Category: In the Field

From this week’s report to/from the nest box team:

No surprises here: we already have merganser eggs in two of our boxes, #4 on the inflow and #5 on lower Barnyard Run. We chipped all of the boxes. #4 is now easily accessible — thank you!

However, access to the interior of box #84 is still a big problem.

I will pick up some spring hook-and-eye closures and we can fit them to boxes #60, #61, and others.

Working around the weather (as usual), as well as some other appointments, I visited the Glade and Lexington Estates Park at suboptimal times. But I came back with a combined species count of 21. The Great Blue Heron in the little skid of a pond in Lexington Estates was the biggest surprise. There seems to be more Leatherleaf Mahonia (Berberis bealei) along the Glade than in years past—or maybe I’m just better at spotting it. Nasty stuff.

Another lichens walk with Natalie Howe, this time as part of a five-week class, and this time back in the friendly confines of Nature Forward’s Woodend Sanctuary. I excelled at finding sticks with not-lichens, like this one with a big patch of Giraffe Spots (Peniophora albobadia). But I did meet two taxa of Physcia, including Physcia stellaris, a Parmotrema, and a shadow lichen, Phaeophyscia rubrophulchra.

We walked the new trail, so most of the rocks were newly-placed and hadn’t acquired the requisite patina of lichens.

The one downer about lichens workshops is that they tend to take place when nothing much else is going on, so it’s always freezing and windy.

Many pictures of the digits on my left hand.

• 2021 in iNaturalist
• 2020 in iNaturalist
• 2019 in iNaturalist

I’m chasing that next Trail Quest pin.

• Walker Nature Center, Reston, Fairfax County, Va.
• Great Backyard Bird Count at the Glade and Lexington Estates Park
• Elklick Woodlands NAP with Nelson DeBarros in the rain
• Huntley Meadows Park for the Mason & Bailey Club
• Clifton Institute odonates count
• NABA Butterfly Count at the Clifton Institute
• Riverbend Park with the VNPS Potowmack Grass Bunch
• Bioblitz at a private residence with the Clifton Institute
• Clinch River State Park, Wise County, Va.
• Virginia Creeper Trail, Washington County, Va.
• Grayson Highlands State Park, Grayson County, Va.
• Bluff Mountain Preserve, Ashe County, N.C.
• Thoroughfare Road grassland, Prince William County, Va., led by Bert Harris
• Boundary Bridge for the Mason & Bailey Club
• First Landing State Park, Virginia Beach, Va.
• Great Dismal Swamp NWR
• Magothy Bay NAP, Northampton County, Va.
• Lichens workshop with Natalie Howe
• Seneca and Central Loudoun CBCs

Another moderately successful season of monitoring nest boxes at Huntley Meadows Park, Fairfax County, Va.

• 2021’s report
• 2020’s report
• 2019’s list
• 2018’s list
• 2017’s list
• 2016’s list
• 2015’s list
• 2014’s list
• 2013’s list
• 2012’s list
• 2011’s list
• 2010’s list
• 2009’s list
• 2008’s list

This was my second year leading Seneca’s sector 14, and I was a last-minute recruit to lead a subsector of Central Loudoun’s sector 11, four sites in the vicinity of “Old Ashburn” (the crossroads with the W&OD Trail).

We found a warm place inside to get the sector 14 group organized and then dispersed into a pair of parties. We missed some birds that we found last year, but found new ones, for a total of 46 species. One of my feeder watchers reported an Evening Grosbeak (Hesperiphona vespertina). The Buttermilk Creek Trail (pinned as an eBird hotspot) was marginally productive for Candy and Pat’s party; on the other hand, I had reasonable success with the obscure Lexington Estates Park in Great Falls, despite a bumptious family group passing through. No luck finding Rock Pigeon in my sector, despite some near-twilight parking lot crawling. The north end of Lake Fairfax is more easily accessible from the boat house, rather than walking down the hill from the parking by the water park.

I got to meet some new places and denizens of Ashburn with sector leader Kent Clizbe, and my team of five “beginners” was relatively well experienced. A Red-shouldered Hawk (Buteo lineatus) teed up for us near the Graves Lane pond. Accipiters are still an ID challenge for me. Raptor-on-raptor confrontations are always fun: this time it was another Red-shouldered Hawk challenging a Red-tailed Hawk (Buteo jamaicensis), flustering a pack of European Starlings in the process. The Borrowers claimed the lens hood on my long lens, and then quickly returned it (thanks, Michael!).

It was a good season for Eastern Bluebirds (Sialia sialis) on both counts.

More publicity for the Habenaria repens that we documented in September. News of the observation was reported in Florascope, newsletter of the Flora of Virginia Project. The species is now recorded in the Digital Atlas of the Virginia Flora, and will be added to the next digital update of the Flora of Virginia.

Discovered new to Virginia in September 2022 during a Master Naturalist field trip in the Great Dismal Swamp. The sighting was posted on iNaturalist as an unknown orchid, but soon identified from the photos by a Virginia Natural Heritage Program biologist. A subsequent field survey by Natural Heritage biologists revealed about 25 reproductive plants, dozens of smaller plants, and hundreds of tiny seedlings at the site.

The orchid that Margaret Chatham spotted and I photographed on a VMN field trip to Great Dismal Swamp NWR received a little shout-out (scroll way down) from the state organization and Zach Bradford of Virginia DCR.

It’s a largely southern species (that ranges into South America) that has seemingly been inching towards that Virginia state line in recent decades, with the previous closest population about 15 miles to the south in NC.

A state record — cool!