Headwaters Master Naturalist Byron Hukee took advantage of a unique opportunity to help scientists further our knowledge of the endangered California Condor. Many thanks to him for sharing his experience here. My affinity for the California condor (Gymnogyps californianus) began in 2008 after moving back to Utah when I retired from the US Air Force.…
HMNer, Kate Guenther, has launched a new educational website to assist nature educators and wildlife rehabilitators to quickly and easily look up what wildlife plant foods eastern US birds and mammals eat. Check it out at http://www.wildfoods4wildlife.com and also check out the Facebook page, https://www.facebook.com/wildfoods4wildlife/ Kate saw the need for this project when she was…
It’s a wild life, when you’re a Virginia Master Naturalist. Headwaters chapter members Adrie Voors and Stephanie Gardner recently proved just that with our participation in The Showerhead Microbiome Project. Our showerhead scanning was part of the larger Your Wild Life initiative, a series of experiments that are hosted, analyzed and interpreted by the Your…
The Virginia Birding and Wildlife Trail Adoption project is currently among the most popular for Headwaters Chapter members. About 20 of our members are doing work as trail adopters, helping to monitor sites on two of the three loops in our region (The North River Trail and Forest Trail). The VBWT project is definitely high…
On a day just beginning to turn grey with rain, Carl Droms and I slog across an already wet meadow crisscrossed with spider webs. We’re here to deploy a camera for the eMammal project, part of Virginia Working Landscapes citizen science work for the summer of 2017. We’re already an hour and a half into…
Several Headwaters Master Naturalists were among the Virginia Master Naturalists who helped research Virginia’s bees in a project that got citizen scientists buzzing with excitement earlier this year. University of Virginia environmental sciences graduate student Kathryn “Kate” LeCroy coordinated the project and is currently analyzing the data collected by volunteers in the bee house hotels…
On June 15, HMNs Kathy Byers, Chris Bowlen and Peggy Plass joined a trio of botanists with the Virginia Department of Conservation and Recreation for a trip to Magnolia Swamp in Augusta County. The primary target of their search was the Queen of the Prairie (Filipendula rubra), a beautiful wildflower last seen on the property…
