August Sightings #1

More nature photos from our outdoor respites in the middle of covid seclusion and mask-wearing.

Boch Hollow ...

A re-visit to Boch Hollow State Nature Preserve, on July 31st. Almost August. Climbing from the east trailhead, Joan and I reached this pond, with wonderful reflections of the far shore.

Zooming in on the blooms of "water shield," which is not common but locally abundant in ponds and shallow water throughout the eastern US. The submerged stems can be up to six feet long!

The hairy wood mint. I have since learned how to manually set the aperture to get a greater depth of field in focus.

Happy gilled mushroom growing out of a log. Looks fresh!

Here the mycelium ("roots"), an interconnected network of hyphae, anchor some shrooms in the coral family to the side of a tree.

A spiny orb-weaver spider.

The work continues at the closed west trailhead. Maybe next year?

Slate Run ...

Slate Run Metro Park hosts a historical farm, picnic and play areas, woods, and wetlands. There's a lot of variety there! Joan and I started at the west, or wetlands, entrance, and moved slowly because there was so much to see.

Algae everywhere in this pond, and each juvenile green frog had barely one square yard to itself.

In clearer water,

There were several juvenile green herons along the shore of one pond.

They are stalkers who can strike a fish instantly. This is an action shot of a greenie flipping its catch before swallowing it whole. (Click on the image to enlarge.)

Overhead, a juvenile osprey, sometimes called the "fish hawk," searched for its breakfast. This diver will plunge into the water and then beat back up into the air with talons grasping, it hopes, a juicy catch. This contrasts with the bald eagle, who will wet no more than its feet.

A northern water snake, a common species but usually not where Joan and I wander; we're not often around unspoiled water. It dines on fish and small amphibians.

Just chillin' ... or rather, warmin' in the sun.

As the trail left the wetlands the land gradually rose; grasses and flowering  plants became more common. On the left, we have wild senna, often used by Native Americans for medical purposes, but now declining through its range. On the right, blue vervain.

A short climb took us to an observation point, complete with a deck where we could sit and gaze and have a snack. Against the horizon, with binoculars, you can locate the Franklin County landfill and the warehouses surrounding Rickenbacker International Airport. The airport began as the Lockbourne Army Airfield in 1942, but is now primarily a cargo port with some passenger service and an Air National Guard refueling wing.

We continued east, and spent time tromping through meadows and then woods, including trails we'd never followed before. Gotta rack up those miles!

A great tree.

The view from a deck that was a stone's throw from one of the parking/picnic areas.

Just below the deck a huuuge chicken-of-the-woods fungus grew. The species is edible. Colorful too.

After more trail exploration my photography resumed as we passed through the wetlands on our return leg. Zippy and fluttery winged creatures were out now, including these three dragonflies.

Widow Skimmer

Eastern Pondhawk

Halloween Pennant

But the really, really, really big treat was a family of sandhill cranes, two adults (with the red patch on the head) and two juveniles. The southwest section of the Slate Run wetlands is off-limits because sandhills sometimes nest there, even though this far south is not ordinarily in their range outside of migration.

Along the way Joan and I collected various bits of trash, including a lost reusable water bottle, for proper disposal. We've being doing that on all our hikes this year. The stuff some people throw on the trail ...

Rockbridge ...

A repeat visit to this geological formation. The first stretch is a trail with some boardwalk sections with fields and woods on the right, and a fence and farmland on the left. Here we see a dodder plant, one of 201 parasitic species in the parasitic genus Cuscuta. You can see how it has latched onto this host.

The common or square-stemmed monkey flower. This plant has a high salt content and, dried, was used as a salt substitute.

A bee who took no notice of me, focused on the joe-pye weed.

A jazzier rendition via the DeepDreamGenerator.

The trail soon split, to the right for the Rock Shelter and the left for the Rock Bridge. We followed them both.

First, at the Rock Shelter, with Joan for scale.

A closer look.

We finished our visit to the Rock Shelter by taking an additional loop trail. On the way, we encountered this gnome, an invasive species that favors parks and preserves.

Returning to the other loop we reached the Rock Bridge.

It hardly looks able to support its own weight, but most folks, including us, had the nerve to walk across.

Christmas Rocks ...

Our repeat visit to Christmas Rocks began early on a cloudy morning with a good chance of rain. The forecast kept others away; we had the first 3½ hours to ourselves. A light sprinkle during the last hour was mostly intercepted by the green umbrella of the woods.

There was damage on the trails from a windstorm a few days before.

The first part of the trail system is an old road, now a gravel driveway to a house, where the preserve actually begins. The low terrain to the right of the road as you go in supports all types of moisture-loving vegetation, and at this time of year, butterflies, such as this tiger swallowtail, are searching for blooms.

The biggest treat of the day was this female northern walkingstick. This creature is no more than 4" long, and it is an insect, meaning it has six legs. The front legs are held out in front when motionless to reinforce the "I'm just a stick" message.

At Home ...

Not a hike, but nestled between the weathered wooden slats of Joan's basil planters, a gray tree frog, well camouflaged, don't you think? He visited us for two days.

There's more to August, but this post is plenty long enough. See you next time! 

Baby Hummingbirds

Joan and I have been watching a pair of baby hummingbirds as they rapidly grow. At first they were just hypothetical eggs being kept warm by mama, tucked into a lichen-clad nest she'd carefully built in a pear tree barely a dozen feet from our house.

We checked every day, waiting for signs of hatching. We would wonder, "Is that the tip of a beak peeking over the edge?" One day we were certain it was.

There were two chicks, one larger than the other, likely having broken out of its shell a day or two earlier. (Click on the image to enlarge.)

My, how you've grown!

Mama was very busy feeding the hungry ones, even when she was harassing a juvenile owl hanging around our yard one day. Begging is mandatory.

Me! Me! Me!

Bigger sib seems to get fed first.

Mom knows how to fix 'em.

But Mama doesn't ignore the smaller one.

Smaller sibling's turn.

Every day the nest is more crowded. It's a good thing they don't weigh much, or the one in the lower bunk might get crushed.

When one gets restless or needs to exercise those untested wings, well, it's awkward, isn't it?

It's getting close to their departure date. Some morning at least one will have flown.

Level 2 Charger!

Meet Sammie, or should I say Sam-e, my 2019 Chrysler Pacifica plug-in hybrid minivan. He can go 30 miles on a charge, give or take, so for roaming around our side of town he's mostly using electrons. I adopted him in December 2018.

Photo tweaked via DeepDreamGenerator

Sammie came with a 120-volt charger that I could plug into the existing outlet on our garage wall. However, that outlet is on the same circuit as the basement outlets and the bathroom outlets, all on a 15-amp circuit breaker. I've been told this was a common practice back in the '80s, when the house was built.

The first trouble was that two of the bathroom outlets would grow hot if Sammie was charging. In fact, in the master bath you could hear a buzzing noise. After joining the Facebook group for Pacifica hybrid owners, I learned that the misbehaving outlets were best replaced with fresh, commercial-grade outlets -- still only a few bucks. After more web research I bought three such, and swapped out the garage outlet and two of the bathroom outlets. The buzzing and heating stopped.

But it was still just a 15-amp circuit. If Sammie was charging -- and it took twelve to thirteen hours if empty, on 120 volts and 12 amps -- then the circuit breaker was likely to trip. Plug in a hair dryer? Pop. Dehumidifier in the basement (we run one during the summer) kicks in? Pop.

I finally decided to spring for the installation of a 50 amp, 240 volt circuit for Sammie, and collected a couple of estimates. One company wanted to completely replace the old panel, which didn't have spare slots after solar panels were installed in 2015. That was pricey. Another proposed adding a subpanel instead, and came in $1200 cheaper. That's more like it!

In this photo, solar stuff (disconnect, revenue meter, Enphase Envoy) is on the left, the original panel in center, and the new subpanel on the right. Circuits were moved from the original to the subpanel to make room for the 240-volt circuit in the original. The equipment is mounted on a basement wall.

Of course, I wanted to choose my 240-volt EVSE (Electric Vehicle Service Equipment), or what most folks call the "car charger," before the install. I'd been browsing for a while, knowing that I'd need one sooner or later, and chose Grizzl-e over more well-known manufacturers. The model with a premium 18-foot cable was US$419. Rugged construction and outdoor-rated.

I didn't need fancy features such as wifi connectivity. What I did want was variable charging amperage. Most EVSE units charge at a fixed rate, commonly 16, 24, or 32 amps. The very few that supported changing the amperage were more expensive, garlanded with bells and whistles.

Why variable amperage? Most of the time we'll want to draw only 16 amps to allow the solar panels to provide as much of the electricity as possible, by stretching the charge time, which would still be 2.5x faster than the 120-volt unit. But I would be able to jump to 32 amps (the Grizzl-e will actually go to 40 amps, but Sammie won't go that high) if I needed a quicker turn-around. Also, we're future-proofed against the possibility of a battery-only vehicle.

A feature or drawback of the Grizzl-e, depending on how you look at it, is that the amperage is not changed through an app on your phone, which if you're fumble-fingered like me might result in choosing too high or low an amperage. And it doesn't depend on wifi. Grizzl-e is a bit more work: unplug it, remove the front cover (Allen wrench), flip three tiny switches into the configuration you want, as described in the manual, and reassemble. If you don't need to change amperage often, that's plenty good enough.

I'm pleased to say that the electrical work and the first use of the Grizzl-e went smoothly. Now we don't need to worry about the hair dryer. 

July Sightings

This post collects some interesting photos from our outdoor rambles of the last several weeks.

At Christmas Rocks State Nature Preserve...

The blooming buttonbush has its tiny flower petals down on the surface of the sphere, and at the end of 100 to 200 stemens are the reproductive parts.

A look through the eyes of the DeepDreamGenerator:

A different sort of bloom, as it were, the sporophytes or spore-producing bodies of these mosses.

Sporophytes in the sunlight.

Multiple environments atop, on the sides of, and below the rocks.

An arc of illuminated spiderweb; click to enlarge.

A pretty but deadly mushroom of the aminita family.

At the Franklin Park Conservatory ...

Dale Chilhuly glass in the Pacific Islands Water Garden.

Carnivorous plants in the 2-acre Childrens Garden (wetland area).

I've documented the Paul Busse Garden railway here.

At Home ...

We have discovered that catbirds are enthusiastic bathers.

Joan planted several native plant species in front beds this spring, including milkweed, the sole support of monarch butterflies for egg-laying and feeding the caterpillars. (In particular, she planted rose milkweed, a cultivar of swamp milkweed).

We hadn't anticipated such early success as we've received; soon there were monarch visitors and tiny egg dots under the milkweed leaves. Here are photos of some monarch caterpillars, which go through five instars, or skin-sheddings, as they grow. A first instar is tiny, a centimeter or less long and skinny as a sharp pencil lead. This is likely a second instar; note that the two sets of "horns" are about the same size front and back.

Third instar? The front horns are larger.

A hummingbird has established a nest in the pear tree a dozen feet or so behind the house.

Photo through double-pane glass with small spotting scope.

There are two babies in the nest, growing rapidly. For the next update on the hummers, go here.

 
At Clear Creek Metro Park ...

A blooming green adder's mouth orchid, with its single leaf, and an in-focus closeup of the blooms.

A surprise atop a bolus growing out of a tree ... click on the image to enlarge.

A spicebush swallowtail butterfly.

The beginnings of a dam just above Lake Ramona?

The spider webs stood out on an astonishingly humid early morning. Easy for the flying insects to avoid until the silks dried and ceased to glisten.

Hello, venusta orchard spider!

This one is all curled up, and so harder to identify. Just about everything building webs in the air is an orb-weaver of one sort or another.

This one is surely in the genus of spiny orb weavers. Click on the image to enlarge and note the projections.

Rattlesnake plantain, an orchid. We've seen many this summer.

Here we have Indian pipe, which lacks chlorophyll. Instead of generating energy from sunlight, it is parasitic on certain fungi that are in a symbiotic relationship with trees, so ultimately its energy comes photosynthesis, but two steps removed!

Shrubby St. John's wort. These blooms are smallish, between half an inch and an inch across. This bee favorite known for, among other things, its deer-resistance.

Joan and I recommend observing nature at least once a week for your mental health!