US Botanic Garden - December 2013 - Part I

The US Botanic Garden conservatory displays model trains and models of buildings from natural materials during the holidays. This year the buildings included “World’s Fair” models as well as the usual Washington DC buildings.

We arrived just as the building opened at 10 on a rainy Saturday morning - and there was a line to see the display in the East Gallery. We had umbrellas and the line moved - not rapidly but never standing still. There were a lot of children that could hardly contain their excitement to see the exhibit and then once they were inside, the motion of the trains - the stops and starts, the whirring buy, one train that lost one of its cars but kept going - brought delighted giggles.

Some of my favorite models were the Lincoln Memorial

The White House with a swing set!

 And the Botanical Garden Conservatory

Enjoys some of the other sights of the special exhibit in the slide show below!

Gleanings of the Week Ending December 28, 2013

The items below were ‘the cream’ of the articles and websites I found this past week. Click on the light green text to look at the article.

Short Cycle Efficacy Trials Key to Personalized Learning - How can the myriad of education applications and blended learning models be evaluated?  This article describes some attempts. Hopefully we finally will achieve the focus of efficacy for the individual learner rather than the technology or educational administration.

4 Frighteningly Ambitious Education Experiments for 2014 - There are lots of experiments that I’ve been reading about lately (prompted by some recent Coursera courses). These four caught my attention because they emphasize that many boundaries we one assumed have been softened or even breached by technology. So now - we have some alternatives that have never been available before. All the more reason to figure out how to do ‘short cycle efficacy trials’ (see previous gleaning).

Frogcicle - I’d heard about some frogs being able to survive freezing…this is a video that shows that happening.

A Dingo Ate Australia - The article portrays the dingo, Australia’s only native dog species, from multiple perspectives.

Petrified Life - Time lapse video of the American Southwest…well worth the 5.5 minutes to watch.

The Most Incredible Historical Discoveries of 2013 - It’s the time of year that we get a lot of ‘best of’ lists. It does seem that 2013 had quite a few rather surprising historical discoveries. History is not as well defined as we sometimes assume!

Greenland Ice Stores Liquid Water Year-Round - Water evidently stays liquid in the space around the ice particles in an aquifer that covers 27,000 square miles. A team drilling core samples in southeast Greenland was surprised when they came up with liquid water (from 33 feet in one hole and 82 feet in another). The air temperature at the time was minus 4 degrees Fahrenheit. Another article on the same topic is here.

The 100 essential websites - How many of these do you know about already? I always take a browse through lists like this - and sometimes discover a something worthwhile!

Waiting in the Wings - Mining collections (butterflies, plants and birds) to determine changes over the 19th and 20th century as individual species - and in relationship with other species. Not everything in the food web changes at the same rate.

These are the most beautiful libraries we've ever seen - I am reading more electronically these days but there is still something very appealing about rooms full of books. 

Brookside Lights - December 2013

Brookside Gardens is having their ‘Garden of Lights’ display through January 5th. We went this past weekend while the weather was balmy (in the 60s). There was a crowd but we managed to get a parking place before the lots filled up. The lights include lots of flowers

 

Some insects (praying mantis and butterfly are pictured but there was a bee hive and ants too)

A rainbow with intermittent rain clouds and lightning

A giraffe (and other animals like lions, pigs, frogs, peacocks and turtles)

Imaginary beings (the one pictured looks like a crazy bird to me…there is also a sea serpent with baby sea serpent too)

And outlines of trees with lights.

In the conservatory there is a model train display which I posted about earlier (here). The model of the ‘facilities’ below was one of additions to that display this year!

Zooming - December 2013

The ‘zooming’ post for December includes pieces of Florida pictures (the first 5) and then pictures from Brookside (outdoors and inside the conservatory).

Bald Eagles in Florida - November 2013

The bald eagles at Merritt Island National Wildlife Refuge are birds the come back when the heat of summer is gone. They arrive earlier than many of the other winter birds. The best viewing of the eagles with their nest is actually on the bus tour of the Kennedy Space Center rather than areas accessible in the wildlife refuge although there are some favorite snags in the refuge - just barely within viewing distance from the road - where the eagles like to survey their territory.

I can remember the first time I saw a bald eagle. It was about 24 years ago and at the Blackwater National Wildlife Refuge on the Eastern Shore of Maryland. The bird flew overhead as I held by baby daughter as we looked up from the visitor center parking lot.

Even though there are more bald eagles in the world now than 24 years ago, it’s still a ‘little celebration’ any time I see one!

Broken Shells - Florida November 2013

My favorite beach activity is picking up shells. Most of the time they are broken pieces of a form that sheltered a life in the sea. Sometimes they are lying on top of the sand and sometimes they bring a sand in their curves when I pick them up. It was too cool to want to wash them off in the waves in November so there was more sand than usual with the shells in my bag.

I always like to image the part of the shell that is missing - to complete the curves.

Sometimes it is as easy as imagining a mirror image that could complete the half into a whole.

Gleanings of the Week Ending December 14, 2013

The items below were ‘the cream’ of the articles and websites I found this past week. Click on the light green text to look at the article.

Hummingbird Metabolism Unique in Burning Glucose, Fructose Equally - It takes a lot of energy for these small birds to live as they do!

The Use of Social Media in School - Infographic. Learn some ways Facebook, Pinterest, Blogger, and Twitter are being used in the classroom.

Estrogen: Not Just Produced by Ovaries - The brain can produce and release estrogen! So what does this mean for the hormone over the course of a lifetime?

Elephant Foster Mom: A Conversation with Daphne Sheldrick - It takes a tremendous amount of effort to raise orphaned elephant babies.

Man Walks All Day to Create Massive Snow Patterns - Art for the season!

Useful Infographic on Picking Seasonal Fruits and Vegetables - Sometimes we are so used to finding things in the grocery store all year round that we forget about the season. Cherries and pomegranates are the ones I notice that are only available during their season but almost everything has a season.

World Builder - This video was referenced in a Coursera course on Digital Culture. It is somewhat futuristic but not too far into the future….and thought provoking about technology, relationships, and cognition.

Supervolcanoes Discovered in Utah: Evidence of Some of the Largest Eruptions in Earth's History - Active 30 million years ago in southern Utah. The remains of supervolcanoes are not high cones; at their hear is a large collapse. The ‘Utah’ in this headline was what first caught my attention; I’m still gleaning items that are near our October vacation!

Incredibly Elaborate Illustrations by Victo Ngai - These illustrations are worth at least 1000 words!

Birth date popularity - An interactive data visualization of US births between 1973 and 1999. Move the cursor over the wheel to find how your birthday ranks. September 16 is ranked 1 (9 months from the end-of-year holiday season).

Sandhill Cranes in Florida - November 2013

Sometimes spectacular birds are sighted in unlikely places. About an hour after we saw wood storks near the MacDonald’s parking lot before we got to Orlando, we saw Sandhill Cranes in the cell phone lot where we pulled in to wait for my daughter’s plane to arrive.

They did not seem bothered by the cars driving slowly and parking or pulling out. There was a mother with a young child walking in the parking lot. Neither the birds or the people made any sudden move; a comfortable distance was maintained.

These are large birds and their different postures can make them appear very different. Compare the three birds in the two images below. They are the same three birds!

Brookside Gardens - December 2013

Brookside Gardens is the place for an evening walk through garden themed lights in December. I was there on a cold but sunny day when snow was still on the ground. The conservatory was lush with tropical plants (star fruit, bird of paradise, poinsettias, and bananas) and the model train display.

Outside, the dragon of lights looked relatively tame in the brightness of day and snow clung to the evergreens - and on some of the artificial flowers created with lights. There was a black squirrel sorting through the leaf litter. The Children’s Garden was cherry with colored lights on the white picket fence - but it was too cold to stay for long. There were very few people in the outdoors of the garden and the ones that were moved quickly along the path. It was a day for a brisk walk - or none at all.

Bok Tower Gardens (Florida) - Part 2

I posted about the tower at the Bok Tower Gardensyesterday. Today the focus is on the plants and a few animals. Lizards seemed to be everywhere and it was warm enough for them to be very active.

The squirrels were acclimated to people. This one listened to the carillon concert with us - keeping his back to us as he perched on a neighboring bench.

The slide show below shows a number of other features in garden: a metal Venus flytrap sculpture among tropical vegetation, oranges glowing in the sun, bees on an agave flower, a Monarch butterfly on orange and red flowers, coral stones used for paving with moss growing in larger indentions, a pineapple type plant, a spider web, the center of a cycad.

Bok Tower Gardens (Florida) - Part 1

Bok Tower Gardens is on Iron Mountain in Florida near Lake Wales. It is surrounded by orange groves growing in the red-brown soil that gets it color from oxidized hematite.

 The tower itself is on the summit of the mountain which at 295 feet above sea level is one of the highest points in peninsular Florida. The gardens were built by Edward Bok at his winter home in Florida. He was inspired by something his grandmother instilled in him. There is a small sign with the quote near the tower (see photograph to the left). He died in 1930 but the gardens and tower still keep the spirit of that goal alive. Enjoy the slide show below for a quick look at the tower itself.

There are grills with mosaics and stone sculptures and friezes. Birds and plants are popular topics in stone.

The grill work that is covered in mosaic adds additional colors to the tower. There are no regular tours inside the tower but there are enough doors and balconies visible from the outside to image some of the internal structure. The carillon is housed in the upper part of the tower and there are concerts scheduled a couple of times a day.

Even the top of the gate in the fence around the tower is decorated with bird images.

The tower is only the high point (physically) of the garden. The museum is informative, the food is pleasant, and the gardens are full of lush plants (and spiders and birds and squirrels). I am planning two additional posts from our visit to the gardens in November: one on tiles and fountains and another featuring the plants. There are many plants in this outdoors in this garden that we only in conservatories in Maryland.

Herons in Florida - November 2013

The two types of herons that were easiest to spot in Florida when we were there in November were the Great Blue Heron and the Tricolored Heron (formerly known as the Louisiana Heron).

The Great Blue Heron is a bird we see in Maryland as well and I’ve posted pictures of it before. They look the same everywhere. Some of these pictures include mangroves - a sure indication that these birds are much further south than Maryland.

The Tricolored Herons were new to me. Their range is much further south than Maryland; they thrive throughout Florida. These herons run in the water as they pursue their prey - very different behavior than the patient stalking style of the Great Blue Heron.

Gleanings of the Week Ending December 7, 2013

The items below were ‘the cream’ of the articles and websites I found this past week. Click on the light green text to look at the article.

The Snowman - Our family’s favorite holiday video - now available on YouTube.

Goldenrod Seeds - Chris Helzer’s photos posted to his ‘The Prairie Ecologist’ site

Khan Academy - I’m taking two Coursera courses about education (E-learning and Digital Cultures from The University of Edinburgh and Emerging Trends & Technologies in the Virtual K-12 Classroom from University of California, Irvine). The number of resources I’m discovering on the web through these courses is staggering. This is one of them.

Psychedelic Images of Terrifying Viruses - The colorization of microscopic images of viruses is done to make it easier to study the structure. You can look at them from that perspective or enjoy them as art! Be sure to look at the comments section for Luke Jerram’s glass sculptures of microbes (other images of the glass here).

Cherry Basil Crumble Bars - I am intrigued by the idea of using beans in the crust/topping and pairing cherries with basil

Are MOOCs the Future of Online Education - Infographic about Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs) that includes currents statistics and some pros and cons about taking a MOOC.

Top 25 Wild Bird Photographs of the Week #55 - I couldn’t resist including this one. My favorite, of course, is the peacock.

Ye Old Parasites - A study of decomposed feces from one of a castle’s latrines has shown high concentration of roundworm and whipworm parasites that plagued crusaders around 1200. Aside from being an interesting footnote to history on its own, it helps explain why so many crusaders died of malnutrition. The detailed genetic information of the parasites from 1200 compared to their modern forms can also guide treatment development to parts of the genome that are less likely to evolve (and become resistant).

What it’s like to grow old, in different parts of the world - Jared Diamond at TED.

Photos of Tiny Animals on Fingers - Enjoy!

Roseate Spoonbills in Florida - November 2013

Roseate Spoonbills are easy to spot because of their color and size - and then fascinate with their unusual bill and the way they feed. In November at Merritt Island National Wildlife Refuge they gathered with other birds to feed in the pools where there lower water level concentrated the small animals and the spoonbill sifts through the mud to find them. The pools are so rich that the spoonbills were with egrets and ibis.

Alligators in Florida - November 2013

Alligators were easy to spot when we were in Florida in November. The biggest ones were at the Merritt Island National Wildlife Refuge. They loll on the banks of the waterways. It’s easy to image that they are smiling to lull their prey into a fall sense of security. In reality they have eaten recently and are not likely to move much from their comfortable spot.

In a small ditch next to the parking lot of the Kennedy Space Center’s Visitor Complex, there was a small alligator. At first his eyes were closed but as more people walked by his place, his eyes slowly opened. These animals have an ancient look about them…and the eyes fit with the rest of their appearance. There is an emptiness about the eyes; how is alligator consciousness different (or similar) to our own?

Sometimes an alligator looks particularly well feed. Doesn’t the middle of the large one above look particularly rounded? I wonder what he ate.

Brown Pelicans in Florida

The Manatee Observation Deck at the Merritt Island National Wildlife Refuge was a great place to see pelicans; there were a lot of them all three times we were there in mid-November. The birds have large wingspans and, with photography, it is easy to capture the way the long feathers at the end curl in flight.

Their heads are up above the plane of their wings when they fly - like herons and egrets. The head looks very large with the length of the bill and the pouch. They look ancient.

At the observation deck there were adults with distinctive coloring

And more ‘brown’ mono-colored juveniles.

Unfortunately - we only saw a manatee once during our week in Florida and it was at Bair Cove boat ramp on the other side of the Haulover Canal from the Manatee Observation Deck. It was a ‘blob’ just under the water….so I didn’t get a picture good enough to share.

Maven Launch on 11/18/2013

We were at Cape Canaveral on November 18th for the Maven (Mars Atmosphere and Volatile EvolutioN) Launch. The day before the launch, we toured the Vehicle Assembly building and saw the launch pad with the Atlas V rocket, Centaur, and Maven (at the top) from the fence surrounding it. 

Our viewing location for the launch was on the causeway that crosses the Banana River. We boarded the bus about 3 hours before the launch, ate a picnic lunch sitting on beach towels (fortunately we were not in an area with fire ants), and used an umbrella for shade when it got a little hot. The clouds built up right before the launch time…but not enough to stop the launch at the very beginning of the planned window. The slide show below includes some selected pictures. They don’t capture the most stunning part of a launch: the sound. It is sound that is felt as much as heard … different from any other experience I’ve had … and well worth the effort! A launch is a celebration of accomplishment; the mission is built and on its way. It will be months before the science phase of the mission starts when it gets to Mars.

Enjoying the Birds at Florida Beaches

The weather was too cool and windy to swim, so we enjoyed watching birds on the beach instead….at Canaveral National Seashore, Cocoa Beach and the beaches near Melbourne.

The wind made for some ruffled feathers. The terns would quickly turn into the wind and preen to resume their usual sleek look.

Or sometimes they just tolerated their ‘punkish’ look.

A willet and sanderling fed side by side on the goodies left from the waves rolling in. 

And the best of the rest are in the slide show below!

Road Trip to Florida

Our destination was Melbourne FL and we did the calculation between flying/car rental and driving - deciding that for two people without significant time constraints, it was less expensive to drive. The drive from Maryland to Florida is a trek on I-95. One passes around Washington DC and Richmond VA and then I-95 becomes a highway that misses any major city. I had thought we might see some fall color as we traveled southward; there was a little in Virginia but by the time we got to North Carolina, the pines dominated the roadway. There were miles of them. Sometimes there was a cotton field visible along the highway. Once past the Roanoke Rapids, there were more swamps and broad rivers. It was still sweat shirt weather all the way from Maryland to South Carolina where we stopped the first night.

By the time we got to Florida, it was warm and wet. I enjoyed the dolphin sculpture at the welcome center. Since it was raining, we stopped for lunch at MacDonald’s rather than picnic.

As we got out of the car the rain slowed down and I noticed two wood storks on a grassy area next to the parking lot. What a great way to start out our week in Florida! I’ll be posting more about our time in Florida over the next few weeks.

The road trip to Florida included a return trip too. On the way back I captured the sunrise in Georgia. We were up early for a long day of driving to get back to Maryland.

Great Blue Heron Reflections and a Turtle Lunch

Several weeks ago, I photographed a Great Blue Heron in the pool beside the bridge on the north side of the Centennial Lake in Maryland.

The bird was very still at first but then started moving around the edge of the pool - reflected in the water. After plunging into the water, the wings were arched to fling water off the feathers.

And then I noticed that the bird had caught something. It wasn’t until I got home and looked at the pictures that I realized it was a turtle!