Cerulean Warbler

Cerulean Warbler!

Life List Notebooks

I mentioned in a previous post that I had been working on a new project, well here it is.

I have always kept lists of the birds I see in the field while working on different projects or simply bird watching, but I have never had a notebook dedicated to birds.  Last fall I decided I was going to find and buy a birding notebook and start keeping a life list on January 1st 2016.  Well, I couldn't find what I wanted on Google.  I found some artsy handmade ones on Etsy and some hurricane-proof Rite-in-the-Rain ones, but I wanted something durable enough to last a month in my back pocket but cheap enough to justify having a new one each month.

I found pocket notebooks for beer drinkers, stargazers, wine sippers, comic book artists and even cheese tasters but not for birders, so I decided to make my own!

Then I started thinking how cool it would be if each notebook featured a bird portrait and a cover color to represent that bird - a small feature that would keep the notebooks fresh and completed ones would create a rainbow of birding adventures on my shelf.  So I started with some herons...

Great Blue Heron

 Green Heron

 and Little Blue Heron

I also wanted each notebook to have a little bit of information on the featured species, so they do...

Each inside cover has fields for personal data...

The back inside cover has a Handy Map of Bird Anatomy and some common birding abbreviations...

Each notebook has 23 of  the two-page spread shown below - plenty of room for information, bird lists and a small sketch or two!

If your a birder or know one you can purchase Life List Notebooks at www.lifelistnotebooks.com

I have a some others planned so stay tuned...

Sketches

A few sketches from my field journal from this long winter.

 

 

A lot of days like this this winter.  Im not sure where this year ranks in snowfall numbers, but right now 2013-2014 winter ranks as the 4th coldest on record in Illinois.  For the Dec-Feb period we had an average temperature of 20.8 degrees, the coldest on record 1977-1978 at 19.6 degree average temperature.  The 1981-2010 statewide average for Dec-Feb is 29.0 degrees.

 

A portrait of a 100+ year old white oak showing the scars of storms and neighboring treefalls.

The Monarch of the Woods - Bur Oak

 

In 2001, as a college undergraduate, I started working for the Committee on Natural Areas at the University of Illinois.  One of my responsibilities was to record tree falls that occurred in University Research Forests, one of these sites, Brownfield Woods, quickly became my favorite! Brownfield Woods is a 60 acre remnant of the original “Big Grove” prairie grove present in Champaign County, IL pre-settlement. Although Brownfield has a history of very selective timber harvest and cattle grazing it is often referred to as “virgin”.  My first encounter with the Monarch of the Woods came in 2001 and it has been one of my all-time favorite trees ever since.  At 71” diameter at 4 ½ feet above the ground (DBH) it is the largest tree in the forest.

The 2^nd largest tree in the forest, another bur oak fell on April 2, 2006 it was 70” DBH, a cross-section of the tree ages it somewhere around 380 years old.  To put that into some historical perspective – the acorn that produced this tree germinated around 1626; less than 10 years after the Mayflower landed in Massachusetts.

In 1926 C.J. Telford authored a paper on Brownfield Woods and at that time the largest tree in the forest was the same tree that holds that place today.  Telford called this tree the Monarch of the Woods and it still is today, in 1926 it had a DBH of 65” and over the last 88 years it has only added 6” of trunk diameter.  Below is a photo of the Monarch in 1926 and one taken this month (2014).

  

It is hard to get the feel for how big this tree is especially considering it is a forest grown specimen not an open grown tree.  Here is a panoramic self-portrait made from 5 photos of the tree and I.

 

 

Here is another sketch I made of the base of the tree showing the mossy base, areas of smooth patch fungus (harmless) and of course the large burl that is about 8-9 feet up on the trunk.

 

 

 

 

 

Summer Notes

Our family is in the process of moving back to the prairie of Illinois so I have been without my scanner and much of my drawing supplies so I have nothing new to share.  However, here are a few pages from my field notebook from past summers spent in the Ohio forest!

 

First Morel 2012

Yesterday I found my first morel of 2012.  It was a tiny grey morel that measured less than 2cm tall.  Here is a sketch of one of the last morels I saw in 2011 a great big yellow that measured nearly 20cm tall on May 5th.

Morels can be terribly hard to find.  I didn't find this nice yellow until after I got home and took a closer look at my snapshot of this handsome Jack-in-the-pulpit.  Can you find it?

April

Two sketches from last April – this is about the stage we are at right now – still running 2-3 weeks early.  However, the weather has cooled off quite a bit and a lot of the plants have slowed down or stopped in their tracks. 

The buds of the understory beech trees are swelling but not yet popped and the winter wrens are singing. 

Wild ginger (Asarum canadense) is in flower and the foamflower (Tiarella cordifolia) is almost flowering.

Spring Sketches

Yesterday while spraying invasive lesser celandine (Ranunculus ficaria) I saw my first jack-in-the-pulpit (Arisaema triphyllum) breaking through the leaves.  Here is a sketch of a jack from April 18^th 2010 – almost a month later than the one I saw yesterday. 

Trout lily (Erythronium americanum) was in flower here last week saw my first one on March 23 – here is a sketchbook painting of one from last year on April 26 – more than a month difference.

I was in Illinois a few weeks ago and on March 15^th I saw Dutchman’s britches (Dicentra cucullaria) and toadshade trillium (Trillium recurvatum) in flower – this sketch was done on April 8^th 2010 a solid 3 weeks later compared to this year.



Herons

I was back in Illinois this past weekend and took a bit of time to walk down to the local heron rookery.  One year I counted around 120 nests in this location – on Friday there were fewer but I counted at least 50 active nests.  I didn’t sketch on Friday but here is a sketch from last month when I saw my first northeastern Ohio great blue heron of 2012.  

Ransacked by a Rafter of Turkeys

Last week on February 27th I noticed that almost all of the skunk cabbage (Symplocarpus foetidus) in the fen had been ransacked by a rafter of wild turkeys. In all cases the tops of the cabbage flowers were simply ripped off or ripped open but all parts and pieces appeared to be present – the turkeys were not eating the skunk cabbage – so what were they up to?

It is well documented that the inside of a skunk cabbage flower is stinky and can be as much as 36 degrees warmer than the outside temperature, often melting the snow around it. The temperature difference creates a nice toasty sauna-like atmosphere for potential pollinators. I imagine a bunch of early emerging insects crowding in to the warm and stinky skunk cabbage saloon to get a bite to eat and stay dry on cold February and March nights not realizing that the local turkeys know right where they are. Tired of a winter diet of nuts and soft body insects the turkeys probably have a hankering for something warm and crunchy.

I can’t find anything online about turkey destroying skunk cabbage in search of insects, but I have to think that is what they are up to – I hope it is not just a bunch of young Jakes being teenagers.

Two Common Invasive Species

Unfortunately there are a bunch of non-native invasive plant species that are impacting our natural areas – two of the more common ones are garlic mustard (Alliaria petiolata) and glossy buckthorn (Frangula alnus).  I recently gave a talk about invasives management at the Ohio Invasive Plant Council Annual Meeting – here are a few pages from my notebook that I scanned for the presentation and the take home message for each.

This is a sketch of garlic mustard that has been cut off near the ground and left in the woods (a technique that is approved for management of large nasty monocultures of garlic mustard).  I think of this as a reduction not a control – the cut plants will often times have enough stored energy to re-flower and produce seed.  Similarly the cut stalks have enough energy to mature the young seed pods (seliques) and produce seed.  Take home message is that it is always best to pull these plants by their roods and get them out of your woods!

This watercolor sketch is of glossy buckthorn in a wetland – once these things grow too large to hand-pull the best management becomes cut and treat (with herbicide).  I tried to illustrate that once the plant is cut only a small window (5 minutes or so) exists in which an herbicide treatment is effective.  Oftentimes people call and want to know how to kill buckthorn and/or other woody invasive species on their own property – the vast majority of them are doing everything right except that they are treating with herbicide beyond the 5 minute window.

Sketching in Nature

Earlier in the week Kate from the Sketching in Nature blog invited me to become one of their “correspondents” – I was very excited and gladly accepted the invitation. The Sketching in Nature group is composed of nature artists and sketchers from all over the world – it is a great place to spend some time looking at natural history from around the globe and you can start right here.

If you came from Sketching in Nature - thanks for visiting, but you have already seen this and can skip to the next post.

Here is a page from my notebook from earlier in the week - a little look at some of the botanical activity where I stopped for lunch on Tuesday. Lunch was adjacent to a slip above the East Branch of the Chagrin River and the first thing to catch my eye were the undersides of hundreds of round-leaved ragwort (Packera obovata), a brilliant violet anytime of year but especially striking in February. Next I noticed some young sedges their exposed roots barely clinging to the eroding slope. Carex (sedges) is a difficult genus to master, but in this part of the world there are only a few sedges with leaves this wide and the pale bases of the leaves give this one away as C. platyphylla. Much more common here, and abundant to my right on the wooded hillside, is C. plantaginea it is given away by the red/maroon bases of leaves.  By the way, C. plantaginea has some very striking flowers for a sedge - check them out in the top right corner of this journal post. And making their 2012 debut all over the hillside is wild leak aka ramps (Allium tricoccum) a solid two weeks ahead of schedule based on my notes. As always a great day to be in the woods!

Beech Roots

American beech (Fagus grandifolia) has a relatively shallow root system and often has quite a bit of exposed roots especially on the down slope sides of the tree.  I ran into this gnarly fellow the other day while surveying some property lines at work – with no time to sketch I snapped a smart phone picture for later.  The sketch is done with a Sharpie Pen and then washed with a little watercolor.  The only green on the hillside came from Christmas fern (Polystichum acrostichoides) so I threw one in.

 



Snowy Day

Here is my best attempt to capture one of those days in the woods where snow clings to every possible surface and is falling at the same time.  Watercolor

Polychromos



I have no formal education in art and I really don’t know much about the technical side of colored pencils but I do know that I get really frustrated when I break a pencil point or worse when the pencil lead breaks somewhere down inside the pencil. I can’t tell you how mad I get when I sharpen a pencil and then notice that the led is wobbling from a crack 1-2cm inside the pencil. This seems to always happen to me with Prismacolor pencils and since I often sketch in the woods it can be aggravating especially when I don’t have a sharpener besides a pocket knife. At some point I found that Crayola pencils were much more durable in the field and inexpensive, a basic set can be picked up at any Walgreens or CVS, so I have used Crayola for quite some time. Recently I had more than one suggestion to try Faber-Castell Polychromos, so I did. The local art store had a bunch of the 25th Anniversary Polychromos sets on sale so I picked one up. I was pretty disappointed with the colors in the set but really liked drawing with them, so I ordered a bunch of greens, browns and grays. So far they are great and I have not had a single broken lead.

Here are some sketches I made in the field with my Polychromos.



An old eastern hemlock snag.

My field set-up for a quick sketch with the new greens, browns and grays.

Some of the stuff in the fen that day.

A dead twig with what I think is common green shield lichen

The bright orange twig and buds of black willow stood out against the grays of the day

Skunk cabbage starting to flower and stink

Delicate Thuidium moss as green as it is in June

Bright red twigs of red-osier dogwood

and

Sensitive fern AKA bead fern fertile fronds (these are the beads)

Northern Red Oak

Looking up into a nice northern red oak on a sunny clear blue February day. Watercolor and sharpie pen.

Forest Floor in June

Another still-life with Solomons plume, some oak leaves, bloodroot and oak apple gall.  This is a glimpse of the forest floor on a Sangamon River bluff in east central Illinois.  Colored pencil - Prints Available.  Not familiar with oak apple gall, take a look at this page from my field journal.

Walking the Chagrin

A sketch I made while taking a break from fly fishing.

Fecundity of Cattail

When attempting to control an invasive species it is important to know the potential of a particular species to reproduce by seed or by vegetative means. It is also helpful to know how long seed of that species is viable in the soil, for example if seed is viable for 3 years then I can feel pretty good in 2016 if I stop seed production in 2012. Narrow-leaf cattail (Typha angustifolia) is one of the nastiest invasive species out there. It has destroyed and is destroying native wetlands all over the eastern U.S. T. angustifolia has an amazing ability to reproduce: an individual cattail head (hotdog) can have as many as 700,000 seeds and under ideal conditions seeds can remain viable in the soil for more than 100 years. Furthermore vegetative reproduction has been reported to be very high; as many as 98 vegetative buds per mature plant. Let 1 single narrow-leaf cattail into your wetland and your in big trouble.

These pages from my notebook were done while I was working at the Nature Center at Shaker Lakes (NCSL). You can follow NCSL’s attempt to restore an urban wetland choked with T. angustifolia right here.

Canada Geese: When they can successfully breed in WalMart parking lots by the thousands there are too many; I have heard them referred to as ‘sky carp” which might be a better common name…

Shagbark

I have added a lot of sketches of fruit and twigs of the hickories - here is a field journal sketch of shagbark hickory (Carya ovata) bark.