Winter is woodpecker time

To me, winter is woodpecker time.

Technically, this is not true, of course. Woodpeckers are mostly year-round residents; they do not just show up in the winter. But around where I live, in the winter there is a dearth of bird life in the woods. Actually this is a somewhat complicated topic — in the winter some birds, such as most wood warblers, have migrated south; but there are also some bird from even further north that have migrated here, such as kinglets and juncos; then there are the resident birds, such as chickadees, titmice, bluebirds, etc., so there are still many birds around. However, it seems to me that in this area, there tend to be more waterfowl in the winter than birds of the woods. Furthermore, even those that remain, generally they are much quieter in the winter. Besides, in the winter the deciduous trees have shed their leaves, those birds that remain, such as the woodpeckers, now really stand out.

So much for the quasi-scientific analysis. Go to the woods in the winter and you will understand what I am talking about. The hard knocks of woodpeckers on tree trunks resonate in the woods, and sometimes you will hear the strident, almost maniac calling of the Pileated Woodpecker. The drumming of the Pileated Woodpecker can be especially loud and starling. And if you are luck, you may catch a glimpse of the Ivory-billed Woodpecker.

OK, I am just kidding about the last one. The Ivory-billed Woodpecker, sadly, is most certainly extinct.

The following are a few shots I took of the Downy Woodpecker, the smallest and probably most common woodpecker in the eastern woods (the last one is a female, note the absence of the red patch on its crown).

A couple of shot of the Red-bellied Woodpecker.

On that note, I have a personal gripe about the naming of the Red-bellied Woodpecker. As you can see in the second picture, its belly is only faintly (very faintly) red, but its head — the cap, the crown — is mostly red. But you cannot call it Red-headed Woodpecker, as that name is already taken (and appropriately so, as that woodpecker has a completely and strikingly red head). Then why not call it Red-capped Woodpecker, or Red-crowned Woodpecker? Red-bellied seems a very poor name.

Finally, a shot of a Pileated Woodpecker peering out of a tree hole:

On the mountains and below

This has been a really mild winter — it seems all December we had daily temperatures reaching the 40s or even 50s (Fahrenheit). So I decided to go “over there mountains” the day after Christmas.

The location is Shenandoah National Park. It occurred to me that among the 30-plus hikes I have done in this park, I have never done so in the winter (I guess I am more of a fair-weather hiker). Well, one of my excuses is that in the winter, usually you can see more wildlife along the coast and wildlife-viewing is one of my major interests.

But I almost got rebuffed right off the bat. I took the short Fox Hollow Trail just across the Skyline Drive from Dickey Ridge Visitor Center, and there I saw a small flock of Black-capped Chickadees. This is a very similar bird to the Carolina Chickadee, a bird that is among the most common where I live. In fact, Black-capped Chickadees are most of a norther bird, and its range in Virginia is more or less restricted to along the Appalachian Mountains. I also saw other birds, such as Tufted Titmice, Northern Cardinals and White-breasted Nuthatch. So, yes, there is still wildlife in winter in the mountains.

In winter, the landscape has lost a lot of luster. The Shenandoah Valley lies in the wintry bleakness.

I then made a side trip to Skyline Caverns, a limestone cavern system near the northern entrance of the park. This is in fact below the mountains I just got off.

However, to be honest, I am not very impressed with this cavern because it seems to rely more on colorful lighting to have a more of a “showy” effect. I personally prefer uniform (tungsten) lighting and let the formations (stalactites, stalagmites, flowstones, etc.) show themselves; I think colorful lighting is in fact distracting. Nonetheless, I will show a couple of pictures here.

Not quite satisfied yet, I drove back to the National Park. At one place just off the Skyline Drive, I saw some icicles draping off a rock wall — there, I got my “stalactites” in natural lighting!

Wandering in the neighborhood

Yet another warm weekend in the Washington D.C. area (after a November which was nearly the warmest on record for many cities), so I decided to take some strolls while it lasted.

Saturday morning saw me at Huntley Meadow Park, a small wetland habitat near the city of Alexandria. With a pond in its center, this place attracts many wintering waterfowls. Sure enough, I saw many American Wigeons, Green-winged Teals, Northern Pintails and the funny-looking Northern Shovelers (with their oversized, spatula-shaped bills), not to mention the ubiquitous Mallards and Canada Geese.

I also saw a Belted Kingfisher, perches high on a tree branch. But the most striking birds were the Hooded Mergansers, in their magnificent breeding plumage.

Later in the afternoon I decided to pay a brief visit to Riverbend Park, a county park along the Potomac, adjacent to Great Falls National Park. I did not see much here, except some Carolina Chickadees, Tufted Titmice and White-breasted Nuthatches busily feeding on a bird-feeder.

Sunday morning I decided to venture into our nation’s capital; my destination: the Butterfly Pavilion at the National Museum of Natural History. Actually the real reason was that I acquired a macro lens recently and wanted to try it out with some close-ups of butterflies. As it turned out, I was rather disappointed with the “Pavilion”: it is tiny and gets very crowded in a hurry. This makes me rather miss the Cockrell Butterfly Center at the Houston Museum of Natural Science, which is truly a state-of-the-art facility. Normally I only show pictures I take in the wild on this blog, but in order to complete my story, I post just one, of a Blue Morpho butterfly here.

I then took a walk around the Tidal Basin. There were a lot of birds there, the overwhelming majority are Mallard Ducks, Canada Geese and Ring-billed Gulls, only a couple of Pied-billed Grebes and a Double-crested Cormorant added a little to the diversity. Needless to say, I was a bit disappointed — to be sure, I am glad to see ducks and geese and seagulls too, but after a while you need some novelty. But just after I rounded the Vietnam Memorial, I saw a Red-tailed Hawk perched on a tree. This is just another proof (as if I needed any!) that you just have to get out there; you never know what you will get.

As I walked toward my car, to my utter astonishment, I saw two Japanese cherry trees in bloom! But Cherry Blossom is still almost 4 months away! This is very unusual to say the least. No doubt the recent warm weather had a hand in this. Is this a sign of the effects of global warming? Of course, weather is not equivalent to “climate”, it is tempting but probably not scientifically correct to infer too much from this. Nevertheless, I was genuinely surprised by this observation.

Last stop: Dyke Marsh. This is a place that Louis Halle raved about in his book, Spring in Washington; unfortunately, I never had much luck in this place — to be sure, I did observe many birds here, but they were all birds I had seen in other places before (in other words, no “new birds” for me here). This time, although I saw Chickadees, Great Blue Herons, and even a Bald Eagle in the distance, still there was no “new bird” … that is, until just before I left. I saw a small yellow-green bird flitting in the understory. The light was dark in the tangled bushes and the bird was active. But patience eventually paid off: I followed it for a little while, and finally, it flashed a yellow patch on top of its head. There! That is my new bird! A Golden-crowned Kinglet.

Brazos Bend

(This trip took place on October 30, 2011)

I never get tired of going to Brazos Bend State Park, as with my previous visits, I know I can always count on seeing (and taking pictures of) a lot of wildlife.

So, after getting swamped by mosquitoes at Brazoria National Wildlife Refuge, I decided to go to Brazos Bend. As it turned out, there were also a lot of mosquitoes here, but not so many as at the refuge; besides, there is safety in number — there were many more visitors at the state park, and those succulent babies in strollers probably diverted a lot of attentions from the mosquitoes away from me

At 40-acre Lake, there were many waterfowls and wading birds, such as this immature black-crowned night heron:

And many white birds, such as this bird which I thought to be a little egret, but which turned out to be an immature little blue heron:

and this great egret:

Along the trail between 40-acre Lake and Elm Lake, I also saw many smaller birds, such as this savannah sparrow:

and some big ones, such as this red-shouldered hawk:

At Elm Lake there were more birds (no surprise here), such as this little blue heron (a mature one this time):

And alligators:

On the way back, I saw a white ibis catching and eating a frog:

which, of course, made him (?) a very satisfied white ibis:

Other birds that I have seen but not shown here include: white-crowned sparrow, swamp sparrow, indigo bunting, eastern phoebe, American crow, American robin, northern cardinal, northern mockingbird, red-bellied woodpecker, common moorhen, greater yellowlegs, blue-winged teal, American coot … there are just too many to list.

And this is after a prolonged and severe drought. In fact, one of the lakes, Pilant Lake, was completely dry. I can only imagine how abundant wildlife will be in a wet year.

I returned to 40-acre Lake for the last glimpse. The birds, such as these pied-billed grebes, were lazily basking in the setting sun:

Last but not least, just then a great-tailed grackle flew by to rest on the railing of the wooden viewing platform:

This is a very common bird, almost ubiquitous all over the state, in some places it has even become a noisy nuisance. But who says it is not good-looking with its iridescent feathers glistening in the setting sun?

Adios, 40-acre Lake; Adios, Brazos Bend! But in my heart I know I will be back again.

At the water’s edge, take 3

(This trip took place on October 30, 2011)

This should positively end my travel for the year, which is pretty modest to begin with (no foreign travels, and even domestic ones are all very short). Interestingly, though, with my previous brief sojourns on the Atlantic Coast and Pacific Coast, I did round up all our coasts.

This time it is America’s third coast — the Gulf Coast, and the location is Brazoria National Wildlife Refuge, south of Houston, Texas.

Unfortunately for me, even this planned-to-be-brief visit had to be cut short because as I found out as soon as I arrived at the refuge that the most abundant wildlife is … argh … mosquitoes! They are numerous, persistent and vicious; as soon as I got out of the car I was covered with them. Even after I got back into my car, I had to try to kill the few that got in. When I stopped at any place, soon a mist of mosquitoes would envelop my vehicle.

The saving grace was that a loggerhead shrike, a flock of savannah sparrows, quite a few eastern meadowlarks and one killdeer greeted me just around the Discovery Center. I “bravely” got out for a short while and snapped a few pictures (getting a few mosquito bites during the process), the following are a couple showing a meadowlark and the killdeer.

I did take a self-guided auto trail. Because of the record drought in Texas, many places in the marshes are bone-dry, a rather ghastly sight to behold.

Nevertheless, there were many birds, many of which I could not identify — which is really a shame, as my usual tactic is to “take pictures first, identify later”, and the vicious mosquitoes kept me in the car all the time.

But the day was not all lost yet … I decided to go to my usual stomping ground, Brazos Bend State Park, hoping the mosquitoes would be less numerous there (to be continued …).

Soldiers Delight

Soldiers Delight Natural Environment Area is a serpentine prairie habitat west of Baltimore, Maryland. I visited it a few times; in fact, last time I visited it was just over two weeks ago, which I blogged on. It so happens that today I had to run a personal errand in Baltimore, so I stopped by it again.

Last time I saw the famed fringed gentians for the first time. However, weather was bad at the time and I could not capture them in pictures successfully. With a warm October sun on my back, today I was determined to take another shot.

And this I did (and more). At Chimney Branch (a stream that runs through the NEA) I found many of these delicate flowers and managed to take a few pictures of them this time.

There were some insects busy pollinating the flowers, the next picture in fact shows a tiny beetle on the flower petal.

When taking pictures, I was careful not to trample any of these locally endangered flowers. Here’s another shot to show its slender profile:

But my day did not end here. At another crossing with the same stream, I saw a song sparrow taking a bath in the water. This is one of my favorite little bird, which has the sweetest of songs (in fact, its Latin name is Melospiza melodia).

There were also many common buckeye butterflies, feeding frenziedly on the blooming asters(?).

As I was walking toward the Visitors Center to end this short trek, I found a bearded tooth mushroom (hat tips to Jack Wennerstrom for helping me identify this) on a tree trunk. What is unusual about this one is the fact that it was exactly the same one I took picture of two weeks ago. But now, of course, it already started to decompose, but the fact that I found the same specimen two weeks later slightly surprised me.

An unplanned mushroom hunt

No, I don’t eat mushrooms I pick in the wild — that can sometimes be a deadly hobby. And I did not plan this “mushroom hunt” today. This was planned to be a “wildflower day” instead.

What happened was that I met with naturalist and writer Jack Wennerstrom for a nature walk in Soldiers Delight Natural Environmental Area. Jack being the author of several books, including the NEA’s namesake volume Soldiers Delight Journal and Leaning Sycamores, is obviously intimately knowledgeable about this area, and we intended to see the fringed gentians in bloom today.

Unfortunately this was a dreary day — windy and drizzling at times. We saw a lot of wildflowers, including gray goldenrods, serpentine asters and, needless to say, the famed fringed gentians. The walk was thoroughly enjoyable, thanks to Jack’s keen observations and patient explanations. However, the weather was not favorable for taking pictures of the flowers as the wind kept them constantly quivering.

After struggling with the flowers for some time without much success, I turned my attention to the floor of wooded areas. There I found a lot of mushrooms and fungi, some of which very colorful. Mushrooms are much sturdier than the slender wildflowers and they are nearly static no matter how strong the wind is. With a tripod and a macro lens, I was able to capture the following pictures:

I also saw my first black-and-white warbler on this “dreary” day. You just never know what surprises nature has in store for you. So perhaps this day was not dreary after all.

Sixty miles to Harpers Ferry

I done it.

That is, I have hiked the section of the Chesapeake and Ohio Canal from Georgetown (mile 0) to Harpers Ferry (mile 60.7). Actually, I have hiked all the way to Dargons Bend (just a hair short of mile 65).

Well, I did not initially set a goal of hiking the entire canal, or this section. I started hiking the canal (to be precise, the towpath) a few years ago. As I always go out to look for a new section to hike, it slowly dawned on me that one day I may in fact, cumulatively, hike the whole canal from Georgetown to Cumberland. I then started keeping a hiking log and started “filling out the blanks”.

Today I started from Monocacy Aqueduct, arguably the most splendid structure on the entire canal. It is indeed some piece of work to marvel at.

I hiked to Point of Rocks, some 6 miles off. Thus, a round trip gives me 12 miles for the day. In fact, since I always hike this way along the canal — from one point to the next then back, so in effect I hiked this 65-mile section at least twice. I also hiked some other sections of the canal, and there are some sections I hiked multiple times, especially around Great Falls Tavern .. but, let’s not get too technical.

In this late summer day there weren’t many wildlife active. Perhaps it is the lull before the fall migration, birds were especially scarce, a far cry from the noisy and lively spring. The most memorable moment of the day was when I caught a glimpse of this yellow-billed cuckoo.

But pawpaws are ripe, and soon birds will be on the move again. The canal still has many tricks up its sleeves.

Down by the southern bayou

To me Brazos Bend State Park is the jewel of Houston, the massive sprawling and menacing metropolitan.

I arrived at the park in the early morning and started my walk around Elm Lake. Almost immediately I heard the distinct whistling sounds of black-bellied whistling ducks. To me this colorful duck is the quintessential southern species — in the south, I see them all the time in the bayous, lakes, even retention ponds in neighborhoods, but I haven’t seen them in other locales.

In the lake, there are many common moorhens. Together with the whistling ducks they are the most abundant birds. I see many families of these colorful birds and their more drab-colored young. I also saw a purple gallinule, a very similar bird to the moorhen but even more vividly colored.

The thing I like about this lake and this park is the abundance and variety of wildlife. Even though Texas is in a prolonged and severe drought, and the fall migration season has not yet started, there is still many species of birds abound, such as this little blue heron, and a white ibis, even a pied-billed grebe:

But, of course you cannot go to the park without noticing the American Alligators — after all, the park prides itself as “Home of the American Alligators”. Just before I left, I discovered a group — maybe 30 or more — baby alligators in the lake. These two were apparently having a staring contest:

I thought I had left Texas for good. But it always draws me back. With places like Brazos Bend … alright!

At the water’s edge, take 2

At the water’s edge again, this time Southern California, or as they call it, “SoCal”.

The place is Point Mugu State Park, a park about 30 miles north of Los Angeles. I only had one free day on my whirl-wind trip, so I picked the Big Sycamore Trail in this park for a day hike.

As soon as I arrived in the park, I noticed a flock of noisy birds in the trees. These are black-hooded parakeets, a non-native species. At the trail head I also saw a California Towhee. So within minutes I already “bagged” two bird species.

The trail goes through the canyon shaded by its namesake trees, some reach very impressive sizes. Sycamores are very common on the east coast, but I guess here in the drier climate of SoCal it is rarer to see a cluster of these water-loving trees.

The trail continues to climb up into the Santa Monica Mountains. As I left the valley, the trail became drier and the sycamores were replaced by shrubs and chaparrals. There was no shade in the noonday sun and it became very hot. Some of the craggy peaks are very spectacular. Although their elevation may be only a little over a thousand feet, since they are standing right next to the Pacific Ocean, their appearance is very imposing.

I turned west to the Wood Canyon Trail, then south to Overlook Trail. And this is the side that faces the Pacific. To say the view is breathtaking is an understatement, looking north, Mugu Rock is in view, and the Channel Islands are in the misty distance.

Looking south, the endless beaches of SoCal are there for the taking.

I finished this 10-mile, 700-feet-elevation trail in a little over 5 hours and I only wish it was longer. But there was still time for a walk on the beach. The fall migration season was just starting, and I saw many shorebirds, such as Willets, Whimbrels, Marbled Godwits, brown pelicans and different species of seagulls.

But even a day like this had to end! As I watched sunset on Santa Monica Beach, I thought: it is time to sip some mojito and margarita now!