Category Archives: Outdoors

My parents visited several weeks ago, so we went to see the prairie at Meadowbrook Park , the prairie grove at Busey Woods, and Kickapoo State Park. The latter, a former strip mine, is slated to close on Nov. 30 due to state budget woes, though that may change.

Monarch on thistle (Meadowbrook Park). Butterflies rarely hold still for me, so I’m happy this turned out.

Spider vs dragonfly (Busey Woods). This is a yellow and black garden spider. We came by the web shortly after the dragonfly was caught, so got to see most of the struggle. There were quite a few of these spiders at one spot along the path.

Sephski, this is for you. (Meadowbrook Park, where there is a lot of sculpture, most of it less identifiable)

Two weeks ago, J and I helped clear bush honeysuckle at Weaver Park, which is a relatively recent purchase by the city of Urbana. They plan to put ball and soccer fields there; people also want to preserve the 7 or 8 oak trees (red, white, and chinkapin) that are 300-400 years old. It’s neat to get in at the start of a project like that.

Yesterday, I went to Meadowbrook Park to collect seeds, which the park district uses there and at other parks (including Weaver) and sells. We had about a dozen plants we could have collected from, but most of us focused on one or two because it’s not easy to learn to id plants by seed head, especially when the leaves have already fallen off.

Sunday I went to Meadowbrook Park in Urbana, which has a patch of restored prairie.

The prairie is larger than you might think given the line of trees; it extends quite a bit off the left of the picture.

More photos behind the cut; click for larger versions.
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Only a month late, here are the photos I took on a wildflower hike in Highbanks Metropark in late April.

The fun part about posting these so long after I took them was re-identifying all the plants, although I remembered them all except for the toothwort.

	Dutchman’s breeches So-named because they look like a pair of trousers.
	Trout lily – yellow It was tricky to get the camera close to the plant while not casting a shadow or stepping on other plants…

The rest of the photos (10 total) are in the Highbanks Apr 22 2007 gallery.

I’ve applied (it’s a much more involved process here than in Toledo) to monitor rare plants in the park system again, and I’m looking forward to that. This time I can take photos. With luck (and practice) I’ll get better at them.

Monday I went plant monitoring, looking for puccoon again. Unlike last time, it was a highly successful trip: over 1,000 plants in three hours.

Also saw a bluebird, a red-headed woodpecker, and an oriole. Heard lots of orioles, too. I had to ask the naturalist what the orange bird with dark wings I’d seen was, because I really don’t know much about birds. My parents will laugh.

This morning I went plant monitoring for the first time this year, looking for puccoon (or perhaps puccoon). We found a whole bunch at one spot that wasn’t on our map, but the places we were supposed to be looking didn’t have many specimens, even though the puccoon usually hangs out with the lupine and there was plenty of that.

Plant monitoring: We were looking for hawkweed and didn’t see any. On a brighter note, we returned to the spot where we’d seen one prairie thimbleweed plant so the naturalist could GPS it, and found a patch of at least nine more plants.

I’d secretly hoped that it would be pouring rain this morning, so that plant monitoring would be canceled. Unfortunately, it’s a lovely clear day, if hot and humid. Also unfortunately, when I got to the park after only five hours of sleep, no one was there. So I went for a walk and came home.

Saw a bird, possibly a towhee, an unidentified butterfly, an ebony jewelwing damselfly, and something else that I’ve forgotten. The trail I took went through an EFP-land forest, with widely spaced trees and little undergrowth, though parts of it had lots of ferns to hide fallen logs and rabbit holes from unsuspecting heroes. After a slippery climb up a sandy hill, the trail emerged onto sand dunes, sunny and hot while the forest had been cool and smelling of mildew. I preferred the dunes.