Education

green and blue slivers the dragonflies whirl and dart high and low circles The above haiku is one of many about dragonflies, an insect contemplated in Asian poetry and prose for hundreds of years. But you don’t need to be haiku master Basho to appreciate these fantastic little predators. We in Ohio are blessed with

I saw the small bird out of the corner of my eye as it hovered only inches from my head, plucking insects from a budding branch. It was a ‘BTG’ or Black-throated Green Warbler; one of the more fearless migrants, and its closeness that spring morning took my breath away. Almost all local birders have

“Look. There goes another!”

“No way. How did you see that?”

“Look for the movement.”

“I certainly can’t see them when they land.”

These were snatches of a conversation I was part of as we traveled through the farmlands of Wisconsin in early Spring, running between ponds looking for waterfowl. The subject? That field will-o’-the-wisp, the Horned Lark. We’d see their ghostly forms flitting out into the fields everywhere, but it was a challenge to keep track of them, especially once they landed. This is one of the quintessential open country birds of the Midwest, a bird that livens up even the dullest open farm fields.