Nature Photography through a Window

My office window provides a great vantage point of our back yard and I’ve cleaned it so that sometimes I can get good pictures just steps way from where I write this blog. The deer wonder through

And the squirrels are active in the yard.

They climb up the sycamore or the steps to get to the deck if I have seed in a bowl in addition to the squirrel-proof feeder. It is surprising how fast they discover the seed in the bowl!

But I enjoy trying to capture images of birds. There have been some successes this past month. The dove sat for a very long time on the roof of our covered deck that is visible from my window. It was cold day but that was a sunny spot.

The cardinal sometimes shares the seed bowl with others…and sometimes chases them away but he doesn’t stay long so the others get their share.

The female cardinal seems to need water more often than seed!

The titmice come as a pair.

The blue jays sometimes come from water but they often move so fast that there is not time to even get the camera turned on. This one sat for a few more seconds than usual!

Gleanings of the Week Ending November 7, 2015

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.

The Chemistry of Blood – When I do nature hikes for elementary school children about soil or rocks I always ask them what makes soil or rocks look red (some of them know that it is iron) then I comment that there is iron in our blood too….and that locks it for almost all of them. One time a boy answered my original question with one word: ‘blood’ – thinking he would get a disgusted reaction from me and he was really surprised when I told him the red came from iron in both cases!

Vitamin D pill a day may improve exercise performance and lower risk of heart disease – More evidence that more of us probably need Vitamin D supplements. It’s one I have been taking the past few year.

300 million-year-old 'supershark' fossils found in Texas – Lots of things are ‘large’ about Texas.

The Benefits of Getting Older – They define ‘old age’ and any age over 60! Are you surprised by any items on the list?

Greenland is Melting Away – How they take measures of the ice sheet from the ground…supplementing what can be determined from satellites and drones. The graphics of the rivers on the ice sheet are mesmerizing.

Hunting down hidden dangers and health benefits of urban fruit – When I read the headline I was braced for a lot of negative news…but it turns out that urban fruit is good overall.

Butterflies Weaponize Milkweed Toxins and Wing structure helps female monarch butterflies outperform males in flight – There were two stories about Monarch Butterflies in the news this week….and I saw one – probably migrating – as I was hiking with second graders this week!

Be Mesmerized by the Shifting Complexity of our Sun – The full video is a little over 30 minutes…and there is music too!

The Chemistry of Fireworks: Bangs, Crackles & Whistles – Color gets a lot of attention when it comes to fireworks. This post from Compound Interest is about the other things we enjoy about fireworks.

Hungry for Change: Deer Management and Food Security – Our area has a huge deer population and we have the chomped trees and bushes in our yards to prove it! The idea of combining deer management and food security may be something more communities should consider.

Gleanings of the Week Ending August 15, 2015

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.

Is Modern living leading to a ‘hidden epidemic’ of neurological disease? - A study that compared 21 countries between 1989 and 2010 found that dementias are starting a decade earlier than they used to in adults. In the US, neurological deaths in males 75 years old and over have nearly trebled…gone up five-fold for females in the same age range. The rapid increase points to environmental influences. Scary.

A single image captures how the American house has changed over 400 years - The link at the bottom of the article will take you to the full poster. I like history themes that go way beyond what I learned in school (which seemed to be mostly about conflicts and wars).

Deer Management Solutions: It Takes a Village - We have way too many deer in our area. Fortunately I have not been involved in a collision with one….but I see deer grazing near the roads and the occasional carcass from a collision at the roadsides. Our trees and bushes show evidence of deer browsing…we see deer in our backyard. Very few buds on the day lilies survived to become flowers!

Mapping how the United States generates its electricity - Lots of graphics. The first bar chart shows that there is still a lot of coal used for power generation. It accounts for more than 15% of the generating capacity in 15 states. In my home state (Maryland), coal is used for 44% of the capacity.

Global Risks - Richard Watson posts some thought provoking graphics. The subtitle on this one is ‘How would you like your apocalypse?’

Great plains agricultural greenhouse gas emissions could be eliminated - adoption of best management practices (no-tillage agriculture and slow release fertilizer, for example) can substantially mitigate agricultural greenhouse gas fluxes. The challenge is to overcome the cultural and economic barriers (higher cost of slow release fertilizer, new equipment/training required to convert to no-tillage agriculture) to best practices..

A Self-Taught Artist Paints the Rain Forest by Memory and The plants cultivated by the people from the center in the Colombian Amazon - Beautiful and informative work. The second link is for the free eBook. The text is in Spanish…but the drawings are the reason to download it.

Web-based patient-centered toolkit helps improve patient-provider communication - It seems like this is something that should already be in place in most hospitals although I know firsthand that it wasn’t a few years ago when I had a critically ill parent. It is frustrating that it is taking so long for health care organizations to apply data and technology in a way that keeps the focus on care for the patient….and consistent with patient (or their proxy) interaction re that care.

Astronauts Will Eat Space Lettuce for the First Time Next Week - This article is a little dated….they’ve eaten the greens already.

Artist Quits Day Job to Pursue Passion for Beautifully Quilled Paper Art - I like the spiral shape and this art form is all about spiral shapes with colored paper. 

Flowers on the Maple

The deer can reach about as far up into the maple as I can. It took some stretching to catch a branch to lower it for photography. I have a new camera this year so opted for getting close rather than using the loupe like I did last year.

The flowers are not large…but their deep red color is one of the first signs of spring in our backyard each spring. The birds and squirrels seem to be enjoying the flowers but they don’t strip away the flowers completely. The deer have made quick work of the flowers (maybe the buds didn’t even get a chance to open!) on the lower branches. Hopefully the deer will find other food as the season progresses and the tree can have some leaves on those branches this summer; if not - I’ll have a harder time reaching the maple flowers in spring 2016.

Master Naturalist Training - Week 3

River Birch

White Birch

This week was the third of eight days of training to become a Master Naturalist in Maryland. The forecast was for rain all day but it held off long enough for us to take two short hikes - one for each of the topics for the day: Botany and Mammals. We tromped through snow to look at buds, bark and dry plants. I managed to get some good close ups of bark. How many of these would you recognize: river birch (peeling bark), white birch (white with dark striations), dogwood (blocky bark…but the buds are easier for me to use for identification), and tulip poplar (complete with lichen growing beneath the furrows? Can you guess what the hairy vine is growing up this tulip poplar trunk?

Dogwood

Tulip poplar (lichen)

Tulip poplar (poison ivy)

The second hike was for mammals which was harder for several reasons: mammals are very good at hiding, it was wet (snow melt and sprinkles), the freeze thaw cycle had distorted the tracks even though we were able to recognize some deer tracks, and the one non-deer scat we found was dissolving in a puddle of melt water (although it did include hair so was from a carnivore). I managed to get snow over the top of my boots a couple of times; I took the boots off to let them dry out along with my socks while we finished up the class.

Now that I’ve had those two short hikes I am looking forward to the great thaw and run off….and a good round of picture taking of winter trees for shape and bark….may some buds before they pop open (or right after). I’m keen to create a tree tour of the Belmont location (where our class is held) as my project associated with the master naturalist training.

Like the previous sessions - the Wednesday class day dodged the hazardous weather. Yesterday was very snowy in Maryland!

Previous posts: Week 1, Week 2

Grand Canyon National Park

I’ve been to Grand Canyon National Park three times:

• When I was in high school - in early spring 1971 when I walked a little ways down Bright Angel Trail then turned back when it started snowing.
• In May 1983 when my husband and I walked down the Bright Angel Trail to the plateau level. I remember blisters from the too-new hiking books and my legs feeling like jelly for most of the walk back up.
• In January 2015 when it was cold and breezy. We drove to the park through early morning light and saw a bald eagle landing in the top of a pine tree beside the highway. I wasn’t fast enough to get a picture but it started out the day right. The pictures below are from the visit a few weeks ago.

It is hard to fathom the sheer size of the place. The rim trail on the South Rim - accessible from many points - is an easy walk to try to get perspective. We were early enough that the haze had not burned off completely and sometimes the vegetation seemed to glow from light within.

There has been a lot of building in the main park facilities since 1983. I liked the way the paving incorporated different colors of concrete to make designs - spirals and gentle curves. But we didn’t stay in the developed area long. We decided on our plan for the day - settled on where we would eat lunch (Maswik Lodge Food Court) and began working our way toward Hermits Rest stopping at just about every overlook. After lunch we headed in the opposite direction (toward Desert View) where we would leave the park and head to our hotel about sunset. Along the way we saw rapids and twists of the river below, a mini-snowman, beefy crows, and the zigzag of a trail into the canyon. Sometimes I took pictures of lichen and small plants just to not be overwhelmed by the Grand Canyon vista!

I am already thinking about when I can go again!