Chincoteague Sunset…and Sunrise

Chincoteague was the only refuge on our 4 refuge trek that the weather was good for late and early day photography. We chose a place with water and pines for sunset and got there when the color was just starting in the sky and the reflections in the water were very clear.

I adjusted my camera to get the color and let all the vegetation be in silhouette just as the sun was at the tree tops.

And then it was in the trees.

Two Great Blue Herons flew to a snag behind us and waited there while the light faded still more.

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The next morning we were up an entering the refuge when it opened at 6 AM (this was before daily light savings time and the refuge was on winter hours). The sky was already rosy by the time we got to our spot – a little further along the road that we had used for sunset.

There were birds already busy in the water that took on the color of the sky.

A contrail was reflected in the water closer to us.

The light became more yellow and the geese continued their morning grooming and breakfast.

Then the color turned to orange. The sun was above the horizon.

Chincoteague National Wildlife Refuge

The last refuge on our trek was Chincoteague. I’ve posted about our two prior trips (fall 2014kingfisher, egrets, cormorants, herons, gulls, lighthouse, and sunrise/sunset; spring 2013vultures, blue grosbeak, and egrets). We always see Great Blue Herons at Chincoteague. When I photograph them now I am looking for something a bit out of the ordinary. There was one that was all fluffed up in the cold – standing very still on one leg – framed by dry grasses and brush.

Another Great Blue Heron was perched on a branch over some water – preening.

I noticed a lot more dead and splintered trees this trip and found out that the pine bark beetle had been particularly hard on the pines the past few years and

Winter storm Jonas brought such high winds that is brought trees down on the refuge.

There were tundra swans that we saw in greater numbers at Eastern Neck

And snow geese (sleeping here) that we saw in greater numbers at Blackwater.

This ring-billed gull (adult non-breeding) was not pleased that we pulled up on the road shoulder near him.

We saw a few pintail ducks (and some buffleheads which, again, were difficult to photograph – and I am refraining from posting another blurry picture!).

The birds I had to look up on allaboutbirds were this marbled godwit (I think)

And a juvenile black-crowned night heron (my husband is the one that spotted this one in the brush over the water where we often see other herons).

Prime Hook National Wildlife Refuge

The third refuge on our trek was Prime Hook National Wildlife Refuge in Delaware. It was a gray day --- but at least the rain happened while we were driving to the refuge than while we were there. One of our nav systems took us to a road through ponds but not to the visitor’s center. It was part of the refuge and we saw some Great Blue Herons

And Yellow Legs – very active in catching fish in the shallows.

Fortunately, we had another nav system that did chart a path to the visitor center and we did some hiking. Again – there was construction on one of the trails near the visitor and it was noisy enough that most of the wildlife has found someplace else to be for the day. On our hike I found a number of shelf-fungus. None of them were very large.

But one was a brilliant green color.

I tried to photograph them several from the top

And bottom.

The biggest one was growing on a stump near a boardwalk

And the gills underneath were more colorful than the top.

We headed out of the refuge and on toward Chincoteague….the topic of tomorrow’s post.

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.

Gleanings of the Week Ending March 12, 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.

Dragonfly is world-record flier – Confirmed by genetic analysis…this insect makes transoceanic flights.

Identity unearthed: How excavations in Sudan reveal the transformation Egyptian, Nubian culture – Cultural blending in the ancient world…with a lot of individual choice involved: Nubian bed or Egyptian coffin, wrapped like a mummy or not, Egyptian-type amulet or Nubian jewelry (or both).

Fitting into what I’m learning in my Big History class: Mysterious cosmic radio bursts found to repeat, Hubble breaks cosmic distant record: sees universe soon after big bang, and Einstein’s gravitational waves ‘seen’ from black holes – Every time I take a course, it seems like there are a lot of relevant articles coming out in the news feeds!

Astrobiology: Understanding Life in the Universe – Student companion site for the Charles S. Cockell text. Includes chart sets for each chapter – if all you want is an overview of the topic. The book is developed to support the Coursera Astrobiology course taught by the author (which I took last year).

Migrating Monarch Number Rebound – Hurray! The good news is from analysis of the numbers of butterflies at hibernation sites in Central Mexico. There were 3x more butterflies than the year before. Still – the area is still a lot lower than the 45 acres in 1996. The area was 10 acres in 2015, 2.79 in 2014, 1.66 in 2013. Outside of the hibernation sites – more people are planting or conserving milkweed which is needed for monarch survival and keeping that focus on increasing milkweed availability in the environment is what we in the US can do to help.

Toward diagnosing diseases such as cancer in their earliest stages – But can it be done very inexpensively? So far a lot of these diagnostic tests have added cost to the medical system and there a lot of people that are not going to have the disease (i.e. there is a lot of cost of lots of testing to find the few people that need treatment).

Can some birds be just as smart as apes? – Research with corvids (crows, jays and their kind) and parrots reveals that they are capable of thinking logically, of recognizing themselves in the mirror and of empathy. Even though the brain structures and size appear quite different…both birds and apes have a prefrontal brain structure that controls similar executive structures.

Irish Eyes Soda Bread – Something to bake for St. Patrick’s day – coming up on the 17^th.

Uncovering the Roman Roads Cutting Across England - An amateur archeologist using LIDAR…reveals roads the Roman’s build for trade and rapid deployment of troops (follow the ‘full story’ link at the bottom of the article to see a map).

Who Sleeps? – Sleep conserves energy and may be why so many species sleep…but there may be other benefits at all. This an article that summarizes our current understanding of sleep in some major types of organisms (marine mammals, birds, insects, and mentions ongoing research.

Eastern Neck National Wildlife Refuge

The first refuge on our road trip was Eastern Neck, an island located in the mouth of the Chester River as it flows into the Chesapeake Bay. It is north east of Maryland’s Bay Bridge. We stopped at the visitor center first and walked down the Tidal March Overlook trail from there.

It was muddy and we didn’t quite get to the Tidal Marsh Overlook. I did find some seed pods that had lasted through the winter.

Next we drove down Bayview Road and walked the Bayview Butterfly Trail (no butterflies this time of year). There were buffleheads on the water (although too far away for a really good picture.

And seeds still hanging onto stalks at the water’s edge even this late in the winter season.

The Bay Bridge is in the distance. It was a cloudy day; next time we go to Eastern Neck I’ll want it to be sunny.

Then we headed to the Duck Inn trail that looked back toward the Chester River (toward the east). There was a lone feather near the beginning of the trail.

There were some very muddy places along the trail but this bank of green moss was almost a glowing green. When we came back down the trail toward the car, there was a small child that was enjoying the moss with his family.

We managed to avoid any deep mud encounters on the path and made it to the shore. Where the water meets the land is rounded stones and shells.

Further up the beach, the shells accumulate.

There were some in the grass – indicating that sometimes the water gets very high indeed.

The next stop was the high point of the trip – the Tubby Cove and Tundra swan board walks. There were a lot of tundra swans. The ones with gray heads are juveniles. All the swans seem to bob heads at each other when they are facing each other and it is hard not to interpret the behavior as a greeting or acknowledgement….it may not be the swan’s intent at all.

When they are intentionally moving rather than just floating on the water – their legs are often visible.

I took a series of pictures of one swan that was preening. A swan’s neck is certainly flexible!

Eastern Shore Wildlife Refuges Road Trip

Last weekend we made a 3-day trip to 4 National Wildlife Refuges on the Eastern Shore of Maryland and Virginia.

• Eastern Neck (Maryland)
• Blackwater (Maryland)
• Prime Hook (Delaware)
• Chincoteague (Virginia)

I’ll be posting about each one of them in the days ahead but today is about the driving part of the trip….the beginning and ending of the trip. WIth my husband driving - I am free to take pictures through the windshield.

We started out early enough that there was still some color in the cloudy sky and we neared the entrance to the interstate that would be the beginning of the drive – for a very short distance before we were on good roads, but not interstates.

There is something about a treed cloverleaf that is appealing to me – although it can be disorienting if you are not familiar with the area since the trees block the broader view.

Maryland’s Bay Bridge was along the route a little later but the clouds made the day so dim that it was mostly a silhouette.

Skipping ahead to the journey home – we left from Chincoteague and got stopped in traffic on the road near the perimeter fence for NASA’s Wallops Flight Facility. A pickup had gone over the guardrail into a deep ravine and a crane had been brought in to get it in – stopping traffic on the two lane road for about 15 minutes. I used the time to photograph a blue bird on the fence. Note how centered the bird it between the barbs!

Continuing on ---- Maryland’s Bay Bridge from the other direction as we got closer to home.

Next time we'll have to make a stop at Sandy Point State Park.

Wood Frogs

The Wood Frogs were active yesterday in the little pool in the Honors Garden at Mt. Pleasant Farm. It was a warmer day than we’ve experienced anytime recently – getting into the 70s. Some of the frogs were warming in the sun on the rocks beside the pool

Or lounging on the surface of the water.

There are so many of them that they tend to float into each other and then there is a flurry of activity as they loll on the surface.

There are already some eggs in the pool. It’s only the beginning. And then the pool will be teeming with tadpoles eating everything in sight.

Eventually the tadpoles will become frogs and the pool will be cleaned out and the pump turned on – the pool becomes the welcoming fountain of the Honors Garden in the summer.

Gleanings of the Week Ending March 5, 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.

How Forest Loss is Leading to a Rise in Human Disease – Zika has been in the news lately – but there are other diseases associated with forest loss as well: malaria, dengue fever, Chikungunya, yellow fever, and Ebola. There is building evidence of how and why it happens.

New interactive guide tells the story of forest products in the South – Many years ago, I worked for St. Regis Paper in Texas before they were bought by International Paper – so I read this article with interest to see what has happened to the industry in the past 30 or so year. The guide is located here.

Invasive Plant to Avoid: English Ivy, Barberry, Butterfly Bush, Winter Creeper, Daylilies  - I liked these articles because they provided alternative to these invasive species to use in landscaping. I still have daylilies that I’ve had for years but I’m not going to be containing them rather than propagating them!

Spruce Tree House to Remain Closed at Mesa Verde National Park – Sad that this is closed. We probably have some very old slides from our vacation to Mesa Verde in the late 1970s that I should retrieve from storage!

Consumers have huge environmental impact – Thought provoking. The site for the EUs Glamurs project is here.

7 Resources for Natural History Nerds – Don’t let the initial picture stop you from looking at the rest of the article – it is only a lizard. These are impressive resources. I knew about only 2 of them before seeing the article. I’m bookmarking this article.

Getting the Word Out – More scientists are realizing that it is part of their job to get the interesting aspects of their work out to the public as part of modern instantaneous news. The public is demanding timely information on cutting-edge science!

Five Close Encounters of the Crocodilian Kind – The pictures are good….and the crocodilians are from around the world.

Lead, Plumbosolvency, and Phosphates in the Environment – A well written explanation of how water-works can go very wrong.

The Scale of the Universe – I’ve started taking a Big History course on Coursera and this one of the resources in the first week’s module. Scale is always a challenge and this site does a reasonable job in visualize the very small and the very large.

Learning Log – February 2016

There are so many ways that we learn new things. Since I started logging something new I learn every day – I am more conscious of how varied what I’m learning and the way I am learning it really is.

Observation is a way to learn new things. Birds were very active in February in our area and two ‘new to me’ observations were mourning doves making and geese climbing from open water up onto ice!

Experience. Several items on my learning log fit this category: 1) I started experimenting with not wearing my glasses and discovered that I rarely need them when I am working at my computer…and the neck/shoulder discomfort I had started to feel sometimes later in the day has completely disappeared. 2) Another learning experience this month was having a thyroid nodule biopsy; it was not bad but I really am not keen to have another one. 3) I learned to use a laminator (to make a tree identification guide more durable). It isn’t a big thing but was ‘new to me.’

Books. I started looked at the Hathi Trust collection of online books; there are so many items there is it overwhelming; botanical prints are my first ‘theme’ for browsing. On the physical book side, I read several books about Wild Life Refuges and have already started applying what I read to vacation planning; we’re going to visit the 4 National Wildlife Refuges on the Eastern Shore (of Maryland and Virginia) in March: Eastern Neck, Blackwater, Prime Hook and Chincoteague. In the Internet Archive arena my theme for browsing in February was ‘wallpaper’ with particular focus on wallpaper catalogs from the year I was born!

Udemy’s Photography Masterclass: Your Complete Guide to Photography). I finished as much of the class as I was interested in. I learned a few things but realized that I am spoiled by the quality of the courses I’ve taken on Coursera and Creative Live. The 4 Udemy courses I have taken are just not up to the same standard in terms of production or content.

Coursera’s Soul Beliefs (Unit 1). I finished the 11 ‘weeks’ of lectures for this portion of the course and will start on the Unit 2 lectures in March.

Coming up in March – there are already some other types of learning coming up: travel and ‘live’ classes.

The Participatory Patient

I am past the stage in my life that I accept everything a doctor tells me without question. I’ve come to realize that they are specialized and trying to meet patient expectations that can vary considerably. There may be some patients that always want a medical procedure or drug to solve a perceived problem since that is what my doctor seems to expect of patients. My expectation is just opposite; I want to avoid drugs and medical procedures unless absolutely necessary - where it is very clear that the benefit to me is greater than the risk (both short and long term).

I like the standards of care but expect that they are tweaked with data from my particular test results. And I expect the doctor to be current on the recommendations from analysis of similar situations (i.e. the big data of medicine) and be able to clearly explain their rationale for me.

But it is hard to be a participatory patient…and hard on doctors to with new studies coming out all the time and not necessarily in their area of specialty.

The situation that started my thinking about this was a recommendation that I get an ultrasound guided needle biopsy on a thyroid nodule. I did a search and discovered that my nodule was the minimal size for this recommendation. When I met with the surgeon, I brought this up and he admitted that it was ‘low risk, low value’ but recommended that I go ahead and have the biopsy before the nodule got bigger. I acquiesced – but it was marginal.

The procedure was done and then the results came back via the surgeon’s office a few days later: the nodule is benign and I was told to have another thyroid ultrasound in 6 months. In checking the literature, I discovered that new guidelines re thyroid nodules came out from the American Thyroid Association in January of this year…and their recommendation after a ‘benign’ cytology from a biopsy is 12 months for a thyroid ultrasound.

The net of all this is - if I don’t challenge the doctor’s recommendation the ultrasounds will be done more frequently than the guideline and that increases the cost to me (both in $ and time) and to my insurance company.

Now I’m beginning to wonder about the timing of a lot of diagnostics and checks. It is hard being a participatory patient!

Ten Days of Little Celebrations – February 2016

Here are my top 10 celebrations for February – there was a lot to celebrate in this winter month:

There were a lot of birds to celebrate through my office window –

The crow with a glint in its eye,

The pileated woodpeckers in the forest,

And the mourning doves that were around frequently including a pair that mated on our deck railing!

I also celebrated good results from medical tests on myself and a family member (that counts as 2 celebrations!). Even when the majority of tests result in good (or benign) findings, there is always worry that builds and the relief translates into a little celebration when the results come back

Every time I wear my new fern imprint jewelry (ring, bracelet an earrings) I celebrate – savoring the living ferns I remember and the event where I made the purchase.

I also celebrated Christmas again every week that I work the cuddle socks one of my sisters gave me as a gift! They are indeed warmer than regular socks and comfy without shoes.

There were outdoor activities to celebrate too –

A walk around the neighborhood in the snow,

A sunny day walk at Mt. Pleasant farm (even though it was cold, breezy, and muddy), and

The birds on the ice at Centennial Park.

Gleanings of the Week Ending February 27, 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.

Keep off the grass – Some areas are better as being grasslands than forests…and our planet needs those grasslands!

Dodos might have been quite intelligent – It turns out that Dodos has brains that were the same size as pigeons relative to their body size…and they had relatively larger olfactory bulbs so they probably had a better since of smell.

This bus-size whale is even more unusual than we thought – Omura’s whale devours tiny shrimp-like creatures plus large mouthfuls of ‘dirty water’ (that includes fish eggs and plankton almost invisible to the human eye. They sing a low repetitive melody for an hour or more. What will happen to these whales when the oil and gas exploration gets underway in the area where they live. Is the technology good enough to keep the petrochemicals from leaking into the water?

Reflection – Another photographic project idea!

Collect psychology classes lack curriculum about disabilities – A study pointing out that classes intended to focus on interactions with people of all types have a hole when it comes to people with disabilities – particularly physical disabilities.

Total Solar Eclipse – August 2017 – Planning ahead. It doesn’t happen very often and the path for this one is a diagonal across the continental US.

FDA to test for glyphosate in food – Finally! When Roundup first came out we used it to kill weeds growing in the cracks of our sidewalk. It was never sprayed close to anything we were going to eat. But now, because food crops are engineered to not be killed by it, it is sprayed on food crops like soybeans and corn…so it goes into our food system. It’s a little scary that the study was not done before now.

Antarctica could be headed for a major meltdown – The last time Earth’s atmosphere had about the same amount of carbon dioxide as it does now was about 16 million years ago…the temperatures were 10 degrees warmer and the ocean levels were 50 feet higher. And we have some observations that indicate that the ice shelves of Antarctica are melting rapidly: 7 of 12 ice shelves on the Antarctic Peninsula had collapsed over past few decades.

Elementary School Lessons about Fossils and Rocks – I’m always on the lookout for one page references and this resource includes a good one for rocks (here).

Share your Field Notes: Nature’s Notebook – A citizen science project about phenology (the timing of natural events like blooming flowers and migrating animals…a great way to spend time outdoors and contribute valuable observations to science.

Zooming – February 2016

Birds dominate the zooming post for February. There are a lot of clips of the heads. If you want to see an enlarged version of a collage – click on it and a window with the enlarged version will appear.

In the first collage, there is a female cardinal, a male house finch, a pileated woodpecker (from the top of his head), a titmouse and a male cardinal.

Next up is a dove, a crow, velvety buds of a Princess Tree (one of the few botanical images), a robin’s foot – missing a toe, and a blue jay.

The swish of color at the top of the collage below is a blue jay flying away. The blur of color appealed to me. There is snow in a Crepe Myrtle seed pod, and a robin.

The last one is for fun – showing a dove showing off what is under its wing…and a dove blinking. In the lower right corner is the empty ‘nests’ of bird’s nest fungus.

Centennial Park in Winter

I posted yesterday about the Canadian Geese at Centennial Park. There were other things to see as well. There were gulls on the ice and swooping down for fish in the open water part of the lake. Feathers littered the edge of the ice. This Ring-billed Gull (juvenile) was close enough and stood still long enough for a portrait.

There are quite a few crows around too….cawing attention to the themselves!

There was a tree that had had a large branch cut – probably last fall. It was one of the more colorful natural elements on this winter day. The asymmetry of the cracks caught my attention as well.

This is an example of a not-so-good picture being good enough to identify the birds: a female and male Bufflehead. They are small ducks that winter in our area. There were at least 3 of them feeding in the lake while I was there but they were clearly at the limit of my handheld ‘zoom’ capability.

The mallard ducks were closer. The male was swimming along the edge of the ice (notice the feathers on the edge of the ice)

And the female was a little further into the lake. The pair meandered through the Canadian Geese without harassment.

I took a few ‘intimate landscape pictures: the rocks near the boat launch with a remnant of snow and last season’s plants gone to seed,

The empty nests of Birds Nest Fungus in the same location I photographed them last spring full of ‘eggs,’

And a collection of hardy plants encircled by roots of a tree holding the soil above the level of the path.

It was a warm afternoon for winter…but still cold. And we probably are not done with winter yet. None of the deciduous trees around the lake looked ready for spring and the ice on the lake shows bright white in the background.

Centennial Park’s Canadian Geese

Earlier this week I made a ‘field trip’ to Centennial Park. It was chilly but sunny – I wore a hoodie rather than a coat. There were parts of the lake that still had ice. The Canadian Geese were active – sometimes sedate

And sometimes honking loudly (not the tongue!).

But most fun to watch was how the geese climbed onto the slushy ice from the water. Their strategy is to push themselves up on the ice as far as they can, roll to one side to get a few more inches onto the ice – far enough to have their legs on the ice so that they can standup and immediately take a step forward then preen to get the ice out of their feathers. The second bird used the same strategy then added a huge wing flap and shake at the end before strutting off. Enjoy the geese climbing onto the ice in the slide show below!

More on what else I saw during my Centennial Park field trip in tomorrow’s post.

Natural History of a Place

I went to Belmont Manor and Historic Park in Elkridge, MD frequently enough over the past year to observe it in every season. Last summer a large English Elm on the front lawn of the Manor had to be cut down (Dutch Elm Disease). I took this picture shortly before it was cut down - the picture taken from an angle that the dead part of the tree didn’t show too much. A month later the tree was gone, the stump and exposed roots dug out, and new sod put over the wound. A month later and it was hard to tell where the tree had ever been. The episode stirred some thoughts about the natural history of a place and the significance of our actions on that.

The English Elm was planted – a non-native to North America. Whoever made the decision to plant an English Elm may have been wise in the end because this one lasted longer than most of the American Elms against Dutch Elm Disease.

The pond further down the hill was probably dug in the 1980s. It was probably always a wet area. There was probably a vernal pool there in spring. Lots of wood frogs would have successfully laid their eggs there and new frogs would have emerged. Now the pond has fish – that eat frog eggs.

In the 1900s – the area in front of the house was open. For some of those years it was pasture for horses. The forest would have been different. At the beginning of the century there might have been American Chestnuts in the forest. They would have been noticeable for their size and their nuts would have been gathered every fall – by people and squirrels (and other animals too). There is no tree that has quite filled the niche of the American Chestnut that was wiped out by the mid-1900s by the Chestnut Blight.

Earlier in the 1800s, many of the trees would have been cut for fuel. There were a lot of ironworks. There were massive erosion events when the forests were cut and the Patapsco River – downhill to the north of Belmont – received a lot of sediment changing it from a navigable river to a shallow, easily flooding river by the early part of the 1800s.

Prior to anything being built on the hilltop where the Manor House is today – the area was forested. The chestnuts were the big tree and the Europeans were impressed by the richness of the life in the rivers.

There is so much that we did not preserve…and that we still don’t quite know how to sustain.

Gleanings of the Week Ending February 20, 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.

Snow Rollers – Snow balls formed via weather conditions rather than human hands!

Humorous Charts and Graphs Show What Being an Introvert is All About – Lots of fun….and oh so true! The graphics start with one about the ‘perks of being an introvert.’

Recovery: Saving Lake Sturgeon, an Ancient Fish with a Bright Future – A little bit of history… and the potential of surviving… for this fish species that has been around for a very long time.

Mammography: Is Every 2 Years Enough? – Netting out what the most recent studies have found. But will doctors and mammography centers go with the recommendations? It seems that some mammography centers might be financially motivated to continue to push annual mammograms for everyone – even those over 55.

New study finds clear differences between organic and non-organic milk and meat – This is a study from the UK but the results would probably be the same in the US. I already buy organic dairy and meat… and appreciate that research about the nutritional value fortifies that decision!

The Fungi Within – This article includes a nice table of fungi frequently found in the body. It’s interesting that there are so many and that most of the time they don’t cause us problems. But do we always recognize when they are problematic?

‘Ecologically diverse’ breast cancers more likely to be deadly – Most of the time diversity is a good thing…but not when it comes to cancer. It appears that the general rule that ‘diversity is good for survival’ is true for cancer ‘systems’ too.

Mind and Matter – From the author of a book on the topic. Many patients supplement what their doctors are telling them with other resources…and maybe this is an area (the role the mind plays in our health) we should include when we visualize the educated patient of the 21^st century.

NASA Releases Retro Travel Posters Playfully Encouraging Space Tourism – Fun!

Images of Sound Waves in Water – A little like kaleidoscope images…except with sound waves.

Bird Photography through a Window – February 2016

It’s been a good month for bird photography through my office and kitchen windows. There are several kinds that visit daily. The male cardinal is so brilliantly colored that he always stands out. He is bigger and quite assertive about keeping the juncos at bay when he’s hungry. He’s too big for the feeder so he hogs the seed bowl when he is around.

His mate is the same way.

The blue jays visit the maple tree

And the bird bath. The jays are noisy so I usually have plenty of warning that the flock is passing through. The bird bath is popular when it is very cold because it is heated and probably the on only liquid water around.

The dove come in pairs…and sometimes larger numbers. They like both the seed bowl and the birdbath but sometimes sit on the deck railing and look out over the yard. There was one odd instance when the dove turned around and appeared to be watching me cook dinner through the kitchen window.

The robins have been increasingly common at the bird bath. Previously I saw them in the yard occasionally. One afternoon when the snow was melting the robins were having a feast of worms that must have been close to the muddy surface.  This particular robin has come to our birdbath several times. Can you spot what distinguishes this bird? (Part of the left foot is missing.)

I see the crows frequently and sometimes here them. They sometimes flip debris from the gutter over my office. They very seldom sit anywhere that I can photograph them. This one seemed to be posing for his picture.  Note how different the feathers on the head are from those on the back and wings.

There are others that are less common. A pair of pileated woodpeckers came through a few times this month. They stay in the woods behind the house.

We sometimes see house finches but the juncos generally drive them away from the feeder.

The same is true of the titmice.

A flock of red winged blackbirds came through early in the month. At first I thought they were something else because they were not all black. But I did notice the red and yellow patches. It turns out that these are immature males!

Some of them were blacker…and more mature.

Cowbirds also came as a flock and gobbled up most of the seed in the bowl. There are still some around but not as many at one time as that one cold afternoon. No other birds could get close to the bowl.

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.