It’s easy to tell you’re approaching the farm of Union Rural Electric Cooperative member Steve Graham.
The original farm contained a few small woodlots, which Graham kept. Also, because much of his ground is made up of water-loving hydric soil, he built a sizable pond and large wetland, paying for their construction through cost-sharing. The wildlife haven now attracts myriad songbirds, waterfowl, pollinators, white-tailed deer, and even a bald eagle or two.
Along the eastern edge of Alum Creek State Park in central Ohio runs a thoroughfare called Africa Road. I’ve lived in the general vicinity for years, and the road’s name always seemed a bit odd to me.
Late last fall, just off Africa Road in Alum Creek State Park, the ODNR unveiled the first of four planned “Heritage of Freedom” trails in the state commemorating Ohio’s contribution to the Underground Railroad. “The Underground Railroad is a key part of Ohio’s history,” says Mary Mertz, director of ODNR. “This Heritage of Freedom Trail serves as a visual history lesson and provides an immersive way to see what freedom-seekers faced in Ohio’s natural environment during this time in history.”
Professional ornithologist Glen Chilton made quite the interesting offer in 2009: “I will pay a reward of $10,000 to the first person who can direct me to a genuine stuffed Labrador duck that I have not seen and described in my book, The Curse of the Labrador Duck.
Chilton made the offer because he had just completed a nearly 10-year study to personally examine all 55 known remaining taxidermic mounts and study skins of the bird, and he wanted to make sure he had located them all.
His quixotic quest took him to museums throughout North America and Europe. He logged 72,018 miles on airplanes; 5,461 miles on trains; 3,408 miles in cars; 158 miles in taxis; 43 miles on ferries; and 1,169 miles on buses. That total of 82,257 miles is longer than three times around the earth at the equator!
A secretive, solitary hunter of the deep woods is attempting a comeback in the Buckeye State.
The fisher, a fur-bearing mammal found only in North America, is also known as black cat, black fox, or fisher cat because of its dark brown to nearly black coat.
“Fishers [have been discovered] in archaeological sites in Ohio, and they were found in Ashtabula County as late as 1837,” says John Harder, associate professor emeritus in evolution, ecology, and organismal biology at Ohio State University. “However, unregulated trapping and habitat loss led to the extirpation of fishers from the state by 1850.”
Fishers are not small. Males can measure 4 feet in length from nose to tip of tail and weigh as much as 15 pounds. Females are half that size.
I’m old enough to have witnessed the demise of much of the ring-necked pheasant population in Ohio firsthand. In the 1960s, I remember my father taking me on a pheasant hunt to private property in the northwest part of the state.
Ringneck numbers in Ohio peaked during the 1930s and ’40s, and have been on a steady downhill slide ever since. The reason for the decline is simple, as it is throughout the North American pheasant range: the disappearance of quality grassland habitat.
As goes the habitat, so goes the population of birds.
Sitting beside a small campfire, its woodsmoke scenting the cool air of a perfect autumn afternoon, I could almost see the scene as vividly as the man seated across from me described it.
The “my people” he speaks of — and traces his lineage to through one of his grandfathers, a full-blooded Native American — were a mixed-race group (modern-day anthropologists term it a “tri-racial isolate”) known as the Carmel Indians. They lived in Ohio’s Highland and Meigs counties until as recently as the early 1900s.
The Shawnees called it Spaylaywitheepi. When French traders and trappers arrived during the 18th century, they described it as the Iroquois had: La Belle Rivière — the beautiful river.
Seeing the Ohio today, it’s difficult to believe that, in its original state, the river was a naturally shallow stream, varying in depth from only about 3 to 20 feet. And during annual periods of low water, such as late summer and early fall, a person could literally walk across the Ohio River on the stream’s bottom at many spots. You’d certainly get wet, possibly up to your waist or so, but the feat could be accomplished.
A multitude of boaters, anglers, swimmers, vacationers, sun-chasers, and thrill-seekers flocks to Lake Erie each summer. Most of them will have no idea of the activity taking place far beneath those waters.
The entrance to one of the mines, operated by Cargill, Inc., is just offshore from downtown Cleveland on Whiskey Island (so named when a distillery was built on the site in the 1830s). The second mine, operated by Morton Salt, is 30 miles farther east along the lakeshore at Fairport Harbor. The property and mineral rights under the lake are owned by the State of Ohio, but the mineral rights are leased to the two operators.
Are your favorite hiking trails somehow growing inexplicably longer and steeper? If so, congratulations! You’re a “seasoned citizen.” For most outdoor folks, that hard-won status usually kicks in sometime around age 50.
After a lengthy search spanning several months, I eventually found just the right tree — growing, of all places, on my own property 100 yards behind the house. About a dozen feet high, it was a thin sugar maple that had grown straight up for about 3 feet, spiraled for 2 feet, then grew straight again. Perfect!
If you consider yourself an outdoors person, you do know what poison ivy looks like, right?
Are you sure?
Poison ivy wears many disguises. It can appear as a single plant, a group of plants, a shrub, a ground vine, or even a climbing vine. And its infamous “leaves of three” can be as small as a 50-cent piece or as large as your hand. In addition, different-shaped leaves (actually leaflets) —their margins smooth, lobed, or toothed — can appear on the same plant.
