Conowingo - December 2016

Yesterday we spent the morning at Conowingo Fisherman’s Park. It was a sunny morning – Christmas – and the traffic was light. When we got there we immediately noticed that there were more gulls than we’d seen before and the water was churning from the dam.

It takes us about an hour to get to Conowingo from our house so we had not put on all our winter gear beforehand. I added ski bibs, a fleece jacket, a silky balaclava, and a hooded scarf before I put on my coat. Foot warmers were added to the bottom of my feet before I put on my hiking boots and I stuck hand warmers in my gloves. At the last minute, I decided to add the bands the legs of the ski bibs to shorten them a little since the pavement was slushy and wet. The temperature was in the 30s…a good but not severe test of the ‘cold weather’ garb. I stayed comfortably warm!  The silky balaclava is newest addition and I like it because it easily pulls up over my mouth…are higher over my nose; That would be great for colder or windier days. You can also see that we were not the only ones enjoying the birds at Conowingo on Christmas morning!

The Bald Eagles are the reason we go to Conwingo. My husband got the best pictures of the day of an eagle that had just caught a fish.

He also took a picture of one up in a tulip poplar tree that we noticed as we talked back to our car getting ready to leave.

I took some pictures that are past the optical zoom range of my camera…into the digital zoom.  There were almost always eagles on the abutment come out from the dam and I couldn’t resist trying to capture their interactions.  The one on the left is keeping a firm hold on his catch.

Is this one screaming at the gulls to go away?

And sometimes there is just a big tussle. There are at least three birds involved in this picture.

This eagle is surrounded by black vultures – although they all seem to be not making eye contact with each other.

There were groups of black vultures on the railing at the top of the dam…and there always seemed to be one or two that were spreading their wings.

I saw one cormorant in the water…and one flying low over the water.

The gulls were ring-billed gulls. They would dive down to catch a fish then (sometimes) bob downstream on the surface.

Now for some ‘can you find’ pictures. There is a great blue heron in each of the three pictures below (not flying).

Do you see the pigeons in the picture below?

And finally – do you see the two Bald Eagles?

Conowingo was a good outing for our Christmas morning!

Conowingo – June 2016

I stopped by Conowingo Dam on my way to Philadelphia. It was not a great day for birds. The water was low and the large number of birds we saw last time (probably many newly fledged Bald Eagles and Great Blue Herons) were foraging elsewhere. The picture of the point of rocks that always seems to attract at least one heron illustrates the low water (the white marks are how high the water is normally).

We saw a few eagles fishing. After I looked at one of my pictures on a larger screen, I realized there were more than I thought. Click on the image below to get a larger view of:

• 3 eagles on the abutments (a juvenile and adult on the closer one, an adult on the further one),
• 3 black vultures near the center of the picture, and
• 3 or 4 cormorants on the rocks in the lower right!

We took a few pictures and continued our road trip.

Gleanings of the Week Ending March 26, 2016

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.

Forests reveal lingering effects of native cultures – The researchers looked at patterns of honey locus in the Southern Appalachian region. The article drew my attention because the native culture in the area was Cherokee (maybe some of my ancestors) and I had read something similar about the native stands of bananas.

Goodbye, America. I’m becoming a nomad (again)! – Mike Elgan is currently in Cuba and blogging about the experience….a lot more about daily life in Cuba that the Presidential visit.

Pregnant T. rex could aid in dino sex-typing – A T. rex with a medullary bone – the same as modern birds (female) have to shell their eggs. It comes and goes with the bird’s reproductive cycle so not only indicates that the fossil was a female --- but that it was also in the egg laying part of its reproductive cycle.

Climate variations analyzed five million years back in time – We have to go back into the geological history of the Earth a very long way to find a climate as warm as what we are heading towards and we cannot detect the detailed variations….but we already know that there were abrupt climate shifts back then.

Artist Paints Elaborately Colorful Scenes Using Only Her Fingers – This is quite different than a child’s finger painting? My favorites are the lily pads with the fish underneath, the deer looking through yellow leaves, and the curled up fox.

Tunable windows for privacy, camouflage – I would enjoy not having to add blinds and/or drapery to windows….but it would have to require very little electricity to be opaque (since that is the mode that probably would be wanted most at night when solar energy was least available).

Bald Eagle Cam (DC) – Just in case you have not seen the story elsewhere. This article has a link for the live cam and the twitter feed. Yesterday when I looked the day was warm enough that a parent was standing to the side of the nest while the babies slept (they are still young enough that they fall over in a ‘food coma’ after they eat!

Potential Zika virus risk estimated for 50 US cities – A very scary map. It has been long enough ago that German measles caused birth defects when pregnant women contracted the diseases…this time we don’t have a large number of people in the population that have immunities from having the disease previously so if the US does have an outbreak it would have traumatic outcomes.

Chocolate Chemistry – On a happier note – chocolate. Dark chocolate is my favorite ‘splurge’

21 Enormous Man Made Holes – Mines, nuclear explosions, wells…lots of reasons humans have made giant holes on the surface of Earth.

Blackwater National Wildlife Refuge

Blackwater National Wildlife Refuge near Cambridge MD was the second refuge we visited on the Eastern Shore. The high point of the visit was probably snow geese. They were all over the ponds closest to the visitor center.

Some were very close indeed. Most of them just calmly kept an eye on me (I was using my 30x zoom to photograph them).

But one of the younger ones seemed hyper aware of my presence – maybe this goose was smarter than average.

Of course there were Canadian geese as well – ignoring everything but their own business.

In lesser numbers but just as impressive: Great Blue Herons. Note the spring plumage on the head.

The day was very cloudy. It was only 3:30 in the afternoon but already looked like dusk as we drove around the wildlife loop.

We stopped to photograph a pair of bald eagles perched on an old osprey nesting platform. They were too far away to get a really crisp picture. But I always like to see them. Blackwater was the first place I ever saw a bald eagle in the wild – back in the spring of 1990.

As we got ready to leave – a group of Canadian geese honked their departure too.

Conowingo in February 2016

We thought the day was going to be sunny - lots of light for photographing birds - but it became cloudy not long after we got there. And it was cold and breezy. The birds seemed more interested in hunkering down and staying warm than fishing even though the dam’s generator were running and churning up lots of water.

There was still some snow on the ground from a snowstorm over a week before. When I took this picture I thought the rock on the right looked like a floppy eared animal coming out of a winter’s sleep!

And what about the maze of ice in this close up of a snow bank over gravel. The melt pattern was not uniform at all.

The river water was moving swiftly and all the snow along the lower bank had melted. The color variation of the rocks has a lot of visual appeal sandwiched between the monotones of water and snow.

There were several birds that flew into the trees. This one has a fish that it finished off from its perch in the tree.

Another just seemed to survey the photographers that were along the fence between the parking lot and the Susquehanna River.

The most interesting of the birds in the trees was the black vulture. Its feathers were fluffed against the cold and ruffled by the wind. I was interested to note the white in the feathers; it is noticeable when they are viewed from below when they are soaring but I had not seen the white when they were on the ground. And look at the claws – they look like evil-looking curved fingernails.

The only Bald Eagle I managed to photography was a little too far away. The eagles are the main reason we go… so I was glad to get at least one picture.

There was another larger bird that caught a fish near the dam….but it flew off to the other side of the river. It was quite a bit larger than the gull.

There was a tree that had some velvety buds. After I got home I did some research. Aargh! It is a Princess Tree - a non-native, invasive species.

As we headed home, I noticed that the ice patches on the road has mostly melted. I drank some more of my hot tea from the Thermos – using the cup to warm my hands.