photo – A Honey of an Anklet

Shenandoah National Park getaway 2026

I escaped the to-do list monster for two and a half days with a trip to Shenandoah National Park. I made four hikes; not too much of the flora and fauna was unusual, but a couple of the hikes themselves proved surprising.

I found resprouts of American Chestnut (Castanea dentata) in several places, none of them more than two meters tall. Eastern Comma (Polygonia comma) butterflies were the most common lep found, perhaps the most common insect found, including a scattering of them collecting minerals on a gravel verge. The most common bird I detected was probably Common Raven, which was heard quarking and flapping overhead at every site.

Following my much-loved copy of Circuit Hikes in Shenandoah National Park,¹ the loop to Byrd’s Nest #4 came in a little lower than the guidebook read: 420ft elevation change, 520ft vertical ascent.² Late purple asters are blooming in the park. I’m calling this observation Symphyotrichum phlogifolium. I found an interesting fly, ID not confirmed, and a new sharpshooter for me, Paraulacizes irrorata.

The next day, I started out with a loop around Blackrock, a hike that I also took in 2018. I added a side trip to the Blackrock Hut, which added time and altitude to the trip. I more or less knew what to expect on the last leg, but the steady straight-line climb on the Trayfoot Mountain Trail was relentless. A smol lycophyte, too tiny to get a solid ID; katydids chatting in full daylight; nice Virginia Jumpseed. An Oak Treehopper (Platycotis vittata) thought about hitching a ride with me at the parking lot.

After lunch at the Loft Mountain Wayside,³ I started up the Frazier Discovery Trail, which is marked as the Deadening Nature Trail on my map from 1988. I should have looked at the contour lines on the topo side of the map, because what I discovered is that even “nature trails” in the Park can be rocky, rugged, and vertical. This trail turned out to be the birdiest one of the trip, with a Barred Owl calling in the distance. Lots of spicebush in fruit.

For my final walk, I picked another new trail just from looking at the map. A little tired from the previous three hikes in the previous days, I promised myself that when I was ready to stop climbing, I could turn around and descend. I settled on the Meadow Spring Trail: found no meadow (succession, man) but I found a spring and the ruins of a farmhouse. I made it to the end of the trail, where it connects to the Appalachian Trail, again climbing more than I expected. While there wasn’t much in bloom on the way up, there was a patch of asters for sweat bees to nectar on at the AT junction.

This time I stayed in the main lodge building at Big Meadows. Good location, lovely view, the restaurant ran out of fruit, managing the radiator made me feel like I was in a New York apartment in the 1940s.

Hike stats (all of these taken at naturalist/old man pace):

Byrd’s Nest #4, 2.7 miles, 2:40, 420ft altitude difference, 580ft vertical ascent
Blackrock-Trayfoot, 2.7 miles (est), 3:00, 580ft vertical ascent
Frazier Discovery, 1.3 miles, 1:50, 450ft altitude difference, 440ft vertical ascent
Meadow Spring, 1.4 miles, 1:50, 510ft altitude difference and vertical ascent

¹My copy is from 2005. I really need to get an updated edition, but all my hike notes are in this one.

²Per Geo Tracker. Also indispensable, but sometimes I have trouble making sure that it’s recording.

³Too many tasty twisty fries.

At the park: 159

It’s the off season for ducks in nest boxes at Huntley Meadows Park: a good time to write a little about the boxes themselves.

As P. and K. are demonstrating here, a typical box for us is made of nominal one-inch wood panels, about the height but not the width of a dorm refrigerator, with a slightly sloping roof, and entrance/exit hole, and a door on the side. Each box has a painted number: the numbering system is there is no system. Sometimes a box is numbered (randomly) by the carpenter who made it, sometimes a box retains its number when it’s moved to a completely different place in the park.

A box is mounted on a metal pole, usually in some depth of water. And usually we sheathe the pole in a PVC sleeve, as a predator deterrent. As a second deterrent, we’ve attached a metal cone to the PVC sleeve. As you can see from the detailed photo, there’s still a bit of a gap between the apex of the cone and the sleeve: I conjecture that black ratsnakes can slip through the gap, so we’ve recently filled in with foam crack filler.

If you’re mounting boxes on square wooden posts, you wouldn’t have this gaposis problem.

The box is attached to the pole in a couple of different ways. Typically, we drill two pairs of holes in the back of the box and pass through a pair of U-bolts, securing them with nuts on the inside. There’s not quite enough friction to hold the box in place, so it rests on the top of the PVC sleeve.

I’ve also recorded at least one box that uses carriage bolts that thread through the box and the pole.

And a box with metal straps.

The door must also be secured against predation. Whereas ratsnakes like to come in through the entrance hole, raccoons prefer finding a way to open the door. So we often close the door with a hasp and quick link, or with a hook and eye on a spring.

The inside of the box is fitted with a section of hardware cloth (wire mesh), which gives the ducklings more of a purchase when they’re ready to scramble out of the box. This element tends to be a point of failure as the box is used, so we might have to staple the mesh back in place.

A typical box lasts about five to seven years in the field before it falls apart. If a box develops a knot hole that pops open, we can keep the box going for another season or two with a bit of plywood and some (clumsy) nailing.

Letters of recommendation: 1

Whenever I check into a motel, one of the first things I seek out is the literature display rack. I’ve grabbed info on antique malls,¹ directions to the Goo Goo Shop in Nashville, opening hours for the Tinkertown Museum in Albuquerque (I need to go back in season)—I don’t always find something interesting, but once in a while I find a peach, like the brochure for The Dennos Museum Center in Traverse City, Mich.

So how did those racks and all those brochures get there? Well, at least for here in the mid-Atlantic, I may have found the source. In a brilliantly meta moment, I picked up a rack card for TDS Brochure Distributors. (They’ve allowed their domain to lapse, so it’s possible that they’re no longer operating under that name.)

From the back of TDS’s card:

Embark on a journey of exploration in our captivating region! Pick up one of the brochures, rack cards, maps, or visitor guides displayed here, and let it whisk you away to an unexpected and thoroughly delightful experience. Consider extending your stay to uncover the full spectrum of exciting attractions in the area. Your getaway to unforgettable moments starts with a choice from this display!

¹Since my house is full, I really need to stay out of these places.

Clifton Institute Bioblitz August 2026 (Rappahannock): addendum

The view of the Blue Ridge from our bioblitz site last month.

Still here

In about 1981, A. and I took a little trip to Garrett County, Maryland, the triangular bit at the western end of the state, wedged between West Virginia and Pennsylvania. We were hoping for cross-country skiing (we had recently moved from Minneapolis), but there was no snow, so we did a bit of unfocused hiking.

At the crossroads of U.S. 50 and U.S. 219, marked on the map as Red House, we found a roadside restaurant that served up buckwheat pancakes and this amazing link sausage—it was probably smoked, but then prepared like ordinary breakfast sausage. I don’t remember the name, but it was likely something like the Red House Inn.

A few years later, A. and I split up, and then somewhere in the mid 1980s I took a solo trip out U.S. 50 (I think I was driving Algernon) and stopped again at this roadside restaurant. Food still amazing.

And then time continued to pass, and the next time I was out that way I saw that the restaurant was closed. So it goes with mom and pop outfits. East-west traffic on U.S. 50 was perhaps beginning to decline with the opening of I-68 in the northern part of the county.

On my West Virginia trip with Mark Garland earlier this month, I passed by the place again. It has a new roof, but there are buttresses keeping the walls upright (not visible in the photo). Traffic on U.S. 50 was very sparse, again maybe due to the opening of four-lane U.S. 48 to the south.

The building is now a roadside church. It’s nice to remember my two visits from 40 years ago, and that wonderful sausage.

West Virginia highlands August 2026

We scuffled with lodging availability (nearby music festival), a road closure, pop-up thunderstorms, a park closed for an archery tournament, and limited opening hours for visitor centers, and still pulled off an enjoyable two days in the West Virginia highlands on a Nature Forward trip led by Mark Garland. The group visited sites in Blackwater Falls State Park and Canaan Valley National Wildlife Refuge. The refuge’s mascot is the Cheat Mountain Salamander (Plethodon nettingi).

The driving to this part of West Virginia follows the somewhat infamous Corridor H highway, signed as U.S. 48. The stretch between Wardensville (just over the Virginia line) and Davis is four lanes divided with intersections at grade, chopping through hills and bridging rivers and valleys.

Mark showed us two new butterflies for me, both in hand: Atlantis Fritillary (Argynnis atlantis) and Meadow Fritillary (Boloria bellona). Participant B. pointed out several nifty day-flying moths, among them Eusarca confusaria, Ctenucha virginica, and Common Ringlet (Coenonympha california). I found two lycophytes new to me, Hickey’s Tree-clubmoss (Dendrolycopodium hickeyi) and Staghorn Clubmoss (Lycopodium clavatum) (and). And we puzzled out the ID of a meadowhawk, at last landing on White-faced Meadowhawk (Symptetrum obtrusum).

Mark demonstrated attaching a BlūMorpho transmitter to a Monarch butterfly. Six hundredths of a gram with its own solar panel, and signals from nearby phones with Bluetooth active can be recorded. Wowee!

I hadn’t realized that the Blackwater River, flowing east to west across the region, is part of the Ohio River watershed. Traveling between the valley and my motel in Oakland, Md., I made a short side quest to visit the Fairfax Stone, marking the springs of the North Fork of the Potomac River, the Potomac of course flowing east to Chesapeake Bay.

I also passed through Thomas, W. Va., with a hippy-dippy line of shops along its riverfront. It would be cool to stop in the next time I’m in the area.

Glacier National Park

My last stop on my May trip was Glacier National Park. My timing wasn’t great: the upper stretches of the Going to the Sun Road were still closed for the season, which meant a long drive from my lodge on the west side of the park around to the east side. More glacier action at Grand Teton (and higher elevation), but I enjoyed my brief visit to Glacier.

But first I had to get there. The only road going north out of Grand Teton goes through Yellowstone, so I got the nickel tour of that property. Some up-close-and-personal views of Bison bison. The hoofers seemed to be keeping to the southbound side of the road; the traffic was much more backed up in that direction.

My digs on the lodge campus were spartan: a two story cabin called Snyder Hall, which had served several purposes in its lifetime. Private rooms sleep two; bathrooms down the hall.

Saturday the 24th I made that long drive around to the east side to the Sun Point Nature Trail, which yielded some nice wildflowers—White-leaved Cinquefoil (Potentilla pulcherrima) on exposed rocks overlooking Saint Mary Lake; butter-yellow False Rock-loving Cinquefoil (Drymocallis pseudorupestris) on another outcrop visible from the parking lot; Bearberry (A/K/A Kinnikinnick) (Arctostaphylos uva-ursi) along the trail; and yet again I did not collect enough information to identify a Castilleja to species—and butterflies—two nice nymphalids, California Tortoiseshell (Nymphalis californica) and Milbert’s Tortoiseshell (Aglais milberti). The trail passed through a burned-over area, so there was nothing to cut the wind, and I retraced my steps.

Back on the west side towards evening, I strolled the Trail of the Cedars. My sources say that the flowers of Pacific Trillium (Trillium ovatum) open as white, but turn purple to red as they mature. And I found a Maianthemum that is not racemosum: a delicate Star-flowered Lily-of-the-Valley (Maianthemum stellaturm).

For my last day in the field, I walked a trail with a loop at the end in the Fish Creek area. I sighted one more squirrel species—Red Squirrel (Tamiasciurus hudsonicus)—some green stuff—Pipsissewa (Chimaphila umbellata) showing last year’s fruit and Wood Forget-me-not (Myosotis sylvatica) in flower—and distant Red-necked Grebes (Podiceps grisegena) on Lake McDonald.

Merlin signaled both Hammond’s and Dusky Flycatchers. I got glasses on a couple birds, and photographed one from behind. I don’t know these Empids’ vocalizations. So nothing to confirm an ID to species. Two for next time.

A short visit: maybe worth a trip in another season.

Grand Teton National Park: 2

In the afternoon, after my short climbing adventure, I did a driving tour of Antelope Flats. At a pullout near a bridge over Carpenter Draw I found some beautiful gnarly bark on a Narrowleaf Cottonwood (Populus angustifolia). Merlin-assisted again, I found a lifer Vesper Sparrow (Pooecetes gramineus).

Returning to my lodge, on US 191, I found a distant bull Elk (Cervus canadensis) and my first herd of Bison (Bison bison).

Next day, 21 May, there was a frosting of snow from overnight at the lodge, with rain in the forecast for the morning. I needed to do laundry, so—

In the afternoon, trying to stay out of the wind, I walked the approach to Grand View Point. Here’s my rental Nissan Altima; she was very bossy about lane drift and other peccadilloes of my driving, so she never got a name.

I found a few interesting small wildflowers. However, the big surprise caught on the way back to the car: a stirring in the forb layer just to the left of the trail, and then out sauntered a Dusky Grouse (Dendragapus obscurus)! This sighting brought my total of life birds for the trip to nine, rather more than I expected/hoped for.

My last day in the Park called for some flexibility. I was planning to explore Willow Flats, in search of more Moose and other good things, but the area was closed due to bear activity. So I pieced together some walks on Lunch Tree Hill, around the Colter Bay area, and the easy part of the Lupine Meadows trail. I met yet another new ground squirrel, Uinta Ground Squirrel (Urocitellus armatus). At Colter Bay, I spied a group of about six of them making use of horse dung. Another new butterfly, Large Marble (Euchloe ausonides). And I achieved another objective: a fine photo of American Dipper (Cinclus mexicanus) (one of my favorite birds) at the bridge over Cottonwood Creek on the way to Lupine Meadows.

13/10 would come again.

Grand Teton National Park: 1

I left the Salt Lake City metro for four days in Grand Teton National Park. It did not disappoint, as the cliché goes. I even spotted a few species of charismatic megafauna.

The first two days I spent in the vicinity of Jenny Lake. Tuesday I took two walks along the east and north sides: I had ambitions of walking the three-quarter loop around to the shuttle boat dock, but the elevation and my conditioning quashed that idea. Generally the trails were in good shape, but I encountered at least one choose-your-own-adventure opportunity.

Lots of new plants, many of them in flower: a native mahonia, Berberis repens. An orangetip butterfly, Julia Orangetip (Anthocharis julia). The first of several new ground squirrels for me, Yellow-pine Chipmunk (Neotamias amoenus): my guidebook says, “Steals campground food,” and I often found them around buildings and parking lots.

I gradually figured out that the unfamiliar warblers were Audubon’s, conspecifics of the Myrtle Warblers from back home. My notes say, “Yellow-rumped Warbler and Ruby-crowned Kinglet and Chipping Sparrow are all over—but can I get a good photo? No.”

I had acquired a bell and a canister of bear spray in preparation for this part of the trip, but I might have been able to rent my bear spray. Brown-headed Cowbirds were the mooch birds on the Jenny Lake campus. My trail tracker app reported that I hiked 4.5 miles.

The next day was devoted to as much vertical as I could handle. I rode the boat shuttle to the west side of Jenny Lake and started the climb toward Inspiration Point. The first stretches were fairly easy, and the junctions were more clearly marked. A tip was being passed along the trail that a cow Moose (Alces alces) was hanging out, so I took a little side trip.

As indicated by guidebooks, the trail was very popular, even on a Wednesday morning; I wouldn’t have needed the bear spray.

Another example of a wildflower genus that I know from the mid-Atlantic, but a different species, Lanceleaf Spring Beauty (Claytonia lanceolata). A second new ground squirrel, Common Golden-mantled Ground Squirrel (Callospermophilus lateralis)—it didn’t hang around very long. A shrub that I would find often, Mountain Lover, or Oregon Boxwood (Paxistima myrsinites).

Once you’re at the fork for Hidden Falls, the going gets steeper. The good thing about an out-and-back hike, I wrote in my field notes, is that you can decide when to stop. My trail tracker app reported that I had reached 7000 feet of elevation, and that was good enough for me. A net climb of 300 feet on a 1.7 mile walk.

I took the first of many looks for American Dipper in the fast-running mountain streams.

Great Salt Lake Bird Festival

Every birding festival is different. The Great Salt Lake Bird Festival, based in Davis County, Utah, provided field trips to some interesting sites—and a keynote speaker with great photos who, alas, overstayed his welcome.

First up was a walk in Dimple Dell Regional Park, in the foothills of the Wasatch Front, led by Tori Sohn and Rachel Lake. A focus of this walk was the flora of the region, so I got first looks at several common plants that I would see throughout the trip, from Cheatgrass (Bromus tectorum) (no pic?!) to Gambel Oak (Quercus gambelii) to Lewis Flax (Linum lewisii). Also picked up my first lifer, a bird that I would see often in Utah, Lazuli Bunting (Passerina amoena) (LAZB).

Rachel lumped all the sagebrush into Big Wyoming Sage; she said that there is an entire manual just for Artemisia ID.

There were reaches of the creek running through the canyon that were wet, but most of it was dry, as in the photo.

In the evening, Adam and Marzena Blundell led a short walk through Mountain Wilderness Park, ending at their home, fitted with a multitude of bird feeders. More LAZB, including a good look at a female.

Next day was a drive-stop-bird-repeat trip up Diamond Fork Canyon with leader Keeli Marvel. The canyon is in Utah County, southeast of Springville. I quickly caught on that everyone had a a different pronunciation of lazuli (Z or ZH, for instance), but less quickly that I have been pronouncing this word wrong for decades. Lewis’s Woodpecker (Melanerpes lewis), another western speciality; Canyon Wren (Catherpes mexicanus) at the top of the Red Ledges outcrop, with a voice that sounds like a ball bouncing downstairs; and a nifty butterfly, Sagebrush Checkerspot (Chlosyne acastus). It was nice to get some decent photos and audio of an east-west bird, Yellow-breasted Chat (Icteria virens).

Stephanie Greenwood took us through Springhill Geologic Park in North Salt Lake. This is a lemons-to-lemonade recovering natural space. One of the dirty little secrets I learned from this trip to Salt Lake is that the foothills are mined for Lake Bonneville gravel, with houses perched on the ridgeline above. The residents of this patch were not so lucky; a slow-moving landslide in the 90s ultimately dispatched about a dozen homes.

Song Sparrows here demonstrated some of their regional dialects; Mule Deer (Odocoileus hemionus) like suburbs as much as their congener White-taileds do; we saw lots of Arrowleaf Balsamroot (Balsamorhiza sagittata), which I would continue to see farther north; I found several very sluggish Obscure Darkling Beetles (Eleodes obscura), some of them showing unusual behavior: one was flopped over on its back as if dead, another showed a head-down posture.

Sunday was my destination trip, a school bus ride (leaders: Max Malmquist and Jaimi Butler) (I sat in Scatlett’s seat) down the washboard road to Robert Smithson’s Spiral Jetty. The work is beached now, with the dusty pink water so special to Smithson a good half mile walk away. I packed for this trip prepared for bugs and sun, but on this day we got chilly wind and a bit of rain.

The area has been explored for petroleum, and there are scattered seeps of sticky tar that can catch wildlife unawares. Some opportunities for botanizing along the remains of the structures built to support the mineral exploration: a native wild rye, Squirreltail (Elymus elymoides).

We reached the water! Salt concentrations run very high here (as a taste test confirmed); winds whip up the salt into ephemeral whitecaps. Catch a bit in your hand and give your fellow birder a Salt Lake high five!

Oh yes, birds. We stopped at the Golden Spike National Historical Park, where a Great Horned Owl (Bubo virginianus) was tending near-fledglings—this is why you go with a guide. A fleeting look at Gray Partridge (Perdix perdix) from the vehicle—not many field marks visible in my grainy photos but what else could it be?

I got an even briefer look at another western specialty that I’m not going to count, and I missed MacGillivray’s Warbler (seen by others) on two trips.

Julie Metz Wetlands May 2026

Another visit to the Julie Metz Wetlands in Prince William County, this time with the Grass Bunch. Happy, abundant vegetation: here’s the view from J.’s favorite spot. Some fairly easy sedges, like Sallow Sedge (Carex lurida); an unexpected non-Tipula crane fly, Spectacled Crane Fly (Epiphragma solatrix).

Some of the paths through the wet areas are pretty janky: what I call Bring Your Own Boardwalk.

Williamsburg midweek getaway

I put together a quick road trip to Williamsburg, anchored by a visit to the recently expanded Muscarelle Museum of Art on the William & Mary campus for its fine exhibition of women Abstract Expressionists.

After that, it was field trips:

to the tiny but mighty Williamsburg Botanical Garden: scoliid wasps and nomad bees spotted among the Golden Alexanders;
a short walk along the Basset Trace Nature Trail, carefully tended by the Virginia Master Naturalists Historic Rivers Chapter; oddly, you drive through Colonial Williamsburg and park next to a hotel building to get to the trailhead;
and on the way home, a stop at Westmoreland State Park on the lower Potomac: friendly rangers and a solitary Rattlesnakeweed (Hieracium venosum) that seems to be out of its vouchered range.

On the back roads of U.S. 17 and Virginia 3, I lost count of the number of Baptist churches, as well as yard signs urging YES or NO in the upcoming referendum [Narrator: David is against the measure].

DIY Science

I participated in the inaugural DIY Science day at the Clifton Institute, led by co-Director Eleanor Harris. It’s an adult-tailored version of the Institute’s Young Naturalists program. Not too many rules: explore the field station, formulate a research question, do some science, and present your results. The vibe is a little like the Serendipity Days practice when I was with NPR’s Digital Media.

As I wasn’t sure how the day would play out, I planned a research question ahead of time: roughly, can we measure any differences between two species of oak (White Oak, Quercus alba, and Northern Red Oak, Q. rubra), as sampled as dead leaves from my home and the Institute? The red oaks are well-known for showing more tannins than the white oaks. Is there a way to measure that difference?

So I brought some leaves picked from my backyard, and then at the field station collected some more in the woods. First complication: I was hoping to also analyze another species from the red oaks, Q. falcata, only to find that there are no records of Southern Red Oak at Clifton.

Second complication: methods and materials for measuring tannins were a bit beyond the capabilities of the research station, or so I surmised. However, some follow-up searching suggests some simpler, alternative methods.

As a result, staffer Bridget Bradshaw suggested some other tests that might yield some interesting results. She also brilliantly suggested a simple way to make equal measured samples from my dead leaves: 10 punches with a paper hole punch from each leaf. No mussing about with weighing something in the sub-gram range. Samples went into small lidded yogurt jars (apparently well-stocked at the research station, and easy handled by the kiddos).

Simple chromatography with a bit of acetone and (coffee) filter paper.
Measuring acidity of samples steeped in water and set in the sun for 30 minutes.

The chromatography didn’t show any results after the hour or so that we had available. But the pH measurement did return some results, on the face of them counter-intuitive. Here’s our 16 pH specimens, sunning on the Clifton Institute porch.

All the White Oaks sampled, as well at the Red Oaks at Clifton, measured more basic than the control (the plain spring water that was used to steep the samples). A possible explanation: fresh oak leaves will measure on the acid end of the scale, but after some decomposition as dead leaves, the acidic compounds leach away preferentially, leaving more basic dead leaf material.

Third complication: the pH meter that we used took several minutes to produce a reading, and readings shifted about as we took our measurements.

For “final presentation” to the group, I drew a quick, crude graph with a Sharpie. I’d like to polish it a bit for presentation here. Update: After some scuffling with the Google Charts API, I managed to produce the following graphic. (It’s a screenshot, not live; the API and vanilla WordPress don’t play well together.)

More research needed: I’d like to try this experiment on some fresh leaves and with a more reliable pH meter.

By Jimmy Van Heusen: 2

An easy saunter up the C&O Canal from Carderock with Nature Forward’s Stephanie Mason, Genevieve Wall riding shotgun, and some familiar bird and plant people. We got stuck on “High Hopes,” most of us wrinklies remembering this novelty song from an animation seen on Captain Kangaroo, after watching two ants dragging a dead spider twice their size across the towpath.

Genevieve spotted a Silver-haired Bat (Lasionycteris noctivagans) roosting. Stephanie pointed out Smooth Rockcress (Borodinia laevigata (= Boechera laevigata)), a new plant for me. We all heard Louisiana Waterthrush singing very clearly, but nobody got eyes on it. Another critter with high hopes: an American Beaver (Castor canadensis) swimming upstream in an arm of the Potomac.

Genevieve and I collaborated to reconstruct the chorus of New Order’s “Bizarre Love Triangle” (not “strange,” as I think I told the group) to serenade a trio of Wood Ducks, two drakes and a hen.

On deck: 28

I’ve made some progress in adjusting the balance between prose fiction and non-. Brought back a couple of goodies from the shop at the Museum of the City of New York.