My walk around Brookside Gardens last weekend was a great time for early spring bulb photography. The daffodils dominated with different configurations of yellow and white…big and small. Miniature irises were in bloom too. It seems like there are fewer hyacinths every year; I’m not sure why. The tulips were up but there were no buds showing; they will be worth another trip to Brookside a few weeks from now. Enjoy the early spring bulbs slide show!
My walk around Brookside Gardens last weekend offered more than the usual opportunities to photograph birds. The day was chilly and a little breezy….but full of sun and an improvement over prior days. The birds were active.
The robins were the easiest to photograph because of their numbers and their interest in searching through leaves and grass for edibles. It was possible to get close enough for the camera zoom to do the rest. This bird had just stopped his searching temporarily to survey the surroundings…eyeing me with suspicion.
The cardinal was singing a spring song in the tulip poplar. I appreciated my monopod for this shot - and that the breeze paused momentarily.
This mourning dove was walking around the bed of sprouting bulbs looking for nesting material. In the instant after this picture was taken, the bird flew away with the piece of straw in its beak.
There were lots of these black birds (in the trees, in the bushes, on the grass) but I haven’t quite identified them. The tail seems short for a common grackle. They eye is yellow so that rules out a cowbird or starling…and there is not red shoulder patch for it to be a red winged blackbird. Hmmm.
When I went out to photograph the sunrise (posted here), it seemed like the clouds were clearing and the temperature was pleasant enough - in the 50s - to walk around Centennial Park. A few hours later I got out of the car and realized that my bulky sweater and photo-vest were not going to be warm enough because the breeze was making it feel a lot colder than the mid-50s temperature. We had not walked too far when my husband commented that his coat was adequate but his legs were cold. So we didn’t walk very far! I took a few images as we hurried back to the car.
The canoes looked worn from previous years.
The paddle boats look colorful at the dock; they looked sparkling and new - or maybe we were just far enough not to notice the wear.
The trees were still very bare and the grass brown.
The geese were honking at each other the whole time we were making our brisk walk. And finally one pair was chased away…and a brief quiet reigned before other geese resumed their territorial defense.
Back in the car - I was glad to be out of the wind and warmed by the exertion of the walk.
Being on Daylight Savings Time makes it easy enough to catch a sunrise this time of year. I noticed as I came downstairs last weekend that the time, light and clouds were aligned to photograph the sunrise from my front porch (with our two cats meowing behind the door keeping them inside).
Pretty soon the trees will be full of leaves and the horizon from the front of our will be too high for sunrise pictures. Why don’t I get up a little early and find another nearby vantage point with a clearer horizon? For some reason, I only do that when I am traveling!
The deer can reach about as far up into the maple as I can. It took some stretching to catch a branch to lower it for photography. I have a new camera this year so opted for getting close rather than using the loupe like I did last year.
The flowers are not large…but their deep red color is one of the first signs of spring in our backyard each spring. The birds and squirrels seem to be enjoying the flowers but they don’t strip away the flowers completely. The deer have made quick work of the flowers (maybe the buds didn’t even get a chance to open!) on the lower branches. Hopefully the deer will find other food as the season progresses and the tree can have some leaves on those branches this summer; if not - I’ll have a harder time reaching the maple flowers in spring 2016.
After the hike along Trolley Trail between Banneker Historical Park and Museum and Ellicott City on Saturday (previous post), our group headed to the Avalon area of Patapsco Valley State Park. The Thomas Viaduct - a railroad bridge that crosses the Patapsco River and Valley just inside the park. It was completed in 1835 and still carries railroad traffic!
In our previous Master Naturalist classes we had learned about the history of the area from colonial times. Where the sign talks about Elkridge Landing as a port looking unimaginable today; the silt and dams have changed the river tremendously since colonial days when Elkridge Landing was a significant port.
The CCC built building in the park and we visited one. It was built of stone and there was an interesting nest (wasps?) near the ceiling of the porch. The inside is evidently riddled with termites - beyond repair.
There is a sewer pipe is exposed along the river. It was uncovered during the flood caused by Hurricane Agnes in 1972 - and there is not stable way to cover it again. The river was stocked a few days before our hike; a little boy was fishing with his day and joyously held up a fish they’d caught for us to see as we were walking on the swinging bridge over the Patapsco.
We saw a couple of skunk cabbage just poking up from the leaves.
The main green was moss. This log with green cap was a welcome relieve from the brown leaves.
There was some color in the rocks too if you looked closely…a lot of big crystals in pegmatite.
And what’s not to like about water tumbling over rocks…and down to the river. It was a good last ‘uphill’ for the day. We’d been out and about since 8:30 and it was 4:30. The Master Naturalist field trip was history. 
Our backyard was snowy for more than half the month of March this year. At times the maple branches would begin to look red - but this it would get very cold again and the tree would turn back to the very wintery looking gray/brown.
This first picture is from March 4th. The forest floor was full of fog that morning because the air was warming and the snow was melting during the days but freezing again each night.
On the 20th we got more snow and it coated everything. The snow was surprisingly light but there was no breeze to knock it off the branches. It was a good day to be indoors.
The last picture is from March 30th. The maple does have red flowers on its branches. I’ll have to go out on the next sunny day to see if any of the flowers are low enough to photograph. The deer browse the tree heavily (so the low branches are devoid of flowers). The holly back in the forest and the long needled pines are about the only things that do not have a ‘deer pruned’ look this time of year.
Last Saturday was the day-long field trip for our Master Naturalist class. It was very cold but everyone bundled up and headed out from the Benjamin Banneker Historical Park and Museum. We saw a replica of the type of cabin that would have been on the property when Banneker lived there and marveled that the property was purchased with 7,000 pounds of tobacco. Dried tobacco is very light so we assumed it must have still been green…but that is still a lot of tobacco.
One of the first stops was the Banneky House built in the mid-1800s - long after Benjamin Banneker’s time. Our focus was the rocks on its exterior! This wall showcases Ellicott City Granite with the small, very dark pieces being amphibole.
We started to walk down the pathway of the park to the Trolley Trail that would take us into Ellicott City. The trolley stopped in 1959 and the rail to trail occurred in the 1990s. The forest was not an old forest and there were some houses (some very new ones in the mix) built fairly close to the water. The weather has been too cold for wildflowers to be blooming but there were other things of interest. I always stop for shelf fungi and these with gray/white/rust rings were nestled into some green lichen….the color and texture was eye catching.
There was water trickling everywhere…and the most seemed very green against the backdrop of rocks and brown leaves left over from last season.
The bed of moss has fruiting bodies! Note that the height of the whole plant is only about 2-3 inches.
We saw frogs eggs - but the frogs were silent in the cold (and probably burrowed somewhere to keep warm).
There were swirls in some of the rocks beside the trail. Thinking about the metamorphosis of rock under pressure requires a conscious effort to understand a timescale that is beyond our normal comprehension.
We get down to Ellicott City in time for lunch. The decision to eat at a restaurant (and warm up) rather than picnic was welcomed by all.
I noticed the cairns in the little park across from the restaurant. At least two types of rocks were easy to spot!
The post that marks the water level above the normal river height during various floods is at the river end of Main Street in Ellicott City. The one in 1868 is at the very top of the bridge railing. That would have flooded two floors of the buildings! At that time the area would have been heavily farmed - most of the forests would have been fields so the water would have run off quickly from a storm. The 1972 mark is from Hurricane Agnes. Some forest had grown back but there was beginning to be a lot of housing development. More has been built since then. What would happen if a storm like Hurricane Agnes happened again today? A lot of impervious pavement has been added to the watershed. Are there enough forested buffers and rain gardens to slow down the flow of stormwater during a big storm?
After lunch, our group carpooled to the Avalon area of Patapsco Valley State Park. I’ll post about that part of the field trip later this week.
March has been a colder than usual this year. Some of the bird activity seems to be happening with about the usual timing in spite of the cold. The robins have become more numerous - on the lawn, scratching around the leaf litter in the garden and at the edge of the forest, gobbling worms in the street and driveway when it rains.
We have pairs of doves and cardinals that we see from our windows frequently; they must be nesting nearby.
One day at Belmont there seemed to be swallows everywhere - staking out the blue bird boxes (hopefully there will be blue birds that get some of them but it seems that the swallows arrived first).
Most people have kept their feeders full to help out the birds arriving in the cold. At Mt. Pleasant Farm there were lots of gold finches and a pileated woodpecker (which I was not fast enough to photograph).
The juncos that leave us for the summer are still around; I haven’t watched them closely enough in years past to remember when they leave….are we keeping them here by feeding them?
Last weekend was a pretty cold to be walking around Brookside Gardens but I did notice some harbingers of spring.
The witch hazel is the first tree to show colors in the spring. Brookside has yellow and red specimens. The color comes in the form of festive streamers around the red center of the flower.
There were a few skunk cabbage blooms. The area was thick with the plants last spring so I knew where to look off the boardwalk between Brookside Gardens and Brookside Nature Center. Next time I go - early next week probably - I’ll probably see a lot more of these plants. This is the first year I’ve thought to look for them early enough to see them emerge from the ground.
Of course there are buds and new cones everywhere…the two below were so large I didn’t need the loupe!
It was cold yesterday but the sun was out and we decided to walk around Brookside Gardens anyway. I’ll post about the few outdoors items of interest we found later this week. Today - I’m focused on the lush vegetation of the Conservatories. We were surrounded by color in the green house and it was pleasantly warm.
Now that I have noticed the cycads at the entrance - I check on them at the beginning of my walking around. The cocoa tree has been moved where it is easier to see from the walkway too.
I was using my monopod for my camera and it helped me get the best picture I’ve ever taken of one of the red pompom flowers.
The star fruit on the tree near one corner was the largest I’ve even seen - and the yellow rimmed with green was appealing. It is an improbable looking fruit.
Enjoy the color from the Brookside conservatory to start the work week!
Last Wednesday was the fifth of eight days of training to become a Master Naturalist in Maryland. The snow that held on for the first 4 weeks was totally melted but the wind was still bitterly cold. I took some pictures of the turtle in the nature center next to our class room rather than walking around outside for my ‘before class’ photography session.
The topics for this week were taxonomy and ecology. One of the exercises in the taxonomy session was to create a dichotomous key for 5 things we collected outside. Our team decided quickly to do evergreens. One person found a branch from a white pine tree on the ground. I picked some leaves from a boxwood and a small spruce branch…we briskly walked over to pick some holly leaves and a blue spruce. And then we were back inside making the key. It was easy to create the binary questions for the key: needles or leaves, smooth leaf margins or spines on margins, long needles or short, bluish needles or green needles. Before we put the pine branch back outside (it was sticky with sap), I took some pictures of the immature cones.
One thing I realized as we were working with dichotomous keys is how computers have changed identification of organisms. We tend to do a search for whatever characteristic seems most distinctive and easily observed….and then use pictures to hone the identification quickly.
The ecology section was focused on stream ecology and we walked down to the nearest stream and did some collecting and water testing. The immediate area where we worked is state park and conservation easements.
This is the time of year to find insect larvae in the water (hatched from eggs laid last summer). We pulled apart leaf packs that had been decomposing in the water and use D nets to catch organisms stirred up by turning over a rock and then stomping the stream bottom. And there was a lot to see. The dobsonfly larva was about 4 inches long!
A water strider was already moving around on the surface of the water.
My contribution - after I borrowed some waterproof boots to wade into the water with a D net - was a small fish! It was a little smaller than the dobsonfly.
As we started back, I took two pictures that were reminders of previous topics: bark of a persimmon (botany from week 3)
and a deep red shelf fungus (fungus from week 4).
Further along the road, I took a picture of Belmont Manor in the late afternoon sun….a good ‘last picture’ for the day.
The first half of March has been full of winter weather…and then a thaw.
The ice coated pines, deer browsed azalea, frozen drips on the bushes and the red buds of maple adding some color - all were topics for photographs in March.
Later we got a snow that was not heavy but it stuck to the tulip polar branches, sycamore seed pod, and cat tails. The lady bugs seem to like the indoors this time of year. I couldn’t resist adding at least one Zentangle ®to the Zoom collection this month.
When the thaw stated to occur - the Master Naturalist class made a trek into the woods and found fungus very easily: jellies, shelf fungus with pores rather than gills, and several kinds of lichen on stones and tree trunks.
By the end of the month there will be a lot of spring color. I’m already looking forward to compiling the Zoom collection for April!
Last Wednesday was the fourth of eight days of training to become a Master Naturalist in Maryland. Snow was not in the forecast….but there was still some on the ground. As I walked from the parking lot to the building, the fog was hanging in the low places and into the forest; daylight savings time made a difference in the lighting as well.
The two topics for the day were
I did the pre-reading for both modules and the factoid that popped out was that the cell walls of mushrooms are made of chitin (the same molecule that makes insects’ exoskeletons!). How had I missed learning that in the mycology class I took back in the 70s?
Another key learning from the beginning topic of the day was the logistics of the lecture. The instructor had her one year old son with her! I thought it was would be distracting (and eventually he was taken off to another room by a helper) but the lecture was interesting and he provided some of the lighter moments of the morning. It is not something that could be done for every class but I am thinking more often about ways we can blur the divide between work and the other things we do in our lives. The industrial age forced us to make work totally separate - but humans didn’t evolve in that kind of environment. Our interests were multi-faceted with only short bursts of total focus. Concentrating on one thing for a long period of time (the way many jobs are formulated) can be stressful simply because the human brain and body did not develop in that environment.
Later in the day we hiked into the woods and found lots of fungi. Slims and jellies
Shelf fungus
With pores (rather than gills) underneath
Lichen
In the afternoon we had two lectures. The first gave a history of the human development of the land along the Patapsco River (near our classroom). The story included John Smith (noticing red clay), a harbor just below the falls of the river was the second busiest harbor in Maryland after Annapolis until is silted up, the deforestation to feed the iron forges and heat houses, the mills (flour and textile), the floods, and trains - the first cars pulled by horses before steam engines were developed. Much of the around the river is deforested and is a heavily used state park. Floods are still a problem. The one caused by Hurricane Agnes in 1972 took many years of recovery.
Switching gears - the next lecture was from a wildlife perspective. The impact of plants and animals brought to the New World was discussed. Some introductions were accidently but had a huge effect: earthworms changed the forest floor from deep mulch with lots of moisture to drier places….and changed the understory; chestnut blight took away the biggest tree in the forest. There is more forest in the area now than there was 100 years ago but the deer population is so large that plants in the understory are increasingly thorny invasive plants. We’ll have another lecture on invasive plants in week 6.
At the end of the day, I thought about my expectation that the lectures couldn’t all be as interesting as the first few - but the ones this week were still the same high quality in terms of material and presentation. And the weather is enabling more outside treks….makes it even better!
Just 5 days ago we were in the grip of winter. We’d had a significant amount of snow and the temperatures were down in the single digits. The timing was good; the roads were bad during times I had plenty of food in the house and no need to get out. I put off shoveling the driveway.
The sun came out but was very cold. We managed to get out down the driveway but decided we would have to shovel since it was not going get warm enough to melt anytime soon. I was surprised that the snow was light and managed to shovel the driveway in one long session….with some soreness immediately afterward that was gone by the next morning (all that bouncing while working on the computer does keep my back muscles in shape!).
And now 5 days later - the snow in the sunny places of the yard has melted leaving it very soggy. The piles along the driveway from the shoveling over the past month will be the last to melt….although we have gotten snows in April in some previous years!
The maples buds are very red and I can see the enlarged buds on the cherry and oak….so the trees are readying for spring. The robins have been searching the soggy lawn for worms that are probably near the surface to avoid drowning. So - there are signs that spring is on the way...I’ll be optimistic and plan as if there is no more winter!
This week was the third of eight days of training to become a Master Naturalist in Maryland. The forecast was for rain all day but it held off long enough for us to take two short hikes - one for each of the topics for the day: Botany and Mammals. We tromped through snow to look at buds, bark and dry plants. I managed to get some good close ups of bark. How many of these would you recognize: river birch (peeling bark), white birch (white with dark striations), dogwood (blocky bark…but the buds are easier for me to use for identification), and tulip poplar (complete with lichen growing beneath the furrows? Can you guess what the hairy vine is growing up this tulip poplar trunk?
The second hike was for mammals which was harder for several reasons: mammals are very good at hiding, it was wet (snow melt and sprinkles), the freeze thaw cycle had distorted the tracks even though we were able to recognize some deer tracks, and the one non-deer scat we found was dissolving in a puddle of melt water (although it did include hair so was from a carnivore). I managed to get snow over the top of my boots a couple of times; I took the boots off to let them dry out along with my socks while we finished up the class.
Now that I’ve had those two short hikes I am looking forward to the great thaw and run off….and a good round of picture taking of winter trees for shape and bark….may some buds before they pop open (or right after). I’m keen to create a tree tour of the Belmont location (where our class is held) as my project associated with the master naturalist training.
Like the previous sessions - the Wednesday class day dodged the hazardous weather. Yesterday was very snowy in Maryland!
It is not spring yet at all here in Maryland. The melt we had yesterday has been refrozen and more snow is falling today. We are enjoying a snow day along with all the children in the neighborhood! Here’s the plan:
On Saturday it was cold - but it was sunny, the snow was melting and there were robins on the roof of our deck taking sips of the melt from the gutter and shingles. It seemed like spring was on the way.
On Sunday, we were definitely a winter day and worse than most of our winter so far because it was more ice than snow. I decided to make the best of the return to winter by attempting some snow flake photography. The flakes were small - probably formed at lower temperature. 
I used my loupe and took some pictures. Many of the flakes broke as they landed on the red glass plate (I had left it outside to cool down so they did not melt at all).
As the day proceeded the snow stopped and it rained instead…which led to ice buildup on all horizontal surfaces except for the birdbath (which is heated).
The rain stayed liquid enough to wash away the salt that had been applied to our street proactively - and it froze before evening. The ice was not as smooth as an ice rink…but still very slippery. It’s an icy start to the work week. I am glad I don’t have to leave home!
Our backyard has been snowy for most of the month. It wasn’t that we got a tremendous amount of snow - just that it lingered for a long time because temperatures never got warm enough to melt it completely. A few times the grass began to show a little.
There were tracks through the snow too - mostly deer. They have a route between the houses and through our backyard to the forest. Sometimes they linger in the yard - look around. There is not enough for them to eat anywhere right now. The squirrels are active on sunny days. They are enjoying their store of acorns. So far they have not dumped any of the bird seed we have on the deck. The birds make their rounds to our water (heated bird bath) and seed several times a day: cardinals, titmice, chickadees, blue jays and doves. The crows are around too but not on the deck.
I’ll start weekly pictures of the backyard in March since I anticipate quite a lot of changes during the month!
It was hard to pick my three favorites this month. I settled on three topics: Mayans, Fungi, and Chinese Painting.
Maudslay, Alfred Percival. Biologia Centrali-Americana, or, Contributions to the knowledge of the fauna and flora of Mexico and Central America. London: R. H. Porter and Dulau & Co. 1902. Four volumes available from the Internet Archive: volume 1, volume 2, volume 3, volume 4. These books focus on the archeology of a region - primarily Mayan - in the late 1800s that has gotten more attention over the past century. There are lot photographs (sometimes with people to help understand the scale of the ruins) and drawings. There are also a few color plates. The photograph at right is quite well know (it’s in the Wikipedia entry for him and is in many textbooks). Many of the ruin were roughly cleared of vegetation or still partially obscured at the time Maudslay documented them.
Banning, Mary Elizabeth. Fungi of Maryland. Available via the New York State Museum here. This is an online exhibit more than a book but I am including it here to show off the beautiful illustrations done by Mary Banning. She began her work in 1868 and continued for over 20 years producing 174 detailed 13” x 15” watercolor illustrations. The online exhibit includes 48 of them. Unfortunately - she was unable to get her work published; she sent it to the New York State Museum as a ‘safe place’ in 1890; it was found again 91 years later in 1981.
Barnhart, Richard M. Peach Blossom Spring Gardens and Flowers in Chinese Painting. New York: The Metropolitan Museum of Art. 1983. Available from the Internet Archive here. Some of the images are very colorful and some are muted. I particularly liked the muted image of the lotuses.
Celebrating the whole of life....
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