Spring mornings are a glorious time to be in
the Big Woods; actually spring mornings are the best time
to be in any woodland. Wildflowers are emerging and some are in full bloom,
trees are beginning to leaf-out – an old boss of mine used to say that the oak
leaves were the size of squirrels’ ears – birds are defending their territories
with song and waterfalls are at their best.
So, it was off to the Big Woods to see what I
could see. Amidst last fall’s sere brown leaves a small patch of bloodroot was
in full bloom –
Nearby were a couple of trout-lily flowers among
hundreds and hundreds of non-blooming plants that had produced only leaves –
Amid the flowers a small butterfly, a spring azure, engaged in short flights; spring azures are the most common butterflies of early spring –
There’s a small open wetland in this section
of the Big Woods and, although the wood frogs and spring peepers had already
bred and left, amphibians still called from the open water. American toads in
large numbers gave forth their trilling calls –
At the edge of the open water swam a garter
snake, hunting toads no doubt –
The wetland gradually gives way to moist
woodland where a large number of round-lobed hepatica were in bloom: blue –
And white –
And, least common, the pink variety –
Heading back to the car on an old woods road,
I saw the day’s second butterfly, a Juvenal’s duskeywing –
And in a muddy spot the track of a coyote –
Further along I kneeled to photograph the
pretty flowers of a Pennsylvania sedge –
As I knelt, I was “treated” to the sight of a
large tick crawling on my pants’ leg – a wood tick (also called the dog tick) –
Wood ticks don’t seem to be anywhere near as
common as the black-legged ticks that carry Lyme disease and are much easier to
see. Like other ticks, wood ticks are a vector of one or more diseases; they can carry the rare, but potentially lethal, Rocky Mountain spotted fever.
Every time I find a tick, I’m glad for the permethrin with which my pants are
treated.