At the park: 75

From my most recent report of the nest box team’s activities:

Lots of activity in the past two weeks! We have nests in 8 of the 16 boxes we are monitoring. We have often observed mixed clutches of Wood Duck and Hooded Merganser, but [we] found something new in box #60: two birds flushed from the box, one of each species. The box has a combined clutch of 14 eggs.

We expect box #67 to be hatched out by May. Box #6 did not show any change between the 29th and the 5th, so it’s possible that this nest has been abandoned. Continuing my run of dropping hardware into the wetland, box #7 needs a new quick link closure: I have some spares and I will take care of this next time.

I have new GPS coordinates for all the boxes, and I will be distributing that info.

We have several pictures of duck and merg eggs side by side for comparison, and I will get something distributed shortly.

thanks for the perchTree Swallows say thank you to box #84 for being such nice spot to perch up on. A Brown-headed Cowbird could be heard in the parking lot on the 29th. An Osprey was fishing in the main pond on the 5th.

* * *

That’s all for us for April. Our May work day will be the first Sunday, 3 May.

Flem Snopes

…a thick squat soft man of no establishable age between twenty and thirty, with a broad still face containing a tight seam of mouth stained slightly at the corners with tobacco, and eyes the color of stagnant water, and projecting from among the other features in startling and sudden paradox, a tiny predatory nose like the beak of a small hawk. It was as though the original nose had been left off by the original designer or craftsman and the unfinished job taken over by someone of a radically different school or perhaps by some viciously maniacal humorist or perhaps by one who had had only time to clap into the center of the face a frantic and desperate warning.

—William Faulkner, The Hamlet, Book One: Flem, Chapter Three, 1.

The Pigeoning

Frank works in a shabby office, with nothing but his own OCD and a rather talkative office safety manual for company. The expression on his face usually registers somewhere between bemusement and mild alarm. Frank is also a bunraku puppet and the protagonist of this 60-minute piece—a charming, often goofy, at times phantasmagorically frightening tale of one man’s obsession with common city pigeons and the secret messages they carry to us.

Writer/director Robin Frohardt always lets us know what Frank is thinking, which is rather a challenge because Frank is wordless (we do hear some expressively heavy sighs from him); a lot of the information about Frank’s emotional and cognitive states is the responsibility of composer Freddi Price. Doubling on laptop, Price’s sound effects are clean and crisp, and sometimes not quite what they seem.

There’s a lot of good straightforward puppetry here: a formidable trash monster, a hilarious set of venetian blinds with a mind of its own. Frohardt is not afraid to go a little meta, as well, as when Frank himself turns feckless puppeteer. But the core of this piece is Frank’s endearing personality (although I don’t think I’d want to share a break room with him), sometimes revealed by something as simple as the squeak of a highlighting pen.

  • The Pigeoning, created and directed by Robin Frohardt, composed by Freddi Price, Artisphere Dome Theatre, Arlington, Va.

This was my first (and very likely last) opportunity to visit Artisphere’s friendly Dome Theatre (the ceiling of which was used very creatively to register an underwater effect). Alas, the multivenue county-funded facility is slated to be closed later this year.

Rare precision

Mark Memmott, interviewed by Scott Simon, takes the time to parse out the meanings of the word “suicide,” and explores when the word is (and is not) appropriately applied to someone who takes other lives along with his or her own. Memmott wants to inform, not inflame.

But I should note that the phrase suicide bomber can be problematic, and I want to be very careful with what I say next. I am not suggesting anything about what happened aboard the Germanwings jet, but, especially when information is scant, it’s important to remember that what seems obvious may not be. For instance, there is evidence that some of those who have been called suicide bombers have been forced to or tricked into carrying explosives into buildings and crowds. Should they be called suicide bombers? I don’t think so. I don’t think most people would. And I know I’m a nag on this topic. It’s usually best to avoid labels, and the phrase suicide bomber is a label. Unless you’re sure those labels apply, stick to the facts, be precise with your words, choose them carefully.

At the park: 74

Excerpts from my most recent report from the monitoring team:

Nature is taking its course: we have Hooded Merganser eggs in four boxes (including the newly-replaced #84) and one Wood Duck egg laid in box #2.

mossyNot much green visible yet [but this log nursing bryophytes looks cheery]. The team spotted the Red-necked Grebe [Podiceps grisegena] on the 15th and 22nd. An Osprey [Pandion haliaetus] was fishing over the main wetland on the 22nd. Kat and Chris, working the inflow to the wetland, have a lot more success snagging trash than we do in the outflow.

At the park: 73

From my report from the nest box monitoring team for 8 March:

The team detected depressions in the 3 of the boxes, but (again a surprise) we have not counted any eggs yet.

Maintenance items: I discussed with Dave Lawlor on a separate thread the value of replacing box #84. The glued-on doorknobs for new boxes #1 and #3 have both come off; we’re going to screw in hooks next week. Most importantly, the pole for box #13 is cracked, but the PVC sleeve is intact. Box #13 is on the left of the boardwalk, the same side as the new monitoring equipment, along the old drainage canal, just off the patch of land before you get to the observation tower.

Birds observed: Black Duck, Bald Eagle, Tree Swallow (perched on the entrance of one of our boxes), Red-winged Blackbird (males singing). Also quite noticeable are the branches down from the big Willow Oak where the Heron Trail splits off.

VNPS Winter Workshop 2015

A really strong workshop, with four good speakers, hosted by Virginia Native Plant Society at the University of Richmond. A theme emerged: interactions of plants with other organisms in the landscape, be they herbivorous White-tailed Deer (Odocoileus virginianus) (as discussed by Henry Wilbur, emeritus at the University of Virginia), or pollinating Eastern Tiger Swallowtails (Papilio glauca), who pick up pollen from Flame Azalea (Rhododendron calendulaceum) on their wings (only the second such association known, as discovered by Mary Jane Epps, postdoc at North Carolina State University [her work will soon be published]), or the unexpected linkage (through soil pH) of invasive Garlic Mustard (Alliaria petiolata) and the tiny arthopods known as springtails (Collembola), brought to us by Anne Alerding of Virginia Military Institute.

For me, the most interesting talk (and most challenging to follow along with) was Karen Barnard-Kubow‘s explication of her dissertation research on the genetics of American Bellflower (Campanulastrum americanum). This species has a range from the Virginia Coastal Plain to the breadbasket Midwest. Barnard-Kubow’s work has identified distinct clades: one in the East, one or two in the Appalachian Mountains, and one in the Midwest. Cross-breeding experiments on these populations suggests that the plant might be in the process of speciation. Her work also indicates that genetic material in the plant’s chloroplasts is sometimes inherited from the male parent, rather than strictly from the female, as received wisdom has it.