The Ozarks

 Last month I visited family in Missouri. I'd been through Missouri many years before, and remember it being mostly flat. I was travelling out of St. Louis towards Kansas City then. This time, I went southwest out of St. Louis. The road was like sailing the ocean over the waves. Up down one hill then up the next. I always thought the Ozarks were in the southwest corner of the state. It turns out pretty much the whole southern half of Missouri is Ozarks. The undulation leveled out a bit once I reached the Springfield Plateau in the southwest. But it was nowhere near as flat as Illinois.

The wildlife in the Ozarks is different from what I'm used to in Pennsylvania. However, I didn't get to see very many new critters. There are freshwater clams in Stockton Lake. I saw plenty of armadillos, but they were all dead. No roadrunners, no rattlesnakes, no scorpions, and no tarantulas. I saw some insects that I have at home, like a wheel bug, a milkweed bug, and the ubiquitous deer. Southern leopard frogs in a spring house at a Civil War battlefield was a nice surprise.

Wheel bug

Bird poop moth

Milkweed beetle

Black swallowtail

Freshwater clam

There was more forest than I expected to see. I got to check out some oak savanna. Most of the land in the Springfield Plateau that I saw was farmland. There were some crops, mostly corn, but the majority was cattle pasture.

It was nice to see some butterflies finally. Compared to last summer, I haven't seen very many this year. Apparently once you leave Bucks County they are everywhere. The Flight 93 memorial in western Pennsylvania has quite a few grasshoppers too. Turkeys flew across the road ahead of me somewhere in that area. Elsewhere, the sky was full of turkey vultures and hawks that I couldn't identify. A fox ran across the road ahead of me in Indiana.

Dead luna moth

Fence lizard

Fritillary (left) and buckeye (right) butterflies

Southern leopard frogs

Dead armadillo

Even though I didn't set out to explore nature on this trip, it still happened. It happens everywhere I go now that I've been trained to see things everywhere. Next time you are out and about, take a look around and notice what you see.

Tiger swallowtail

Oak savanna

Christmas is for the Birds

This year is the 120th annual Audubon Christmas Bird Count. It began December 14th and runs through January 5th. The tradition started in 1900 in at the beginning of the conservation movement. Since the beginning, citizen scientists have used the information gathered to track trends in bird populations.
I took part on December 15th and had an eventful and cold day. Once again, I put my discomfort aside for the sake of nature. The day began at 4 AM with three hours of owling. My partner Chris drove us around to a few sites where we'd listen in the dark for owl calls. In an attempt to draw them out, he played owl calls on his phone. We heard a screech owl at one location and a pair of great horned owls in a duet at another place.

Great horned owl

After a pit stop around 7 AM we picked up the third member of our trio at sunrise and began our visual observations with nearly three dozen turkey vultures overhead near a roosting site. I happen to know about this roost because I drive past it on the way to and from work, and depending on my schedule I see the vultures either leaving for the day or returning for the night. Right away my presence paid off. In past years, Chris and John start their count headed the other direction.
Over half our time was spent in the car. Much of what we saw was from the road. We did some walking though, and it was tough in some places. Recent rain meant soggy ground. It's December and Pennsylvania, which is rarely a good combination. In addition to the cold, it was windy. The wind made for great raptor conditions, but bad for everything else. It was difficult to hear bird calls over the sound of the wind. Watching for motion in the trees and bushes was confusing because everything was moving.

Turkey vulture

This year we counted 47 different species, and a total of 735 birds. In 2018 we counted 38 species and 754 birds. Canada geese were the big winners this year, coming in at 266. However, they were mainly in two flocks. The birds we spotted the most times were turkey vultures and house finches. I look forward to counting more birds in 2020!

Canada goose