Back to the POV pix. Here’s my desk for Kindertransport, with the nifty keypad that Jeff lent me. Godzilla is making sure that I don’t miss a cue.
Tag: photo
Working in the herbarium: 1
Folks have sometimes commented that there are no people in my photos, and no action. So here ya go, with a little of both: the VNPS Potowmack Chapter’s “grass bunch” inspecting specimens in the botany department of the National Museum of American History, with the kind assistance of Rob Soreng.
New Mexico circuit: 3
(You may have gathered that these trip reports are not in chronological order.)
The NPS’s driving directions to Chaco Culture National Historical Park read, in part, “13 miles (21 km) of rough dirt road (CR 7950). The 4.5 miles (7 km) before entering the park are very rough.” (Empasis added) “Very rough” means almost constant washboard conditions, 1 to 2 on my 5-point impassibility scale, mercifully little in the way of ruts, rocks, or potholes. This is not a place to drop in for a casual visit.
But O, it’s worth the drive. As the gravel road gives way to pavement within the park boundary, you’re confronted with Fajada Butte.
The centerpiece of the park is the (reconstructed) remains of Pueblo Bonito, a ginormous complex of what once comprised 600 rooms and 40 kivas, according to the NPS brochure. It’s so vast that trying to capture it in a photo or two seemed futile. So I snapped a Rock Wren (Salpinctes obsoletus) instead.
Hungo Pavi is of a much smaller scale. I was taken by the rhythm of small windows and openings for the roof supports.
Casa Rinconada is a large kiva, roofless but otherwise restored to grandeur.
Turning Maria back to base, I abruptly stopped for a small herd of Wapiti (Cervus canadensis).
The next day, I visited another unit that is managed with CHCU. Aztec Ruins National Monument is much more accessible by vehicle, and more interactive, if you will. A walking path takes you through the fully rebuilt Great Kiva, as well as a series of rooms—it’s not a walk for the claustrophobic.
On the grounds just outside the monument, Gunnison’s Prairie Dogs (Cynomys gunnisoni) were keeping an eye on things.
And then on to Navajo Dam State Park, for a stop that wasn’t too fruitful, before moving on to Santa Fe. But I did find a second species of ground squirrel, Rock Squirrel (Otospermophilus variegatus) and a life bird, Woodhouse’s Scrub Jay (Aphelocoma woodhouseii).
New Mexico circuit: 1
A new place to explore! The Land of Enchantment, or (to judge from the snazzy new black license plates) The Land of Red and Green (Chilies).
I debarked (detrained?) in Albuquerque, and scheduled some light touristy activity to get used to the altitude. First order of business was picking up my prepaid rental car at the Hertz office next to the Amtrak station. Except—no Hertz office. One of the train station staff told me, oh, yeah, that building burned down and they never replaced it. We keep telling Hertz to remove it from their listings.
So, after a somewhat tense call to Hertz to book a car at the airport, and a quick ride to same provided by Anthony, I was on my way to my Old Town motel.
After a day of finding all the yummy food and taking a guided tour of Old Town ABQ, I was ready to get out in the field. Sevilleta NWR is two counties south, along the Rio Grande. The loop trail from the visitors center has some very helpful ID markers for some of the desert plants, but that didn’t stop me from misidentifying Rubber Rabbitbrush (Ericameria nauseosa): the stuff is everywhere, short and tall. I found two life birds: Ladder-backed Woodpecker (Dryobates scalaris) and Chihuahuan Raven (Corvus cryptoleucus). I got a lucky shot with my long lens and caught one of the birds with white throat feathers ruffling in the wind.
Next day was a disappointment: I rode the Sandia Tramway to the peak, only to figure out that the way to the spot with the bird feeders was a snowy 2-mile hike away from the tram terminal. So no rosy-finches this time. I moved on to my next city, Farmington.
Front desk staff at my Albuquerque motel gave me two great restaurant recommendations: Church Street Cafe (tasty “Q” salad) and Sawmill Market, a food hall with too many good choices. And I found Flying Roadrunner Bakery around the corner from my tour guide’s kiosk. The things they do with blueberries there…
Philadelphia getaway
In the winter holiday break, I Amtraked up to Philadelphia to take in the Barnes Foundation (underwhelming: the pictures can’t breathe) and reacquaint myself with the Duchamp room at the Philadelphia Museum of Art. And to be a bit of a transit flâneur.
Changing plans at the last minute, I staked out a loop with the Market-Frankford line1 (heavy rail), the 102 line toward Sharon Hill (light rail/streetcar), and the Wawa line (commuter rail2). The interchange at Clifton-Aldan is apparently an afterthought, as there is no streetcar platform and the operator warned me to look out for cars passing the streetcar on the right. Here’s two shots of the 101/102 rolling stock at 69th Street.
To get to the Museum of Art, I took my old beloved rattletrap subway-surface line3 to 22nd Street to catch a bus up to Fairmount Avenue.
In the vicinity of my hotel, I spotted a fun tailor shop window,
and a lovely fire escape.
And I photographed my first bodega cat! This is Chaucer, mascot of Book Corner, for the benefit of Friends of the Free Library. I found a Joseph O’Neill that I’d been casually looking for.
1SEPTA is rebranding the subway and light rail lines, but apart from colors on the signage, nothing is carrying the new designations.
2Somewhat confusingly called “regional rail” by SEPTA. Philadelphia’s gonna Philadelphia.
3The subway-surface would drop me right at the corner of Chestnut Street for Grad Towers. It’s not as rattly as I remember.
On deck: 27
The shelf was getting a little unbalanced toward fiction, so I ordered some new titles and now it looks like back-to-school time. Still not keeping up with Kate Atkinson.
During 45’s term, I reread Faulkner’s Snopes trilogy. I wonder what would be a good palliative read this time around.
Postcards from Ohio: October 2024
I made another road trip to Dayton and environs, primarily to inspect new memorials for Mom, and secondarily to see… stuff.
Mom’s new bench in Stillwater Prairie Reserve is looking quite sharp, although it appears that the plaque has already acquired a bit of scratchiti.
Also spotted at Stillwater were several Eastern Fox Squirrels (Sciurus niger).
In Greene County, I walked Sibenthaler Fen and Russ Nature Reserve. I do like a well-executed trail post. The lat-long is a nice touch.
Some transit geekery: I rode the Cincinnati streetcar up to Findlay Market for a spot of lunch.
As for Cincinnati’s two connector expressways linking I-75 and I-71, the short Norwood Lateral (Ohio 562) might be the only freeway in the country whose control cities on the big green signs are the same at each end, namely, Norwood, because that’s the only place the freeway goes. On the other hand, Ohio 126 is only signed Ronald Reagan Highway—because it won’t take you anywhere useful, mayhaps? Ohio 126 smooshed property values on Mom’s condo when the road was built to Reading Road.
And I rode Dayton’s 4 bus downtown, with a return on the 7. The 4 was running trolleys and diesels, while the 2 and 7 were only diesels. I rode bus #1958, pictured at left; in the photo at right of bus #2064, the trolley poles are easier to see. There are no trolley wires at the end the the 7’s run, but the new hybrid equipment allows the driver to “drop the poles” for a stretch. Downtown I saw buses on the 8 doing that.
I tried this place for dinner, and it was pretty good. I broke my vegetarianism to sample goetta.
VNPS 2024: Maple Flat and Cowbane Prairie
Two field trips for this year’s annual meeting, both of them in the vicinity of Stuarts Draft on the western slope of the Blue Ridge.
Gary Fleming led the walk to several sinkhole ponds in the Maple Flat area of the George Washington/Jefferson National Forest. Limestone/dolostone account for the sinkholes, but unlike the karst landscape of Lee County, here the soft stone is overlaid by alluvium/colluvium and a layer of clay. One of the specialties of this site is Boltonia montana, only recently scientifically described.
Nate Miller was our guide to Cowbane Prairie NAP, a wet meadow. I would have done well to bring my LaCrosse boots. I didn’t get great images of any of the specialties here (and they were not in flower, anyway). The group enjoyed multiple plants of Bottle Gentian (Gentiana clausa). On a goldenrod, a Spotted Cucumber Beetle (Diabrotica undecimpunctata) made for a nice image, after cropping. It’s probably time for me to start paying more attention to orthopterans.
Alexandria NABA Butterfly Count 2024
The Alexandria count in 2023 at Huntley Meadows Park was pretty much washed out. Scouting for this year indicated that there wasn’t much in bloom on the boardwalk side, so I was reassigned to the hike-bike trail side and trip leader Ana. Oh, what a difference! Huge swaths of Bidens, full of skippers, including Ocola Skipper (Panoquina ocola) (new to me this count week) and Fiery Skipper (Hylephila phyleus).
We did take an hour on the boardwalk as well: the highlight of this side was a thistle with a half dozen Great Spangled Fritillaries (Speyeria cybele) nectaring on it.
And snakes and spiders and shorebirds and more wildflowers and more butterflies.
Pocahontas State Park
Before returning home, I stayed over an extra day to bag one more state park under the Trail Quest program. Pocahontas State Park was rather quiet on a weekday. I rambled on the yellow-marked Forest Exploration trail in my backup car sneakers (as my usual sneakers were still drying out). Pocahontas has a network of trails designated and graded for mountain bikes, but the Forest Exploration trail is designated for foot traffic only. Much of the walking was on sandy substrate, with plentiful bits of isinglass scattered about. Gunfire, alas, from nearby private land was regularly audible. Not too much in bloom, but I found a solitary Indian Tobacco (Lobelia inflata) in flower and fruit.
Richmond the River City
Genevieve Wall led a two-day foray to several sites along the James River in Richmond and environs. We took a short walk in the area known as Pony Pasture, along the upper reaches of the whitewater that courses through the city. A fine Tawny Emperor (Asterocampa clyton) made an appearance. At a second site downriver, we crossed the humpty-backed footbridge to Belle Isle; the bridge is suspended from the Route 301 bridge.
The next day, now fully in the Coastal Plain, as we waited for the ferry to Presquile National Wildlife Refuge, some of us spotted an Atlantic Sturgeon (Acipenser oxyrinchus oxyrinchus) breaching. The refuge is now a grownup island, as long ago a channel was cut across the base of its peninsula to facilitate river barge traffic (the Turkey Island Cutoff). Meadows in the refuge are relatively clear of most non-native invasives; however, the management plan calls for letting natural succession to take place, which is expected to clear out the infestation of Clematis terniflora. Heavy morning dew on the mown paths plus poor planning on my part resulted in soggy feet for most of the day. An interesting ode caught our attention, but she turned out to be “just” a Blue Dasher (Pachydiplax longipennis). We wrapped up the day with a contemplative paddle in canoes from Deep Bottom Park.
Dyke Marsh Wildlife Preserve
The Grass Bunch met, in scattered fashion, at Dyke Marsh Wildlife Preserve, after waiting out a passing thundershower. In the past, field trips to Dyke Marsh (say, for birding) have usually petered out at about the point where the trail turns east. but this time, C and I walked the length of the trail, to the end of the boardwalk. There are some pleasant views from this point.
After scooting through the non-natives near the trailhead, we turned up a couple plants in flower that I had not recorded before, Cutleaf Coneflower (Rudbeckia lacinata) and Biennial Beeblossom (Oenothera gaura).
New York 2024 bis
I made a second trip to New York this year! The impetus was seeing the Vivian Maier show at Fotografiska before that venue closes its doors. Also on the gallery/museum visit checklist was
- Brooklyn Botanic Garden: the Franklinia trees were looking rather peaky, but I did spot a Painted Lady (Vanessa cardui) in one of the flower beds. The Japanese garden was a bit of a disappointment; I don’t understand why the torii was placed in the pond. Some traffic noise, but overall, the BBG is worth a return visit.
- A (for the most part picturesque) ride up the Hudson on Metro North to Dia Beacon, to see some “old friends” (Robert Ryman, Sol LeWitt, Richard Serra). I liked the Steve McQueen installation downstairs (Bass): it felt like waiting on a subway platform for the train out of Purgatory.
- International Center of Photography, now on Essex Street.
- MoMA PS1 for James Turrell’s Meeting, seen under perhaps perfect afternoon conditions: some haze in the blue sky, tumbles of clouds sliding by.
I rolled out in the direction of the Rockaways on the A to Jamaica Bay Wildlife Refuge (an NPS property, despite its name). Birding was slow in the late morning, but a Yellow Warbler (Setophaga petechia) flitted about and a trio of Black-crowned Night Herons (Nycticorax nycticorax) perched up. I found a few new plants that I did not recognize, a couple of non-native invasives (Rosa rugosa and Saponaria officinalis) and a startling mint, Monarda punctata. I watched a Red-winged Blackbird (Agelaius phoeniceus) steal a cicada from an Eastern Cicada-killer Wasp (Sphecius speciosus): after the wasp lost its meal, it spiraled in angry circles around the scene of the robbery. I killed my first Spotted Lanternfly. And my second. Any my third. Walking the coarse gravel path around the West Pond in my hiking sneakers began to wear out my feet.
The A runs underground until 80th Street, so I had ample time to admire some brilliant innovative tech: as the train approaches a station, doors on the exit side are framed in green light, and the strip map above each door changes to a map of the platform with the train berthed, with your car marked with a “You are here.” Arrows direct you to stairs, elevators, connecting trains and (in the outlying stations) major buses, and street intersections. Wayfinding right when you need it, before you step on to the platform. Let’s hope that this tech makes its way on to the other lines. The gold and cobalt blue accents in the livery are quite handsome.
For all of the New York subway’s crashed message boards,
funky stinks, cramped escalators (looking at you, E and M at Lexington Avenue-53rd Street), squonky noises, confusing service changes for maintenance (for a trip back from Columbus Circle, it would have been faster to walk, even accounting for the fact that I jumped on the wrong 7 train), and random rust stains, once in a while you find a bit that has been restored to glory. Here’s a station marker on the Lexington line that’s just superb.
I visited three jazz clubs new to me:
- Dizzy’s Club: rather posh, bar seating works well.
- Blue Note: very snug, not for claustrophobes.
- Jazz Gallery: no frills, no minimums, just right.
Some views from my jewel box hotel on East 55th Street: an old school shoe repair shop.
From the 7th floor terrace, buildings at the corner of Lexington, and in the distance down at Madison, a partial view of what I still think of as Philip Johnson’s AT&T Building, now just known as 650 Madison.
On my way back to the subway from the Joyce Theater, I was feeling peckish for dessert. Poof! appeared an Oddfellows ice cream shop at the corner of 17th Street. A generous scoop of vegan chocolate-chocolate chunk was very good.
I see you, Sol
I finally connected up with the Events DC folks to join one of the public tours of the art in the Walter E. Washington Convention Center. We saw some good stuff, but I was really there for the wall drawing.
The docent and I bonded over Mass MOCA.
Jug Bay wetland plants
Bradley Simpson and Judy Fulton led a walk in Prince George’s County’s Jug Bay Natural Area.
Something something I think I had been here before, maybe in a boat? but when I saw the gigantic observation tower with lift, I was sure. Of course, it was eleven years ago. The Baldcypress trees are still there.
There were many stems of Crane-fly Orchid (Tipularia discolor) in bloom, so I was able to secure a good photograph; the Wild Rice (Zizania aquatica) was also blooming; an Eastern Kingbird (Tyrannus tyrannus) was delivering lunch (a dragonfly having a bad day).
We struggled with the ID of a sedge-y looking plant that turned out to be not even a graminoid: it’s Arrow-leaved Tearthumb (Persicaria sagittata). Update 24 July 2024: Margaret Chatham convinced me that it was a sedge after all: Georgia Bulrush (Scirpus georgianus).
And in other iNaturalist-assisted IDs, I noted an almost lookalike of Water Pennywort, but it was a completely new genus for me: Kidney-leaf Mud Plantain (Heteranthera reniformis), in the Pontederiaceae.