T.R.E.D. Nature Walk

Sheila and I enjoyed a leisurely stroll along the Mt. Berry Trail with thirty or so fellow ecological enthusiasts on this beautiful Spring day. Our leader was Owen Kinney. The walk was sponsored by T.R.E.D.* Owen did a great job of pointing out all sorts of natural wonders along the way. I will definitely steal a few of his talking points for my walks at Arrowhead. 

We were pleased to see several of our friends along the way, including Rob Innis who took this picture of us...

 

... and two pictures of this bird ...

... that Owen had identified by its call which Owen says sounds like "Peep, You're Weird"

The rest of my photos are from my own iPhone:

I noticed a Great Blue Heron in the pond near the trailhead. Owen talked about what a patient and efficient killer the heron is as it plods about shallow water at the edges of the pond spearing unsuspecting frogs, fish, and even turtles with its huge dagger of a beak.

Several folks, including Owen, used their "Merlin" smartphone app to pick out the calls of several other birds. Other used their "iNaturalist" apps to ID plants along the way.

Owen found an insect gall in a Goldenrod stem and picked it apart.... 

...and passed through the group to show the larva nestled inside.

At the forefront of the group is another friend Marilyn Lindholm (in the green blouse). Marilyn is a fellow member at Trinity United Methodist Church and also a fellow storyteller.

Owen found another example of an insect implanting its offspring in a host -- this time a leaf. Here he shows it to Sheila.

These muscadines have put on a lot of fruit...

... I'll keep an eye on these as they mature!

Woolley aphids on a blackberry cane

This was a fascinating little demo. Owen picked up a Daddy Longlegs by its head. He applied slight pressure to it and it produced an excretion that smelled like chocolate! This is an adaptation intended to repulse predators. No permanent harm to the arachnid!
Here is an article with some interesting Daddy Longlegs info.

On the walk back we noticed that silt from spring flooding was head high in the leaves of this Sweetgum.

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* T.R.E.D. = Trails for Recreation and Economic Development of Rome/Floyd County

Oldest Tree East of the Rockies!

How did I miss this story from 2019? There is a tree in North Carolina that was hundreds of years old at the time of Christ. I tiny core has been drilled from it that records the floods and droughts of recorded history perfectly and so gives scientists a mighty trustworthy record of rainfall for the last two millennia. Click the picture to read the story from Newsweek.

Let's Make Sure Rome's "Central Park" is in the Master Plan!

This would be a great time for friends of Rome's "Central Park" to contact the city's parks and rec department about the parks master plan they are working on.

Here's the comment form for the master plan ---

I certainly want to promote sensitive development of walking and bike trails, boardwalks, and wildlife viewing stations in the city's Burwell Creek, Burwell Forest, and City Duck pond -- connecting the beautiful Jackson Hill trails to Ridge Ferry Park and the Riverwalk trail system. There should be space for a little parking and trailheads off Riverside Parkway near the tracks as well as off Dogwood at the Duck Pond and off Vaughn Road near where the chipper equipment is now located.

With this new master plan, I hope our dream of a "Central Park" will finally begin to take shape! 

An article about the Master Plan fro today's Rome News...

Gleaning Facebook: Coosa Darter

What a treasure is the Armuchee Elementary Nature Trail! Thanks, Amos, Joe, & Shira for your help yesterday. As I understand it, the beautiful little Coosa Darter is not endangered. It is well-established in its range but only exists here in the Coosa Basin mostly in the little streams like this one. What a gorgeous, lush, diversely populated portion of the this little oasis in space is our Ridge and Valley province of Georgia. If you are looking for a way to help preserve our wonderful Coosa River Basin, join us at CRBI. There is no more effective environmental protection organization anywhere, IMO. Read more at coosa.org.

 

Gleaning Facebook: Just to be clear...

From Alan Weakley:

"Just to be clear, I'm an old white straight southern married son-of the-confederacy son-of the-American-revolution dad glad that we re-elected Barack Hussein Obama as President of America. I have no doubt that America, my daughter, my son, and my wife will be better off because of this outcome. Let's be patriots. Repudiate politicians who take the scorched Earth approach of Mitch McConnell: “The single most important thing we want to achieve is for President Obama to be a one-term president.” The "single most important thing" we should all try to achieve is to support leaders who advance democratic and ecological ("knowing the home") values within our country and abroad."

From Terrell: This southern white ol' geezer Dad agrees. 

Comments: 

Raymond Atkins: I agree too. I am also a white, southern, geezer Dad. Oh, and I am not on the dole and have never drawn a nickel of the public's money.

George Barton: WE are now a minority Terrell, when do we apply for affirmative action?

Paula Graves: Yeah, because white men have it so hard.

Ray: YOU try being in charge of the remote 24/7, Paula. The stress is unbelievable.

Howard Smith: ME, TOO

EEA Conference 2011

Notes from the EEA conference:
EEA Executive Director, Paul McLendon on the mission of the Environmental Education Allience of Georgia

"We want to build a statewide culture of environmental literacy and citizenship."

I'm with ya, Paul.

From songwriter Erica Wheeler (our entertainment at lunch):

"...see that moon out your window?
I'm under that same light.
Hear me whisper your name
- I'm prayin'
may our love be never-ending
as long as somewhere the wind still blows"

and (again thanks to Erica) a quote from a Georgia settler (no specific date given, but must have been early 1800s.):

"...I saw that interesting part of the state when all was
new-waters in the creeks and rivers as clear as crystal; rich valleys, hills . .
. . covered with thick forest. A land of beautiful flowers-white, pink, yellow
and red honeysuckle (azaleas), redbud, dog-wood blossoms, wild roses and many
others. The ground was covered with violets, sweet-williams (flocks), and other
beauties. There was plenty of wild game-deer, turkey, and other varieties. When
first seen, it was in lovely spring and I was nine years old."

Sean Beeching (from the website below.)

Best (and lamentably only) field walk: An after dark lichen walk with a UV flashlight led by Bob Hill of UGA. We saw the fluorescent lichens! Wow. Several lichen species give off a fluorescence when illuminated with these UV lights. You can tell the species by the color of fluorescence. The most fascinating thing was to listen to the incredible depth of knowledge exhibited by the wonderfully fascinated and articulate co-leader of the walk, Sean Beeching, as he discussed these widely ignored, strange, double organisms - part fungus, part algae. An amateur lichenologist, he has discovered previously undescribed species. Check out this link to see pics of Sean and his cohort at work play.

 Green Tree Frog (lifted from the internet)

It was good to enjoy again Tara Munez' presentation on amphibians. Our school has a special relationship with these critters  since our students  initiated the movement that resulted in the state adopting the Green Treefrog as the official Georgia Amphibian.

My Facebook friend and fellow "Triple Facilitator" Nikki Belmonte of the Atlanta Audobon Society taught a session on "Connecting Children and Communities to Birds". She led us through a little exercise that will be esy to use with our students to help them understand the odds our feathered friends face in their migrations. Unfortunately I had to leave the session briefly and realized when  I returned that I had missed the very thing I wanted from the session -- how to us the Backyard Bird Count with my students.

Eddie Anderson, an Atlanta videographer, presented some ideas for using technology in EE. He designed video podcasts for Arabia Mountain and Flat Rock Baptist and sared those with us.

Scott McMahan of Garden Hood gave advice on planting for school gardens.

My favorite moment in a workshop was the illustration by our teachers from the Atlanta Botanical Garden of the importance of going beyond simple identification in interpreting nature for students (or anyone). She exhibited a Mickey Mouse pocket watch and asked us to describe it. We did so in some detail - size, shape, material, etc.

 A similar watch lifted from hyperspace.

Then she told us the true story behind the watch, choking up a little, and bringing lumps to our throats as she described how her beloved father had come to be given that watch and the significance of the engraving on the reverse. It gave me chance to remind my student-teacher, who was sitting with me in the class, of why I put such emphasis on storytelling in teaching. However carefully and closely we examined that watch, I doubt any of us would be giving it any thought at all a day later had we not heard the story that goes with it.

And the awards...

• our own Kim Kilgore - Project Wild Facilitator of the Year
• The Georgia River Network, Environmental organization of the year (accepted by CRBI's Joe Cook.)

Just when you think it's safe to go outside...

When the Spring Beauties pop up in my yard I mow around them till the flowers fade. Same thing with the little wild violets in the front and the wild daisies in my mother's lawn. And right at our back porch, what I thought to be Queen Anne's Lace (also called Wild Carrot) comes up every year and I just let it be - to enjoy the delicate white umbrels for a while before cutting them back when they get too weedy.

Recently I was studying a Queen Anne's Lace flower and realized significant differences in it and what grows in our yard. I've been meaning to try to key it out. Maybe it's a native member of the carrot family I thought. Knowing me as I do, and few know me better, it's a wonder I didn't crush a leaf and taste it, or stick a stem in my teeth as I wander about the yard.

Today Richard and Teresa Ware dropped by with their friend Jim Drake to talk about plans for the Georgia Botanical Society's Spring Pilgrimage to be held next April here in Rome. We probably spent a couple of hours talking about the Pilgrimage, then reviewing my wildflower photos to identify the ones I hadn't figured out yet. As they were leaving I remembered the "Queen Anne's Lace", pointed it out to Richard and Jim. They both said immediately that it was definitely not Q.A.L. They began examining it. Crushing leaves and smelling them. Checking their every-ready field guides. Richard has taken a plant home - roots and all - to key it out more carefully, but the preliminary verdict is that, growing at my doorstep -- where my children, my neices and nephews, my friends' youngsters, have played -- is that famous plant, world famous for over two-thousand years, the plant whose juices were forced upon Socrates himself, yes:

Conium maculatum
Poison Hemlock
The most poisonous plant in America!

It is lovely. The umbrella flowers are delicate.

The pinnately compound ferny leaves look like the innocuous little sprigs of parsley that decorate a fancy dish.

And they are a part of that wonderful/terrible parsley [Apiaceae] family that gives us dill to spice our pickles, crunchy carrots for our salads, decorative garnish for desserts, anise for licorice candy and root beer, fennel for Chinese five spice and to feed the swallowtail butterflies, caraway seed for rye bread, coriander, cumin, celery, parsnips...

...and hemlock's potent poison for livestock who own no field guides and can't use Google images, for the occasional child who thinks the hollow stem makes a great straw, or for the outdoorsman who wonders it the carrot-like taproot just might be a way to flavor that wild stew.

Stay tuned -- I'll update when Richard gives me a final verdict.

*************

Whew!!!

Terrell,

After keying in several books and verifying by Google internet search I'm sorry to say that you'll have to retract your identification of the poison hemlock! Your plant is:

Torilis arvensis (Hedge Parsley), which is native to Europe but now an introduced weed here.

Best regards,
Richard

Well, the excitement is over. I have not, after all, been endangering visitors by harboring a dangerous killer plant. It is just another noxious invasive species. Read about it here.

Thanks, Richard!

*************

Miscellaneous Nature

A few nature shots to share from the last few days:

This salamander lives in our little brook which flows into Armuchee Creek in Floyd County GA. Is there a herp buff out there? Who is this fellow?



This pair were very upset with their reflections in my truck mirrors and windows. Am I safe in calling them Eastern Bluebirds?





This guy looks like the Eastern Kingbird in my book. A very handsome, formally attired guy hanging around our classroom garden.



Rat snakes are seeking an education in our area. The first fellow slithered right through the middle of two or three hundred eight, nine, and ten-year-olds at recess. Imagine a circle of fifty fascinated kids out of the camera's line of sight.





Then his cousin wandered across the drive. He was lucky I was there to fend off the only-good-snake's-a-dead-snake caucus.






Our Virginia pines look like a very rude kid has passed by - spittle bugs are eveywhere.



The beautiful Tulip Tree blossums litter the nature trail after a spring rain.



The Indian Pinks are not real showy yet, but they are getting there.



An Eastern Comma butterfly visited the stream as we waded.



I take this fellow to be Downy Woodpecker.



And the darners are all over the pond area.



These red aphids are feasting in the library garden. (Uroleucon ambrosiae?)



Dadgum William Shakespeare for mentioning Starlings in his writing.



This squirrel likes our black walnuts.



And our state bird, the Brown Thrasher looks for morsels in the lawn.

Two Days in May

Shhhh!

This is just between you and me.

The last couple of days of school provide some special times in the woods. The reason is that many students check out with Mom after the Honors Day program on Thursday

Our Scouts lead us in the Pledge. (Someone forgot to point out to them the location of the flag!)

... and after the Last-Day-Of-School party on Friday.

Mr. Shaw's Stars disguised with shades and appropriately tough looks. I had just been presented my special safari hat adorned with a blue band that declares me "Teacher of the Year".

Now, don't get me wrong. I wish I could have that special time with each of my students, but what makes it special is that the number of students who participate is so manageable an amount.

This year I set a record. Only four students remained with me after the honors day program. What a great time we had. (Remember: mum's the word!)

Four boys and I grabbed our sack lunches, water bottles, and the cameras and headed outside. We ate lunch outside, deposited the trash appropriately, and headed down the trail.

Hopscotching across the stream on exposed rock, we forged a trail upstream to the very corner of the property, shucked our shoes, rolled up our pants, and waded into adventure.


Salamanders,

insect galls,

grubs, inchworms,

butterflies, dragonflies,

crawdads,

minnows, and, of course, numerous "snakes" -- none witnessed by the teacher who saw lots of crooked sticks, roots, and vines, -- but unshakably testified to by excited younger eyes.

All afternoon these four young fellows explored, snapped mostly-blurry pictures, exclaimed, learned, and -- my fellow teachers and their parents will not believe this but I witnessed it -- behaved.

The boys discovered this "sweetheart" tree - American Beech - with a hole large enough to swallow a ten-year-old.

In one case I can honestly say it was the longest period of time I have been with the little fellow without having to resort to some sort of disciplinary action. He was scheduled for in-school suspenion for slugging another student the day before. The principal wisely postponed ISS to Friday. I suspect the principal reasoned the kid would stay home and out of our hair --as he did.
So I had the joy of an afternoon of fun, learning, and warmth as my last experience of the year with the little rascal.

On Friday the experience was repeated. This time with about a dozen youngsters.