Boy this Makes me Mad! Blog Scraping by Imran Yousaf

This is to give you something interesting and relaxing to look at before you read my rant.

Mr Imram Yousaf from Pakistan has stolen my blog content and reposted it at his blog.

I hate to send any traffic his way, but just be aware, this can happen to you. I found this stuff when I was searching for my blog in google. This guy really makes me sick. Check out my content on his blog:

http://justmastee.blogspot.com/2008/03/ohio-birds.html

This post even has copyright information on my photos.

And beware, don’t click on his other links that don’t sound like they are about Ohio Nature. He’s got plenty of adult images there. How that content matches up with my blog content- I will never know.

I’ve sent Mr. Yousef a cease and desist e-mail, and I would very much appreciate if others would also write Mr. Yousef and tell him what you think of this objectionable practice.

His e-mail addresses are:

infologiximran@gmail.com

and

infologix_imran@yahoo.com

Thanks to all, and this is just a way to let you know that this can happen to any of us bloggers. I’ve used Copyscape in the past to prevent this sort of stuff, but this time, Copyscape didn’t pick up this site, I just stumbled into it.

Thanks everyone,

A very irate Tom

At least I must have good content if somebody else steals it, right?

Mother’s Day Flower Revealed as Camassia scilloides

With her keen eye, Nina of Nature Remains correctly identified the mystery mother’s day flower. She gets the unofficial Ohio Nature Blog “Botanist of the Day” award. Here are a few more images of this plant using both artificial and natural light. I’m curious to see if our northeastern friends and nature bloggers this plant up their way, I’ve only become familiar with it after moving to central Ohio. It is quite a plant, it seems to grow in colonies, making it a great subject for landscape photography!

My Thoughts on the Turtle Quiz

And here are my two cents on the turtle quiz. There are three species pictured in this photo. The large softshell turtle is a eastern spiny softshell, Apalone spinifera spinifera. Although this photo does not show its characteristic spines, I did see them through binoculars when this massive female was turned to the bank. We do have smooth softshells in Ohio like Jason mentioned, but they are in the bigger river systems further south.

The second species in the quiz is the red-eared slider, Trachemys scripta elegans considered a non-native species in the Olentangy. There were believed to be a few disjunct northern populations along old oxbow ponds of the Scioto river south of Columbus near Circleville. However, I consider anything in the Olentangy to be either individuals that are released pets, or, perhaps these turtles are breeding in the wild now. I’ve never come across a baby red-eared slider in the wild, or a nesting female, but I am very much curious to know if this species is breeding in Ohio. In many parts of the world, and even out west, this species is considered a nasty invasive. They may be becoming invasive here in Ohio and only time will tell.

Here is a video of a male map turtle attempting to court female red-eared sliders (woops, wrong species) and other female map turtles that I captured early this spring. The female red-eared slider wants none of the action from the male map turtle, so she climbs up on a rock to bask in the sunlight. The male then swims over to a female map turtle, and they face each other under water, beginning their courtship:

And the third species is the common map turtle, Graptemys geographica. A turtle of rivers, I have seen them in the Olentangy, Big Darby Creek, and the Grand River in northeast Ohio. They are extremely wary and are not easily approachable. Binoculars or even a spotting scope is the best way to observe them. Best of luck searching for turtles this summer, they really are quite fascinating creatures.

Tom

A Flower for our Moms

Happy mother’s day Mom! And happy mother’s day to all the moms out there. My mom of 29 years, Carol, is in Munroe Falls Ohio today, while Megan’s mom of almost 29 years, Kate is in Otisfield Maine. We are both lucky to have such great mothers. And our grandmothers are awesome as well! Shout outs to my Grandma Arbour in Akron, and Megan’s Granmda Jean in Manhattan and Grandma Jerry in Orangeburg, South Carolina.

So here is a flower for you special ladies on this mother’s day. This is actually a native Ohio plant, and I shot this photograph last evening just at the end of our drive, just back into the woods. What a wonderful fun tool (or should I say toy?) my new Vivitar 285HV flash has been. Although I’m partial to more natural shots, using a flash can really create endless creative possibilities.

Here I put the camera on a tripod pointing straight down at this flower, set up my ten second timer, held the flash in my right hand and an eight inch white reflector in the other, and pointed the flash right at the flower. The reflector bounces the flash back onto the other side of the flower, filling in the light so that there are no harsh shadows. Once I looked at the image, I wasn’t quite happy with it, so I rotated the image 180 degrees. And that is why the main light is coming from the top left, even though I was holding the flash in my right hand. If you do not have an external flash for your digital SLR camera, I know that I have really enjoyed mine and it has allowed me to capture images that I never thought were possible.

The question of the day:

What is the scientific name of this native Ohio vascular plant species?

Tom

Olentangy Sun

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Olentangy Sun, originally uploaded by Tom Arbour.

May 3rd, 2008

Sky Watch Friday

 

A five minute window of sun, lighting the neighbor’s Cornus florida trees, here in Columbus, Ohio.

Off to the Islands

Early tomorrow morning I’m off to Kelleys Island for an overnight botanizing trip. Kelleys is a limestone rock in Lake Erie, about one mile from the mainland, and we’ll take a ferry to get there. The trip should be fun, but it will also be plenty of hard work trying to update the rare plant records and map the vegetation on the island. We’re expecting plenty of rain over the next two days here in Ohio, so we may get quite drenched. Hopefully I’ll have a little spare time in the evening to check out the bird migration activity as well. I’ll be back Friday evening.

Tom

Turtle Mania! How Many Species in this Photo?

Expecting warbler mania? Well, this past weekend was the major fallout for warblers in Columbus. I’ve been hearing buzzing and warbles here and there in the evenings, but Sunday morning was awesome for warblers. It was also awesome for turtles! I literally saw dozens basking along the banks. Here’s a little turtle quiz. There are three species pictured here. The question. Which species are in the photo, how many of each species are there, and which ones are which species? This post is partially inspired by Mary at faith, fabric, and photos who asked me to ID some turtles on her blog! If you don’t know the names, can you separate the three species? And can you see how huge these things are? The mallard duck is in the photo for a size reference. Have fun, I love turtles, I hope you do to.

Hints: This photo was taken this past Sunday on the Olentangy River behind our house here in Columbus, Ohio, which is a relatively small tributary to the Scioto. I’ve posted the photo at full resolution, clicking on the photo will allow you to view much more detail in the image.

 

Results of Our Collective Naturalizing

1 Trillium flexipes, drooping trillium

2 Morchella species. James, thanks for your extensive internet research on Morchella. It looks like the taxonomy of American morels is somewhat messy, and most are given the names of European species, but have been found to be distinct from the old world Morchella.

3 Viola sororia

4 Claytonia virginica

5 The half-free morel, another Morchella species.

6 A blister beetle, or more specificially, an oil beetle, in the genus Meloe. After learning about this creature’s secretions give nasty blisters, I’m glad I didn’t touch it.

7 Hydrastis canadensis, goldenseal

8 Trillium grandiflorum

9 A four-merous Trillium sessile. I’ve heard that these can come in sexilliums and octallions as well (that would be six and eight parts, and I just made those words up:)

10 This is just a shot of a headwater stream. Not sure why I threw this one in. Maybe just for variety. There is a tiny shrub pictured, I don’t remember what it was.

11 Aesculus glabra, Ohio buckeye, the state tree of our great Buckeye State.

12 This is the skull of a white tailed deer, Odocoileus virginianus. David was pointing out how sharp this individuals teeth were, meaning that it was a young individual. Only the front teeth were worn down significantly.

13 Eastern milk snake, Lampropeltis triangulum. Our milk snakes tend to be chocolate brown and gray rather than red and gray.

14 I believe this is the shed exoskeleton or even the carcass of a dead burrowing crayfish. Ohio has several species, and my crayfish book is at work! Roger Thoma, a crayfish expert in Ohio, could tell us what this is, I’m sure.

15 Northern dusky salamander, Desmognathus fuscus

16 A land snail. I haven’t learned snails yet. Any mollusc experts out there?

17 Carex bromoides Ryan gets kudos for spotting this one as a Carex.

18 Carex communis

19 Carex pensylvanica

20 Symplocarpus foedtidus, skunk cabbage. Props go to Adam Paul for this one.

21 Chrsyosplenium americanum, golden saxifrage. Prize goes to Jennifer @ A Passion for Nature.

22…And as Kathleen said, Cornus florida. One of my favorite trees of northeast Ohio. Here in central Ohio, I’m partial to the redbud at this time of the year.

The Power of Collective Naturalizing

Ok, I think I just made up a new phrase. What the heck do I mean by “the power of collective naturalizing”? One of the coolest things that I do as an ecologist is get together with other top notch ecologists and naturalists around the state, and we do what we love- we naturalize. Or botanize. Or bird. To most of us, we love it all. Just being in a natural area, interpreting the plants, the animals, the ecological systems, it is fantastic. And when you’re with a bunch of people, it is amazing how many new things you can learn in just a few days in the field.

I was in the field three days this past week, in two parts of the state, and all three times with fantastic naturalists. Here are just some of the things we saw. Some of these things I know to species, other to genus, and others, I don’t really have a clue. I want to know what you know. Know what something is? Comment, give the number, and tell us something about that plant or animal-maybe your experience with it, whether you see it often, or maybe it is rare in your area. Let’s collective naturalize through the blog. This is an experiment and something new that I’ve never done here, but I think it could be quite fun.

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