Did you know that -- different sea gulls inland at Lake Spring Park

    The other week we explored "Lake Spring Park" in Salem (VA) and found the newspaper article we read about it to be somewhat correct -- it is at least partly overrun with birds in its two in town ponds, and there are bird droppings you'll want to avoid on part of the paved walkway around the water at Lake Spring. But I don't think the droppings are mostly from Canada geese. It was overwhelmingly populated with sea gulls, hundreds of miles from the ocean!
    Why were they there? Good question. And they seemed to be everywhere, overwhelming the geese and mallards in the water when we decided to toss our cheddar flavored popcorn at them. They really annoyed the heck out of the other birds with their high pitched screeching and aggressive dive bombing around the ducks to catch even a sliver of food. There must have been at least 50 gulls and man, were they pushy!
     And they weren't the usual ones we see migrate this way this time of year. They were ring-billed sea gulls. These gulls are a little smaller than the typical herring gull you see at the beach. It looks like they had someone paint a thin black stripe near the tip of their slightly smaller beaks. Though they did have gray on their backs, there were also some with speckled heads and backs, and legs and feet that were pinkish or grayish, instead of yellow. My Audubon guides says the speckled one are immature; there must have been as many "youngsters" as mature ring-billed sea gulls.
      A few years ago we camped near the bottom of North Carolina, and took a ferry toward South Carolina and Myrtle Beach. On land we spied these black-headed sea gulls scurrying about us for food. It seems nature wants to always provide some type of variety in species. After all, variety is the spice of life.
    We ran out of popcorn and found the walk around Lake Spring Park rather short, so we drove a bit more and picnicked at Longwood Park. This was before our recent snow, and I hope we get back to springlike weather real soon!

Winter Walks and helping at Stadium Woods at Virginia Tech

      

                                     Cars are parked on the root systems of these old oaks-- a no no.

Woooo --- it wasn't half as cold as I thought it would be on Saturday, the day we had our first "cleanup" of the year at Stadium Woods. Stadium Woods is (there may be some grammatical debate on whether the verb should be "is" or "are", but with an expanse of wood/forest we Americans tend to use the verb "is") located behind Virginia Tech's Lane Stadium, and been the site of controversy and back and forth arguing and contesting of decisions concerning its future. After all, when you're talking about 300 to 400 year old oaks in the middle of town, a rare occurrence on the populated East coast, then maybe something should be done to help this woods thrive and survive.
     In the past the university has talked about cutting up this 14 acre forest to create an exercise facility for the football players. Considering the fact that there is actually a forestry major at Virginia Tech, you would think they would want to keep the woods intact, especially when studying all these white oaks, (which most of them are) and what ecosystem is unique to white oaks. But they didn't seem to care about this. So the "Friends of Stadium Woods" and the local Master Naturalists have had to be the advocate for the woods. Tsk, tsk.
     But a group of students came out on this sunny day to help pull up alien invasives like Privet, Japanese honeysuckle, English ivy, and Oriental bittersweet. These are plants that once they get foothold  in an area, they overrun the native plants and can kill them off and change the ecosystem. We had some students actually using shovels, like the two guys working under me, to totally, "totally" get rid of multi-flora rose. This woods already has a good share of brambles from black raspberries and wine berries, so the "sticker bushes" of multi-flora aren't too welcome. It is really an overgrown mess in some places, so we worked in our winter coats, hats and work gloves to pull out and pile up invasives taking over the woods for a few hours. 
     Even if it's not been decided by the university president at Virginia Tech whether or not  to fully keep this forest intact, we will continue to strive to clean up the invasives. There are trails locals and visitors can take, bringing them close to trees you need two to three people to reach all the way around. And that's big, let me tell you!

A Bit of a Walk at Mill Mountain, Roanoke

Overlook at Mill Mountain, Roanoke, Virginia

     Depending on whatever the weatherman wants to throw your way, a walk in winter can be either unpleasantly harsh, or surprisingly nice. Or, it could be a little of both. It was certainly that our first time up the mountain, Mill Mountain, that is, which overlooks Roanoke, a city like many that is named after a Native American tribe (Algonquin for "shell money"). Mill Mountain, with its huge neon star overlooking the city at night, is also a place where you can view wildlife and get close to nature. But on this January day they were all holed up in their burrows and dens.

     Our guide, Tim, took a small group of us on a walk along the "ridge line" trail at the top of the mountain. But part of the way we were surrounded by the barest of tall trees, and strewn about logs, which didn't need to protect us from the elements -- there was little wind and the sun was up in a blue sky. He pointed out small animals may use the logs on the ground as their highway or runway to get from place to place. And when we came to a tree with a big hole in it about three feet up, he asked the kids in our group of a dozen why animals might like the big hole above the ground. He received answers like "to protect from the rain," "to stay warm," "to stash food," and a few others. We didn't see any critters, even if the day was warming up to almost 50 degrees. Snakes might come out of their den with prolonged warm temps and sun themselves on a log, Tim explained, but this surprisingly mild day saw no creatures stirring on this afternoon,  except for humans. Ah well. We might need to wait another month or two before the little critters come out.

Don't Eat the Christmas Berries

    This may be a little after Christmas, but those of us trying to learn more about nature and foraging (especially if you are ever lost in the woods!) need be weary of the many red berries we see around Christmas time. Like holly berries, which come from the female tree-- yes, some trees are like that, carrying the female parts and fruit, with male parts on other trees of the same species. There a number of different holly trees on the Radford University campus, and the red berries produced are poisonous. Maybe one berry wouldn't hurt much, but poisonous parts of plants in nature make people very ill, or the case of certain plants, like jimson weed or  poison hemlock, downright deadly.
      So don't let the kids or cats eat the holly berries that may be part of Christmas wreaths. The white berries of mistletoe, that little sprig you put overhead in order to garner a kiss, also are not healthy, the leaves even moreso than the berries and cause vomiting, diarrhea, stomach pain, not fun things to happen to you during the holiday.
     Wintertime and the woods seem rather brown and bare, and the bright berries on display then are for the birds, though they aren't the birds' first choice.

Did you know that-- about the parrot fish

                                                  It's Big! It's Blue! It's a Fish!

     It looks like a talking, cartoon fish. I stumbled upon something very weird on the Internet (not that that is difficult, but even so, this is surprising). Somewhere was posted several "weird" animals, animals being anything that can move independently. I then learned there is  a very unusual fish in the Caribbean (though they also have a variety of this fish in the Pacific as well). And it's called the parrot fish, this one being the blue parrot fish.
     This "blue" fish has a bump on its face making it look like a beak, and also a  fused set of teeth (instead of 32 individual teeth, like people have). And THAT, makes it look a bit like maybe a "Finding Nemo" kind of fish! 
     Many fish don't have any real teeth, as they feed on tiny insects or algae. The blue parrot fish does feed on algae on rock and coral, and bites off the rock in the process! It also has pharyngeal or throat teeth to further grind up the coral -- to tiny bits. It's then expelled out the other end: fish poop. If you were to swim by this three foot long fish it would leave you in a cloud of underwater dust!
     These remains help form the Caribbean beaches and islands. So maybe those "white" sands aren't as pure as you think! They say the parrot fish produces about 200 pounds of sand this way. It's certainly given me a new interest in the colorful fish of the Caribbean-- gee, did Captain Sparrow ever seek out any of these blue fish? 

What is by my door

     Near our front door, just besides our somewhat prolific red bush (now fading out), is a compound leaf of what looks like a "mini- tree", that's come out of nowhere. This means it could be the volunteer, invasive "Tree of Heaven". But it has leaves with serrated edges, which the Tree of Heaven doesn't have. It seems to be, more likely, mountain ash or maybe a type of sumac.

Falls Colors and Hiking Blue Ridge and Mabry Mill

                                             Me on the Rock Castle Gorge Trail, Blue Ridge Parkway.

                                     The scenic Mabry Mill, Blue Ridge Parkway in VA.


     It was over a week ago, after being "inside" the previous weekend promoting nature, that we went outside to take our first real trip on the "Blue Ridge Parkway" to partake of the fruits of nature's labors in autumn: the fall colors.
     Actually, on Route 8 on the way to the Blue Ridge Parkway, I think the colors were brighter and peaking a bit more. I think it depended on what part of the Blue Ridge Parkway you were on. But we did see some outright bright reds (of dogwood, sourwood, red oak, sumac, most likely) at a few overlooks, amongst some greens and other muted colors. On one hillside, at the "Rock Castle Gorge" overlook, it was bright with many shades of yellow and oranges. I noticed the yellow orange color was prominent at the Rocky Knob picnic area.
     The Rocky Knob area was, well, rocky, with many outcroppings people could walk among as they headed toward a very rustic, slate colored restroom. The information station on the Parkway itself was also slate colored, and small. But it had some neat little items, like brochures showing the entire route of the Parkway you could take. If you wanted more, they had for sale cards identifying Eastern forest trees,  drawings of animal prints, and even hats and pocket knives for sale. But the picnic area itself, which seems to be "at the top" of the parkway, was windy and a bit shady and cold. I needed to head back to the car for my hat before sitting down to wolf down a sandwich in the cold wind. And I noticed a big oak above me --- most of its branches were near the top, and the top of it swayed to and fro about 80 feet above me!
     But diagonally across from Rocky Knob was Rock Castle. We looked out a bit, but also wanted to see a bit of a trail. The trail had some rocks you  had to get over and I almost tripped a few times --- good thing my spouse went back to the car to give us some steadiness with our walking sticks. The trail in many parts was "slushy" with fallen, dry leaves, and I noted the hickory nuts and some turkey oak and white oak too. As I told my college students, the trees are having their late hurrah before winter and then going dormant. It was a short trail, and we took pictures by these  rocks in the middle of the woods, in a configuration and little bit like an "open" Stonehenge.
     Then we drove several miles down the road to the reknown Mabry Mill, which was in business in the last century and before, at a time when they went to a grist mill to have their corn ground. It was packed -- you'd have had to wait an hour to get in their little restaurant, but there a guide speaking about the grist mill's history, and many other artifacts at the site, like an "evaporating dan," blacksmith log cabin, wooden wagon with wooden wheels, etc. And even some information on making soap. The good ol' days, when people were very self sufficient. And everyone was taking pictures of the mill and pond nearby, a few fall colors adding some contract to their dark color.
     Fall colors are an interesting way to get people out on the trail. The Parkway was busy the third weekend of October and hopefully it will continue to have visitors through the entire month.