A great way to shed light on the outdoors

Books that are specific to your area are a must

I've got books on everything from birds to mushrooms

Is there anything at your house that you would buy without batting an eye? I mean besides beer?
At our house no one ever hesitates to buy a book. This is mostly Brenda's influence. Her attitude is that the covers of books are doorways to knowledge, wisdom and entertainment. If there isn't room on the credit card for a book, then just try another credit card. We will find the money somewhere; it's that important. Brenda is a big library user but buys lots of books as well.
My weak spot are field guides that are specific to our region. And since I never know when I'm going to need them the library isn't a good solution. I need the book right now, in my pocket or on the shelf.
Over the years I've accumulated a great number of field guides on birds, flowers, trees, shrubs, fungi, lichens, amphibians, just to name a few, and they are among my most prized possessions. With these books I can learn the names of everything in the outdoors. More than that, I can begin to understand the role they play in the ecosystem, how they were used by First Nations and how precious they are to us right now.
I also find that books are far and away a better way to identify things than is the Internet. Case in point: years ago I wrote on my old blog about an enigma involving herring gulls at our remote outdoor business -- Bow Narrows Camp -- on Red Lake in Northwestern Ontario. See Gulls Catch Tiny Blue Flies, Then Migrate
Herring gulls live to eat fish. They are the birds that will sit on the water behind your boat just hoping you will toss away a dead minnow. They are also the ones that will swarm you when you are emptying fish guts on a rocky island, nearly landing on your head in the process. They are bonkers, crazy, nutsy for fish and never pass up an opportunity to get some more. We all know that, right? Well, not always.
Every year in late August I watched the big gulls flying erratically right over camp. They were obviously trying to catch something right out of mid-air, 100-200 feet off the ground. They would dip, dive and swerve like swallows. And I could never make out what they were catching until one year. I think it might have been quite windy and that is what forced their prey down lower. They were tiny bluish-white flies and I mean tiny, like one-quarter the size of my little finger nail. What were they and what was it about them that made the normally voracious fish-eating herring gulls spend so much energy catching them?
I must have wasted dozens of hours scouring the Internet for an answer. I also asked in the blog post if anyone had any ideas. No one responded.

It has "bugged" me all these years that I couldn't solve the riddle.
Then this spring Brenda and I stopped at Tettegouche State Park on Hwy 61, north of Duluth. This place is my favourite source for the North Woods Naturalist Series field guides that are just about the Northern States and Northwestern Ontario. I had thought I already owned every book this company has published when my eyes spotted two new ones on the shelves: Insects of the North Woods and also Ferns and Allies of the North Woods. Jackpot!
I read field guides like other people read novels, cover to cover. I was almost finished the Insects book when I came upon the chapter entitled Fruit Flies. "Fruit flies!" I almost yelled out loud. "Fruit flies!" Why didn't I think of that before? Small flies that are poor fliers and therefore easy to catch.
Sure enough, there among five wild fruit flies found in this region is the exact bug I photographed up at camp. It is called, simply, Fruit Fly, or in scientific language: Paroxnya albiceps.
The guide says P. albiceps feeds on asters in late August and into September. Asters are a common flower around the yard at camp.
They must be intensely nutritious, perhaps all fruit flies are. When the herring gulls are feeding on the flies I could pass right beneath them with pails of fish guts and not one of the birds was interested.
After feasting on the fruit flies for a few days, the gulls apparently got the fuel they needed to migrate as they then took off, not to be seen again until the next spring.