theater, natural history and conservation, the utterly mundane, and Etruscan 8-tracks
A splendid time was had by Mason & Bailey Club Auxiliary participants in a joint field trip/going away get-together for yours truly, meeting on 18 March. We walked a loop from Peirce Mill to Pulpit Rock and paused for a snap by A.
In addition to the spring ephemerals that I had scouted earlier in the day, K found a sessile trillium about to bloom (either Trillium sessile or T. cuneatum—I’m in dialogue with some iNatters).
Nancy Vehrs led a walk at Conway Robinson State Forest, a new site for me. The 440 acres of woods are near Manassas National Battlefield Park, but not contiguous to it, and they will soon be boxed in by development on all four sides.
Once you walk north and cross through the zone where bedrock crops out, the flora really pops as you descend the slope to Little Bull Run. Round-leaved Hepatica (Hepatica americana) and Bloodroot (Sanguinaria canadensis) were easy to find. At the run, Virginia Bluebells (Mertensia virginica) were going to town.
The walk back up the hill was a bit of a puff, especially at the end of the day.
Bonus herp for the trip was a Dekay’s Brownsnake (Storeria dekayi).
This week’s update:
Steady as she goes: Box #62 has a full or nearly full clutch, but is not being incubated yet. The hen on Box #4 did not flush, so we can figure that she’s incubating. Box #67 now has 6 eggs. We did some maintenance work on Boxes #7, #84, and #3.
We visited two Triassic Basin sites in Fauquier County, on a trip led by Clifton Institute staffers Andrew Eberly and Bridget Bradshaw. No pix of living things to post to iNat, so the pix are Flick embeds today!
At the Institute, Andrew gave a quick geology refresher. I have trouble remembering that felsic rocks are low in iron (that “fe” is for feldspar) and it’s the mafic rocks that are high in iron and magnesium.
First road stop was an outcrop of Newark Supergroup siltstone on the shore of Germantown Lake in C. M. Crockett Park. Andrew demonstrated that the dip of the outcrop is about 15°.
The siltstone fractures easily, but not cleanly.
We then moved farther south, to Kelly’s Ford on the Rappahannock River. This site is part of the C. F. Phelps WMA.
The siltstone here has been metamorphosed into something much harder to break, and the stone is much darker.
Bedding is clearer in this photo.
We didn’t stop for pix of the blooming Early Saxifrage and Cut-leaf Toothworth, but you are likely to see these in my iNaturalist feed soon.
And a second field trip with Natalie Howe, with Tom McCoy riding shotgun. We entered Patuxent Research Refuge’s North Tract (that sign for Bald Eagle Road is easy to miss), signed in (apparently the complicated waivers about unexploded ordnance are a thing of the past), and covered a good 100m, maybe 150m, on the Forest Trail—followed by a short drive to the Hopkins Cemetery enclave on the refuge.
We found a little something that I so wanted to turn into a myxomycete, but iNat’s AI suggests a fungus, Phleogena faginea.
It takes a little gumption to accept that your field ID of most lichens is only going to get you to genus. We looked at a Lecanora, many different Cladonias (and), a Pyxine (get the UV flashlight!), and a Canoparmelia. We were pretty confident that we had a bit of Graphis scripta, as well as Lepraria finkii and Flavoparmelia baltimorensis (most of these IDs are still pending confirmation on iNat).
The Hopkins Cemetery offers a big drift of Cladonia reindeer lichen in relatively undisturbed turf.
Lichenologists in action, checking out the Cladonia.
The report from last Sunday:
We have a clutch of eggs already incubating in box #5! As well, we have new Wood Duck eggs in two boxes, and evidence of roosting in three more boxes.
We added spring hook-and-eye closures (says safety gate hook & eye on the package) to three boxes. B. and crew will bring materials and tools for some upgrades to the boxes on the main wetland next Sunday. In particular, we lost the wingnut closing box #7, so we will rig up an alternate closure….
Danke schön! Remember that DST kicks in Sunday morning.
The view from just downstream of Boulder Bridge.
Just in case you find yourself lost in Rock Creek Park and need to find the Netherlands Embassy right away.
In my newly copious unscheduled time, I’ve been working with Margaret Chatham on invasives removal at Fraser Preserve, at the tippy-top north end of the county. Last week and today we focused on turning Rosa multiflora stems into brush piles. The snow didn’t slow us down much, but my dogs did get a bit frosty.
I can now report from firsthand knowledge that the Silver Line does indeed go to Ashburn, via IAD.
Yesterday I retired, after eight great years at NPR. Some looks from last walks around the building (sorry, no pix from the newsroom).
New buildings have gone up; you can no longer see the top of the Washington Monument from the 4th floor terrace.
New books! But I really need to catch up on my Goodreads notes.
Better late than never, one pic from the Mason & Bailey Club walk in the Boundary Bridge area of Rock Creek Park, back on Labor Day weekend. We did spot an Ovenbird.
A few snaps and reports from this year’s Virginia Master Naturalist Program Statewide Conference and Volunteer Training, based in Virginia Beach.
I took a walk on my own at First Landing State Park. I found Downy Rattlesnake Plaintain (Goodyera pubescens) in fruit and a local specialty, American Olive (Cartrema americana) (formerly genus Osmanthus), in fruit. Some Spanish Moss. Otherwise, there’s not a lot of variety in this loblolly woods. Target practice at nearby Fort Story was momentarily alarming.
In fact, there are few natural places in Tidewater Virginia that are far from some sort of military installation. I don’t know that I learn to filter out the noise from the fighter jets.
On Friday, a group visited Great Dismal Swamp National Wildlife Refuge. I got a clear look at one of our up-and-coming non-native invasives, Murdannia keisak—the flowers are itty-bitty. But the real prize of this trip was found by Margaret C. and others in the group: Waterspider Bog Orchid (Habenaria repens), not well attested in Virginia.
We did some mushrooming at Norfolk Botanical Garden. Small surprise: it began as a WPA project! There is a Japanese Garden that I would like to come back to visit. Saturday’s entomology workshop was cancelled, so we visited Virginia Tech’s Hampton Roads AREC (Agricultural Research and Extension Center). Blackberries and kiwis in the research plots. Mason’s Famous Lobster Rolls for dinner—maybe not an authentic recipe, but very tasty.
Sunday’s birding trip to Magothy Bay NAP was a bit of a bust, with only a couple flights of White Ibis appearing. I was informed that the local (Virginia) pronunciation is ma-GOE-thee, but Marylanders say MAG-uh-thee. I may have to break the news to the rest of the state.
On my dilatory way home, I swung south into Ashe County, North Carolina and a visit to Bluff Mountain Preserve. Bluff Mountain is but one of the ridgelines protected by the Nature Conservancy in this area. According to my guide Susan, the mountain offers a rare high-elevation mafic bedrock, with an endemic reindeer lichen species on the outcrops. In addition, ten acres of wetland comprise a fen; there’s an Eastern Hemlock woods; and a rather nice meadow. The New River provides drainage, so I had crossed back from the Tennessee River basin to the Ohio.
We spent just a quarter of an hour or so at the fen, but I zeroed in on something unusual that turned out to be Sticky False Asphodel (Triantha glutinosa), a species of conservation concern. Nearby, Susan pointed out Canada Burnet (Sanguisorba canadensis) and Smooth Yellow False Foxglove (Aureolaria flava). We found lots of interesting mushrooms popping up along the trail (it had rained recently), but with only three hours up on top of the mountain, we didn’t have much time to dawdle.
Logistics for this tour were a little unsettled until the day, and there was more climbing from the parking lot than we had planned on, but it was a good hike. Next time I’ll wave my “I’m a donor” flag more loudly; we crossed paths with a donors’ tour on our way up the mountain.
Southeast from my base of operations in Abingdon, two walks in Grayson Highlands State Park.
From the visitor center, the Twin Pinnacles Trail is maybe only 55 meters of elevation change, but there’s a fair amount of up and down. The scramble down from Big Pinnacle was a bit tricky.
I liked the shelter/rest stations along the way, at least two of them marked as scout projects. Thank you, scouts!
Spruces at the skyline show some flagging.
The walk was a little easier going down, 2:20 for the loop.
I found patches of Appalachian White Snakeroot (Ageratina roanensis or A. altissima var. roanensis, depending on your authority), a mystery goldenrod at the Little Pinnacle summit, a mystery whorled composite, and a mystery bryophyte.
A younger me would have tried the walk from Big Pinnacle to Massie Gap, but the prudent present me drove back to Massie Gap for an afternoon loop that used about 3/4 mile of the Appalachian Trail along Wilburn RIdge. I walked the Maine-bound direction; I wasn’t overtaken by any spry through-hikers, but there were some folks to say hello to going the other direction. The AT here is fairly level, a rhododendron thicket with random unmarked side trails and more spruce.
Some fairly large vaccinium shrubs. About 85 meters of elevation change, 2:20 for the loop.