Savoring 2015

Another year has passed…and I am using today to savor it month my month. As I wrote this post, a bluebird settled outside the window of my office - long enough to photograph through the window; so I'm sending off 2015 with a 'bluebird of happiness' in view. I find myself focusing on what was new (to me) in 2015 as I write this. I’ve indicated the ‘new’ in italics.

January

In January we visited Tucson and made an overnight trip up to Montezuma’s Castle, Wapataki, Sunset Crater, Grand Canyon, Meteor Crater and then drove back through the White Mountains. There was a beautiful sunset on that drive back. We also enjoyed the butterflies and poison dart frogs in the conservatory at the Tucson Botanical Garden.

February

I spent over a week in Texas – and enjoyed the birds at Josey Ranch as usual.

March

During February, March and April I spent one day a week in Maryland Master Naturalist training. It served to update many things I learned in my college classes in biology in the early 70s! Jelly fungus was one bit of trivia I learned…and now I see them frequently.

April

In April we spent days exploring wildlife refuges along the North Carolina coast and a little inland. It was the first time I’d seen river otters in the wild and a carcass being shared by a turkey and black vulture.

May

May a big month for hikes with elementary school field trips…and retracing steps to places discovered during the Master Naturalist class (like the grove of Bigleaf Magnolias near the boundary between Belmont and Patuxent Valley State Park).

June

Somehow there were a lot of short trips in June…and associated discoveries: bird’s nest fungus at Centennial Park, the comfort of James Buchanan’s house in Lancaster (and the legacy his niece left to Johns Hopkins), the attention to detail of the DuPont that created Winterthur, and the Monticello structure upstairs that camouflaged the multiple floors and filled them with light too.

July

I was back in Texas again in July and the desert willows were blooming – otherwise it was too hot to do much outside.

August

August was a busy month. I was thrilled that the elementary school aged campers enjoyed nature photography so much.

We also made a tour of New York State Parks with waterfalls. Some we had been to before: Letchworth, Montour Falls, Taughannock, and Harry H. Treman. Stony Brook was the new one.

September

The highlight at Longwood Gardens in September was the water lilies.

October

In October – we went to our first Dark Sky Star Party at Staunton River State Park in Virginia. It was the first time we had camped in over 20 years too!

The star party was followed by a tour through West Virginia to enjoy the fall foliage – partly via the Cass Scenic Railroad.

November

October and November were filled with hikes with elementary school field trips….and swirling fall leaves.

December

The end of year crescendo was our vacation to the Big Island of Hawaii. There were firsts at every turn on this trip.

I also discovered a new source of free courses: edemy…and completed two of them!

Roanoke River National Wildlife Refuge

We walked through a bottomland hardwood forest on The Kuralt Trail in the Roanoke River National Wildlife Refuge back in April.

The trail was an old logging road - raised above the water level with dirt taken from barrow pits along the road (most of the pits were filled with water there. There were cypress trees - standing and stumps left from the logging era. Do you see the knees? There is also a waterline evident on some of the trees. The dams upstream release water periodically and flood this area. Without the dams, the high water would rise and fall more rapidly rather than standing so the flood line is an indicator of our management of the river.

It was a cool enough morning that the insects were not abundant. The birds were noisy but too mobile to photograph. The forest was just leafing out so there was dappled light rather than the dense shade of summer.

I took many pictures of shelf fungi - as usual when I walk in a forest.

I couldn’t resist the spring green and clear blue sky photo either!

Pocosin Lakes National Wildlife Refuge

Pocosin Lakes National Wildlife Refuge is a large refuge in several segments. It has only been a refuge since the 1990s so much of the area is still recovering from being drained/farmed. There was an area planted in colorful grass - different enough from what we had been seeing to stop for some photography.

A butterfly was so involved with a dandelion flower that we had plenty of time to take pictures from multiple angles.

Wild turkeys were enjoying the leavings in the cornfield.

Later in the day we drove to Columbia NC where the visitor center for the refuge is located. The center was already closed but there is a boardwalk along the edge of the Scuppernong River. You can see the time level via the rings of the pine pollen at the base of this cypress stump.

The boardwalk meanders over the marshy areas back into the forest where there were several shelf fungi.

The cypress stand in the soggy areas - sometimes surrounded by water.

A lone pied-billed grebe was looking for dinner.

A turtle was catching the last of the day’s sun - ignoring the green debris on his back.

Last but not least, as we walked back toward our car - there was a snake on a branch hanging of the water. Is that a bulge toward the middle? He may have already had his dinner.

Swanquarter and Mattamuskeet National Wildlife Refuges

We headed out to Swanquarter National Wildlife Refuge first thing one morning. The birds that winter there had already left. We tried to walk silently on the decking to get close enough to take good photographs of terns and gulls that are always around.

I watched an osprey dive successfully for a fish but the bird was too far away to get a really good picture.

Our next stop was Mattamuskeet National Wildlife Refuge. This refuge had many groups of coots.

There were egrets fishing in the shallow water. I managed to get a fuzzy picture of one becoming airborne….different enough from the stalking poses I usually capture.

The turtles line up on anything in the sun. This morning was chilly.

I liked this grouping of cormorants. There were some noisy Canadian geese nearby so they did not hold this pose for very long.

The male and female pintail ducks swimming single file was my best sighting at this refuge. I captured these pictures by leaning out of the open car window!

The Elizabethan Gardens in Manteo NC

Most of our destinations in North Carolina were wildlife refuges; The Elizabethan Gardens was an exception. It has been open since 1960 - a project of the Garden Club of North Carolina. It is located on the outer banks of North Carolina with one side bounded by water.

When we were there earlier this month the camellias were still blooming profusely (although there were a lot on the ground too), bulbs were in their first waves, pines pollen coated everything, redbuds were blooming, and everything was either green or greening.

The gardens have a nice balance of formal gardens and more rustic beds. It was easy to image several areas as wedding venues - a lawn surrounded by planting low enough that the water was visible beyond, a thatch roofed gazebo with plenty of space around it. I liked the smiling dwarf statues in one of the rustic areas.

We had visited the gardens years ago. The statue of Elizabeth I had been added since our last visit.

Enjoy the slideshow of this special place!

Ten Little Celebrations - April 2015

Noticing something worth celebration each dayis an easy thing for me to do. The habit of writing it down reminds me to be grateful for these and a myriad of other things in my life. Here are my top 10 for April 2015.

Countdown to a little vacation - Even though lots of my days feel like ‘vacation’ I have adjusted my definition for vacation to equal ‘away from home’….so I savored the anticipation of the North Caroline road trip in the days prior to leaving.

Otters - There were so many plants and animals I could have celebrated from the North Carolina trip but I am singling out the otters because it was the first time I has seen the animals in the wild.

A barbeque dinner - Sometimes a high calorie splurge is truly worth it. The restaurant advertised ‘Texas Barbeque’ and they delivered.

The Elizabethan Gardens - A lovely place in Manteo, North Carolina. A garden is a great place to celebrate spring.

Maymont - This was a spur of the moment stop in Richmond VA on the way home ---- a gold age mansion and grounds that was donated to the city after the owners died in the 1920s. It is now a park. We were there on a Monday when the mansion and visitor center is closed….but the park is well work the stop. I have post planned for it in a week or so (it’s taking me some time to get all the posts done from the North Carolina trip.

Home Again - I always celebrate coming home after being away….no matter how great the ‘vacation’ was.

Cherry Blossoms - We didn’t get down to Washington DC this year for the cherry blossoms but the tree in our yard had its best year ever….timed perfectly to welcome us home.

Last Master Naturalist Class - I celebrated getting through the 8 class days - not missing a single one! And now I am waiting for my final exam to be graded!

GreenFest - I celebrated finding the native plants I wanted for my yard at the county celebration - along with some additional reusable bags and information on dealing with deer in the neighborhood.

Figuring out a technical problem - I figured out how to use the GPS info from a series of picture to overlay a map. It was easy than I thought it would be….something to celebrate.

Alligator River National Wildlife Refuge

After we left the barrier islands - our plan was to visit some of the inland wildlife refuges so our first stop was the multi-refuge Visitor Center in Manteo. We picked up the maps and brochures for all the refuges we wanted to visit. I couldn’t resist photographing the colorful tile band in the visitor center restroom!

Alligator River National Wildlife Refuge was the first refuge we visited. As we turned onto the wild life loop road (gravel), we were thrilled to see otters frolicking in the canal. I benefited from my husband walking ahead of me and getting most of their attention. They were huffing at him to go away when I took this picture.

There were a few wildflowers. This one had a spider!

The maples were further along their seed production than our tree in Maryland.

I only saw one mushroom but this was lovely nestled in this moss and pine needles.

Fiddleheads were everywhere. The forest was wet…lots of places for ferns to grow.

The pines were releasing a lot of pollen. Our car was covered with the yellow dust when we returned from our hike.

We used our car as a blind to photograph 2 vultures on the other side of the canal from the wildlife drive. The black vulture (on the left) was feeding on a raccoon carcass as we drove up. The turkey vulture (on the right) was waiting patiently at first - but then seemed to become more assertive and the black vulture flew away and the turkey vulture settled in for a meal.

There were also turtles. They were very sensitive to any noise and would plop in the water very quickly. I was glad to catch these two…complete with reflections.

And last but not least, as we reached the highway out of the refuge we spotted an alligator in the canal by the road. He seemed to be dozing in the sun at first. As I used the full zoom on my camera - he opened his eye. What an ending to a visit to the refuge!

North Carolina Barrier Islands

I’ve posted about the light houses and Jockey Ridge State Park in the past few days which are both part of the barrier island scene. Today I’m picking up the best of the rest from a couple of days on the Barrier Islands of North Carolina.

There was the beach of course.

Unfortunately the weather did not cooperate to provide a good sunrise. I contented myself with the morning light on the pines

And yucca pods.

There were a lot more beach houses right along the shore than when we were there years ago and many had their own private boardwalk over the dunes and roofed decks with stairs down to the beach.

We didn’t see as many birds as we had anticipated. I watched an egret long enough to get a picture after a successful catch!

There were a lot of birds overhead in nice Vs.

There was a kite surfing class in the shallows of the sound.

In one place we saw three different turtles. There was a large snapping turtle.

But I’m not sure what these other two are.

The sunset from our hotel room balcony was not bad. The pedestal in the distance is on a sand dune…The Wright Brothers Memorial at Kitty Hawk.

Jockey Ridge State Park

Jockey Ridge State Park was very close to our hotel in Kill Devil Hills, North Carolina. It’s a dune field on the sound side of the barrier island. They sponsor a school from hang gliding at the park which is just a little south of Kitty Hawk where the Wright Brothers took flight. We also stopped by the park before we headed inland to other wildlife refuges. All the pictures were from that morning in the park.

Walking to the end of the boardwalk from the visitor center that crosses over dunes stabilized with trees -

Some with curly lichen -

There is a wooden platform that looks out to a low place in the dunes where water had collected from the overnight rain.

I took the stairs down to the sand for a closer look at the ripples left in the sand

And a few bird tracks made since the rain had smoothed the sand.

My own footprints were the only human footprints.

I walked down to the edge of the water and heard plops in the water. I never managed to see the frogs but they were probably taking advantage of the water.

At the edge of the forest the shifting of the sand was obvious. Some trees were being buried

And some were clinging to the edge with their roots showing.

Three Lighthouses

On our first full day in North Carolina, we saw three lighthouses! The first was the Bodie Island Lighthouse. It was early enough in the day that the fog had not burned off and we were the only people around. The lighthouse and cottage were in excellent condition judging from the outside and I read later that the latest restoration had been completed in 2013.

Further south along the barrier islands was the Cape Hatteras Lighthouse. This lighthouse was in the news a lot in the late 1990s. It was moved over the dunes and further inland at that time because the shore had eroded to within a few feet of its base. It appears to have survived the move quite well. Both the Bodie Island Lighthouse and the Cape Hatteras Lighthouse are open seasonally - but we were there a few weeks before that so did not climb either one.

The third lighthouse was near the other end of the barrier island - the Currituck Beach Lighthouse. This one is different than the other too in that it is located in a more settled area and has many trees around its base…and it is also unpainted. Evidently it was never painted. Architecturally it is similar with brick façade and iron structure at the top to hold the ‘light’ source and lens. My husband climbed the steps to the outdoor gallery and discovered that it was very windy at the top! I discovered when I was preparing this blog post that Google Maps has a view from the top of this lighthouse!

Zooming - April 2015

There were so many zoomed images to choose from this month…and it is only the 16th! I couldn’t resist a clip from one of the Zentangles to include with the brilliant spring color of maple flowers (my back yard) and skunk cabbage (Brookside Gardens) early in the month.

Brookside Gardens is full of photography opportunities in April. Some is old growth like evergreen ferns and dried flowers from last summer. Other things are the harbingers of spring - bulbs and witch hazel blooming. There are more birds around too.

The rest of the images are from our loop trip from Maryland down to North Carolina to visit wild life refuges. I’ll be posting more images in the next few weeks. The images below are from the barrier islands - lots of beaches…pines...shore birds…turtles.

And then we crossed the sound to the wetlands. The colorful tile (rightmost clip below) is from the Alligator River National Wildlife Refuge visitor’s center. We saw otters, spiders, mushrooms, fiddleheads, maple samaras, vultures (turkey and black), and an alligator! There was a formal gardens too (camellias, daffodils, statuary)!

Road Trip to North Carolina

We are back from a road trip to North Carolina - focused on the coastal National Wildlife Refuges. I have a series of posts planned for the next few weeks. Today my focus is the getting away.

We had decided to leave a little later to avoid the weekday commuter traffic around the Washington DC beltway so we took our time packing the car. It had been very wet the previous day and there were earthworms that had taken shelter under the garage door - to keep from drowning. Some of them had stayed to long but others were already making their way back over the asphalt to the lawn. There was also a tiny frog on the driveway that was evidently too cold to move.

My husband decided the traffic was light enough for us to leave earlier than he’d planned…and we were ready. We were on the road by 8:30. It was such a gray day that it was not a scenic drive. The non-native pears trees (escaped Bradford pear trees) were in bloom in the brushy areas along the highway. The new leaves of the season provided a hint of green.

We stopped to stretch our legs at the rest stops almost every hour….made very good time. It was still gray and cold as we drove over the bridge near Norfolk and saw larger ships.

And then we arrived in Kill Devil Hills, North Carolina and discovered that our room had a view of the Wright Brothers National Memorial (on the side of the barrier island facing the mainland) and about a block from the beach in the opposite direction (on the side of the barrier island facing the Atlantic). We hoped for a warmer and sunnier tomorrow!