Killer Wasps, Our Backyard Entertainment for August

Our neighbor called us on July 31.  "We have insects swarming in the back corner of our yard close to your lilac bush.  Will you come out and see if you know what it they are? I think they are wasps."

There were dozens of insects flying, sometimes landing on the grass briefly, sometimes flying about, mostly  four or five feet above the ground.  Sometimes they disappeared for a while into the arborvitae  hedge at the edge of our properties.  They did look like wasps but they ignored us, didn't seem at all interested that three humans were infringing on their chosen area.

"They're not aggressive. They act like the Cicada Killers  we had in the yard last year but they aren't big enough," Polly said.  We agreed.

"Go get that peanut butter jar Stephen was catching lightning bugs in," Tom told me.

I brought it but we were all leery of riling any wasp.  Nobody wanted to know what the insect was bad enough to risk being stung.

"Oh, I know...the butterfly nets," I said.  Sometimes being a well-equipped bug enthusiast has its rewards.

And that's how Polly caught this insect.

That evening her husband drove his riding mower through the area and the insects didn't bother him at all.

We  still weren't convinced the swarming insects were Cicada Killers (Specius speciosus)  because they were just too small. Finally, Tom typed "Cicada Killer" on the computer and via the world-wide web he confirmed that the coloring was right for a Cicada Killer.

Tom solved the problem of the size when he went down our driveway ramp on August 11.  There was a dead Cicada Killer on the ramp.  It was big like the ones we remembered from other years.  Mystery solved.  As in many  insect species, the Cicada Killer female is larger than the male.

Later I learned that the males hatch from the underground burrows before the females.

The female Cicada Killer digs a tunnel underground.  She digs chambers off the main tunnel.  Then she begins capturing Cicadas (Cicadidae) which she paralyzes and carries to her burrow one by one.  If she stuffs one cicada in the chamber and lays one egg on it, the egg develops into a larva which feeds on the paralyzed cicada.  It makes a pupa case and remains underground until the following summer.  When it emerges it is a male.  Eggs that will develop into females are provided with two or three cicadas.

We continued to watch the back corner.  On August 16, Stephen spotted a Cicada Killer carrying a cicada into a burrow.  We got a photo of the Cicada Killer reemerging.

We searched the area and found other burrows.  The holes were sometimes hard to see but the tiny balls of dirt which had been removed from the burrows were a giveaway.

I circled the hole with a blue line.  The tiny balls of dirt are circled with red.

On August 18 another neighbor brought over "a strange insect"she found on a young lilac sapling her son brought her.  It had a strange "thing on its back end".  The strange insect was a cicada emerging from its final molt.  We watched the insect pump up its wings and turn from white with tinges of green to the familiar dark colored insect we find every year about this time.  The cicada shell is on the bark above the cicada.

On August 26, Tom saw a Cicada walking slowly on our driveway.  Either, it had not yet completed its emergent changes or it was nearing the end of its life span.  Tom laid the dead female Cicada Killer beside the Cicada to get a photo of the comparative sizes of the two insects.

2014 Hug the Earth Festival with the The Banana Slug String Band and the Students of Miami County, Ohio

This is the sixteenth year that I have helped in some way with the Hug the Earth Festival.  It has grown from a one day event with about seven hundred students participating to a four day event with over three thousand students participating.  In addition, there is now a Saturday Festival open to the public.

Because Stillwater Prairie Reserve was waterlogged from the rains of the previous week, the students' festivals were held at the Miami County Fairgrounds.

There were limp antennae on the Banana Slug mascot who met the children as they began their day on Tuesday but by Thursday his antennae were stiff and perky.  He must have found some starch somewhere.

The band members from Santa Cruz, California, "Solar" Steve Van Zandt,

 "Marine" Mark Nolan,

 Doug "Dirt" Greenfield,

 and "Airy" Larry Graff

have been together  for nearly thirty years.  They entertain children and adults with songs about our wonderful earth and encourage everyone to care for it.  For quite a few years "Gaea" Gary has come with them to play drums.  I don't have a recent photo of him.

During the school year the students learn a special earth song, make costumes related to the song and come out to a Miami County Park for a day of exploring and learning more about their special earth song.  The festival is the culminating  event. This year, some of the students were superheros with superhero capes they decorated themselves.

Here is a superhero of Ohio's prairies.

Here is another Habitat Superhero.  Looks like the habitat is a river.  Beside him is the bucket with the rocks he dug out of the sand and gravel pile deposited in one of the Miami County Fair grounds open sided buildings.  All of the rocks in the pile are mined in Ohio.

The older students panned for their rocks.  The rocks they found were from many areas of the world.

In the trough are the pans the the students will use.  Standing around it, getting last minute instructions are the staff who will help them if they need it.  Notice that most of the staff are wearing slug antennae.

Here the students are comparing the rocks they found with samples enclosed in this box.

The Columbus, Ohio Zoo brought unusual animals like this two-toed sloth and talked to the younger students about the animals'  habits.

The older children were treated to a High Ropes Adventure which included a fast ride down a zipline.  There was also a climbing tower.  These were set up behind the stadium.  I took this before the event was completely set up.

On Saturday, tree climbing using ropes was also set up at Stillwater Reserve.

Rain, Sun, Sleet or Snow, the Hug the Earth Festival goes on and brings smiles to hundreds of people.

Butterfly Monitoring Workshop, March 29, 2014

I was glad Tom and I decided to come to the workshop even though rain was pouring down and we had to park in Aullwood's overflow parking lot which is a field.

The morning session  was Introduction to Moths by Mothman, Dave Horn.  He even has Mothman as his license plate.  He is Professor Emeritus at The Ohio State University.  Recently he put together a pamphlet of common moths in Ohio for the Ohio Department of Natural Resources.  He was asked to choose about seventy which was a problem because he says there are about six hundred common species.

 Dave is an entertaining as well as knowledgeable speaker.  One of his slides was a a brief overview of moths.  It looked a little like this.

Moths...Usually cryptic  
             Mostly nocturnal
             Highly variable
             Much more diverse than butterflies (20 moths for every 1 butterfly)
             Often tiny
            Not so well understood as birds and butterflies

And then he entertained us by describing some of the moths that didn't fit this list.

The  Hummingbird Clearwing, (Hemaris thysbe),  in the photo above is one of the exceptions.  It flies during the day and nectars at flowers.  (The first time I saw one, I actually thought it was a hummingbird for a moment and wondered why it was so small. )

Most of us "know" that moths fly at night and come to lights  but in addition to the moths that come to lights at night, there are others like the Hummingbird Moth that fly during the day  and also moths that  come only to ultraviolet or black light.  Still others come to rotting fruit ( or bait made with a homemade mix of ingredients which includes beer.)

We didn't stay for the afternoon session, partly because when we left for the lunch break, the rain had turned to a mixture of sleet and snow.  Guess what the overflow parking lot was like.  Our van ended up stuck in the mud up to the frame. We finally had to give up and call Triple A. ( American Automobile Association ) The  towtruck driver braved the mud, sleet, snow and wind and pulled our van out using a cable attached to the truck.  Still can't believe how pleasant he was.

Play Day at Brukner, Spotted Salamanders and Io Caterpillar

This is the reason I continue to volunteer a Brukner Nature Center.  It's fun for me and fun for those I teach.  I was teaching Reptiles and Amphibians.  We were on our way to Investigate a Rotting Log when we made a brief stop at the creek.

The girls in the middle of the photo are looking for the frog another of the students found the moment before.  I'm glad someone spotted the frog.  It was the only one we found on our excursion.

But that was all right.  The students were here for the third day in a row.  Earlier in the week they had seen frogs at the pond.  They had also found turtles so the reptile family had been seen.

They never did see a snake in the wild which is unusual since they had been in all the Brukner habitats during the three days they had been exploring,  I was glad showing  and letting them touch one of our Wild Life Ambassadors, a corn snake, was part of the Reptiles and Amphibians Session.

The soil and leaves under the rotting logs at the bottom of the hill where we normally look for amphibians and reptiles  were dry because we have had very little rain in September.

One of the Wildlife Educators employed by Brukner suggested I take the children to the floodplain instead.  Normally, this is too muddy to walk on.  But yesterday, the ground was only damp.

The students looked under logs in two areas and found living treasures in both areas.

The most exciting to find were the young Eastern Spotted Salamanders.  All were small, some smaller than others.

Earlier in the week, the students had spent a session learning about insects and insect relatives.  They found a variety of these in and around the logs.  This is one I had never seen before.

I took a photo of it which I showed to a Brukner intern when the group and I returned to the center.  She told me it was an Io moth caterpillar.

A great day.  I played and I learned something new.

2013 Hug the Earth Festival with the Banana Slug String Band

The Banana Slug String Band from Santa Cruz, California was back in Miami County, Ohio last week for the sixteenth annual Hug the Earth Festival.  This is the second year that the five-day long celebration has been held at the Stillwater Prairie Reserve.  The Festival outgrew its old site, the Garby Big Woods Reserve.

Besides the hour-long concerts in which the students performed with the slugs, they enjoyed ...

Earthball activities...

Digging for special rocks like limestone and fossils and shark teeth...

Screening for gemstones...

Petting animals...

Learning about exotic animals...

Climbing trees...

And speeding through the air on Zip lines.

Miami County Education Staff on the Job

October sixth was a beautiful day. After we voted, Tom drove to Charleston Falls.  He said he'd sit in the van and read while I hiked. 

When we arrived, we saw a group in one corner of the parking lot. They were the park education staff reviewing how the day had gone.
 

 

 

I didn't want to interrupt them so I took two quick photos and then started off on my hike down past the falls.

A jumble of erratics, rocks left behind by the glaciers, is not far down the trail. There I came across this heap of teaching materials. I recognized the station because I have videotaped students busy there in the past. There are hammers and goggles in the crate and boards behind it. This is where the students talk about the glaciers and then break open small geodes.

Now I knew the topic for the day, Rocks.
 

Further along the trail, I saw education staff members picking up the materials from another station.

Before they moved on to continue their pick-up detail, I snapped their picture.

They went on about their business and I continued toward the Thorny Badlands Lookout Tower. On the way, I came across another station waiting for pick up. This is where the students examine closely the composition of soil.

"How lucky these sixth grade students were today," I thought as I walked on. "They were officially "learning" and at the same time outside on a beautiful day, not in a stuffy classroom."

Hug the Earth Festival, 2012, Songs and Activities, Part 2

 
Here is Marine Mark leading children in dance to the tune of "I'm a Tree". "I'm a tree, I'm a tree, and I'm growing very tall".




Doug the Drop leads the Water Cycle Boogie Dancers. "The watercycle boogie goes round and round. The watercycle boogie goes up and down".




The Everything Needs a Home singers..."Everything needs a home, a habitat, a place to roam".






Airy Larry, The Plant Man, leading the Roots, Stems, Leaves, Flowers, Fruits, and Seeds singers. "Roots, Stems, Leaves, Flowers, Fruits, and Seeds, Six plant parts that every plant and animal needs".

There were lots of other activities besides the big concert.





Mike Manning, The Rock Man, showed these children fascinating rocks and talked about how people used them.


 

The children panned for treasure and found some of the rocks Mike talked about. Here is what one child found.





On the other side of the park, workers from Ohio mining put on a skit which emphasized that everything is mined or grown.





One child was dressed up as a miner.




These children mined for Ohio ores in especially prepared sand hills.





Then they took their pail of rocks to a table where they could compare what they found with named samples.




All of the children played with , a huge inflated "Earth" ball, and all ate a picnic lunch with their classmates.


  On Friday, the younger students were treated to a visit from the Kentucky Reptile Zoo. They saw a variety of reptiles.

 


The older students had a special treat, a Ropes Campus where they could climb a "Cliff", walk high above the ground on ropes and zip down a Zip Line. Tom pulled this photo from a video.





Here are students climbing the rock wall.
.