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description= A blog about the natural world around us, whether it be birds, insects, plants, geology, or more!;
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competitive reasons or even simply due to an urge to see the biodiversity of birds as best as one can or a combination of both a subset of listers can be considered chasers which are birders who will go out of their way to see a rare bird that shows up somewhere chasing can be as much as chasing a rare bird that shows up in your home county as i did when a black legged kittiwake showed up in pickaway county ohio to getting on a plane and flying across the country several chasers i know in ohio made the drive all the way to portland a 13 hour drive just for the chance to see the great black hawk in person one of the interesting side effects of birders chasing a rare bird is the economic impact they bring to the local communities birders came from as far away as arizona and each person undoubtedly spent at least 1 in the portland area people would have bought hotel or airbnb rooms got lunch or dinner at local restaurants spent time at local shops and the likes birding tourism can have huge impacts on local communities the biggest week in american birding held in northwestern ohio had a 40 million dollar economic impact in the local community last year one study looking at the economic impact of birders chasing a rare bird in this case a black backed oriole which showed up in pennsylvania in 2017 found that the nearly 2 000 birders who went to see the rare bird brought in an extra 223 000 to the community over the course of 67 days the portland great black hawk will no doubt have a similar impact if not greater why was it there why did this juvenile great black hawk do what it did why did it leave its normal range and venture not only to texas but 2 000 miles north to maine there are several possible explanations but we will never know the answer for certain birds regularly show up in places outside of their normal range some species do so more than others due to both biological and meteorological circumstances sometimes weather events like hurricanes strong winds or storm fronts will push birds into new places sometimes young birds will disperse outside of their range either due to naivety or an attempt to find a new place to live such as pioneering or colonizing attempts sometimes the internal navigational system of birds will be messed up making a bird migrate north instead of south or vice versa sometimes birds accidentally go a little too far when migrating and end up further north or south of where they should be recent data suggests that insecticides might even be disrupting the ability of birds to navigate which might be causing some birds to show up in unusual places on accident there s a lot of reasons that can cause birds to show up in unusual places and oftentimes it s very hard to pinpoint exactly which factor was at play it s especially difficult regarding the great black hawk the great black hawk is a species that doesn t migrate so migratory overshooting and misdirection don t make sense the maine individual is a juvenile and so it dispersing 200 miles north to texas makes some sense but at the same time it doesn t make sense for a juvenile to disperse 2 000 miles north to maine maine also has a history of southern species showing up so this suggests some kind of weather related events possibly at play but there s no specific storm or front we can attribute to its arrival from what i ve seen there s no obvious conclusion to be made about why this great black hawk ventured this far north leah mould left your blogger kyle brooks center and olivia brooks right in deering oaks park portland after seeing the great black hawk you can actually see the great black hawk in this photo it s the brown blob in the spruce tree above the person in the purple coat that s facing away photo credit miranda wheeler although the great black hawk saga has come to a sad end this crazy traveling hawk has impacted thousands of people around the us and the local community as well it s not the first time something like this has happened as birders know all too well and it won t be the last what species will be the next big star and where will it show up only time will tell posted by kyle brooks at 5 52 pm 49 comments email this blogthis share to x share to facebook share to pinterest labels nature ohio photography parks birding birds birds of prey maine rare birds location portland me usa sunday january 13 2019 a selection of photos from wayne national forest i m still alive after my last post on august 11 2018 this blog fell silent for over 5 months back in late june of this year i began a new job as a photojournalist resource assistant for the usda forest service at wayne national forest ohio s only national forest most of my days since then have been filled with editing photos writing and editing that writing subsequently i quickly found myself not having the drive to do the same exact thing for this blog when coming home from work the last thing i wanted to do was to continue doing the exact same things i had been doing all day so i put this blog on the back burner with the new year now in swing and the government shutdown currently still going strong i decided to work on some new posts this re entry post is simply a selection of photos i ve taken while on the job that i really like wayne national forest is around 244 000 acres in size with much of that being a patchwork of relatively small areas most of those patches lack any sort of developed recreation infrastructure like hiking trails parking lots campgrounds and so on however there are some developed areas and probably the most visited of those areas is lake vesuvius in the ironton unit lake vesuvius is a man made reservoir and is often used for boating fishing and swimming this fisherman was out on the lake just after sunrise heading toward his fishing spot every photographer has a list of subjects they want to take a photo of even if there are thousands and thousands of similar photos despite the cliché there s something about having your own version of an oft photographed subject or trope that is appealing the photograph above is one such case despite the absolutely overwhelming number of such similar photos out there just check out the google search results for photo of dried mud i wanted my own photo of such a scene i finally got the chance while getting photos of the leith run campground after it was flooded by the ohio river the wayne national forest has a variety of trails across its 3 units with more on the way one of the most well known trail systems in the national forest is the wildcat hollow backpacking trail ohio doesn t really have a lot of backpacking trails and so every trail counts the wildcat hollow trail comes in at 17 2 miles long with some parts winding along ridgetops and other parts like the scene pictured above snaking through the valley bottoms one of the things i ve been trying to do in this new position is experiment with new photographic styles and methods this photo for example was a post processing experiment a la the ever popular and in my opinion overdone desaturated with crushed blacks look that s all over instagram a purple coneflower echinacea purpurea among a field of wild bergamot monarda fistulosa this was taken in one of the wayne s acid mine drainage mitigation sites this mitigation site in particular is outside the village of shawnee in addition to raising the ph of acid mine drainage impacted stream water this site features several acres of planted prairie filled with native wildflowers to provide food for our native pollinators one of the best parts parts about national forests is that you can pretty much wander wherever you want in them and of course there are beautiful areas hidden throughout each national forest that require you to do some bushwhacking and exploring to find fly gorge is one such place fly gorge is a small ravine featuring a series of cascading waterfalls to get there you have to park in a nondescript pull off on ohio scenic byway 7 push your way through a dense wall of saplings bushes and poison ivy carefully meander through a decades old illegal dumpsite find the creek and begin making your way upstream i love finding repetitive patterns and tantalizing textures while hiking and so i was happy to find this wall of tiny mushrooms on a dead log in addition to patterns and textures i also love finding scenes of contrast here s some evergreen southern running pine diphasiastrum digitatum against the reds oranges yellows and browns of the new leaf litter as i mentioned in the opening this is a re entry post of sorts as i get back into the swing of things i ll be posting more educational articles thanks for reading posted by kyle brooks at 8 29 pm 1 comment email this blogthis share to x share to facebook share to pinterest labels nature ohio photography parks national forests ohio photography location wayne national forest athens ranger district athens unit coal township oh 43766 usa saturday august 11 2018 a journey through the watkins glen gorge watkins glen state park is a relatively small park in west central new york that features an absolutely beautiful shale gorge filled with waterfalls and other wonderful geologic formations i visited back in early june of this year to hike the gorge and see the sights in my last post i did a relatively deep dive into the geological history of the region and the gorge to put the park into context if you re a geology buff i highly recommend checking it out the geology of watkins glen state park this post however will examine what the park is like today so let s go on a pictorial journey down the gorge beginning of the spiral gorge section there are several trails at watkins glen state park including some that go along the edge of the gorge walls some that connect the gorge with the top of the gorge and of course the trail that follows the gorge itself the gorge trail comes in at around 1 5 miles long you can access the trail from either the upper entrance which sits at around 1010 feet above sea level or the main entrance which sits at around 490 feet above sea level this post will follow the flow of glen creek as it cuts its way down the gorge so we will be going down in elevation we ll start half a mile down the trail at mile point bridge mile point bridge called such as it is a mile up from the end of the gorge crosses glen creek as it begins to enter a section of the gorge known as spiral gorge spiral gorge is an extremely narrow section of the main gorge that is more reminiscent of the slot canyons out in the american southwest than anything i ve seen in the east the main waterfall of this section is called pluto falls and it s the small waterfall pictured above with spiral gorge being as narrow as it is not much light reaches it this coupled with the steepness of the walls means only the hardiest of mosses can grow on the shale the darkness and lack of life gave rise to the name pluto falls as pluto better known as hades in the original greek myths was the roman god of the underworld spiral gorge soon lets out into a more open section of the gorge this immediate section contains the crown jewel of watkins glen state park rainbow falls you can t tell but this picture was taken from atop a bridge that crosses a big cascade in fact you can just see the end of the cascade at the bottom center the thin waterfall in the center right is the famous rainbow falls as you can see the water runs down a slick section of the cliffside before falling into the bottom of the gorge you can also see that the trail actually run behind the waterfall as well you might be thinking that it doesn t look like much and you are right at least from this angle the view from coming up the gorge is much more spectacular than from going down if you walk a bit further down and then turn around you re rewarded with the most famously seen angle of rainbow falls and the triple falls cascade right by it as well as the bridge the previous photo was taken from if you look at the google results for watkins glen state park you ll quickly notice that almost all the photo results are of rainbow falls from this general angle it s a common photo but one that i was longing to take for years and one that i m happy i have my own of i know people sometimes wonder why photographers take photos of places that have been photographed thousands upon thousands of times especially if it s of the same feature a lot of times it comes down to the photographer wanting to have their own version of it even if thousands of others have essentially the same photo the gorge trail is fantastic and one of the unique features of the 1 5 mile trail is not only that you get to see 19 waterfalls but you get to walk behind 2 of them rainbow falls is one of the two waterfalls the trail passes behind and expect to get wet when you go through it also don t forget to tuck away your camera gear just downstream from rainbow falls is a section of the gorge called the glen of pools this section is filled with several potholes and plungepools one of which you can see at the bottom of the photo above potholes and plungepools form from different sets of geological processes but the end results are similar in appearance a deep circular depression carved into the rock there are two main ways a pothole can form one way involves the rapid flow of water coming around a curve and forming an eddy the water will carry sand and pebbles and over time these rocks will get caught in the eddy and swirl around for a bit when they swirl around they carve a pothole given more time the pothole gets larger and larger another way involves joints which i talked about in my last post if a pebble being carried by the water gets dropped into a joint the water will swirl that pebble and others around in the joint forming a circular depression over time the circular depression in the bottom of the picture above for example is a pothole plungepools on the other hand are associated with waterfalls essentially when water and any sediments the water is carrying plunges over a waterfall the water will hit the bedrock directly underneath the waterfall over time this force essentially digs out a circular depression underneath the waterfall further yet downstream the gorge enters a section that is relatively flat and wide why the change even though all the rocks exposed in the watkins glen gorge belong to a formation called the genesee group there are hundreds of sub layers within the formation some of these layers are softer or harder than others the layer exposed in the creek bed above for example is harder than other parts of the formation because of this glen creek was able to erode down to this harder layer but was having trouble eroding past it instead the water followed the path of least resistance and traveled horizontally along the harder layer instead of down and through it although after a while this changes once the water does encounter a softer layer that it can ...
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