Month: August 2024

Jewel of the flowage

Unless I go back to the campsite for a chair, I’m pretty sure who is going to win this waiting game. Great blue herons make a living stalking prey; my patience too often flutters.

I was walking the shoreline of this sluggish flowage, scaring frogs and taking photos of wetland plants, when the heron lifted in a rush from an old elm tree. Branches hanging over the water framed the bird’s getaway.

I had startled the heron, which in turn startled me. It flapped away on a 6-foot wingspan in a serious of screamy squawks piercing the silence on this dew-laden morning. The heron saw me before I saw it. Was I not paying attention?

Now, the heron is in the middle of the flowage, where lily pads and clumps of algae cover much of the water surface. The heron looked large when it took off, and still does, perched on a small dead branch poking out of the water. A great blue stands over 4 feet tall. This one is that and more.

My camera lens finds a portal between low branches and shoreline grasses. It’s not much of a photo, considering I missed the dramatic, close-up takeoff. My attention had been on frogs and flowers, and so I was guilty of not being ready for “now you don’t see it, now you do.”

The heron knows I’m here, so there’s no chance it will come back to its morning perch in the tree. In what I interpret as showing off after its escape, the big bird begins preening, using its dagger beak to rub its chest and get beneath its feathers, one outstretched wing at a time.

Meanwhile, the lazy morning meanders on along this 29-acre shallow flowage created by a dam on a slow and low river between the campground and village. I can’t say there’s stunning natural beauty here, or that the algal blooms riding murky green mats don’t smell. But I grew up along this river, so it’s all good with me.

The natural beauty is in the life on this nearly stagnant water. A kingfisher perches on a wire, silhouetted against the sky. An osprey flies over, a bald eagle circles. Though not known as a fishing lake, the heron, kingfisher, osprey and eagle know there are several species of fish “present,” as my Wisconsin lakes book puts it. Translated to avian language, there’s variety on the menu.

I begin looking at an array of wetland plants in late August: sweet flag, broadleaf cattail, and broadleaf arrowhead. Water plantain is in bloom with a spot of yellow at its base of three white petals. Pale smartweed blooms in drooping spikes of pink.

Jewelweed catches my eye. How can I not focus on the jewelweed? There hang the showy two-lipped flowers in reddish-orange with beads of dew on petals hiding a cornucopia-shaped pouch of nectar. Bees and hummingbirds know about the nectar. They use the lower lip of two fused petals as a landing pad.

Speaking of landing, a frog suddenly jumps and disappears below the muck, breaking my jewelweed fascination and concentration. I check for the heron. It’s still there. Perhaps I’ll get that chair.

Note: Want to read more nature essays like this? My book, “Soul of the Outdoors,” is available through online book sellers and at Wisconsin bookstores in Rice Lake (Old Bookshop), Eau Claire (Dotters), Menomonie (Dragon Tail), Hudson (Chapter2Books), Spooner (Northwinds), and Bayfield (Honest Dog), and in Duluth, Minn., at The Bookstore at Fitger’s. For a personally-signed copy, email me at davegreschner@icloud.com.

Month of the moth, and more

Our neighbors have a knack for seeing the little thing in nature. It helps that they tend to two gardens and two young boys; A child’s unburdened explorations reveal discoveries adults often overlook.

These folks just plain enjoy nature spinning its story in their yard. They wave us over for these discoveries—a baby hummingbird they nursed to independence, a flying squirrel living in a bird house, the clownish-striped caterpillars of monarch butterflies.

The other day it was a hawk moth, a fascinating creature less that two inches long, seemingly assembled with parts from a bee, hummingbird, wasp and dragonfly. Research revealed that these sweet feeders with long string-like tongues (proboscis) for probing flower tubes go by many names.

What we observed darting among blooming bee balm was a clear-winged hummingbird moth, also known as a hawk moth, from the sphinx moth family. They are daytime feeders, and if noticed at all are often assumed to be baby hummingbirds. However, baby hummingbirds don’t fledge until they are the size of their parents, and they don’t have antennae as do the sphinx moths.

So it’s August, and all that makes the month a mellow transition to the next season. Hawk moths, hummingbirds, and bees are pursuing the nectar of bee balm (bergamot in the wild). I walked away from the hawk moth in awe, wondering what else late summer will bring on days that dawn hazy but far from lazy as nature preps for autumn.

Spider webs glisten on the morning dew, the night work of the orb weaver spider, a dream weaver with visions of captured flies. The day drifts on as monarch butterflies squirm from chrysalids on milkweed with green pods. Tansies paint the roadsides yellow, and goldenrod takes the cue. Nearby Jerusalem artichokes nod approval as they bloom in the same hue.

Blackbirds whirl in synchrony and frenzy above fields of browning oats and barley. Bullfrogs poke their fat heads above the green scum of a warm lakeshore. Wild plums blush in purple, and clumps of mountain ash berries in deepening orange bow under their own weight. Squirrels scurry for green acorns, butternuts and walnuts.

I walk past field corn. Rope-like tassels, the male flower of corn, beg for a breeze to carry their pollen to the silk of young slender cobs in this business of manufacturing kernels. Somewhere, bears anticipate milk-stage corn.

I hear talk of tomatoes on a walk at sunset, a sunset 20 minutes earlier than two months ago. Where does summer go? It goes on the wings of Canada geese, their molt over, now flying against the dusky sky, adults and goslings alike, all with new flight feathers.

This evening, the Milky Way stretches across the sky, through the humid air, horizon to horizon. I wonder at its vastness. How many stars in it, how many creatures great and small under it? I wonder where the hawk moth is tonight.

Note: Want to read more nature essays like this? My book, “Soul of the Outdoors,” is available through online book sellers and at Wisconsin bookstores in Rice Lake (Old Bookshop), Eau Claire (Dotters), Menomonie (Dragon Tail Books), Hudson (Chapter2Books), Spooner (Northwind), and Bayfield (Honest Dog), and in Duluth, Minn., at Bookstore at Fitger’s. For a personally-signed copy, contact me at davegreschner@icloud.com.