Mourning Doves in May

I noticed a mourning dove with a sheen on his neck feathers and immediately wondered if maybe there would be dove pair mating on our deck railing like we’ve had for at least twice this spring already.

He fluffed his feathers and strutted. He lifted and spread his tail feathers as he preened while a female looked on. At first the female seemed interested. She approached but then sat down on the railing. The male continued to show off his plumage. He tried grooming the female but she continued to sit although she did groom him a little – not very enthusiastically. Then she moved away. The male seemed surprised and looked around to determine where she went but she had already flown much further away.

Gleanings of the Week Ending May 28, 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.

Hawai’I at the Energy Crossroads – A case study about the issues with how we produce electricity – now and into the future.

“Top tips for men juggling a successful career and fatherhood” hilariously nails how sexist the advice given to working women is – For anyone that doubts that gender bias is still quiet prevalent in the workplace.

Ancient tsunami evidence on Mars reveals life potential – Evidence of cold, salty oceans on Mars (the image of Mars was produced using Google Earth!)

Restoring an Ancient Nursery for Atlantic Sturgeon – These fish can reach 14 feet in length and weigh 800s pounds – a species that has been around since the dinosaurs. In the 1890s, caviar from Delaware River sturgeon was a thriving enterprise. Within a decade, the population of sturgeon fell to 1% of its historic numbers. Even with a moratorium on sturgeon fishing in the 1990s, the fish were not recovering due to ship strikes, channel dredging, and poor water quality. Now – with focus on dissolved oxygen, salinity, and flow conditions….and understanding the extent of spawning and nursery habitat in the freshwater portion of the river…slow recovery is beginning.

Antibiotics that kill gut bacteria also stop growth of new brain cells – Another reason antibiotics should not be overprescribed….and that we look for ways to resolve an infection that does not kill gut bacteria.

Wildlife is where you find it – A reminder that the natural world often survives even in a very man-made environment…and to be observant enough to notice it.

Bright light alters metabolism – Blue-enriched light in the evening seems to be problematic….will electronic devices of the future modify the type of light they emit based on time of day to help us stay healthy?

State of North America’s Birds Report Released to Commemorate Centennial of the First Migratory Bird Treaty – Birds connect our continent and some progress has been made. There is still a lot to be done. Individual actions like choosing sustainably created products, preventing bird collisions with windows of our houses and office buildings, and participating in bird related Citizen Science project (like eBird) make a difference.

10 Overlooked Wildlife Experiences in our National Parks – Sometimes small creatures that make their homes in National Parks are just as memorable as the scenery.

Toothpaste Tips and Myths – Toothpaste comes in lots of different formulations. Educate yourself about the good – and not so good – aspects of some of the benefit claims.

Patapsco Valley State Park – Volunteering

Earlier this week I spent the day with 1^st graders in Patapsco Valley State Park. They were releasing fish they had raised at their school into the river. There was a ‘field day’ planned around the release and the activity I helped with was looking for macroinvertebrates in the river.

There was a nice pebble beach and gentle slope a little way into river although the current further out was swift due to all the recent rain. The water had run off enough that some pools had separated from the main channel. Our gear was simple: seine nets, strainers, ice cube trays, plastic tubs and jars, magnifiers, and pictures of macroinvertebrates we were likely to find.

The view in the other direction shows the sticks we put into the river to mark the area the 1^st graders were allowed.

The day started out cool but warmed up enough that no one complained about being in the water.

Across the river, some geese with goslings decided to go further upstream before entering river rather than encountering the students.

We did find hellgrammites which are an indicator that the river is clean enough to support ‘sensitive’ macroinvertebrates – a good sign for the fish being released as well.

Belmont Cemetery

One of the stations on the 6^th grade field trip to Belmont is at the cemetery not far from the Manor House. It was my station earlier this week; I walked out early to get everything set. The cemetery is situation on a gentle slope at the edge of the forest. Looking toward the Manor House, the trees on the grounds are large enough to almost hide the house. The cemetery was used by the family that owned the land from the late 1700s until the mid-1900s.

The longest lived person in the cemetery was 95 years old…and a relatively recent burial.

There was a baby that only survived a few weeks. The cemetery prompts discussion of history…of health care. There are also other topics. Note the difference in weathering of the stones between the one from 1922 and the one from 1972; the newer one (1972) looks more weathered --- different types of stones --- geology.

Another stone toward the back – a child 2 years old with a different last name than any other person in the cemetery. This child was a visitor from Baltimore that died at Belmont and buried in the cemetery in 1834. Her grandfather was Francis Scott Key – another link to history. This grave is toward the back and appears to be isolated but a survey with ground penetrating radar found graves in the open area in the center of the cemetery --- bringing up technology and archaeology.

Lichen growing on a stone that is old enough to be so weathered it cannot be easily read brings up biology and how rock is chemically weathered by the algal/fungi symbionts.

The very large (and old) Tulip Poplar tree just outside the cemetery’s fence is also something the students noticed.

The buses were 20+ minutes later than expected so I had time for some bird observation as well. The blue birds, robins, and tree swallows were enjoying the mowed grass area in front of the cemetery.

Other posts about volunteering at Belmont this month:

• Belmont BioBlitz
• Birds at Belmont for Pre-Schoolers

Wallops and Chincoteague in 1978

I’ve been scanning our collection of old slides and will be posting about some of my ‘finds.’  This post is about the first exposure to Chincoteague and Wallops Island. My husband – in the early days of grad school – went on a research trip there in May of 1978 and stayed at the Refuge Inn (still our favorite place to stay). The picture of the pony corral from an upper floor of the Inn looks about the same – dated only by the cars in the parking lot.

Growing up in north Texas – the ocean scenes were new to him. The research was a collaborative effort with the Russians and they were based on a research vessel off the coast which added to the experiences. One trip out to the Russian vessel resulting in my husband’s camera getting sprayed with salt water; it never recovered fully and he started his collection of Canon cameras with the following year.

Pictures of nature are relatively timeless. There are still egrets, water, and grasses,

Gulls (and unfortunately discarded tires),

And my husband and I still try to photograph the birds in flight. He succeeded with an egret in 1978! I was surprised that there were no pictures of Great Blue Herons from 1978. Did he just not notice them….or were there not as many as there are now?

The lighthouse still shows up above the trees although the trees seem higher now.

There are still a lot of radio dishes at Wallops island that can be seen from the road.

Since he was actually on the facility, he got closer views.

He travelled with a lot of instruments. He checked a lot of equipment. He was assigned a small vacant observatory for his set up for the week. This pile was what it looked like after he packed it all back up to come home. I suppose some of the briefcases and luggage date this picture too! The plaid suitcase was one that had been collapsed on the trip up but contained laundry and seashells collected on the Wallops Island beach for the trip home!

The last to be packed: the insect repellent (he still remembers the salt water mosquitoes vividly) and his sunglasses. The packaging for OFF has a familiar look!

Gleanings of the Week Ending May 21, 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.

Maryland climate and health report identifies state's vulnerabilities to climate change – Extreme weather, increased risk of foodborne illnesses, health impacts of extreme heat (hear attacks, asthma), increased accident risk from extreme precipitation.

Why vultures matter and what we lose if they’re gone – We have black and turkey vultures in our area of Maryland. I see them frequently and appreciate their place in the ecosystem – cleaning up carrion. Without vultures – other scavenger populations grow, often with negative consequences for human health.

Night Vision Problems and Driving – Something else that happens to most of us as we get older. I was surprised that the article did not mention astigmatism as more problematic at night if it is not corrected. I always notice my glasses not being quite right at night before I do in the daytime and it is usually the astigmatism correction that needs adjustment.

Colorful Watercolor Paintings of Radiant Trees in Nature – I couldn’t resist some eye-candy for this collection of gleanings since so many of the other items seem so serious.

New Zika Diagnostic – I’m glad they are making progress at diagnostics…now we have to make progress on prevention too since having a lot of infected people is going to be a public health crisis.

Test Your Sleep Smarts – How many of these did you know? The explanations of the answers are included…and sometimes contain links to more detailed information.

Team highlights ways to address global food challenges – Agriculture produces enough calories to meet basic human dietary needs worldwide…but one out of eight people in the world do not have access to sufficient food. This study presents a set of strategies to overcoming the challenges of providing food for the global population.

How Rising CO2 Levels May Contribute to Die-Off of Bees – Evidently an increase in CO2 often causes a decrease in the nutritional value of plants. A detailed study of golden rod pollen showed that pollen from plants in 2014 contained 30% less protein than pollen from 1842 (with the greatest drop occurring between 1960 and 2014). That’s important to bees that depend on goldenrod pollen for late season food. It’s important to us because nutritional value of crops like wheat and rice are similarly impacted by higher CO2 concentrations.

Too much folate in pregnant women increases risk for autism, study suggests – Another case where too much of a good thing is not good. A lot of the nutritional information is about minimal requirements. Supplements make it possible to get much higher doses than the minimal requirement. There appears to be a correlation with very high level of folate right after giving birth and the risk of autism spectrum disorder.

Meet the Bee Expert who Helped Invent the BioBlitz – I noticed this article just as we were finishing up the Belmont BioBlitz this week….and decided to include it in this week’s gleanings.

Four Days of Belmont Bioblitz

I spent Monday through Thursday of this week at the Belmont Bioblitz. Fifth grade students from 2 elementary schools participated on Monday and Tuesday; on Wednesday and Thursday it was seventh graders from a middle school. The observations the students logged into the iNaturalist app will be used to refine the Belmont Species List; the list originated from previous Bioblitz events at Belmont. All four days started our similarly – the volunteers gathering in the morning to help the staff prepare. It was quiet enough for some birds (like the nuthatch below) to be at the feeders near the nature center; the feeders would get refilled before the students arrived.

The volunteers would gather in a long line across the drive from the Manor House where the buses would eventually pull up.

Turning around - the swallows and red-winged black birds swooped over the grasses and down to the pond. The volunteers enjoyed the past bit of calm.

And then the buses arrive – almost hidden by the trees as they first come through the entrance gate.

Then more visible as they get closer. The students pour out of the buses and into groups - each with a chaperone (or 2) and 2 volunteers. The volunteers have been assigned zones where their group will focus for the duration of the morning.

Trees are easy to document although the blooms of the horse chestnut were already fading by Monday.

The leaves still were distinctive enough to make identification easy.

The pecan was a popular entry into iNaturalist – one of the native trees that produces something we eat.

Many students were surprised that there are different kinds of oaks – easy to tell by just looking at their leaves.

There were toads hanging out near the pool on the first three days – laying eggs.

They liked the wells around the pool where the water was shaded by the cover.

By the fourth day they were mostly gone and we found one further away into the trees and brushy area.

On Tuesday it rained and on Wednesday, the participants found quite a few mushrooms in several areas where the grass is mowed.

One the last day – the highlight (for me) was a lacewing one of the students managed to capture. We photographed it in a magnifying box

Then released it….it paused for a few seconds for me to get one last picture.

At the end of each day - there is hand washing and then a picnic lunch. On Monday and Thursday, the picnic was on the lawn in front of the Manor House. On Tuesday is raining and the BioBlitz picnic was inside the big tent used for weddings at Belmont. The students sat on the carpet under candeliers. The same location was used for Wednesday too since the lawn was still very soggy.

After lunch - it's time for the students to return to school on their buses...the Belmont Bioblitz field trip is over. But - the collection of pictures and descriptions in iNaturalist has grown each day of the event - quite an accomplishment.

Ten Days of Little Celebrations - May 2016

May was the height of the spring school field trip season and three was something to celebrate about all of them –

The preschoolers that earned to recognize red winged blackbirds both by sight and sound

Being remembered by a 2nd grader as his hike leader from last fall (and the hike that followed),

Getting through a very wet field trip with 3rd graders – hiking with umbrellas through the meadow,

The 5th graders on the first Bioblitz day finding a toad near the pool in a formal garden – on their sunny day,

The 5th graders on the second Bioblitz day documenting beetles and trees and slugs and flowers – in the rain making the most of their teams of two or three: one holding the umbrella and the other entering the data into iNaturalist…..and then having their picnic brown bag lunch under the chandeliers in the tent that usually hosts weddings,

And the group of middle schoolers that removed a big pile of invasive plants…..before the rain started!

The trip to Conowingo was worth celebrating. I enjoyed it while I was there and then even more once I looked at my pictures! It helped that we managed to go on a sunny day.

A wildflower talk was worth celebrating for the topic and the ‘new to me’ tidbits sprinkled through the lecture.

I am celebrating a good start to my project to digitize our slides. There are some hidden treasures there!

Another project – cleaning out stuff – is also proceeding well. In this early phase, one of the measurements is how much (paper) is going in the recycle directly or being shredded (and then recycled.

Birds at Belmont with Pre-schoolers

Last week I spent a day volunteering at Belmont for a pre-school field trip. I led an activity about birds – with the children sitting on a blanket and looking out over the meadow. There were 5 groups in all: 3 in the morning and 2 in the afternoon. We talked about birds using pictures of birds on a felt board and feathers (I whooshed a turkey feather through the air and they were surprised at the noise it made!) – but the real show was behind me at the bird feeders and the meadow and a high snag in a tree a little further away.

At the feeders: one group saw a nuthatch, several groups saw the grackle,

And all of them saw red-winged blackbirds.

There were some ‘mystery’ birds at the feeder as well and birds we could hear but not see. But that just made it fun to listen and see how many birds we could hear.

In the meadow, the mourning doves looked for food among the grasses dried from last year and the newly emerging plants. The red tailed hawk was in a high snag across the meadow for all the morning sessions! The afternoon sessions got a fleeting look at the red trailed hawk flying across the meadow and into the woods where we were hiking.

Toward the end of each session we listened to recorded birds sounds. The preschoolers were very tickled to discover that the recorded sound for ‘red-winged blackbird’ matched what they had been hearing all morning!

Our Backyard During a Break from Rain

After checking the front flower beds, I walked around to check out the backyard. The chaos garden needs weeding; the honey suckle is beginning to take over (again). I’ll put it out but leave the fleabane. It’s a weed, but I tolerate it because the small flowers last a long time and add some additional color next to the chives, lemon balm, and mint that I want in the garden.

The Christmas ferns I planted last year survived the winter and may be reproducing! The new fronds are splattered with dirt because the run off from the deck is so violent during heavy rains. If the stand of ferns grows, the muddy area under the deck could reduce the mud and provide some nice greenery that would not need mowing. I’m keeping my fingers crossed. The violets are also doing well under the deck since they thrive in shade.

There was a jack-in-the-pulpit with a drying out bloom in the boundary area between our yard and the forest. I’d put a lot of leaves into the area last fall and was glad to see this forest plant in bloom. I watch to see if it produces the red seeds.

The black walnut is the trey I am trying to watch this spring. The end of each branch sprouts a crown of new growth (stems and leaves) which I always think of as a ‘bad hair’ configuration. The tree is young enough that I only saw one nut on it last year. Maybe there will be more this year – but I imagine they will be well above the deer browse line.

The tulip poplar is full of flowers and buds. These trees are the most common large trees in the forest behind our house.

As I went up the stairs to our deck, I saw a crane fly – still. I left it there after taking photographs from several angles.

The old turtle sandbox on our deck has several dandelion plants that I’ve been harvesting when I need greens for a salad….and there is quite a lot of mint coming up as well.

Overall, the backyard is in pretty good shape. The main weeding work is in the chaos garden. The challenge on the deck it to make sure all the pots are draining adequately and that the bird bath water is changed frequently enough to avoid breeding mosquitos.

Gleanings of the Week Ending May 14, 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.

Nanoscale solutions for hospital acquired infections – Antibiotic-resistant pathogens are problematic…and racing to find new antibiotics is getting harder all the time. Seeing different solutions – like these (click in the red circles to see the description) is reassuring.

Umami Flavor on the Rise – The ‘pleasant savory taste’ of soy sauce, hard cheeses, and mushrooms or nutritional yeast….but how to get the flavor without high sodium.

Changing the world, one fridge at a time – What can we do about food waste? The problem is in the production side in the developing world and the consumer side in the developed world…so in the US, it is in each of our refrigerators and pantries. I’ve gotten better over the past few years and rarely have anything spoil. I also dry orange peels instead of putting them into my compost!

Green light for plant-based food packaging – Part of the solution to food waste? Based on this story from Science Daily – I’m not sure this one is ready for prime time.

How Safe is Your Drinking Water? – A well-organized article with some tips on how to find out more from Berkley Wellness.

Enthusiast Builds Website to Collect, Share Free National Park Maps – Find it here. This is a site to bookmark and check when you are planning a trip to any National Park.

A Surprising Look at Crow Family Life – We are seeing more crows this year – recovering to the numbers from before West Nile Virus killed so many of them. I welcomed hearing about cooperative breeding among crows in this article (and maybe it includes the blue jays too).

9 Dangerous Beauty Trends – How many of these did you already know about?

How a Cancer Drug has saved people from going blind – My grandmother was blinded by macular degeneration so I’m always interested in the ongoing research to prevent or treat it.

Kids win another climate change lawsuit – A Superior Court judge ruled in favor of 7 young plaintiffs ordering the Washington (state) Department of Ecology to promulgate an emissions reduction rule by the end of 2016 and make recommendations to the state legislature about how to reduce the state’s greenhouse gas emissions in the 2017 legislative session. Similar legal action is pending in North Carolina, Colorado, Pennsylvania and Massachusetts.

A New Bird to Our Deck

Earlier this week, my husband commented that there was an unusual bird on our deck. I looked down from my office window to where I had poured seed into a bowl from the feeder (the seed had gotten a little wet and sprouted). Sure enough – it was a bird different from any I’d seen at our seed on the deck.

I went downstairs for a better angle. It was gobbling seed.

It had a lot of blue and then some browner areas. The beak was not chunky enough to be a blue grosbeak (like we’d seen at Chincoteague about this time of year a few years ago). The markings on the side were not the distinctive cinnamon like the grosbeak either.

I continued taking pictures as long as the bird continued eating.

After the bird flew way, I got out my tablet and used the Merlin App and decided it was an

Indigo Bunting!

It has appeared at least once more on our deck (probably more since we haven’t been around as much the past few days). Hopefully it will nest nearby and I’ll learn to recognize the female – which is brown with faint streaking on the breast…whitish throat (i.e. a small and hard to distinguish bird).

Conowingo – May 2016

We made the trek to Conowingo Dam to see Bald Eagles last weekend. There was some action right away – but at about the limit of my Canon Powershot SX710 HS point-and-shot. The images are not as crisp as a photographer with a more expensive camera and big lens...but still good enough to capture behavior. It was entertaining to watch the eagles – many of them juveniles (i.e. without white heads and tails yet).

I got one sequence with an eagle coming into to land near another on already perched on a rock. Notice how the one in the air has extended legs/talons.

The eagle that he is joining appears to be vocalizing (open beak) and still has some white feathers mixed in with the brown – not quite an adult probably.

Note the 6 eagles on the dame abutments (2 adults on the closest one…and 1 adult with 3 juveniles on the far one).

A few minutes later – the adult on the far abutment has moved closer to the other adults. The juveniles are on their own.

The dam did not appear to have all its turbines in operation so there were not as many stunned fish around for the eagles. Cormorants would fly up close to the spillway and then float down river getting fish along the way.

I saw a few Great Blue Herons but then when I got home I noticed even more in my pictures…like this one flying past a bald eagle on a rock.

The Great Blue Heron I noticed the most while I was there was on a point of rocks for a very long time. I didn’t ever see it catch a fish so maybe it was savoring a fish it caught before I noticed it. The cormorants in the background are flying toward the dam (to the left in the picture) and would then float back down stream as they looked for breakfast.

Now for a little game. How many Great Blue Herons do you see in this picture (click on the image to see it larger)?

I count 6. Now for one a little more difficult. This one has Bald Eagles and Great Blue Herons. How many of each bird can you find (the smaller, dark birds are cormorants…don’t bother counting them)?

I count 6 eagles (4 adults, 2 juveniles) and 9 herons. The next one has more eagles in the air. How many Bald Eagles and Great Blue Herons in the image below?

4 eagles in the air (3 adults and 1 juvenile) and one eagle in the rocks. The herons are more of a challenge because there are so many. There are at least 12 (note – one is on the far right catching a fish, the body is hidden behind a rock but the neck and head are showing). What about the image below…the last of this game of eagle and heron counting.

There are 4 eagles (only the back is seen of one of them) – all with white heads. But there are 17 herons!

And now for one plant from near the dam. I took a picture of the Princess Tree back in back in February.

Here is what it looks like today. Still non-native and invasive…and growing beside the parking lot at the base of Conowingo Dam.

The best of the rest of Brookside

There was a lot more than fiddleheads, azaleas and goslings at Brookside Gardens last week….so this post is a ‘best of the rest’ from my collection of pictures.

The Red Buckeye near the conservatory parking lot was blooming.

I’d never looked at the flower up close before. I looked it up and discovered that it is closely related to the horse chestnut.

The jack-in-the-pulpits were coming up. These are flowers that one has to be looking for to spot although these striped ones are pretty distinctive.

Many times the leaves and the flowers are almost the same color.

The dogwoods were blooming too. Depending where they are in the garden they can be still green in the center

Or already yellow.

And there are some that are very different – from Asia rather than our native variety of dogwood.

There as a chipmunk sorting through the debris in a concrete culvert – finding seeds.

The area of the gardens that has been ‘under construction’ for the past few years was open and there were yellow irises around the pond,

A newly planted magnolia with large leaves and mature blooms, and

A robust stand of horsetails.

I noticed a bench that evidently is not used often ... judging from the plants growing around it.

I’d never noticed how the bark of this Hawthorne wrinkled as the branches flared out from the trunk!

Even the pines have interesting features in the spring.

It’s a great time of year to take a closer look at the garden!

Gleanings of the Week Ending May 7, 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.

Winding Pathway Offers Unforgettable Journey Through Portugal's Stunning Natural Landscape – A rugged area – made more accessible via a boardwalk!

Motherhood without maternity leave – Why is America one of the only countries in the world that offers no national paid leave to new working mothers? 88% of working mothers have no access to paid maternity leave!

Trouble in Paradise: Fatal Blight Threatens a Key Hawaiian Tree – The beautiful Ohi’a trees we saw are in trouble!

10 Unexpected Impacts of Climate Change – How many of these 10 were you aware of before this article?

Winners of the 2016 Audubon Photography Awards Celebrate Diverse Birds of North America – These are birds in action – not posing for a photograph!

Four Ways to Explore the News through Maps – This post was for teachers (and via them to their students)…..but could be interesting to just about everybody. It is a different way to access news.

Pulling it all together – I took a Systems Biology course from Coursera last year and realized the need to integrate what has been compartmented for study – a needed simplification until recently. Systems Biology requires computers and models that have a lot of similarities to those for research into global weather or astrophysics. This article highlights 4 strategies for hunting new cancer targets.

Dreamlike Watercolor Paintings of Iconic Skylines Around the World – How many of these skylines do you recognize?

Fructose alters hundreds of brain genes, which can lead to a wide range of diseases – Interesting research done with rates. Fructose was found to impair memory but rats given DHA (an Omega-3 oil) along with the fructose performed comparably to rats that were not on the fructose diet.

Satellite maps shows explosion in paved surfaces in D.C. region since 1984 – I moved to the Washington DC area in 1983. A lot has happened since then. On the ground, the increase in paved surfaces has not kept up with the number of cars trying to get from one place to another.

Goslings at Brookside Gardens

Last week one of the high points of our visit to Brookside was a group of 7 relatively new goslings making their way through the garden. When we first saw them they were on a grassy slope near the center of the gardens. There were two adult geese herding them along.

I made a last photography just before we left – they had made is safely to the little stream that runs along the edge of Brookside Gardens. The stream is a much better place for the goslings than the ponds because there are turtles in the ponds that are big enough to drown the little ones. (A larger version of the first three images is available by clicking on the pictures.)

In between the grassy hill and the stream – the little group crossed a parking lot with sloping curbs easy enough for the goslings to climb,

Continuing though pine needles and buckeye debris,

Traversing a patch of grass,

Circling some rounds from a recently cut tree,

To reach a gentle slope down to the stream,

The goslings frolicked in the water (it looked like they were rejoicing to finally get to water),

They stayed relatively close together and to the adults at first,

Then became braver – exploring the sides of the stream!

Gleanings of the Week Ending April 30, 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.

Sharing a Passion for ‘beautiful’ bees – A nature photographer’s project to tell the story of North America’s native bees. There is some information about how he gets his images without stressing the bees too.

Getting to the Root – 18 genes are related to hair related traits --- but we are only beginning to understand how they work.

How do we get our drinking water in the US? – With Flint, Michigan’s water problems, awareness is increases across the country that we should not take our drinking water ‘goodness’ for granted. For a more chemistry perspective – take a look at Water Treatment – from Reservoir to Home from Compound Interest.

Sugar: The Benefits of Cutting Back – The results of a study involving children and teenagers.

7 Tips to Reduce Food Waste (and Save Money) – Nothing truly new in this list…but all good ideas. Now to just apply them all the time.

Genetic Resilience – A study of half a million human genomes, reveals 13 adults that had mutations for 8 different severe childhood genetic disorders…yet had no reported signs of the disease. We have a way to go in understanding how genes work as a system; none of them work in isolation and our studies of them in a standalone fashion is a simplification too far.

Are hazardous chemicals in your cosmetics? – The 4 to look for and avoid are: phthalates, parabens, triclosan, and oxybenzone because they interfere with the body’s natural hormones.

Thyroid tumor reclassified to curb over diagnosis of cancer – The detection of tumors has outpaced the research about what tumors need treatment versus those that are relatively benign. This is a case where a type of thyroid tumor previously classified as ‘cancer’ is being reclassified as non-invasive and with a low risk of recurrence. Are there more tumor types that patients are worrying about now that will eventually be reclassified along these same lines?

America’s Ten Most Endangered Rivers of 2016 – The one near me is the Susquehanna but the 10 rivers on the list are all across the country.

Dirty Dozen Update! Fruits and Veggies Worth Buying Organic – The latest list from the Environmental Working Group.

Ten Days of Little Celebrations – April 2016

April was full of springtime activities. Volunteer activities took me

Outdoors with 7th graders in a stream looking for macro invertebrates (and seeing bluebirds and tree swallows on the way to the stream),

To my daughter’s elementary school (15+ years ago) for an outreach program with a barred owl and his expert handler

Into the flurry of activity helping preschoolers craft butterfly models (our of coffee filters, clothes pins, pain, and pipe cleaners), and

To the county STEM fair as a judge – hearing about a project that taste tested mealworm cookies!

There are multiple reasons I celebrate these volunteer activities --- the interaction with the students, the topics, and the frequent connection to the natural environment.

I saw two birds that were worth celebrating (along with the bluebirds and tree swallows already mentioned): a male wood duck at Brookside Garden and loons at Centennial Park.

I enjoyed some traveling and celebrated

Being TSA Pre for both flights – it makes the passage through security faster (and not feeling like I have to get stuff out and off…then back together)

Helping build a chicken coop,

Baking carrot cakes that turned out yummy for 2 birthdays,

Earth Day at Dallas’ Fair Park (and remembering times I had been to the Fair Park many years ago).

And finally – I celebrated a day just being at home!

Zooming – April 2016

The images I selected for zooming collages this month – all reflect springtime. The Carolina Wren that scouted out nesting locations and selected an old gas grill that we had not gotten around to arranging to take to the landfill (not it won’t go until the wrens are finished with it, the blossoms of a fruit tree and maple samaras…

Horse chestnut leaves, gingko male flowers and leaves, and a daffodil….

Another type of maple samara, a dove in the sunlight, and dogwood flowers….

A goldfinch, robin and bluebird looking a little scruffy (getting their spring/summer plumage) and the beginning of dandelion flowering….

Morning glories and irises from Texas (they had a very mild winter in the Dallas area and lots of rain so the gardens are well developed) ….

A lizard and water lilies (also from Texas).

It’s a vibrant spring and we’re enjoying the cool mornings and near perfect afternoon temperatures in Maryland.

Texas Garden

I was visiting in the Dallas area last week. It rained most of the time so activity was skewed more to things done indoors…..but the sun came out long enough for some garden pictures. The plants are growing well with the early warmth (and following a milder than usual winter) and plenty of moisture.

Irises are still blooming. The bulbs have been moved around as they have gotten too thick in beds either in this yard or in yards of friends and families. My mother remembers where they came from originally.

Pink Preference Sage that was planted years ago by my grandmother is showing its color too. It fills it area with its pleasant pink and green. She got the first plant from one of her sisters.

Mourning doves inspect the garden from the pathways.

The Oxalis is growing in rounded mounds. The mounds grow and the flowers open when there is plenty of light then close again at night or when the clouds are thick.

Garden ornaments peak through. The plants have been propagated from a small bed that my grandmother had started in her last gardening years.

The same is true for the white and yellow clumps of flowers that interrupt the edge between the patio and grassy yard.

The buttercups started the same way. These come back from seed every year at the base of a 24-year-old rose bush my grandmother received as a gift for her 80^th birthday; it had huge blooms that were just past prime so I didn’t photograph them.

A morning glory blooms through a fence – grown from seeds found when cleaning out a room after an aunt died.

The garden is the past translated to present beauty!