Category: In the Field

A return to a section of Shenandoah National Park that I had visited not too long ago. This time I spent a lot more time trying to puzzle out plants (even though there were many that I passed by), so I covered the 3 miles out the horse trail, down the fire road, and back up from Dark Hollow Falls in a lazy 3:35. I was struck by the way some of the steeper slopes were dominated by ferns in the herbaceous layer.

I found several small patches of Houstonia caerulea. One of the common names for this wildflower is Quaker Ladies, and it’s appropriate, because the blooms come together in one place, but each flower retains its uniqueness.

My attaboy comes from working out this Wild Pink (Silene carolinensis), of which I found only a few instances. The flower is actually a little pinker than in the image: my optics aren’t quite up to the task of rendering this color.

Several mystery plants that I took snapshots of—maybe I can figure out one or two later.

I heard and saw a few American Redstarts (Setophaga ruticilla). Or “yellowstarts,” if one is to judge from the colors of the female.

Another Saturday, another field trip: this time for class, at Meadowside Park and Nature Center in Montgomery County, led by Jane Huff. Meadowside is one of the “green fingers” of the country, following the valley of the North Branch of Rock Creek. From my end of town, the best way to get there is via the distinctly off-the-beaten-track Avery Road, connecting to the lateral Muncaster Mill Road. The park is a nice size, and offers both upland and riverine habitat.

I saw two new butterflies, a Red-banded Hairstreak (Calycopis cecrops) that classmate Tom found, and several Zabulon Skippers (Poanes zabulon), the first of which I found. The group may also have found a Peck’s Skipper, but I didn’t get a good look for myself.

We walked down to the pond, passing an interesting stand of Sassafras (Sassafras albidum) (probably clonal) and a drift of Forget-Me-Nots (Myosotis sp.). (We didn’t linger to key them out between the native and introduced species.)

At the reconstructed cabin site, there is a garden plot. We found this Black Swallowtail (Papilio polyxenes) caterpillar there, munching on some Common Rue (Ruta graveolens). The black-white-yellow coloration suggests a Danaus butterfly like a Monarch, but the swallowtail lacks “horns” and the colors are spots, not stripes.

We saw lots of crane flies (Tipulidae), including one pair intent on making more crane flies. Dr. Huff turned over a far-gone rotting log to reveal an Eastern Brown Snake (Storeria dekayi). We saw lots of recent windthrow: 100-foot tall Tuliptrees snapped off two-thirds of the way up. Dr. Huff suggested an association between waxwings and junipers that I would like to follow up on.

Some nice galls on the leaves of a Black Gum (Nyssa sylvatica).

Best bird of the trip was a House Wren (Troglodytes aedon) hanging out around the martin house near the pond. Best plant of the trip was Green Dragon (Arisaema dracontium), a Jack-in-the-Pulpit congener found in one clump next to the creek. Its field marks are the long orange extension of the spadix, and the 5 to 15 leaflets.

I took a walk through the park “on my own,” as it were, unencumbered by monitoring duties but looking to make some field notes as homework for my current class. I was halfway there before I missed my point-and-shoot, so I had to make do with my tablet for images.

I haven’t been down the Cedar Trail for a couple of years or so, and I don’t spend much time this later in the season, so I found several puzzlers. The stretch of the trail that I used to think of as “Woodpecker Alley,” with lots of dead trees, is filling in with Sweetgum and lots of other green things.

I keyed out Rattlesnake Weed (Hieracium venosum), a yellow-flowered composite without noticeable disk flowers, petals pinked like a member of Caryophyllaceae, and minimal stem leaves like Goodyera.

I snapped some images of a mystery plant, already in fruit with 5 siliques, and with watermarked leaves like a waterleaf. Still working on that one.

The Snapping Turtles (Chelydra serpentina) were all over the place, at least eight in the main pond. And one, about 50 meters from anything wet at all, crossing the Cedar Trail, very interested in the cavity at the base of an uprooted tree.

I looped through the woods up to the tower, exchanged some information and pleasantries with a couple of guys from the Shenandoah Valley, and headed back to the car on the boardwalk. Right at the wetland’s edge, I came across this Thamnophis sp. snake, either an Eastern Ribbon Snake or Eastern Garter Snake. The image that I acquired doesn’t quite show the detail of the stripes needed to separate these two species, at least to my eye.

I broke from my usual Saturday gig to take a walk through the Fraser Preserve in the northern tip of the county, bordering on the river. Fraser is jointly managed by the Nature Conservancy and Calvary Baptist Church; one of its missions is making nature study available to inner city children. The walk was led by Conservancy volunteers, and a couple of staff were also on hand.

The plant life here is rather similar to what I’ve been shown on other class trips along the Potomac, at Carderock and Turkey Run, for instance.

Birds were mostly heard but not seen, as the canopy begins to leaf in. Some of the showiest spring bloomers are gone or nearly so (like Mertensia virginica), but we did find some Golden Ragwort (Packera aurea) coming in. We had stopped to look at a patch of bluebells and I found this single Toadshade (Trillium sessile) just opening up.

I looked at this lushly growing carrotty thing, not yet in flower, and I had read the flyer for the walk that highlighted some of the property’s specialties. So I asked Ed Clark, who was co-leading, “Is this what I think it is?” and he confirmed that it was Poison Hemlock (Conium maculatum). This non-native is highly toxic if ingested; it has noxious weed status in eight states. The purple spots on the stems that give it its specific epithet don’t read well in my images.

But you see that it can grow to head-height.

Unseasonably cool, breezy weather greeted us on Sunday for a foray to southern Maryland looking for spring butterflies. Stephanie Mason and Dick Smith took us to two sites on the Coastal Plain. The weather checked the activity of the butterflies, but we found lots of other things to look at.

Our first stop was at Calvert Cliffs State Park. The playground near the parking lot is guarded by a fierce dragon made of recycled tires.

We found a spread-wing skipper, most likely Juvenal’s Duskywing (Erynnis juvenalis), according to Dick, given the time of the year; a hairstreak, a battered Henry’s Elfin (Callophrys henrici); and an azure (Celastrina sp.).

The oaks in this sandy, acid-soil habitat are tricky to ID this time of year. Working from bark, leaves, and acorn cups, we found evidence of Chestnut Oak (Quercus prinus) as well as Swamp Chestnut Oak (Q. michauxii). The understory is well-populated with American Holly (Ilex opaca) and Mountain Laurel (Kalmia latifolia).

We watched three 4-inch-long, yellow-brown elvers (Anguilla sp.) wriggling in the current of a small, shallow brook.

There is a spring hunting season for Wild Turkey (Meleagris gallopavo) in parts of the park (which might explain why we didn’t see any). Back at the parking lot for lunch, a good half dozen of us spent 10 minutes looking for a steadily-singing Pine Warbler (Dendroica pinus) that would not budge from its concealment near the top of a pine. This has not been the first time I’ve chased a bird like this: I’m inclined to consider lack of visibility a field mark for Pine Warbler.

We moved on to the Glendening Nature Reserve of Jug Bay Wetland Sanctuary, and the butterfly action picked up a bit. Several Eastern Tailed-Blues (Everes comyntas) and American Coppers (Lycaena phlaeas) were found. And flitting about its host Juniperus virginiana, Juniper Hairstreaks (Callophrys gryneus). Whereas the elfin basks with its wings held perpendicular to the ground and the duskywings spread their wings parallel, the Juniper basks in a tree “rolled over” with both wings folded together, nearly parallel to the ground and angled to face the sun.

It’s only the new growth of a Virginia Pine (Pinus virginiana), but it’s the only close-focus image that I succeeded at for the trip.

This little patch of prickly pear (Opuntia sp.) was a bit of a surprise.

The big mystery for this stop was a series of burrows, ranging from 1 to 2 cm in diameter, some of them ringed with a little wall of twigs and beech scales. Ben measured one of the burrows to be 10 inches deep. The consensus is that the perfectly round holes were made by one or more species of solitary bee or wasp, but we couldn’t get more specific than that.

Update: Stephanie has suggested one of the scrub burrowing wolf spiders (Geolycosa sp.) as the maker of the holes.

Carole Bergmann led a walk across Hoyles Mill Conservation Park, home to one of the largest tracts of contiguous forest in Montgomery County. The park’s selling point is its geology, an underlying sill of diabase bedrock that isn’t that far below the surface, as the image on the right demonstrates.

Diabase is prized as a construction material. Its mafic chemistry and the thin soils translate into a forest community of mixed oaks with a fair amount of Virginia Pine and Eastern Red-cedar, but not much in the way of our usual hickories, maples, and Tuliptree. Uncommon oaks to be found here include Shingle Oak, Swamp White Oak, and Post Oak.

We found American Hazelnut (Corylus americana) in bloom on the far side of Little Seneca Creek, and the state rare Pricklyash (Zanthoxylum americanum) right at the entrance gate.

The special bird sighting for the day was a Downy Woodpecker working the upper branches of a Virginia Pine, hanging upside down. This is not the first time that I’ve seen a Downy acting like a songbird. Maybe I should start calling them Downy Chickadees.

Selected from this week’s report to park staff:

The beavers’ effect on local water levels is quite evident. While lower Barnyard Run used to be the reach of sketchy high water, the knee- and hip-deep stuff is now at the beginning of the boardwalk. Box #2 used to be located at the edge of the channel, and now it’s surrounded by water.

We had some ice to break through in the shallows around #1 and #3.

Box #1 is up to 12 Hooded Merganser eggs, so we would expect incubation to begin this week. Box #13 has a new nest with 3 HM eggs.

Dormant season feeders observed: 14 Green-winged Teal, 4 Northern Shoveler, 2 Gadwall

Water gauge: 0.28

You can just see in this image that the water has risen so that it is lapping the bottom edge of the side rail of the boardwalk. Another six inches and the trail will be awash.

Nesting season at Huntley Meadows Park has started already. Excerpts from my e-mail report to park staff from Sunday’s work day:

Every year, or so it seems, the birds start nesting earlier. We have 7 Hooded Merganser eggs in box #1, and another hoodie flushed from box #10. Photographers also report that a Wood Duck drake has also been hanging about this area at the beginning of the boardwalk.

We checked the other boxes in the wetland and topped up the wood chips. Box #6 looks to be in serviceable condition — no need to replace it this year. The latch on #62 is troublesome, as it has swollen and rusted in the weather; I will look for a screw-lock ring that fits it better.

Target winter species observed: Northern Pintail, Northern Shoveler, Green-winged Teal

Water gauge reading: 0.32

Construction for the wetland restoration project is really finally happening this year. Here’s a view upstream along Barnyard Run, back toward the observation tower. Expect this reach to look very different in a few months.