Garbry Big Woods Sanctuary, March 19, 2018

When Tom and I opened the van doors we heard the frogs calling for mates, another sign that spring is on its way.

Tom found the first flowers...Harbingers-of-spring.  He didn't come out with me last week when I saw the Harbingers so this was the first time he has seen them this season.  When I searched for them last week, I searched and searched before finding the first one.  Today they were sprinkled throughout the woods.  In another week there will be even more of them.  But, because each little cluster is a quarter inch or less in diameter, they still won't be easy to find unless a person is looking for them.

Just beyond the first water seep, Tom spotted a Purple Cress.  One flower was open wide.

Further on we, found a few more Purple Cress.  Most of them were still in bud but we found this one with multiple flowers.

I saw a few of one variety of Waterleaf.  The leaves were still as small as the ones I found last week.

The most noticeable flowers were the Hepatica.  Even a casual observer would see them.  There will be more and bigger clusters soon.

The pollinators were busy.  See the tiny beetle in the hepatica on the right?

Tom was surprised when he looked at the following photo.  He hadn't realized there was a honeybee in the picture, too.

As we returned to the parking lot, a bird was singing and flitting about in the trees.  Neither of us recognized its song.  Time to get out the bird song CDs.

Trip to Lake Erie, Monday, March 12, 2018

All of the photos in this blog were taken by Tom, either on Monday or on other trips we've taken to Lake Erie.

The day was overcast when we started out and never improved.  Before we left Lake Erie we drove through mist and light rain.  As we headed home Tom drove through two nasty snow squalls.  fortunately, neither one lasted long.  Nevertheless, we had a good birding day.  Ducks aren't bothered by the weather and we birded from the van.

At Magee Marsh we were pleased to see that at least one eagle pair had returned to their nest of previous years.  One eagle was on the nest.  The other was nearby.

Tom offered to drop me off at the boardwalk.  He said he would read if I wanted to walk.  I told him, "No."  There was a mist falling and the temperature was 31 degrees.

There were ducks along the causeway and the red-winged blackbirds were back. 

Northern Shoveler

Red-winged Blackbird


There were ducks at Metzger, too.  We were pleased to see a few Northern Pintails.  We don't see them every year.  Usually we are too late.

Tom decided he would like to go to East Harbor which is about a half hour to the east.  We never have gone to the state park because we didn't want to waste time driving when we could be birding.  however, Tom has been following the Ohio bird sightings on EBird and he said there had been a lot of birds sighted there.

This is what we saw...birds from one shore to the other.  We will go back to East Harbor again.

Our Second Trip to Cedar Bog This Year...June 12, 2017

After our half hour visit to Cedar Bog on May 31, we decided we wanted to go back when the Grass Pink Orchids were blooming.  We invited our friend, John to come with us.  The tree we are looking at is a Yellow Maple.  It marks the "Y" in the circular trail.

At the "Y" we turned to the right.

The Tuberous Indian Plantain (Cacalia tuberosa) was beginning to be showy.  There will be larger flower heads.

A little further down the trail, I found this Milkweed (Asclepias)  One of the experts from the Ohio Wildflower Facebook site told me it was Poke Milkweed (Asclepias exaltata) one of two species of woodland milkweeds in Ohio.

Meanwhile, Tom was taking photos of a Damselfly, an Ebony Jewelwing male (Calopteryx maculata).  Damselflies usually sit with wings folded upright while Dragonflies usually sit with wings spread.

At the Sedge Meadow, Tom found the Showy Lady's Slippers still blooming.

Showy Lady's Slippers (Cypripedium reginae)

In the same sedge meadow, he found the first Grass Pink (Calopogon pulchellus)  We saw more further from the boardwalk and also more in the next section of Sedge Meadow that the boardwalk passed through.

In the second section of Sedge Meadow we found the Round-leafed Sundew (Drosera rotundifolia).  We knew where to find them because years ago we went on a guided walk.  The plants are very tiny, only a little bigger than the lid on a small jar of bread and butter pickles.  They are fascinating to me because they are very tiny, yet are a carnivorous plant.

Round-leafed Sundew (Drosera rotundifolia)

Far out in the sedge meadow, we saw this plant.  Fortunately, Tom has a camera that could take the distant shot.

I posted this photo on Ohio Wildflowers and learned that it was Phlox maculata.

In this same meadow, Shrubby Cinquefoil were beginning to bloom.

Shrubby Cinquefoil (Potentilla fruticosa)

Below is a plant I find interesting.  I first saw it years ago when I was exploring with a park naturalist off the trail at Garbry Big Woods Sanctuary.  It was a rare oportunity to go into the usually unseen parts of the woods.  He explained that it was believed to have been called Nein bark by early German settlers because the bark peels off the branches.  The name, over time, has become Ninebark.  The flowers are not at their most beautiful showy selves in this photo.

Here is a crop of the photo above showing the long curving branches on which the old bark peels off in layers.

This is a photo that Tom took when we visited the bog last June 11 when the flowers were showy.

Ninebark (Rubus odoratus) a member of the Rose family.


There were a lot of Tall Meadow Rue Plants.  It is a species in which there are male and female plants are on different plants.

Tall Meadow Rue (Thalictrum polygamum) with male flowers.

Tall Meadow Rue with female flowers.

All along the trail we saw butterflies but none of them stayed around long enough for Tom or me to get a picture.

We were finishing our walk when Tom found this Red Admiral.  It was down in the grasses so interested in whatever was there that it stayed for a bit longer than the other butterflies.

Red Admiral ( Vanessa atalanta rubria)

Cedar Bog, May 31, 2017

We had plans for the day.  We would go to Cedar Bog after making a quick stop at Key Mobility in Xenia to have Kyle adjust the power chair lift in the van.  The lift turned out to be problematic.  Eventually, Kyle decided there was something wrong with the lift that he had never come across.  He put a loaner lift in the van and promised to work on our lift.

By the time he had tried everything he knew and called the lift help line several times, we had only a short time to visit at Cedar Bog.  We decided to go anyway because wildflower enthusiasts were posting pictures of the Showy Lady's Slippers.  We saw them several years ago at the end of their blooming season and Tom wanted to get photos of the flowers at their peak.

He found them.

It was late in the day and mostly overcast so the lighting was easy to work with.  I finally was able to get a good photo of the map of the trails.

Because it was late we took a very short walk, only went down the boardwalk to the right to the first opening  because the Showy Lady's slippers close to the trail there.

I was surprised at the number of other things we saw on our walk.

We saw this snake slither across the boardwalk.  Neither of us knew what kind it was.  It didn't have the pattern of the Massasauga  which was pictured on the sign near the beginning of the trail.  Nevertheless, we waited for it to move off into the foliage before we moved on.

There was a variety of butterflies.  This one sat long enough for Tom to take its picture.

The large broad leaves of Skunk Cabbage covered much of the forest floor.

One of the prettiest flowers was this one.  I think it is Flowering Spurge.    There were masses of it in the old field meadow before we entered the woods.

As we were leaving, Tom took one last photo...

Southern Blue Flag Iris.

I had never seen these irises here so I had a bonus on this half hour walk.

Magee Marsh, May 17 and 18, 2017

This was our fourth trip to Magee Marsh this spring.  Each time the marsh was different and the birds varied though we saw Red-winged Blackbirds all three times.

Male Red-winged blackbirds are a common Ohio bird in the Spring and Summer.  They are a delight.  The females look a little like a large sparrow, striped in tans, and browns with a little white mixed in.

The males often perch in the open and sing with enthusiasm.  One little girl told me she thought it was singing, "Oh come to meee.  Oh,come to meee.".

Tom took this picture when the bird landed on the rope closing off the area where a pair of Bald Eagles are raising two offspring.

We came a bit late in May because it was after the official Greatest Week in American Birding so the area was less crowded.  Pictures were harder to take because the trees were leafed out.  Three weeks ago, the leaves were only beginning to open.

Late spring is when the American Redstarts are migrating through.  Some remain in the area and nest.  We saw both males and females.  The two pictures below are of males.  The females have yellow feathers where the males have red-orange.

Below are some of the other birds that we saw.  Tom took all of the bird photos.

Male Blackburnian Warbler.

Two views of the Male Magnolia Warbler

Two views of the Male Chestnut-sided Warbler

Male Prothonotary Warbler

Female Black-throated Blue Warbler

The female warblers are generally drabber than the males.  The female Black-throated Blues have a rectangular "pocket handkerchief" on their wing just as the more colorful males do so I recognize them more easily than I do some of the other females.

Male Baltimore Oriole

Other birds besides the warblers come to stay for the summer at Magee Marsh or stop on their migration route to the north.  The oriole is one of them.  We stood for five minutes and watched this one glean caterpillars from the tree.

We had a bit of an adventure as we were leaving on the 17th.  As a result we left later than we usually do.  Tom stopped on the drive out so I could snap this photo with his camera.