Please join me on my wacky wildflower hike. Normally wildflower hikes are about a mile long. Ours is 10 miles along the Potomac River and C&O Canal. AND we see one of Frank Lloyd Wright's few buildings in the Mid-Atlantic. Registration required.
Wildflowers and Frank Lloyd Wright
Northern Virginia Hiking Club, March, 30, 2025
https://www.meetup.com/nvhc-hiking/events/306165836/
https://marylandnature.wildapricot.org/event-5904374
PLEASE JOIN US AT MUSEUM STORE SUNDAY FOR YOUR NATURE-THEMED HOLIDAY GIFTS!
Dec. 1, 2024, 10 am - 3 pm
The Natural History Society of Maryland joins more than 2,100 museum stores, across all 50 states, the District of Columbia, 25 countries, and five continents, participating in Museum Store Sunday. The museum will be open. Come explore, exercise your curiosity muscle, then pick up some great gifts that can be found nowhere else. Seriously.
To make the event even more memorable, NHSM has invited some special guests to join for the day.
We will also have hoards of minerals and fossils and books available.
On Museum Store Sunday, shoppers will not only find quality gifts filled with inspiration and educational value, but through their purchases will also directly support NHSM as proceeds at museum stores directly support the educational missions and programs of the parent institution.
Admission to the museum is free. Free 300-million-year-old fossils with purchase. Please help us plan by RSVPing.
The Natural History Society of Maryland is a 501(c)(3) non-profit corporation and contributions are tax-deductible.
The mission of the Natural History Society of Maryland is to foster stewardship of Maryland’s natural heritage by conserving its natural history collections, educating its citizenry, and inspiring its youth to pursue careers in the natural sciences.
FOR A LINK TO SOME OF MY FAVE PHOTOS, PLEASE VISIT:
https://www.flickr.com/photos/olympusbjs/albums/72157707966110305
FOR SOME OF MY AWARD-WINNING PHOTOS, CLICK HERE AND HEAD TOWARD THE BOTTOM OF THE POSTS:
http://www.walkingwashingtondc.com/
TO ATTEND OUR BOUNDLESS BLUEBELLS HIKE ON 4/14/2024, CLICK HERE:
https://www.marylandnature.org/get-involved/events/event/boundless-bluebells-photography-hike/
WACKY WINTER WILDFLOWER:
Eastern Skunk Cabbage
Care to eyeball one of the wackiest wildflowers on the planet? No need to blaze a trail to Borneo or Brazil. Exotic-looking native Eastern skunk cabbage (Symplocarpus foetidus) thrives practically in our own backyards in Northern Virginia.
Not only is Eastern skunk cabbage Virginia's earliest blooming native wildflower, but it also generates and regulates its own heat, changes color, and even transforms its sex. And if that isn't wacky enough, this oddball flower typically starts blooming in frigid January in Northern Virginia. No other Virginia native wildflower blooms in January.
Eastern skunk cabbage is one of only a small number of plants on the planet that is capable of regulating the heat it produces, known as thermoregulation. So whether it's 5 degrees or 50 degrees outside, the plant can produce enough heat to reach about 70 degrees for 10 to 14 days during its initial female phase. This is the optimum temperature for maturation and fertilization of the female flower, says Eastern skunk cabbage expert Siobhan Percey of Maryland. The plant's heat and odor help lure pollinators inside its hooded spathe, a thick, curvy, and colorful cabbage-like leaf.
The spathe's colors can vary from solid and variegated cranberry to chartreuse. Inside the spathe is its “spadix,” a ball-like structure that somewhat resembles a coronavirus.
As it transforms from a female (with little female stigmas poking out all over the spheroidal ball) into a male (sprouting yellow male anthers with yellow pollen), it also starts to change from cranberry/pink to butter-yellow.
Although the Virginia Native Plant Society says that Eastern skunk cabbage possesses “only modest beauty,” some fans feel that this curvaceous creation with jewel-tone colors and Georgia O’Keeffe forms is worthy of the Museum of Modern Art.
So, where do you find this pint-sized pulchritudinous plant? In the muck. As an obligate wetland plant, it thrives in the gooey black muck, with its contractile roots pulling it deep into the earth. By late spring, it has evolved into a tall, tropical-looking wave of lush green leaves. And by summer, the leaves of this perennial have all but disappeared as some of its roughly two-inch berry-like fruits have fallen into the muck to start the cycle of life anew.
Eastern skunk cabbage in the snow is a memorable sight. Just ask one of the fourteen hardy members of ARMN (Arlington Regional Master Naturalists, a chapter of Virginia Master Naturalists) and their guests who trekked along a snowy trail in 24-degree, windy weather on Jan. 21, 2024 to learn about the wacky wildflower and the steamy heat it generates to attract pollinators. Some even got down on their hands and knees in the spongy snow to peer inside the small opening of its hood-like spathes with penlights to check out its teensy-weensy yellow flowers. And they compared notes about whether the Eastern skunk cabbage actually smelled, even when one was accidentally smushed and only then did it start smelling. Most said they couldn't smell it, despite skunk cabbage's practically malicious moniker.
"Eastern skunk cabbage is just a fascinating plant," said ARMN member Manoma Sirisena. "You can read about it, but it doesn’t have the same effect as seeing it in person."
Serisena and her colleagues ventured along the Foxstone Park Trail in Vienna, VA for the continuing education hike that I led for ARMN. I have been informally studying and photographing Eastern skunk cabbage for several years.
And since they began this "Skunks, Spies, and Other Winter Wonders" trek by the site of one of America's most shattering spy stories, they also learned about FBI agent-turned Russian spy Robert Hanssen, whom the FBI calls the most damaging spy in American history. Hanssen lived nearby and was busted making his final drop at the Foxstone Park pedestrian bridge. Hanssen will never return to Foxstone Park—but the wacky winter wildflowers will return every year.
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CLICK ON EACH IMAGE BELOW TO ENLARGE THEM TO READ THEM:
BEAUTIFUL BIRDS, BLOOMS, & BEASTS TO GO
Looking for framed paper print photos, metal or canvas photos, or photos to turn into blank or personalized greeting cards, calendars, t-shirts, or more? Some images are almost guaranteed to make you smile!
Here are some of my favorite images:
https://www.flickr.com/gp/olympusbjs/7DG0Xz
NOVEMBER IS HOLIDAY SHOPPING TIME!
The Friends of Patuxent Research Refuge and the Natural History Society of Maryland (NHSM) are holding holiday sales in November. I'll be selling photos, photo cards, tote bags, calendars, & more.
Patuxent's Holiday Bazaar is Nov. 4 at the South Tract from 9 a.m. to 3 p.m. You can buy goodies from 35 vendors and meet a kestrel hawk and cutie-pie screech owl up close. Maybe you'll even win a door prize. For details, please visit: https://friendsofpatuxent.org/event-5425689
NHSM's Museum Store sales event is Nov. 26 from 10 a.m. to 3 p.m. Please click here for more info: https://marylandnature.wildapricot.org/event-5444729
Due to a water leak, the Occoquan Bay National Wildlife Refuge’s new visitor center is closed for the foreseeable future, so my “Loveable Birds & Beasts”exhibit will need to be removed in mid-November, 2023. I hope everyone was able to enjoy it. I will continue to post here about future exhibits.
Please visit “Loveable Birds & Beasts at Occoquan Bay National Wildlife Refuge” in Woodbridge, VA. Seventeen of my photos of Virginia natives — from an indiGLOW bunting to amorous snakes — are on loan to the fabulous refuge’s new visitor center.
https://www.fws.gov/refuge/occoquan-bay
WHERE TO FIND WINTER'S WONDERS
Hibernation is for big, ol’ hairy bears—NOT humans. Bundle up and head outside to discover winter's wonders!
Gobs of "snowbirds" choose Virginia as their Miami Beach. As a wildlife photographer, my personal favorites include yellow-bellied sapsuckers (no, they aren't cartoon characters), white-throated sparrows (they sometimes sound like computers), golden-crowned kinglets, and dark-eyed Juncos. I also adore wintering waterfowl like canvasback ducks with vampire-red eyes, ballerina-beautiful tundra swans, chunky snow geese, and feisty American wigeon ducks with green-striped heads and squeaky voices.
You can find the general location of these birds with Cornell University's free eBird website and mobile app and use it to alert you to rarities, like teensy but tough rufous hummingbirds, which are increasingly more common winter wanderers. You can pinpoint birds, critters, and plants with the iNaturalist's free citizen-science website and mobile app by National Geographic and the California Academy of Sciences.
You’ll know you’ve stumbled upon a sapsucker if you hear a nasal mewing and spot trees with rectangular "patches" in the bark or perfect rows of deep round holes.
Owls aren't quite as easy to detect. But at Dyke Marsh, you might glimpse barred owls "honeymooning" in the winter. Babies come a bit later. Depending on the weather, Virginia’s great horned owls typically hatch by late winter or early spring. They have recently nested at Fort C. F. Smith Park in Arlington and at Occoquan Bay National Wildlife Refuge in Woodbridge.
Some parks, like Ellanor C. Lawrence Park in Chantilly, hang bird feeders, which make it even easier to gawk at beautiful birds close-up. And Arlington's Long Branch Nature Center is now likely the most dependable place in the United States to see southern flying squirrels up close. They offer a few public squirrel programs during the winter.
But you don’t have to visit those hotspots for birds, blooms, or beasts. Just trek anywhere along the thousands of miles of public trails in the DMV. Stop often to look and listen for sights (especially movement) and sounds of life. You might encounter rascally raccoons, acrobatic eastern gray squirrels (and maybe some albinos and black morphs), white-tailed deer, and perhaps even a Virginia opossum, with a whopping 50 teeth, the most teeth of any wild mammal in North America and North America’s sole marsupial with a kangaroo-like pouch. By late winter, you may hear the deafening, high-pitched wailing from a hidden brigade of thumbnail-sized spring peeper frogs introducing themselves to their mates.
Besides just evergreen trees and shrubs, Virginia’s forests are splattered with other greenery all winter. Clumps of American mistletoe cling to bare trees. This parasitic plant's white berries may poison humans but yield a yummy snack for cedar waxwings, woodpeckers, and other birds. Tropical-looking Christmas ferns spill over rocks with dark emerald green fronds. Plant-like lichens light up trees and boulders with a light-green, yellow-green, and green-gray palette. Clubmosses form a spongy green oasis on the ground suitable for leprechauns and other fairies. Invasive vines, such as English ivy, wind their way up trees. The birds and critters that find them a snuggly, warm hideaway don't know that the gnarly
Native and non-native flowers, berry-like drupes (fruits), and seeds also brighten the winter woods and gardens. You can find little white snow drops spreading along the ground, sunshine-yellow leatherleaf mahonia, canary-yellow winter jasmine, spiky apricot-colored and pale-yellow witch hazel flowers, and ivory and pink hellebores. The birds will help point out their fave eye-candy seeds and drupes, like brick-red staghorn sumac, sometimes spotted with a woodpecker dangling underneath. Humans won't need help finding the shiny-red "berries" (drupes) of American holly, beaming purple beautyberry, salmon-colored coralberry, regal-red winterberry, red-orange coral honeysuckle, and rosy-red rose hips from Virginia’s native swamp rose.
So, grab your cardinal-red scarf and gloves and go exploring for your own winter wonders. The only thing you likely won't stumble upon is a big ol' hairy bear!
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| Black Bear with Cub |
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| Albino Northern Gray Squirrel |
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| Albino Northern Gray Squirrel |
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| Black Morph Northern Gray Squirrel |
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| Male Canvasback Duck |
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| Male Northern Cardinal |
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| Male Northern Cardinal in American Holly |
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| Common Muskrat |
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| Downy Woodpecker Eating Poison Ivy Berries |
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| Bald Eagle Flying with a Fish |
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| Bald Eagles Nesting |
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| Southern Flying Squirrel Duo |
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| Southern Flying Squirrel Eating Native Hazel Nut |
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| Red Fox Yawning |
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| Great Horned Owl |
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| Male Dark-Eyed Junco |
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| Male Northern Cardinal in the Snow |
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| Mistletoe in the Snow |
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| Virginia Opossum |
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| Juvenile Virginia Opossum Baring Teeth |
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| North American River Otter |
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| Male Ruby-Crowned Kinglet Raising Crown |
