Shaw Nature Reserve (1)

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My daughter and I made our first visit to the Shaw Nature Reserve last week. I had ordered some native plants to be picked up during the Fall Wildflower Market. We arrived shortly after noon, before the market started, which gave us ample time for a short hike in the Whitmire Wildflower Garden and along the Bush Creek Trail. After checking in at the visitor center (using my Friends of the Springfield (MO) Botanical Gardens for entrance) and getting a token to open the gate to the reserve’s Pinetum Loop Road, we drove all the way around the loop. We stopped to walk out to the Crecent Knoll Overlook. Thistles were one plant that was blooming.

The vegetation was thick with a variety of plants. We stayed on the trails to avoid picking up ticks and sticky seeds! I used my optical zoom to photograph some spheres on the back of a leaf. Galls?

After completing the loop, we parked near the northern trailhead for the Brush Creek Trail. A tree had been cut into sections near the trail (probably after it had fallen on the trail. The saw marks make it difficult to count the rings.

Some of the areas are limestone glades where the plants don’t grow as densely. I noted a very weathered piece of limestone.

The only insect I photographed intentionally was a grasshopper that was not much over an inch long. I was pleased that I managed to focus on it! Will it mature enough to lay eggs before winter?

There was a sculpture among some of the fall wildflowers!

There was an area that had a lot of new-growth ferns. I enjoy photographing fiddleheads. It always seems miraculous that they start out so tightly packed…and unfurl into large fronds!

The persimmons were not ripe yet…but I was thrilled to recognize the bark and fruit (with the sign to confirm the id).

There were several kinds of fungus we saw on the hike as well. Lichen (yes there is algae there too, but I am lumping it with the fungus,

Shelf fungus,

And 2 kinds of mushrooms. The first reminded me of vanilla wafers.

There were 2 groups of the second kind. They were very close to the trail and it looked like someone had kicked the parts of the clump closest to the trail (why do people do that?). These reminded me of small crepes!

Stay tuned for more from our hike at Shaw Nature Reserve in tomorrow’s post.

Gleanings of the Week Ending May 27, 2023

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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.

See the Breathtaking Ocean Life Found at Deep-Sea Vents – A short video is included…worth watching.

Exploring the underground connection between trees – Trees, fungi, and other organisms…all interdependent but not guided by a common purpose.

Vibrant Fungi Photos Capture the Beauty of Nature and Nostalgic Memories of Foraging for Mushrooms – Images to savor.

Traces of a Neolithic Road Discovered in the Adriatic Sea – Stacked stone slabs that connected a settlement to a man-made island…now under water.

Shifting sand spits – Gauging climate change in a high-altitude watershed.

Air pollution from oil and gas production responsible for $77 billion in annual US health damages, contributes to thousands of early deaths, childhood asthma cases nationwide – Another reason to dramatically reduce the burning of fossil fuels. It’s not just about climate change.

An ‘Epidemic’ of Loneliness Threatens Health of Americans – A mounting problem. Social disconnection has multiple types of cost: economic, health, poorer academic achievement/work performance.

The ocean is hotter than ever: what happens next? – Probably more extreme weather and marine heatwaves…problems for marine life from corals to whales.

Cleanup of inactive Gulf of Mexico wells estimated at $30 billion – The life cycle costs of the fossil fuel industry are much greater than we’ve ever paid (i.e. we haven’t generally paid for clean up costs as part of the cost of fossil fuel based products)…the bill will eventually have to be paid.

Photography In the National Parks: The Invitation of An Intimate Composition – Good tips for more than National Parks! It’s a special kind of landscape photography!

Gleanings of the Week Ending December 3, 2022

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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.

Drought hit large portion of the globe in 2021, state of water report says – Bad news for water: the negative trends are stronger than the positive ones.

Bloating common among Americans – I am so glad I discovered that I was lactose intolerant; it’s been relatively easy to change my diet to avoid bloating completely!

Do students really eat that badly? – Yes and no…and alcohol plays a negative role.

Fungi that cause lung infections may be spreading across the US – Infection causing soil fungi Histoplasma, Coccidioides, and Blastomyces – evidently the diseases are more widespread now than in the 1950s!

White House unveils its holiday décor, including 77 trees and ‘We the People’ theme – Getting in the mood for December celebrations!

From Patches to Pies, Illinois Knows Pumpkins – A little pumpkin history…and a satellite image (NASA’s Landsat 8’s Operational Land Imager) from after the pumpkins are harvested.

Cranberry bogs in Plymouth County – A satellite image of production of another seasonal food: cranberries! Massachusetts supplies about 25% of the cranberries grown in the US (outpaced only by Wisconsin). The cranberry bogs look pink/red in the natural-color image at the beginning of the article.

We’re told to ‘eat a rainbow’ of fruit and vegetables. Here’s what each colour does in our body – Love the colorful foods!

Effigy Mounds National Monument Becomes a Tribal Sister Park To Ioway Tribal National Park – A new type of agreement….hoping it is a good one for everyone.

How to be a sustainable parent – It’s hard since the most easily obtained products are obviously not and there are no pre-defined alternatives that are more sustainable…aside from buying second hand (i.e. reuse) whenever possible.

Gleanings of the Week Ending October 15, 2022

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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.

Previously deployed military personnel show retained dust in lungs – The lingering impact of deployments in Afghanistan and Iraq.

As Rio Grande shrinks, El Paso plans for uncertain water future – Preparing for a year when there is no river water. Elephant Butte Reservoir that stores water for Las Cruces NM and El Paso TX, where I went on a birding field trip in November 2016, is currently at 5.6% of its capacity. So far – nothing has resolved the water insecurity of the region into the future.

Watercolor seas in the wake of Hurricane Ian – The impact of water surging and running off…natural-color imagery from NASA’s Terra satellite. There is also an image from the European Space Agency’s Sentinel-2 satellite detailing the coastline near Fort Myers.

Solar Community Slammed by Hurricane Ian: “Our Lights Stayed On” – And another Hurricane story…this one from the ground – Babcock Ranch, about 2 miles from Fort Myers.

Pre-Hispanic images revealed on early convent walls in Mexico – Hmmm….the building was not always a Christian convent?

Has the pandemic changed your personality? – Declines in extroversion, openness, agreeableness, and conscientiousness among adults were measured…particularly in young adults (ages 18-25). I found myself wondering whether the political upheaval that was happening at the same time contributed to the finding; the collective stress levels were probably heightened by more than the pandemic.

A field guide to Jackrabbits – An animal to look for in the west….next time I travel there.

Multiple health benefits of b-type procyanidin-rich foods like chocolate and apples consumed in right amounts – The study showed that peak benefits are achieved at mid-range doses rather than high or low doses. But it is not clear how to get the mid-range dose through diet…which made this article interesting but not actionable.

How did Vikings make glass beads? – Evidently by salvaging Roman and Byzantine mosaics as their raw material!

Scientists are finding fungi in cancerous tumors – A surprise…and lots of research still to be done to understand if the fungi are a correlation or contributor to the tumor.

Gleanings of the Week Ending April 23, 2022

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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.

Virologists Identify More Than 5,000 New Viruses in the Ocean – Another indication that we still have a lot to learn about life on our planet.

Top 25 birds of the week: Bird Habitats! – Beautiful birds! I always enjoy seeing photographs…seeing birds I know and some I don’t!

The Jumping Slugs of the Pacific Northwest – A little different than the slugs I’ve seen. These have a vestigial shell on the top of their ‘hump.’ There was a new-to-me skeletal name in the article: slugs have a hydrostatic skeleton!

Aging clocks aim to predict how long you’ll live – Really? The value of the various aging clocks is still TBD.

Wildflower Fungi – This post was from the Master Naturalist group in Springfield MO. I am paying more attention now that I am moving to the area.

Deforestation drives climate change that harms remaining forest – Deforestation causes changes in a regions air temperature and precipitation…instigating changes in the whole region rather than just the part where the forest was removed.

Scientists Identify 50,000th Spider Species on Earth—but Thousands More Are Waiting to Be Discovered – It’s humbling to realize that there is so much about our world that we don’t know….have not discovered.

Amid Hopes and Fears, a plastic boom in Appalachia is on hold – Another sad trend in Appalachia…still hitching their future to fossil fuels. The jobs look good but the long-term jobs are few and the market for their products is not a positive one. Everyone wants to reduce single use plastics as much as possible.

Study suggests tree-filled spaces are more favorable to child development than paved or grassy surfaces – Playgrounds need more trees!

Germany’s Nature Society Crowns the 2022 Nature Photographer of the Year – The first picture is of a male kestrel. That caught my attention…and then I browsed the rest of the photos.

Yard Work

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The yard work seems to never be finished. My goal is to spend a morning hour every other day catching up. The front flowed beds are the first phase. The milkweed is looking awful and the day lily leaves need to be cut since they are turning yellow. I learned last year that trimming the day lily leaves back causes the plant to grow fresh leaves that last until frost. It probably reduces the bulb growth underground, but the deer take so many of the flowers that producing more bulbs is not my priority.

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On the first morning, I cut or trimmed the most aphid infested milkweed and about 1/3 of the day lily leaves. I discovered it was slower going since I wanted to leave the black eyed susans (the deer eat them but maybe not quite as much as the day lily flowers).

The second morning, I continued working on the rest of the bed. There were still a lot of day lily leaves to go.

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I use a wheelbarrow as my measure for each day – my goal it to fill it up. It wasn’t that difficult although it was only another 1/3 of the flower bed! I took the load back to the compost pile; it covered the kitchen scraps I had taken out before I started.

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On the way back up the hill, I stopped to photograph some tiny orange fungus in the grass (I’ll check on them in the next few days…see if they become mushrooms) and a moth which I though was a leaf at first.

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And then there were the milkweed bugs on one of the plants that I chose to leave up in the flower bed.

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Now to find a third morning to finish off the work in the flower bed…and move on to the next flowerbed/bush trimming on my list. It won’t be tomorrow since the forecast is for all day rain from Tropical Storm Isaias.

I’m getting more accomplished on the flower beds now that I’ve settled on the wheelbarrow metric and planning to be out for only an hour. I am not an enthusiastic gardener, but I do want the flower beds to look a lot better than they do right now and am psyched to get there an hour at a time. I am hopeful that I’ll get to a point that I can take off an occasional day (or not get too far behind if the weather does not cooperate) in the next few weeks. The other change I’ve made is to wear my river (field trip) boots; they take away my excuse that the foliage it too wet!

We are at home so much right now that there is no excuse to not have the yard it great shape.

Unique Activities for Yesterday:

Watermelon. We ate our first watermelon from the CSA this season. It was small enough to eat in one sitting for my husband and I. It was yellow (rather than red) and had seeds….but we both enjoyed it tremendously. I’d love to get one of the big red melon with seeds that I remember from my childhood but it seems like they aren’t grown very much anymore.

Mycology Class Remnants

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Way back in the 1970s when I was working on my undergraduate degree in Biology, I took a mycology (study of fungi) class. It was one of the most memorable upper level courses in my undergraduate work…but it’s been a long time. The textbook, lab book and spiral notebooks are long gone. When I was cleaning out the basement (continuing projects during the ‘stay at home as much as possible’ strategy to avoid COVID-19), I found remnants of the course: some black and white negatives in protective sleeves – unlabeled. As soon as I looked at them, I knew they were microphotographs of the microscope slides I made during the mycology lab even though I don’t remember which species they are (some are penicillium species).

The negatives were somewhat deteriorated – maybe they were never crisply focused. I scanned them with my Epson V600 Photo Scanner then clipped the best portions of some of the frames and colored them blue in Microsoft Powerpoint. They have an abstract art look.

I remember that in the lab we inoculated growth medium (agar and other types), let the fungus grow onto the glass…then stained the fungus (methylene blue, I think) to make the filaments and fruiting structures and spores appear blue under the microscope. I would love to take a mycology lab course again….and take lots of pictures!

Smartphone Nature Photography – part 2

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Continuing from yesterday’s post….

Identification. Sometimes I take a lot of photos so I can identify something later. This was the case with these caterpillars. They were devouring dogwood plants at Brookside Gardens last summer. They remind me of lemon bars (yellow custard underneath powdered sugar). I defaulted to thinking they were a moth or butterfly larvae…but they turned out to be a dogwood sawfly larvae!

Stories. Some pictures tell a story. If you are aware at the time…make sure you take the pictures of the whole story. This Achemon Sphinx Moth was discovered by summer campers going out between rain showers during a nature photography activity. Moths are more active at night and usually are hiding in foliage during the day. This one was on the ground and twitching. I knew from experience in the Brookside Gardens Wings of Fancy exhibit that it had probably been bitten by a spider. We took our pictures and left it where it was. I regret that I was too busy helping campers to keep my camera at the ready to shoot the moth being pulled between two rocks – presumably by the spider that never did make itself visible.

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Insects. Insects can be very fast moving and difficult to photograph no matter what camera you have. They often are slow or immobile when it is cooler. Cool mornings are good to find cicadas – silent and still…but maybe not dead. Butterflies can be under leaves roosting if it’s cool…or it is dusk and they are seeking a place to spend the night. Then there are masses of milkweed bugs that are prevalent in the fall. They are moving but there are so many that it’s easy enough to get a good number; I always try to figure out how many instars are shown in the same picture.

And sometimes it is just luck. This blue morpho sat on my wrist while I was at the exit of last summer’s butterfly exhibit at Brookside Gardens. I had my phone on the lanyard so was able to pull it out and one-hand the phone to take the picture.

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Specimens. There are nature photography shots that might be of specimens rather than out in the field. The shot of the blue morpho wing was from a specimen that had died using the 15x macro lens. I’ll try the 60x next summer. I included the label in the picture of the dogwood tree cookie…for documentation; I liked the irregularity of the rings.

Wet day color. Sometimes a rainy-day hike is a good thing. The color of fungus is often more intense on these days – and the phone handles the raindrops better than more traditional cameras.

Light. Sometimes an image is made by something special about the light – spotlighted ferns, the shadowing of a sectioned Nautilus shell, a sunrise.

Clipping. Because the camera only has a digital zoom, I often take the picture without zooming then make a clip after I get home. In the example below – the two butterflies (tiger swallowtail and male monarch) are clearly identifiable even though the clip has a painterly look.

So – go out and take some pictures! The only blooms we have outdoors right now are the witch hazels. There are other winter opportunities too: tracks in the snow (or mud), seed pods, snow landscapes, and ice crystals. And maybe a squirrel will be close enough and still enough….

Shelf Fungus

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There were several tree trunks/branches thick with shelf fungus that I photographed last Friday during my muddy hike in the Middle Patuxent Environmental Area). The first was a tree standing by the river – exposed roots holding it right on the edge. There were at least three different kinds of fungus on the trunk.

Perhaps seeing that tree made me more observant as we hiked further along the along the loom of the South Wind Trail. I spotted some bright orange fungus on some fallen branches beside the path. The color jumped out – a contrast with the greens and browns on the forest floor.

With all the rain we’ve been getting – there are quite a few fungi around…and they are fresh enough to be brightly colored. They are fun to find and photograph. Exact identification is frustrating for most of them, so I am lumping these as ‘shelf fungus’!

Gleanings of the Week Ending August 11, 2018

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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.

Chemists characterize the fatal fungus among us -- ScienceDaily – Aspergillus fumigatus is deadly to people with compromised immune systems. It affects more than 200,000 people annually including 25% of all leukemia patients – killing half of them. Understanding more about the organism may enable better screening and treatment.

 Learning from ‘little monsters’ -- ScienceDaily – Research on macroinvertabrates. Since I volunteer for field trips with schools to streams and rivers to sample these critters – I read anything that comes up in ScienceDaily about them.

How Rising Seas Could Threaten the Internet - Yale E360 – Within the next 15 years, 4,67 miles of fiber conduit and 1,101 notes in the US are expected to be underwater. New York, Miami and Seattle will be the most effected.

Earthtime.org -- Visualizing the Impact of Humanity | CleanTechnica – Three very short videos…about earth’s temperature over the past 137 years, the more recent time sequence of wind turbine installation in Europe and solar installations in the US.

Pic for Today – Point and Shoot Photographer -  Nature photography with a point and shoot camera. I subscribed so I get the picture and short description with my news feeds every day.

Allergy clinic finds large percentage of anaphylaxis cases from tick bite meat allergy: Increased awareness, more available testing led to 33 percent of cases identified as alpha gal allergy -- ScienceDaily – Wow! This is not good. Lyme Disease is serious but not anaphylaxis serious. We’re going to have get even better at avoiding tick bites.

AGU and AAS: Working Together to Expand the Understanding of Exoplanets - From the Prow - AGU Blogosphere – There seem to be more areas where we are acknowledging that interdisciplinary approaches are needed. The old lines of specialty can be limiting.

Hollow trees host massive moth slumber parties -- ScienceDaily –black idia moths in Florida are found in roosting in hollow trees during the day (they are active at night like most moths). The post didn’t identify the species but there are black idia moths in Maryland. I am going to start looking more carefully in hollow trees when I’m hiking although it’s already close to the end of the season.

Great Fall-Blooming Plants for Pollinators - The National Wildlife Federation Blog – The fall-blooming plants are not just for bees…they help the butterflies too!

Free Technology for Teachers: Take a Look at Microsoft’s Free Hands-on STEM Lesson Plans and Projects – I am going to take a look at these…see if there are any that could be easily incorporated into field trip conversations this fall.

Gleanings of the Week Ending December 16, 2017

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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.

Switching Jobs | FlowingData – How often do people change jobs and what kind of job to they move to. In the field I was in (computer mathematical), almost 70% stay in the field. I certainly did for the duration of my 40 year career.

You’ve Seen the Washington Monument. Now See the Other Washington Monuments | Smart News | Smithsonian – A little history.

Top 25 Wild Bird Photographs of the Week #117 – National Geographic Society – I always enjoy the weekly collection of bird pictures.

Autonomous Driving Levels 0–5 + Implications | CleanTechnica – A good reference re autonomous cars. Right now, I have a level 1 car (it has adaptive cruise control). I am hoping that by the time I am very old and want to stop driving that level 5 cars are easily available.

Cataloging Fungal Life in Antarctic Seas | The Scientist Magazine® - Fungi that thrive in extreme conditions…some surprises.

Water-loving cats: Unique Tiger facts – National Geographic Society – I like the last image the best: tigers in the snow.

3 Reasons Why California’s Fire Risk Won’t Dampen Anytime Soon - NPR – I was interested in this article but it didn’t answer the question that I thought it would: In areas where fires are burning now – are they reducing the ‘fuel’ enough that fires will not burn again for a long time…and could we develop techniques to maintain that reduction in ‘fuel’ (i.e. dead wood, brush) without damaging the ecosystem.

In Luxor, Two Tombs Dating Back 3,500 Years Unveil Their Secrets | Smart News | Smithsonian – There seem to be more finds in Egypt recently – but will they be enough to draw tourists back to the region?

The Secret in the Sand Dunes – Cool Green Science – Midway Beach survived Sandy…because they pay a lot of attention to maintaining their dunes --- including after-season Christmas trees to provide structure to dunes…catching sand.

Common psychological traits in group of Italians aged 90 to 101 -- ScienceDaily - Study finds group displays distinct optimism, stubbornness and bond with family, religion and land

Monitoring Conservation Easements

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This December is my first experience volunteering to do the annual monitoring of conservation easements for the Howard County Conservancy. I went to a training back in September and then ‘shadowed’ an experienced monitor visiting 2 easements in November. In December, I was ready to monitor 2 easements with a cohort that was doing it for the first time as well.  The owners were notified by Howard County Conservancy that we would be monitoring on a particular day and the weather cooperated for both days – dry and not overly cold. The first property was mostly forest and the hike around the property was different than my usual hike since there were no well-defined trails; deer trails or picking a path through the briars (glad we were doing this in December when it was cold enough to wear heavy pants to protect my legs from thorns). It was a wonderful early winter ‘walk in the woods.’

The land was crossed by a stream that feeds into the Patuxent River. We had one stream crossing over a culvert but made another stepping on rocks; it was good that it had not rained recently. Most of the trees were native…but there was a substantial clump of bamboo growing on one streambank.

The land was easier to see with the leaves on the ground. As usual, I noticed fungi.

There was an odd holly-like plant as part of the understory. The leaves looked like holly but the top did not.

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At the end of the walk, I rejoiced that the property owner had made the effort to make it a conservation easement and that it was about that same as it had been in previous years.

The second easement was entirely different: surrounded by housing developments and an active farm/golf related business rather than forest. The business was about the same as it had been in the previous year…but there was a change at the farm: a guard dog. The dog did not appear immediately, but no one was home. We could tell that there had been some earth moving going on upslope from the stream that starts on the farm and eventually flows into the Patuxent River. If a heavy rain came – a lot of soil would slump down into the stream. The dog appeared…and we decided to gracefully retreat without completing our check of the easement. The monitoring will have to be done when the owner or their representative can be there. It was a rattling experience, but we enjoyed a hefty morning snack with hot tea/latte to recover!

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Belmont BioBlitz – Fall 2017 (Part II)

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The second day of BioBlitz, the area my group was assigned had some native trees planted as landscaping (one was just beginning to display it fall colors) and long row of white pines. We found mushrooms under the pines; one of the chaperones used the clip on macro lens to photograph underneath the bright yellow mushroom (with the phone in selfie mode).

Of course there were insects and small flowers too….with pinecones to examine while we were enjoying the shade under the pines before heading to the front of the manor house for their picnic lunch.

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The third day of BioBlitz, my group was in the woods. We found several types of fungi growing on rotting wood.

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Millipedes seemed to be everywhere. We talked about taking a video as we watched how their legs moved in ‘waves’ to push them forward.

And then there were lots of small insects we tried to capture in the magnifiers so we could get good pictures!

This was probably the best Belmont Bioblitz I’ve participated in: the weather cooperated (dry and not too hot) and the 5th graders were enthusiastic observers!