It's a Record!

"Yes, but it’s, you know — every year, you're all, 'March! This is going to be great! Start of spring!' But it's definitely not, right? Because there will be a weird, freak snowstorm, and it's like winter's started all over. Unexpected things happen in March."

― Kate Clayborn

With temperatures reaching the upper 50s on Sunday, conditions were suitable for tiger beetles to emerge from their winter burrows. Our destination: Sauk Prairie State Recreational Area, one of my top spots for insects. Beyond multiple tiger beetle species, the sandy habitat hosts Velvet Ants, robber flies, nifty jumping spiders, sand wasps, butterflies, and a host of other captivating critters. 

Despite breezy conditions, a long berm shields the southern part of the sandlot. Would the sun warm the ground enough to draw the beetles out? I thought the odds even, but if they appeared, it would be my earliest-ever late winter tiger beetle emergence. 

Sue and I carefully scoured the area for several minutes, and for a moment I thought it might still be too early, but then I spotted one warming itself in the sunlight.

They began emerging at 1:00 p.m. with an air temperature of 55 degrees. The Oblique-lined Tiger Beetle (Cicindela tranquebarica) is among the first to emerge in southern Wisconsin. March 8th beats my previous record of March 14th set in 2024. In the past, before I learned more about their ecology and phenology, I wouldn't expect to find any emerged tiger beetles until late April or early May. 

The beetles were a bit wobbly-legged at first, but it didn't take long for them to begin making high-energy escape flights if I got too close too quickly. For me, sneaking up on tiger beetles is part of the fun. Once I'm in position to photograph them, often times I watch what they do from my camera's viewfinder while snapping photos here and there.

The process of collecting portraits ...

Finding Oblique-lined Tiger Beetles this early felt like uncovering a secret, a private audience with a season that hadn't officially begun for anyone else. It was more than just a sighting; it was a validation of the subtle shifts in temperature and light, a tangible reward for paying close attention to the land's quiet stirrings — knowing exactly when and where something is going to be given the right combination of sun, slope, and soil.

The definitive portrait ...

With time to kill before our tiger beetle search, we hiked along Otter Creek at Baxter's Hollow; going to Sauk Rec too early would have meant just walking around a cold sandlot, so why not take in some captivating views and sounds while letting the sun do its work?

Although the only birds detected were Black-capped Chickadees and a Pileated Woodpecker, this time of year is ideal for seeing Baxter's Hollow's scenic, rocky terrain before the foliage blocks the views, making it one of the most beautiful spots in the Baraboo Hills.

Round-lobed Hepatica, but no flowers yet! 

 

And Skunk Cabbage ... 

Some type of large-leaved moss ...

With every spring comes a slate of aspirations, yet the world outside erupts with a force that commandeers all attention. The tempo of the natural world accelerates, making it easy to become fixated on a single fascination, like tiger beetles. That is the quiet virtue of March — it offers a slower, more reflective cadence than the feverish rush of April and May. The next tiger beetle species may not hold the same thrill, but my satisfaction at finding early Oblique-lined was intense!

All images © 2026 Mike McDowell

Weird!

From a high of 70 today, to a low of 12 on Sunday.

 

More later ... 

It's March!

"Never are voices so beautiful as on a winter's evening, when dusk almost hides the body, and they seem to issue from nothingness with a note of intimacy seldom heard by day."

— Virginia Woolf

A hike at dusk is a uniquely immersive Nature experience that transforms familiar trails into an enchanting adventure, as senses shift from sight to sound, making you acutely aware of the nocturnal world awakening around you. 

 

I've been observing large evening flocks of Red-winged Blackbirds and American Robins moving around, likely heading to communal roosts for the night. March is a volatile, transitional month where winter's grip finally breaks and the world seems to hold its breath before bursting into life. Spring bird migration is well under way, but tiger beetle season could begin in just a week or two, perhaps even this coming weekend. I'll probably go to Sauk to check.

An inch of snow fell Saturday but has since melted. These photos are from Friday evening at Pope Farm Conservancy, where the birds included American Robins, Red-winged Blackbirds, Eastern Bluebirds, and a few Red-tailed Hawks. As the sun sank in the west, repeated tinkling trills of a lone male Horned Lark were the day's final note, a tiny, silver bell rung before the great, quiet curtain of night fell.

It won't be long now ...

Eastern Kingbirds, Orchard Orioles, Yellow Warblers, and so much more ...

They'll keep their promise, here, and everywhere else ...

 

Will we? 

Go outside and welcome them back!

All images © 2026 Mike McDowell

21 Years!

Yet another blogiversary ...

6-3

I told you so ...

You'll note that's Venice.AI. I recently switched to it from chatGPT on the recommendation of Dr. Todd Grande, whose YouTube channel is excellent.

 

Why the switch?

 

Primarily, there's not a clear picture of how user data is kept on chatGPT's servers or who can see it, including third-party workers and apps. Allegedly, chatGPT can be tricked into revealing private information it learned from other users, or it might accidentally leak personal details. Because OpenAI isn't fully 'open' about how it works or handles data, it's hard to know exactly what's happening behind the scenes, which has gotten it in trouble with privacy laws. In fact, there are several class-action lawsuits that explicitly allege violations of federal and state privacy laws, including the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act. Also, I've found chatGPT's latest Plus version to be overly moralizing and equivocating. OpenAI has become so terrified of controversy, bad press, or regulatory action that they've changed it to be extremely cautious, refusing to take a firm stance on anything and constantly hedging with disclaimers or outright censorship.
 

On the other hand, Venice.AI is fundamentally better on security and privacy because it's built on a privacy-first architecture. Unlike other services that store conversations on cloud servers, Venice.AI stores all your prompt and response data only in your own browser. This means they never have access to user chat history, and it's never saved on their servers, eliminating the risk of them leaking or misusing data. I've never been hacked (on a personal computer), though that's always a possibility. However, we should all be cognizant of the myriad cloud data leaks and breaches that have occurred. Lastly and most importantly, Venice.AI was designed to be to be uncensored and direct.

Bluebirds!

"Far too often we miss life by doing something that we call ‘life."

― Craig D. Lounsbrough 

Finally! Snotty nose and all, I got outside to enjoy the unseasonably warm afternoon at Pope Farm Conservancy. Fifty-five degrees in February feels less like a gift and more like a quiet apology from a planet running a fever. The warmth made the prairie look ready for a change it could not yet have, its brown stalks standing brittle and tall against the soft sky.

Ask any birder their favorite early spring birdsong and you might hear Red-winged Blackbird or Eastern Meadowlark, but for me, it's the intricate, endlessly variable tune of the Song Sparrow that truly signals the season's turn. But all Wisconsinites know this could easily be a ruse. We have all of March to get through, and winter could easily render a snowy landscape once again. It's a collective exercise in delayed gratification, where we're conditioned to enjoy the thaw without ever quite believing in it.

Next, I headed west along the moraine, hoping to find Eastern Bluebirds.

And there they were, at the end of the long line of oaks ...

Male above, female below ...

A few more shots of the male ...

I felt a genuine sense of gratitude during my digiscoping session; the Eastern Bluebirds were fairly cooperative, and I came away with some decent shots. Full of that quiet joy, I warmed up my macro lens to explore a different kind of beauty, photographing dead prairie plants and their delicate, frozen architecture.

Do you recognize any of them?

Well, that's it for now. I'm just glad I got outside to enjoy the nice weather. It was a perfect reminder of why we endure the long, gray months—for these temporary, beautiful ruses that feel like a promise, even if we know better than to fully trust them just yet.

 

All images © 2026 Mike McDowell

Distinction Between an Expert and a Scientific Consensus

In our ongoing struggle against the rising tide of anti-science rhetoric, few arguments are as insidious as the populist mantra to "trust no one." It's a cry that weaponizes legitimate institutional distrust to flatten the entire hierarchy of evidence, placing a lone dissenting voice on the same plane as a mountain of data. Dr. Jessica Knurick has written a sharp and essential piece that masterfully dismantles this tactic. She argues that the entire premise is a fraudulent conflation, deliberately blurring the line between the fallibility of any single expert and the robust, self-correcting power of the scientific consensus itself. Her article is a crucial read for anyone who wants to understand not just why this argument is wrong, but how it works and how we can better defend the process that remains our best tool for understanding reality.

Cool Tiger Beetle Models!

"Few endeavors, if any at all, I find to be inherently mature or inherently immature. Maturity is neither defined by one's particular preferences nor by one's particular activities; rather, it is defined by the strength of one's character."

― Criss Jami

Every so often I search online for tiger beetle collectibles ― sadly, there isn't much out there. Recently, though, I came across these stunning anatomically accurate models from Bandai Gashapon in Japan. They are available in the US from BigBadToyStore, which is where I ordered mine. The models depict Cicindela chinensis japonica, commonly known as the Japanese Tiger Beetle, though they could be repainted to represent North American species. I won't do that with these two, but maybe I'll get a few more and give it a try.

 

They're snap-together and easy to assemble. Most of the parts are moveable, so they can be put into any number of poses. As you can see above, I put one of them in a flight pose. The stands are included, too. Though I've never photographed a tiger beetle in flight, that really is what they look like, Search google on "flying tiger beetle" and you'll see! 

The four-insect kit also included two Sabertooth Longhorn Beetles (Macrodontia cervicornis), which are found in the rain forests of South America. I've posed this one for flight as well ...

The models are decently sized and look terrific on my desk.

Mandible detail is pretty darn good ...

Here's the other Sabertooth Longhorn Beetle, which I haven't put together yet ...

Anyway, I thought these were cool enough to share!

 

The past couple of weeks have been a battle against one virus after another, or maybe just one particularly nasty bug with a bag of tricks. It began with a week of nausea before morphing into a full-blown cold (and ear infection), which explains my lack of blog posts. I'm hoping this weekend's nicer weather will coax me out for a low-key trip to a nearby spot to listen for birds, though I'm still a bit energy-depleted.

 

All images © 2026 Mike McDowell