VMN-Historic Southside Chapter:  A New State Record of a Rare Liverwort and a Grant for Education Projects

By Lynn Wehner and John Bunch, both VMN-Historic Southside Chapter

John Bunch (VMN-Historic Southside Chapter) has found and identified a new STATE record of a rare liverwort, Fossombronia cristula.  This is in addition to the 20+ county records of various ‘worts’ he had last year and some 40+ plants total.  Liverworts, like mosses and hornworts, are non-vascular plants.  They are usually quite small and thus easily overlooked by most people, though not by this sharp-eyed naturalist who delights in exploring swamps in pursuit of botanical discoveries!  Learn more about John's find.

Another piece of good news is that the ​Historic Southside Chapter was awarded a grant of nearly $2000 from the Chesapeake Bay Restoration Fund. This fund is from money collected from the sale of ‘Save the Bay’ license plates. The chapter will use the funds to purchase additional educational materials to be used in outreach and education about impacts on the Chesapeake Bay watershed. This grant was one of 90 awarded across the state to various organizations.

VMN-Historic Rivers Chapter Recognized By the Virginia Recreation and Park Society

By Adrienne Frank, VMN-Historic Rivers Chapter

The Historic Rivers Chapter Board is honored to announce that our chapter received the Distinguished Private Sector Service Award from the Virginia Recreation and Park Society, submitted by Alister Perkinson, celebrating all of the things that we have accomplished in our partnership with James City County Parks and Recreation.  He highlighted our contributions by saying that “In 2017, we dedicated over 2,500 volunteer hours in the James City County Parks at an estimated value of $61,725.” Projects in the parks included Bluebird and Prothonotary Warbler nest box monitoring, natives planting at the Williamsburg Botanical Garden, the Butterfly Festival, summer camps and nature programs, educational displays at the Rec Center, signage for Living Forest Interpretive Trails, and the Powhatan Creek waterways guide. These projects had an impact on thousands of visitors to our parks. 

VMN-Fairfax Chapter Volunteers Recognized by the Fairfax County Park Authority

The Fairfax County Park Authority established the Elly Doyle Park Service Award program in 1988 to recognize former Board Member and Chair Ellamae Doyle's years of outstanding service. Four Fairfax Master Naturalists were recognized during the November 2018 ceremony:

• Marilyn Schroeder, Elly Doyle Park Service Award
• Tom Blackburn, Outstanding Volunteer, Riverbend Park
• Shannon Dart, Outstanding Volunteer, Huntley Meadows
• Bob Dinse, Outstanding Volunteer, Hidden Oaks
  
  

Congratulations, Marilyn, Tom, Shannon, and Bob!

ARMN Celebrates 10 Years Serving Community and Launches Facebook Page

By Kasha Helget, VMN-Arlington Regional Chapter

The Arlington Regional Master Naturalists group just finished its 10th year as a Virginia Master Naturalist chapter, and over 70 members celebrated the milestone at the Annual Meeting in December.

President Marion Jordan highlighted ARMN’s past achievements, present efforts, and plans for future activities. This included an acknowledgment of the various projects on which members have donated thousands of hours during the decade. Among these are stewardship activities (such as invasive plant removals from regional parks and public lands, stream cleanups, and native plant nursery work); education and outreach programs (including public events and instructional programs, nature center support, work with children inside and outside of the classroom, and school gardens); and citizen science (such as stream water monitoring, bird counts, tree, plant, and insect surveys, and more recently, bioblitzes and other surveys that use internet-based iNaturalist, eBird, and GPS tools to track plant, animals, and restoration efforts).

For the future, Jordan stressed the priority of expanding ARMN’s outreach to include more members of the community with events such as “pop-up parks” (to provide nature mini-presentations to passers-by both in parks and elsewhere), as well as more structured outreach to a variety of organizations and citizens.

The ARMN members also submitted their own reflections on their past and present involvements in the organization, and how they looked forward to continued participation during the next decade.

Active membership in ARMN has grown to over 175 individuals whose contributions have multiplied throughout the years. Just in 2018, members reported over 15,000 hours of work in support of the natural environment locally and throughout Virginia!

The ARMN organization has also been honored during its ten years by awards from the National Park Service and Arlington County, and individual members have been honored for their efforts in supporting Arlington’s natural environment.

ARMN has recently launched the Arlington Regional Master Naturalists Facebook page to engage members of the general public about local natural events, photos, discussion topics, or other items of interest in our natural world. Anyone can join by applying for inclusion in the group. We hope to see YOU participate there, too!

Over the past 17 years the enclosed two acres of our “north pasture” has served as a teacher for our family in meadow management, with all lessons learned through observation and modification of mowing cycles to support the natural carpeting of the hillsides with a glorious show of introduced and native flowering plants. In early May, Oxeye Daisies blanket the slopes, in June the Dandelions take their turn, and in early fall another round of Dandelions and the more approved-of native plant, Common Yarrow, finish the season.

Just a few feet across the dirt road that runs along the ridge line, a variety of completely different nonnative plant species provide evidence of early British settlers to the area: edible Yellow Hops Clover and Rabbit’s Foot Clover carpet the southern facing slope in the early spring, and sometimes again in late summer. 

The eight acre farm we live on in Toano, Virginia, has been cultivated, hunted and explored for centuries by colonists and for millennia by Native Americans of the Powhatan Nation. Our double-digging of the first garden beds in 2003 revealed such a treasure of bulky 17th century German pottery, broken porcelain and medicine bottles, we happily skipped down Route 60 to Colonial Williamsburg’s archeology department and showed them our haul. 

They were not impressed. “You can’t stick a shovel in the ground around here without finding these sorts of things. Call us when you find brick,” they said. 

Why is it important to understand the habitat this county record-setting animal preferred? Because we did not realize that in tending a meadow of self-planted, naturalized and native plants, we were also creating and tending a habitat for a “secretive” and therefore rarely seen Eastern Slender Glass Lizard.

When I knelt down to examine the poor animal that I accidentally hit with my riding mower this past fall, NPR’s Sunday jazz show was playing in my ears through protective headphones. What I saw in the grass appeared to be a perfect music staff: rows of horizontal black lines separating bright, white spaces. I turned over the animal to see if it was injured or dying, but it was missing its head, probably from popping-up to check out the approaching rumbling. The blades are always set at the maximum height of 4 ½ inches, so I was surprised it could lift its head that high, and sad.

I grew sadder as I marveled at the second music staff running along the length of the opposite side of its body: two lateral music staffs extended from neck to tail separated by an unusual glossy, bronze color bisected by a black, middorsal stripe. Back in the house, none of my field guides, or online websites, showed a haute couture snake sporting a set of music staffs. Hmm…  a “Write Your Own Song Snake,” I mused, before emailing the Virginia Herpetological Society, VHS, with my photos and a request for help in identifying the animal.

“Wow! How cool is that!” came the reply a few hours later from a group of herpetologists. “The animal is an Eastern Slender Glass Lizard. These are legless lizards. Your discovery represents the first observation of this species in James City County.”  The team pointed me to a page on the Virginia Herpetological Society’s website to formally document the “County Record” as a Field Note to be published in the VHS’ bi-annual journal, Catesbeiana. (You can find instructions for this process here.)

Not only was the VHS team as enthusiastic about the find as I was, Paul Sattler, PhD, editor of Catesbeiana, answered my questions about the legless lizard on the phone. As a newly graduated master naturalist (from the Historic Rivers Chapter in 2018), I was deeply grateful for their replies and instructions.

Why was the animal in the north pasture? Why would it be a county record? Why aren’t there many around? The Eastern Slender Glass Lizard, Ophisaurus attenuates longicaudus, is secretive and seldom seen “because they stay in abandoned rodent burrows and under mats of dead grass and other decomposing plant materials.” O. attenuates are “always associated with grassy areas,” but, “Once old field succession reaches the stage where pine and hardwood trees shade the ground, glass lizards decline in numbers,” stated the VHS website.

The website explained that the historical decline of the glass lizard population is attributed to the lack of grassland habitat due to both successional changes and direct habitat loss. Its preferred prey species – grasshoppers – have also declined from overuse of pesticides. 

As a testament to the glass lizard’s former notoriety, a substantial body of folklore exists around their ability to autotomize their tails. Believing the glass lizard to be a snake, folklore tales claim the broken pieces will grow back together after sunset and form a complete "snake" again. A series of notes in the Martinsville Daily Bulletin in September 1967 describe just such an incident, and the people involved claimed they saw the pieces reassembling. 

It’s easy to see how anyone could mistake the glass lizard for a snake. However, legless lizards differ from snakes because they have eyelids (can blink), external ears and eat smaller, more frequent meals than snakes.

As part of its conservation of Virginia’s native, wild herpetofauna, and specifically the glass lizard, the VHS recommends that, “Observations of any kind should be reported,” and that, “Any consideration of long-term management for this species must include the maintenance of grassland habitat.” 

And this is why official county records are important to conservation efforts, explained Sattler in a phone call. “We have to tell the state what we found and where and how many every year. The state enters all of that information into the database at the US Fish and Wildlife Service. They keep a record for each county and have for decades. For James City County, there has never been a glass lizard reported. This is the first one. That’s why it is a new county record.”

Dr. Sattler graciously eased my conscience about hitting the beautiful legless lizard and offered a little kudos on meadow management. “Because you’ve maintained the habitat, they have a safe place to live. It’s great you hit the one you did so you know that they are there. It’s great that you have the photo and video of where you found it,” he said.

The Eastern Slender Glass Lizard James City County Record was published as an official Field Note in the Fall 2018 issue of Catesbeiana this past December. My original Sunday jazz inspired name for the animal, the Write Your Own Song Snake, will remain an inside joke in our family, continuing the glass lizard’s long folklore tradition. I promise to turn down the headphone volume and keep an eye out for our new meadow resident this year.

"Citizen Science" is scientific research and data gathering that is conducted or assisted with public participation, often by amateurs and nonprofessionals. Such public interest and wishing to contribute to science is a growing trend, providing many chances to tap into volunteers and collect data. All these extra eyes and ears (and photos) the public can provide can greatly expand how much certain forms of data can be collected. This is what citizen science is all about, with regular people providing useful data, but it also can provide great opportunities for interpretation and public events. 

Bioblitzes are probably the best known natural history citizen science events. These are typically periods of biological surveying in an attempt to record all the living species within a designated area. Groups of scientists, naturalists and public volunteers conduct intensive field study over a continuous time period (usually 24 hours) and record what they find. A Bioblitz provides a snap shot in time. While it is certainly not a complete record of what lives in the location, if you take enough snap shots over different times and seasons, you can get a good picture of what is going on there. 

The free iNaturalist app is now more-or-less the standard way for bioblitzes and other citizen science projects to record natural history observations. The beauty of the app is that with a simple uploaded photo, crowd sourcing can then help identify the organism and the observation is recorded so that worldwide any researchers can data mine the info they need. You never know what piece of data you could be providing some researcher somewhere in the world. Here’s a link to various tutorials on how to use the free app: https://www.inaturalist.org/pages/video+tutorials.  

You don't even need to know what you're reporting (though the iNaturalist app has a neat suggested identification feature to provide likely ID possibilities as well). Thanks to crowd sourcing, other, perhaps more knowledgeable, people can provide their ID skills. The suggested ID feature also means that you can basically have a virtual field guide of sorts to use, though it is much better at some taxa than others. The iNaturalist platform can also help users setup different projects to provide ongoing check lists and biotic inventories of parks and other surveyed locations, large and small.  For a great summary of iNaturalist and its use in a bioblitz, setting, please check out this article and video by Steve Baragona of "Voice of America" which features a bioblitz we ran.

The City Nature Challenge is another citizen science event, a friendly global citizen science competition to see which city can have the most people observe the most species of wildlife and plants and record them over a 4-day span of time. Last year 68 cities world-wide competed with many more planning to participate this year from April 26-29. These cities tallied 441,888 observations by 17,329 people. Think of it as a 4 day bioblitz in multiple cities across the globe which is planned to be repeated yearly. 

Bioblitzes and similar citizen science events such as the City Nature Challenge offer a lot of interpretive opportunities. To begin with, different teams and their leaders can serve as natural history walks and short programs. Indeed, by getting well-known experts and naturalists to lead groups, you can attract a nice group of interested people, some of which you may discover have great skill or knowledge in certain areas and thus might be recruited as potential long term volunteers.

The central meeting location which many bioblitzes use can also be places for environmental groups to man booths, activity tables, conduct short presentations, games, and distribute information. Some activities can be geared for younger audiences and the novice or general audience who may just want to see some potential program or show. But the area can also serve to show people unique activities or to have unusual specimens brought back for ID and to show others. Indeed, having people bring back invertebrates for an expert to ID can prove to provide neat discoveries for the public to make. If you stagger teams and activities, people may show up interested in one thing, but be introduced into others they may not have thought they were interested in but are willing to try out. Many people my want to take advantage of an opportunity to be part of expert teams and learn from them in the field. Take for example this short look at a fungi ID team during a bioblitz and the process they used which fascinated many people who had no idea about this wonderful group of organisms. Many expressed interest in learning more about these organisms and were fascinated by the myriad of fungi they were introduced to in their local parks.

The power of people making these “discoveries” themselves cannot be overestimated. Good interpreters understand the importance of the “wow” or “teachable moment” when something comes up and makes an important impression with the individual(s) who found it. Well, when people are out with a leader or on their own and make these discoveries themselves, it can make a real impact and offer a unique interpretive moment. Every outing can have the potential for such impactful “finds”. These discovery moments also help people become aware of what lives in their parks, which hopefully leads to appreciation, wanting to understand more, and wanting to take care of the places where they’ve made these discoveries, what some will note are the social continuum steps towards stewardship. That people make these discoveries themselves and in their neighborhood parks makes the stewardship experience even more powerful.




These type of biotic survey events can also offer great networking and public relations possibilities. Staff from neighboring jurisdictions and environmental groups have often assisted and provided their expertise for events. I myself have also assisted many other jurisdictions and groups in their bioblitzes, City Nature Challenge, or other events. This allows for good networking opportunities, sharing of knowledge, good will, and unofficially "talking shop." Media often take great interest in these of public events, as shown in the Voice of America video linked above and much coverage of ongoing citizen science events. 

So citizen science special events have great potential as interpretive and media events. They are rewarding to participants while providing potential data for researchers.  The next big opportunity, and it is repeated yearly, is the global City Nature Challenge April 26-29, 2019. So mark your calendars and give it a shot, either personally, as part of one of the many planned events, or perhaps to run an event yourself. More information can be found here: http://citynaturechallenge.org/ though there are many cities with their own individual websites as (here’s the Washington, DC one I’m taking part in again for example: https://citynaturechallengedc.org/) Your own interpretive moments may help to provide valuable data to researchers while helping you and the public discover the wonders of the natural world all around their parks.