Author: David Gorsline

Piney Branch headwaters

glassyOur last field trip for Land Use Planning was a squlchy walk through the headwaters of Piney Branch in southwestern Montgomery County, as we looked at stormwater management structures there. Piney Branch is within one of several Special Protection Areas in the County. About ten years ago, Human Genome Sciences built a campus on land near Travillah and Darnestown Roads under conditions meant to ensure best practices for stormwater quality and quantity control.

three poolsforebay gunkCurrent thinking encourages more, smaller retention chambers, like this series of three. In the image at left, you’re looking at the last chamber, where (behind you) the outfall structures drain into the stream. The two upstream chambers are the depressions you see in the middle ground, this side of the road and lie of bare trees. In the image at right, you’re looking in the opposite direction, at the first of the chambers. The dark gunk is sediment and petroleum washed from the various impervious surfaces of the campus and settled into the sand at the bottom of the chamber. The white PVC tubes at upper right at test wells for checking groundwater levels.

chambers and wallA little farther along Shady Grove Road Extended is this chamber. The primary outfall is partially obscured by the dead Typha stalks, and it carries water to the stream in a small pipe (about 10 cm diameter). In the event of a major rain event, the large outfall structure at center left carries water away in a big pipe (30 cm or more). Most of these large outfall structures are notched so that a medium-sized inundation can be slowed down by the chamber. Also notice the retaining wall at right, which is holding up the graded fill so that offices and parking could be built on level ground, out of frame at right. The retaining wall is already showing some cracks and streaks.

ducks like itOld-fashioned stormwater practices depended on in-stream dams that formed artificial ponds, like this one in a different development, part of the Universities at Shady Grove. At any rate, the three Ring-necked Ducks (Aythya collaris) that we saw were enjoying the water.

scrubbedDespite management efforts, Piney Branch is not in the prime of health. Scouring of the banks is apparent in the image.

At the park: 42

Nesting activity in seven of the boxes, as of this morning. We also spotted a pair of Spotted Turtles this morning, a species on the park’s target list.

plastic spamWe had a good complement of box-checkers this morning, so I spent most of my 90 minutes collecting trash from the area upstream of the main wetland. I gave some thought to leaving the dishpan, since it was flipped over and providing some habitat. I ran out of trash bags, so I had to leave some flotsam for next week.

yumBeavers have been active up and down the stream network. I was watching some sparrows, and then came across some female Red-winged Blackbirds, who looked huge by comparison. It’s only from a distance that you would confuse these birds with sparrows.

Some links: 52

Mitch Albom’s column in defense of NPR has been up for a few days, but it’s still worth a link.

If you really wanted to show a liberal bias to NPR, you could try to prove it by studying hundreds of its broadcasts. But studies take time and effort and they’re not as cool. Hiding a camera and playing “gotcha” is more fun.

Which is what [James] O’Keefe and crew do. Sorry, folks, the guy is no hero. Journalistically, he’s a coward. And I don’t get why NPR rolled over for his stunt.

Spenser decoded

So I’m working my way through the evening’s ten pages of Spenser and I come to a passage in Book II, Canto XII of The Faerie Queene where he apparently feels the need to demonize certain species of birds and flying mammals:

Even all the Nation of unfortunate
And fatal Birds about them flocked were,
Such as by nature Men abhor and hate;
The ill-fac’d Owl, Death’s dreadful Messenger,
The hoarse Night-Raven, Trump of doleful Drere,
The Leather-winged Bat, Day’s Enemy,
The rueful Strich, still waiting on the Bier,
The Whistler shrill, that whoso hears, doth die;
The hellish Harpies, Prophets of sad Destiny.

Whistler is glossed by the edition that I am recording as plover, and I don’t know where that disrespect is coming from.

But it was Strich that caught my eye. The word, perhaps already obsolete when Spenser used it at the end of the 16th century, refers to the various petite screech-owls, and was formed through some sort of collision between the sound the bird makes and the ominous, bloodthirsty Strix of classical mythology—or at least so Oxford reasons. To add to the confusion, nowadays Strix names a genus of much larger owls, among them the Great Gray Owl and Barred Owl, and it is the nominate genus of the True Owls family, the Strigidae.

Zelig backing up first base

Douglas Martin closes the book on Greg Goossen, C and 1B for the Mets and Seattle Pilots. A bright prospect who never starred, nonetheless Goossen’s name is attached to many incidents of baseball history in the 1960s, and he provided fodder for Jim Bouton’s Ball Four.

Bouton told of the time the two were on opposing International League teams and Goossen was catching. The batter bunted to the pitcher, and Goossen yelled, “First base! First base!” Instead the pitcher threw to second and everybody was safe.

As a disgusted Goossen stalked back to the plate, Bouton shouted from the dugout, “Goose, he had to consider the source.”