Return To Bogs in 2018?

Posted March 3, 2018

Open Pond at Allenberg Bog, photographed by Jeff Zablow in New York

Bogs? My first visit was to an acid bog near Ligonier, Pennsylvania about 23 years ago. Unforgettable, it was. Pitcher plants, sundew, while all the time enduring that unnerving feeling that you are about to sink down, never to be seen again, and find near eternal rest inches from another body, entombed in acidic sphagnum moss, some 2,000 years long gone. Louise Davies led that Wetland Study Group. A day impressed solidly in my mind.

This was Allenberg Bog in western New York State, 2016. It too is an acid bog, formed of unknown centuries of the deposition of sphagnum moss. So acidy, that species that cannot endure acid pH’s stay away, and the bog goes on, unchanged. This is where I met a flight of Bog Coppers. They were tiny, mostly cooperative, but near the end of their short flight period, and their wings had dulled as the days went on.

Planning now, I am, to visit Allenberg Bog once again, a bit earlier than I did in 2016. I wish to remeet those Bog Coppers, and see them in their full radiance. Rare fritillaries might also be seen, and even rarer bog orchids. Yummy.

Also in the planning is a trip with Angela and friends to Bruce Peninsula, Ontario, to see, among others, northern bog butterflies and botany. Jeffrey Glassberg’s Swift Guide shook out more than 20 butterflies that I might see for the first time on Bruce.

I’ve made new friends, and am again enlisting Dave’s friends to help me locate Atlantic White Cedar bogs. They just might introduce me to Hessel’s Hairstreak, a rare Southern cedar hairstreak, and one of extraordinary beauty.

Acid bogs beckon, and I promise, I will be cautious, even if I locate those Atlantic White Cedar bogs, where for sure I will be alone. Promise.

Jeff

My name is Dragon’s-mouth

Posted November 7, 2016

Filed under Buffalo Audubon Preserve System, NY, Native Orchids, Native Plants and Flowers

Orchid, photographed by Jeff Zablow at Allenberg Bog in New York

How’s that for a catchy name? You’d think that Colgate or Crest would have made this pert beauty a sometimes celebrity.

Scrutinizing the sphagnum moss bog for Bog copper butterflies, and finding them! was very exciting. Seventeen years of pursuing butterflies, and finally, bog coppers. Working through the bog matt of bouncy “carpet” you knew you were liable to find very, very exotic butterflies, insects, animals and plants.

When this orchid was spotted, I felt like using one of those old lines, “Hello baby, where have you been all my life?” No more than 7″ tall, it just stood there, a fairy princess, looking as delicate as delicate can be, and not a court attendant in sight. Nearby were several others, separated nicely from one another.

The sense was, this is a rare and extraordinary orchid, described by Paul Martin Brown, in his Wild Orchids of the Northeastern United States, as a “regionally significant species.” That is how I viewed it, a rare, hard to find, fragile example of G-d’s handiwork. I was there at exactly the right time, for days earlier, nope! and a few days later? nope!

For thousands of years, Arethusa bulbs Linnaeus has persevered in this unique, western New York bog. Allenberg Bog is also known to some as Waterman’s Swamp, Congdon’s Pond, and Owlenburg Bog and is on the border of the towns of Napoli and New Albion, New York in Cattaraugus County. A unique and fascinating refuge of 390 acres, it is the jewel of the Buffalo Audubon Preserve System. The orchid looked fragile and vulnerable, but surviving, and producing anew. If this slight, delicate flower can, then we surely can, is what I thought.

Jeff

Copper News!

Posted July 17, 2016

Filed under Copper, Wildflowers

American Copper Butterfly photographed by Jeff Zablow at Raccoon Creek State Park. Jeff blogs about the art and science of butterflies at http://www.wingedbeauty.com

I figured that’s it. That’s it for those sweet little butterflies, the Coppers. Shown here is an American Copper, photo’d several years ago. I’ve not seen an American copy this 2016, not a one!

No shock that I Love these Coppers. I’ve seen Bronze Coppers, thought few and far between, in western Pennsylvania and at Blackwater National Wildlife Refuge in coastal Maryland. Other species of Coppers are found in the few cranberry bogs still remaining east of the Mississippi, and in northernmost Maine. Others are found west of the Mississippi, beckon, and I don’t know when??

But I have News! On Monday, July 11th and again on Tuesday, July 12, 2016 I hiked through backcourtry in Cattaraugus County, western New York State, and headed to a wild cranberry (acid) bog. Bog Coppers were flying their low, very-difficult to follow flight! Tiny ( 0.9″ from wing-tip to wing-tip) Lycaena epixanthe males and females! Eureka!!! Super rare, always threatened butterflies.

Two gorgeous mornings, with sun, moderate temperatures and no wind. But, I don’t recommend this to most of you. Every, every, every, every step you take in such a bonafide ancient bog, has your feet sinking, with the mud grabbing at your boots/watershoes. Meaning, every step must be followed by effort, effort to pull your foot out of the muck grabbing at it. Not only is that weird, but by that second morning, my calves began to Ache! I mean seriously ache!!

I was tickled pink! with many exposures of Bog coppers. Yes, I’m not ready to share one yet, ’cause again, ‘Yo shoots, film. Fuji slide film. So the wait begins. Mail film to Parsons, Kansas. Have slide processed and returned to me. Review slides on lightbox, cull out the best, and then, then, bring those to Rewind Memories to be scanned.

Sooooo why share this American copper image now. C’mon do I have to list the many motives for that?

Bog copper images, ASAP.

Jeff