Other Birds at Bosque del Apache

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There are birds other than cranes at Bosque del Apache National Wildlife Refuge too. They didn’t seem quite as numerous as when we were there pre-Covid…but we didn’t spend as much time looking for them either.

In a trip around the wildlife loop, we saw Northern Pintails, Buffleheads, Northern Shovellers, American Wigeon, White-crowned Sparrows, Sandhill Cranes, Snow Geese, and Ruddy Ducks.

Winter plants/landscapes are also abundant…water, mountains, cottonwoods, cattails….knobby ice on the surface of shallow ponds.

There are two bird feeder areas near the refuge visitor center. Sparrows (white crowned and house), Gambel’s quail, starlings, Red-Winged blackbirds, Curved Bill Thrasher, Spotted Towhee, and White-winged Dove were frequent visitors either on or under the feeders!

My favorite non-crane sighting was the Spotted Towhee.

Previous Festival of the Cranes posts

Gleanings of the Week Ending December 21, 2024

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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.

6 Things You Should Never Wear on a Flight – Most of the suggestions are good for road trips as well.

What Your Last Name Says About Your History – Interesting…a different perspective on names.

Photos of the Week – December 6, 2024 – Winter sunrise/sunset beauty on the prairie.

German Archaeologists Discovered the Iconic Bust of Nefertiti in an Ancient Egyptian Sculptor’s Studio – One of the most famous of ancient Egyptian artifacts…’ownership’ has been questioned from the beginning.

Lifesaver for wild bees: The importance of quarries – Research done in Germany, but Missouri has considerable limestone…perhaps we should be striving to keep quarries open rather than overgrown with woody plants. Many wild bees in Germany and in Missouri nest in the ground and often need open, sunny areas to do so.

Archaeologists discover key tool that helped early Americans survive the ice age - Tiny artifacts unearthed at a Wyoming site where a mammoth was butchered 13,000 years ago are revealing intriguing details about how the earliest Americans survived the last ice age. Archaeologists found 32 needle fragments made from animal bone buried almost 15 feet (nearly 5 meters). Analyzing the bone collagen of the needles revealed they were created from the bones of red foxes, bobcats, mountain lions, lynx, the now-extinct American cheetah, and hares or rabbits!

Here Are 2024’s Best Northern Lights Photographs - From a purple and green sky in Canada's Banff National Park to an unexpected, fiery orange appearance in Namibia, this year's auroras took us by surprise. While called the Northern Lights Photographer of the Year, there are plenty of Southern Lights represented in this year's collection too.

The Arctic Could Have Its First ‘Ice-Free’ Day by as Early as 2027 - The first summer on record in which practically all the sea ice in the Arctic melts could occur much earlier than previously expected. In a new study, scientists warn that the ever-increasing greenhouse emissions may bring us closer to an ice-free Arctic by the end of the decade.

Water Infrastructure, Disasters, Water Scarcity & Security, Potable Water, & Conflict – A post about what happened to Ashville, NC. Water-related disasters currently make up over 90% of all disasters on Earth, with record-breaking floods and droughts making headlines around the world. Over the past ten years, the number of fatalities from these catastrophes has doubled. Climate change, warming surface water temperatures, and more aggressive hurricanes making their way up to some of the planet’s oldest mountains in North Carolina have all contributed to a growing awareness that rising temperatures have disrupted the entire water infrastructure of the Appalachians.

Meet the Mysterious Woman Who Shaped MoMA – A biographical post about Lillie P. Bliss and the creation of the Museum of Modern Art as an exhibition focused on her opens.

New Mexico Tech Morning

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Our second morning in New Mexico started at the New Mexico Tech campus for an early morning look for birds. Before it was light enough for photography we heard, then saw, a great horned owl perched on a roof of a building. There were robins in the exotic pines.

As it got a little brighter, we headed to a pond and immediately saw western bluebirds!

There were ring neck ducks there as well…and American wigeons.

I took a couple of non-bird images – art and a pinecone among leaves. The campus has more trees that the general area around Socorro (they must water more).

There was a lone pied grebe.

A juvenile green heron was a surprise since it was in the 20s; most of the species has migrated further south already.

The most numerous birds were the interbreed mallards/domestic ducks. One had a tuft of feathers on its head that looked like a toupee!

Macro Photography in Bosque del Apache Desert Arboretum

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The Bosque del Apache National Wildlife Refuge’s Desert Arboretum is near the visitor center…and was the location of our first formal activity of the Festival of the Cranes last week: macro photography.

I started out with my bridge camera (Canon Powershot SX70 HS) and a tripod. I learned very quickly that the tripod was too heavy and unwieldy for me. I struggled to get myself positioned without stepping into the beds to get close enough to the plants. The macro lens that I’d added to the camera did not work well enough for me either,  so I reverted to hand held and using the zoom from just far enough away to allow the camera to focus. I photographed cactus spines, screwbean mesquite…white crowned sparrows.

I had the best results with my phone (iPhone 15 Pro Max). Cactus fruits and spines dominated but I also managed to photograph some creosote bush seed pods and some bark. I challenged myself to pay closer attention to focus and background along with overall composition.

The session would have been more enjoyable had a opted to bring my collapsible stool so I would not have been standing the whole time (my back was painful by the end)….a lesson learned that I will (hopefully) remember for next time.  

Previous Festival of the Cranes posts

Road trip from Missouri to New Mexico

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My husband and I were excited to get to the Festival of the Cranes at Bosque del Apache National Wildlife Refuge last week. This was our third time to attend…the first since the COVID-19 pandemic. It was the first time we drove rather than fly since we had moved to Missouri – a bit closer that where we lived previously (in Maryland). We made the drive over 2 days.

The first day was a 10-hour drive. We left the house at 6 AM and drove in the dark at first…and then it was foggy for most of the route through Oklahoma although I did spot a harrier (hawk) flying near the road in western Oklahoma). I didn’t take any pictures.

By the time we got to the Texas panhandle, the sun was shining. The rest stop building had a berm on two sides and dramatic white walls with a star cut out. It was very windy and cold – we were walking fast to and from the car!  The mosaic in the bathroom was a lot like the scene outside; the old Texas rest stops all had mosaics and I am glad that they have continued the idea in the new ones.

The panhandle of Texas has a lot of wind turbines. They were almost all in motion!

As we crossed into New Mexico, there was a welcome center. I took a picture of the front and back of the sign…but it was still very cold.

We stopped for the night at Santa Rosa NM…about 2.5 hours from our destination.

I observed the changes in vegetation as we drove on toward Albuquerque. The interstate curves around through the mountains just before getting to the city…a very scenic stretch of highway. Since I wasn’t driving, I took some pictures. There is a lot of rock – but vegetation too…and highway art.

We got to Socorro NM, ate lunch, made a reconnoiter drive around the Bosque del Apache wildlife loop, checked into the hotel, and then my husband headed out to a nighttime photoshoot at the Very Large Array; maybe he’ll share his photos with me, and I’ll post the best ones. I appreciated an evening on my own to unpack and get ready for the flurry of Festival of the Cranes events.

Gleanings of the Week Ending December 14, 2024

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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.

Unusual Foods People Used to Eat All the Time – Poke (as in pokeweed) salad, turtle soup, cream chipped beef on toast, limburger sandwich, and vinegar pie. I remember my mother serving cream chipped beef on toast in the 1960s. She also served canned chicken or hard-boiled eggs in cream sauce over toast! It was a quick meal in the days before microwaves.

Incredible Winners of the 2024 International Landscape Photographer of the Year – Take a look and pick a favorite. I like the ‘sunrise on the Atacama Desert’….its crisp lines. The lightning and double rainbow over the Grand Canyons is awesome too.

The ancient significance of the date palm - Phonecia translates to the “Land of Palms” in ancient lands, where palm growth and harvesting dates to approximately 5,000 years ago in ancient Mesopotamia, growing along the Tigris and Euphrates rivers. Date palm trunks and fronds were used as the roof for homes of Akkadians, Sumerians, and Babylonians. Mature palm leaves were made into mats, baskets, screens, and fans.

'One of the greatest conservation success stories': The 1969 mission to save Vermont's wild turkey - Vermont's wild turkeys are a successful restoration story, and one that stood the test of time, unlike elsewhere in the United States where wild turkey numbers are now declining.

Here's how much home prices have risen since 1950 – I bought my first home in 1978…bought subsequent homes in 1983, 1986, 1994, and 2022. I remember the interest rates on mortgages in the 1980s being high (the article says 13.7%) and 1990s (the article says 10.1%). In 2020 the interest rate was low, but we didn’t need a mortgage to purchase our last house! Every house we’ve purchased over the years has been above the median home price (unadjusted).

VA offering 'green burial sections' at national cemeteries – Hopefully ‘green burial’ will become the norm everywhere soon. We don’t need chemicals/embalming fluids leaching into the environment.

When Did People Start Eating Three Meals a Day? - In ancient Roman times, dinner was the one large meal everyone ate, although it was consumed earlier in the day than it is today — sometime around noon. This extended into the Middle Ages in Europe. Laborers often ate a small meal of bread and ale early in the morning before starting a day’s work on the farm. Their main meal of the day, called dinner, was served around noon, and a light snack, known as supper. By the end of the 18th century, many people were eating dinner in the evening after returning home from work. It wasn’t until around 1850 that lunch officially began filling the gap between breakfast and dinner. By the turn of the 20th century, lunch had become a defined meal, typically eaten between 12 p.m. and 2 p.m., and consisting of standard lunch fare even by today’s standards: sandwiches, soups, and salads.

Can we avert the looming food crisis of climate change? - The study integrates key concepts of the dynamics of atmospheric CO2, rising temperatures, human population, and crop yield…and highlights the urgent need to address CO2 emissions to maintain agricultural productivity. It also uncovers a promising strategy to mitigate crop loss caused by climate change: developing crop varieties with a higher temperature tolerance. Next steps for the team involve refining their model to include more variables like insect population, water availability, soil quality, and nutrient levels, which also impact crop yield under climate change.

US Grid Operators Kept the Lights on This Summer with More Solar, Storage, & Wind - In summer 2024, grid operators in all regions maintained enough capacity to keep the lights on during periods of peak demand, even as they retired older generators, and an increasing number of regions used more solar and storage to meet peak demand. Because it is one of the nation’s fastest-growing regions and had near-record peak demand in 2024, the new report concentrates on ERCOT (Electric Reliability Council of Texas) to analyze summer grid operations.

Square Meter Photography Project – Autumn – Macro photography on the prairie.

Valley Water Mill Park

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I finally managed to walk the trail around Valley Water Mill Lake just before Thanksgiving. It was my 3rd time at the park; the first time was with my Identifying Woody Plants class and the 2nd was on a very rainy day to learn about what kind of volunteers they needed. This 3rd time was on a dry but cloudy day in the 40s. Most of the fall color was gone but there was still plenty to see. I was a little rushed because my husband was using the hike for exercise while I wanted to slow down and take pictures!

The honey locust (Gleditsia triacanthos) pods were frequently on the trail….and it was easy to spot the trees with thorns!

The coralberry (Symphoricarpos orbiculatus) was still beautiful along the trail. The berries require some freeze-thaw cycles to become palatable to birds.

The other color in understory was burning bush (Euonymus alatus)– a non-native invasive that is popular in landscaping. I looked at the stems to be sure that is what it was….they have corky wings. There is also wintercreeper (Euonymus fortune) in the park. Both are very difficult to eradicate.

I was on the lookout for fungus too but was rushed enough to see only the most obvious. There was a cut end of a log that has shelf fungus around the outer edge…and some that looked a lot like meringue on another.

Most of the oak leaves were brown and crackly…an occasional one still colorful.

There were a lot of leaves on the ground. Most of the time the trail has been swept clear by the wind but there were drifts of leaves everywhere.

I photographed two exposed roots. One that was close to the trail and displaying the impact of being stepped on. The other looked more like the soil has been eroded from the base of the tree – maybe during a flood; the tree was not that far from the riverbank.

Next time I go to Valley Water Mill I want to plan to spend a bit longer….explore a bit more thoroughly!

Identifying Woody Plants Class – the finale

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The last Identifying Woody Plants class of the semester was this past week. Since I am not taking the class for credit, I am not taking the final next week!

The first part of the class was a quiz identifying woody plants from pressed specimens. It was not hard because we had previewed the species on the quiz in pressed form during the previous lab. But….I forgot to underline the scientific name…so no ‘perfect’ score for me.

Next – we took the 5 plants we had each put in presses out. I took pictures of mine with the black lab table in the background:

River birch – Betula nigra – Betulaceae

Pin oak – Quercus palustrilus – Fagaceae

Virginia creeper – Parthenocissus quinquefolia – Vitaceae

Japanese barberry – Berberis thunbergii – Berberidaceae

Fragrant sumac – Rhus aromatica – Anacardiaceae

Then we mounted one of our specimens for the herbarium and put our labels in the newsprint folders with the rest. I choose to mount the river birch since the catkins has stayed attached. The close second was the Japanese barberry since it had fruit. The mounting process uses glue and then weights to hold the specimen in place for it to dry.

I took pictures of some specimens from other students: yew, red oak, winter creeper, pink silk tree, sweet gum, eastern redcedar (two of them), and bur oak.

After that project, there was a review for the final which I stayed for…as a wrap up for the class. It was a good way to ‘end.’

I’ll miss the weekly class…the field trips and interactions with the other students and professor during the field sessions. I got contact info for a few of them…plan to take them to lunch sometime next semester on days I am on campus for a geology class (with lab).

Gleanings of the Week Ending December 7, 2024

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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.

No need to overload your cranberry sauce with sugar this holiday season − a food scientist explains how to cook with fewer added sweeteners – Cranberries are one of my favorite seasonal foods. I like them so much that I buy enough to freeze and use well into spring – even summer. During the cold months I use them for relishes, adding to stir fry veggies, and in muffins. I’ll make the relishes more savory than sweet from now on!

Researchers Investigate Sustainable Ancient Construction Techniques – Studying the best-preserved earthen building in the Mediterranean. It was built between the eighth and sixth centuries BCE.

Floating Wetlands Bring Nature Back to Baltimore’s Inner Harbor – Built as part of the National Aquarium. The article interested me since we lived near Baltimore for so many years.

Check Out the Highest-Resolution Images Ever Captured of the Sun’s Entire Surface – Images from European Space Agency’s (ESA) Solar Orbiter.

Climate change and air pollution could risk 30 million lives annually by 2100 - Under the most probable projection, annual mortality rates linked to air pollution and extreme temperatures could reach 30 million/year by the end of the century. In 2000, around 1.6 million people died each year due to extreme temperatures, both cold and heat. By the end of the century, in the most probable scenario, this figure climbs to 10.8 million, roughly a seven-fold increase. For air pollution, annual deaths in 2000 were about 4.1 million. By the century's close, this number rises to 19.5 million, a five-fold increase. And yet – there is not the political will to change the scenario.

Vincent van Gogh’s Brilliant Blue ‘Irises’ Were Originally Purple – The paint faded since the painting was created in 1889. It’s still beautiful – either way.

Bee alert: Pesticides pose a real threat to over 70% of wild bees - Alarming risks that pesticides pose to ground-nesting bees (i.e. bumblebees, squash bees), which are crucial for pollination and food production.

The Chilling Sound of the Aztec Death Whistle - Creating 3D digital reconstructions of original Aztec death whistles…then recording sounds from originals and the reconstructions. Both produced sounds like a human voice or scream. There is a link to recording samples at the bottom of the post.

Overwhelmed by ever more clothing donations, charities are exporting the problem. Local governments must step up - There are more and more clothes in circulation, and they are getting cheaper and lower quality. That means the clothes you give away are worth less and less. Worldwide, we now dump 92 million tons of clothes and textiles a year, double the figure of 20 years earlier. Local governments usually handle other waste streams. But on clothes and textiles, they often leave it to charitable organizations and commercial resellers. This system is inherited from a time when used clothing was a more valuable resource, but the rising quantity of clothing has pushed this system towards collapse.

Oysters as large as cheese plates: How New Yorkers are reclaiming their harbor’s heritage – Perhaps the main accomplishment of the project, even more than increasing oyster population, is reminding New Yorkers that they are islanders. It's hard to care about something that is only abstract, something you don't have experience with. Ultimately, people have a much greater ability to improve water quality than the oysters ever will.

eBotanical Prints – November 2024

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Twenty more books were added to my botanical print eBook collection in November - available for browsing on Internet Archive, New York Public Library Digital Collections, or Botanicus. They cover a range of botanical topics: medicinal plants, botanical link in literature (Milton), particular taxonomic groups, and fruit as well as plants of places (Italy, Russia, and Korea (7 volumes!)). Three volumes (1 by Cornut and 2 by Presl) were about North American plants from preserved plants collected by others – the authors never visit the New World. Overall - the 20 books were published over almost 300 years (1635-1933).

My list of eBotanical Prints books past the 3,000 volumes milestone in November – now totaling 3,003 botanical eBooks I’ve browsed over the years. The whole list can be accessed here. Click on any sample image below to get an enlarged version…and the title hyperlink in the list below the image mosaic to view the entire volume.

Enjoy the November 2024 eBotanical Prints!

Picturesque botanical plates * Thornton, Robert John * sample image * 1807

American medical botany * Bigelow, Jacob (artist) * sample image * 1820

Sorimachi 409 * Spencer collection * sample image * 1746

The Flowers of Milton * Giraud, Jane Elizabeth (Lithographer) * sample image * 1846

Pomona Italiana * Gallesio, Giorgia (illustrator); Capurro, Niccolo (pubisher) * sample image * 1839

Iac. Cornvti ... Canadensivm planatarvm, aliarumque nondum editarum historia.  * Cornut, Jacques Philippe * sample image * 1635

Eidodendron: views of the general character and appearance of trees foreign and indigenous connected with picturesque scenery * Burgess, Henry William (artist); Hullmandel, Charles Joseph (printer) * sample image * 1827

Flora Rossica * Pallas, Peter Simon * sample image * 1788

Reliquiae Haenkeanae V1 * Presl, Karel Borivoj; Haenke, Thaddaus * sample image * 1833

Reliquiae Haenkeanae V2 * Presl, Karel Borivoj; Haenke, Thaddaus * sample image * 1835

Hymenophyllaceae :eine botanische Abhandlung  * Presl, Karel Borivoj * sample image * 1843

Tentamen Pteridographiae * Presl, Karel Borivoj * sample image * 1836

The Hardy Catalpa * Record, Samuel James * sample image * 1906

Flora Sylvatica Koreana Pt 11 Caprifoliaceae * Nakai, Takenoshin * sample image * 1921

Flora Sylvatica Koreana Pt 16 Araliaceae and Cornaceae * Nakai, Takenoshin * sample image * 1927

Flora Sylvatica Koreana Pt 17 Elæagnaceæ, Alangiaceæ, Daphnaceæ, Flacourtiaceæ et Ternstrœmiaceæ  * Nakai, Takenoshin * sample image * 1928

Flora Sylvatica Koreana Pt 18 Piperaceæ, Chloranthaceæ et Salicaceæ * Nakai, Takenoshin * sample image * 1930

Flora Sylvatica Koreana Pt 19 Ulmaceæ et Moraceæ * Nakai, Takenoshin * sample image * 1932

Flora Sylvatica Koreana Pt 20 Bambusaceæ, Myricaceæ, Juglandaceæ, Magnoliaceæ * Nakai, Takenoshin * sample image * 1933

Flora Sylvatica Koreana pt. 21 Aristolochiaceæ, Lardizabalaceæ, Berberidaceæ, Pittosporaceæ, Malvaceæ, Empetraceæ, Urticaceæ * Nakai, Takenoshin * sample image * 1933

Our Missouri Yard Before the Killing Frost

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I walked around our yard before the killing frost last week…to capture the colors of late fall. There is not much to do in the yard right now. I am following the ‘leave the leaves’ strategy. The winds swept away most of the leaves in the front yard but there are two drift areas in the back which may thin the grass. I don’t mind at all if that happens. I’ll plant black-eyed susans, cone flowers, golden rod, asters, bee balm, golden alexander, etc. I am inclined to let the pokeweed grow at will since I have seen mockingbirds eat the berries this fall.

There were still a few dandelions in bloom….and insects. The morning I walked around was in the 40s so the insects were not moving very fast.

Of course there was lots of color…including aromatic sumac, a young maple, our Kousa dogwood…as well as other plants that are probably not native.

The seeds of the chives are easily falling out of their husk. The pods on the crape myrtle will probably freeze before the can mature; the plants have died back to the ground every year we have lived in Missouri so far. The big buds on the rhododendron look great and will likely make it through the winter to bloom next spring.

Both the Eastern White Pine and Short Leaf Pines are doing well in our back yard – pokeweed growing underneath them. There is also a small Eastern Redcedar that has come up in my wildflower bed; I’m thinking about where to move it next spring…maybe to the area where I planted a button bush…which a squirrel promptly clipped to the ground.

My husband got the barn swallow nests removed from under our deck. We succeeded in not letting them build a nest on the brick of our house last summer…but they found a place on the deck supports and we didn’t notice soon enough.

Our maples in the front yard have lost their leaves. Our neighbor’s river birch has also lost its leaves and it looks like there is a squirrels nest in the tree. The oak in our neighbor’s yard (a pin oak) still has a lot of leaves but seemingly has dropped a lot as well; most of the leaves in our back yard are from that tree.

Even though the drought of the summer made the fall not as brilliantly colored, fall lingered lingered…and the transition to winter was worth noticing.

Gardens Aglow 2024 (1)

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We walked through the Mizumoto Japanese Stroll Garden’s Gardens Aglow the Monday before Thanksgiving. It was the member’s only night and we arrived just at it opened at 5. They were handing out mugs of hot chocolate! We were bundled up but feeling the chill of the first really cold days so the hot chocolate was appreciated.

There was still light in the sky but as we walked around the light displays it got fully dark. I missed last year’s show because I was in Dallas the whole time…so it was a treat to see it again. Every year it is a bit different.

I always enjoy the Japanese lanterns even though they are not draped in lights. My favorite this year was the one with newly fallen ginkgo leaves around its base.

Two big trees were probably my favorites: a rainbow tree and a bald cypress with spots shining upward into its branches.

It really is a great place to spend on hour of our evening. I will be volunteering on 2 nights in December…and we’ll probably go again to see it on another evening.

Ten Little Celebrations – November 2024

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Our area finally is getting some rain. We have been celebrating the rainy days after being very dry for months. We got above the annual average rainfall for the month before mid-November. Of course – there was a lot more to celebrate during the month as well.

 Stems for bees in a bucket…and a small turtle. The yard and neighborhood are making the transition to winter…with lots of leaves flying and the tender leaves of the violets wilting. I celebrated starting a project with stems in a bucket (hopefully becoming a good place for native bees to nest) and seeing a small red-eared slider on a branch in our neighborhood pond.

Friends of the Library. I volunteered twice during the month – sorting/boxing used books at two libraries in the county where I live; the next sale is in the spring. Celebrating the opportunity to contribute to the book availability in my community!

Harris’s sparrow seen during our first FeederWatch observations. My husband and I saw a ‘new to us’ sparrow during our first FeederWatch session! It didn’t appear in subsequent weeks so perhaps it was migrating through. Springfield is on the edge of this sparrow’s winter range…well within the migration area.

Soft peppermints. Peppermint is my favorite winter candy flavor…and the soft ones have become my favorite this year – either eaten or dissolved in a cup of hot tea!

Brilliant red Virginia Creeper. I’ve let the Virginia Creeper become the ground cover of my front flowerbed…and celebrated its brilliant red color this month.

Valley Water Mill for a second day. Celebrating the discovery of a favorite outdoor place near Springfield.

McDaniel Park. The last field session of my Identifying Woody Plants class…celebrating a city park with lots of trees.

Accumulating 40 Missouri Master Naturalist hours. The Missouri Master Naturalist training was over at the end of October which qualified me as an ‘intern’ until I accumulated 40 volunteer hours. I celebrated that I crossed that threshold by the end of November!

Seek app identification (the bug on the Rose of Sharon pods). The Seek app can be very helpful. I forgot to use it in the field (at McDaniel Park) but remembered when I got home…celebrated that I had a ‘good enough’ picture for the app to make a good identification: Hibiscus Scentless Plant Bug.

Thanksgiving. Celebrating the day….and the reminder of all that is positive for us right now….that being grateful is easy.

Zooming – November 2024

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The zooming images for November are mostly a celebration of fall in our area of Missouri. There are a few animals in the group that could have happened at other times – a robin bathing in a stream, a grackle at our feeder, and a small red-eared slider in our neighborhood pond.

Can you find the poison ivy seeds (hint…they are white), the glorious fall Virginia creeper, a chestnut husk, 4 kinds of oak, and a maple?

I enjoyed searching out little bits of nature to photograph…fill frame…using my camera to ‘see’ better than I do with just my eyes. My camera’s optics are the great enabler!

Thanksgiving

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I am thinking of Thanksgiving ahead of time – planning a quite holiday with family with activities planned before and after:

  • The holiday light display is open for Friends of the Garden the Monday before Thanksgiving…so we will enjoy our first walk through of the season unless the weather is wet. I missed seeing them at all in 2023 because I was in Dallas for the later part of the year.

  • I am not a black Friday shopper…but enjoy being outdoors (maybe working off some of the calories from the day before). Our November has been relatively mild…good hiking weather.

There is also plenty in my life to be thankful for right now:

  • My dad is comfortable at his assisted living home; my sisters and I are able to visit him frequently.

  • I have finished my Missouri Master Naturalist training, and the volunteering opportunities seem to be coming along as I expected. There is much to learn and do even during the winter.

  • The Identifying Woody Plants class at Missouri State is about over…and I thoroughly enjoyed the field trips – learned a lot about great outdoor places close to where I live.

  • Our home is snug – ready for winter…the sprinkler system winterized and the heating system checked.

  • Both cars are performing well. Both have been used for road trips recently. My husband and I both appreciate the driver’s aids on modern cars when we make longer drives.

  • The fall has been prolonged by the milder temperatures. The color might have been muted from less rain in the summer, but the length of the display made up for that.

  • Internet Archive is back online. I missed it a lot while it was down and realize how much I savor browsing through its digitized old books; many of them are not available otherwise.

Life is good….

Road Trip to Texas – November 2024

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My monthly 2-day road trip to Texas to visit my dad was sunny and full of fall sights. The temperatures were decidedly cool. On the first day, I noticed more hawks that usual on high branches of roadside trees – particularly in Oklahoma. Some of them were probably red-tails but some were obviously smaller. Going 70 miles an hour, I only get a quick glimpse (avoiding becoming a distracted driver).

I stopped at the Texas welcome center on US 75 after leaving Oklahoma to eat my lunch and enjoyed their native plant garden. The Turk’s cap was still blooming.

The American beautyberry has clumps of purple drupes but some that were on the top part of the clump looked burnt. I wondered if they got the most summer sun…and were damaged by many days of the high temperatures.

There was a small tree that had a lots of red berries. I managed to ID it: possumhaw (Ilex decidua). It is a native deciduous holly. It grows in Missouri and I might plant one in my yard…maybe replacing a non-native.

It was very windy the next day on my drive back to Missouri. I didn’t see hawks perching….but did see some soaring. One was flying low over a field near the highway --- obviously hunting.

The sun was going down by the time I got back to Missouri. The light from the setting sun gave the roadside trees and orange glow. It was a good scenic finale for the road trip.

Identifying Woody Plants – Month 3

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The Identifying Woody Plants field class I am taking at Missouri State University is winding down. The field trips are done, and we’ve had a class looking at twigs and fruit in the lab. The fruit is not too hard…but twigs are a challenge. I did some photographs of fruit.

Hickory nuts/husks, pods (trumpet creeper, catalpa, honey locust)

Colorful bittersweet (I hope the native), acorns, chestnut burs, magnolia (the grouping looked very artsy to me), rose hips, tree of heaven winged seeds, pods of Rose of Sharon.

The ginkgo outside the building our classroom is in finally turned yellow. There were others on campus that had already turned yellow and dropped their leaves. This one was delayed.

In another class, we looked at pressed specimens from prior classes (some of them more than 10 years old) with the assignment to be able to ID them in the next class! I realized how much I look at many aspects of the tree and only having the small part that can fit on a page is sometimes very challenging.  The Nyssa sylvatica specimen has no fruit – just leaves and twig.

There is one more class after Thanksgiving that includes the mounting of our own pressed specimens. Then I will be done since I am auditing the class and can forego the final!

Previous posts about Identifying Woody Plants field class

Gleanings of the Week Ending November 23, 2024

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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 a Soviet swamp rat scheme for Azerbaijan went horribly wrong – Nutria introduced in the 1930s…..destroying every wetland in Azerbaijan today.

Light Pollution May Be Keeping Honey Bees Up at Night - On hot nights honey bees will sleep outside and slept less/more fitfully if there is artificial light…which could undermine the health of the colony.

The next massive volcano eruption will cause climate chaos — and we are unprepared – The history of large eruptions and what we can determine about the aftermath…though provoking on what it would be like if a massive eruption happened in the modern world.

Carbon recycling instead of plastic trash – Using iron electrocatalysis and producing green hydrogen as a biproduct…can be powered by solar panels. I hope this can be commercialized near term. We are overwhelming our world with plastic trash!

CT Scans Unlock Secrets of Mummified Individuals at Field Museum – Respect for the ancient dead…but still studying their bodies.

How do countries measure immigration, and how accurate is this data? - Three types of migrants who don’t have a legal immigration status. First, those who cross borders without the right legal permissions. Second, those who enter a country legally but stay after their visa or permission expires. Third, some migrants have legal permission to stay but work in violation of employment restrictions. Most high-income nations have a small minority of irregular immigrants in their immigrant population; the exception is the United States which estimates 22% of their immigrants are irregular.

Riding The Rails on Amtrak's Cardinal Line Through New River Gorge – Maybe a relaxing way to see the National Park and Preserve…thinking about next fall.

Mother Tiger Teaching Cub How to Fight Wins Nature’s Best Photo Awards – Great pictures….but Patricia Homonylo’s video is the most thought provoking….the one that is a call to action.

Geologists rewrite textbooks with new insights from the bottom of the Grand Canyon - From the Tonto Group's 500-meter-thick strata, we're learning about sea-level rise and the effects of catastrophic tropical storms -- probably more powerful than today's devastating hurricanes -- during a period of very hot temperatures when the Earth was ice-free.

Quantifying How Urban Trees Cool Cities - The authors of a new study estimate that the city of Baltimore could reduce land surface temperatures by 0.23°C if they increased tree canopy by 1%. To achieve 1.5°C of cooling, they would need to increase tree canopy cover by 6.39%.

A Walk in our Neighborhood – November 2024

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A lot of the leaves have fallen; the oaks are holding on the longest. As I walked around our neighborhood ponds, I took leaf arrangement pictures – on pine needles, in shallow water, in deeper water, and on the path.

I noticed a pine that had dropped cones near the path and picked up a few for my sister to use for a craft project with her grandson.

There are still some green water plants that the community is trying to establish at the edge of the pond. We haven’t had a killing frost yet. I hope they come back stronger and more numerous next year.

There was a very small red eared slider on a branch above the water….on the other end of the pond I saw a large snapping turtle – too far under the water to get a good picture.

The day was in the 60s and sunny – the aeration on the pond created a rainbow.

It was not a long walk; I should make the circuit more often.

Milestones

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Last week marked two ‘milestones’ in my Missouri Master Naturalist (MMN) volunteering:

My tree educational trunk capstone project (part of the MMN training) is finished (or at least at a good stopping place). I had intended to leave it at the Springfield Missouri Department of Conservation for storage…and I savored the fall foliage from my car when I got there. The fall has lingered this year without a hard frost to hurry the end. By the end of the morning, I was taking the trunk home along with some additional educational materials since there is a plan to use the trunk for outreach sessions in January and maybe the Osage orange would be dry enough to add to it by then. I’m still thinking about it as ‘finished.’

I also started a new project: creating a collection of soft pith stems in a bucket (suggestion from Wild Bee Lab Facebook Page). I’ll check it periodically to see if any bees use the stems for nests. My initial collection includes pokeweed, forsythia, bush honeysuckle, and goldenrod. Yes – some are non-native but if the bees use them, I’ll be even more vigorous in getting rid of the non-natives around my yard and doing this with the stems rather than burning them in my chiminea.