How Naturalists Find Things

When we arrived near the northern end of Snake Lake, we looked over meadows that were mostly brown grasses, rushes and sedges. They all look more or less alike from a distance, although after repeated close observation one can remember different shades of green and recognize a patch of rushes or sedges in a field of grass while driving by on a freeway at 70 mph. One also learns that the rushes and sedges indicate wet areas. With repeated explorations and observations one learns to anticipate the presence of certain invertebrates. A lot of the fun and skill of naturalists has to do with anticipation. Anticipation and hope. One might visit a place known for eagles and hope to spot an eagle. It might take twenty visits before one is lucky enough to spot an eagle. However, if one visits with open eyes and mind, he/she will almost always see something else interesting.
When we got out of our vehicles and looked over the landscape, we saw that the meadows were punctuated by taller plants here and there. For the most part, these were the dried stems and branches of taller wildflowers such as mullein, certain thistles, and a few small trees like willow and alder. This is where the fun begins. As we approach an individual mullein or small tree, we mostly looked at the ground. I was the experienced naturalist in the group, but my companions kept spotting small bits of color amongst the dried up, brown vegetation. Perhaps a tiny red flower, or a tiny blue one. That's when we got on hands and knees for closer inspection.
While crawling round on the ground trying to identify tiny flowers, I spotted the Praying Mantis egg case in the top photo. Within seconds, one of my companions spotted a live, female Praying Mantis. It was a 3"-long, brown beauty. We noticed it had either a weird parasite or a serious injury on one side. Later when I enlarged the photos on my computer I was able to tell it was an injury and the large bubble on one side of its abdomen was a cluster of eggs leaking out of a laceration.
Then one of my companions spotted a mostly dried up Yarrow (2nd and 3rd photos) which had just a few white blossoms remaining. I decided to inspect the flower cluster more closely and spread the individual blossoms apart. This revealed one of our favorite bugs hiding out - the Ambush Bug. We never would have seen it had curiosity not set in. And, on any given day there could be quite a variety of possible denizens of these flower clusters. For example, a few minutes later we were looking closely at some 6-foot tall mulleins. As I explained their life cycle as biennials, we were probing every individual blossom and leaf for possible tiny critters hiding out. I ended up with a nice photo of a Carpenter Ant in one of the leaf axils (4th photo from top).
As we continued to wander around the mostly dry and brown meadow, we'd often spot some small areas of color among the brown. There were a few asters still blooming, a few yellow salsify, both native and non-native dandelions, and a very few thistles. I found the thistle pictured above particularly intriguing because the rather large plant was mostly dead, but there was this one blossom still bright red. There must have been at least a few xylem and phloem operating so the plant was not entirely dead.
Most of the dandelions had gone to seed, and recent rains and wind had set most of the seeds free. However, there were a few plants whose heads full of seeds had not yet opened. As the last photo above shows, just prior to opening, the head is wrapped in sepals that can be quite colorful.
It was quite rewarding to visit a scene that on first glance seemed to offer nothing much but dried, brown vegetation, then to discover in an hour and a half several dozen species of interesting flowers, bugs, seeds, cloud patterns, etc., and to share stories of prior outings and plan future ones. These past two weeks, students in my Adventures in Nature Journaling class and I have taken lots of photos and notes. You'll probably see us from time to time during the winter months in one of our local coffee shops perusing photos and entering notes and drawings in our nature journals. Reviewing these journals later is a great way to build the anticipation that will fuel another season of wandering. Meanwhile, as our weather changes into winter, we will do another kind of wandering with different expectations.