2012 Comprehensive List

New Shooting Locations:

1. Bledsoe Creek State Park (Tennessee)
2. Fullersburg Woods Forest Preserve (DuPage County, IL)

 New Species:

Amphibians


Birds (11/5)

1. Blue Jay
2. Hairy Woodpecker
3. Muscovy Duck
4. House Finch
5. Brown Creeper 
6. Yellow-Shafted Northern Flicker
7. Northern Cardinal
8. Song Sparrow
9. White-Breasted Nuthatch 
10. Blue-Winged Teal 
11. American Robin 
12. Red-Breasted Woodpecker

Insects and Arachnids (5/2)
       Butterflies and Moths

1. Eastern Tailed Blue
2. Eastern Tiger Swallowtail (female)
3. Pipevine Swallowtail 
4. Cabbage White 

        Other (2/2)

1. Mosquito
2. Tiger Beetle
   

Invertebrates (other than insects and arachnids) (1/1)
Snail


Mammals (3/1)

1. White-Tailed Deer
2. Eastern Cottontail Rabbit 
3. Eastern Gray Squirrel
   

Reptiles (1/1)
Common Snapping Turtles



Unknown (1/1)
unknown silkworm caterpillar


Plants (10/6)

1. Columbine
2. Crossvine
3. Rhododendron
4. Sweet Betsy
5. Honeysuckle
6. Common Blue Violet
7. Saint Anthony's Turnip (buttercup)
8. Virginia Bluebells 
9. Prairie Trillium
10. Creeping Buttercup

Update: 4.14.12 -  9/6 (9 species total, 6 are new)
Update: 4.16.12 - 13/10 
Update: 4. 21.12 - 24/11
Update: 4.28.12 - 34/18

(Listings in purple are new species for this year.)

2011 Comprehensive List

Amphibians
Bullfrog

Birds

1. American Black Duck
2. American Coot
3. American Redstart
4. Baltimore Oriole
5. Barn Swallow
6. Black-Crowned Night Heron
7. Brown Creeper
8. Canada Goose
9. Cardinal
10. Chipping Sparrow
11. Common Yellow-throat Warbler
12. Crow
13. Eastern Kingbird
14. Eastern Towhee
15. Gray Catbird
16. Graylag Goose
17. Hairy Woodpecker
18. Hermit Thrush
19. Indigo Bunting
20. Lincoln's Sparrow
21. Magnolia Warbler
22. Manky Mallard
         - Duclair Duck
23. Ovenbird
24. Pekin/Domesticated Duck
25. Pied-Billed Grebe
26. Peregrine Falcon
27. Redheaded Woodpecker
28. Red-Tailed Hawk
29. Rose-breasted Grosbeak 
30. Tree Swallow
31. Virginia Rail
32. White Crowned Sparrow
33. Yellow-Rumped Warbler
34. Yellow Warbler

Insects

        Butterflies and Moths

1. Cabbage White Butterfly
2. Eastern Comma Butterfly
3. Fiery Skipper
4. Sulphur Butterfly

        Damselflies
 Eastern Forktail Damselfly

        Dragonflies

1. Calico Pennant Dragonfly
2. Carolina Saddlebags Dragonfly
3. Common Green Darner Dragonfly
4. Common Whitetail Dragonfly
5. Eastern Pondhawk Dragonfly
6. Jade Clubtail Dragonfly
7. Twelve Spotted Skimmer Dragonfly

        Other

1. Honeybee
2. Megachilid bee
3. Six-Spotted Tiger Beetle

Mammals

1. Chipmunk
2. Eastern Cottontail Rabbit
3. Gray Squirrel

Reptiles

1. Painted Turtle
2. Red-Earred Slider Turtles

Unknown

1. Ant-looking Spider
2. Little Tiny Toads
3. Tiny Grasshopper
4. Unknown wasp
5. Unknown wren
6. Unknown Yellow and black spotted beetle

Total Species Blogged: 61 (including 6 unknown)

2010 Comprehensive List

This is the comprehensive list of all animal and plant species listed in this blog in the year 2010


2010

Amphibians

1. Green Frog
2. Northern Leopard Frog
3. Southern Leopard Frog (tadpole)
4. Southern Leopard Frog (frog)

Birds

1. American Goldfinch
2. American Robin
3. Common Tern
4. Downy Woodpecker
5. Grackle
6. Great Blue Heron
7. Kildeer 
8. Red-Eyed Vireo
9. Red-Winged Blackbird
10. Ring-Billed Gull
11. Song Sparrow
12. Snowy Egret
13. Swan
14. Wood Duck

Insects and Arachnids
 
      Butterflies and Moths

1. Ailanthus Webworm Moth
2. Buckeye Butterfly 
3. Clouded Sulphur Butterfly
4. Eastern Tailed Blue Butterfly
5. Eastern Tiger Swallowtail (female, black morph)
6. Hairy Skipper
7. Little Yellow Butterfly 
8. Monarch Butterfly
        - Monarch Caterpillar
9. Pearl Crescent Butterfly
10. Red Admiral Butterfly
11. Silver Spotted Skipper

     Damselflies

1. Citrine-Tail Damselfly
2. Familiar Bluet

     Dragonflies

1. Calico Pennant Dragonfly
2. Common Darter Dragonfly
3. Eastern Amberwing Dragonfly 
4. Eastern Pondhawk Dragonfly
5. Elfin Skimmer Dragonfly
6. Twelve-Spotted Skimmer Dragonfly
7. White-Faced Meadowhawk Dragonfly

      Other

1. Arigope/Yellow Garden Spider
2. Carolina Grasshopper/Carolina Locust
3. Common House spider
4. Fire-Colored Beetle
5. Green Bee
6. Hoverfly
7. Great Black Wasp
8. Japanese Beetle
9. Migratory Grasshopper
10. Milkweed Beetle
11. Tachnid Fly
12. Thread-Waisted Wasp
13. Yellow-jacket

Other
Sulphur Shell fungus

Unknown
unknown grasshopper with ovipositer

Plants

1. Arrowroot
2. Bergamont/Bee Balm
3. Black Eyed Susans
4. Blue Vervain
5. Bottle Gentian
6. Bull Thistle
7. Butterfly Milkweed
8. Chickory
9. Common Mullien
10. Coneflower
11. Cutleaf Rosinweed
12. Goldenrod
13. Great Blue Lobelia
14. Indian Pipe/Ghost Plant
15. Loosestrife
16. Morning Glory
17. New England Asters
18. Obedient Plant
19. Pokeberry
20. Queen Anne's Lace
21. Rattlesnake Master
22. Spotted Jewelweed
23. Tickseed Sunflower
24. Waterlilies
25. Winterberries

Total Species Blogged: 78

Spring has sprung!

So Chicago's weather has been *bizarre* to say the least lately.  This winter we never got more than about two inches of snow at any given time and only had about three or four measurable snows the entire season.  We rarely saw temperatures below freezing, even overnight.  I don't think we were in the teens or twenties (F) more than one or two days.

Then in March we were hitting 87 (F) and the like for about three weeks.  Now it's April and we're more on track with 'normal' weather, which is to say days in the 50s and 60s nights in the 40s and 50s, occasionally in the 30s.

All of this has conspired to *really* muck with nature.

A lot of flowers are blooming two weeks to a month early.  The trees never really shut down for the winter so the pollen counts are in the astronomical ranges.  My allergies are insane and people I know who have never had seasonal/pollen allergies are starting to feel congested and wheezy.

But all the same... it's now spring in earnest and the start of my personal 'photography year'.  I wanted to go out and do some shooting in March, but I managed to break my camera.

Actually, according to the very, very nice guy at International Camera who fixed it, I didn't *break* it per se.  It was a thing that apparently happens to Canon dSLRs on occasion - the shutter broke.  It's really, really hard to take pictures when you don't have an operational shutter.  But they repaired it for me quickly and much more inexpensively than I had feared it would be.  So if you're in Chicago and you need to get a camera fixed, I highly recommend them.  The building they're located in is just a tiny bit dilapidated and creepy, but the guy running the shop is incredibly nice and they do great work.

So once I was up and shooting again, I went down to Tennessee to visit my little niece and nephew.  While I was out there I harassed my father into taking me to a state park so we could do some shooting.  He's working on 3D shooting, with a pocket 3D camera.

I'm not terribly interested in 3D yet, mostly because most people don't own the technology to properly view a 3D picture, so I'm not sure what I could do with a 3D shot if I had one.

I've done my first tour of both the Magic Hedge and the North Pond as well.  It's clearly early on in the season and most of what I found both places are year-round dwellers and some of those early-popping flowers I mentioned before.

As the weather has warmed up I've been thinking about what my goals will be for this year.  My plan last year was to get 50 new species.  Unfortunately starting a new job last fall kind of derailed me before I got there.

So I think this year, I'm going to again shoot for 50 new species.  I'd like to get 200 total species blogged this year.

I also want to get to at least ten new locations for shooting.  I started with my Tennessee shoot at Bledsoe Creek State Park.  (And for the record, I give this park an overall B grade.  A few things I wouldn't see at home, more species earlier in the spring, but at least on this trip, nothing *spectacular*.)

I'm going to set up a master post for species I've posted in the past couple years to help me keep track, but another good place I've found for tracking and talking about wildlife spotting is projectnoah.org.  You can follow me and my spottings here.

So for right now, I'm tossing up a few of the better shots from Bledsoe Creek State Park in Tennessee.  The next few posts after that will be me trying to organize my sightings so I know what's new and what's not. :)

Eastern Tailed Blue (2012 - 001)

This is an Eastern Tailed Blue.  His little tails on his hindwings are hard to see, but the orange spots help to identify him.  There aren't a lot of butterflies up north yet, even with the crazy warm weather, so it was nice to see such an obvious sign of spring down south. :)

Blue Jay (2012 - 002)

A Blue Jay!  Okay, I admit, a stellar blue jay shot is one of my bucket list photographs.  This shot is okay, but one day I want to get one that's truly awesome.  I'm a huge fan of finding blue in nature, since there's so little of it.

White-Tailed Deer (2012 - 003)

White Tailed Deer.  I'm told there are a ton of these in this particular park, but this is the only one we saw all day.  She's pretty small, so we're guessing she's young, but mom was nowhere to be seen.

Eastern Tiger Swallowtail (female) - (2012 - 004)

So I'm still working on my Blue Jay shots, but I have to say, this is about as good a shot of an Eastern Tiger Swallowtail as I'm ever going to get.  This particular butterfly is female - you can tell by the blue 'chevrons' on her hindwings.

Mosquito (male) - (2012 - 005)

 This is one of the biggest mosquitos I've ever seen in my life.  The leaf in that picture is about the size of my hand.  So that mosquito's body length is about 2 or 2.5 inches.  I'm told that these huge ones are all male and therefore do not bite people.  I have to figure there's some truth to that, because for all of these I saw out there I emerged from the woods without one bite.

Pipevine Swallowtail Butterfly (2012 - 006)

This Pipevine Swallowtail was hanging out with the Tiger Swallowtail above.  At first I thought it was a black morph female Tiger, but then she opened her wings and I could see the white dots and the large sections of iridescent blue on her back.

Muscovy Duck* (2012 - 007)

This was a new species for me for sure.  This face that only a mother could love belongs to a Muscovy Duck.  We don't have those in Chicago (though I may have spotted a hybrid one yesterday at the North Pond... I'm working on an identification for that one.)  These are pretty large ducks.  In fact between the red faces and their size my dad's first reaction to the small flock of them we saw was, "Look!  Turkeys!"

Unknown caterpillar (2012 - U001)

 I wish I knew what this was.  I mean, obviously it's a caterpillar.  And it's hanging from a silk thread, which means it must be some kind of silkworm which should lead to a silk moth, right?  Well a really good list I found for all the Sumner County butterflies and moths only lists one silkmoth and this is *not* the caterpillar it comes from.  I asked at Project Noah, but we all seem to be stumped.  If anyone has any ideas, I would *love* to hear them!

Snail (2012 - 008)

 So here's something I don't see much of in Chicago, no matter how many waterways I walk around.  A snail!  (I saw a slug one morning at the South Pond last year, but I couldn't get it to come out from between the boardwalk slats to get a good picture of it.)  Anyway there were tons of these snails in one spot near that lake at Bledsoe.  Again, I'm looking for a species identification if there's anyone out there who's good with gastropods.

Hairy Woodpecker (2012 - 009)

I know I've seen these at the Magic Hedge before, but I don't think I ever got a picture this clear.  This is a hairy woodpecker.  I love how you can see the band of yellow on his beak.










So that's ten pictures for this post.

In summary, for my goals:

Total Identified Species Sited for the Year: 9
Total Unidentified Species Sited for the Year: 1
Total New Species: 1

Eastern Tailed Blue Butterfly
Eastern Tiger Swallowtail Butterfly
Hairy Woodpecker
Blue Jay
Muscovy Duck*
Mosquito
Pipevine Swallowtail Butterfly
Snail
White-Tailed Deer

* - New Species

Very Large Furniture - Archtectural Artifacts, Post 8

So some of the pieces in this place were just plain huge. And ridiculously old.

This is a pair of old French mirrors.  Very old, very huge - I'm guessing around ten feet tall - and I totally can't figure out who would buy these things.  I can't think of a decor used today that these would go with even a little bit.

(And yes, that's a camera obscured self-portrait.)

 Adding to the "seriously, who is the intended market for these things?" is this:  The $14,000 price tag.  My *car* cost just a bit more than that when it was brand new.  These are mirrors.  And again, I appreciate 'old/antique'.  I appreciate various aesthetics.  But I just can't see integrating these things into a house.  I keep thinking something like this should be in a museum or historical-society home that no one lives in but school kids tour six or eight times a day.

Next to the huge, old mirrors was this massive vertical file.  It was about six feet tall and maybe eight feet wide.  It would take up most of a wall.  I can't imagine it wasn't made for library use or maybe an office that needed to store a ton of records before computers were invented.

But I'm pretty sure it was used in someone's house before coming to AA.

 The original tags are all numbers or ranges of numbers.  Like Dewey decimal numbers or inventory numbers.  But apparently the last owner was a collector of certain toys and oddities.  This shot shows that what used to hold something labeled "893 - 895" last held Tab Bottles.  Anyone else around here old enough to remember the soft drink Tab?  Came in pink cans before it came off the market.  Came in bottles with pink labels before that.  My mom used to drink it and a friend of mine who lived in Tennessee used to on very regular hunts to find the stuff once it was discontinued.

This row held 1981 Happy Meal Toys.  Specifically Miss Piggy and Kermit toys.  The middle drawer had  1985 Camp Snoopy toys and the far right drawer had the 1977 action series glasses.  Again... am I the only one old enough to remember when you could get glass glasses from McDonald's?  We had a whole set of them when I was growing up.  Hamburgler, Grimace, Ronald, Mayor McCheese...  What was up with McDonald's not having any female characters?

This one says "1935 Hot Wheels" but I'm pretty sure the number and the item have nothing to do with each other.  First of all, Hot Wheels started producing cars around the same time I was born... roughly 1972.  But also, the black numbers seem to be the original labeling while the fading red marker seems to go with the latest owner's collecting.

 The part of me who wants to be WAY more organized than I am, would love to have something like this where I could label things and have a place for everything and everything in its place.  But at $2400 (and with a walk-up apartment that's on the 4th floor), this isn't the way I'll be doing it any time soon. :)

I also have to wonder about the owners/managers labeling a given item as "cool" (see the top left corner of the tag.)  Does that mean that anything they don't label *isn't* cool?  Should we not buy something not labeled 'cool' for fear of being uncool?  And who are they to decide whether or not something is cool or not for everyone.  And that's really what it meant.  There were several signs around the warehouse that had this on it.  It wasn't a weird inventory number or anything.  It really is just telling you "this thing is awesome... at least someone around here thinks so."  Weird.

Now I Feel Old - Architectural Artifacts, Post 7

These shots are all from one display.  It wasn't the easiest place to shoot because all the boxes were in a glass display case in a ridiculously dark corner of the place.

This is how I remember Tide looking when I was a kid.  Given my absolutely *stupid* skin problems, I've had to keep the same detergent for most of my life, so I've seen Tide go through more than a few changes in packaging.  Though I don't know anyone today who would get worked up about 3 cents off a box of laundry soap today, that would probably cost around $10.00 for the same weight.

Here's most of the display.  Some of the things printed on the boxes then would just not be okay in anyway today.  I know a lot of them are over 50 years old, but still... Specifically, look at the box about two-thirds up on the left hand side.  That picture would *never* play in the 21st century.

And also, just because I'm on a Sherlock Holmes kick right now, I keep reading that light blue one almost in the middle as "Lestrade".  But that would be different. )

This sign baffles me.  The sign is made of aluminum or tin and is perfectly preserved in a nice wooden frame.  So clearly it has some value to someone.  But I cannot find thing one about Polly Stamps on the internet.  I can find another piece of advertising - some clocks on eBay - but that's it.  Anyone know the history of these mystery "Polly Stamps"?  I can find that they were some sort of trading stamps, but I can't find a decade or any kind if info article anywhere.  All that seems to have survived is their various advertising mechanisms.  Weirdness.

And this last bit.  There was a large wall clock down where my group gathered, so I was doing a few test shots to test the light and such.  I isolated a bit of it because I'm interested in what appears to be some kind of water damage.  Like the face got rained on.  Which is odd, right?  Because there's glass on the clock itself if it was hung outside or something.  And if it was in a flood or other environment where the clock was submerged, it certainly wouldn't show *spots*.  The clock is marked with "New Haven Clock Company, New Haven, Conn." right under the hand visible in the photo.  Apparently this company made clocks between 1853 and 1902 under this name.  Apparently in 1902 it was reorganized, but still made clocks until World War II, at which point the company switched over to producing goods for the war.  They went back to clocks and watches once the war ended, but they folded completely in 1960.  So... old clock!


Also, I'm discovering that Blogspot is doing weird things with posting and not posting some of my articles.  I'm seeing that some weird things are happening with titles.  I'm going to go in and play with things and try to make it behave, but if you see something weird, I'd love a comment telling me what's gone wonky. Thanks!

Going Globe-l - Architectural Artifacts, Post 6

I spent an inordinate amount of time tinkering with this old globe.

When I started shooting it, it was up on a shelf in the window.  Obviously the problem with that is that it leaves the globe backlit.  So I moved it to the floor.  Which had the incredibly odd problem of the floor being the same shade of aqua as the water on the globe.  Also, weirdly, apparently globes are shinier than you'd think.  As matte as they look when you're looking at them, they have a nasty glare when you try to use the flash.

Anyway, if you look at this globe, you can see that it's more than just a few decades old.  Even with the current changes in certain political regions, it's been quite a while since most of northern Africa was one large political body called "French West Africa".  I loved to look at maps and globes as a kid.  I remember being ridiculously excited when I got a political map of the world for my wall when I was in about third grade.  And while a fair number of the African nations I learned from that map are no longer either in existence or going by the name they had in the late 70's, I don't remember "French West Africa."

You can also see at the top that most of eastern Europe is bright orange.  It's labeled USSR.  Now *that* was on my map in third grade.

So I got on a bit of History Hunt.  When was this globe made? 

I couldn't find *anywhere* that listed a copyright date.  I found the map maker and where it was made (go, Chicago), but I couldn't find anywhere what year this globe was made.

So I started shooting regions I knew went through changes between the time the USSR was formed and dissolved.

One clue was that Vietnam is still two countries.  It's the purple and green countries on the left hand side of the shot, under China (the big yellow one).  So that means we're sometime after 1955 and before the two were reunified after the Vietnam War ended in 1976.

Also of note, East and West Germany.  Though they were separated from 1950 until 1990, so that actually widens our time frame.







So I went back to map of Africa, knowing that there was a lot of change over a short time there.  The smallest detail caught my attention first.

 The little yellow country I've drawn an arrow to is listed as Río Muni.  I wasn't able to find a lot about this region other than the Wikipedia article that said: Río Muni became a province of Spanish Guinea along with Bioko in 1959.  I couldn't find *anything* that listed it as ever being an independent country, the way it's shown here.

What I did find in this same region was that if you find Gambia, there was a city-name change in 1973.  Bathurst is renamed Banjul.  On this map it's still Bathurst.  Which lets me know, at the very least, this map is older than I am. :p

In further poking I find that The Ivory Coast was liberated from French control in 1960.  So now we're somewhere between 1955 and 1960.

Ghana was made an independent country in 1957 and it's already here as its own country.  So we're between 1957 and 1960.

Also in 1960, the area to the west and at the top of the map, is marked as Senegal, but still shown as part of French West Africa.  In 1960 Senegal and Mali form a union and become independent, but the union collapses before the end of the year, leaving Senegal as a new country.

So... after all this, I'm guessing this globe was made to reflect the best information the mapmaker had in 1960.

I'm not sure if they moved fast enough that the new cartography could be done and the globes printed and assembled within the year.  It's possible this is the political distribution of 1960, but the globe may not have been actually produced until 1961 or '62 or whatever.  It's also possible that for something like this - clearly a school globe of general information - that they may not reprint or reformat every single year.  It might have been made in 1963 because there wasn't any 'significant' - and I mean 'significant' to the American mentality of the time - changes that needed to be reflected yet.


So... yeah, this is what I do on a Saturday afternoon.  I troll through history trying to figure out inconsequential things like, "When was this globe made?"  :)  It keeps me off the streets.  (Especially when the streets are covered with snow this morning and are only about 10 degrees F. )