Goshawks, Bald Eagle Fledglings, and Young Peepers

Northern Goshawk, (Accipiter gentilis)
Photograph by David Brinker

Earlier this week I read in the Washington Post that someone shot Maryland's only nesting Goshawk (Accipiter gentilis) in nearby Garrett County.  Way back in 1984, I got to care for a Goshawk for the Pennsylvania Game Commission, which used the accipiter for sting operations targeting illegal trades among falconers.  The penalties for all these crimes, in the uncommon occurance when someone is convicted, always seems trivial.

But today (Saturday) I found a very cute little female Wheaton Terrier running loose near Indian Rock in northern Hampshire County.  I hollered around the fisherman's access, but then took her home just a few miles to our farm.  We learned the owner was the visiting daughter of our friend, and when I returned her a little later, I heard the Bald eagles that nest there chirping on the slope above Indian Rock.  These eagles, both the adults and the immature birds, fly up and down the South Branch from the mouth to Milleson's Mill and have nested there for as long as I've lived here.

There are few things that leave an impression like that of an eagle flying by as you're sitting by the river.

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Yesterday, Anna Hjelmroos took me and Heather Eves on a field trip detailing her Masters degree capstone project at Wolf Trap Farm Park near Vienna, Virginia.  There we saw young Spring Peepers (Pseudacris crucifer), which were so prevalent we worried about squashing them as we walked.  They're so small you'd thing they were spiders or insects of some kind.  They are fast, but Anna caught a few and i got a photo. I've seen ticks larger than these little chorus frogs. We have thousands of peepers on our South Branch floodplain ponds, but I've never seen them this small.

Tiny young spring peepers

Later we followed Wolf Trap Run along the Farm Pond and came upon a cliff that was probably 20-25  meters high on a ridge that is probably less than 100 meters wide, clearly carved by the stream over time.  Another one of those surprises within our National Parks.

The cliffs along Wolf Trap Run

  

Milkweed blooming

I'm pretty certain it's Common Milkweed - Asclepias syriaca that is currently blooming.  We have a lot, although milkweed sometimes has pollination challenges because the flower design inhibits some insects, and the stickiness is sometimes to much for the more fragile insects, which often die because they're unable to escape.

Common Milkweed - Asclepias syriaca

Our house begins to look buried in wet Junes. 

Scarlet Tanagers and Cedar Waxwings

Image of Cedar Waxwing from Cornell. 

This weekend marked the first Cedar Waxwing (Bombycilla cedrorum) and Scarlet Tanager (Piranga olivacea) we've seen this season.  Both are among our most strikingly colored birds in Hampshire County.

We see lots of Cedar Waxwings travel from the trees on our side of the South Branch to catch insects along the cliffs on the other side.  But most interesting is Cedar Waxwings love of over-ripened, fermenting fruits that leave them intoxicated, sometimes even leading to death by alcohol poisoning.

Image of male Scarlet Tanager from www.Birding.com.

New Intern

Jamie planting grapes on Memorial Day weekend.

Jamie is our new intern at the South Branch Science Consortium. He's a rising junior at MIT in Aerospace Engineering.

We put him to work right away planting grapes and designing a trellis system for supporting the vines. Over the summer, we hope to have him lead a variety of projects in alternative energy, agricultural experiments, and  redesiging our whitewater playspot in the river channel.

Moving dirt.

Rescuing toads.

South Branch beaches

The spring floods moved a good part of our upstream beach further downstream.  It's already very popular with canoeists and tubers, but fortunately there have been no fire rings or litter yet.

Looking downstream from our old spot.

I'm not sure what Korry hunts for in the water, but she'll do this for hours.

The following morning.

Potato planting

Our fields were finally dry, and I got the Red and Kennebec potatoes in the ground in two long rows.  I experimented with rototilling followed by a pass with a potato plow, then backfilling with the flattened bucket of the tractor.  It worked well on the float position, unless there was a lot of vegetable matter in the soil, which sometimes caught behind the bucket and scoured the potato groove.

Freshwater Mussels in the South Branch

Freshwater mussels in the Chesapeake watershed seem much more vulnerable and are certainly less common than in the Ohio River drainage 40 miles west.  I'll bet 80% of those we do see are just empty shells, but I could tell these were alive from 15 feet away.  I've read that there were as many as 14 species surviving in the Potomac back in the 1970's.  Nowadays, fortunately, all are protected.