Turk Mountain Textures
Combine ancient sands and giant worms
(Skolithos species), ice age freeze and thaw, and modern winds and fire......
...and one ends up with an amazing Blue Ridge landscape. Go visit Turk Mountain in the Shenandoah National Park for a first hand look. The trail is short and the view is spectacular.
Bald Eagle sighting, a mating pair?
Bald Eagle,
Haliaeetus leucocephalus
Date:
December 17, 2010
Time:
12:00pm-12:10pm
Location:
Mouth of Wilson, Virginia, below the Field's Dam at the confluence of Fox Creek and the New River. (Lat/Lon: 36.602951, -81.307705)
Elevation:
2460 feet
Weather:
temperature is on the rise after a two week period of extreme cold and moderate to light snow.
On my way to Mouth of Wilson
, at around noon, two giant birds caught my eye. I had just crossed over the bridge where Fox Creek empties into the New River. After hitting the brakes and spilling a soda on the floor, I pulled over and watched. The adult eagles were taking turns swooping down, coming within inches of a bird in the water. Every minute or so they would perch on the trees along the south side of the river. A crow passed through, heading upstream, and one eagle dove into hot pursuit. It made chase up to the dam and returned. After diving down at a water bird several more times
.
I did not make an ID on that bird, but it dove under the water on occasions; cormorant sized, with dark plumage. I noticed at Aviatlas.com that a double-crested cormorant has been spotted near this locality before
(during the month of October).
The pair of eagles departed together. They flew southwest, up stream, and then turned south toward Piney Creek, NC
(very high in the sky but almost directly over 93)
.
Maybe one day someone will find a nest!
I continued west on 58, admiring the up-thrust sheets of ice about to spill over the banks of the New River (this reminded me of last year's amazing January ice event:
).
Early Signs of Spring in the New River Valley
Bittercress is always the first wildflower by the river bottomland, but the exact species is hard to pin down. Both Pennsylvania bittercress (Cardamine pensylvanica) and hairy bittercress (Cardamine hirsute) are small plants with tiny white flowers that bloom when the greens of wild onions are appearing and just before the purple carpet of ground ivy goes wild. Bittercress appears before a more showy mustard family member blankets the hayfields with gold (land cress, Barbarea verna). Spring peepers herald the earlier, white-blooming arrivals, usually the first March evenings after mild days. In many years of informal record keeping, late February is the earliest the amorous males begin calling, but this year the frog song began the second week of March. This past winter we had record-breaking snow and ice cover, for two months even in the lower elevations.
This winter was also unusual with huge ice bergs littering the river side. After a series of river freezes that normally occur when the temperatures dip down into the single digits or lower for a string of days, warm, rainy weather broke up the ice and cast it aside, creating huge ice sculptures on the banks. Most of the ice is gone now in the lower elevations, except for a few north-facing coves. Storm damage was also the worst in many years. Trail crews have been working hard to clear all the blow-downs on the Appalachian Trail, and parts of the Blue Ridge Parkway near Asheville and Mount Mitchell will be closed until May. None of the trees are leafing out yet, but weeping willow will be the first, soon. A friend reported seeing white hepatica on the Virginia Creeper Trail near Abingdon. Daffodils are blooming and any other earlier bulbs that the deer did not eat. They ate all mine.
Catching Snowflakes
Tools:
We laid black pieces of construction paper on a bench during yesterday's snow. We left them in the frigid air for two hours prior to beginning. The images were captured with a point-and-shoot camera
(Cannon Powershot SX110-IS)
on its wonderful macro setting. The temperature at the time of taking these photographs ranged between 14-18 degrees Fahrenheit...which is the key to sharp and clear crystals.
Patience:
It took about two hours of searching to find these crystals, as the majority that we observed were in layers and clumps. Occasionally, all falling snow would shift over to being just needles. The sharply defined singular crystals were very hard to see...they were very thin and transparent, and required looking at an angle to catch reflecting light.
Next time:
I really wish we could have gotten sharper images,... we pushed the limits of our point-and-shoot camera, that's for certain. Next time, maybe we'll have a dissecting microscope with a camera!
Share your images:
We would love to see any images you might have taken as well!
Icebergs in Virginia's Blue Ridge?
Here's a glimpse of what is probably a very uncommon wintertime event in Virginia.
Story and photographs from the New River Highlands of SW Virginia:
"We have been watching the ice form for several weeks since the record breaking cold snap... 5 straight days below 20 and then 12'' of very wet snow (in which the moisture ratio equivalent makes it more like 20''). The ice was so thick that A and E walked across with the New River raging under them...
A few days later we had heavy rains and it appears that the water washed over the ice to form layers of clear and blue slabs of ice, some 10' thick. As the run off swelled the river, this powerful force lifted the ice and deposited it on the banks, stripping the bark off all the trees along the river. Heavy equipment was brought in to remove the ice from the road at the Round House [an historic structure
adjacent
to the river]."
"...the old timers say they have never seen this before. "
-
Mike Floyd
Location:
Along the New River in Mouth of Wilson, Virginia. Photos by Jane and Mike Floyd:
I consider these images to be vessels for time-travel!... a brief glimpse into the distant past, to a time closer to the last ice age, when the New River must have been churning with chunks of ice all through the winter up there in the Blue Ridge. And if you would like to stretch the imagination a bit further, try and imagine Taiga forests (fir, spruce, and birch dominated) covering the landscape behind the
ice blocks
, and a Tundra-capped Mount Rogers area in the distance...with herds of
and
roaming open areas, and
and
lurking in the shadows.
- devin floyd
More images of the ice phenomenon, taken along a tributary of the New River: