September Ends!

"I understand spiders are hard to cherish. They appear to be all right angles and stubble, and they do not sleep, and their eyes never close, and we find it difficult to admire that which does not blink."

― Katherine Rundell

These were the bird species found during Saturday's Pope Farm Conservancy field trip:

Canada Goose 

Mallard 

Mourning Dove 

Sandhill Crane 

Killdeer 

Cooper's Hawk 

Red-bellied Woodpecker 

Downy Woodpecker 

Hairy Woodpecker 

Pileated Woodpecker 

Northern Flicker 

Eastern Phoebe 

Red-eyed Vireo 

Blue Jay 

American Crow 

Black-capped Chickadee 

Horned Lark 

White-breasted Nuthatch 

Red-breasted Nuthatch 

Northern House Wren 

European Starling 

Gray Catbird 

Eastern Bluebird 

American Robin 

Cedar Waxwing 

House Finch 

American Goldfinch 

Chipping Sparrow 

Field Sparrow 

Dark-eyed Junco 

White-crowned Sparrow 

White-throated Sparrow 

Savannah Sparrow 

Song Sparrow 

Lincoln's Sparrow 

Eastern Meadowlark 

Red-winged Blackbird 

Tennessee Warbler 

Common Yellowthroat 

Bay-breasted Warbler 

Chestnut-sided Warbler 

Palm Warbler 

Yellow-rumped Warbler 

Northern Cardinal 

Rose-breasted Grosbeak 

Indigo Bunting 

The boreal sparrows are already here. I shouldn't be surprised — late September always brings them — yet their arrival still makes the season feel as though it has slipped by too quickly. The year's insecting days are numbered, even if the weather has stayed unusually warm. That lingering heat feels out of step with the turning prairies, where asters and seedheads tell the truer story of autumn.

A dapper Lincoln's Sparrow!

Using our binoculars, we trained on a brush pile alive with sparrows — Song, Savannah, Chipping, and Lincoln's all shuffling through. Oh, House Wrens, too! I called out the species and their clock positions rapid-fire, and more than a few participants wondered how I was picking them out so quickly. To most, they're just "LBJs" — little brown jobs flickering in and out of cover. With no vocalizations to lean on, the Merlin app offers no help here. What makes the difference is simply the trained eye of a birder with four decades experience in the field.

"Did you get all that?" I asked the participants.

The prairies are alive with asters ...

Splashes of purple, blue and white spread across the fading grasses. Their blooms stand as one of the last bursts of color before frost, a reminder that while the sparrows are already moving south, the season still has its hold here. 

And who's that in the Swamp Milkweed? 

Above, 4th instar Milkweed Bugs (Oncopeltus fasciatus), and below a Two-striped Planthopper (Acanalonia bivittata).

But wait, there's more!

The weekend's highlight was finding dozens of Banded Garden Spiders (Argiope trifasciata) strung through the grasses at Barneveld Prairie. It's been years since I've seen them in such numbers at one place — webs shimmering between stems, each spider poised at the hub.

They're a large orb-weaving spider in the family Araneidae with a slender abdomen in yellow, white, and black horizontal bands, giving the species its common name. Females are much larger than males, often reaching over an inch in body length, while males are small and short-lived. This species builds large, vertical orb webs in open habitats such as prairies, grasslands, and gardens, usually from late summer into fall.

But I just wasn't sure ...

when I should ...

... stop photographing them!

It looks like it's flying through the grasses, doesn't it? I just rotated the photo for this effect.

And so September draws to a close. The prairies feel both full and fleeting — wildflowers still shining in patches of yellow, purple, and white, sparrows filtering steadily southward, and the grasses woven with fine threads from spiders. Each sign marks a transition, the edge between abundance and decline, between the warmth of summer and the chill soon to come. Autumn always seems to arrive too quickly, carrying with it both beauty and the unmistakable sense of another season slipping away.

All images © 2025 Mike McDowell

Traffic!

Since returning from my blogging hiatus that ended in 2020, traffic has been steady, though noticeably lower than before the break. But in the past few months, visits have jumped significantly. From the stats, it looks like my Seagull Bar SNA post was linked somewhere, and so far, I've managed to hold on to those new readers.

This blog is, at its core, a place for journaling my excursions in Nature and, to a lesser extent, working through ideas about current events — most often those tied to the First Amendment. I don't treat it as breaking news or polished analysis so much as an ongoing conversation with myself: a way to test thoughts, connect them to what I've read or observed, and see where they lead. 

As I mentioned some time ago, when I returned to blogging I disabled comments. Part of the decision was practical — I didn't want to spend time moderating spam or dealing with the occasional rude drive-by remark. But it was also about focus. Without the constant pull of reactions, the blog feels more like a private workspace, a place where I can shape ideas without worrying about an immediate response. That keeps the writing process closer to journaling than to a debate stage, which is exactly what I want this space to be.

So, welcome, new readers! I'm glad you found your way here, and I hope you'll stick around as I continue exploring the trails, ideas, and odd tangents that keep this little corner of the blogosphere alive.

Summer Ends!

"Summer has always been good to me, even the bittersweet end, with the slant of yellow light."

― Paul Monette

Warbler-wise, the Pheasant Branch Creek Corridor was quiet yesterday, with little movement in the canopy or understory. Still, the woods weren't without interest—several Swainson's Thrushes and a few Gray-cheeked Thrushes skulked through the darker corners of the corridor, offering brief glimpses and soft calls from the shadows.

So far I've tallied 20 warbler species for this season's southbound migration, with Palm, Yellow-rumped, and Orange-crowned yet to make my 'fall' observation list. A typical season total usually falls in the mid-twenties, so there's still some room to round things out as September gives way to October.

The autumnal equinox occurs tomorrow, when the sun crosses the celestial equator, marking the start of astronomical fall. But already, the landscape is showing many signs of the season—maples beginning to flame red, sumac leaves curling toward crimson, and Virginia creeper vines draping trees in deep scarlet.

But, for the most part, the corridor is pretty much a green jungle ...

I found one Buffalo Treehopper!

Like in recent years, I haven't devoted the same energy to fall migration as I once did. There was a time I birded it with the same focus and enthusiasm as spring, intent on seeing as many species as possible. Now I'm content with fewer outings and fewer checkmarks, appreciating the season for what it offers rather than what I can tally—my visits are fewer, but the season still carries its quiet rewards.

I guess the boreal sparrows are next!

All images © 2025 Mike McDowell

Red + Blue = Purple

"If we don't believe in freedom of expression for people we despise, we don't believe in it at all."

― Noam Chomsky

"There is no separation of church and state. It's a fabrication. It's a fiction. It's not in the Constitution. It's made up by secular humanists. It's derived from a single letter that Thomas Jefferson wrote to the Danbury Baptist Convention."

― Charlie Kirk

OK ...

Thomas Jefferson's famous 1802 letter to the Danbury Baptists didn't invent this principle; it clarified it. In that letter, Jefferson described the First Amendment as building "a wall of separation between Church & State." The phrase stuck, and later Supreme Court decisions, beginning with Reynolds v. United States (1879) and especially Everson v. Board of Education (1947), used Jefferson's words to articulate the meaning of the Establishment Clause. Far from being a throwaway metaphor or an invention of "secular humanists," Jefferson's image of a wall was a faithful description of what the framers had already written into law.

Here's what Jefferson wrote in 1902 in that letter:

Believing with you that religion is a matter which lies solely between Man & his God, that he owes account to none other for his faith or his worship, that the legitimate powers of government reach actions only, & not opinions, I contemplate with sovereign reverence that act of the whole American people which declared that their legislature should "make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof," thus building a wall of separation between Church & State. Adhering to this expression of the supreme will of the nation in behalf of the rights of conscience, I shall see with sincere satisfaction the progress of those sentiments which tend to restore to man all his natural rights, convinced he has no natural right in opposition to his social duties.

So no, the separation of church and state is not a "fiction." It isn't something "made up" after the fact, and it certainly wasn't concocted by secular humanists. It's embedded in the very first line of the Bill of Rights, and it reflects the founders' recognition that religious liberty can only thrive when government is restrained from interfering in matters of conscience. To call it fabricated is to misrepresent both the Constitution and the intent of those who wrote it.

In analogy, consider this directive:

"Mix the blue paint with red, and paint the house."

Clearly, the house will be purple. But nowhere in the instruction does it literally say 'paint the house purple' — paint has properties, and words have meaning.

 

Taking the establishment clause with the free exercise clause renders the same notion: 

When taken together ― just as the framers intended ― you necessarily get Separation of Church and State. Lest we forget, the Treaty of Tripoli was signed in 1796 (negotiated under George Washington's administration, unanimously ratified by the Senate in June 1797, and signed into law by President John Adams on June 10, 1797).

Article 11 begins:

"As the Government of the United States of America is not, in any sense, founded on the Christian religion..."

Not in any sense.

Though it's all been said already, what happened to Charlie Kirk was deeply shocking and awful. He was never really on my radar — I follow a number of podcasts, and while his name surfaced now and then, I never watched his videos. To me, he was more of a peripheral figure, tangentially reminding me of Steven Crowder in the way he staged debates with college students. 

In the end, the real historical revisionists are those who deny what the founders put in plain sight. They misrepresent Jefferson's ideas and words, ignore the First Amendment, and pretend that "separation of church and state" is a modern fabrication. But theirs is the fiction — not the principle itself, which has been woven into our law and history since the nation's founding.

Bottom image © 2025 Mike McDowell

Cool Tiger Beetle video!

It's Still There ...

All images © 2025 Mike McDowell

Late Summer Warblers!

"Man only likes to count his troubles; he doesn't calculate his happiness."

― Fyodor Dostoevsky

The warblers are back!

These were the species found last weekend in Middleton:

Blue-winged Warbler

Golden-winged Warbler

Tennessee Warbler

Nashville Warbler

Chestnut-sided Warbler

Magnolia Warbler

Cape May Warbler

Black-throated Green Warbler

Blackburnian Warbler

Bay-breasted Warbler

Blackpoll Warbler

Black-and-white Warbler

American Redstart

Ovenbird

Northern Waterthrush

Mourning Warbler

Common Yellowthroat

Canada Warbler

Hints of autumn flicker through the foliage, yet the Pheasant Branch Creek Corridor still holds its lush, almost jungle-like feel.

Summer's creatures remain active as well ...

And of course, wildflowers are still hanging on, throwing one last party before fall takes over.

The world feels heavy with bad news these days, but out here, Nature has a way of easing the weight. The rush of the creek, the hush of the trees, and the simple persistence of wildflowers remind me that life carries on with a rhythm far older and steadier than our troubles. In that rhythm, there's peace.

All images © 2025 Mike McDowell