Vernal: A Spring Photo Project (Day 61 through Day 70)

To this point I've shared two months worth of spring photographs.  As of today (June 21st) spring has reached its end, but I have a months worth of photographs still to share.  Here are the photos from day 61 through day 70.  To see the previous set of images follow this link.

Day 61 (19 May 2019) - Plum flowers

We have a plum tree right outside our back door.  It rarely produces much fruit, but every spring it is absolutely covered with blossoms.  I photographed these flowers after a light rain covered everything with water and softened the light.

Day 62 (20 May 2019) - Audubon Woods Creek

Another rainy day.  This image was taken in a light drizzle at the Chippewa Watershed Conservancy's Audubon Woods Preserve.  The CWC owns 23 separate properties, but Audubon Woods is my favorite because of the mature trees.  The center of the preserve can often feel ten degrees cooler than the edge.  The water trickling over these rocks helps add moisture to the air cooling it even further.  Even the color of the woods feels cool as the mist in the air diffuses the light making everything glow green as the sunlight penetrates the forest canopy.

Day 63 (21 May 2019) - Dandelions 

Spring wouldn't be spring without dandelions.  Homeowners may not love them, but the bees and other pollinators do.  Some people are taking notice - the Ziibiwing Center of Anishinabe Culture has adopted the policy of not mowing until the dandelions have gone to seed.  I photographed this dandelion bloom in the lawn at the Isabella Conservation District office.

Day 64 (22 May 2019) - Forest Ecology Studies 

Most of the programs that I do are in the classroom out of necessity, but every year I take students from Winn Elementary out to Audubon Woods to explore forestry and forest ecology.  In this photograph the students are measuring the distance from a stake (representing the center a 0.1 acre plot) to a tree in their study plot.  If the tree is within 37 feet of the stake (the radius of a 0.1 acre plot), they will then get an azimuth to the tree, measure the diameter of the tree, and record all of this date on a map of their plot.  I keep copies of all this date in the hope that it can be used to record changes in the forest over time.

Day 65 (23 May 2019) - Look up...

May 23rd was another day of forest ecology studies at Audubon Woods.  I think actually took more photographs of students on this day than I did on the 22nd, but my favorite photo of the day was taken when the students had gone back to school for lunch.  Looking up, I spotted this combination of blue sky, white clouds, dark branches, and yellow-green leaves.  With the sun lighting up the edge of a cloud formation I couldn't resist this photograph.

Day 66 (24 May 2019) - Honey Locust Thorn 

This photograph was taken right outside my back door.  We have a large honey locust (Gleditsia triacanthos) growing only a few feet from the house.  This tree provides lots of shade in the summer and a home for many species of birds and insects (not to mention squirrels).  The most interesting thing about the tree is the large thorns that grow from a few branches.  The honey locust originally developed these thorns as defense against ice age mammals - now they are just a reminder of a time when elephants walked the tundra and forests of North America.

Day 67 (25 May 2019) - Fern Frond 

Another photograph from home.  This fern covered with a layer of fine spider webs was photographed in the garden on the side of the house.  This image has been cropped to a square from its original format.

Day 68 (26 May 2019) - Home, Sweet Home

On May 26th we drove about forty-five minutes from home to visit my parents near Laingsburg, MI.  At one point I took a few minutes to walk around their property looking for something to photograph.  As I walked past this nesting box in a wooded area, a wren popped its head out of the box.  It's not grand architecture, but it's good enough for a wren.  If you look close you can see the wren's toes gripping the entrance hole.  The bird looked at me for a few seconds and then flew off into the underbrush.

Day 69 (27 May 2019) - Iris

When we moved into our house eight years ago there was already a patch of irises planted on the south side of the house.  I think these are Siberian iris, but am not certain.  I love the nectar guides on each large landing pad of a petal directing pollinators toward the nectar (and pollen).  The large serrated leaves in the background belong to cut-leaved coneflower (Rudbeckia laciniata).

Day 70 (28 May 2019) - Wild Columbine 

My final image from this set of photos was taken at the Chippewa Watershed Conservancy's Williams-Blackburn Preserve.  Wild Columbine (Aquilegia Canadensis) is one of my favorite late-spring wildflowers.  It's very photogenic when the flowers are fully mature (like this one), but I often miss out on finding them so it's always exciting to find a perfect bloom.  One really interesting thing to me about these flowers is how hairy they are.  Look close and you can see that the petals, stem, and leaves are all covered with minute hairs.  I like being able to peer in and see that level of detail.

Vernal: A Spring Photo Project (Day 41 - Day 50)

It has been nearly a month since I shared anything on this blog.  I've have been photographing every single day for my Vernal photo project, but I have suffered from both a lack of time (and often a lack of motivation) to write.  It's been so long since I have written that my mom has started to yell at me...

Here you go, Mom.

Day 41 (29 April 2019) - Rise up

The fiddlehead of ferns emerging from the ground are one of my favorite spring photography subjects.  I have been taking pictures of them since I before I purchase my first "real" camera.  Between film and digital I probably have hundreds of images like this in my archives, but I continue to take more.  Why?  Because it screams "SPRING" and after a winter devoid of color - anything green is more than welcome.  This photograph was taken at Mill Pond Park in Mt. Pleasant.

Day 42 (30 April 2019) - Raindrops on Tulips

Most of the plants in our garden are native to Michigan with one major exception - tulips and other spring bulbs.  I can't get enough tulips.  Every few years I plant a couple hundred in the garden on the south side of the house.  In addition to the tulips, we have several other spring flowering bulbs: alliums, grape hyacinth (which spread like crazy on its own), crocuses, and striped squill. But the tulips are the star of the show - my favorites are these variegated ones that have petals that fade from red in the center through orange to yellow on the edges.  This photograph of tulips covered with raindrops was underexposed a little bit to deepen the colors of the petals and the image has been cropped around the edges.

Day 43 (01 May 2019) - May Day Raindrops

Rain was a common theme for the beginning of May.  I took this image of raindrops hitting a pool of water on land owned by Shepherd Public Schools near the south end of Shepherd.

Day 44 (02 May 2019) - Dutchman's Breeches

Dutchman's Breeches (Dicentra cucullaria) is perhaps my favorite spring wildflower (after skunk cabbage).  I photographed this stem of dutchman's breeches flowers at Chipp-A-Waters Park.  For many years I knew of only one patch of this flower in Mt. Pleasant, but in recent years it has both expanded at Chipp-A-Waters Park and begun to grow at another location along the river.  I chose this photograph because of the way the raindrops have beaded up on the flowers and stem.

Day 45 (03 May 2019) - Mayapples

What would the month of may be without mayapples (Podophyllum peltatum)?  I love how these plants pop up out of the ground  and unfurl like small umbrellas over the course of several days.  This photograph was taken at the Chippewa Watershed Conservancy's Audubon Woods Preserve.  This species spreads both by seed and clonally by spreading roots.  Audubon Woods is home to several large colonies Mayapple.  I imaging that if you were to look at the genetic makeup of any single colony you would find that the majority of the plants share the exact same DNA.


Day 46 (04 May 2019) - Grape hyacinth

This is the fifth day in a row that my photograph featured raindrops.  When we moved into our house eight years ago there was already a flower bed planted on the south side of the house.  One of the plants present was grape hyacinth.  Over time the as we have added other species of plants the hyacinth has "migrated".  Now many of the plants appear in the lawn.  I don't really mind.  They add a lot of color and when mowed the leaves look similar to the grass.  In this image I like the contrast between the vibrant green, deep dark purple, and the glowing raindrops.  Although there is no focal point thimage just works for me.

Day 47 (05 May 2019) - White Trout Lily

If I want to see white trout lily (Erythronium albidum) in Mt. Pleasant I have to search a certain patch of woods.  Many years I search without finding a single bloom.  I once went five years between sightings.  It isn't that the plants are not there, but rather that they take so long to bloom.  Their corms (bulbs) need to store up enough sugars to produce a bloom.  In non-flowering years, the plant produces a single speckled leaf.  It can take up to seven (or maybe more) years for a plant to store enough sugar.  This year I was able find a few flowers in bloom.  I like all the detail on the pistil and stamen in this image.  You can also see specks of pollen on the petals.  This image is worth clicking on to enlarge the details.

Day 48 (06 May 2019) - Love is in the air...

I thought I missed American toad (Anaxyrus americanus) breeding season this year.  I heard them calling at Chipp-A-Waters Park during the last week of April.  Then nothing more as the period of cold rainy weather hit mid-Michigan.  Thus I was actually kind of surprised when I heard them calling again.  There is a small wetland near the the canoe landing at the park.  Around the edge of this wetland could be seen several dozen toads calling periodically from the shallows.  This individual let me sit about five feet away as I waited for it to call again.  I like this image because not only can you see the fully inflated throat sac, but you can also see the ripples in the water cause by its calling.

Day 49 (07 May 2019) - Hide-and-seek

For me 2019 has bee the year of the wood duck.  It seems like every time I walked into the woods in April or early May I would see at least one pair.  On May 7th, while walking a trail at Mill Pond Park in Mt. Pleasant, I passed a small seasonal wetland.  Something caught my eye.  This wood duck drake was doing his best to "hide" perched atop this downed log, but his camouflage scheme left something to be desired.

Day 50 (08 May 2019) - A view of the sky

My final image of this set was taken at Chipp-A-Waters Park.  We spend so much time looking down, sometimes it's just nice to look up and take in the sky over our heads.  I like how the trees frame this opening, the bright green of their newly emerging leaves, an the varying shades of blue sky.

So many shades of green (14 June 2017)

Last week I shared a photograph of a Cinnamon Fern that I took on a walk at Mission Creek Woodland Park.  Here are some more images from the same walk.  Everything is so impossibly green!  Walking through an area like this you can almost feel the oxygen being pumped out of the plants.

I call this activity a walk, but it is really more of a slog (defined as a long, tiring walk or march as per dictionary.com).  A person does not tiptoe lightly through a swamp, but slogs through the mucky bottom that threatens to suck the boots off your feet.  If you are lucky you can step from sedge tussock to sedge tussock of log to log, but at some point you are forced into the muck.  The giant Skunk Cabbage (Symplocarpus foetidus) leaves in the photo below indicate a location with out firm footing.  Notice the Sensitive Fern (Onoclea sesibilis) at the bottom left of the photograph?  Surrounded by Skunk Cabbage leaves, this is just the sort of image I was looking for when I entered the swamp.

First is a horizontal image.  I like this image with the degree of contrast between the fern and Skunk Cabbage leaves and the differing areas of light and shadow.  I also like the smaller fern leaf poking through the leaves to the right of the picture.

Now here is the same central leaf zoomed in closer and in a vertical composition.  This image is all about the fern leaf; it is basically a portrait of the fern with the Skunk Cabbage leaves acting as a backdrop.  I like both images.  Which one do you think works better?  If you have an opinion, let me know in the comment section.

In another portrait of a Sensitive Fern, a small fern frond peeks between the lobes of a larger leaf.

In one section of the Mission Creek swamp, Cinnamon Ferns are by far the most prominent and charismatic plant that you can see this time of year. 

 

 
I was especially drawn to the red fertile fronds.  They really stick out against the green background of the fern's fronds. 

Although, these pictures are not as "artistic" as the fern photo that I shared last week, I still really like their overall appearance, especially on this final image.  The bright green and red compliment each other well and there is enough texture to keep me interested in the photo's various elements.

 

Art in Nature - Cinnamon Fern

This photo of a Cinnamon Fern (Osmundastrum cinnamomeum) is officially in the running as my favorite photo of the year.  I took this picture in the swamp at Mission Creek Woodland Park and I just really like how it looks, especially the interlocking leaves on the left, the red fertile frond running through the center of the image and the diagonal lines of the stems.

Scenes from Chipp-A-Waters Park

Yesterday, after finishing a school program for fourth grade students at Vowles Elementary, I went down the road to Chipp-A-Waters Park for a short early-Spring walk.  Chipp-A-Waters has long been my favorite place to look for spring ephemeral wildflower.  While I was not realistically expecting to find any flowers, I was hopeful.

To make a long story short, I didn't find any wildflowers.  However, I did find a few interesting things to photograph.

Much of the back end of Chipp-A-Waters park is covered by floodplain forest.  One of the dominant species in this habitat was the Green Ash (Fraxinus pennsylvanica).  I say was, because most of the ash trees have died over the past few years - killed by Emerald Ash Borer larvae.  Over the past two years many of these trees have begun to blow down.

Wind-thrown Green Ash trees at Chipp-A-Waters Park

Although I did not find any flowers, I did find several patches of Wild Leeks (Allium tricoccom) poking through last year's leaf litter.  Wild Leeks, which are also known as Ramps, are a highly-sought-after edible plant.  Both the leaves and the underground bulb can be eaten.  They have a mild "onion" taste.  I highly recommend trying them.  If you plan on harvesting any of these to eat, make sure that every plant has an onion smell.  There are many look-a-likes, some of which are extremely toxic.  Unfortunately, it is not okay to harvest this plant from any of Mt. Pleasant's parks - it is against park rules.

Wild Leek leaves

Wild Leek - leaves and last year's flower stalks

Wild leeks and Red Oak leaf

Besides the patches of Wild Leeks, the only green to be found was in patches of moss growing on logs and tree trunks.

Moss on a Green Ash log

Even though there was not much new growth to be found, there was still plenty to photograph, such as these oak leaves and acorn.  I really liked the dark, monochromatic look of this photo.

Leaves and acorn

Another subject that I found to photograph was the fertile fronds from last year's Cinnamon Ferns (Osmunda cinnamomea).

Last year's fertile frond

Many of these fronds can be found in low-lying areas of the park.  It was cold enough overnight that the water standing in many of these pools had developed a skim of ice.

Fern fronds in an icy pool

I didn't spend much time in the park, only about thirty minutes total, but I was happy just to get out into the woods.  I hope to be doing a lot more of that in the coming weeks as birds return and wildflowers begin to bloom.

A Wet Walk in the Woods (11 MAY 2015)

I had to cancel my programs for today due to the weather, but this meant that I could spend a little bit of time in the woods at Chipp-A-Waters Park. 

White-crowned Sparrow (Zonotrichia leucophry)

Eastern Poison Ivy (Toxicodendron radicans)

Beetle larvae tunnels

Virginia Creeper (Parthenocissus quinquefolia) - note the five leaflets

Another photograph of Eastern Poison Ivy (Toxicodendron radicans) - note the three leaflets and hairy vines

Shelf fungi and moss

A very faded Large-flowered Trillium (Trillium grandiflorum) - there is a small spider tucked in among the stamen

I bought a new wide-angle (10-22mm) camera lens this weekend. The remaining four photographs were taken with this lens.  I still need to buy a filter for this lens to reduce glare, but so far I am happy with the photos.

False Rue Anemone (Enemion biternatum) and Wild Leek (Allium tricoccum)

A wet Sugar Maple (Acer saccharum) leaf plastered to an old birch trunk

Large-flowered Trillium (Trillium grandiflorum) and Wild Leeks (Allium tricoccum)

Cinnamon Fern (Osmundastrum cinnamomeum) fronds emerging from the leaf litter