W.H. Chip Gross

I maintain nine bird feeders outside my home-office window. Only two of them were commercially manufactured, and one of those two was given to me as a gift. The other seven I cobbled together from material I had on hand. I don’t mind spending money when I have to, but if I can save a few bucks and still get the job done, I’m all for it, especially with the continually rising cost of bird feed.  

Trail cameras take both still photos and video clips of wildlife and provide endlessly entertaining images. If there’s someone on your Christmas list who would like to try this fun and fascinating outdoor hobby — or if you’d like to try it yourself — here are a few suggestions to help get you started, based on my own experience:      

In general, the weasel family has a dubious reputation, particularly its scientific subfamily Mustelinae, which in Ohio includes not only mink but also ermines, least weasels, and long-tailed weasels. Adding to this foursome’s loathsomeness is the fact that they smell bad, emitting a strong, musky odor from anal scent glands, which they use for marking territory or attracting a mate.  

The ALB is a wood-boring bug that attacks a dozen types of hardwood trees in North America, including maples, elms, buckeyes, birches, and willows. Infested trees do not recover. They then weaken and become safety hazards, especially during storms, and eventually die.

“Even into medieval times, bogs and fens remained mystical and frightening places,” says Denny, a member of Mount Gilead-based Consolidated Cooperative. “Fueling some of those fears was a natural phenomenon known as ‘will-o’-the-wisp’ or ‘jack-o’-lantern’ — a mysterious, flickering light often observed hovering and moving around at night within bogs, swamps, and marshes. 

The slaughter began with large mammals — elk and deer in the East, bison in the West. Once those populations were decimated, the professional hunters moved on to waterfowl: ducks, geese, and swans. After those species were depleted, shorebirds were next in line. Smaller than most waterfowl, shorebirds made up for their small size by numbering in the millions. They also decoyed readily and tasted good on the dinner table. 

Last on the list was songbirds.  

To get a feel for AOA, I tagged along on one of the organization’s many annual educational events open to the public. The field trip attracted some 30 people to Cedar Bog Nature Preserve, a few miles south of Urbana. It’s the oldest nature preserve in the Buckeye State purchased with state funds (in 1942), and is owned, operated, and managed by the Ohio History Connection. 

The United States maintained nearly 700 camps, in all but three states, during the war — established to help alleviate the overcrowding of POWs housed in Great Britain. Had just Italian (50,273) and Japanese (3,915) POWs been sent to the U.S., existing American camps could have handled those numbers. But late in the war, as Allied troops began to take control, an additional 371,683 German prisoners began debarking from troop ships onto America’s shores, and the POW prison system was quickly overwhelmed. U.S.

The story begins several months earlier, in March 1782, when 96 members of the Delaware tribe, who had converted to Christianity, were rounded up, massacred, and burned along with their entire village of Gnadenhutten (meaning huts, or tents, of grace) along the Tuscarawas River by Col. David Williamson and his contingent of frontier militia.

“I have my oriole feeders out by the last week in April,” Mast says. “Through the years, I’ve tried a lot of different foods to attract orioles, including sliced oranges, but my main food now is simply grape jelly.” Orioles and a few other species, such as rose-breasted grosbeaks, gray catbirds, and some warblers, seem to love the stuff. “A red-bellied woodpecker even comes to my jelly feeders occasionally,” Mast says.