At the park: 95

From my most recent report:

The not-so-good news is that five of our boxes showed no evidence of incubation, with eggs that had been laid four weeks prior — so we cleaned out those boxes. The much-better news is that we have new nests started in box #6 and our studio apartment, box #5. Box #6 would be a second brood, if it comes to term — it’s only one egg at present. We also have two, possibly three, nests still incubating.

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A recent BirdNote featured Frank Bellrose and one of our favorite ducks: https://www.birdnote.org/show/frank-bellrose-and-wood-ducks

Ka-chunk

Languagehat takes on the naval neologism geedunk. My post to the comment thread:

I had a colleague who was in the Navy in the 1990s; he was stationed, among other places, on Diego Garcia in the Indian Ocean. He taught me “gee-dunk” (pronounced as a spondee) as a word for a break room, a place with a coffee machine, a table or two, and a couple of vending machines. Not at all the ice cream parlor of swankier years. His etymology, or perhaps the etymology that was handed down to him, was that “gee-dunk” was the sound of working the vending machine: the sound of pulling and releasing the knob, and the ka-chunk sound of the sweet and salty treat falling to the bottom tray.

Underground Railroad Game

This play is not the first to treat its audience like children, but it is perhaps the first to do so literally, when the house lights come up and the house is addressed as a fifth-grade class beginning a teaching unit on the American Civil War.

Shallow, lacking nuance, weakly manipulative, and not nearly as shocking as it wants to be, the piece is not without its good moments.

  • Underground Railroad Game, by Jennifer Kidwell and Scott R. Sheppard with Lightning Rod Special, directed by Taibi Magar, Woolly Mammoth Theatre Company, Washington

Peirce Mill river herring 2018

downstreamNeil Fitzpatrick and Bill Yeaman led a walk to Rock Creek and the fish ladder established in 2007 to enable migratory river herring to swim around the man-made barrier of the dam at Peirce Mill. And our luck was great! Despite some muddy conditions in the stream, many Gizzard Shad (Dorosoma cepedianum) could be seen, working their way upstream. Alas, no acceptable photos acquired. (Note to future self: bring a longer lens and a little more patience.)

On our walk down the somewhat trippy Melvin Hazen Trail, the group spotted a single Louisiana Waterthrush (Seiurus motacilla).

At the park: 94

From my report for last Sunday:

box 62, againThe birds appear to have hit the snooze button in response to the variable weather conditions. None of the nest has hatched out yet, while three new nests have started. Ever-popular box #62 is still incubating.


unhappy at box 60Unfortunately, it appears that the nest in box #67 has been abandoned. And the predator guard for box #60 was no match for a determined Common Raccoon (Procyon lotor), who consumed the eggs in the box. Box #60 is set rather low to the ground, on the bank of the channel; we should think about raising it or otherwise repositioning it.


We chased some paper wasps from box #67. I was cautious about seeing a wasp with yellow bands on the abdomen (as well as some wasps showing the more common all-black coloration), but it seems that several of the Polistes wasps in our area may show that feature, including the introduced P. dominula.

Fall zone

Benjamin Strauss et al. present a harrowing quiz: outline maps of various coastal states under one possible climate change scenario, in which sea level rises by 170 feet over the coming millennia. The geophysical boundary between Coastal Plain and Piedmont is unmistakable; farther south, other states would be obliterated.