Springtime photography….is April the best month? It seems like that might be true this year. The photographs were taken at the Springfield Botanical Gardens, my yard, the Missouri State University Campus, my daughter’s yard, Onondaga Cave, and 2 volunteer activities. There were so many images to choose from; I selected 23. I used three different cameras – iPhone 15 Pro Max, Canon Powershot SX730 HS, and Nikon Coolpix P950. Enjoy the slideshow!
I was braced to make the whole drive between my home in Missouri to Dallas in the rain last week….but the rain didn’t materialize until I got more than halfway there. The scissortail flycatchers are back for the summer and I saw quite a few flying over or beside the road; the silhouette is very distinctive. There also seemed to be more egrets too. I didn’t see quite as many hawks because the leaves are out on most of the trees and that makes the birds harder to spot. There was an interesting mural on a truck at one of the truck stops.
It rained heavily as I got to McAllister OK but then was only sprinkling when I got to the Texas Welcome Center on US 75. The bluebonnets were in bloom!
It had evidently done more that sprinkle at the place just before I got there…the water droplets were still clinging to the flowers. Most of the plantings are native…but there are a few yellow roses too.
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.
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 is a wet cave. That means many of the formations are still active and the air in the cave is very moist. There is an airlock where the tour begins and ends. There are salamanders in the cave, but their numbers have declined with the bats (White Nose Syndrome); the salamanders eat the bat droppings and there are not enough to sustain as many salamanders and before. We didn’t manage to see any.
There is a river that runs through the cave. At one point you can hear the water moving but when you look at it from above it seems very still! They know where the water goes but not where it comes from!
On the way home we stopped at Bennett Spring State Park near Lebanon MO. It was raining so the only picture I took was of a painted glass window! We drove down to where the spring emerges and then back to I-44 along a road through the forest….lots of dogwoods in bloom in the understory. It was a grand finale to the day trip even with the rain!
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.
In late March – after the monthly Missouri Geology post, my daughter and I visited Cedar Gap Conservation Area. I posted about the vegetation (spring wildflowers) and the tail itself here and saved the ‘rock’ pictures for this post. Most of the pictures are from along the trail.
The most interesting rock of the trip was found down near the stream by my daughter; I’m not sure how she found it in the jumble of rocks!
The geology lab for Missouri Master Naturalists that was a follow up to the geology program I’d arranged for last February focused on minerals. There were 8 sets of trays with a total of 24 minerals and we practiced the process to identify them! It was a learning experience. I realized that there might have been a better class for learning to id rocks and minerals than the geology course I am taking….and it is for educators (not sure that non-degree seeking students can take it).
Last week my daughter and I visited Onondaga Cave and Bennett Springs State Park….I’ll be posting about that trip soon. Both had a geology component too.
So much going on in April --- I’ve been out and about…noticing and photographing bits of springtime.
These first two are from my yard – two native plants I added 2 years ago: the fragrant sumac (a woody plant) that is putting up more stems and is blooming right now and the American spikenard (a perennial) that is coming up where I can see it from my office window!
On the Missouri State campus as I walked to my geology lab class: two maples that have produced samaras, sweet gum has small leaves and is beginning of seed formation, and some ‘carnation’ trees that have been added very recently are blooming at the edge of a parking lot.
There were some things I noticed at my daughter’s house as I waited for the tree crew to arrive: hostas coming up (she could easily divide these to supplement the few that are growing under her southern magnolia), a bed recently cleared of a bush honey suckle and other invasive plants…and there is some good stuff that survived underneath), Carolina silverbell in bloom, an azalea with a few flowers in deep shade under the hemlock,
Leaves unfurling on the oak leaf hydrangea, and
I like the garden gate on the shady side of her house. It’s idyllic looking but in previous years not a place to sit…because the mosquitos tend to like the area. Now that the redbud is gone, the area will get a little sun…maybe make it a pleasant place for a chair and small table.
Back at my home, the front yard has been mowed, and I made the decision to put mulch under the Asian dogwood tree. I cut the grass that had come up there very short with the weed eater and trimmed off the lower branches. I had enough cardboard to put under the mulch. The day was windy, so it was a bit challenging to keep the cardboard in place before I got the mulch on top. I used about 1/3 of the mulch I got from my daughter: a big blue bin and then a smaller bin. I used the snow shovel to move it around on top of the cardboard pieces…was pleased with the results. I am already planning the projects for the rest of the mulch – waiting to accumulate enough cardboard!
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.
Internet Archive has digitized versions of many Life Magazines. I have been browsing through them – slowly since there was an issue for each week. As I looked at the issues from 1937, I thought about my parents; they started school that year. They were probably still very focused on things going on within their family and small community rather than the broader world…but the world was heading into a time of turmoil. Looking at the way Life was covering those events seems relatively naïve now! The sample images (one from each weekly magazine) show a variety of topics the Life editors chose to cover over the course of the year. Most of the ‘color’ pages of the magazine were advertisements.
Life Magazine 1937-01-04 – a lot of public works projects in the past 4 years
Life Magazine 1937-01-11 - Margaret Sanger and birth control
Life Magazine 1937-01-18 – Chinese farmer in California
Life Magazine 1937-01-25 – US Army planes
Life Magazine 1937-02-01 – Roosevelt’s second inauguration - a rainy day
Life Magazine 1937-02-08 – Mississippi flooding; levee dynamited at Cairo, Illinois
Life Magazine 1937-02-15 – US Supreme Court’s new building
Life Magazine 1937-02-22 – Marian Anderson
Life Magazine 1937-03-1 – Building the Golden Gate Bridge (accident)
Life Magazine 1937-03-8 – Sun Valley sky lifts
Life Magazine 1937-03-15 – British crown
Life Magazine 1937-03-22 – Irving parachute
Life Magazine 1937-03-29 – Palm Springs
Life Magazine 1937-04-05 – HMS Glorius in winter maneuvers
Life Magazine 1937-04-12 – Mussolini in North Africa…a Roman city in the sand
Life Magazine 1937-04-19 – Queen Mary with 3 grandchildren…Elizabeth II as a young girl
Life Magazine 1937-04-26 – Neville Chamberlain as Chancellor of the Exchequer
Life Magazine 1937-05-03 – British rearmament
Life Magazine 1937-05-10 – Germans celebrate Hitler’s birthday
Life Magazine 1937-05-17 – Dionne quintuplets at 3
Life Magazine 1937-05-24 – Coronation Day at Buckingham Palace
Life Magazine 1937-05-31 – Golden Gate Bridge from one of the piers
Life Magazine 1937-06-07 – University of Virginia
Life Magazine 1937-06-14 – Washington DC from the air
Life Magazine 1937-06-21 – Dust Bowl
Life Magazine 1937-06-28 - Telephone
Life Magazine 1937-07-05 – River Jordan and Jewish farms
Life Magazine 1937-07-12 – Audubon Association protects birds
Life Magazine 1937-07-19 - British air fleet after rearmament
Life Magazine 1937-07-26 – Typical day for a 12-week-old baby
Life Magazine 1937-07-26 – US wheat belts
Life Magazine 1937-08-09 – Mapping the battle at dawn
Life Magazine 1937-08-16 – Wall Streeters commute by plane
Life Magazine 1937-08-23 – Niagara Falls
Life Magazine 1937-08-30 – Maine trotters
Life Magazine 1937-09-06 – Texaco advertisement
Life Magazine 1937-09-13 – Nephew of Geronimo
Life Magazine 1937-09-20 – Prime Minister’s Kitchen
Life Magazine 1937-09-27 – Nazi parades
Life Magazine 1937-10-04 – American Legion parade
Life Magazine 1937-10-11 – Joe Kennedy and merchant marine stagnation
Life Magazine 1937-10-18 – Armstrong Linoleum advertisement
Life Magazine 1937-10-25 – Natives of Northwest Canada
Life Magazine 1937-11-01 – Man O’ War…256 ‘children’
Life Magazine 1937-11-08 – 100-inch telescope for Mt. Wilson
Life Magazine 1937-11-15 – Flying Dreadnought
Life Magazine 1937-11-21 – America as an exporting nations: raw cotton, automobiles, fruits
Life Magazine 1937-11-29 – Nursery furniture
Life Magazine 1937-12-06 – Japanese depiction of dying afternoon of Manchu China and garish dawn of Westernized Japan
Life Magazine 1937-12-13 – Train engines (billions of dollars and millions of men)
Life Magazine 1937-12-20 – Christmas is in the air
Life Magazine 1937-12-27 - $300/minute to operate the set for MGM’s musical Rosalie
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.
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!
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.
Lots of early spring celebrations in March!
Trout Lilies. One of the high points of our hike at Cedar Gap Conservation area was seeing trout lilies blooming down by the stream…as celebration of the new season.
Bald Eagles. The serendipity of seeing two bald eagles soaring over Springfield was another celebration of our Cedar Gap field trip. They seemed to be heading north so might have been migrating through as eagles do in the spring.
Tenure. My son-in-law was granted tenure at Missouri State University. It’s a major milestone to celebrate.
Pinecones. The wind caused pinecones to fall from our shortleaf pine and I picked up a bag of them for my sister. We both celebrated in anticipation of the fun projects she’ll do with her grandson.
Redcedar. I transplanted a small eastern redcedar that came up in my flowerbed to the place in my yard that I want it grow….and celebrated that it stayed upright even with the high winds that came along in March. It will make a great addition to the bird habitat near our patio!
Physical therapy. I celebrated that the physical therapy my dad is doing seem to be helping him recover his mobility after an illness in February.
Covid booster. My husband and I both got a booster in March…celebrated how easy it is to do at our pharmacy. We both have managed to never have Covid.
Loess Bluffs National Wildlife Refuge. Celebrating snow geese and swans…and all the other birds at the refuge.
Orchids. The Missouri Botanical Gardens (St. Louis) Orchid Show is quite a celebration of flowers. It will probably become an early spring tradition for us from now on!
Volunteer opportunities. I am celebrating that there are so many great volunteer opportunities…lots of variety which I will continue to explore this year.
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!
We took two road trips over the past month --- opportunities to observe Missouri geology along the roadsides! My copy of Roadside Geology to Missouri has been a good reference.
The first was from our home near Springfield MO to St. Louis. Interstate 44 dominates the route and there are plenty of roadcuts first on the Springfield Plateau then the slightly lower Salem Plateau…finally down the northeastern flank of the Ozark Dome close to St. Louis. Our day trip was on a sunny day, so it was easy to take pictures.
One of the most interesting road cuts is at the north side of the rest stop near mile marker 235. The Roadside Geology book says – “Tilted blocks of Pennsylvanian sandstone and shale….are part of a down-dropped block of rocks along a fault zone or a filled-sink structure, or perhaps both.” I took pictures from the south side of the road as we were going toward St. Louis
And then one as we passed by on the return.
We noticed caves and state parks along the way and are planning a ‘field trip’ in April to see some of those.
The second was from our home near Springfield MO to Loess Bluffs National Wildlife Refuge near Mound City MO. The route took us from the Springfield Plateau to the Salem Plateau…then the Osage Plains as we turned toward Kansas City and crossed the Missouri River…finally to the Glaciated Plains of Northern Missouri. The day was sunny, making photographs of road cuts as my husband drove possible. I even got two pictures of the roadcut near out home as we set out!
The road cuts were less pronounced as we got further along…and more crumbly. On a botanical note – the sycamores are easy to spot this time of year.
I was so busy photographing overpasses and the bridge at Kansas City that I didn’t realize the bridge was over the Missouri River!
The Loess Bluffs (in this case roadcuts) look very different than the roadcuts further south. The loess here is from the edges of glaciers of the last ice age. Plants sometime can take root…but often sluff off and the loess is revealed again.
And then we reversed toward home.
Previous Missouri Geology posts
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!
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.
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!
Over the past month, the online geology course I am taking has proceeded with 4 more chapters of the textbook, an added role-playing activity on flooding, and a field trip being scheduled for early April! So far, the most thought-provoking chapter has been on water pollution. It is a topic I’ve learned about over a period of years but having a well-organized chapter tie everything I know together was almost overwhelming. The moves to reduce efforts to improve or preserve water quality at the Federal level while I was reading the chapter made the challenges we face near term and into the future even more troubling.
In the lab, there were sedimentary and metamorphic rocks to look at and then some different kinds of labs…looking a cross sections and oceanography. I skipped one of the labs because it was raining, and I decided I didn’t want to be out and about – a benefit of being a retired person. I took pictures of the rocks we looked at in the lab and made ‘flashcards’ for myself to help me learn to recognize them. Of course – the HCl test and scratch plates are also needed for identification too.
I met my daughter for lunch after most of the lab sessions before heading back home.
Copyright © 2025, Gwen Morrison. All rights reserved.
Celebrating the whole of life....
Thanks for visiting my blog! Enjoy the photo picks from last month:
Copyright © 2024, Gwen Morrison. All rights reserved.
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