Hemlock Woolly Adelgid

I’d heard about Hemlock Wooly Adelgid killing the hemlocks in the Eastern US….and this morning I saw an infested tree at Belmont Manor and Historic Park. Aargh! Those white, cottony tuffs are the egg sacs.

They were not as thick everywhere on the trees. I thought the branch with the cones that I photographed was relatively free of them but now that I look at the image more closely – there are some tuffs here too.

On the plus side – I wondered if the lady bug on one of the branches was eating the insects or the eggs. The branch looks damaged (black) and there appear to be some hatched insects in the lower right corner of the image. But the lady bug looks covered the adelgid fuzz and goo.

(All images can be enlarged by clicking on the image.)

Ten Days of Little Celebrations – March 2016

Many years – March is a mix of winter and spring, skewed toward spring. This year it has been heavily skewed toward spring.

I celebrated:

A sunny day for a hike (it was often muddy but the temperature was pleasant enough)

Blooming skunk cabbages (this year leaves are unfurling very quickly)

Birthdays of 3 family members. It happens every year, but somehow have 3 in cluster increases the attention to celebrating.

A road trip to 4 Eastern Shore wildlife refuges

The rapid leafing of a sprouted sweet potato once I put it into dirt

The rediscovery of a small purse that is perfect fit for my camera, id, and chapstick. I getting more comfortable with minimalist fieldtips!

The opportunity to dissect an owl pellet and finding 2 rodent jaws.

Feeling prepared for spring field trips at Mt. Pleasant Farm and Belmont (after training that happened this month)

The weather warmed enough to keep the window in my office open --- hearing the birds at our feeder and at the edge of the forest.

Staying focused on what I want to get done – there is no ‘spring fever’ happening to me this spring at all!

Field Trip Training

I attended all the training sessions this month for the spring field trip volunteers by the Howard County Conservancy. The field trips for elementary and middle school students will start soon even though this year the weather has been warm enough they could have started earlier than mis-April. Some of the training sessions were the same as last spring – but I learn something a little extra each time…and I enjoy the short spring hikes that are incorporated into the training. Things change so fast along the paths in spring that there is always something new to notice.

Once the field trips start – the challenge will be to focus on the hiking groups and guiding their discoveries. Every hike is different. Sometimes it works to stay totally on topic…other times there is something along the trail that captures everyone’s attention so we just celebrate the serendipity. Last spring several of my groups just stood for several minutes and watched tree swallows building a nest in blue bird box! I was impressed with how quiet the second graders could be when their interest was focused. Will the same happen this spring? I hope so.

I have a little break for a week and then the flurry of spring field trips start. It will be over by mid-June (even with snow days delaying the end of the school year). It's a great volunteer gig!

Zooming – March 2016

In February – birds dominated the zooming post. This month there is more variety. The first two collages are from Brookside Gardens – and are all plants in the conservatory.

Outside the plants were mostly dried vegetation from last falls – but the collage below contains a feather too.

And then we get to some birds: snow geese and a yellow legs. I liked the shell within a shell shape.

Shelf fungus and pine codes --- pine needles as background for heads of a Great Blue Heron and an egret.

A splintered tree trunk – a physical reminder of how power storms can be. Tundra swans with sunrise colors in water and sky as background.

Close up of two birds revealed the red in their eye. The frog looks happy to be surveying the pool with lots of eggs already laid. The daffodil is just the beginning of the spring flowers.

Belmont Manor and Historic Park – March 2016

I’ve been to several Howard County Conservancy training sessions at Belmont this month. The short hike associated with the first training was into the nearby woods. The trees were still very much in winter mode. A few of the young beeches retained dry leaves from last season. The large trees in this forest are beech, tulip poplar, sycamore and oak (fewer oaks, and they are smaller than the other trees).

The only green around were plants close to the ground protected by the buttress roots of trees or

Moss growing on tree trunks.

The next training had a hike that went out to the cemetery on the property. Just outside the fence is a huge tulip poplar. There is a hollow place on the side of the trunk toward the fence and it is unclear how far up the tree that hollow goes.

There is a row of White Pines with picnic tables underneath. I’ve never stopped there for a picnic but last summer the area under the pines was a good place to look for mushrooms to photograph.

We hiked back to the front of the manor house and I finally got around to photographing the date on the plaques above the front door. CPD stands for Caleb and Priscilla Dorsey – the builders of the oldest part of the house.

It was a wet day – but the view from the drive in front of the manor house was still scenic with the large magnolia on the lawn and the pond beyond – a bald cypress standing vigil at the water’s edge on the left.

The dampness gave the gum balls on the ground more color. The wind had trimmed one of the nearby white pines recently to add to the arrangement.

On some of the old trees the lichen on their trunks looks more robust than the tree.

During the third training we hiked through one of the fields and I found a blue jay feather – a little battered from being on the ground for several days.

After the training I decided to stop at all the turnouts along the one lane wide road. The part of the road that has been newly paved now has speed bumps. This is the entrance to Belmont showing the trees along the drive.

A lot of trees have been cut along this newly paved section – supposedly to winnow out unhealthy trees. It has been going on for the past several years. I made a slide show of the pictures I took of the stumps. Can you tell which ones are not part of the recent cutting? (1, 4, 9) One looks like an unfurling scroll to me. (3)  There were several that I wondered why they were cut – they weren’t hollow so there must have been something else that made them candidates for the saw. One such was (11 and 12) --- but then I noticed the space between the bark and the rest of the wood; something was definitely wrong. The one with the biggest hollowed out area would have probably fallen soon had it not been cut (13). Some of the wood from a large branch looked very spongey (14) so clearly the tree was rotting. Still – it is sad to see so many trees cut down at one time.

Mt Pleasant Farm – March 2016

There are signs of spring at the Howard County Conservancy’s Mt. Pleasant Farm but the trees still look very bare. Earlier in the month I posted about the Wood Frogs in the Honors Garden pool. Last week, the frogs (and their loud clacking) were gone, but the tadpoles were beginning to hatch. They were easiest to see on the rocks. They are algae eaters and the little pool has plenty for them to eat. Notice that there is also a tiny snail just above the water line.

The moss growing on the parts of the rocks above the water looks very green right now. Soon there will be a lot more tadpoles in the water below since there is a large egg mass that has not hatched near this rock.

I took advantages of the absence of leaves to capture a stump that is usually hidden by brush. It has shelf fungus

And wood pecker holes

And lots of moss growing on it.

It is near the spot where skunk cabbage grows (previous post is here).

The streams are gurgling (and the paths are usually muddy) this time of year.

The farmhouse is visible from the meadow with the deciduous trees still bare.

I stood photographing a mockingbird for several minutes. At first I thought the breeze was ruffling the neck feathers but then I realized that the neck moves a lot as the bird creates his sounds (mockingbirds have quite a repertoire).

Squirrels are still finding last season’s nuts – and eating them noisily. I would not have noticed this squirrel without that noisy munching.

The maple ‘tree within a tree’ is still one of my favorite stops along the stone wall. Theorizing about why it is that way….and looking for snake skin sheds which seem to be there frequently…are always a hit with hiking groups.

These shelf fungi caught my eye – like little steps up the large branch.

Last season’s dogbane still holds some of its seeds in the meadow.

So even at the end of winter – beginning of spring, there is a lot to see here. It is a calm before the riot of growth that comes in April and May.

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.

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.

Old Slides

I was motivated by the story about Spruce Tree House closing at Mesa Verde to dig through boxes to find slides from when we visited many years ago. I found them! We were there in August 1980. During that time my husband was doing all the photography and I did the filing. The Mesa Verde slides were in a notebook with each page (with pockets for each slide) neatly labeled. We don’t have a working slide viewer any more so I put together an ad hoc light table with a lamp on the floor and a piece of white acrylic resting on the top of the lamp shade.

Using the loupe to gain the magnification was not satisfying (field of view too small…and blurry around the edges) so I decided to try using just my camera.

The slides appeared to be in reasonable shape – not deteriorating over the 30+ years.

But – converting them to digital via a camera is really not the way to go. This one was done hand-held and is not as sharp as I want – and the set up to mount the camera and then feed in slides were be cumbersome.

My husband and I are talking about buying a slide to digital converter….and I’ll be adding another ‘project’ to my list.

Projects

Old habits die hard. My whole career was built around projects – things that has a plan, with milestones, and culminated in something. Now I find myself organizing some aspects of retirement that same way – into clumps of activities that are very focused on an objective.

Virtually all of our vacations are projects – with a definite plan, some pre-vacation study or activities, and then the vacation itself. Afterward I almost always write some blog posts about it so that wraps up the project. You’ve probably noticed the series of posts about Hawaii and Tucson most recently.

Another type of project is the Winter Tree Hike at Belmont guide I developed as part of my project to become a Master Naturalist in Maryland. That’s one I have finished recently. Now I need to create the Spring/Summer version.

I’m starting a group of photography projects around themes like model trains, seed pods, stumps or reflections. They are not as cleanly projects since the ‘end’ will be determined by the accumulation of enough images to warrant a blog post on the topic!

It always feels good to put the last flourish on a project; it is the biggest appeal for thinking about collections of activities as a project rather than just activities that merge with all the continuing activities of day to day life.

Outdoors at Brookside – early March 2016

After walking through the conservatories at Brookside Gardens, I walked on the boardwalk toward the Brookside Nature Center to see if the skunk cabbage had appeared. It had not but I did see a very weathered stump and the bald cypress knees were more obvious than they are in the summer when foliage hides some of them.

There were crocuses beginning to bloom. Do you see the bee in the upper left? The day was not too cold for the bees to be enjoying the few flowers that were blooming.

Back into the main part of Brookside Gardens – I noticed bulbs beginning to come up. Are these daffodils?

Snow drops were already blooming.

The seed pods from last summer at the very tops of the crepe myrtles in the rose garden were almost glowing in the bright sun against a very blue sky.

There were other bulbs blooming as I started back along the path between the visitor center and the conservatory.

And then the witch hazels in bloom. They are the earliest tree in our area to actually bloom. Some of them don’t jettison their leaves from last season before the spring blooms emerge!

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.

Brookside Conservatories – March 2016

I enjoyed walking around Brookside Gardens earlier this week – the warmest day of the week (sweatshirt weather, breezy, sunny). I started out in the conservatories. There was eye popping color right as I walked in – purple, green and white.

And orchids with their complex blooms. It is always a celebration of the relationship between flowers and pollinators when I photograph orchids at close range. This one even has fuzz on the runway to encourage the insect to move in the right direction!

Some plants have flowers that grow as mini-bouquets or globes of color. This is an orange and yellow version.

I took two views of this flower group – from the side

And then straight down into the flower.

Then there were mounds of small yellow flowers too.

A subtler beauty – a leaf floating on top of the water in the pool – with roots underneath. It’s a good visual for the concept of water tension.

I missed reds until I got a little further into the conservatory. These flowers looked best before they were fully open.

I experimented with some images of ferns growing over water in the Conservatory’s stream. Do you like the seeing the larger view

Or the zoomed in version? I think the zoomed in version looks more painterly.

Tomorrow’s post will feature the outdoors part of my walk at Brookside Gardens.

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.