O my son! know thou that if the tail of the dog or the pig were ten cubits long it would not approach to the worth of the horse’s even if it were like silk.
The Story of Ahikar 7:12, Rutherford Platt, ed.
Author: David Gorsline
At the park: 114
Sunday’s report on the ducks and mergs:
Three more nests have started, clutches are building in two, and two nests are incubating.
We checked the new box #3, and as Dave predicted, the hinge placement of the door is problematic. Kat and Chris have some scrap screen material; we will try to modify the box so that the nest stays in place when the door is opened.
Visitation is definitely up: when we left at 10:15, cars were parked along the entrance road nearly back to Lockheed Blvd.
Until next week!
Gap analysis
Alicia Williams et al. report that there’s still a gap between intentions to buy bird-friendly coffee and actual purchases. Their paper, based on a survey of Living Bird readers, identifies a market segment and suggests some ways to close the gap.
Drone
If you live in the mid-Atlantic, you’ve probably heard that Brood X is about to join us after its 17-year nap. Some links to prepare you:
- My field report from 2004.
- Melissa Block points her mic at “a zillion cicadas,” back when ATC could spend 7 minutes on a story like this.
- Pics and recipe pointers from Alonso Abugattas.
- Ditto from Kevin Ambrose of the Capital Weather Gang.
- Views of the instars from John Cooley and Chris Simon.
- Interactives of the various broods by year and geography by Jonathan Corum.
- David Attenborough messes with an amorous male.
Some links: 88
A couple of theater-connected stories:
- Muriel Zagha reports on the restoration of Marie Antoinette’s theater in the Petit Trianon complex: the carvings and statues were true stagecraft, made of papier-maché and wood.
- Emily Robinson describes how D.C.’s Shakespeare Theatre moved from Capitol Hill to 7th Street. (Back before the move, I studied with Mikel Lambert in a classroom across East Capitol Street from the Folger.)
At the park: 113
From the report for Sunday:
We see nesting activity in four of our boxes, and a Wood Duck pair was spotted in the vicinity of box #1. A Hooded Merganser has moved into box #68, adding eggs to what was probably a clutch from last year. Beavers might have ideas about building a dam next to this box.
Box #3 is on Dave’s punchlist to replace.
Aloft, we saw an Osprey (Pandion haliaetus) and two Bald Eagles (Haliaeetus leucocephalus), an immature and a somewhat scruffy adult.
We’ll work the remaining two weeks in March, then start skipping weeks. So our first day in April will be 11 April, and we will check on folks’ availability for the rest of the month.
Forecast
Assume, then, a prospect of chaos in the streets, joined by every group on the island with a grudge. This would include nearly everyone but the OAG and his staff. Doubtless each would think only of his immediate desires. But mob violence, like tourism, is a kind of communion. By its special magic a large number of lonely souls, however heterogeneous, can share the common property of opposition to what is. And like an epidemic or earthquake the politics of the street can overtake even the most stable-appearing of governments; like death it cuts through and gathers in all ranks of society.
—Thomas Pynchon, V. (1963), epilogue, “1919,” I
Silver Line progress report: 51
The date for “substantial completion” of the second phase has been bouncing around. Latest estimates are for Labor Day weekend. This is the date that the construction contractor turns the work over to Metro. If the date holds, passenger service to IAD and beyond in early 2022.
Upcoming: 56
I need another trip to North Adams. A James Turrell Skyspace will open at MASS MoCA in May.
At the park: 112
We have resumed nest box monitoring at Huntley Meadows Park (following precautions and adhering to protocol, of course). From today’s report:
And so the season begins.
Kat reported new nests for 2021, both Hooded Merganser, including incubation in box #7. We cleaned out boxes that hadn’t been cleaned since 22 April 2020. It’s possible that we have had hatches in 6 boxes since that April visit.
We will bring some oil for the carabiner on box #62.
Box #3 in the new pool by the observation tower needs replacement: it is missing its top and its bottom. #3 is the one a little farther from the tower….
We spotted a Red-tailed Hawk (Buteo jamaicensis) perched up on a snag along Barnyard Run.
Hypercorrection
Sensei was amused when I asked why Mr. Smith, in our textbook, did not use the o-prefix for politeness when asking the name of the fish in the tempura restaurant scene, おなまえ sted なまえ. She said, “Nobody uses the prefix in this situation—well, maybe some senior ladies would.”
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Great Backyard Bird Count 2021
Waiting out the ice storm until Monday, I got some time to walk the Glade today, just before the rain came back. Sixteen species, a couple of bad photographs, but a distant look at a Hooded Merganser (Lophodytes cucullatus) pair on drawn-down Lake Audubon. But I missed my usual Red-shouldered Hawk.
Unfortunately, there is much more Leatherleaf Mahonia (Berberis bealei) than meets the eye in the growing season.
ID corner
I was on a discussion thread at iNaturalist for an observation of Aralia species in Catonsville, Md. The non-native Japanese Angelica Tree (A. elata) has been escaping from cultivation and is reported in several Maryland counties.
How to distinguish A. elata from the native Devil’s Walkingstick (A. spinosa) in winter? David Sibley’s guide says that A. elata is “less spiny,” but that doesn’t help very much.
Fortunately, Maraea Harris of Meadowlark Botanical Gardens pointed out for me (we were on an invasives removal work day) a cultivated example of A. elata, specifically the variety “Silver Umbrella” with variegated leaves (in the growing season, of course).
You can see that the younger stems (at left) are lightly armored, but the older trunks show only vestiges of their spines. This observation squares with a horticultural blog post from Milan Havlis.
Also of note: cultivars are grafted, and can revert to the wild type. I wonder how many of our escapes are from cultivars.
Buchanan subbasement
OK, one parting shot at 45: Sarah Lyall polls several historians, looking for a prediction of how history will judge the recently departed resident.
“He’s in a whole other category in terms of the damage he’s done to the Republic,” said [Sean] Wilentz [professor of American history at Princeton University], citing the radicalization of the Republican Party, the inept response to the pandemic and what he called “the brazen, almost psychedelic mendacity of the man.”