…in about 15 minutes. Hope to be able to post by email if not the usual way. Will try to see what the urban wildlife there is like while we are do hurricane relief work.
March 31, 2007
March 28, 2007
The bushes rejoice
No, this is not suddenly turning into a political blog. Just announcing the gaudy show of the forsythia which were just slightly open yesterday and today are in full bloom. I always thought of forsythia as the “For Cynthia” bush. We don’t actually have any ourselves, though of course it is invasive and pervasive. This photo is from mveaches taken earlier this month in Tulsa, Oklahoma. So that’s two datapoints when I get a chance to properly code them.
I am even more pleased to announce that the spicebushes have also just started flowering. This much more subtle woody plant is native and I’m glad that the understory of our little patch of woods is full of it.
March 27, 2007
Blogger BioBlitz: what a great idea
Wish it had been mine. During the upcoming National Wildlife Week April 21-29 here in the U.S. ecobloggers are pledging to list all the species we encounter in an area of our choosing. Details are still under discussion but most likely each blogger will choose a day and a place and try to spend at least two hours recording species and their abundances. Jeremy Bruno, the brilliant initiator of this event has offered to compile the results. Geolocating the observations is expected, so that we can display them on a map.
This might be an incentive to get our Firefox plug in ready to be beta-tested during the event. It could make reporting and linking to blog entries easier, though we’d have to push to also get a compilation mechanism worked out.
There is a Google group here for discussion.
And a Flickr group for those who will be photoblogging.
Please join us!
March 26, 2007
Bradford pears
Up and down I-95 in glorious bloomage today. Do they count as invasive? More or less, according to Jenn. You and Joel should add your data points as flowering Marches up the east coast:
Athens, Georgia       March 19 (comment by Biosparite on Jenn’s post)
Nashville, TN Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â March 20 (Ceeelcee calls them the “Paris Hilton” of trees)
Suburban MD Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â March 25 (this blog)
The ones by the highway don’t seem as perfectly coiffed as the ones in landscaped parking lots. Because they have to compete with other roadside flora, or because they don’t get pruned? Or maybe there’s something else that looks like them also in bloom.
March 25, 2007
He’s lungless, can you tell?
Matt Reinbold takes some pretty awesome pictures of Maryland wildlife. This is a “ridge and valley” salamander, aka Plethodon hofmanni. I’m trying to develop my amphibian-finding skills but so far I’m not so good. Not sure exactly where he found this but he’s in the next county east from me so similar terrain, probably.
March 24, 2007
Return of the osprey
A reliable source (my father-in-law) reports that a couple of days ago he saw osprey for the first time this year near his house on the Chesapeake Bay. According to the Fish and Wildlife Service, the Chesapeake Bay has the largest nesting population of osprey in the world — about 2000 pairs. I bet that’s gone up since the page was written. Osprey spend the winter in Mexico and Central and South America, and have been the subjects of satellite tracking. R. O. Bierregaard has a nice summary of their migration:
Birds that we have followed for several migrations tend to be as faithful to their wintering spot in South America as they are to their nesting area up north. Males and females take separate vacations, which someone waggishly suggested is the reason they can stay mated for life. The young travel on their own when they head south. They do not follow their parents, but work on pure instinct apparently following a fairly simple two-line program: Go south and stay over land as long as possible. This gets them to the Keys in Florida, the southeastern tip of Cuba, and many of them to the little peninsula on the south coast of Hispaniola.
My father-in-law said that at first he thought it might be a bald eagle; he sees these about twice a month.
March 22, 2007
“Mom, are they fighting?”
In this case, “them” was a couple of randy barred owls we were eavesdropping on in the woods just after dusk. Always spooky to hear owls high in the trees as the light dims, and there always seem to be two. These were first exchanging calls (not the usual “who-cooks-for-you, who-cooks-for-you-all” but more like “cook-cook-cook-cook-you-all”), then one flew closer to the other and they hooted synchronously, then one flew towards the other making an sharper series of crow-like “cows” and they briefly made contact. For some reason, kids always assume aggression instead of mating but that’s not what it looked like to me. It began to rain so we hurried home but we could hear them continuing to entertain the neighbors off in the distance.
In other balmy evening news, we saw our first bat of the season. Not many insects out yet for it to eat, but oh well. This means we can get out the tennis balls — we like to throw them high in the air near a bat to see if we can attract their echolocating attention. As far as I know, no animals are harmed in the making of that game.
And every few yards on the dark path we flushed invisible toads, noisily hopping away in the dry leaves.
The obvious robins
It’s a cliche, but the robins really are harbingers of spring. This morning I woke in the dark to their unmistakable loud singsong music. Definitely they’ve been around for some weeks (some probably even stay the winter here in Maryland). I’ll have to ask around if others have been hearing them and I’ve just somehow missed the pre-dawn chorus until today.
The photo is one I took during last week’s storm. I found it odd that seven or eight robins found it necessary to wade through the sno-cone slush in the streets. Not sure what they’d be going for — grit? Salt?
March 21, 2007
Bullfrog in winter
Just in case anyone wonders what frogs do in the winter, I present this not-so-great photo of a bullfrog taken on January 14. It was an unseasonably warm day, but we were all surprised to see it lurking in a small puddle next to a large lake.
Weather here is suddenly cold again, despite the equinox.
March 20, 2007
Anatomy of impending doom
When I saw these graceful and symmetrical roots on my weekend walk this weekend I thought “How beautiful!” But of course it is just another sign that our creek is suffering from major erosion. My understanding is that the ultimate culprit is too much pavement, or rather too little natural ground cover. Rainwater tends to collect and rush with far too much power when it can’t seep into the earth. So frequent rains cause the creek to swell and run much faster than it ought to, sweeping the dirt away from the roots. The trees are trying valiantly to hold back the shoreline but inevitably topple.