July 18, 2026

There are so many things I didn’t know before falling into this nature photography hobby that it’s actually impossible to cover them all. Here is just a sampling of some of my favorite discoveries!

It’s never been enough to just take a picture and move on. It’s never been enough to just know the names of the plants and creatures that show up in front of my lens. I’ve always needed to know what makes them special and why they do the things they do. Why do dragonflies point the tips of their ‘tails’ toward the sun on a hot summer day? Why do some birds flail around on the ground? Why do grackles puff out their chests and point their beaks upwards? Almost every picture I’ve taken needs an answer.

Did you know that there are more than 5,000 species of dragonflies? That they were some of the first winged insects to evolve 300 million years ago and that they used to have wingspans of two feet or more? I had no idea!

It wasn’t until I started taking pictures that I learned dragonflies and damselflies come in multitude of colors; red, pink, blue, green, yellow, gold, purple, black… almost every color you can imagine.  I had barely paid them any notice before going on picture walks!

When I found a dragonfly pointing the tip of its tail toward the sun on a hot summer day, I wanted to know why.  What I found out was fascinating! This is how dragonflies regulate their body temperature and prevent overheating! Their handstand-like posture is known as an ‘obelisk pose’. By aligning their tails directly with the sun’s rays, a dragonfly minimizes the surface area of its body exposed to solar radiation!

When I first saw a bird flailing around on the ground like this Black-capped Chickadee, I thought it was injured. When I approached to see if I could help, it flew away! Why was it on the ground in the first place??

The behavior this chickadee was engaged in is called “anting.” Birds will intentionally cover themselves with ants in order to benefit from the formic acid that ants release when they’re disturbed. The acid helps with controlling parasites, soothing irritated skin, and serves as a natural insecticide or fungicide!

Before photography took over my life, I didn’t know that grackles could be so beautiful or that they could establish dominance, attract a mate, or settle a dispute by merely pointing their beaks in the air. It’s called ‘the grackle stance’, ‘sky pointing’, or ‘bill tilting’. Grackles tip their bills straight up, extend their neck as far as they can, and puff out their chests to look as large and as intimidating as possible. The one who holds that stance the longest, wins the dispute! If they’re trying to impress the females, the grackle who lasts the longest or looks the most fit, takes home the girl!

American Bullfrogs are my favorite amphibians and I’ve taken hundreds of pictures of them over the years.  It wasn’t until recently that I learned you could tell a boy frog from a girl frog by the size of their ears! Look for a circle next to the bullfrog’s big, bulgy eyes. It’s called a tympanic membrane, a tight patch of skin that acts like an eardrum. If that circle is bigger than the frog’s eye, it’s a boy!

Some butterflies, like monarchs, also have ears! They don’t look anything like our ears or a frog’s ears, but they do have specialized, drum-like membranes called tympanal organs located at the base of their forewings that allow them to ‘hear’ the vibrations of fluttering wingbeats made by approaching predatory birds!

You can’t tell the sex of a butterfly by its ears like you can a bullfrog, but you can tell a boy monarch from a girl by two black dots. Male monarchs have two prominent black spots (scent glands) on their hind wings that are used to attract mates. Female monarchs do not.

I had never seen a turtle like this one before (with its bright yellow neck) until I took a picture. It has a interesting life history, a threatened existence, and a compelling reason for us to protect it.

This is a Blanding’s turtle and, unlike most other creatures, it shows virtually no signs of biological decline as it ages. A 90-year-old turtle remains as healthy, active, and reproductively viable as a 20-year-old! Researchers who have been studying this ‘fountain of youth’ feature of the Blanding’s turtle are looking for ways to delay age-related diseases in humans, such as hypertension, Type 2 diabetes, cataracts, macular degeneration, Alzheimer’s disease, and Parkinson’s.   

Unfortunately, the Blanding’s turtle is listed as Endangered, Threatened, or a species of Special Concern in most of the areas where it resides. Sadly, it faces the same or similar threats as many other species with whom we share this planet: habitat loss and fragmentation, predation, climate change, and pesticide use. So many plants and animals that we destroy hold the secrets to a better life for us. What harms them, harms us.

One of my favorite plant discoveries has been ‘bee balm’, also known as monarda. Given the right conditions, bee balm grows abundantly in the wild, but can also be grown in your garden. It’s a wonderful little plant for attracting hummingbirds, bees, and butterflies. But there’s another insect that loves bee balm just as much: a hummingbird moth! This fascinating insect is a little bigger than a bee but smaller than a hummingbird, and has been mistaken for both. It likes the same flowers as bees and hovers in front of them like a hummingbird to gather nectar.  

Before taking pictures, I didn’t know that some robins stayed here all winter. I thought, like everyone else, that they were the true ‘harbingers of spring’.  But, on my wintertime picture walks, I discovered them up in the trees eating berries! If robins can find enough berries over the winter, they won’t migrate. We tend to think of them as just spring and summer birds because that’s when we are more likely to see them; out on our lawns pulling up worms!

Surprisingly, Robins and other berry-eating birds, like Cedar Waxwings, can become intoxicated if the berries they’re gulping down are fermented!

One of my biggest bird surprises was finding cuckoos in Michigan! I didn’t even know we had cuckoos anywhere in the United States, let alone Michigan (at least not the feathered kind)! My only ‘cuckoo’ experience had been in Scotland years ago! But Scotland and Michigan host completely different species. Scotland has a Common Cuckoo; Michigan has the Black-billed Cuckoo and the Yellow-billed Cuckoo.  Even though we rarely see these birds, cuckoos are good to have around. Our Michigan Cuckoos love eating spongy moth caterpillars (formally known as gypsy moth caterpillars) which defoliate our trees and kill the weakener ones.

In just a few weeks I’ll be on the hunt for one of my favorite insects, the Praying Mantis. I love finding them and taking their picture because, unlike any other insect on the planet, a Praying Mantis can turn its head 180 degrees and look me straight in the eye! How weird is that?

There seems to be an infinite number of plants and creatures that I never knew about before walking out my door ten years ago, camera in hand, to go on my first picture walk—and I expect there’s an infinite number left waiting to be discovered!

I learn something new every time I go out!