A "weedy" yard

 

As always, click the image to enlarge

A big patch of Common Blue Violet (Viola sororia) brightens my backyard. The white flowers sprinkled throughout are a form of this species known as the Confederate Violet (V. sororia forma priceana). I have encouraged violet proliferation by just not mowing them off while in flower, so they can set fruit. It's worked well and I've got scores of purple jots brightening the turf grass that remains. How this native violet could be considered a "weed" is beyond me (although a "weed" is in the eye of the beholder, I suppose). Moreover, spraying toxic chemicals to destroy them, in favor of a flawless emerald blanket of nonnative turf grass is crazy, in my opinion.

I made this shot of this Northern Flicker (Colaptes auratus) last April in one of my violet patches. I've seen these woodpeckers in the violets a few times, and I suspect they are hunting ants. Ants are major dispersers of violet seeds, and ants are a major part of a flicker's diet. If having a "weedy" violet-filled lawn means flickers, I'll take it.

This scene is even cooler than the violet explosion, to me. This area is the back half of the backyard (roughly one-quarter to one-third of ALL my remaining "yard"), and not so long ago it was all nonnative turf grass. About four or five years ago, I noticed clumps of a native sedge called Common Wood Sedge (Carex blanda) popping up back here. This is one of our more opportunistic native sedges (there are a few nonnative sedges) and I don't know how it got started here. It may be that I tracked back seeds of the sedge from one of my forays. No matter, it is there, and I adjusted the mowing regime to accommodate it. I just waited until the fruit (perigynia, in sedge-speak) were fully ripe, and then mowed it. The mower broadcast the hard, bony seeds (achenes, in sedge-speak) all over the place, and it worked. Now, 90+% of this part of the "lawn" is now native sedge. That's all I did.

In this shot, the sedge is in full flower. The tannish-brown spikes sticking up everywhere are the staminate (male) flowers. The pistillate (female) flowers are lower on the plant. The sedges only reach four or five inches in height. Unless I learn otherwise, there is no reason to routinely mow this area anymore. The sedge is the perfect height, in my opinion. I'll probably just mow it once annualy, late in the season. At least that's my plan for now. I'm also going to transplant some of the sedges to other parts of the lawn and hopefully get the entire backyard to become a blanket of Common Wood Sedge, interspersed with other various native flora.

While the sedge lawn may, to some eyes, look a bit coarser than the manicured nonnative turf grass that we've been programmed to plant, manage, and cherish, I think the sedge lawn is a vast improvement. Another benefit is that invertebrate life forms have spiked tremendously. The sedge forms a duff layer that seems to be far more conducive to animal life than that of sterile turf grass. One barometer of success is the sheer number of fireflies displaying in summer. Last year they had expanded to the point of dazzling. It was like a laser light show back there. Viewing them from a second-story window reveals that the displaying beetles stay almost entirely over my backyard, with little drift into the neighbors' yards (most of them manage for turf monocultures). Firefly larvae are ground dwellers and predatory, feeding on various small animal life. I would say that the sedge supports vastly more of a duff layer food web, thus the huge spike in fireflies.

If you'd like to shrink your lawn, experimenting with Carex blanda might be worth a try. I haven't researched where one might obtain it, but I think some native plant nurseries carry it. Try googling "Carex blanda nursery" or something like that, and you should find some sources.

Large-flowered Bellwort, and some plant photography thoughts

 

As always, click the image to enlarge

A Large-flowered Bellwort (Uvularia grandiflora), a personal favorite spring wildflower. This plant was long placed in the lily family (Liliaceae), but taxonomic splits in that family have led to the bellworts being placed in the Colchicaceae family, and apparently now it's been shifted to the Convallariaceae family. Wherever we humans decide to place it in our organizational schemes, this is a superb-looking plant.

Shauna and I made an epic trip to southern Ohio last Saturday and saw many species of spring wildflowers. We were mostly in Adams and Scioto counties, where the spring flora comes on significantly earlier than here in central Ohio. We were pleased to encounter many flowering specimens of this bellwort species at the Chalet Nivale Preserve. I find bellworts photographically irresistible and the specimen in the photo was in a particularly good spot for clean imagery, other than being hard to reach.

Shauna snapped this shot of your narrator making the image of the bellwort in the previous photo. It is not far from the base of the limestone cliff, right at my eye level.

While macro lenses are often standard fare for wildflower photography, I went off the reservation for this one. One, that slope was slippery, and scrabbling into position to shoot the bellwort with my 100mm macro lens would have awkward and probably hard on the other plants emerging around the bellwort. So, I bolted the Canon 400 DO II lens to my R5 and attached the rig to my big tripod (A Gitzo, with Wimberly head). While I normally use that tripod and the big lenses for birds and other wildlife, I discovered a long time ago that the big lenses can be superb for plant photography.

With no disturbance to the habitat, using this rig allowed me to get my lens at eye level to the subject. Even though the bellwort was too far for macro photography, I could frame fill it with this lens. As the subject is vertically oriented, I rotated the lens within its collar for a vertical perspective. The position that I liked best put me just inside the minimum focusing distance of the lens, which is about 11 feet. So, I slipped on a 25mm extension tube, and that problem was solved. FYI, in case you aren't familiar with them, extension tubes are just short hollow tubes (no glass) that fit between the camera body and lens. They create a bit more distance between lens and camera which reduces the minimum focus distance. I would highly recommend getting tubes with electronic connectors, so that they don't kill your ability to autofocus.

Once positioning the camera was accomplished, it was time to shoot. Another enormous asset of large prime telephoto lenses is the gorgeous creamy bokeh (background) that they create. Even though that cliff wall wasn't very far behind the subject, the 400 DO obliterated it into a grayish-brown blur. I helped that by shooting at f/5.6. In general, wider apertures are better, in my opinion, for floral subjects. Even though the 400 opens to f/4, I decided I liked the slightly increased depth of field by stopping down one stop. The shutter speed was 1/60, plenty fast enough. But shutter speed is largely irrelevant in plant photography. I have shot multiple second exposures and achieved tack sharp results of wildflowers. As there was a bit of wind this day, I chose to use a slightly higher ISO than normal and set that to 400 so that my shutter speeds could be a little faster than they would be at my preferred ISO of 100 or 200.

Another way to help freeze movement would be the use of a flash. For me, that's almost unheard of with plants. I think flash generally imparts a harshness to the subject and its environs that looks bad. I can assure you, that had I used flash on the bellwort pictured above, it would not look like that, and the look would be worse. I know there are ways to mute lighting from flashes, and I have all manner of diffusers. And corrections can be made later through editing. Nonetheless, flash-free images just look much better to my eye.

To further assist in removing possible movement caused by me, I had the camera's shutter on two-second delay. I also have the R5 set so that a touch of the rear viewing screen will instantly focus the camera on the spot that you touched and automatically start the two second delay. So, I just tap the bellwort's flower in my back screen, move away from the rig, and the camera focuses on the flower, the camera starts beeping and two seconds later it takes the photo. There's no way that I can accidentally bump or otherwise jostle the rig.

Great Horned Owlet, and a favored food

 

A young, and still quite fuzzy, Great Horned Owl (Bubo virginianus). It was one of two owlets fledged from a nest in a small west-central Ohio woodlot. The stick nest that they were born in looked like an old Red-shouldered Hawk nest to me - not very large, and in the crotch of a large maple about three-quarters the way up the tree. About half of the Great Horned Owl nests in this region utilize the abandoned stick platform nests of raptors and herons, and the other half use natural tree cavities.

The bird in the photo was not long out of the nest but can already make short flights. Its nestmate was in a nearby tree, but much higher up. The female owl was not far off, either.

An Eastern Cottontail poses in a violet patch in my backyard yesterday. At least three bunnies call my yard home, and this one is the largest. He's the size of a small cat.

Great Horned Owls prey heavily on rabbits. I'm sure that the young owl in my photo has dined on rabbit on numerous occasions. The male owl brings most if not all food to the juveniles, with the female pitching in if need be.

Cottontails breed prolifically and one pair can raise scores of kits over a year's time. Most will not make it to the size of the chap above, though. Rabbits are high on the menu for a raft of predators, not just owls.

Years ago, I was trolling a gravel lane in the wee hours in the middle of nowhere in Pike County, Ohio, conducting owl surveys for the Ohio Breeding Bird Atlas. Rounding a bend in the road - at very slow speeds, fortunately - I came across a Great Horned Owl sitting in the middle of the lane, freshly caught cottontail in its talons. The owl was not pleased with my appearance, and if looks could kill I would not be writing this. Its rabbit victim was so large that the owl could not get off the ground with it, so the burly owl physically dragged the bunny to a nearby embankment and hauled its prey up that. I then idled by at close range and on down the road, leaving the winged tiger to its rabbit steak.