The Skunk Cabbage are in bloom

In wet marshy woodlands and swamps a curious plant is peaking up from the wet, moist soil. The Skunk Cabbage (Symplocarpus foetidus) sprouts so early in spring that the heat of the plant’s cellular respiration from its rapid growth actually melts the surrounding ice and snow.

The large egg-shaped leaves rise not from a stalk but directly from the soil. The leaves unfurl and shade the odd-looking flower beneath it. You can just see the small purplish-brown flower in the photo above.

The purplish-brown flower blooms from February to May. The purplish-brown hood is the spathe. The pale yellow knobby thing in the flower is the spadix. The spadix is covered with tiny flowers.

The Common Yellowthroat Warbler sometimes nest in the central hollows of the large leaves. Sowbugs and millipedes are often seen on the decaying spathes.

Wood ducks, Ruffled Grouse, Ring-necked Pheasants and Northern Bobwhites feed on the seeds. The Skunk Cabbage is the first pollen source in spring for honeybees.

How to Keep a Naturalist's Notebook by Susan Leigh Tomlinson

How to Keep a Naturalist's Notebook
by Susan Leigh Tomlinson.

How to Keep a Naturalist's Notebook aims to "offer instruction for keeping a detailed exploratory notebook about the natural world". Tomlinson did a good job. After reading this book the reader learns to keep a comprehensive nature journal.

Tomlinson is a paleontologist, artist and professor at Texas Tech University, where she teaches in an interdisciplinary degree program in nature studies.

The book has six chapters.

1. Getting Started (preparing the field kit)
2. Field Sketching: Basic Skills (basic drawing skills)
3. Field Sketching: Beyond the Basics (color and line, layout, perspective)
4. Field Drawing: Tips for the Field (techniques, types of field sketches)
5. Field Identification: (taxonomic classification)
6. Putting It All Together (field notes, maps and final words)

The book is
* one part lesson in the basics of sketching
* one part instruction in journal writing
* part walk through the process of identifying something and learning about it.

Three of them on field sketching and drawing. The chapters on drawing and sketching have very good tips and techniques. Tomlinson discusses types of field sketches, basic drawing skills, tips for the field and tips to make you journal attractive. Tomlinson devotes seventy-three to field sketches. These are less of a "how to draw" type page but more of a mindset and approaches to field sketching.

Tomlinson discusses types of field sketches, basic drawing skills, tips for the field and tips to make your journal attractive.

Here are some of her suggestions I have found helpful.

* Just put a enough color in a sketch and not try to color the whole image. Her examples look illustrate this idea. Her illustrations look good.
* Vary line intensity so the sketch don't look "outline-y"
* Filled the page - a full page is a lively page
* Create thumbnail sketches instead of sketching on a large blank page

Tomlinson is a trained scientist and she provides tips on methods of identification, pronouncing scientific names, getting the most out of field guides.

What Tomlinson did is fill a gap. If you have Keeping a Nature Journal: Discover a Whole New Way of Seeing the World Around You by Leslie and Roth or Steven G. Hermann's The Naturalist's Field Journal: A Manual of Instruction Based on a System Established by Joseph Grinnell, then How to Keep a Naturalist's Notebook fits nicely between the two.


This book is good for the naturalist who is just beginning to keep a notebook or nature journal. Or someone who has kept a notebook for ideas and fresh perspectives.

Crosswicks

Saturday, 28 March 2010 - Jenkintown, PA

Weather: 7:30 am - cool, clear, sunny. Location: Crosswicks Audubon Wildlife Sanctuary.

Purpose: bird walk and cleanup.

Habitat: Piedmont upland woodland of 13 mostly wooded acres with several small streams. The sanctuary is a small second or even third-growth woodland. The canopy trees are tall, many over 150 feet at least. These are so thin, they can't be that old.

But they are thin trees. It seems trees shoot up in height and then the rest of their long lives concentrate on gaining girth. And the trunks widen until they are massive giants that humans can barely wrap their arms around.

Understory trees are beginning to leaf out. The Red Maple has a fuzzy head of red flowers. The Spice Bush is full of yellow-green flowers and small leaves are sprouting on shrubs.

The woods are criss-crossed by several streams. The streams run clear and swiftly in the cool morning air.

The woodland was wet and in some places, muddy. At least after all the rain and snow we have had over the winter. From January through March 25th, the Philadelphia had 12.78 inches of precipitation. That is 4.84 inches more than normal.

Skunk Cabbage is beginning to bloom.

Birds: On our bird walk we saw and heard: Golden-crowned kinglet-2, White-breasted Nuthatch -2, Red-belied Woodpecker-1, Crow-1, Bluejay-1, Flicker-1, Turkey Vulture-1, White-Thorated Sparrow-1, Starling-1 and House Sparrow-1.

We watched a Turkey Vulture rise up and fly in tight, smooth circles high above the tree canopy. It must have been feeding on carrion or even creating a nest. I know they nest early, at least by April.

Lesser Celadine covers the woodland floor in spots. It is an invasive species hard to eradicate in Delaware Valley forests.

Fresh green moss is alive and well on a rotting log.