Ten Days of Little Celebrations – October 2016

More than half my ‘little celebrations’ this month were place/activity specify. There were 3 celebrations of familiar places/activities:

• I spent 4 mornings at Belmont for BioBlitz with fifth graders. The weather was near perfect – much better than the wet weather for the event last spring. Every day held a few surprises and I was pleased that my husband joined me this fall rather than my volunteering on my own.
• My walk around Brookside was a fall morning – a little cool – that was near perfect for walking around the garden loop. I’ll have to go back to see the mum exhibit in the conservatories.
• Mt. Pleasant Farm is probably one of my favorite places in the fall. What’s not to like about hiking with elementary school field trips! This fall the 1^st grades were the most frequent visitors. I got plenty of practice leading those hikes.

Another 3 of new places/activities:

• I’d never been to State College (Penn State) before. We picked a great weekend to go – colorful fall squash, gourds and leaves everywhere.
• Waggoner’s Gap was also new. The weather was not great for raptor spotting…so I celebrating finding the place….but want to go back again to actually spot some birds.
• Being with high schoolers assessing the Middle Patuxent River at Eden Brook was new too. The place was full of fall leaves and the river had plenty of scenic variety….and the perspective of high schoolers doing field work (sometimes with water flowing over the tops of their boots) added elements to the celebration that went beyond just going to the place on my own.

There were some serendipity sights that I celebrated via photography:

• Getting out to the meadow before the dew dried to photograph spider webs and
• Bright fungus growing on a tree where lightning had struck (and killed the tree).

And mixed in with those celebrations was one ‘lazy day’ that I celebrated because it was so different from the rest of the month!

Belmont BioBlitz – Fall 2016

Last week was BioBlitz week a Belmont Manor and Historic Park. It was 4 fall days with 5^th graders from 4 different Howard County Schools. My husband volunteered as well and we worked together all 4 days. We arrived about 30 minutes before the students to get our gear (a backpack of magnifiers, identification books, a white cloth, and a ruler) and listen to the briefing about what was unique about the day. The students arrived in 2 or 3 busloads with their chaperones and we were assigned a group. The first day we had 5 girls; it was a huge contrast when we had 11 boys the second day! The last two days we had groups with boys and girls - about 10 students.

We started each group with a short introduction and then helping everyone that had smart phones get the iNaturalist app and sign on to the Howard County Conservancy’s id…then we were out in the field. I had added a pair gardening gloves to my backpack and that helped the students find things in the leaf mats, soil and rotten logs – like small mushrooms and worms and slugs!

We made a stop back to the nature center for a briefing about looking at the data they were collecting during BioBlitz after they returned to school – emphasizing the Citizen Science aspect of what they were doing. The observations of the students last week and previous Belmont BioBlitz weeks can be found here: http://www.inaturalist.org/projects/belmontbioblitz.

Most days the students were able to use a spotting scope pointing to the birdfeeders at the edge of the meadow near the nature center. I got a picture of a woodpecker one morning before the students arrived. It seemed like the house finches were gutsier and stayed around the feeders even when the students were not that far away.

And then – after all the flurry – BioBlitz for Fall 2016 was done. I took a picture as my husband and I headed out of Belmont on the last afternoon.

Gleanings of the Week Ending May 21, 2016

The items below were ‘the cream’ of the articles and websites I found this past week. Click on the light green text to look at the article.

Maryland climate and health report identifies state's vulnerabilities to climate change – Extreme weather, increased risk of foodborne illnesses, health impacts of extreme heat (hear attacks, asthma), increased accident risk from extreme precipitation.

Why vultures matter and what we lose if they’re gone – We have black and turkey vultures in our area of Maryland. I see them frequently and appreciate their place in the ecosystem – cleaning up carrion. Without vultures – other scavenger populations grow, often with negative consequences for human health.

Night Vision Problems and Driving – Something else that happens to most of us as we get older. I was surprised that the article did not mention astigmatism as more problematic at night if it is not corrected. I always notice my glasses not being quite right at night before I do in the daytime and it is usually the astigmatism correction that needs adjustment.

Colorful Watercolor Paintings of Radiant Trees in Nature – I couldn’t resist some eye-candy for this collection of gleanings since so many of the other items seem so serious.

New Zika Diagnostic – I’m glad they are making progress at diagnostics…now we have to make progress on prevention too since having a lot of infected people is going to be a public health crisis.

Test Your Sleep Smarts – How many of these did you know? The explanations of the answers are included…and sometimes contain links to more detailed information.

Team highlights ways to address global food challenges – Agriculture produces enough calories to meet basic human dietary needs worldwide…but one out of eight people in the world do not have access to sufficient food. This study presents a set of strategies to overcoming the challenges of providing food for the global population.

How Rising CO2 Levels May Contribute to Die-Off of Bees – Evidently an increase in CO2 often causes a decrease in the nutritional value of plants. A detailed study of golden rod pollen showed that pollen from plants in 2014 contained 30% less protein than pollen from 1842 (with the greatest drop occurring between 1960 and 2014). That’s important to bees that depend on goldenrod pollen for late season food. It’s important to us because nutritional value of crops like wheat and rice are similarly impacted by higher CO2 concentrations.

Too much folate in pregnant women increases risk for autism, study suggests – Another case where too much of a good thing is not good. A lot of the nutritional information is about minimal requirements. Supplements make it possible to get much higher doses than the minimal requirement. There appears to be a correlation with very high level of folate right after giving birth and the risk of autism spectrum disorder.

Meet the Bee Expert who Helped Invent the BioBlitz – I noticed this article just as we were finishing up the Belmont BioBlitz this week….and decided to include it in this week’s gleanings.

Four Days of Belmont Bioblitz

I spent Monday through Thursday of this week at the Belmont Bioblitz. Fifth grade students from 2 elementary schools participated on Monday and Tuesday; on Wednesday and Thursday it was seventh graders from a middle school. The observations the students logged into the iNaturalist app will be used to refine the Belmont Species List; the list originated from previous Bioblitz events at Belmont. All four days started our similarly – the volunteers gathering in the morning to help the staff prepare. It was quiet enough for some birds (like the nuthatch below) to be at the feeders near the nature center; the feeders would get refilled before the students arrived.

The volunteers would gather in a long line across the drive from the Manor House where the buses would eventually pull up.

Turning around - the swallows and red-winged black birds swooped over the grasses and down to the pond. The volunteers enjoyed the past bit of calm.

And then the buses arrive – almost hidden by the trees as they first come through the entrance gate.

Then more visible as they get closer. The students pour out of the buses and into groups - each with a chaperone (or 2) and 2 volunteers. The volunteers have been assigned zones where their group will focus for the duration of the morning.

Trees are easy to document although the blooms of the horse chestnut were already fading by Monday.

The leaves still were distinctive enough to make identification easy.

The pecan was a popular entry into iNaturalist – one of the native trees that produces something we eat.

Many students were surprised that there are different kinds of oaks – easy to tell by just looking at their leaves.

There were toads hanging out near the pool on the first three days – laying eggs.

They liked the wells around the pool where the water was shaded by the cover.

By the fourth day they were mostly gone and we found one further away into the trees and brushy area.

On Tuesday it rained and on Wednesday, the participants found quite a few mushrooms in several areas where the grass is mowed.

One the last day – the highlight (for me) was a lacewing one of the students managed to capture. We photographed it in a magnifying box

Then released it….it paused for a few seconds for me to get one last picture.

At the end of each day - there is hand washing and then a picnic lunch. On Monday and Thursday, the picnic was on the lawn in front of the Manor House. On Tuesday is raining and the BioBlitz picnic was inside the big tent used for weddings at Belmont. The students sat on the carpet under candeliers. The same location was used for Wednesday too since the lawn was still very soggy.

After lunch - it's time for the students to return to school on their buses...the Belmont Bioblitz field trip is over. But - the collection of pictures and descriptions in iNaturalist has grown each day of the event - quite an accomplishment.