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 51 through Day 60)

I've fallen way behind on sharing the images from my spring photography project.  Here are my photos from Day 51 (09 May) through Day 60 (18 May).  If you haven't been following along, my goal is to photograph something outdoors in nature every single day this spring.

Day 51 (09 May 2019) - Tulips

I love tulips.  They are the only non-native flower that I regularly add to our home garden.  Last fall we planted nearly three hundred tulip bulbs all red, orange, and yellow.  I love the pop of color that they add to spring.

Day 52 (10 May 2019) - Blue-gray Gnatcatcher

I am not now, nor have I ever been, a birder.  I do not chase birds, but this spring the birds seemed to find me everywhere I went.  This blue-gray gnatcatcher (Polioptila caerulea) was photographed at Mission Creek Woodland Park as it foraged on low branches of an eastern hemlock tree.  A second after I captured this image the bird flew off.

Day 53 (11 May 2019) - World Migratory Bird Celebration

So this photograph was taken indoors.  It's the only image of this entire photography project to be taken inside a building.  (I also took one indoor image during my Summer 2018 photography project.)  This picture shows my friend Rebecca Lessard with Pearl the red-tailed hawk at the World Migratory Bird Day Celebration at the Ziibiwing Center in Mt. Pleasant.  Rebecca is the founder and executive director of Wings of Wonder, a raptor rehabilitation center located near Empire, MI.  She has been the presenter at the Ziibiwing Center WMB Celebration several times.  I think this is the best image that I have ever taken of Rebecca - she is a blur of motion when presenting and it's almost impossible to photograph her well in low light.

Day 54 (12 May 2019) - Jack-in-the-pulpit

Forest Hill Natura Area is not particularly rich in spring woodland wildflowers, but I did manage to find several jack-in-the-pulpit (Arisaema triphyllum) plants in the South Woods.  I love all the shades of green in this image.  This photo was taken right at ground level using the LCD live viewer to compose the shot - I like this feature as it means I no longer have to lay on the ground to shoot images from this angle.

Day 55 (13 May 2019) - Northern Parula Warbler

Another bird that found me.  This male Northern Parula (Setophaga americana) landed on a branch right at eye level during a walk through Mill Pond Park.  Normally these birds are found high in the canopy, but they will be found lower in the forest during migration.  Although as I said before, I am not a birder, it's hard not to admire a bird as beautiful as this one.

Day 56 (14 May 2019) - Large-flowered Trillium

The Chippewa Watershed Conservancy has recently been gifted a new property along the Chippewa River east of Mt. Pleasant.  This property consists of three acres of riverbank and will eventually be developed as a preserve with a canoe landing.  On May 14th a small group visited the property to conduct a biological survey.  I identified approximately forty species of herbaceous plants including this large-flowered trillium (Trillium grandiflorum).  This image has be deliberately underexposed so that the highlight didn't completely wash out.  I like that you can see all the little grains of pollen both on the stamens and on the white petals surrounding the stamens.

Day 57 (15 May 2019) - Waxing Gibbous Moon

I have really grown to enjoy photographing the moon.  Fortunately, the sky in Alma is dark enough that I can do it right from my driveway any time the notion strikes me.  I recently purchased a new (better) tripod head that holds long lenses in place much better than what I was previously using, making this kind of photography easier.  This image of a waxing gibbous moon has been cropped to a 16:9 widescreen format for no other reason than I like how it looks.

Day 58 (16 May 2019) - Common Blue Violet

Another image photographed at home.  Common blue violets (Viola sororia) are slowly trying to take over both as a groundcover is our flower gardens and as the dominant plant in parts of our lawn.  The seeds of this flower are eagerly collected by ants.  The ants eat a fleshy coating known as an eliasome and discard the seeds in their garbage middens where they sprout easily.  I like the details such as the hairs of the flower's beard and the dark veins on the petals.

Day 59 (17 May 2019) - Environmental Education Day

For each of the past ten years the Isabella Conservation District has hosted an environmental education day for third grade classrooms in the county.  This year over 550 students and 100 adults attended.  One of the many highlights is a live display of Michigan reptiles and amphibians.  I love how the students in this image are interacting calmly and with curiosity toward an eastern garter snake.

Day 60 (18 May 2019) - Bleeding Hearts

Another photograph from our home flower gardens.  While tulips are my favorite garden flower, Shara loves bleeding hearts.  She is still upset about the bleeding heart plants that we left behind when we moved more than eight years ago.  (I will admit that the bleeding hearts that we planted in Alma have not yet grown to the magnificence of the plants that we left behind.)  One of the first photographs that I ever took with my first digital SLR camera was of a bleeding heart flower in that garden.  I cropped this image to a 16:9 widescreen format to focus solely on the flowers and remove some of the distracting foliage of other plants.

Fall Forestry Studies

The best part of my job is getting students outdoors.  I especially enjoy getting them into the woods to study forestry and forest ecology

Want to make a kid's jaw drop?  Tell them that they are going to count how many trees are in a forest.  Even better is to tell them that they have to find out how many leaves can be found on the forest floor or that they have to find out how the leaves weigh!

I always manage to get lots of students outdoors in the spring, but this year I made an effort to schedule more field explorations for the fall.  Over the past three weeks, I was able to get eleven classrooms from four different schools out into the woods.  Two of the classrooms have been out in the woods with me before, but for the other nine classes it was a completely new experience.  It's always interesting to see how the students (and their teachers) react to the independence.

Here are a few pictures from three of the schools.  (Unfortunately, it looks like I did not take any photos of the two classrooms from the fourth school.)  The students in these photos are counting leaves in a square foot plot (or quadrat), collecting leaves to weigh, measuring the forest canopy using a clear grid, and identifying leaves using a guide. 

12 October 2018 - Winn Elementary at Audubon Woods
 

 

16 October 2018 and 19 October 2018 - Mary McGuire Elementary at Mission Creek Park

 

25 October 2018 - Beal City Elementary at Beal City School woodlot

Aquatic Macroinvertebrates in the Little Salt River

The school year is almost over, but the past couple of weeks have been among my busiest of the year.  In addition to spending several days doing forestry and forest ecology with classrooms, I have also spent multiple days at the Little Salt River in Shepherd with students collecting and identifying aquatic macroinvertebrates (animals without backbones that live in water and are large enough to see without magnification).  Over the course of the fifteen days I will have spent five days along the river.  Among other things, the students have found hundreds of crayfish, Green Frog tadpoles, dozens of small fish, scud (amphipods), mayfly larvae, damselfly larvae, caddisfly larvae, water mites, and crawling water beetles.  We also found several examples of a species that I had never seen before, Creeping Water Bugs.

 
I have also taken dozens of photos of the students at work.  Most of the students get super involved in the work and their allotted time just flies by.  A lot of words have been written in the past decade or so about the disconnect between children and nature. 

It gives me a lot of hope to see students elbow-deep in a bucket of muddy river water trying to identify snails.  Why does this give me hope.  People who understand things like aquatic macroinvertebrates tend to understand their importance and care about them.  People that care about things like aquatic macroinvertebrates will want to protect them and their habitats.  These kids learning to identify snails today are the land stewards of the future.