Category: In the Field

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.

I made two trips to Huntley Meadows Park last weekend. On Sunday, I worked with the RMV team to plant (mostly) trees and shrubs (mostly) around the new outdoor classroom, just across the entrance trail from the visitors’ center. I planted two viburnums, two beeches, a blueberry bush, and a Christmas Fern.

Saturday I got an update from park staff on the planned wetland restoration project, which has been scheduled to start construction Real Soon Now for several seasons. The new plans call for a composite design for the dam, anchored by interlocking panels of vinyl sheet piling, with riprap on the downsteam face and a gentle earthen slope on the upstream face. This idea was suggested by National Wildlife Refuge managers, who know something about engineering water impoundments. To deceive the beavers (a beaver never met a course of running water that he didn’t want to dam), the design uses Clemson water levelers to collect the water that will flow through the structure.

Soil science word of the day: it’s the lean clay layer (clay with low plasticity) lying just under the surface that is responsible for keeping the wetland a wetland. If this layer were to be disrupted, it wouldn’t matter how clever the design of the dam was.

Almost ideal weather conditions (Friday’s passing cold front with storms, Saturday’s northwest winds) set up a great weekend birding in Cape May with a group led by Mark Garland. Warbler migrants were numerous (15 species for my count, including my darling Black-throated Blue and Black-throated Green). In the afternoons, we worked the neighborhood streets around Lily Lake. An insect hatch in the elm trees caused them to “turn on,” in Mark’s words. A brilliantly yellow Prairie Warbler; a crazy weekend for Red-breasted Nuthatches (Sitta canadensis).

Falcons and accipiters were also plentiful (ID mnemonic: the tail of a Sharp-shinned Hawk is sharply cut off, while a Cooper’s tail is rounded) , and easier to see from the west side of Cape May Point than from the official watch station in Cape May State Park. A trio of Brant in Delaware Bay was a small surprise. Mark called the goldenrod thriving in this windblown habitat Beach Goldenrod (other sources call it Seaside Goldenrod) (Solidago sempervirens).

Sunday morning at Higbee Beach we were seeing half a dozen Northern Flickers at a time. Higbee runs north-south along the bay side of the peninsula. Mark explained an early-morning phenomenon that I didn’t understand the first time I visited Cape May, in 1998. As the sun comes up, a passerine (migrating by night) that finds itself over Delaware Bay takes the strategy “water! go back the way you came!” So at sunrise you will see birds flying back north over Higbee, looking for a dry spot to land.

Monarch butterflies were also in migration, a steady stream all weekend. The flicker of a butterfly was always catching my eye, making me think that I’d spotted a bird. I added Common Buckeye (Junonia coenia) to my very short butterfly list.

Everyone came scrambling to see the Say’s Phoebe (Sayornis saya) in the park east of the lighthouse. I’ve seen this bird in the west, so I got my look and then went elsewhere: there had been reports of Clay-colored Sparrow in the brush along the back of the dunes, and some of our group got a brief look, but I did not succeed.

80 species for the weekend, plus good looks at several Cape May Warblers for a life list twitch.

Mark’s suggestion paid off: Westside Market on Broadway is a good place to get a sandwich and Krimpets for lunch. If you’d like a split of wine to go with dinner (many of the restaurants are BYOB), Collier’s is the place to go.

I like the funky nouveau street name signs in Cape May City. And the hand-painted sign at my motel (a mom and pop operation now converted to a chain’s branding) was very cute.

Sunday we walked the property of VNPS Pocahontas Chapter President Catharine Tucker in Hanover County. Her 70 acres have seen little farming disturbance over the last 150 years, and hence are one of our better representatives of mesic hardwood forest in the upper Coastal Plain. The fall zone runs through Richmond, and this part of Hanover County is northeast of Richmond.

On the state road leading to her land, Catharine pointed out Red Morning-Glory, or Redstar (Ipomoea coccinea) growing in a hedge managed for butterflies. There seems to be some question as to whether Ipomoea is native to this part of the country.

Catharine effectively used the subsiding road cut to illustrate the soil profile: a sandy horizon lying atop red clays.

The bulk of the property is a Beech-Tuliptree forest, with some magnificent examples of Fagus grandifolia. Our group measured around one tree, computing a DBH of 110 cm. And with beeches come the parasitic Beechdrops (Epifagus virginiana)—plentiful here, but difficult to photograph with a point-and-shoot.

Our destination plant was Shining Clubmoss (Huperzia lucidula), found in one small clump at the base of a tree. This fern ally is kin to the more often-seen Lycopodium ground pines.

Bonus local common name: Catharine calls Mayapple (Podophyllum peltatum) May Pops—although Google thinks that this name goes better with Passiflora incarnata.