David Gorsline – A Honey of an Anklet

Suitland Bog

Lynn Rust’s Microbial Ecology class field-tripped to Suitland Bog (a magnolia bog that’s actually a fen). The property was once mined for sand and gravel before M-NCPPC picked up some of the land, while allowing development on another parcel. (In the inexorable logic of new streets being named for what they replaced, Rock Quarry Terrace passes through one of the nearby townhouse subdivisions.)

In the successional upland accessed by ample parking at the community center, we found the rocky, sandy soil of the Coastal Plain. Virginia Pine (Pinus virginia) is waiting to be overtaken by the beeches and oaks, while Blackjack Oak (Quercus marilandica) hunkers in the understory. Thundering helicopters from nearby Joint Base Andrews are just something you have to deal with.

In the bog itself, we easily found Purple Pitcher Plant (Sarracenia purpurea). According to Lynn and the park ranger, this introduced species is outcompeting the sundews, and is subject to some culls. Yellowing leaves of Sweetbay Magnolia (Magnolia virginiana) were recognizable.

Bisected by a power line cut, the place definitely shows the marks of human influence, and could use some major trash pickup love. I don’t remember, but I reckon that my visit in 2013 was from the other entrance, from the south.

Christmas Bird Count 2021: Seneca: 1

I am the new leader for sector 14 of the Seneca circle for the Christmas Bird Count. Our count day is Sunday, 19 December. If you’re interested in helping bird the north half of Reston, Dranesville, and the south half of Great Falls, let me know!

Day 0

My Winogradsky column project for Microbial Ecology, taught by Lynn Rust. We sampled sediments from the Wheaton Branch stormwater ponds on Dennis Avenue. Hope I added enough egg yolk (S) and not too much newspaper (C)!

We won’t see results for a few weeks.

That explains Blofeld’s cat

“No time to die: An in-depth analysis of James Bond’s exposure to infectious agents,” by Wouter Graumans et al.

We hypothesize that his foolhardy courage, sometimes purposefully eliciting life-threatening situations, might even be a consequence of Toxoplasmosis.

Particularly worrying:

While Bond was traveling to Japan (1967) shortly after the H2N2 pandemic (1957–1958), his actions were at odds with knowledge on the different modes of respiratory virus transmission. Bond regularly joined crowds without social distancing including on public transport.

h/t: Jennifer Ouellette at Ars Technica

Silver Line progress report: 52

Phase 2 has hit the “substantially complete” milestone. But not so fast—

Metro can begin some testing, but other pre-service evaluations can’t start until work on the rail yard is complete. According to the rail yard project’s most recent monthly update, the estimated timeline for completion is February 2022.

Rainbow mnemonic

Roll over you great big indolent vole.

—Ali Smith, Like (1997), p. 19

A mystery: 25

All of the burrowing animals, the geofodes, enter a very different world, which exists only a very short spacial distance from the actual desert environment itself.

—Raymond B. Cowles, Desert Journal: Reflections of a Naturalist (1977), p. 105

Geofodes appears to be a coinage by Cowles, deriving from geo and the Latin fodere that gives us fossorial. Or perhaps it’s a slip, because his book went to press posthumously. At any rate, it ain’t in my dictionary.

Mason Neck State Park 2021

Holiday weekend, and a chance to earn my next badge in the state parks Trail Quest challenge. Somewhat unintentionally, I followed the same trails that I walked last year in late spring. Much quieter this time of year, cloudy-cool and a bit drizzly—glad I brought my hoodie.

The understory of the woods (holly-oak-beech) is very open; I suspect deer browse pressure. The oaks have dropped an abundance of acorns.

I found a little patch of Strawberry Bush (Euonymus americanus) (a/k/a Hearts-a-burstin’), still in fruit, on a hummock in a very wet spot. And an orbweaver making short work of an unfortunate Eastern Pondhawk.

The thing to remember about the Meadow View Trail, pleasant enough as it is, is that it is a trail to a view of a meadow. You won’t see any meadow along the trail itself.

3:00 for the circuit again, with a lunch break.

Read the liner notes

TIL (well, yesterday) that Beth Orton’s “I Wish I Never Saw the Sunshine”

is a cover, written by Ellie Greenwich, Jeff Barry, and Phil Spector:

I still prefer Orton’s version, by a bunch.

Ranked

Best use of inset text, Snark Division:

You can find the title of this show rendered in different official places as Diana: The Musical; Diana, The Musical; and even Diana the Musical, as if Diana were either the name of the musical (like Garfield the Cat) or Diana were something you were encouraged to do to the musical (like Pat The Bunny). I have gone with Diana, The Musical.

Plus Oxford semicolons! How did that get past the copy editors?

Tweaking Rs

Clay Risen has an obit for Joan Washington, dialect coach for many a film actor.

“Cornish is harder and more nasal than Devon because it’s a windy peninsula,” she told The Sunday Telegraph. “If you’ve got the wind in your face, you’ve got to speak without giving much away.”

Neabsco Boardwalk

Barbara Saffir led a workshop at Neabsco Boardwalk on using iNaturalist and ISO axanthic Green Treefrogs (Hyla cinarea). And we found some!

The boardwalk trail is rather new—nicely accessible and wide, open to multiple use (jogging, dogs, scooters). While the upland path to the boardwalk could serve for a nonnative invasives workshop, the wetland itself is pretty clean, a major exception being a population of Japanese Knotweed (Reynoutria japonica).

A mystery: 24

Linda adjusted her position to face the trees…. The powerful drum of a beak against dead bark carried through the woods and she scanned the overstory for a pileated woodpecker. It flew a series of arcing loops and landed in the boughs of an ash tree. Below it grew crinklefoot ferns. A row of Queen Anne’s lace swayed in the ditch.

—Chris Offutt, The Killing Fields (2021), pp. 132-133

Any idea what Offutt means by crinklefoot fern? Anyone? The only thing botanical that turns up for me is Crinkleroot (Cardamine diphylla)—not a fern by any stretch.

“Lakeland, Florida but they will deliver it to your door step”

Ed Solomon keeps a text-message spammer-scammer going for an hour and a half.

10:41 A.M. “Richard Weeks”
i got $150,000 delivered to me when i applied for the grant and you dont have to pay it back.. you can also apply

10:41 A.M. Ed Solomon
shut up. no way—are you serious??

10:42 A.M. “Richard Weeks”
I’m very serious and am not pulling your legs. I’m so happy cuz when i received the Money from Ups, I quickly paid off my bills and saved the rest to the bank. Though, currently thinking on Investments

And so…

11:24 A.M. Ed Solomon
thanks. okay. and tell me honestly. and i promise i won’t tell her. Is SHE the one who gave you the rash? (cause i was wondering why you and i both have the same thing)

11:26 A.M. “Richard Weeks”
yes shes the one

Ah, the power of saying, “yes, and.”

Haze figuring

Hilarious but true: a category of rubbish research papers, run through a word-for-word thesaurus in an attempt to avoid detection of plagiarism and duplication, can in fact be easily detected. Holly Else reports on a preprint posted in July by Guillaume Cabanac and colleagues. Some juicy howlers, called “tortured phrases” by the paper’s authors: counterfeit consciousness for artificial intelligence, irregular esteem for random value, and flag to commotion for signal to noise.