On November 13, 2019, at FODM’s quarterly meeting, Dr. Sally Valdes outlined several ways that climate change is adversely affecting wildlife. Introducing the topic, she said that carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gas emissions have risen to levels unprecedented in the last 800,000 years. Carbon dioxide concentrations have been tracked continuously at the Mauna Loa Observatory in Hawaii since 1958 and the trend has been steadily upward, from about 315 parts per million (ppm) to 414 ppm in the spring of 2019.
On October 11, 2019, FODM volunteers and National Park Service staff put in 400 more native plants in the native plant restoration area in Dyke Marsh, a .65-acre plot on the west side of the Haul Road trail. The group planted riverbank wild rye (Elymus riparius), New York ironweed (Vernonia noveboracensis), wild rice (Zizania aquatica) and deer tongue (Dichanthelium clandestinum (syn. Panicum clandestinum)).
FODM Board of Directors’ member Deborah Klein Hammer saves bats and is featured in a September 16, 2019, article in “DCist” here.
Deborah studies Brazilian freetail (Tadarida brasiliensis) and Seminole bats (Lasiurus seminolus) in Dyke Marsh. Around 2013, a Brazilian free-tailed bat came into care of the Save Lucy Campaign (www.savelucythebat.org/), an organization devoted to rehabilitating injured and orphaned bats and educating the public about the importance of bats.
In the late summer and early fall, parts of Dyke Marsh turn a brilliant yellow. The yellow blossoms are typically plants in the family Asteraceae.
Many of the plants are Bidens laevis, common name, beggar-ticks, says botanist Dr. Elizabeth Wells, and she explains that they are restricted to low, wet places such as marshes. The name Bidens refers to the two teeth on each achene (Bidens = two (bi) teeth).
Fall brings a “special orchestra” to the out-of-doors, began Wil Hershberger, at the September 11, 2019, meeting of the Friends of Dyke Marsh, at which Hershberger explored the songs and singing of crickets, katydids, grasshoppers (Orthoptera) and cicadas. In late summer and early fall, these singing insects fill the air with their courtship choruses.
