September 2, 2016:

Every time we start working on a new Kollath-Stensaas field guide to the North Woods, I get obsessed with the topic at hand. This time it is dragonflies…and I’ve been out multiple times a week since late July (I got a very late start and wish my obsession would have kicked in about May 20th when the first dragonflies are emerging). And so with net and camera stowed, I headed 2 1/2 hours up the North Shore of Lake Superior to Grand Marais and the Gunflint Trail. By leaving at 4:30am I was able to be out shooting by 7:30am. No Moose or Black Bear, but I did hear a Black-backed Woodpecker along the Lima Grade, but my real quarry was odonates (dragonflies & damselflies).

I spent most of the day along the Lima Grade in the Superior National Forest on the edge of the Boundary Waters in Cook County, Minnesota. Road conditions are fine but you hope you don’t meet too many folks headed in the other direction!

An unusually tame Common Raven voices her displeasure at my attention. Normally, northern ravens skidaddle at the first hint that you may even be thinking about tapping the brake of your vehicle. She let me stop and even stick my 400mm lens out the window for a few seconds before flapping off. [South Brule Road, Cook County, Minnesota]

Beaver pond gloriously ringed with Bidens cernua, Nodding Bur-Marigold. This is where I spent a couple hours hanging out and waiting for dragonflies.

Insect photography requires quite a bit of discomfort….sometimes from other insects such as mosquitoes, horse flies, deer flies, etc….and sometimes from contorting your body into unnatural positions to get the right angle. To make a creative shot of this Oblong-winged Katydid.

The three photos above are of the Shadow Darner (Aeshna umbrosa) that I netted as he patrolled this small roadside pond. They are one of the most handsome of darners, me thinks. Note his wedge-type claspers, straight-edged thoracic stripes that are yellowish on the bottom transitioning to blue-green at the top.

The “spotted” form of Variable Darner (Aeshna interrupta) shows two pairs of two spots on its thorax.

Face and multi-faceted eyes of the Variable Darner.

Late in the afternoon, I finally found one of my target species along a stretch of Lima Mountain Road…A Zigzag Darner (Aeshna sitchensis)…only the second one I’ve ever seen! (The first was years ago at Hartley Park in the city limits of Duluth). This dragonfly of the far north makes its home in boggy areas from Alaska to Labrador, reaching south into the northern Rockies (Idaho, Wyoming, Montana), northern Minnesota, Wisconsin, Michigan and northern New England. Unlike most darners, these guys prefer to perch on the ground, and once you locate one (usually on a gravel road like the one above). It is easily recognizable by its brown and light blue abdomen, narrow “zigzag” thorax stripes, small size for a darner, and its habit of perching on the ground.

Didn’t I just say that Zigzag Darners were partly identified by their habit of perching on the ground? Well, I guess Variable Darners do it too, as I saw TWO green-form females also perching on the surface of gravel roads (both on the Lima Grade).

My first and last stop of the day was Artist’s Point in Grand Marais where I found a “Jesus Mallard” walking on water.

Now that’s graffiti! It speaks to an earlier time when folks had more time to spend on their vandalism…Note that Hilda Brekken (no doubt a Norwegian farmer’s daughter) even pecked her name and hometown into the rock-hard rock in CURSIVE! She likely traveled by train to Duluth from Osakis, Minnesota then took the America (a supply boat) up the North Shore to Grand Marais. There was NO ROAD to this part of Minnesota in 1901 (date of this “pecked petroglyph”). The North Shore road was not constructed until 1920s, and not fully paved until 1933.

The quaint harbor of Grand Marais, Minnesota.

[All macro photo taken with Canon 7D, Canon 70-200mm f4 lens with Canon 500D close up lens attachment, handheld]

Last August I escaped for a weekend to explore the Swamp River in a remote corner of Cook County in far northeast Minnesota. My goal was Moose and rare flora. But the highlights turned out to be a Timber Wolf pup that was playing along a dirt road near the canoe landing, and a feasting flock of Cedar Waxwings.

I took hundreds of photos and several videos (including playing otters) during those two days…some pretty good, I thought. After I got home, as usual, I downloaded them to an external hard drive. But before I could even really look at the photos, the hard drive crashed! I had duplicates of all the photos on the drive EXCEPT the most recent ones, including those from that weekend up north.

Fortunately, a computer guru was able to recover almost all of the images…Unfortunately, it cost quite a bit. But worth it! The lesson? YOU REALLY DON’T HAVE ANY PHOTOS UNTIL THEY ARE BACKED UP IN AT LEAST TWO PLACES. Ideally, every image should be backed up at home in two places, AND a full-size version should either be in the Cloud (Photoshelter, CrashPlan, BackBlaze, Carbonite, etc), or an off-site location (in case your house burns down). Do I follow this myself? I try, but I’m behind on backing up to the Cloud. I put my best stuff (as full-size jpegs) on Photoshelter at my http://www.sparkyphotos.com site.

Pups this time of year often can be seen near roads. The adults are likely nearby and may still be feeding the young. NEVER feed wolf pups! The last thing we need is a wolf getting acclimated to humans. If it ever approaches a human or dwelling in the future, it will probably be “removed.”

The following morning I canoed part of the Brule River off the Gunflint Trail…Once again, skunked on Moose. But the Mountain-ash berries (Sorbus sp.) were ripe and the Cedar Waxwing families were chowing down!

Two juvenile Cedar Waxwings feast on Mountain-ash fruit.

Did you know grasses can have beautiful flowers? This is the bloom of Wild Rice (Zizania palustris). Ducks feast on this grass during their fall migration.

Here is an interesting wildflower that grows in slow moving waters…Megalodonta beckii …Beck’s Water-Marigold

…But it is even more interesting when you lift it gently out of the swamp! The finely divided submerged leaves encircle the stem. Very neat plant.

PacMan convention

I got down very low to get this image of a White Water Lily and its reflection along the Lima Mountain Grade. I then increased the contrast in Aperture.

Gotta go now…Time to backup some photos!