Home to frogs and turtles, this perennial pond is part of Sapsucker Woods of Cornell University Lab of Ornithology, Ithaca, Tompkins County, New York
Click Me for “Finger Lakes Memories” my online gallery.
Habitat
Author: MichaelStephenWills
My photographic style centers on the use of natural light to visualize emotion and evoke memory. The evolution of my style began early in the year 2002, with an imperative to capture personal and fleeting memories.
My son and I traveled to New York City, to view the first Saint Patrick's Day parade after September 11, 2001. My work from that parade was so successful and satisfying (see "New York Fire Department, Saint Patrick's Day 2002") I just never stopped.
Thermogenic
Plant Identification
Can you spot the Skunk Cabbage (Symplocarpus foetidus)? Hint: the plant emits heat, melting surrounding snow.
I cannot remember, don’t recall (?), the identification of those long stalks. Dear readers: can you identify?
Eastern skunk cabbage belongs to a select group of thermogenic plants for its capacity to create temperatures of up to 15–35 °C (59–95 °F) above air temperature through cyanide–resistant cellular respiration (via alternative oxidase) in order to melt its way through frozen ground.
One mechanism behind maintaining heat around the plant is the thermogenic oscillation of the spadix: Independent of light, a precise thermal regulator is produced by an oscillatory temperature-sensing model in the spadix under dynamic external temperature variations. An equilibrium between heat production and loss, due to heat radiation, evaporation, conduction and convention is maintained in the spadix. Additionally, the airflow around the spathe effectively maintains heat generated by the spadix.
Click Me for “Finger Lakes Memories” my online gallery.
Reference on the thermogenic features: Wikipedia, “Skunk Cabbage.”
Copyright 2018 Michael Stephen Wills All Rights Reserved
Winter Magic
a meditation
Found along the Hoyt-Pileated Trail, Sapsucker Woods, Sunday, March 12, 2023.
Text of plaque reads: Andy Goldsworthy; British, born 1956; “Sapsucker Cairn” (formerly New York Cone), 1995 – 2008; Llenroc and other local stone; Gift of Sirje Helder Gold and Michael O. Gold, rededicated in memory of their beloved son Maximilian Arnold Gold; Herbert F. Johnson Museum of Art.
A sculpture transformed by a March snowfall. Notice how the stone, warmed by sunlight filtering through the leafless trees, melts surrounding snow.
Llenroc (Cornell spelled backwards) stone is a type of bluestone that is quarried in the Finger Lakes region of New York. It has a mix of blue-gray and rust color and is traditionally used on Cornell University’s campus. Llenroc is also the name of a Gothic revival villa built by Ezra Cornell, the founder of Cornell University.
Click Me for “Finger Lakes Memories” my online gallery.
Copyright 2018 Michael Stephen Wills All Rights Reserved
Saguaro Sky
dramatic skies from Saguaro National Park
November is a special time for the ranges and basins of southern Arizona deserts. Climb a bajada of foothills, face west and wait for the sunset. That is what I did this day, November 3, 2005. East of Tucson the Saguaro National Monument at the foot of the Rincon Mountain Wilderness is where I parked, unpacked the photo gear and climbed the side of the Tanque Verde Ridge for a favorable view. Weather was pushing high level moisture from the west, clouds were developing.
You see here a shot from that session. In the distance, looking across Tanque Verde, are the Santa Catalina mountains. Months since the last rainfall, the giant Saguaros are using internal moisture reserves drawn up from a shallow root system, the flesh is less plump, the supporting structure of the ribs, always evident, are more pronounced. The last light catches these ribs in relief against a dramatic sky.
Click this link or the photograph for my Online gallery of this offering
Copyright 2023 Michael Stephen Wills All Rights Reserved
Home to Birds and Trees
Fuertes Bird Sanctuary / Renwick Wood
This large sign found along the Cayuga Waterfront Trial at the entrance to Renwick Woods. It provides the origin story (floodplain, delta of Fall Creek), how it came to be conserved and the importance of the place to birds.
The original entrance to the Fuertes Bird Sanctuary, now called Renwick Wood, was marked by this arch, designed by Louis Agassiz Fuertes, dedicated June 10, 1917.
The professor was born February 7, 1874, at Ithaca, the son of Prof. Estevan Antonio and Mary Stone (Perry) Fuertes. He was graduated by Cornell with the degree of A.B., in 1897, and married Margaret F. Sumner of Ithaca, in 1904. Since 1898 he had been a painter of birds.
Professor Fuentes illustrated such volumes as “Birding on a Broncho,” “Citizen Bird,” Song Birds and “Water Fowls.” His permanent work included habitat groups in the American Museum of Natural History; 25 decorative panels for F.M. Brewster, at New Haven, Conn., birds of New York at the State Museum, Albany; murals in the Flamingo Hotel, at Miami, Fla., paintings for the New York Zoological Society, Bronx. (Source: Find a Grave)
The flowers of this small shrub identify it as a member of the Rose family. The berries I captured in the following photograph are edible (non-poisonous), though astringent. Autumn time, the leaves turn red. It is native to eastern North America. I found these berrys along the Renwick Wood trail.
A pair of Mallard ducks foraging along a Fall Creek bayou on the edge of Renwick Woods where Stewart Park begins.
Ithaca Fire Department was training at their facility on Pier Road, next to Newman Golf Course, and across Fall Creek from Renwick Woods.
Copyright 2023 Michael Stephen Wills All Rights Reserved
Balcony House Tour
Climb the Ladder
Overview
A visit to Balcony House is a 0.25-mile (0.4 km) hike. The tour requires walking down a 130-step metal staircase then, (1) climbing up one 32-foot (9.8 m) ladder to enter, two small ladders, and 12 uneven stone steps within the site.
(2) crawling through an 18-inch wide (46 cm) by 12-foot (3.7 m) long tunnel as you leave the site.
(3 – 5) ascending a 60-foot (18 m) open cliff face with uneven stone steps and two 17-foot (5 m) ladders to exit. Mesa Verde National Park, near Cortez, Montezuma County, Colorado.
Photograph and caption (above) is from the US Park Service, Mesa Verde, Balcony House tour web site
Click me for more Mesa Verde works in my Fine Art Gallery
On the Mesa Rim
We purchased our timed tour ticket at the visitor center at the foot of the Mesa, essentially a flat top mountain rising dramatically from the surrounding plain. In the second photograph we are looking over the mesa rim overlooking Soda Canyon.
The tour is a small adventure, starting with a climb down into Soda Canyon and a climb up a 32 foot ladder. The ladder is solid and we had plenty of time to climb with one person ascending at a time. I was a bit overwhelmed by the experience and had my equipment tucked away for safety. I had to leave my sturdy tripod in the car. A more adventurous photographer captured the following ladder photograph.
photo: Ken Lund, CC BY-SA 2.0
Masonry
Here we are looking back to the entrance, where visitors crawl on hands and knees to enter.
Here is Pam twenty two (22) minutes into the tour. The structures are build into a naturally occurring cleft in the mesa cliff, below the rock shelf of the mesa top. The rock shelf is the roof above Pam.
Looking up to the ceiling above a rock and mud wall. The structures have been carefully, lovingly, conserved since the rediscovery of Mesa Verde in 1884. The conservation work began 1910.
The 38 rooms and two kivas house up to 30 people. The cliff northeast facing cliff provided little warmth from the sun in winter. At 7,000 feet and 37 degrees latitude, the mesa is cold wintertime — the average low being 18 degrees Fahrenheit (minus 8 Celsius). As other locations offer a southern exposure, the warmest side for the northern hemisphere, why was this site chosen by the ancients? The answer is found in the two water seeps emerging from the ground at the juncture geological layers where the water gathers and finds a way from surface rainfalls. The high desert climate here was dry then and now.
The walls demonstrate an enormous variety around basic patterns.
Plaza
I had enough time to capture these “fine art” views of Balcony House, looking back toward the entrance. The round, in-ground structures are kivas, ceremonial and communal gathering spaces.
Possibly the most adventurous and potentially frightening tour component was the end, crawling on hands and knees along an 18 inch wide (46 centimeters) 12 foot long (3.7 meters) tunnel followed by a climb up a 60 foot (20 meters) open (exposed to falling over) cliff face.
Copyright 2023 Michael Stephen Wills All Rights Reserved
Tower of McGraw Hall from Libe Slope
The First Cornell Tower
Named for founding trustee John McGraw, who gave $120,000 for construction of the building, McGraw Hall, designed by architect Archimedes N. Russell, opened in 1872.
Built of an Ithaca stone known as Lenrock, the four-story building was the first on campus to include a tower and today is home to the American Studies Program, Department of History, Department of Anthropology, and Archaeology Intercollege Program.
Jennie McGraw, daughter of John McGraw, donated the chimes to be placed in the tower, where they stayed until McGraw Tower was built in 1891.
This year the College of Arts and Sciences inaugurated a comprehensive renovation of McGraw Hall.
Copyright 2023 Michael Stephen Wills All Rights Reserved
Happening on Cayuga Lake
Wave Riders
Pam and I have sailed past Crowbar Point, the arm of land projecting into the lake on left, so we know this end of Cayuga Lake well. The lake reach northward is deceiving as the bulk of the 39-mile reach is north of the headlands of the west lakeshore visible in the distance as the apparent end of the lake.
I love the pale blue of late February / early March skies.
Here is a video of a large gathering of Canadian Geese, multitudes landing to ride lake waves on an unsettled, windy March afternoon.
Copyright 2023 Michael Stephen Wills All Rights Reserved
Golden Willows
Stewart Park
Among the earliest plants to flower, brilliant yellow willows (Salix alba ‘Tristis’) are glorious early spring as new growth sprouts.
Willows native to New York State are all shrub-like, the homeland of these large trees is Europe and Asia.
Also known as White Willow, for the white undersides of the leaves that flash in the wind. These flourish on the southernmost shore of Cayuga Lake.
Willow bark does NOT have analgesic properties. The genus name, Salix, is the root for acetylsalicylic acid (aka aspirin), a chemical that does not appear in nature, originally synthesized from salicylic acid extracted from Meadowsweet.
Copyright 2023 Michael Stephen Wills All Rights Reserved
Musclewood
Memorial
Another Cayuga Waterfront Trail stop is this memorial. The plaque reads ” ‘Grandpa’ (Ironwood) Trees in memory of John A. ‘Jack’ Dougherty; June 15, 1927 – March 12, 1995; City of Ithaca 1949-1989, Retired as Superintendent of Public Works.” Located near the intersection of Pier Road and Willow Avenue, Newman Golf Course, Ithaca, Tompkins County, New York. That is an Ironwood tree, midgound center.
The American Hornbeam (scientific name: Carpinus caroliniana) is also known as Musclewood for the rippled surface of the mature trunk. Other names are blue-beech, ironwood and muscle beech.
Nestled on the trunk……
Michael Stephen Wills Photography 