full of birds. We pulled over, carefully approached the spot, and were able to get fairly close, and just as good, could get on the ground to better depict our subjects on their level.

After shooting more obvious subjects - various herons and egrets, Roseate Spoonbills, ibises, etc. - I noticed a Clapper Rail peeking from the marsh. Soon it became apparent that there were three rails, and two of them, apparently unaware of or indifferent to our presence, came into the open and put on a show.

As always, click the image to enlarge

One of the Clapper Rails poses beautifully, in between bouts of preening. While the big chicken-like birds are probably more extroverted than most of their rail brethren, they'll still dart rapidly back into the vegetation if startled. But we stayed nice and quiet and had about fifteen quality minutes to shoot these birds in primo light.

A Clapper Rail scuttles onto a mudflat, showing its oversized foot. One reason that this big rail is so successful is probably due to its varied diet. They'll eat all manner of readily available fare: worms, crabs, shrimp, all manner of invertebrate animal life, seeds and other plant parts, and even fish. A Ring-billed Gull was nearby when I made these shots, working on a dead fish. One of the Clapper Rails went over and attempted to wrestle with the gull over the fish and did nip away parts of the piscine treat.

The stubby tail of a Clapper Rail, which it frequently holds cocked aloft, in the manner of a wren.

Most rails swim well, and the Clapper Rail is no exception. This one went motorboating about, snapping at morsels on the water's surface and submerging its head to forage on who knows what, in the manner of a dabbling duck.

The Clapper Rail is extremely similar to the King Rail, but they differ consistently in habitat. The former is confined to salt marshes along the Atlantic and Gulf coasts, while the King Rail favors freshwater marshes and sometimes brackish (slightly salty) wetlands.

Clapper and King rails represent a bit of a taxonomic snarl, and the two "species" are known to hybridize (apparently not frequently, but who knows). While there is still plenty to be learned about these two entities, I am sure, they have recently been carved up. The King Rail was split into two species: the nominate King Rail of much of the eastern U.S., and the fairly recently minted Aztec Rail of central Mexico. The Clapper Rail was cleft into three species: the Clapper Rail of this post, which ranges along the Atlantic and Gulf coasts of the U.S., Ridgway's Rail of the Pacific coast/southwestern U.S., and the Mangrove Rail of Central and South America.

But if you see a rail that looks like this in an American coastal salt marsh, it's about sure to be a Clapper Rail.

Yellow-rumped Warbler is Ohio's only regular wintering warbler

 

A female yellow-rumped warbler feasts on poison ivy berries/Jim McCormac

NATURE

Jim McCormac

Columbus Dispatch

January 19, 2026

Come mid-winter, birders start to experience warbler-deficit disorder. The small, colorful songbirds are favorites among the binocular-toting crowd, and Ohio is a major warbler hotspot.

Forty-one warbler species have occurred in the Buckeye State, and 36 of them occur annually. Many species occur in large numbers, especially during spring and fall migration.

But May – peak of vernal migration – is still months away. That’s a long time for those of thirsting for colorful Blackburnian, Cape May and Magnolia warblers and their dashing brethren. Collectively, our warblers display a palette of hues that would dazzle the most ambitious artist.

However, most of our warblers are currently residing in haunts that should make most of us northerners envious: southern Florida, Colombia, Costa Rica, the Dominican Republic, Mexico. Most species of warblers winter in tropical climes with some species as far south as Argentina and Bolivia.

Take hope, though – we still have the hardy yellow-rumped warbler! This feathered tough bucks the dominant paradigm of its southbound snowbird associates and routinely winters in northerly latitudes such as Ohio.

The yellow-rumped warbler is the most abundant North American warbler with a population estimated at 150 million birds. “Butterbutts,” as they are slangily known, are among our showiest warblers, but people get jaded to them due to their commonness. “Just another butterbutt” is an oft-heard refrain amongst birders poring through the waves of spring and fall migrants.

No yellow-rumped warblers occupy Ohio during the summer months. Their breeding season lies well to our north, where they nest across the length and breadth of the conifer-dominated boreal forest.

Breeding butterbutts can be found from Alaska to Newfoundland, and south to northernmost Michigan. Others breed further south at high elevations in the Appalachian Mountains and the western Rocky Mountains.

While both sexes sport the telltale yellow rump, the male is admittedly flashier. It is clad in showy black and grayish-blue plumage highlighted by a golden throat and flanks. At one time, scientists cleaved this widespread warbler into two species: the eastern “myrtle” warbler and the western “Audubon’s” warbler.

Males of the latter, named for the legendary frontiersman and ornithologist John James Audubon, wear a lemony-colored crown patch and flashy yellow throat. The myrtle warbler – which birds appearing in Ohio are – lack the golden crown and have white throats.

Due to a zone of hybridization, where myrtle and Audubon’s warbler ranges meet, scientists lumped them into one species – the yellow-rumped warbler – in 1973. To this day, many birders still refer to these subspecies as myrtle and Audubon’s warblers.

Breeding yellow-rumped warblers are tightly tied to coniferous trees, including fir, pine and spruce. Away from that habitat, however, they are perhaps the most versatile of all our warblers in habitat use.

I would not be surprised to see a butterbutt in nearly any habitat imaginable and probably have over the years. The warblers are also adept at finding and eating a wide range of food, which, in addition to their vast breeding range, probably plays a big role in their success.

This hardy, versatile warbler also winters further north than any other warbler. While some birds range as far south as the Caribbean and Central America, most winter in the U.S.

I’m in southeastern Texas as I write this column, and yellow-rumped warblers are everywhere. But just a week ago, Shauna and I participated in the Hocking Hills Christmas Bird Count in Ohio and found seven butterbutts in our turf. Yellow-rumped warblers winter commonly north to Ohio and other Midwestern states.

A prime reason that butterbutts can survive northern winters is their ability to include lots of fruit into their diet. And a major source of that fruit is one of the most despised native plants in North America: poison ivy (Toxicodendron radicans).

I suspect that poison ivy is THE primary reason that butterbutts can successfully overwinter in northern climes, while their mostly insect-eating warbler relatives must retreat to more southerly buggy latitudes.

The yellow-rumped warbler in the accompanying photo is scarfing down poison ivy berries, and I made that image on the aforementioned Hocking Hills bird count in subfreezing temperatures.

Poison ivy fruit fuels many species of wintering birds, not just butterbutts. In many ways, the rash-inducing vine is one of our most important wildlife plants. That’s a hard case to make to most people, but the yellow-rumped warblers sure appreciate poison ivy.

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.

Armadillo, and Texas

 

A Nine-banded Armadillo (Dasypus novemcinctus) crosses a rural East Texas lane. These curious armored tank-like mammals are primarily nocturnal, but we found this one rooting about in a grassy verge during the day. It took about 20 minutes before the animal finally showed itself, allowing us some nice unobstructed images.

Shauna and I have been in the Houston area since last Friday and have had a great time photographing birds and other wildlife. Lots of action and I have scores of interesting images, and some of that should make its way onto this blog eventually.

I was invited to speak at the River Oaks Garden Club's annual Sadie Gwin Blackburn Environmental Seminar (this was the 35th one), held at the Houston Museum of Fine Arts. That took place this morning and we had a nice turnout. River Oaks Garden Club is a high productivity group, and this was one of the best organized events that I've been to. My topic was Growing Caterpillars: A Tangled Tale of Birds, Plants, and Conservation.

We return home tomorrow but came down last Friday to have about five days to explore and photograph. Most of our time was spent along the Gulf Coast, but we ranged as far west as Aransas National Wildlife Refuge, and as far east as Anahuac National Wildlife Refuge. Two photographic highlights were Long-billed Curlew and Snowy Plover, but there was so much more, including some very cool plants. More to follow!