One antidote to a pandemic: Training to be a master naturalist

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Photo: Ron Grimes

By Julie Shaw, Spring 2021 Graduate

The Fairfax Chapter Master Naturalist training program saved me from the grim claustrophobia brought on by the pandemic in the winter and spring of 2021.

While avoiding the news in December 2020, I came across a notice about the training in the Fairfax Master Naturalist Newsletter and I jumped at the chance to apply. So did a lot of other people: The spring 2021 training had more than 50 applicants for 20 slots.

I was lucky to make the cut, and it was just what the doctor ordered. I work—now from home—at a day job in communications for an environmental organization, but that job mostly takes place behind a computer. I do not frequently get the kind of connection with nature, or with people, that I find most meaningful. And with degrees in English literature and journalism, I have a lot to learn about nature and how to help it.

Our trainee cohort came from diverse backgrounds. Some studied or have degrees in nature-related fields. Some have served in the military or government. Our group also included young people just starting out in their careers (one is a high school student), parents planning to spend treasured free time to educate their children and others about nature, and retirees eager to use their energy and experience to support local ecosystems and wildlife. The class also incorporated participants from the spring 2020 Master Naturalist training who were completing a pandemic-interrupted education.

For the volunteers who organize the training, the switch from in-person to online meetings brought some minor difficulties — from just getting people into the Zoom session to getting presentations to display correctly. But the sessions were relatively smooth since many people have become accustomed to Zoom.

Members of our class did miss out on some of the bonding that in-person training sessions can facilitate and, perhaps more importantly, the associated snack-time tradition. But we were fantastically fortunate when it came to weather for our field trips (although several of us used our cars as warming shelters during the surprisingly cold May 1 visit to Mason Neck Wildlife Refuge and State Park). And we benefited greatly from the efforts of an impressive team of volunteers and presenters who delivered a well-oiled and engaging program.

Reviews from my fellow trainees for the program have been overwhelmingly enthusiastic. And while our experience has been colored by the pandemic, what we’re taking away from the training will likely have a much more enduring and positive impact on our lives.

NOTE: More helpers are always needed for the training program. Contact Lori Scheibe at [email protected] to volunteer.

Fairfax Master Naturalists Talk Pollinators and Citizen Science at June Environmental Expo

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Photo: Marilyn Schroeder

By Mike Walker

FMN members hosted a booth at the first “post pandemic” Outreach Event in 2021. This was the Mount Vernon-National Park Service Environmental Expo at Fort Hunt Park on June 26. Marilyn Schroeder and Mike Walker set up and staffed the booth, with Master Naturalist and Bat Expert Deborah Hammer offering training and use tips for the iNaturalist system. Many of our local partner organizations were present at the Expo, including Friends of Huntley Meadows and Mason Neck as well as various Fairfax County government organizations, such as the Green Breakfast folks from the Soil and Water Conservation department. Chapter sponsor Jim McGlone, representing the forestry department, was also there promoting proper tree planting.

Two important takeaways for me: first, next to our booth was an entomologist with the National Park Service. He explained that staff from the Department and local universities have discovered and documented five new, previously undiscovered species of insects found on parkland. Field investigations have been taking place in Dyke Marsh, Turkey Run Park and Great Falls-Riverbend parks. Second, on display and available for inspection were about a dozen all electric automobiles and a Fairfax County Public Schools electric school bus. What had been wishful thinking on a new age of automobiles now appears to be becoming mainstream and even affordable. One owner of a Chevrolet Volt told me he has owned his electric car for 10 years and has never returned to the dealer or had any repairs other than new tires and wiper blades. Lots of interesting information.

Keep your eyes open for our booth at the next public environmental event. Stop by, ask questions, or just visit!

It’s Time to Sign Up for The International Coastal Cleanup!

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Join Clean Virginia Waterways for the 27th year of keeping Virginia’s waterways litter-free! This annual cleanup of trash and litter in our rivers and on our beaches is part of the International Coastal Cleanup and is the largest event held by CVW. Thousands of volunteers gather along the shorelines of Virginia’s rivers, lakes, bays, and beaches (and inland too!) to clean up litter and debris, and recycle found items. They also complete Data Cards or use the CleanSwell app, to collect valuable information about the amounts and types of litter and debris they are finding. Click here to see how your important data are used.

Please participate in this statewide and international effort dedicated to cleaning the world’s waterways. This year, cleanups will run from late August to early November.

Want to Be a Leader?
Cleanup events require leaders! Gather your friends, family, co-workers, organization, or other groups and lead your clean up as a Site Captain! Learn more about being a Site Captain here. If you would like to be a LEADER of a cleanup, please signup to be a Site Captain or call Clean Virginia Waterways at (434) 395-2602, or send an email to [email protected]. You do not need to know a specific date or time for your cleanup to sign up, so sign up TODAY!

Want to Volunteer?
Stay tuned, as cleanup dates for August-November will be updated throughout the summer. Click here to check dates of cleanup events in a community near you. Need help finding one? Contact us by calling Clean Virginia Waterways at (434) 395-2602 or send an email to [email protected].

Clifton Institute Seeks Education Associate

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The Clifton Institute seeks a full-time Education Associate to provide environmental education programs to children and adults. The Clifton Institute is a 501(c)(3) non-profit organization located two miles north of Warrenton, in the northern Piedmont of Virginia. Their 900-acre field station, which includes forests, grasslands, shrub fields, and wetlands, is permanently protected under a conservation easement. Their education programs include field trips for local school groups, summer day camps, nature hikes for children and their families, and walks and workshops for adults. Please visit www.cliftoninstitute.org/events to learn about their upcoming events and www.cliftoninstitute.org/events-old to learn about their past events. The Clifton Institute is a small but dynamic organization and the successful applicant will play an important role in the organization.

Start on August 2, 2021 or as early as your schedule allows. The full job description is here.

This Little Light …

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Photo: Jerry Nissley

Cicadas have come and gone. The only visible remnant being dead-headed branches that result from flagging (laying eggs), in preparation for their legacy, the next generation of brood X. Invisible to us are the nutrients provided by countless insects as they drop and cycle into the earth. That was, of course, a tiny singular cycle within Nature’s big cycle.

Lightning Bug Chart – from Pinterest

The concept of singular cycles within the ‘big one’ struck me the other night as dusk creeped in on an evening silenced by a lack of humming cicadas. When what did appear? The next singular cycle; there always seems to be a next singularity. Perhaps more noticeable because the audial chaos of cicadas was now replaced with the visual peacefulness of – lightning bugs.

As shown in the lightning bug chart there are several significant species in our yards. The most common is Photinus pyralis with its familiar ‘J’ stroke flash. These fanciful little creatures light up an evening with joy – they bring a smile to my face when I notice the first blink of each evening. I love to hear the glee of my grandchildren chase down a few for further inspection. They never fail to please.

So it goes. Cycle after cycle. Cycle within cycle. Here for a season. Here for a reason. Appearing with determination to make a complex difference for a season and more importantly to prepare a legacy. Perhaps appearing for simple reasons, to bring joy into our world as a respite from the chaos.

A tiny lightning bug appeared to me in the dim of my rec-room the other evening. I thought, now there is one beautiful, exemplary individual – here for its season and for all the right reasons. I smiled, for Marilyn.

In memoriam: Marilyn Kupetz June 14, 1956 – June 12, 2021

Using Virginia’s Natural Community Research to Guide Stewardship Activities

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Article by FMN Joe Gorney, photo by J. Quinn

As Master Naturalists, we sometimes help reclaim vegetated areas from the clutches of non-native invasives. At the end of this process, we’re often confronted with a degraded and/or blank slate in need of enhancement. But deciding what to plant can be a challenge. Optimally, we’d use a mixture of upper-story trees, mid-story trees, shrubs, and herbaceous plants to create a well-balanced plant community. The Virginia Department of Conservation and Recreation maintains a publication entitled “The Natural Communities of Virginia: Classification of Ecological Groups and Community Types,” which includes information regarding the more than 300 natural communities that cover Virginia: https://www.dcr.virginia.gov/natural-heritage/natural-communities/. While the publication is an amazing resource, navigating all of that on-line information to find the appropriate community and then deciphering said information to decide what to plant can be a challenge, so much so that people might be tempted to either: a) give up; and/or b) default to the “TLAR” method of plant selection (That Looks About Right).

Faced with that scenario and motivated by some long-term restoration work in Arlington County, Glenn Tobin, an Arlington Master Naturalist since 2016, worked with ecologists and biologists from Arlington County, DCR’s Division of Natural Heritage, and several other groups.  He led a year-long effort to translate DCR’s publication into readily-accessible and practical guidance for people engaged in ecological restoration efforts. The original publication was pared down to the nine plant communities endemic to Northern Virginia. The resulting guidance has been published in a website entitled “The Natural Ecological Communities of Northern Virginia.”  
(see: https://www.novanaturalcommunity.com/). 

The website contains a list of the nine forest communities we might encounter, key concepts to identify those communities, a dichotomous key for community identification, downloadable summary descriptions of each community, Excel spreadsheets with more detailed information, and a list of some natural community misfits. Species are included within each community and categorized by abundance (sparse, rare, restricted, common, dominant).

The website is intended as a guide, and not a “cookbook,” a guide that can help us formulate planting recommendations to enhance the ecological health of an area. The plant communities were selected to establish a desired end state for restoration. The information does not address edges or meadows, although the Clifton Institute in Warrenton is developing some information regarding meadows (https://cliftoninstitute.org/). If you’d like to see a presentation regarding the new website, log onto the VMN Continuing Education Webinar Series webpage and click the link from May 7, 2021. (Continuing Education Webinar Series – Virginia Master Naturalists)

For further information about integrating plant communities into your landscape, I also recommend the following books:

  • Planting in a Post-Wild World: Designing Plant Communities for Resilient Landscapes, by Thomas Rainer and Claudia West.
  • The Living Landscape: Designing for Beauty and Biodiversity in the Home Garden, by Rick Darke & Doug Tallamy.
  • Garden Revolution: How Our Landscapes Can Be a Source of Environmental Change, by Larry Weaner and Thomas Christopher.

Other valuable resources include:

Summer would be the perfect time to explore this information, so that you’ll know what to plant come Fall. Happy reading and good luck creating healthy landscapes throughout our communities and within our backyards., photo by

Virginia Outdoors Foundation (VOF) Herpetology Internship Announced

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Virginia Outdoors Foundation is thrilled to announce that they are now accepting applications for their 2021 Virginia Outdoors Foundation (VOF) Natural Science Fellowship (Herpetology) position. This fellowship will be focused on the pursuit of scientific discovery and increasing knowledge related to the resident snake populations at VOF’s Preserve at Bull Run Mountains – which is a living laboratory and open-air museum based right here in the backyard of our nation’s capital (bullrunmountains.org).

The Preserve’s 2020 Annual Report can be found here for all of those interested in reviewing more information about them and their programs: https://www.vof.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/02/VOF-BRMNAP-2020-Annual-Report.pdf

Job listing/application portal can be found here:  https://recruiting.paylocity.com/recruiting/jobs/Details/600454/Virginia-Outdoors-Foundation/Natural-Science-Fellow-Herpetology

Celebrate National Moth Week! Workshop and Survey with Judy Gallagher

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Io moth by Judy Gallagher

Thursday, July 29, 7:00 – 8:00 PM (Online via Zoom)
Field Trip: Saturday, July 31, 8:30 PM –10:30 PM Lorton, VA
Fee: FREE, but registration is required

You all know something about butterflies but you probably don’t know much about their cousins, the moths. Did you know many adult moths eat nectar but others don’t eat at all as adults? Join Judy to learn about the mysterious world of moths, and gain some information about identifying them.

On the outing, they’ll set up a black light to attract moths and use field guides and iNaturalist to try to identify them.  They’ll set up an iNaturalist project to keep track of the moths they see.

Brought to you by Audubon Society of Northern Virginia.

Planting for the Picky Eaters

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Photo courtesy of Plant NOVA Natives

Many insects are picky eaters, only able to eat the plants with which they evolved, meaning the plants that are native to their region. Butterflies are a good example, since although the adults can sip nectar from non-native flowers, their caterpillars depend on specific native plants.The majority of bees are more flexible than that, able to eat the pollen and nectar from a variety of species. They are known as generalist species, although even in their case they have their own favorites. The European Honeybee, for instance, is a generalist but chooses certain flowers in preference to others.

Of the approximately 400 native bee species in Virginia, about a fifth are plant specialists. Examples include the Spring Beauty Bee and the Blueberry Bee, which (unsurprisingly) depend on the flowers of Spring Beauties and Blueberries. These bees are short lived as adults, emerging when the plants they depend upon are in bloom, and quickly gathering the pollen they need to store in their nests for their larvae, thus pollinating the plants while they are at it.

Our local ecosystem requires the full spectrum of plant/animal interactions to flourish. It is easily knocked out of balance when too many native plants are displaced by introduced species, something that has happened in many of our yards. We can restore that balance by planting a lot of native plants. One strategy could be to start with flowers that feed various specialist bees from early spring to late fall, because they will also supply food for the generalist bees. Since many of these flowers attract butterflies and hummingbirds as well, they make a winning combination. A list of popular native garden plants that feed specialist bees can be found on the Plant NOVA Natives website. It feels good to help the bees, whose numbers are in decline.

One of the many charms of native bee species is that they are highly unlikely to sting you, assuming you don’t try to grab one or otherwise threaten it. While they are foraging on a flower, you can get your face (and your camera) right up to them, and they will almost certainly ignore you. Gazing at bees brings surprises, as they come in many sizes and colors, including metallic blues and greens. It is particularly mesmerizing to watch bees on plants such as White Turtlehead, where they pry open the flowers and crawl inside, then back themselves out again, butt first. You can get a peek at those and other cute native bees on this two minute video, filmed in Fairfax County.

Plant NOVA Trees Event Volunteers Needed

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Plant NOVA Natives was launched in 2014 to promote and increase the use of locally native plants in Northern Virginia. One of nine campaigns within the state-wide Plant Virginia Natives marketing partnership, it is a grand coalition of governmental, nonprofit and for-profit organizations that have pooled their resources to work toward this common goal. The campaign’s success rests on the action of the millions of individuals who make up our Northern Virginia community.

Plant NOVA Trees is a new and focused drive by the Plant NOVA Natives campaign to significantly increase and preserve the native tree canopy in Northern Virginia. The drive will launch in September 2021 and continue through the fall of 2026.

They are looking for people who can organize some kind of tree-related public event sometime this fall. To launch the native tree campaign, they will be sponsoring a region-wide Celebration of Trees, September through November. They are hoping that numerous people in every county will help them create buzz.

Some ideas for events include:

Tree walks (For the general public, you would want to make it short, snappy and fun.)
Tree plantings (be sure to report them on My Tree Counts)
Removing invasives that threaten trees
Webinars
Labelling trees with their names or placing signs in front of trees describing their particular benefits to wildlife and humans
Creating a GPS map of your community’s trees
Collecting seeds from your trees to be sent to the state nursery that grows seedlings
Forest bathing, scavenger hunts
Tie yellow ribbons around old oak trees (and red ones around red maples, etc)
Geocaching
Fairy houses in the woods
Photo contests
Anything creative you can come up with!

They have a sign to mail to organizers as well as brochures, and where selling their Native Plants for Northern Virginia guides is an option, they can provide those. If you do put on an event, they would love to add it to their Celebration of Trees event calendar, so please let Margaret Fisher know at [email protected].

The Fairfax Chapter recognizes the valuable work to be done by Plant NOVA Trees and recently donated $2,500 to the campaign. Funds will be used for promoting awareness of the program and for community tree identification projects. You may make your own donation here.