Gleanings of the Week Ending April 26, 2025

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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.

Liberation of Bergen-Belsen: how a lack of protective clothing cost lives – Typhus was rampant when the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp was liberated by British troops on April 15, 1945. Anne Frank had died there just a few weeks before. What happened in the immediate aftermath of liberation is described.

How climate change is supercharging pollen allergies – Longer growing season….and extreme allergy events where trillions of pollen particles, sucked up into the clouds as the storm formed, splintered by rain, lightning and humidity into ever-smaller fragments – then cast back down to Earth for people to breathe them in. In one such event in Australia - emergency rooms saw eight times as many people turning up with breathing problems as they would normally expect. Nearly 10 times as many people with asthma were admitted to hospital. 10 people died. It’s been called ‘thunderstorm asthma.’ In the US, pollen levels are expected to be higher than average in 39 states…with worse symptoms.

Colorful city birds – Brown shades are more common in natural environments than in cities. Successful urban bird species have more elaborate colors in their plumage, which is especially true for females. Cities seem to favor more colorful birds -- probably because there are fewer predators in urban areas and 'being seen' poses a lower risk than in rural areas.

See the Titanic in Remarkable Detail With a 3D Scan – From National Geographic. …a digital reconstruction of the wreck.

Royal Meteorological Society Celebrates 10 Years of Incredible Weather Photography – Great photographs an interview with Kirsty McCabe, UK's Royal Meteorological Society’s senior broadcast meteorologist and editor of their MetMatters blog.

Odd-Looking Blue Creatures Are Washing Up in Large Groups on California’s Beaches Once Again –The jellyfish-like creatures in this post are Velella velella – thin, oval shaped blue or purple that usually are 3-4 inches long. They use their stinging blue tentacles to prey on plankton.

Meet Four Amazing Endemic Parrots from New Zealand – They are quite different from each other…and the parrots we see in zoos.

Why you should avoid lotions and creams that contain 'fragrance' – Avoiding fragrance is easy enough…but other things are harder to detect and avoid.

Six immersive experiences for more joy – The 6 seems reasonable to me…most of them I had derived for myself already!

Ten National Wildlife Refuges That Need Our Support Most – All the wildlife refigures I have visited over the past few years have unmet maintenance needs. Funding for materials, equipment and staff has been too low for some time. There are Friends organizations that try to address some of the needs…but it is never enough. Some of the places that became refuges because they are very special are suffering now…maybe being irrecoverably harmed.

Dogwoods

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The flowering dogwood flowers are beginning to wane…but they have put on a good show this month.

I took the pictures for this post on the Missouri State University campus on the way to the Student Union for lunch with my daughter. There was a grouping of the natives (white) and a hybrid (pink). Their branches were low enough to get macro pictures.

Later in the week, my daughter and I visited Onondaga and Bennett Spring State Parks and I enjoyed the winding roads in and near the parks with Flowering Dogwood (the native) in the understory. I’m glad Missouri chose the dogwood for its state tree!

Dogwoods were a tree I remember from east Texas earlier in my life….and then seeing a lot more of them in Virginia and Maryland when I moved to that area in the early 80s. Then Dogwood Anthracnose killed or damaged many of the trees there; they vanished from the understory in some areas. So – I was happy to observe healthy Flowering Dogwoods in the wild again.

Onondaga Cave (1)

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My daughter and I visited Onondaga Cave State Park last week. I had made reservations for the 10 AM cave tour. The park is a bit over 2 hours from Springfield – almost all on I-44. We made good time and had time to look around outside before going in to join the tour. There were emerging plants in the pollinator garden (I only spotted one milkweed…hope there are more nearby) and a display about the Gemstone and Fossil Panning activity (we were focused on the cave but it would be a fun activity with children).

I used my small Canon PowerShot SX730 HS on the ‘night scene’ setting. It worked relatively well although the guide was using as flashlight and sometimes the light from the flashlight was needed!

The walk is about a mile….made easier by ramped walkways (i.e. no stairs). It is slippery in some places but there are handrails. There are a few low ceilings that could be hazardous for tall people, but the guide is very proactive about pointing them out.

Gleanings of the Week Ending April 12, 2025

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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.

Doctor shortages have hobbled health care for decades − and the trend could be worsening – It does seem like it is getting harder and harder to make an appointment with my doctor…and I have yet to see the same doctor twice for my annual checkup since we moved to Missouri. This article provides some background into why the US is increasingly short of doctors.

Your neighborhood might affect your risk of dementia - Most studies of risk factors for Alzheimer's disease focus on the individual level, not the community level. Of course, intervening at the community level is challenging, but prioritizing disadvantaged communities may be an effective way to mobilize resources for older adults and provide avenues for reducing the risk of dementia for the overall community.

Mangrove Pioneers - On the ground, a team surveying tidal marshes near the Florida–Georgia border in 2024 found red mangroves (Rhizophora mangle) and black mangroves (Avicennia germinans) growing 50 miles (80 kilometers) and 14 miles (23 kilometers) farther north, respectively, than their previously documented range. Landsat and other satellite imagery are valuable for monitoring marsh-to-mangrove transitions over larger areas and longer time frames. Conditions along the U.S. East Coast are conducive to mangrove territory expansion - less-frequent extreme cold events and rising winter temperatures in the region as contributing factors to the trees’ survival.

These Carnivorous Snails Slurp Earthworms Like Spaghetti – Snails in New Zealand….the short video is worth watching!

Why Norway is restoring its Cold War military bunkers - Norway is a land with many bunkers. At the peak of the Cold War, the sparsely populated, mountainous country had around 3,000 underground facilities where its armed forces and allies could hide and make life difficult for any invader. Norway is reactivating two of their most iconic underground structures of the Cold War. The role of the reactivated base which has had structural and equipment upgrades is to help the "resilience and survivability" of Norway's F-35s in the face of a Russian attack.

Are Hairstyles the Key to Unlocking Art History’s Most Famous Portraits? - Hairstyling has always been a way that women exacted agency over their self-presentation.  Paintings and sculptures can be rare visual records of these carefully chosen, and ephemeral, hairdos—which, unlike fashion garments, can’t survive and be passed down. (Although some historic wigs and clip-ins have stood the test of time and made it into museum collections.)

Making Sense of Butterfly Declines - Over the past two decades, the total number of butterflies across 554 species has plummeted by 22%. That means a loss of about one butterfly out of every five observed since 2000. This alarming trend underscores the severity of the decline, with many species experiencing drastic reductions in their populations. Three ways to help butterflies: plant native, plant native milkweed (i.e. native host plants), don’t spray.

2,000-Year-Old Wooden Houses Found in China - Houses in Shaoxing, Zhejiang, that date to the Warring States period (475–221 b.c.). The stilted and terraced wood-frame structures would have been covered with reeds and bamboo. The walls, made of interwoven wooden posts and thatch, retain numerous small holes, which archaeologists believe were left by grass ropes used to bind the structure together. Artifacts recovered from the site included primitive porcelain cups, red pottery tripods, ceramic urns, bronze drill bits, and plentiful remains of domestic animals as well as marine resources.

Retreating Arctic Glaciers Have Exposed 1,500 Miles of Coastline - Scientists tracked the movement of 1,500 coastal glaciers from 2000 to 2020, finding that retreating ice had unveiled hundreds of miles of coastline, largely in Greenland - revealing stores of precious metals…. but they warn that newly exposed coastline, which has not been cemented with ice, is vulnerable to erosion and landslides.

Listen to the First Known Recording of Shark Sounds, a ‘Weird’ Audio Clip Captured at a Marine Lab in New Zealand – Sounds from a rig shark…when it was handled between tests in the lab.

Project FeederWatch – April 2025

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The juncos seemed to have left a little earlier than I expected. We didn’t see any by the beginning of April. Our bird feeder area looks almost the same as it did in the winter since the hollies and cedar are evergreen. Now we have violets coming up (the small low clumps of green in the rocked areas); they seem to thrive in the rock with landscaping cloth underneath. I’ve noticed robins and doves collecting the fine stems from last season’s violets to build nests.

We were startled during the first few minutes of one of our Feeder Watch sessions by a Cooper’s Hawk flying in and landing on the patio table! I managed to get a picture before it took off. All the other birds had vacated before the hawk came – so it didn’t get a meal from our feeder area. They didn’t return until the later part of our 30-minute observation time.

The white-throated and white-crowned sparrows are still around. I didn’t take pictures of them. There are house finches and goldfinches. The goldfinches are sporadic visitors and the one we saw stayed at the feeder longer.

The light blue color when a dove blinks always surprises me. This one seemed to snoozing….making it easier to photograph. It was cold morning, so the feathers were fluffed.

The Carolina Wren is not a bird we see every single observation time…but we usually see it at least once during our 2-day Feeder Watch count. It likes the suet…and whatever is scatter on the ground….best.

There is a pair of downy woodpeckers. They like the suet and the seed….and our trees. I am hoping they nest nearby and produce young this year.

I saw a red-bellied woodpecker briefly, but the grackles came and it left quickly. On the plus side – the grackles are acting as a deterrent to the starlings.

This is the last month of the Project Feeder Watch season. I’ll do one last post in early May to close out what happens at our feeders (maybe we’ll see some migrants). We’ll start up again in the fall.

2 Months with my Nikon Coolpix P950

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The most significant experience with my newish Nikon Coolpix P950 was our trip to Loess Bluff’s National Wildlife Refuge; there were three blog posts from that trip (one, two, three). My favorite image that the new camera captured was a video of trumpeter swans…trumpeting!

There were a few photos I took around my spring yard – crocus and a pinecone in the grass. I notice the slight increase in weight from my previous camera…not a positive for the new one.

The camera autofocus is not as good in lower light as my previous camera…or maybe it is the ‘through the window’ aspect of the photos I take while we are making Feeder Watch observations.

I am determined not to revert to my previous bridge camera (Canon Powershot SX70 HS) but I find myself using my small point and shot camera that I can slip in a pocket for times I don’t anticipate needing the additional zoom power of the heavier camera!

Spring Yard Work

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There is always a lot to do in our yard after the winter months. Right now - mowing and cleaning up beds is not on my list. The temperature lows have not gotten reliably above 50 for enough days that the insects have emerged, so I am concentrating on all the rest – and enjoying some early blooms. The violets in the front (south) beds bloomed a couple of days before the ones on east side of the house.

The chive seeds I planted winter before last are now clumps of chives along the edge of the east facing bed as well. The seeds were from my mother’s garden. I’ll keep propagating them until they outline the bed. Maybe someday I will take out the metal edging completely. I like the way look and that, as soon as they are well established, they make excellent additions to salads. They are also a good reminder of my mother’s life and garden.

In the front flower bed, the space I cleared of rocks for the hens and chicks is overflowing with plants. Clearing more of the rocks (and the landscaping cloth underneath it) so that the group can expand further is on my list!

I picked up small branches around our yard – mostly from our neighbor’s river birch which is a prolific self-pruner. I piled them on the patio and made bundles of them to easily feed into our chiminea and

Waited for a calm day to burn them. I got about half of them burned before I felt thoroughly smoked and saved the rest for another day!

The highest priority task now is to remove rocks from around the hostas sprouting in the flowerbeds (some in places that are now under bushes), dig out the clump and divide them for transplanting into an area between a pine tree and the flower bed surrounding the patio. The area has been thoroughly mulched and is ready for them. I’ll not disturb the crocus bulbs that have multiplied there and have already finished blooming this season.

A challenge: the oak pollen is high and I am allergic. I’ll either wait a few days or wear a mask when I work on the hostas…or maybe I’ll be delayed by some spring showers.

Springfield Botanical Gardens – March 2025

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There were signs of spring at the Springfield Botanical Gardens last week when I made a short visit.

The daffodils were beginning to wane.

The grape hyacinths filled some niches in beds otherwise still bracing for winter.

The maple trees had new samaras – still colorful. There must be several different kinds of maples based on the different structure and color of the samara clumps.

The most dramatic were probably the deciduous magnolias. I always like photographing them. The most of trees that I found were very young.

I found some tulips as I headed back to my car. It was a little disappointing to not see more of them. They did not appear to be as densely planted as in previous years – or maybe a lot of them just didn’t produce for some reason.

The redbuds were blooming….making a haze of color in the gardens! This is a great time of year to visit botanical gardens frequently to see the transition from winter to spring to summer.

Zooming – March 2023

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I selected 22 images for this month’s zooming post. 7 were taken during our road trip to Loess Bluffs National Wildlife Refuge (going through Kansas City), 5 during the road trip to the Orchid Show (St. Louis), 5 at home, 3 during a hike at Cedar Gap Conservation Area, and 2 in Dallas. March was a good month to be out and about…typical for early spring!

Gleanings of the Week Ending March 29, 2025

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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 long will you live? New evidence says it’s much more about your choices than your genes - Environmental factors influence health and longevity to a far greater extent than genetics. Environmental factors had the greatest impact on lung, heart and liver disease, while genetics played the biggest role in determining a person’s risk of breast, ovarian and prostate cancers, and dementia. The environmental factors that had the most influence on earlier death and biological ageing included smoking, socioeconomic status, physical activity levels and living conditions.

'The ice melted beneath our feet': The huskies that revealed the rapid shrinking of Greenland's ice - Greenland experienced record ice loss in 2019, shedding a total of 532 billion tones from its giant ice sheet, according to a 2020 study. On average, Greenland loses 234 billion tons of ice per year. What's distinctive about Greenland is how much melting happens on the surface in the summer, because Antarctica doesn’t get anywhere near as much.

Humboldt Penguins on the Edge – Temperate penguins of Chile and Peru. They hunt in the cold, nutrient-rich waters of the Humboldt Current, the world’s largest marine upwelling, that flows a few miles offshore. They are excellent swimmers and deep divers in their pursuit of anchovies and other fish. Humboldt penguins have come back from the edge of extinction before—it will take the continued efforts of local communities, governments and partners to bring them back again.

Study: 'Sustainable intensification' on the farm reduces soil nitrate losses, maintains crop yields - A nine-year study comparing a typical two-year corn and soybean rotation with a more intensive three-year rotation involving corn, cereal rye, soybean and winter wheat, found that the three-year system can dramatically reduce nitrogen -- an important crop nutrient -- in farm runoff without compromising yield.

These Everyday Artifacts Tell the Story of Harriet Tubman’s Father’s Home as Climate Change Threatens the Historic Site – The site is in Blackwater National Wildlife Refuge – the first place I saw a bald eagle in the wild (in the early 1990s). My family visited there many times when we lived in Maryland, and we observed the transition of the marshes to ghost forests and then then open water over the next 30 years. The refuge is obviously changing with rising sea level.

Plastic recycling gets a breath of fresh air - The researchers used a molybdenum catalyst and activated carbon -- both of which are inexpensive, abundant and non-toxic materials. The mixture with PET was heated and, after a short period of time, the chemical bonds within the plastic broke apart. With the tiny bit of moisture from air, the material turned into terephthalic acid (TPA) -- the highly valuable precursor to polyesters. The only byproduct was acetaldehyde, a valuable, easy-to-remove industrial chemical.

This English Burial Site May Be Centuries Older Than Stonehenge - Flagstones, a burial site in Dorset, on the English Channel, may be the earliest known large circular enclosure in Britain. It is a perfectly circular ditched enclosure, with burials and cremations associated with it and may have even served as a prototype for later sites such as Stonehenge, which is located just 45 miles to the northeast. The ditched enclosure was created around 3200 B.C.E., with burials placed in it at that time. The scientists were also intrigued to find that a young man was buried under a large stone at the site fully a millennium later.

Climate change threatens future of banana export industry - It will be economically unsustainable by 2080 for many areas across Latin America and the Caribbean to continue growing bananas for export, because of rising temperatures caused by climate change.

Spring Spectacle: Thousands of Tulips Bloom at One of LA’s Top Gardens – Reminds me that I need to plan a visit to the botanical gardens near where I live in Missouri for tulips soon!

Portraits of women who 'shine a light': from an 'analog' astronaut to a watermelon farmer – Vignettes of women from around the world…what a range of activity!

Cedar Gap Conservation Area

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My daughter and I took an early spring hike at Cedar Gap Conservation Area near Seymour MO this week. It is about 45 minutes from where we live along good highway…to a 2-lane road that heads into the country side for less than a mile before it turns to a gravel road, and crosses some railroad tracks just before the small parking lot. The Cedar Gap Plateau is the second highest point in the State of Missouri! Three watersheds begin from the plateau: Gasconade River, Finley River, and Bryant Creek.

The trail is downhill to a stream – the headwaters of Bryant Creek. The trail is gravel that is sometimes large enough and loose enough that going downhill is considerably harder than going uphill!

We noticed some redbuds with buds developing but not open year. I stopped to photograph a small nest left from last season and some very green moss.   

It was not long. Before we heard trickling water! The water stairsteps down over rock ledges into pools…some clogged with leaves and others clear to the rock at the bottom of the stream. It has not been a wet winter or early spring so there was not a lot of water.

We saw a few wildflowers coming up through the leaves left from last fall.

I attempted to photograph some water striders. Their shadows show up more than the insects.

I walked a little further up to take a picture of overhang and realized that water was dribbling off the top…maybe evaporating before it reached the stream.

We hiked back up the trail the way we had come. The hike is a loop, but I wasn’t sure that we were half way around….and didn’t want a longer hike. I made stops on the way up (a steep trail) but felt surer footed than when we walked down. My last picture was of trees on top of the highest area…still like winter…but we know they will leaf out soon.

My daughter and I enjoyed a Mexican food lunch in Seymour before we drove home.

My daughter and I enjoyed a Mexican food lunch in Seymour before we drove home. The grand finale of the trip: as we drove toward my daughter’s house in Springfield, we saw two bald eagles soaring overhead. Fortunately, we were stopped at a red light so we both were able to safely see them!

Gleanings of the Week Ending March 22, 2025

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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.

In This Storied Egyptian City, Rising Seas are Causing Buildings to Crumble – Alexandria, Egypt. Since 2001, 290 building have collapsed as the rising water table weakens soil and erodes foundations. There are other historic coastal cities with the same problem.

Astronomers Discover 128 New Moons Orbiting Saturn, Cementing the Planet’s Title of ‘Moon King’ – The total number of moons of Saturn is now 274….almost twice as many as all the rest of the moons in our solar system combined.

Microplastics could be fueling antibiotic resistance - Microplastics -- tiny shards of plastic debris -- are all over the planet. They have made their way up food chains, accumulated in oceans, clustered in clouds and on mountains, and been found inside our bodies at alarming rates. Scientists have been racing to uncover the unforeseen impacts of so much plastic in and around us. One recent discovery: bacteria exposed to microplastics became resistant to multiple types of antibiotics commonly used to treat infections. They say this is especially concerning for people in high-density, impoverished areas like refugee settlements, where discarded plastic piles up and bacterial infections spread easily.

How the Development of the Camera Changed Our World - From glass plates to paper prints to digital photograph imaging, the photo revolution's intention remains the same—to immortalize our world.

Alphonse Mucha Helped Define Art Nouveau. A New Show Explores His Lasting Influence – Mucha was undeniably revered in his day, when his posters and advertisements were widely disseminated. His posters lined the streets, and his illustrations graced the covers of major magazines. And to feed the public demand for his work, Mucha even produced smaller posters printed in publications, allowing people to bring his ornately detailed lithographs home without having to rely on the luck of finding one in the wild. The special exhibit will be at the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, 4525 Oak Street, Kansas City, Missouri, April 11–August 30, 2026….maybe I will plan a road trip for next spring!

'You look up and see light coming through': The divers venturing under the ice in the name of science - In a remote corner of Lapland, northern Finland…a lake with 28 in. layer of ice with a hole cut in it. Divers are tethered to the surface using a safety rope, with a handler on the surface communicating with the diver via rope signals. The training here on the frozen lake is practice for work that will be done out on the sea ice of the Arctic and Antarctic, where there are added dangers – large seals sometimes gather at the dive holes, preventing divers from leaving the water. In 2017, Alf Norkko, a professor of marine research at the University of Helsinki, and his team discovered big changes on the seafloor under Antarctic sea ice since their previous diving expedition in the same area in 2009.  "There was a remarkable increase in the abundance of life," he says. Norkko says that he and his fellow scientists are so dedicated to this work because they are aware of the urgency of climate change. At present, there is a race afoot to understand it, and to respond to it.

Grave of Roman Twins Excavated in Croatia – Twins that died between birth and 2 months…placed face to face. Suffered malnutrition before birth. Infant mortality was as high as 30% in Roman societies.

Particulate matter levels in air exceed WHO limits in majority of world's big cities - Fewer than one in five global cities met World Health Organization air pollution standards (for PM2.5) in 2024 with Central and South Asia accounting for the nine most polluted metropolitan areas on Earth. Los Angeles and Ontario, California are the most polluted in the US.  Mayaguez, Puerto Rico had the cleanest air of any metro area around the world. Man-made activities such as fossil fuel burning for transportation, generating electricity and domestic heating, industrial processes, fireworks and smoking were the largest sources of pollutant PM2.5, but that natural sources including wildfires, dust, pollen and dirt also contributed to particulate loads in the air.

China’s First Domestic Cats Took the Silk Road 1,400 Years Ago, New Study Finds - The Tang Dynasty (618–907 C.E.), from which the oldest cat in the study hails, saw peak activity along the legendary trade network, which boosted the exchange of goods and ideas between China, India, and Persia. It’s not improbable that merchants from the West could have carried cats on their journey to East Asia.

Can Toxic Mining Waste Help Remove CO2 from the Atmosphere? - On the coast of Newfoundland, waste from a shuttered asbestos mine has been a troubling source of contamination for decades. Now, a company plans to process the waste to draw CO2 from the air — one of several projects worldwide that aim to turn this liability into an asset. A 2022 report by the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory estimated that existing asbestos tailings in Canada and the United States could remove up to 750 million tons of CO2 in total — while also removing an environmental health hazard.

Our Yard – March 2025

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The crocus and maple are in bloom! The first blooms of spring 2025.

The daffodils and irises are up – but there are no bud stalks yet.

The rhododendron is full of buds that seemingly made it unscathed through the very low temperatures we had in February.

The shortleaf pine is beginning to drop some cones. I’ll pick them up to avoid mowing over them…and take them to my sister to use for craft projects with her grandson.

Our big wind chime tells us that it is windy outside most of the time – typical for March. It is large enough to sound like distant church bells.

The hens and chicks seem to have grown over the winter. I need to clean up the debris around them…maybe take out more rocks so they can expand more easily.

The only yard work I’ve done so far is cutting some ‘trash trees’ that were growing up into the holly, beginning to trim the yew hedge to make mulch for areas I don’t want grass to grow, and transplanted an eastern redcedar that came up too near our patio to a place where there is enough room for it to grow and provide privacy to the patio as I take remove non-native Japanese barberry bushes.

There is still plenty to do in the yard but I am doing it in sessions of less than an hour…building up for when I start mowing!

Project FeederWatch – March 2025

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We are seeing more robins! They aren’t at our feeders but are not far away in our yard and trees. It is a welcome sign of spring. There are red-winged blackbirds at the feeders sometimes…and we always hear them. I hope there is enough vegetation around our stormwater pond to encourage their nesting. Our winter visitors are still around as well. Grackles are showing up more frequently. Of course, the squirrel appears to lap up any spilled seeds.

The doves seem to have increased in numbers but it may just be that they are pairing up, so we are seeing then in twos.

We left our suet feeder empty for a couple of weeks and are seeing a lot fewer starlings. Our other feeders (squirrel proof) almost close with the weight of the starlings so they don’t get much seed from them.

My husband and I have enjoyed our weekly sessions watching the feeder…will be sad when the program ends at the end of April…will sign up again to do it in the fall.

Previous FeederWatch posts

Loess Bluffs National Wildlife Refuge (3)

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The trumpeter swans were in groups around the masses of snow geese at Loess Bluffs National Wildlife Refuge. They were easy to spot because of their size and their distinctive shape. Even when they are snoozing, they look different that snow geese.

They do make trumpet-like sounds too. There was a quartet that were interacting and making their sounds…sustaining their activity long enough for me to get a video!

There were a few instances where I couldn’t resist some botanical photographs. A large silver maple already blooming

And a dried stalk from last season with a backdrop of a metal fence.

There were several ducks at a distance that I photographed – good enough for id but not great pictures: Redhead

Common Goldeneye

Bufflehead

We saw mallards, pintails, ring-necked duck, and northern shoveler…but too far away to photograph. I saw a pied-billed grebe, but didn’t get a good picture.

The trip to Loess Bluffs was a learning experience with my new bridge camera. I am noticing that the Nikon Coolpix P950 autofocus does not seem to be as good as my old Canon Powershot SX70 HS….but perhaps I am still learning how to effectively use the Nikon. It is disappointing that the new camera is not already obviously better than the old…but I am determined to continue the learning curve with it rather than reverting to my old camera. I am anticipating a few more disappointing field sessions near term.

Loess Bluffs National Wildlife Refuge (2)

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While the snow geese dominated the Loess Bluffs National Wildlife Refuge in terms of numbers, there were other things to see. There were many muskrat mounds, and we saw the animals swimming closer to the wildlife loop road than the snow geese. I only saw one group out of the water on a mound that looked like it was deteriorating. I couldn’t tell whether they were trying to rebuild it or just stopping there for a snack!

We heard many red-winged blackbirds. Some males might have been beginning to claim a territory, but others were still in flocks that would rise up and fly around in a murmuration. My favorite picture shows how long the claw are. It doesn’t look like the bird is gripping the twig as much as it might on a windy day.

A red-winged blackbird nest (probably from last season) was in the reeds.

There were at least two hooded merganser pairs that we saw on our morning visit. The males seemed more likely to startle and fly off…coming back to the female after a few seconds!

I took a picture of one of the bald eagle nests on our afternoon at the refuge….and then in the morning. There appears to be an eagle head visible (not in focus) in the morning picture (click on the image below to get a larger version).

More tomorrow about the other birds we saw….and the plants! There was a lot of see at Loess Bluffs National Wildlife Refuge.

Loess Bluffs National Wildlife Refuge (1)

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My husband and I drove up to Loess Bluffs National Wildlife Refuge last weekend – hoping to see a lot of snow geese. Their migration has begun and the ponds near the visitor center were full of thousands of birds when we arrived. A group would startle, and a lot of birds would rise off the water, swirl around over the pond and come back down not far away. There were three bald eagles that we saw around the wildlife loop road – but they seemed to be just watching rather than hunting for a meal.

As we headed to the hotel later in the afternoon, I researched snow geese migration and found that they often fly at night. We did notice that there were groups of geese that seemed to be flying away from the ponds as we were leaving. When we arrived a little before sunrise the next morning, there were much fewer snow geese than when we had left! It was very different than our experience at Bosque del Apache in December where the snow geese are there for the winter – not migrating through. As the sun came up and the smaller number of geese on the ponds begin to move about…with trumpeter swans around the edges of the group…we noticed that there were snow geese flying in! Perhaps they had been flying all night. Ribbons of birds in the sky kept coming the rest of the morning.

I took a picture from the visitor center with a lot of snow geese over the ponds.

From the lookout deck – I took pictures of birds in the water, the bridge over an irrigation dish to provide access to the wildlife loop, the bluffs (vegetation covered…loess underneath from the glaciation of the area) back toward the visitor’s center, birds in the air…and one final picture with snow geese and tumpeter swans.

I’ll be posting about other birds, muskrats, and some plants in two more posts in the next few days.

Note: We did see a few dead birds in the water. They looked like snow geese. The visitor center was not open so I wasn’t able to ask about the disease most prevalent right now (I suspect bird flu or avian cholera).

1 Month with my Nikon Coolpix P950

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I haven’t used the camera as much as I thought I would – weather caused the cancellation of one trip, and another was dominated by macro photography where I prefer my phone. My learning curve is just taking off! I am still not as proficient with the Nikon Coolpix P950 as I was with my old Canon Powershot SX70 HS….but I am determined to get there and beyond.  

There were plenty of opportunities for through-the-window bird photograph even with the multiple rounds of winter weather over the past month.

We did make a quick walk around some areas of the Springfield Botanical Garden on a cold afternoon. I’ve made a goal to try to be there at least once a month for the rest of this year. I liked the colors of the witch hazel and succulents and cedar…the textures of winter in all the images.  

Shoenberg Arid House at Missouri Botanical Garden

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After enjoying the orchid show, we headed to the Shoenburg Arid House at Missouri Botanical Garden. It was a short walk, but we realized that the breeze made if feel even colder than the temperature. It felt good to get into a warm building again. The air was surprisingly moist – maybe because the plants had been recently sprinkled.

There were cactus and aloes and yuccas…almost every plant had sharp points some place! A few of the cactus were blooming. It is not a large building so the plantings are relatively dense – closer together than they would be in their natural environment.

It was my first time to visit this conservatory since it opened in 2024 after a renovation…transitioning from temperate to arid plants. I liked that it is multi-level (a long ramp or stairs) and the central court. It is a get place to showcase arid plants.

Orchid Show at Missouri Botanical Garden

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We made a road trip to St. Louis last weekend for the Orchid Show at the Missouri Botanical Garden. It is just over a 3-hour drive from our house…with some interesting road cuts along the way (more on that in another post). The temperature was in the 30s so our plan was to see the orchids then browsed the other conservatories rather than spending time wandering through the outdoor garden area. Our membership in the Springfield Botanical Garden gained us free entrance. The Orchid show was in the Emerson Conservatory, so we didn’t even need to go outside for it.

There were orchids everywhere. Some of my favorites: orange ones in sunlight (my mother’s favorite color was orange…a good memory prompt),

Shapes that had me wondering about what kind of pollinator the flower needed,

Small and delicate,

Ones that seem to have alien faces…and elaborate ‘fashion,’

Clusters of spirals.

I used my phone (iPhone 15 Pro Max) on a lanyard and an external clicker - was pleased with how well it did. There were other people using their phones too. One lady was making a video which was going to be dizzying to look at because she was moving the phone so quickly. I talked to a lady that was doing excellent macro compositions with her phone….no other amenities. Another person that I talked to had lived in DC for 20 years but had grown up in St. Louis and had lived closed to the Missouri Botanical Garden for a few years when she visited almost every day. She had moved away but had made the effort to return with her mother for the orchid show.

Almost all the slipper orchids were low…the better to see into the slipper. I found myself taking mostly macro images although I also took some small landscapes and some plants that were providing greenery around the orchids.  Enjoy the slide carousel of orchids!

Tomorrow’s post will be focused on the other conservatories at Missouri Botanical Garden.