Shaggy Mane or Scaly Ink Cap

When we got back from voting the Missouri primary last week, I noticed something different about our front yard. Instead of closed the garage door, I went out with my phone in hand to get a closer look. There were two groups of mushrooms that seemed to be somewhat clustered around one of our sprinkler heads. I took some pictures for the iNaturalist app and the two suggestions were Shaggy Mane or Scaly Ink Cap. They are evidently common in yards!

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I did some macro views with my Samsung Galaxy 10 phone (with 4 and 8x magnification). There were parts that were very black…some that look like part of a pinecone…like roasted marshmallow…like neatly organized fibers.

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I went inside to get my bridge camera (Canon Powershot SX70 HS) to use its optical zoom for another round of images. There seemed to be many stages of mushroom development in the group and I realized that they must have come up overnight since our yard was mowed the previous day!

By the next morning – after a lot of rain overnight – the mushrooms were blackened. Hopefully they matured enough to create spores and we’ll have more in our yard!

Gleanings of the Week Ending October 3, 2020

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.

Domesticated chickens have smaller brains -- ScienceDaily – 10 generations from wild junglefowl toward domestication….and they already had smaller brains.

750 Million GM Mosquitoes Will Be Released in the Florida Keys | The Scientist Magazine® - Reducing yellow fever and dengue carrying mosquitos at a time when more mosquitos are becoming resistant to pesticide-based controls. Texas might be the next place this technique will be used – pending state and local approval.

Earthquakes and insects on Alaska road trips - The Field - AGU Blogosphere – I browsed this article and remembered learning about the 1964 earthquake from the Weekly Reader in elementary school. So -this was an update about what the place is like today…with the town moved completely.

Nuvve And Blue Bird Combine To Create Electric School Buses That Are V2G Enabled – I wish all new school buses would be electric…and charged via renewable means…for the planet and, more directly, for healthier air for young lungs.

Top 25 birds of the week: Colours - Wild Bird Revolution – Beautiful birds….I never get tired of looking at images of the diversity in color and form the birds display.

The U.S. drought vulnerability rankings are in: How does your state compare? | NOAA Climate.gov – Looking at states that I know well because I have family members living there Maryland, Texas and Missouri have a high ability to adapt whereas Oklahoma has a very low ability to adapt (because they have an outdated drought plan and limited irrigation combined with extensive agriculture and cattle ranching). Is Oklahoma headed toward another dust bowl?

Five myths about wildfires - BBC Future – The 5 myths debunked in this article are: regularly logging forests prevents forest fires; there is nothing you can do to protect your property; wildfires are an inevitable fact of nature; all wildfires are bad and must be quenched immediately; it is possible to eradicate (control) all wildfires

Thousands of species recorded in a speck of soil -- ScienceDaily – DNA was extracted from permafrost samples representing different points in the Pleistocene - Halocene transition (about 11,000 years ago). Genetic remnants of animals like mammoths, horses, bison, reindeer along with 1000s of plant varieties were found!

The remarkable floating gardens of Bangladesh - BBC Future – Planting on floating rafts….large scale hydroponics that is not greenhouse based.

4 Fun + Informative (+Free) Apps for Upping Your Nature Knowledge – Cool Green Science – These are great Apps to id plants and animals quickly…with cell phone: SEEK, iNaturalist, Merlin, eBird.

The Grandcat

We haven’t officially met my daughter’s cat yet; he became our ‘grandcat’ during the pandemic (no way for us to make the trek from Maryland to Missouri during this time). Here are some annotated pictures that my daughter has shared with us over the past month – every one of them a little positive tweak to the day. Enjoy the cat pictures!

My morning coffee companion

I am probably supposed to be doing something

Someone pounced on a tote bag

Someone is going to have to explain to his students why their papers got crinkled

Working at his desk

At his standing desk

This dude flying in the sky. Or laying on a yoga mat

Opened my eyes to this dude this morning

He was waiting on the end table on my side of the bed. But he had been curled up against me most of the night. Right now he had made a nest on me in the futon.

Dun dun, dun dun

Cat thermometer says its cold

Lounging on me right now

Cat on his throne

TV cat

He wants me awake so he can snooze on me

Unique Activities for Yesterday:

Blackberry Looper Moth. I finally remembered the little moth I captured in my office a few days ago….and used iNaturalist to identify it: a Blackberry Looper Moth. It’s small but a pretty shade of green with whitish markings. It probably came into my office on one of the flowers from the CSA cutting garden. My picture is magnified enough to see the antennae clearly; they are not ‘feathery’ so it is a female.

Belmont BioBlitz – Fall 2017 (Part I)

Last week, 5th graders from 3 Howard County elementary schools participated in a BioBlitz organized by the Howard County Conservancy at Belmont Manor and Historic Park. The three mornings were quite busy. I enjoyed the calm before the buses arrived – watching the birds at the feeder and photographing the generally calm early morning scene. Then someone would spot a bus starting up the tree lined drive to the manor house – and all the volunteers would spread out and wait for their group of about 10 students and at least one chaperone to be assigned. Then we headed out into the field.

The area my group was assigned on the first day was meadow rimmed with trees. We used iNaturalist to record observations of what we found: horse nettle, pokeweed, worms, spiders, wooly bear caterpillars, and black walnuts. iNatualist helped us identify things better – particularly if the pictures were good. One of exciting things we found but couldn’t photograph well was tiny worms feeding on the black walnut! We also found a birds nest in the tall grasses of the meadow…and lots of multi-flora rose bushes with thorns that seemed to grab pant legs. In two hours…the students were ready for their picnic lunch in front of the manor house and the return to school – tired from a great BioBlitz day.

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More on the other two BioBlitz days in tomorrow’s post….