I found this midland painted turtle (Chrysemys picta marginata) in an oxbow on the edge of the Jennings Woods property. This individual had only three legs, the fourth having apparently been gnawed off by a predator (or just a neighborhood dog). The turtle’s reduce mobility and the fact that it was a cool spring day made capturing the normally very skitish turtle much easier.
Monthly Archives: February 2009
Fall colors at Jennings
A couple of pictures taken of the foliage in autumn at Jennings Woods. The stream in the foreground in the picture on the left is the West Branch of the Mahoning River, which is the primary site of research for the Kershner Lab. The day these photographs were taken, Matt and I were helping Jenn check crayfish she had tethered to the stream-bottom to assess predation on the crayfish. An extremely cool photo essay about Jenn’s research was put together by the KSU photographer. I believe most of the yellow foliage here are from sugar maple.
Shake
Still Water Reservoir
Collembolan Orgy Masacre
Dan, at Molecularfossils.com, has posted an article on Laccaria bicolor, a predatory ectomycorrhizal fungus that can prey on collembola. I thought it was interesting and wanted to comment and link my collembola picture to his post…. I had trouble commenting, so I wanted to write it here before I forgot.
February Arthropods
Last weekend, at George Metro Park, I found several small swarms of midges that, in all likelihood, had just emerged from the nearby Cuyahoga river. The swarms were hovering around the park’s boardwalk, so I snapped a few photos of individuals that were resting on the boardwalk posts. They were so small that it was difficult to hold the camera steady, but, from the picture to the left, you can see their thick, feather-like antenna (the effect is not motion blur).
Later, I came across the spider on the right hiding inside a small snow cavern, kind of like a spider igloo. Although it was a relatively warm day (perhaps just above freezing), I thought the pressence of these two animals was interesting.
McGee Marsh Droplets – Spider Web
And here are some images of droplets forming on spider webs the same morning.
McGee Marsh Droplets – Leaves
There is no theme
If it appears as though the posts on this site don’t have a theme, it’s because they don’t. Most posts are basically just a random picture I come across while browsing my collection. This particular photo was taken at the Leicester Falls, which I attribute as the birth place of my interest in photography. Soon after I purchased my first digital camera, an Olympus D-100, I began photographing the Leicester Falls regularly, usually with Mike Valentino. This photo wasn’t taken with my good ol’ D-100, but it was taken with my second digital camera, a Canon PowerShot a530, which is the camera the majority of my pictures were taken with so far.
Collembolan Orgy
Collembola are an insect-like arthropod common just about everywhere. In forest leaf litter, many species of collembola graze on fungus as the fungus decomposes leaves and sticks. During the fall, some will come together in mass quantities to breed. I caught one of these breeding events at Kent Bog and snapped this photograph. Horny little buggers.