Wife 1.3 and I spent the weekend in Door County, Wisconsin. Had a great time paddling, but the last morning the wind came up and we chose to visit The Ridges Sanctuary. It’s a unique sort of place with pretty amazing flora and fauna due to its position relative to Lake Michigan. It’s cooler than the surrounding area so it looks like the boreal forests of southern Ontario. Plants like wintergreen, bunchberry and caribou moss abound in that 1500 acre area and nowhere else, even a half-mile north of the ridges and swales.
Three hours to walk three miles with a very pleasant and indulgent 1.3. No big camera, just the little point-and-shoot, but even with that I still took too many pictures. 1.3 waited way longer than she should. Yes, there were odonates, this lovely little White-faced Meadowhawk (Sympetrum obtrusum). And a little Satyridae that looked ridden hard and put up wet.
The quiet of that place is infectious. Sitting on the little boardwalk into Solitude Swale, we watched skimmers and darners swoop over the puddles and a few plovers poked their beaks into the muck. The only sound was the wind through the white and red pines and the occasional twitter from a songbird.
As I sit here the refrigerator hums and a fire engine just screamed by. Decidedly not quiet.
The sandy ridge had antlion (genus Myrmeleontidae) acne. Antlions are the larval stage of lacewings, a delicate flying insect that looks as vicious as My Little Pony. The larval stage, however, looks like this.
So yeah. Not cuddly.
Still, things that dig a little pit and shoot grains of sand up to knock ants into their vicious jaws are cool, even if they’re sorta creepy. And George Lucas totally ripped off the Sarlacc thing from Myrmeleontidae.
But I digress.
Here’s something pretty to counteract the nastiness, a Polygonia interrogationis.
Respectfully submitted,
Canoelover