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Welcome to the Nature Photography Blog! Join the Adventure Outside! Happy Earth Day 2016!
Happy Earth Day! The Karner Blue Butterfly is one of the most exquisite butterflies in Michigan and yet it is also one of the most endangered. The loss of the great oak savannas, sandy dry meadows with giant oak trees in between, have greatly reduced the range of this butterfly with bright orange spots. I was in the Karner Blue habitat on a bright sunny day in my tick protective gear. The guides were land stewards of the Karner Blues and had carried out prescribed burns to keep the meadows from turning into forest. Areas of dark black soot were still visible on the ground beneath my feet. Yet, the meadows sprung forth with lupine which thrives with fire. Wild Lupine is a beautiful purple plant that only flowers in mid-Spring. Its leaves are a distinctive dark green that fan out like fingers.
Looking out into the meadow, it didn't look like much. Just a bunch of scruff low to the ground with a few big trees. The temperature was disturbingly hot and the sand almost crackled beneath my feet in the full mid-day sun. Karner Blues are tiny, only about the size of a fingernail. However, just walking into the first patch of flowers, we spotted something blue flying away quickly. Finally I had spotted my first Karner Blue in the wild! As we walked around, more and more butterflies were flying between the clusters of lupine. It was truly amazing to see, especially because the Karner Blue butterflies are so elusive. I had a hard time telling the Spring Beauties and the Karner Blues apart until I was up close, bending down and looking at a little butterfly perched on a lupine flower, just a foot off of the ground. The guide had to look closely to make sure it was a Karner Blue, identifying its distinctive orange markings. The butterflies flitted about very low just over the lupine that was covering the lower meadow I was in. A great swath of purple interspersed with sharp prickly pear cactus. (and yes there are native cactus even in the northern United States). The allure of the Karner Blues is the excitement of seeing little blue drops of sunshine flying about. When the Karner Blues open their wings, the surprise of sky blue peeking out is a thrill to see in the wild. Nature is always adaptive and full of surprises. I hope that the Karner Blue is around for many generations to come! Many thanks to the Michigan Nature Association and the Nature Conservancy for preserving habitat and protecting the endangered Karner Blue Butterfly! To learn more about the Karner Blue Butterfly check out these links: U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service Endangered Species © Nicole A. Plott, Performance Strategy Group, LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Happy New Year: Top 10 Pictures of 2014From butterflies to landscapes, 2014 has been a nature filled year. Here are my top 10 photos, enjoy! 1 The simplicity and perfection of color and shape are what attract me to this photo of a white peacock butterfly. For wings that move so quickly, it is hard to capture a butterfly with all the detail and color.
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The sandhill cranes intrigued me. After seeing the six foot wings expand close to my head, I decided to look at the other lakes and rivers in the area. It was a very gray overcast day and I decided I would try to find the cranes I had just seen the weekend before. The overcast day actually made it easier to capture these majestic birds. Here they remind me of flamingos just looking for food in a little inland lake. At first I could only see them far away, and after I stood there for a while, the cranes walked closer to me and I could hear them cooing to one another. 4 Landscapes are difficult to capture. Here I enjoyed the striking reds and oranges of the trees against the shaded cattails. I actually cropped this image a bit from the original in order to emphasize the trees. I also love the clouds in this picture. I think they add extra depth. 5
I've been searching for wild Sandhill Cranes for a while, and this year I finally saw them close enough to photograph! A fellow photographer named Joan was nice enough to allow me to stand in a clearing and I think the noise of a twig cracking startled them enough to take flight. I was very lucky to be in the right place at the right time with this picture. The brightness of a clear fall day makes the colors look surreal as the birds are darker than the opposite shoreline. It was really cool to see these six foot majestic prehistoric birds, who were once down to 12 nesting pairs in Michigan, walking on this sandbar in the middle of a river and then fly around the trees for a while. 6 The Orange Julia butterfly is usually seen as a normal butterfly, and yet, butterflies taking flight always symbolize transcendence and moving from the physical world beyond into the freedom of the air. I was surprised when I found this picture of the orange Julia butterfly on this pink zinnia flower on my camera after a day of shooting. 7 I love this picture of a black swallowtail butterfly landing on a pink zinnia flower. The eye is looking at me while the wings and angle portray the action and beauty of the butterfly.
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This Zebra Longwing butterfly surprised me. The stripes of the wing make it feel like it is a science fiction butterfly, black and white in a world of color. What is more amazing is that this butterfly is injured, missing half a wing and was still flying beautifully. 9
Fall reflections are always interesting to me. I was playing around with using branches and shorelines to frame the view and this picture just strikes me as quintessential fall, leaves rustling around my feet, sunny with bright colors against the blue of cold water. 10 The Bee and Blazing Star Flower was right outside my front door. For some reason, all the bees preferred the blazing star flower to my roses, bee balm and milkweed flowers. It looked like a weed in a manicured landscape, but the bees sure appreciated it.
© Nicole A. Plott, Performance Strategy Group, LLC. All Rights Reserved. Wild Pollinators
© Nicole A. Plott, Performance Strategy Group, LLC. All Rights Reserved. Check out my Summer 2014 Gallery http://psgstrategy.zenfolio.com/p833770488 Check out these cool links to promote wild pollinators and to remove pesticides from garden plants sold to promote bees and butterflies at garden centers.
Wired Magazine
Xerces Society
Ecology Center What's in the Bee Balm?
Walking past the bee balm, all of a sudden, I saw a flutter of the tiniest wings, low to the ground. At first, I thought it might just be a leaf casting a shadow as it fell from the trees. Maybe it's a Japanese beetle eating the roses. Yet, the flight pattern of a butterfly is so distinctive. I had to crouch down to see what was emerging from the bee balm flowers. Hooked antennae, brown wings but the bee balm flower is so much bigger than the butterfly.
Bee Balm flowers are made of a bunch of tiny flowers on the same stem. The flowering part holds lots of nectar in little tubes that are like little tea cups for sipping nectar. Just a day earlier I say a huge bumble bee wiggling around gathering nectar flower by flower. In fact, just like the butterfly is doing now!
This tiny little wild butterfly is a Peck's Skipper butterfly nectaring in the bee balm, what a cute surprise! © Nicole A. Plott, Performance Strategy Group, LLC. All Rights Reserved. Check out my Summer 2014 Gallery http://psgstrategy.zenfolio.com/p833770488 Disappearing Monarch
Where are all the monarchs? Monarch butterflies are disappearing at an alarming rate. In 2013, the New York Times reported the lowest monarch numbers ever recorded. Every winter, scientists measure the monarch butterfly population as they congregate in forests in Mexico and California. The population is measured in acres as the butterflies cover the trees like a magical overcoat of orange and black. Monarchs overwintering in Mexico fell from a peak of almost 45 acres in 1996 to just 1.65 acres in December 2013. The loss of monarchs in the environment is alarming. While many people still say, what a pretty butterfly, it is disenchanting to think monarch butterflies could be erased forever from the landscape. Even year to year, the monarch butterfly populations declined 43 percent from the winter of 2012 to 2013, according to the New York Times. As an artist trying to depict the drastic change in the landscape, I created two images. The first image is a reduced view that fades the monarch and the milkweed out, disappearing quietly from the landscape. The second image is the original photograph I took at a nature sanctuary in the wild. Where are the monarchs?
For more information, check out the World Wildlife Fund's article on the Monarch Population Decline.
Check out these links: http://www.nytimes.com/2014/01/30/us/monarch-butterflies-falter-under-extreme-weather.html http://www.nytimes.com/2013/03/16/opinion/the-dying-of-the-monarch-butterflies.html http://worldwildlife.org/stories/monarch-population-hits-lowest-point-in-more-than-20-years
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© Nicole A. Plott, Performance Strategy Group, LLC
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