Olentangy River Wetland Research Park

This summer, the ORW was excited to welcome Lizzy Korosec from the Columbus School for Girls as a summer volunteer intern!

Lizzy spent her summer working alongside our faculty, staff, and undergraduate interns and gained valuable firsthand experience with scientific data collection, site maintenance, and research.

Throughout her time here, Lizzy assisted our team with grounds and trail maintenance, helped remove invasive plant species from around the park, helped manage our restored prairie project site, participated in community outreach events, learned to identify a wide variety of wildlife, and collected field data.

We're proud to have been a part of her journey as she continues exploring potential college majors and career paths in environmental science, and we are incredibly grateful for all of her hard work this summer.

Thank you for spending the summer with us, Lizzy, and we wish you the best of luck in your future endeavors! 💚🌾🔬

This summer, the ORW was excited to welcome Lizzy Korosec from the Columbus School for Girls as a summer volunteer intern!

Lizzy spent her time working alongside our faculty, staff, and undergraduate researchers, gaining valuable firsthand experience with scientific data collection, site maintenance, and research.

Throughout the summer, Lizzy assisted our team with grounds and trail maintenance, helped remove invasive plant species from around the park, helped manage our restored prairie project site, participated in community outreach events, identified a wide variety of wildlife, and collected field data.

We're proud to have been part of her journey as she continues exploring potential college majors and career paths in environmental science and incredibly grateful for all of her hard work this summer.

Thank you for spending the summer with us, Lizzy, and we wish you the best of luck in your future endeavors! 💚🌾🔬

On July 26, ORW undergraduate intern Ethan Staffiera led a mushroom identification walk and spore printing demonstration!

Ethan guided participants through the park, pointing out and identifying mushrooms along the way. From scaly ink caps to pale brittlestem to false turkey tail, there were plenty of mushrooms for participants to learn about and forage across the park and in our bottomland forest!

Participants collected mushrooms and brought them into the classroom where Ethan gave a short lecture on the importance of proper mushroom identification when foraging and different identification techniques. One technique, which Ethan demonstrated and participants then got to do, is spore printing. Spore prints are created when mushrooms release reproductive cells (the spores) onto a sheet of paper, plastic, or aluminum foil, to create a visible print of the mushroom’s underside.

If you are interested in foraging, familiarize yourself with any regulations near you, take proper precautions, and ensure that you have tried different identification techniques and are 100% confident in the identification of your foraged item before consuming it.

Thank you to everyone who participated in this event with us! Did you attend and have a successful spore print? If so, drop a photo of it in the comments!

Stay tuned for more events like this soon.

On July 26, guests had the opportunity to satisfy their foraging curiosity with a mushroom walk and spore-printing demonstration!

During the mushroom walk, research intern Ethan Staffiera guided participants and helped identify the mushrooms they found. From scaly ink caps to pale brittlestone, there were plenty of mushrooms for people to collect and examine.

After the walk, participants brought their finds into the classroom, where they learned how to identify mushrooms using spore prints. Spore prints are created when mushrooms release microscopic reproductive cells, called spores, onto a sheet of paper or aluminum foil, leaving a visible print that reflects the pattern of the mushroom's underside.

Be sure to stay tuned for more events like this in the future!

📸 Grace Watts

🐦🦆 Feather Friday🦆🐦

Welcome back, everyone, to this week's Feather Friday, our series that spotlights some of our favorite feathered friends here at the wetlands!

This week's bird is the American Robin, one of the most common birds found here in Central Ohio! The American Robin has an expansive range that covers much of North America, from the Upper South through to the borders of the Canadian Arctic. Robins feed primarily on insects, berries, and earthworms, with their diet shifting throughout the year: mostly worms and insects in the spring and fruits in the winter. American Robins are also fairly fecund birds, with a pair producing up to three broods per season.

However, what's so exceptional about this specific robin's coloration is that it differs quite substantially from what is commonly found in robins! This is due to a mutation that causes loss of pigmentation, known as leucism. Leucistic animals vary wildly in the degree of their pigmentation loss (with this individual seeming to have lost the pigmentation on the top of its head); however, some leucistic animals can see almost total loss of pigmentation.

In celebration of National Moth Week, the ORWRP hosted an Insect Night Sheeting event! 🌕

At the end of last week, participants of all ages got the opportunity to learn about and see lightning bugs, moths, beetles, and other nocturnal insects that roam our wetlands! Thank you to Dr. Ellen Klinger, Dr. Jamie Strange, and graduate student Miabella Centuori for taking the time to teach guests about our local nocturnal insects. 🦗


Did you miss this event and wish you had attended? Do you want to learn more about insects? Keep an eye out this fall...another insect sheeting opportunity may be coming your way. 🍂

Photo 2: Orange Wing Moth

Photo 4: Canadian Petrophila

Photo 5: Crane Fly

Photo 6: Damselfly

Photo 8: Dobsonfly (an indicator of good water quality!)

Two weeks ago, we had the privilege of hosting a wetland delineation course organized by The Junction Coalition, The Ohio State University, and MAD Scientist Associates! 🏛

This class was held as a part of the Ohio State's Climate-Ready Workforce Project, which is partnered with over 21 different organizations and is helping to expand the workforce in support of the water sector. 💧

Ohio State, in collaboration with The Junction Coalition and MAD Scientist Associates, put together the wetland delineation certification with the goal of training over 100 future climate-ready professionals to manage the impacts of climate change in Great Lakes communities! 💪

If you want to learn more about this amazing initiative, check out The Junction Coalition website (junctioncoalition419.org) and The Ohio State's Climate-Ready Workforce Project website (https://skills.osu.edu/projects/climate-ready-workforce-project/)

🐦🦆Feather Friday🦆🐦

Welcome back, everyone, to this week's Feather Friday, our series that spotlights some of our favorite feathered friends here at the wetlands!

This week's bird is the iconic Great Blue Heron! The great blue is the largest heron in North America, with some birds reaching as tall as four and a half feet and with a wingspan of over six feet! This size, combined with their slow and methodical hunting style, makes great blue herons one of the most conspicuous birds here in our wetlands and surrounding central Ohio waterways.

Great blue herons also are not picky hunters, with great blues being known to hunt almost anything small enough to fit in their bill, from fish to snakes, and even other smaller wading birds!

🐦🦆Feather Friday🦆🐦

Welcome back, everyone, to this week's Feather Friday, our series that spotlights some of our favorite feathered friends here at the wetlands!

This week's bird is the Green Heron! One of the smaller heron species we get here at the wetlands, the green heron is a solitary hunter, primarily feeding on small fish, amphibians, and invertebrates. Additionally, green herons often nest among willow thickets and tall marsh vegetation, making our wetland an amazing spot to find these guys!

Green herons are also highly intelligent birds, being one of the few tool-using bird species in the world! They have been observed using a wide array of materials, from old bread to their own feathers, as fishing lures!