Category: In the Field

Our first field trip for Rachel Gauza’s herps class took us to Jug Bay Wetlands Sanctuary in Anne Arundel County. Our host guides were Mel Fegler and Mike Quinlan. This is a popular natural place on the Coastal Plain, and rightly so. I heard my first Wood Thrushes of the year in the parking lot.

But the focus today is amphibians and reptiles! In the morning, we worked several spots near the McCann Wetlands Center. Mike found an Eastern Wormsnake (Carphopis amoenus) under a coverboard in the meadow adjacent to the center.

Moving into the deciduous woods along the Middle and Forest Trails, we saw a nice selection of herp diversity: Eastern Box Turtle (Terrapene carolina), Wood Frog (Lithobates sylvaticus), American Toad (Anaxyrus americanus), Fowler’s Toad (A. fowleri), Marbled Salamander (Ambystoma opacum)—and one toad of doubtful status that I want to follow up with Rachel on.

We dropped down from the right of way of the railroad that once ran from Seat Pleasant to Chesapeake Beach into the floodplain of Two Run Branch to visit several seasonal (now dried) and persistent pools. Opportunities to see Marbled Salamander larvae, Eastern Cricket Frog (Acris crepitans), and a choice-sized American Bullfrog (Lithobates catesbeianus). Marbleds breed in the fall and the eggs overwinter, giving them a head start in develop come spring, so (as you can see), they’re already well along the way to becoming adults.

At lunch break, back at the center, I heard a Summer Tanager (Piranga rubra), and I think this is the first time that I’ve heard the call that Dick Walton’s tapes taught me so long ago as “piki-tucki-tuck.”

In the afternoon, Mel took us to a seasonal pool on the the Glendening Nature Preserve section of the sanctuary, the pool known locally as Barn Pool. We did some sweep netting through this pool, in a very rough approximation of the sampling protocol that Mel follows when she’s monitoring. The water levels were quite reduced, but there were many Marbled Salamander larvae to be netted.

Nest box team report for this morning:

We are up to 8 active nests, a couple of them with 1 or 2 Hooded Merganser eggs mixed in with Wood Duck eggs. I pulled together a couple of the images that Kat and Melina had provided last year for comparison of the eggs.

It looks like these boxes are complete clutches, now being incubated, so we can skip checking them next week: boxes #10, #6, #84, #13, #62. Actually, we never did get a good count for #6 (that’s the one where the male Wood Duck has been stationed on top of the box), as the hen there does not flush.

There was a bluebird box near duck boxes #2 and #4 that fell apart.

First Tree Swallows seen by the team were spotted over the wetland. There was a (migrant, supposedly) Ovenbird foraging at the edge of the parking lot at 8:30.

From the report of the nest box team this week:

We are up to 6 active nests, 2 Hooded Merganser and 4 Wood Duck (with the odd extraspecies egg in some of the boxes). The new predator guards look really good — thanks! [As you can see, attaching the guards to our poles requires a little in-the-field engineering.]

The two new boxes in the new pool near the tower don’t have predator cones yet. Are there any more available? Also, box #3, although it has 3 eggs in it, also has a wonky door that doesn’t close very tightly. It might be possible to tighten up/relocate the hardware so that the door is a snugger fit.

First work day of the season maintaining and checking nest boxes! We already have nests started in two, maybe three boxes (I suspect one of the nests is from last year, abandoned), and this is all before we fluffed up the boxes with fresh chips inside. We also have an open to-do item to install predator guards on the poles. We introduced new recruit Kathy to the dubious pleasures of squoodging through the soft mud of the wetland. And we got a little training in the new protocol for cleaning our gear, in hopes of controlling the spread of ranavirus.

Our resident beavers have rebuilt the lodge that wants to overtake the bench at the start of the boardwalk. And, at that same spot, they have built a new dam off to the left of the boardwalk.

We heard female Wood Ducks hoo-eeking numerous times; lots of Mallards hanging out, too.

Down by box #13, on the dry land before the observation tower, I found something that’s fairly common but I’d never noticed it before, probably because I wasn’t looking for it: the hunkered-down, overwintering, two-colored leaves of Cranefly Orchid (Tipularia discolor).

Gaylan Meyer led a two-hour workshop in introductory identification of mosses in Fred Crabtree Park, just south of Reston on Fox Mill Road. Fred Crabtree Park (renamed from Fox Mill Park since the last time I visited) is a pleasant patch, protecting part of the Little Difficult Run watershed. Gaylan has identified at least ten, maybe 12 moss species in the park.


We keyed out one species, using the recent McKnight et al., Common Mosses of the Northeast and Appalachians (2013). The first swell surprise about moss ID is that there’s not a lot you can do in the field with mosses. You can classify plants into growth form, acrocarp or pleurocarp, and if you’ve got tweezers and a hand lens you might be able to look at leaf shape and the presence of a midrib. Gaylan identifies this as Yellow Yarn Moss (Anomodon rostratus). For the remaining mosses we looked at on the trip, we relied on Gaylan’s scouting of this location and his patient work at home with his microscope.

Oil Spill Moss (Platygyrium repens), at left, and Feather Comb Moss (Ctenidium molluscum), at right, are pleurocarps, frequently branching and usually trailing along the substrate.


The more conspicuous mosses are acrocarps, with upright stems packed together like tufts of carpet. At left is Wavy Starburst Moss (Atrichum altecristatum) and at right is Pincushion Moss (Leucobryum glaucum). For the starbust moss, the sporangia, ending in the brown tubular capsules (empty, with lid off), are fairly well imaged.


Gaylan’s call on this plant is Polytrichum commune, but after checking the Digital Atlas of the Virginia Flora, I think that Juniper Haircap Moss (P. juniperium) is much more likely. By the way, the otherwise invaluable USDA PLANTS database is pretty hopeless for range maps for mid-Atlantic bryophytes.

We also looked at a few plants that are not mosses. Here’s a lovely patch of Shining Clubmoss (Huperzia lucidula), a/k/a Shining Firmoss. The clubmosses, firmosses, running cedars, and such are in a bit of a classification jumble. But they are nevertheless vascular plants that only happen to resemble true mosses.


And a fern-savvy member of the group ID’d this as Spinulose Woodfern (Dryopteris carthusiana). I didn’t get an image of the entire frond, but at least this time I remembered to look at the sori.

On our way back from Martinsburg, a quick loop stroll to Hog Rock in Catoctin Mountain Park. Leta is collecting bits of bark for some indeterminate future project.

For Sunday, a short and sweet stroll along the Madison Run Fire Road at the foot of the Blue Ridge. Saturday’s rains freshened the green stuff everywhere.

The fire road follows the run up into the park; at this time of year, and after periods of drought, the run was more like a crawl. As you walk almost directly east into the park, the stream is on your right and some rather impressive cliffs, broken up by talus slopes, are on your left.

The group ID’d Wavy-leafed Aster (Symphyotrichum undulatum); see the wavy, clasping leaves on the right. I could not keep up with the group’s mania for keying out desmodiums and yet more asters, although I began to recognize Desmodium paniculatum. We found an interesting assassin bug, perhaps Apiomerus sp., that refused to stay in focus for my point-and-shoot; it was hanging out on a Gerardia pedicularia.

Resurrection Fern (Pleopeltis polypodioides), working its way into the crevices of this outcrop, is quite beautiful.

Lynn Cameron led a (slightly damp) walk on two Augusta County trails in the George Washington National Forest for my first day of field trips with Virginia Native Plant Society. Tom Wieboldt, Curator of Vascular Plants at Virginia Tech’s Massey Herbarium (and descendant of William A. Wieboldt), assisted with many of the IDs, including this goldenrod, Solidago curtisii. Eastern Hemlocks in this area seem to be doing OK; Lynn says the Forest Service is applying a treatment against insect pests.

Our destination on the first walk was this striking view of Hone Quarry Ridge, with Shenanadoah Mountain in the distance. A bouncy drive on Forest Service roads then took us to a driving top atop Reddish Knob, which was (as expected) fogged in.

We then pushed on to a second short walk in the headwaters of North River, a tributary of the Shenandoah. The group turned up this brightly-colored guy, an adult Red-Spotted Newt (Notophthalmus viridescens) in its terrestrial red eft form.

Bonus bird for the trip: Ruffed Grouse (Bonasa umbellus), sauntering along the fire road as we drove for home.

Mark Garland led two days of field trips to various off-the-map locations in southern New Jersey.

Monday we spent at three spots in the Pine Barrens (dressed up by the marketing people as the Pinelands, these days).

From one of the area’s numerous sketchy sand roads, we walked in to a generously-sized bog, where White Fringed Orchid (Platanthera blephariglottis) was in bloom. We also found two species of sundews (which I have decided are impossible to photograph; I’m not satisfied with my image of the orchid, either).

Along the way, huckleberries (Gaylussacia sp.) were in fruit all over the place. The ground cover here is one of my new favorite shrubs, Common Wintergreen (Gaultheria procumbens): crush the leaves for a hit of natural teaberry aroma.

At the end of the day, we strolled through one of the pygmy forests, the pines and oaks dwarfed by lack of nutrients and water — a natural bonsai arboretum.

Tuesday we caravaned around the saltmarshes lining the Maurice River, which drains the Millville/Vineland area into Delaware Bay. Hot and sunny, it was a much better day for birds and butterflies, nudging my paltry butterfly life list above the 50 mark. The demure lighthouse at East Point is quite nice.

I hadn’t really expected anything too exciting in terms of birds for this trip. So it was a nice surprise to total up the species count for the two days: 44, plus two or three that I didn’t bother to count. I definitely counted Glossy Ibis (Plegadis falcinellus) (I’ve never seen them this far north), Seaside Sparrow (Ammodramus maritimus) (a bird that I rarely see at all), and #415 for my life list, Clapper Rail (Rallus longirostris). We found the rails, about five or six of them, at this tidal gut at spot called Turkey Point, on the other side of the Maurice (locally pronounced “Morris”). A- looks at the birds, from some distance and somewhat backlit, not visibly distinguished from King Rails, but you go with the local expert’s knowledge of distribution.

Last Sunday at the Park was a work day to install wire fencing as a low-tech, low-impact means of exclosing beavers from some of the larger trees just above the new berm and water control structure. The idea is not to protect the life of the trees, as they are in the new flood plain and will be inundated and eventually die; but rather to preserve them as standing dead trees (snags), so that they can support woodpeckers, Wood Ducks, other cavity-nesting birds, and all the wildlife that depend on such a vertical, natural structure.

The beavers, if we would let them, would take these trees down, and while there’s nothing wrong with downed trees (just ask your favorite stand of moss), we’ve got plenty of them right now.