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Photo by Linda and Robert Scarth
Boggy delight: Few get the chance to experience the wonder of the bogs and fens. Those daring souls who take the chance and don’t mind getting their feet damp are rewarded with intricate beauty of orchids, carnivorous plants and stunningly beautiful dragonflies. Above; a Calico Pennant rests in the sun.
Two in the bush: Into the Bog
Getting ‘bogged’ is something most people avoid. Being stuck in mud, sand or a swamp is a bit scary and certainly inconvenient. However, being in a true bog or fen can be a wonderful, peaceful and naturally engaging experience, with or without photography. Of course, for us there is almost always photography. A bog is a rain fed wetland often having a floating mat of sphagnum moss and other plants around a shallow acidic pond or lake over a peat substrate. A fen is another less acid, peaty, calcareous wetland watered year round by springs or seeps. Both involve peat and are identified by the unique plants that are found in them.
Our most recent wetland adventure was a week in northwestern Wisconsin where several of the many bogs revealed their complex matrices of incredible plants, animals and lyrical beauty. We and other novices followed the odonata experts around for several days at the GLOM (Great Lakes Odonata Meeting) along rivers and in bogs around Grantsburg. This weekend gathering has been happening somewhere in the Great Lakes basin for each of the last six summers. Next year it will be near Chicago. Watch for it. It is a great way to learn about the exquisite occupants of special ecosystems and the people who admire and study them. Dragonflies and damselflies are jewels in the air that become like ‘precious stone and metal’ works of art when perched for photographs.
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