October Birds of Limberlost
By Kimberley Roll

Kimberley Roll took this great photo of a Lincoln's Sparrow at the Loblolly Marsh Nature Preserve. It is a private bird and hard to photograph. 

One of Limberlost and Loblolly's resident bald eagles. The Limberlost Conservation Area is known for its number of bald eagles. A bird that had been extirpated from Geneva in Gene Stratton-Porter's time.

Striking photo of a male cardinal. The cardinals were not that common in this area in Gene Stratton-Porter's time. Gene's first book was "Song of the Cardinal." It was a bird she loved seeing and was happy to know that they nested in Geneva.

The blue jay has been seen in good numbers this year around Limberlost.

The kingfisher. This is a bird that Gene was excited to photograph and its nest by the old gravel pit on the east side of Geneva. Gene would be pleased that the kingfishers are still seen in that same area.

A swamp sparrow. A bird well named as this is a bird seen around the Limberlost wetlands or "swamp."

We have had flocks of red-winged blackbirds migrating south. The female red-winged blackbird is commonly mistaken for a sparrow. 

White-crowned sparrow is one of our winter residents. One of our native sparrows.

Song sparrow is one of our year round birds at Limberlost. 


Thank you to Kimberley for sharing her birding adventures at Limberlost. 

OSIRIS-REX Update!

By Adrienne Provenzano, Friend of the Limberlost and NASA Solar System Ambassador

The Limberlost is much beloved by birdwatchers for the variety of species that visit this area. Some stay year-round and others migrate. It takes curiosity, time, effort, and patience to engage in this pastime.

Gene Stratton-Porter loved birds and while living in Indiana sometimes traveled to Michigan for fishing trips with her husband Charles and daughter Jeanette. While on one such trip, she found herself with time alone. With a heart for exploration and adventure, she rowed herself along a river to a lake where she was able to observe and photograph a heron. She was quite pleased with the results, especially catching the heron in the act of grabbing and swallowing a frog! She writes in Friends in Feathers: "There stood the Heron, a big fine fellow, the light striking to brilliancy the white of his throat, wet with dew from the rushes, the deep steel-blue of his back, and bringing out sharply the black on the flattened crest and the narrow line down the front of his throat." The story continues, "out darted the Heron's neck, clip went his shear-like beak, then pointed skyward, crest flat, the frog was tossed around and caught head-first-one snap, two, it was half-way down the gullet of the bird, whose beak was dawn in, crest flared and chin raised, before I recovered from my surprise enough to remember that I held the bulb in my hand and must squeeze it to secure the picture."

In September 2016, I wrote a blog for this website about a space mission to capture a sample of an ancient space rock and return that sample to Earth. The mission, called OSIRIS-REX, launched in September 2016 and successfully arrived at that asteroid, named Bennu, in December 2018. This coming Tuesday, October 20, 1t 6:12 p.m. EDT, the OSIRIS-REX spacecraft will stretch out a long robotic arm and, using a special tool at the end of it, collect a sample of up to 4.5 pounds of dust and rock from its surface. The sample will be put in a special container and returned to the desert of Utah in 2023, transported to the Johnson Space Center in Houston, Texas, and studied to learn more about our solar system!

Bennu is the ancient Egyptian name for a heron-like bird associated with Osiris, believed by ancient Egyptians to bring knowledge of agriculture and rule the underworld. The name was given to the asteroid because the robotic arm, combined with the extended solar panels which give the spacecraft power, make it look like a flying bird!

Keeping with the theme of birds for this mission, the collection site is called Nightingale. There were four sites considered: Nightingale, Osprey, Kingfisher, and Sandpiper. The back-up site is Osprey. All were birds that could be found along the Nile River in ancient Egypt. Gene Stratton-Porter often photographed birds along the Wabash and in the Limberlost marshes, among them Kingfishers and various birds of prey.

Tune in to NASA-TV at www.nasa.gov, beginning at 5 p.m. EDT on Tuesday, and you can follow the capture of the sample! At 200 million miles away, it's much further than Gene's trip to the Michigan wilderness to study heron behavior, but the curiosity, time, effort, and patience involved are similar. Missions like OSIRIS-REX provide opportunities to develop and test technology, challenge scientists and engineers, and  inspire students and educators and space enthusiasts around the world. Often, NASA missions lead to spinoff technologies we use in our everyday lives!  

This is Gene Stratton-Porter's photograph of a great blue heron taken in Michigan. Today the great blue heron is a common sight at Limberlost. 

Music of Autumn

By Adrienne Provenzano
Songstress of the Limberlost and Advanced Indiana Master Naturalist

Have you had a chance to just sit and listen to the leaves recently? The songs of the trees changes a bit each day, each type of tree with its own music. Bird songs mix in as well in this outdoor concert as other singers and instrumentalists blend their voices in and out of a tapestry of sound. It is a time of year for such a variety of sounds and sights, tastes, aromas, and textures. The crunch of dried foliage underfoot. The rosy hue of a sweet autumn apple. The scent of harvest in the air. The softness of cozy sweaters.

In the 1890s, Gene Stratton-Porter started the Wednesday Club, a literary society in Geneva, Indiana. She presented a paper at one meeting about the poet Walt Whitman (1819-1892), focused on his life and his work Leaves of Grass. She appreciated Whitman's independent nature and wrote as follows: "He liked to stretch his body on the greensward in the sun with the winds of heaven to fan him, and to be of the earth, earthy. He simply would not be confined; the world was his stage; he would travel it. His brain should scale mountain and peak; all nature and all nations were his." Stratton-Porter's 1910 publication, Music of the Wild opens with this quote from Whitman: "All music is what awakens from you when you are reminded by the instruments." Music of the Wild is a detailed account of forest, fields, and marsh.

Here's a poem of Whitman's from Leaves of Grass that seems especially suited to this time of year.

"The Music Always Round Me"

The music always round me, unceasing, unbeginning,

Yet long untaught I did not hear,

But now the chorus I hear and am elated,

A tenor, strong, ascending with power and health,

With glad notes of daybreak I hear

A soprano at intervals sailing buoyantly over the tops of immense waves,

A transparent base shuddering lusciously under and through the universe,

The triumphant tutti, the funeral wailing with sweet flutes and violins,

All these I fill myself with,

I hear not the volumes of sound merely, I am moved by exquisite meanings;

I listen to the different voices winding in and out, striving,

Contending with fiery vehemence to excel each other in emotion'

I do not think the performers know themselves---

But now I think I begin to know them. 

Sycamore leaf and Sycamore with moss.

Music of the Wild and the "new" snake fence and wildflowers.

Enjoy the Moonlight!
By Adrienne Provenzano
Songstress of the Limberlost and NASA Solar System Ambassador

"Oh, the moonlight's fair tonight along the Wabash.
From the field there comes the breath of new mown hay.
Through the sycamores the candle lights are gleaming.
On the banks of the Wabash, far away."

These lines from the official state song of Indiana, "On the Banks of the Wabash," seem especially fitting for October 2020, a month which has two full moons! The Harvest Moon occurs October 1st and the Hunter Moon on October 31st. When there is a second moon, in a month it is also called a Blue Moon. Some may know the expression of things that are rare occurring "once in a blue moon." Enjoy watching the changing shape of the moon all month long!

Check out http://moon.nasa.gov/observe-the-moon-night/ for lots more informaiton and free educational resources about the Moon!

Gene Stratton-Porter's first poem was about the Moon. Written in"wabbly letters" when she was a child, she recalled these lines from her "Ode to the Moon" in later years:

"Oh, Moon, thou art glorious,
Over the darkness of night
Thy beams shine victorious.
Thou lightest the weary traveller's way,
Guiding his feet till break of day."

So, whether you are near or far the banks of the Wabash this month, stop, look up, and enjoy the Moon!

Moon photo the 1969 by Apollo 11.