Lindheimer’s muhly grass, Dallas, Texas, January 2013. Photo by Ed Darrell; horticultural adventures by Kathryn Knowles
Spring sunlight is spectacular on the new flowers; winter sunlight, in the afternoon, shows a different kind of spectacular.
Lindheimer’s muhly grass, Muhlenbergia lindheimeri, shows beauty from soon after it sprouts until long after it’s gone dormant. A garden is a year-around project, and joy.
This seems pretty dumb now, but many years ago when I first heard about so many grasses called “muley,” I was puzzled about that name. I’d heard of muley cattle such as polled Herefords, but not hornless grass! Needless to say, as soon as I looked up Lindheimer muhly, I could see it is in a genus named after a Mr. Muhlenberg.
Gotthilf Hunrich Ernst Muhlenberg lived from 1753 to 1815. He was born into a prominent Pennsylvania family, and his father and brothers were influential patriots during the Revolutionary War. Because of his family’s involvement in the Revolution, Muhlenberg was on the British hit list.
While he was hiding out in a rural area away from Philadelphia during the Revolution, Muhlenberg became interested in botany. Through his extensive collections, Muhlenberg made major contributions to botany, and many plants have been named in his honor. For example, among our local flora are several species of muhly grass (Muhlenbergia) and Chinquapin oak (Quercus muhlenbergii).
Lindheimer muhly was named in honor of Ferdinand Lindheimer, the “Father of Texas Botany.” Many other plants native to the Texas Hill Country also bear the name “Lindheimer” or “Lindheimer’s.” Most of these plants were first collected by Lindheimer, who settled on the banks of the Comal River in New Braunfels in 1845.
Another entry in the Blackland Prairie Almanac, perhaps.
The past two evenings, when it was supposed to be visible, we couldn’t find it. Maddeningly, others have great photos of the thing.
Here’s a photo of where it was supposed to be the evening of March 12. Nice sliver of a Moon.
A view to the west over south Grand Prairie, Texas, showing the sliver of the new Moon, but a no-show Comet Pan-STARRS, March 12, 2013. Photo by Ed, Kathryn and Peanut.
We watched for over an hour, from just after the Sun’s winking out in a blaze of orange (Texas dust and DFW smog). We were shooting without a tripod, and so it was difficult to capture just how thin was the line of the Moon for a long time. It was not a clear crescent, with mountains of the Moon providing jagged lines that glistened like a crystal glass necklace. Longer exposures revealed the comet to other observers in other places, but not to us. Perched as we were right on the edge of the Austin Chalk Escarpment, we were joined by a dozen or so others who hoped to see the comet, or who were just putting their BMX bikes away.
A more detailed, and grainy, shot of the Moon (with no comet):
Eventually the Moon stated its presence, but still no Comet Pan-STARRS, on March 12, 2013. Looking west over Grand Prairie, Texas. (Yeah, probably would have been a much better photo if not handheld.)
Here’s a photo of where it was supposed to be last night, the evening of March 13.
On March 13, Comet Pan -STARRS rode directly underneath the Moon; it’s invisible in this longer exposure, though you can see the streaking lights of a jetliner flying out of DFW International Airport under the Moon.
Quoting from SamuellBeckett.net: ESTRAGON: People are bloody ignorant apes. He rises painfully, goes limping to extreme left, halts, gazes into distance off with his hand screening his eyes, turns, goes to extreme right, gazes into distance. Vladimir watches him, then goes and picks up the boot, peers into it, drops it hastily. VLADIMIR: Pah!He spits. Estragon moves to center, halts with his back to auditorium. ESTRAGON: Charming spot. (He turns, advances to front, halts facing auditorium.)
Inspiring prospects. (He turns to Vladimir.)
Let’s go. VLADIMIR: We can’t. ESTRAGON: Why not? VLADIMIR: We’re waiting for Godot. ESTRAGON: (despairingly). Ah! (Pause.) You’re sure it was here? VLADIMIR: What? ESTRAGON: That we were to wait. VLADIMIR: He said by the tree. (They look at the tree.) Do you see any others? ESTRAGON: What is it? VLADIMIR: I don’t know. A willow. ESTRAGON: Where are the leaves? VLADIMIR:
It must be dead.
Other photographers found Comet Pan-STARRS. This photo comes via SpaceWeather.com. ” Brian Klimowski sends this picture from the countryside near Flagstaff, Arizona . . . ‘Beautiful show this evening!’ says Klimowski. ‘I took the photo from an altitude of about 9500 feet in the San Francisco Peaks near Flagstaff. A 1-second exposure with my Canon digital camera easily revealed the comet.’” Photo details: Canon 7D, 125 mm, 1s @ F/5.6. ISO 1250
No, he’s not particularly gold — but this is winter, and if he’s going to get his breeding plumage, it will come in a couple of weeks.
We’ve had Niger thistle seed feeders out for years; this year one goldfinch (Spinus tristis) finally started to visit. We’ve had as many as four at a time — but they’re probably headed north soon.
Here’s a shot of our first guest, from a couple of weeks ago.
A goldfinch male, checking out the feeder before bringing in his buddies — we hope.
If you’re north of Dallas, and you see this guy at your feeder this summer, tell him “hello” from us.
The non-breeding plumage isn’t so flashy as the bright yellow of the breeding males. Some of the finches settle in to a beautiful, smooth olive-drab livery for much of the winter. Close up, they look like good pen-ink-drawings by a master artist.
Scouts coming for dinner – Dutch ovens ready for duty at Wisdom Trail District Outdoor Leader training, Camp Wisdom, Circle 10 Council BSA, March 9, 2013.
Dutch ovens lined up for duty is a tell that Scouts and Scouters are expected for dinner, aren’t they?
Horsetail Fall flows over the eastern edge of El Capitan in Yosemite Valley. It’s a small waterfall that many people don’t notice, but it has gained popularity as more and more people have noticed it can glow orange during sunset in mid to late February. The most popular place to see Horsetail Fall seemingly afire is El Capitan picnic area, west of Yosemite Lodge and east of El Capitan (see map below). The “firefall” effect generally happens during the second half of February. A clear sky is necessary for the waterfall to glow orange. Photo: Bethany Gediman, NPS
People living close to National Parks are lucky to do so; people who work in them luckier still, in the lifetime sweepstakes for seeing breathtaking sites. NPS employee (Ranger?) Bethany Gediman caught this image of Horsetail Fall in Yosemite National Park.
Posted Feb. 18, 2013, at 4:44 p.m.
Last modified Feb. 19, 2013, at 8:48 a.m.
PORTLAND, Maine — Parker Montano, 15, was in a hotel pool surrounded by about 20 other swimming and splashing youths when one, weighing almost 200 pounds, grabbed onto him and pulled him under in a panic.
Boy Scout Parker Montano of Portland, Maine; photo by Peter Montano
Now, seven months later, the Portland Boy Scout will receive one of the organization’s most rarely given honors after saving that boy and another girl moments later at the same pool.
Montano, a Cheverus High School sophomore from South Portland, will receive the Boy Scouts of America’s Heroism Award during a ceremony in Portland on Feb. 28. Montano belongs to Troop 1 in Portland.
“This is a big deal,” Troop 1 scoutmaster John Hume told the BDN Monday. “The kids are always taught first aid and rescue techniques. Most of us take CPR, and most of us never use it. Parker was able to put his training to use when people needed it most. You need to make a conscious choice to act [in a situation like the one Montano faced], when realizing full well that everybody’s going to be watching you. … Parker took action, and that takes a level of courage that’s not common.”
Montano was on vacation with his family last July when the incidents occurred. He was swimming in the deep end of a hotel pool in New Jersey when the larger boy grabbed onto him, according to a news release issued Monday by the local Boy Scouts unit.
“The pool did not have a lifeguard,” the release reads. “Both boys went underwater momentarily, and on resurfacing, the boy told Parker he couldn’t swim. Parker used rescue techniques learned in Boy Scouts to take control over the larger boy and get him to safety.”
Montano was still catching his breath at the side of the pool when he was called into action again. A woman at the scene began screaming that her daughter had gone underwater without resurfacing.
“Parker scanned the pool and located the approximately 12-year-old girl,” the Troop 1 account of the incident reads. “He swam to the girl and dove to rescue her. He pulled her to the surface and swam her to the side of the pool, to waiting adults. The girl began coughing and was able to start breathing again.”
Montano said in a statement his reaction to the two pleas for help was “like an impulse.”
“It seemed like what was right at the moment,” he said. “My mind processed it later. The fear dawned on you over what happened, and then there was a sense of relief that you were there and could help.”
The Boy Scouts of America’s Heroism Award was given to 155 of the organization’s roughly 2.7 million members in 2012. That means fewer than one out of every 17,000 scouts earned the award last year. Hume said when the Feb. 28 ceremony takes place, it will be the first time he’s seen one awarded in his 40 years involved with scouting.
“[Parker] believes there is good in the world and sometimes it needs a helping hand,” Peter Montano, Parker’s father, said in the release. “I have never been so proud of my son.”
Parker Montano is pursuing Eagle Scout status, one of the highest levels attainable in the organization. He also is an accomplished runner who is scheduled to represent Maine as part of the East Central Conference cross country team in an international meet in Australia this summer, the Troop 1 release stated.
Morals to the story: Post a lifeguard when you swim (do not swim alone); if you have a choice, swim with Boy Scouts around who can pull you out if you get into trouble.
The white dove was a short-lived interlude; the white-winged doves seem to be with us constantly.
One family in 2011; two families in 2012 — and our yard isn’t that big.
A very early version of the birds who visited, befriended, and plagued Snoopy — this drawing, while faithful to Shultz’s work, was done by another artist.
Earlier this week I looked out, and it looked like the early “Peanuts” comic strip when Snoopy opened his dog house to a group of pigeon-like birds for their poker game. The birds took advantage of Snoopy’s largesse, and nearly over-ran him. (Woodstock was a product of that flock of birds, the last remaining vestige by Charles Shultz‘s death.)
At least they didn’t drink our beer and try to make off with the Picasso.
White-winged doves are really too big for any of our feeders — but what are you going to tell a rampaging herd of them? Photos by Ed Darrell – use encouraged with attribution.
Enough doves to frighten Alfred Hitchcock — Two of these birds is too many for either side of this feeding station. How many do you see here?
Not enough room for all, and so they jostle and push each other off the feeders. See the display of the white stripe on the wings of one of our subjects here, from which the species gets its name.
Blue jays enforce the “too-long-or-too-many-at-the-feeder” rules here, but they can be distracted by peanuts put out by neighbors. In any case, they were absent when we needed them.
We used to have mourning doves, but at some point in the last five years this bunch pushed them out. We may be the only ones on the block who noticed. (Yes, it’s “mourning” dove; Duncanville’s having misspelled it on “Morning Dove Lane” is their error.)
Some images are just plain extraordinary — and often, the photographer has invested a great deal of time and effort to make that image happen. Photographer Dave Morrow describes the process of among this image from Mount Rainier National Park in October 2012. “I went up to Sunrise Point at Mt. Rainier last weekend with my buddy Keith. After a lame sunset, we waited for the Milky Way to come out. The placement was just perfect and the sky was pitch black! Time to jack up the ISO and shoot some stars . . . this was one of many from the night.”
I’ve been calling these guys Bewick’s wrens (Thryomanes bewickii) for a couple of years, based on an identification I made a couple of years ago — but checking today to be sure, I’m thinking this is a Carolina wren (Thryothorus ludovicianus) instead.
In any case, a couple of days ago it paused for a few minutes in our backyard rose arbor, long enough I could try to get a good shot with just a 200mm telephoto, and with colors dulled by the window.
Wren in the rose arbor — ruddy color suggests it’s a Carolina wren, but I’ve been calling it a Bewick’s wren; pausing for its photo on Inauguration Day – Photo by Ed Darrell
Bewick’s wrens probably have more grey on their bellies; this one looks ruddy enough to be a Carolina wren. (I just learned “Bewick’s” is pronounced like “Buicks.”)
Wrens stick around all winter now; they didn’t just over a decade ago. This family has been with us for at least three years — two young this year successfully fledged. By now it’s almost impossible to tell which are the young, which the parents.
Gulf fritillary butterfly on blue porterweed — a few feet from the rose arbor where the wren posed, but months apart. Photo: Ed Darrell
On our patio we have a saga continuing with Gulf fritillary butterflies (Agraulis vanillae), their larva, and passion vine. It seems our neighbors eradicated passion vine, so when the frits start moving north in the spring, they find our passion vines as the only ones in town. The females go nuts laying eggs, and at some point we have a surplus of larva who denude the vines in a week. Late hatching larva probably die off.
The butterfly books suggest that we cull the larva, but we don’t have the heart. At some point in the spring the wrens wake up to the issue, and they cull the larva for us. The vines recover, a new wave of frits hatch out, and the cycle begins again. From June through September, the passion vine loses any leaves it puts out within 48 hours, usually. But the wrens probably eat well.
The wrens seem never to perch where we can see them when they sing. I suspect these little guys of having a much better voice than most wrens, but the great arpeggios I hear may be another bird, perhaps a warbler, that I just don’t know (good reason to go spend time at the local DogwoodCanyon Audubon Center, yes?).
Sunset on BLM land near the Little Snake River, in northwest Colorado. Photo by Shannon Diszmang, via Royal Gorge National Recreation Area.
Note from America’s Great Outdoors blog:
Earlier this year, the Royal Gorge Recreation Area staff had a photo contest on their Facebook page and here is one of the great photos that was submitted. Here’s what photographer, Shannon Diszmang, had to say about it.
“This is BLM land in Northwest Colorado (Little Snake River district). I fell in love with this place. The red haze in this photo is the smoke coming from the wildfires on the west coast at the time. This is one of the lowest light pollution spots in our state which makes star gazing the absolute best.”
So, if you’re nearby, and you want a good place to look at the Geminid meteor shower tonight, odds are high there will be little light pollution here. If there aren’t many clouds, you’re in luck.
P.S.: The stunningly beautiful photo above is NOT the winner of the photo contest(!). BLM wrote in a November press release:
CAÑON CITY, Colo. – Today the BLM Royal Gorge Field Office announced the winners of its BLM-sponsored photo contest. The two winners were decided by the public via the RGFO’s Facebook page: one winner is based on the most “likes” and the other is based on the most “shares.” Only those “likes” and “shares” that originated from the Royal Gorge Facebook page were tallied towards a winner.
Both photos will be featured on the RGFO’s Facebook page throughout November and may be featured in future BLM Colorado publications and social media sites.
The photo contest began Oct. 2 and ended Nov. 4 with more than 60 photos submitted. All the photos that were entered into the contest may be viewed via the “Photo Contest” album on the RGFO’s Facebook page: http://www.facebook.com/BLMRoyalGorge
Yeah, were I you, I’d go see what the winners looked like.
Temple of the Sun, Capitol Reef NP, photo by Mike Saemisch, October 29, 2012
First you must get to Capitol Reef National Park, in Utah — one of Utah’s unfairly large number of five National Parks. Then you take your “high-clearance vehicle” (not necessarily 4-wheel drive) out on the dirt roads in Cathedral Valley, and you hope for a crystal blue sky like this one. Then you happen to get there just as the sun is right at the peak of the formation . . .
You had to be there. Mike Saemisch was there just over a week ago, on October 29, 2012, and fortunately caught this photograph with the Sun as part of a sparkling spire on a sandstone formation known as the Temple of the Sun.
Digital photography changes the way one tours these places. Fortunately. Take the kids, and make sure they find it on a map so they can use your trip as fodder for their 9th grade geography class.
More:
See Hal’s photos here, at his blog. He’s also got posts on Bryce Canyon NP and Kodachrome Basin State Park, with Grosvenor Arch, named after the father of our old friend Gil Grosvenor. Kodachrome, alas, is a thing of the past, killed by digital photography. Be sure to take a good digital camera and a clear memory chip when you go, to honor the name of the place, and the Grosvenors (of National Geographic Society fame). Kathryn and I spent great night as one of only two groups camping in Kodachrome Basin, near the height of tourist season in August, in the 1980s. We got there in a Chrysler Cordoba; better to use at least an SUV.
A different angle, at a different time, by Scott Jarvie: “A 3.5hr timelapse taken late on a cloudy night at the Temple of the Moon with the Temple of the Sun in the background. March 17, 2012.”
If you go today, vote before you go. This is one of the areas to be opened to energy exploration — oil and gas drilling or other mining — under Mitt Romney’s “energy plan” and the GOP National Platform.
National Parks really are a tiny part of the federal budget. Consequently, they get overlooked, and that could be bad.
How are your Congress and Senate candidates standing on these issues?
Romney’s “energy plan” calls for opening up the National Parks for oil and gas exploration and drilling, even the Flight 93 Memorial in Pennsylvania Bet that’s not mentioned by anyone in the debate tonight.
Which one is your favorite unit of the National Park System? What’s your favorite family story from visiting the parks? How are you going to vote in November?
Yosemite’s vast acreage and remote location protect some of the darkest night skies in the country. Astronomers, photographers and city dwellers flock to the park to take advantage of this unique opportunity to view planets, stars, and galaxies.
For classroom use, some topics and questions to pursue:
For geography, where is Yosemite N.P.? Flying commercially, which airport is the best to get to the park?
President Teddy Roosevelt and conservationist John Muir pose at Overhanging Rock at the top of Glacier Point, near which the men camped in a hollow and awoke to five inches of snow in 1903. National Park Service image
Map reading and orientation: In the time-lapse sequences, you can frequently see lights streaking across the sky. Those are commercial airliners — can you tell what airport they are headed to, or from? Can you tell which ones are coming, which going?
Science: What star formations do you see in these photographs that you can see from your house? What star formations are not visible from your house?
Government: Who signs the checks that pay the rangers pictured in the film? For which agency do the work, in which branch of which government?
People in the film discuss light pollution from nearby cities. Is there an agency in the federal government who has jurisdiction over light pollution? How about an agency in the state government? What are the rules on light pollution for cities around Yosemite?
Can you identify the landmarks, the cliffs, rocks, mountains and rivers, portrayed in the film? (Students might use a USGS topographical map, California state tourist promotion maps and websites, National Park Service databases, Google Earth, Google, and a wide variety of other sources.
Who was president of the U.S. when Yosemite was set aside as a National Park, and what were the controversies surrounding it?
Who lived in Yosemite, if anyone, before the Spanish missions were established in California? When were the missions established? How did the U.S. gain possession of the Yosemite Valley?
RT @RealDonalDrumpf: Since Obama was inaugurated S&P500 is up 105%. That's a disaster for anyone who took my advice to dump stocks in 2009 …Splashed: 6 hours ago
RT @Phillipburton: I see no women!“@KonniBurton: At the Republican Women of North Texas meeting w/ Rafael Cruz who's about to speak: http:/…Splashed: 6 hours ago
We've been soaking in the Bathtub for several months, long enough that some of the links we've used have gone to the Great Internet in the Sky.
If you find a dead link, please leave a comment to that post, and tell us what link has expired.
Thanks!
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