Author: David Gorsline

Back to a hatchback

first road tripSay hello to Dr. Hardtacks on his first road trip, already a little dusty from the drive. We’re at the trailheads for Buffalo Mountain in Floyd County, early enough to pick our own space before the parking lot fills up (and it did, on a Friday morning).

With multiple new safety features and an automatic backy-uppy parking trick, the doctor is definitely smarter than me. His surname comes from the name of a turtle that Aaron Posner likes to work into his scripts.

For the first 1000 miles, we’re doing 66.5 mpg.

From the Top with Grown-Ups

Today in counterfactual history, NPR sells off cultural programming, new network dubbed ‘NPR Music & Entertainment’, by Wes Horner.

In all the excitement about celebrating NPR’s 50th, we’ve managed to lose sight of some of the network’s original aspirations in the arts arena, and some crazy, risk-taking frontier women and men who, like me, had a somewhat different vision for NPR than its present, near-total news identity.

At the park: 120

After my annual scuffling with the Google chart API, I can post the summary graph of nesting activity for 2021. There’s a gray vertical bar for 2020’s missing data.

Wood Duck and Hooded Merganser trend chart

The true Wood Duck numbers (blue track) are higher, because I did not include two boxes of uncertain disposition: one for which we never got a good egg count, and one dump nest of 25 eggs that didn’t show sufficient evidence that 24 of the eggs had hatched. I found one dead duckling and not much else.

Clifton Institute dragonfly/damselfly count 2021

I made the acquaintance of several new odonates during Saturday’s inaugural count organized by The Clifton Institute, as well as a warmup walk with executive director Bert Harris a couple of weeks prior.

I walked with Larry Meade, Kurt Gaskill, and others at Leopold’s Preserve (near Thoroughfare Gap) and Silver Lake Park.

Top photo observations include a nice up close Eastern Pondhawk (Erythemis simplicicollis ), an Elegant Spreadwing (Lestes inaequalis) that we mis-ID’d at first, and an Eastern Amberwing (Perithemis tenera) that I got to sit down for me. Slaty Skimmers (Libellula incesta) were common; making an early appearance were a few Autumn Meadowhawks (Sympetrum vicinum). I might have to start keeping a list.

100 dB

What to do when cicadas crash your outdoor wedding? Embrace the buzz:

And remember: At the very least, cicadas make for a memorable wedding. “It was actually quite fun to lean into the cicada theme,” [Lauren] Migaki said. “My little brother wore a cicada bolo tie; our favors were cicada-shaped chocolates with caramel pop rocks; and I donned a pair of gold cicada earrings for the reception in our backyard.”

“I loved hearing the noise of them in the trees above us,” she added, “feeling like we had hundreds of wedding guests.”

At the park: 119

A wrap-up message to the team:

We had a good year. 12 clutches, with hatches in all but 1 — a late clutch of only 2 eggs. A conservative estimate is 47 Wood Duck fledglings and 63 Hooded Merganser fledglings.

That estimate does not include the nest in box #13: we did not get a good estimate of the number of eggs.

And it does not count box #3: I counted 25 Wood Duck eggs on 11 April, and when I checked on 23 May, I found 1 unfledged duckling but not enough evidence that 24 eggs had hatched. I also didn’t see evidence of predation, so I’m not sure what went on in that box….

Monitors and box installers, thank you for all your help!

More recordkeeping and summarizing to do.