The zoomed images are more familiar things list month. See how many of them you recognize (click on the image to see an enlarged version of the collage).
Grackle and chives bud
Horse chestnut and paulownia (princess tree) flowers
Sweet bay bud, chives (further along their bloom cycle than the first image), tulip poplar flowers
Toad, lacewing, grass with heavy dew
Mourning doves, strawberries, iris flower
I saw a story about a large radio telescope being built in China recently and it reminded me of the one in Puerto Rico – Arecibo. My husband was there in September 1978 – just a few months after he went to Wallops and Chincoteague. It was all part of his first years as a graduate student. The trip he made to Arecibo was the longest travel-for-work either of us ever did and we were a little discombobulated by it; looking back I wonder why I didn’t take the opportunity to take some vacation and see Puerto Rico; I suppose that we were so unsure of our financial situation that we didn’t even think about it. He brought back a lot of photographs of the place. Look closely at this first picture and note the people on the structure (upper left) and in a small enclosure evidently hoisted to allow work on the structure (center).
There are some pictures of 1978 vintage computers.
Then the view looking down to the dish at an angle
And to the very center.
Underneath the vegetation is kept at bay.
At that time – I had never seen variegated croton. My husband brought back pictures and some dried leaves as a souvenir.
I noticed a mourning dove with a sheen on his neck feathers and immediately wondered if maybe there would be dove pair mating on our deck railing like we’ve had for at least twice this spring already.
He fluffed his feathers and strutted. He lifted and spread his tail feathers as he preened while a female looked on. At first the female seemed interested. She approached but then sat down on the railing. The male continued to show off his plumage. He tried grooming the female but she continued to sit although she did groom him a little – not very enthusiastically. Then she moved away. The male seemed surprised and looked around to determine where she went but she had already flown much further away.
Earlier this week I spent the day with 1st graders in Patapsco Valley State Park. They were releasing fish they had raised at their school into the river. There was a ‘field day’ planned around the release and the activity I helped with was looking for macroinvertebrates in the river.
There was a nice pebble beach and gentle slope a little way into river although the current further out was swift due to all the recent rain. The water had run off enough that some pools had separated from the main channel. Our gear was simple: seine nets, strainers, ice cube trays, plastic tubs and jars, magnifiers, and pictures of macroinvertebrates we were likely to find.
The view in the other direction shows the sticks we put into the river to mark the area the 1st graders were allowed.
The day started out cool but warmed up enough that no one complained about being in the water.
Across the river, some geese with goslings decided to go further upstream before entering river rather than encountering the students.
We did find hellgrammites which are an indicator that the river is clean enough to support ‘sensitive’ macroinvertebrates – a good sign for the fish being released as well.
One of the stations on the 6th grade field trip to Belmont is at the cemetery not far from the Manor House. It was my station earlier this week; I walked out early to get everything set. The cemetery is situation on a gentle slope at the edge of the forest. Looking toward the Manor House, the trees on the grounds are large enough to almost hide the house. The cemetery was used by the family that owned the land from the late 1700s until the mid-1900s.
The longest lived person in the cemetery was 95 years old…and a relatively recent burial.
There was a baby that only survived a few weeks. The cemetery prompts discussion of history…of health care. There are also other topics. Note the difference in weathering of the stones between the one from 1922 and the one from 1972; the newer one (1972) looks more weathered --- different types of stones --- geology.
Another stone toward the back – a child 2 years old with a different last name than any other person in the cemetery. This child was a visitor from Baltimore that died at Belmont and buried in the cemetery in 1834. Her grandfather was Francis Scott Key – another link to history. This grave is toward the back and appears to be isolated but a survey with ground penetrating radar found graves in the open area in the center of the cemetery --- bringing up technology and archaeology.
Lichen growing on a stone that is old enough to be so weathered it cannot be easily read brings up biology and how rock is chemically weathered by the algal/fungi symbionts.
The very large (and old) Tulip Poplar tree just outside the cemetery’s fence is also something the students noticed.
The buses were 20+ minutes later than expected so I had time for some bird observation as well. The blue birds, robins, and tree swallows were enjoying the mowed grass area in front of the cemetery.
Other posts about volunteering at Belmont this month:
I volunteered for several field trips in May at the Howard Country Conservancy’s Mt. Pleasant Farm – but only managed to take pictures the morning I spent with some middles schoolers engaged in ‘service learning’ which translates to cutting or pulling invasive species. It was a cool, cloudy day like much of our May has been. The Honors Garden gate was open as I walked by – the fountain was on and the garden looked well-tended.
I noticed the old pump – now disconnected but still in its originally location.
The flower pot people were dressed in spring finery.
The wagon shed has a display explaining tree rings but I’ve also become quite familiar with the space since it is ‘cover’ when the day as become rainy – a frequent occurrence this field trip season.
And then this odd gall in a cedar. I did a quick search for it when a got home. It looks like a cedar apple rust gall.
By the time I took these few pictures it was time to get focused on the business for the morning – the wheelbarrows for each group were full of tools, 
the left glove and right glove bins were positioned. I got the tutorial on recognizing the plants we were to remove. And then the buses arrived!
We worked for a couple of hours. Honey suckle and wine berry were the most dominate in the area my group was assigned. We cut and unwrapped honey suckle from a small tree – saving it from being strangled and suffocated by the vine. Everyone worked on cutting wine berry to the ground and trying not to grip it to tightly since the fine tips of the thorns sometimes penetrated the gloves. The pile of culled invasives was pretty high when we finished and the students went off to have their picnic lunch – a job well done.
I’ve been scanning our collection of old slides and will be posting about some of my ‘finds.’ This post is about the first exposure to Chincoteague and Wallops Island. My husband – in the early days of grad school – went on a research trip there in May of 1978 and stayed at the Refuge Inn (still our favorite place to stay). The picture of the pony corral from an upper floor of the Inn looks about the same – dated only by the cars in the parking lot.
Growing up in north Texas – the ocean scenes were new to him. The research was a collaborative effort with the Russians and they were based on a research vessel off the coast which added to the experiences. One trip out to the Russian vessel resulting in my husband’s camera getting sprayed with salt water; it never recovered fully and he started his collection of Canon cameras with the following year.
Pictures of nature are relatively timeless. There are still egrets, water, and grasses,
Gulls (and unfortunately discarded tires),
And my husband and I still try to photograph the birds in flight. He succeeded with an egret in 1978! I was surprised that there were no pictures of Great Blue Herons from 1978. Did he just not notice them….or were there not as many as there are now?
The lighthouse still shows up above the trees although the trees seem higher now.
There are still a lot of radio dishes at Wallops island that can be seen from the road.
Since he was actually on the facility, he got closer views.
He travelled with a lot of instruments. He checked a lot of equipment. He was assigned a small vacant observatory for his set up for the week. This pile was what it looked like after he packed it all back up to come home. I suppose some of the briefcases and luggage date this picture too! The plaid suitcase was one that had been collapsed on the trip up but contained laundry and seashells collected on the Wallops Island beach for the trip home!
The last to be packed: the insect repellent (he still remembers the salt water mosquitoes vividly) and his sunglasses. The packaging for OFF has a familiar look!
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.
Veggies are the beauties this month – in anticipation of the Gorman Farm Community Supported Agriculture starting up the 1st week of June. Two veggies that are available already in pots on my deck or in the front flowerbed are chives and dandelions.
I love the shape of the chive buds when they are still closed and after they open. I simply cut them up with the slim green stems in salads.
My grocery store often has largish bags of baby bok choy for $1.99. They can go into salads or into stir fry – which makes it easy to use them up while they are still crisp. The green and white color combination has always appealed to me. The contrasting smooth and crinkle texture adds to the visual appeal.
And what’s not to like about colorful bell peppers. I buy the organic ones and usually every color except green!
May was the height of the spring school field trip season and three was something to celebrate about all of them –
The preschoolers that earned to recognize red winged blackbirds both by sight and sound
Being remembered by a 2nd grader as his hike leader from last fall (and the hike that followed),
Getting through a very wet field trip with 3rd graders – hiking with umbrellas through the meadow,
The 5th graders on the first Bioblitz day finding a toad near the pool in a formal garden – on their sunny day,
The 5th graders on the second Bioblitz day documenting beetles and trees and slugs and flowers – in the rain making the most of their teams of two or three: one holding the umbrella and the other entering the data into iNaturalist…..and then having their picnic brown bag lunch under the chandeliers in the tent that usually hosts weddings,
And the group of middle schoolers that removed a big pile of invasive plants…..before the rain started!
The trip to Conowingo was worth celebrating. I enjoyed it while I was there and then even more once I looked at my pictures! It helped that we managed to go on a sunny day.
A wildflower talk was worth celebrating for the topic and the ‘new to me’ tidbits sprinkled through the lecture.
I am celebrating a good start to my project to digitize our slides. There are some hidden treasures there!
Another project – cleaning out stuff – is also proceeding well. In this early phase, one of the measurements is how much (paper) is going in the recycle directly or being shredded (and then recycled.
Last week I spent a day volunteering at Belmont for a pre-school field trip. I led an activity about birds – with the children sitting on a blanket and looking out over the meadow. There were 5 groups in all: 3 in the morning and 2 in the afternoon. We talked about birds using pictures of birds on a felt board and feathers (I whooshed a turkey feather through the air and they were surprised at the noise it made!) – but the real show was behind me at the bird feeders and the meadow and a high snag in a tree a little further away.
At the feeders: one group saw a nuthatch, several groups saw the grackle,
And all of them saw red-winged blackbirds.
There were some ‘mystery’ birds at the feeder as well and birds we could hear but not see. But that just made it fun to listen and see how many birds we could hear.
In the meadow, the mourning doves looked for food among the grasses dried from last year and the newly emerging plants. The red tailed hawk was in a high snag across the meadow for all the morning sessions! The afternoon sessions got a fleeting look at the red trailed hawk flying across the meadow and into the woods where we were hiking.
Toward the end of each session we listened to recorded birds sounds. The preschoolers were very tickled to discover that the recorded sound for ‘red-winged blackbird’ matched what they had been hearing all morning!
After checking the front flower beds, I walked around to check out the backyard. The chaos garden needs weeding; the honey suckle is beginning to take over (again). I’ll put it out but leave the fleabane. It’s a weed, but I tolerate it because the small flowers last a long time and add some additional color next to the chives, lemon balm, and mint that I want in the garden.
The Christmas ferns I planted last year survived the winter and may be reproducing! The new fronds are splattered with dirt because the run off from the deck is so violent during heavy rains. If the stand of ferns grows, the muddy area under the deck could reduce the mud and provide some nice greenery that would not need mowing. I’m keeping my fingers crossed. The violets are also doing well under the deck since they thrive in shade.
There was a jack-in-the-pulpit with a drying out bloom in the boundary area between our yard and the forest. I’d put a lot of leaves into the area last fall and was glad to see this forest plant in bloom. I watch to see if it produces the red seeds.
The black walnut is the trey I am trying to watch this spring. The end of each branch sprouts a crown of new growth (stems and leaves) which I always think of as a ‘bad hair’ configuration. The tree is young enough that I only saw one nut on it last year. Maybe there will be more this year – but I imagine they will be well above the deer browse line.
The tulip poplar is full of flowers and buds. These trees are the most common large trees in the forest behind our house.
As I went up the stairs to our deck, I saw a crane fly – still. I left it there after taking photographs from several angles.
The old turtle sandbox on our deck has several dandelion plants that I’ve been harvesting when I need greens for a salad….and there is quite a lot of mint coming up as well.
Overall, the backyard is in pretty good shape. The main weeding work is in the chaos garden. The challenge on the deck it to make sure all the pots are draining adequately and that the bird bath water is changed frequently enough to avoid breeding mosquitos.
Earlier this week, my husband commented that there was an unusual bird on our deck. I looked down from my office window to where I had poured seed into a bowl from the feeder (the seed had gotten a little wet and sprouted). Sure enough – it was a bird different from any I’d seen at our seed on the deck. 
I went downstairs for a better angle. It was gobbling seed. 
It had a lot of blue and then some browner areas. The beak was not chunky enough to be a blue grosbeak (like we’d seen at Chincoteague about this time of year a few years ago). The markings on the side were not the distinctive cinnamon like the grosbeak either.
I continued taking pictures as long as the bird continued eating.
After the bird flew way, I got out my tablet and used the Merlin App and decided it was an
It has appeared at least once more on our deck (probably more since we haven’t been around as much the past few days). Hopefully it will nest nearby and I’ll learn to recognize the female – which is brown with faint streaking on the breast…whitish throat (i.e. a small and hard to distinguish bird).
We made the trek to Conowingo Dam to see Bald Eagles last weekend. There was some action right away – but at about the limit of my Canon Powershot SX710 HS point-and-shot. The images are not as crisp as a photographer with a more expensive camera and big lens...but still good enough to capture behavior. It was entertaining to watch the eagles – many of them juveniles (i.e. without white heads and tails yet).
I got one sequence with an eagle coming into to land near another on already perched on a rock. Notice how the one in the air has extended legs/talons.
The eagle that he is joining appears to be vocalizing (open beak) and still has some white feathers mixed in with the brown – not quite an adult probably.
Note the 6 eagles on the dame abutments (2 adults on the closest one…and 1 adult with 3 juveniles on the far one).
A few minutes later – the adult on the far abutment has moved closer to the other adults. The juveniles are on their own.
The dam did not appear to have all its turbines in operation so there were not as many stunned fish around for the eagles. Cormorants would fly up close to the spillway and then float down river getting fish along the way.
I saw a few Great Blue Herons but then when I got home I noticed even more in my pictures…like this one flying past a bald eagle on a rock.
The Great Blue Heron I noticed the most while I was there was on a point of rocks for a very long time. I didn’t ever see it catch a fish so maybe it was savoring a fish it caught before I noticed it. The cormorants in the background are flying toward the dam (to the left in the picture) and would then float back down stream as they looked for breakfast.
Now for a little game. How many Great Blue Herons do you see in this picture (click on the image to see it larger)?
I count 6. Now for one a little more difficult. This one has Bald Eagles and Great Blue Herons. How many of each bird can you find (the smaller, dark birds are cormorants…don’t bother counting them)?
I count 6 eagles (4 adults, 2 juveniles) and 9 herons. The next one has more eagles in the air. How many Bald Eagles and Great Blue Herons in the image below?
4 eagles in the air (3 adults and 1 juvenile) and one eagle in the rocks. The herons are more of a challenge because there are so many. There are at least 12 (note – one is on the far right catching a fish, the body is hidden behind a rock but the neck and head are showing). What about the image below…the last of this game of eagle and heron counting.
There are 4 eagles (only the back is seen of one of them) – all with white heads. But there are 17 herons!
And now for one plant from near the dam. I took a picture of the Princess Tree back in back in February.
Here is what it looks like today. Still non-native and invasive…and growing beside the parking lot at the base of Conowingo Dam.
Mercury past in front of the sun on Monday morning this week. My husband set his camera on a tripod with a solar filter in our driveway and got one reasonable picture before the haze became thick clouds over the whole of central Maryland where we live. The small dot to the bottom of the disk is Mercury; the upper one is a sunspot.
My daughter had better luck in Tucson. The transit was already underway before the sun came up but it was a clear, sunny day. The transit lasted until about 11:30 AM local time. She had organized an event on the mall at the University of Arizona – complete with solar telescopes and a scale model of the solar system. When I talked to her later in the day she said they had several 100 people stop by to take a look through the telescopes and understand what was happening….and how it relates to the way exoplanets are discovered! She spent 2+ hours in the sun talking to people – sharing sunscreen with the other volunteers.
It has been very rainy in our area recently. It has not been with the fanfare of thunder and lightning – more prolonged and gentle showers. We’ve sandwiched in some outings – not always being able to dodge showers. On one trip to Brookside I took very few pictures because it was sprinkling the whole time! We did walk around with the hoods of our windbreakers up and generally enjoyed the scenery.
There was a field trip with 3 graders that it rained the entire 2 hours we were hiking. I was prepared with my stream boots and an umbrella for myself and 4 extra umbrellas for the students (I had 8 in each hiking group so it worked out OK with 2 students for each umbrella…and the chaperones had brought an umbrella too. We proceeded to be out on the grassy trails until everyone was tired of dodging muddy patches and puddles. The challenge turned out to be shoes; some students had boots but most were wearing their normal athletic shoes; eventually – there were a lot of wet feet (uncomfortable and cold). By lunch time they were ready to be indoors! When I got home I had a very wet backpack, hat and umbrellas - which we draped across the yard equipment in our garage.
I’ve been noticing that a lot of the water retention ponds are very full. That means that they aren’t slowing down the run off any more. Our 10 day forecast shows half the day with less than 50% chance of rain….so maybe we won’t stay quite so soggy as we are right now.
There was a lot more than fiddleheads, azaleas and goslings at Brookside Gardens last week….so this post is a ‘best of the rest’ from my collection of pictures.
The Red Buckeye near the conservatory parking lot was blooming.
I’d never looked at the flower up close before. I looked it up and discovered that it is closely related to the horse chestnut.
The jack-in-the-pulpits were coming up. These are flowers that one has to be looking for to spot although these striped ones are pretty distinctive.
Many times the leaves and the flowers are almost the same color.
The dogwoods were blooming too. Depending where they are in the garden they can be still green in the center
Or already yellow.
And there are some that are very different – from Asia rather than our native variety of dogwood.
There as a chipmunk sorting through the debris in a concrete culvert – finding seeds.
The area of the gardens that has been ‘under construction’ for the past few years was open and there were yellow irises around the pond,
A newly planted magnolia with large leaves and mature blooms, and
A robust stand of horsetails.
I noticed a bench that evidently is not used often ... judging from the plants growing around it.
I’d never noticed how the bark of this Hawthorne wrinkled as the branches flared out from the trunk!
Even the pines have interesting features in the spring.
It’s a great time of year to take a closer look at the garden!
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.
Winding Pathway Offers Unforgettable Journey Through Portugal's Stunning Natural Landscape – A rugged area – made more accessible via a boardwalk!
Motherhood without maternity leave – Why is America one of the only countries in the world that offers no national paid leave to new working mothers? 88% of working mothers have no access to paid maternity leave!
Trouble in Paradise: Fatal Blight Threatens a Key Hawaiian Tree – The beautiful Ohi’a trees we saw are in trouble!
10 Unexpected Impacts of Climate Change – How many of these 10 were you aware of before this article?
Winners of the 2016 Audubon Photography Awards Celebrate Diverse Birds of North America – These are birds in action – not posing for a photograph!
Four Ways to Explore the News through Maps – This post was for teachers (and via them to their students)…..but could be interesting to just about everybody. It is a different way to access news.
Pulling it all together – I took a Systems Biology course from Coursera last year and realized the need to integrate what has been compartmented for study – a needed simplification until recently. Systems Biology requires computers and models that have a lot of similarities to those for research into global weather or astrophysics. This article highlights 4 strategies for hunting new cancer targets.
Dreamlike Watercolor Paintings of Iconic Skylines Around the World – How many of these skylines do you recognize?
Fructose alters hundreds of brain genes, which can lead to a wide range of diseases – Interesting research done with rates. Fructose was found to impair memory but rats given DHA (an Omega-3 oil) along with the fructose performed comparably to rats that were not on the fructose diet.
Satellite maps shows explosion in paved surfaces in D.C. region since 1984 – I moved to the Washington DC area in 1983. A lot has happened since then. On the ground, the increase in paved surfaces has not kept up with the number of cars trying to get from one place to another.
The fiddleheads were another sign of spring at Brookside Gardens last week. I enjoy seeing how the fronds of different ferns start out so tightly packed and then unfurl in graceful curves.
Some start out very fuzzy looking. It is hard to image the frond from the fiddlehead form.
Some of the fiddleheads are further along and the expansion of the frond nearest to the stem happens rapidly enough to make it look like the tip of the frond is a knot…but is simply has not expanded quite yet.
Sometimes I imagine other things that look a little like fiddleheads - like intricate round earrings heavy enough to weight their wire
Or the tentacles of an octopus.
I generally thing about fiddleheads being near circular but there are exceptions – the oval shape shows up almost as often.
Fiddleheads are another sign of spring – the harbingers of the lush ferns of summer.
The azaleas were glorious at Brookside Gardens last week. The day was cloudy – the best we could do with the weather pattern that seems dominated by rainy days recently. I got 3 selective focus shots that I liked - successfully tricking the automatic focus algorithm of my point and shot Canon Powershot SX710 HS to create the image I wanted. There were dark pink with the same color blurred in the foreground and side,
Light pink with some purple azaleas making the blur in the foreground,
And yellow azaleas with yellow blur in the foreground bottom and sides.
I also tried pictures of azaleas with other plants – like these flowers that had fallen onto a bed of ferns
And some that were blooming next to a pine.
While I was photographing the azaleas near the pine – I noticed a relative of the azaleas that also blooms this time of year – a rhododendron.
Even though the clouds were pretty thick – it was bright enough to see the reflection of azaleas in the pond.
Everywhere we walked was full of azalea color. If it has been drier – the benches would have been used! Walking around it was still a celebration of springtime in Maryland.
Celebrating the whole of life....
Thanks for visiting my blog! Enjoy the photo picks from 2023:
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