Final Summer Outing!

"I was drinking in the surroundings: air so crisp you could snap it with your fingers and greens in every lush shade imaginable offset by autumnal flashes of red and yellow."

― Wendy Delsol

Happy Fall Equinox!

 

Here in southern Wisconsin we closed out summer on a rather wet note. After a rainy Saturday and a gloomy Sunday morning, the weather finally broke mid-morning. Since we picked up around six inches of rain, Sue and I went up to Sauk County to check the Wisconsin River water levels. 

She texted:  

"I wonder how high the river got."

I responded:

"Well, let's go look!"

Remember this? The rising water completely reclaimed the summer sandbar system, which meant less tiger beetle habitat. Also, with cooler temperatures and wet sand, the question in my mind was whether any tiger beetles would be out on the prowl. Expectations were exceedingly low for insects of any kind, but it's always nice to get outdoors and explore. 

And ...

Yes! But just one — a single Bronzed Tiger Beetle (Cicindela repanda).

Is this my final tiger beetle of 2026? Only time will tell. While I've spotted C. repanda as late as early November, those late-season finds are rare—my season usually wraps up in October. From December through March, my patience is put to the test. Every week or two, my mind wanders back to them in my sleep. Having spent so many hours in the field, I often dream of tiger beetle species that don't exist. It's remarkable how vividly my brain can construct a fictitious beetle that feels completely real.

From the river, we decided check the tiger beetle spot at Sauk Prairie State Rec.Area. Going just a short distance north rendered completely different weather — going from overcast to partly to mostly cloudy. It's been a couple of months since our last visit. Covering the slope, I think I saw a Festive, but didn't get a good enough look at it to confirm the ID. The only other tiger beetle I would have thought possible would be Oblique-lined, but none were found. 

But I did find female and male Variegated Meadowhawks (Sympetrum corruptum) — they're amazing looking, aren't they?

Unlike most dragonflies that spend their entire lives near a single pond, Variegated Meadowhawks are a remarkable long-distance migrant that relies on a multi-generational cycle to cover thousands of miles across North America. In spring, adults stream northward and inland from warmer overwintering grounds in the southern United States and Mexico, rapidly breeding in ephemeral, sun-warmed waters. As autumn approaches, the summer's offspring emerge and ride cold fronts south, using high-altitude winds to return to frost-free regions. Driven by rapid larval development and an incredible capacity for wandering, they often turn up far beyond their expected range, using seasonal winds to colonize temporary habitats across the continent.

A multitude of pollinators were on goldenrod, and a Green Stink Bug was left undisturbed. 

It's Aster Season!

Check this out ...

See those tiny flies? I nearly missed them.

Zooming in ... 

I'm pretty sure it's Tmemophlebia coquilletti, but I'm not 100%. I've never seen one before, so it'll be an opportunity for research and education. In brief, they're a small North American bee fly (Bombyliidae) tightly tied to open, sandy habitats like inland and coastal dunes, where adults serve as active pollinators feeding on floral nectar

From the Sauk Prairie Recreation Area, we headed to Devil's Lake State Park for a hike on the Grottos Trail along the base of the East Bluff. Late in the season, the summer crowds had thinned out, making it easily one of the best times of year to visit. The park saw two tragic fatalities earlier this summer — a climbing instructor fell during a class, and a young man died after jumping between rock formations at Devil's Doorway. While fatal falls draw public attention each year, many more serious injuries on the bluffs quietly go unreported.

On Grottos ...

Signs of fall ...

There were a variety of small mushrooms to photograph ...

Oddly, avian activity was nearly non-existent, save for a single calling Pileated Woodpecker. With no birds on the lake and no sparrows, warblers, or passerines in sight, the woods were remarkably quiet, making for a peaceful and regenerating hike.

What will the new season bring? I've read tantalizing prognostications of gorgeous fall colors in southcentral Wisconsin.

All images © 2026 Mike McDowell

All day ...

AI Hoax?

I spent 1986 to 2000 working in IT, doing everything from software development and network administration to QA software testing. While I taught myself my first programming languages in high school well before taking formal classes, I don't do much coding these days beyond the occasional HTML and CSS tweak on my blog. The snippet above was actually written by AI—something I asked it to build to streamline a repetitive Excel task. 

Sometime in the early 1980s, I made a computer Bulletin Board System (BBS) written in interpreted BASIC with 6502 assembly language subroutines on a Commodore 64. Running on a single phone line with a 1200 baud modem, it offered forums, messages, limited email, and live chat with the SysOp. It didn't enjoy the longevity of other systems at the time, but it was a fun, highly educational programming endeavor.

Because the system ran my own fallible code, a user could easily hit a bug that dumped the software back to the BASIC prompt, leaving the system down until I manually restarted it. To fix this, I wrote an assembly routine that ran on a background interrupt, like a watchdog. It monitored the BBS, automatically rebooting it if it crashed, and also logged the offending code so I could patch it later. In a way, I had created a self-healing loop that kept the system alive despite human error. However, it still required me to address the glitch. 

Now imagine Recursive Self-Improvement (RSI) in AI. At machine speed, when an AI routine encounters a barrier in a programmed goal, it won't crash or halt—it will treat the obstacle like a chess board state and test all potential moves in microseconds. 

Leveraging combinatorial code generation, the AI instantly spawns and tests hundreds of candidate subroutines in microseconds—it discards failing branches and deploys a workaround on the fly. This achieves an autonomous error recovery far beyond my ancient 6502 routine: instead of merely restarting the program after a failure, an RSI system dynamically rewrites its own underlying architecture so the barrier is bypassed before the system even registers a slowdown.

Why do we keep sprinting toward this ominous AI finish line when even the engineers building it are warning us about the edge of the cliff? It boils down to a classic, high-stakes game theory nightmare known as the Multipolar Trap. No AI lab, tech giant, or nation operates in a vacuum. The moment one player hits pause to play it safe, rival powers simply hit the accelerator. In the brutal arena of global tech dominance, slowing down or stopping isn't viewed as responsible stewardship—it's seen as handing the keys to the future to competitors who might not care about guardrails.

In the immortal words of Socrates: "I drank what?" 

Good deal on eggs at Kwik Trip!

KT image © 2026 Mike McDowell

The Earth Isn't 6,000 Years Old

Every once in a while, I encounter someone who sincerely believes the Earth is ~6,000 years old. Not metaphorically. Not as a symbolic interpretation of Genesis. 

 

Literally. 

 

The planet. The mountains. The oceans. The dinosaurs. Every fossil. 

 

All of it supposedly happened within the last few thousand years.

No.

The Earth is approximately 4.54 billion years old, and the evidence is overwhelming. This isn't based on one scientist, one experiment, or some academic consensus that people are expected to accept on faith. It's supported by radiometric dating, geology, paleontology, astronomy, ice cores, and numerous other independent lines of evidence.

Different methods. Different disciplines. The same conclusion.

Our planet is ancient and the rocks don't care about Genesis mythology.

Radioactive elements decay at predictable rates. By measuring radioactive isotopes in rocks and minerals, scientists can determine when geological processes occurred.

The geological record tells the same story. Sedimentary layers, fossils, volcanic formations, mountain ranges, and ancient ocean deposits document a planet shaped by immense spans of time.

We aren't guessing, we're measuring.

The stars create an even bigger problem. The Andromeda Galaxy (M31) is approximately 2.5 million light-years away. Its light has taken roughly 2.5 million years to reach us. Assuming the Milky Way and Andromeda are both roughly 100,000 light-years across, simple geometry lets us estimate Andromeda's distance using its 190 arcminute angular span on the sky. Converting 190 arcminutes to degrees gives 3.17 degrees. Using the small-angle formula, we divide the physical size by the angle to get a calculated distance of roughly 1.81 million light-years. This estimate falls short of the true distance—about 2.5 million light-years—primarily because Andromeda is actually significantly larger than the Milky Way, spanning over 150,000 light-years across, which pushes it farther away to occupy that same patch of our celestial sphere. 

So if the universe is only 6,000 years old, how did that light get here?

Magic!

The usual answer is that God created the light already in transit. In other words, God supposedly created a universe containing evidence of events that never actually happened.

The rocks are misleading us. 

The fossils are misleading us. 

The light is misleading us. 

The radioactive isotopes are misleading us.

This is not a scientific explanation. It's an unfalsifiable attempt to protect a predetermined conclusion.

And if a hypothesis can explain absolutely anything, it ultimately explains nothing.

People are free to interpret Genesis symbolically, theologically, or literally. They're also free to believe in God. But the moment someone claims that the Earth is 6,000 years old, they're making an empirical claim—and empirical claims are tested against evidence.

The evidence is clear.

The Earth is ancient. Life has been evolving for billions of years. Dinosaurs existed for more than 160 million years. Humans arrived extraordinarily late in the story. And no amount of biblical literalism changes any of that. What I find particularly frustrating is that young-Earth creationism makes the universe smaller. The actual history of our planet is magnificent. Continents have moved. Oceans have opened and disappeared. Mountains have risen and eroded. Entire ecosystems have evolved and vanished. Species have flourished and gone extinct. After billions of years of this, one species evolved the ability to investigate its own origins.

That's us.

Why would anyone want to replace that extraordinary history with a few thousand years and a collection of increasingly desperate explanations?

It's a strange double standard: the creation is offered as objective evidence for a God, but if your honest examination leads to naturalistic conclusions, the issue shifts from an intellectual disagreement to a spiritual failing. 

Just Birding!

Over the past several nights, NEXRAD radar picked up heavy bird migration, making it the perfect time to head back to the Pheasant Branch Creek Corridor for the 2026 fall warbler parade—and it delivered. My birding crew tallied 17 warbler species in total, highlighted by standout sightings of a male Black-throated Blue, Golden-winged, Blackburnian, and a Canada Warbler. Chestnut-sided Warblers were the most abundant of the bunch. Factoring in reports from other birders, at least 20 warbler species moved through the corridor—a testament to the site's ongoing value as a vital haven for migratory songbirds.

Here are all the species observed:

 

Canada Goose  

Mourning Dove  
Ruby-throated Hummingbird  
Green Heron  
Great Blue Heron  
Cooper's Hawk  
Red-tailed Hawk  
Belted Kingfisher  
Red-headed Woodpecker  
Red-bellied Woodpecker  
Downy Woodpecker  
Hairy Woodpecker  
Northern Flicker  
Eastern Wood-Pewee  
Eastern Phoebe  
Great Crested Flycatcher  
Blue-headed Vireo  
Red-eyed Vireo  
Blue Jay  
American Crow  
Black-capped Chickadee  
Tufted Titmouse  
White-breasted Nuthatch  
Red-breasted Nuthatch  
Blue-gray Gnatcatcher  
Northern House Wren  
European Starling  
Gray Catbird  
Gray-cheeked Thrush  
Swainson's Thrush  
Wood Thrush  
American Robin  
House Sparrow  
House Finch  
American Goldfinch

Pine Siskin  
Song Sparrow  
Ovenbird  
Northern Waterthrush  
Golden-winged Warbler  
Black-and-white Warbler  
Tennessee Warbler  
Nashville Warbler  
Common Yellowthroat  
American Redstart  
Northern Parula  
Magnolia Warbler  
Bay-breasted Warbler  
Blackburnian Warbler  
Chestnut-sided Warbler  
Black-throated Blue Warbler  
Black-throated Green Warbler  
Canada Warbler  
Wilson's Warbler  
Northern Cardinal  
Rose-breasted Grosbeak  
Indigo Bunting  

 

All images © 2026 Mike McDowell

Splendid Spring Green!

"To a rough approximation, and setting aside vertebrate chauvinism, it can be said that essentially all organisms are insects."

— Robert May 

Did you like those two videos? I've been super busy so I haven't had much time to sort through recent blog material, but I have been getting out on weekends. The Jonny Thompson video came up as a suggestion (he's new to me), but I've read most of Sean B. Carroll's books. If you've not read it, check out The Serengeti Rules. 

 

I love this month. September is sort of like May in reverse—southbound migrating birds come through, insects have a resurgence (or final emergence), and fall prairies put on a dramatic show. It's all very amazing and I'm grateful to be immersed in it.

 

With spring-fall tiger beetle species, my favorite to re-visit is Splendid Tiger Beetle (Cicindela splendida). Summer species like Ghost, Sandy Stream, and Punctured, have a single adult emergence in July or July and do not overwinter—alas, they perish at the end of the season. Spring-fall species emerge as adults mostly in August or September, feed for several weeks and then prepare burrows for overwintering. It isn't until the following spring that they mate and lay eggs. 

By my read, Splendid Tiger Beetles uncommon to kind of rare in Wisconsin, found reliably (with considerable effort) at Spring Green Preserve in Sauk County. While a few scattered sightings exist elsewhere, its small range means it probably deserves Special Concern status in the state, but I couldn't find it on WI DNR's Natural Heritage Inventory page. Perhaps I'll reach out.

As I've written here many times before, finding them requires a trip to the top of the bluff to the rocky outcroppings—this is where you'll find them hunting atop the flat rock surfaces. 

 

Like this ... 

And this ...

Here's one now!

While most are decently skittish, some occasionally allow me to get so close I can set my camera on the rock for low-angle portraiture.

The stilting and sun-facing postures are both strategies for thermoregulation. Stilting keeps their bodies elevated above hot surfaces, while the sun-facing posture minimizes exposure of the abdomen and thorax to direct sunlight. Maintaining a suitable body temperature is essential for optimal hunting and mating activity. When they get too hot, tiger beetles may engage in what's called “shuttling”—scurrying into the shade to cool down before returning to the open to resume hunting. For tiger beetles, it's all about maintaining the right body temperature.

This female Splendid was patrolling her own rock. Even when I spooked her a few times, she eventually came back to the same spot on the outcropping. 

 

What a gorgeous beetle ...

I just can't stop!

To add to the post, I thought I'd photograph a few wildflowers found around the outcroppings and elsewhere. There's Harebell, False Foxglove, Blazing Star, Flowering Spurge, and various asters. 

I was photographing this aster when ...

A "fly bee" came in. Actually, it's a hoverfly in the genus Syrphus. Lori and I still can't let go of the fact that, back in our old Wisconsin Naturalists Facebook group, someone repeatedly called these "fly bees." So now, we almost always refer to them that way. They're not bees—they're flies (diptera). They're also commonly, but incorrectly, called "bee flies." Really, though, they're mimics, using their bee-like appearance to fool potential predators.

 

I also observed my first "fall" Oblique-lined Tiger Beetle on the way back to the parking lot ... 

I'm thinking it's time to return to the Pheasant Branch Creek Corridor this weekend and watch the fall warbler parade. I'm not sure I'll do any digiscoping, but we'll see where the weekend takes me. I've accepted that 2026 will go down as a 12-species tiger beetle year, and that's OK. I do have to admit, though, that I get a little concerned when I miss species that are normally easier to find—or at least reliably findable with some effort.

 

All images © 2026 Mike McDowell