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DSA Update No. 5: Carnage & Closure
Here’s a parting shot from the 2014 DSA meeting in Wisconsin: dragonflies being dragonflies – flying around, having sex, and killing things, including one another.
Got Milkweed?
Now drifting back into northern sections of the United States, Monarchs face a perfect storm of threats. But you can plant the seeds (literally) to help America’s favorite insect.
A Wisconsin Badger
While chasing dragonflies in Wisconsin, I found the state animal watching me from a newly dug burrow in Flambeau River State Forest. It neither growled nor charged. (Can’t have everything.)
DSA Update No. 4: Gomphicide
PICK ANY SCENE FROM THE DRAMA OF LIFE ON EARTH: birth, growth, courtship, sex, subterfuge, betrayal, murder. Find them all expressed in the lives of dragonflies. Shakespeare could write the script on these predators.
DSA Update No. 3: Satisfaction
ENVISION SOMETHING YOU REALLY LOVE but only get to experience now and then. Shooting the moon in hearts. Live chamber music. Big Papi hitting a walk off homer. Fresh strawberry pie. We’ve got that in dragonflies here in Wisconsin.
DSA Update No. 2: Other Orders
TICK NUMBER 26 made her fatal move while I was eating broasted chicken (whatever that is) and drinking a Bud at the Back Door Cafe in Ladysmith, Wisconsin.
DSA Update No. 1: The Gomphids
TO BE COMPLETELY HONEST ABOUT IT, the Annual Meeting of the Dragonfly Society of the Americas is really an excuse for a lot of nice people to cavort together in wetlands and rivers with nets and cameras.
Considering Cowbirds
Here’s how I learned to stop worrying and start loving Brown-headed Cowbirds. An essay for Northern Woodlands magaine.
What’s This? No. 19
My What’s This? challenge returns with these oddities from southeastern Michigan on 3 June 2014. The first to name them wins prestige and $5 off any of my outings or workshops. Enter in the comments section below. Tomorrow I’ll post the winner and…
Go to BirdFest on Saturday
IF YOU GO TO BIRDFEST in Montpelier on Saturday you’ll probably hear a bird say “Free Beer!” You will most likely see a dinosaur going by the name Tyrannus. And you will witness what Roger Tory Peterson once called “the most vivid expression…
Montpelier Wild No. 6: Scarlet Salutations
NOW WELCOMING VISITORS to Hubbard Park is a Scarlet Tanager. Sounding like an American Robin with a sore throat, he sings above Parkway Avenue – the southeast entrance road to Montpelier’s “Central Park.” Your only hindrances are the maple leaves, which might…
Dirty Insect Image No. 4: Mustard Whites
In my continuing series of Dirty Insect Images, this pair of Mustard Whites (Pieris napi) spent about 10 minutes copulating on a red maple seedling yesterday.
