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Blog Directory  >  Green Blogs  >  Conservation Blogs  >  Roger Gosden musing | Love to wonder, the seed of science (Emerson) conservation Blog  > 

The Mind Of A Dog
2023-12-30 22:44
True companions If you loved an animal and have felt it loving you back (more than just from trained obedience) you probably wondered how it perceives you and itself.  I long to know… Read More
All That Breathes
2023-12-23 14:13
Black Kite. Rahul Viswanath (Unsplash) I’m not a movie buff, but occasionally something I see stirs me to make a recommendation. When I woke about 30,000 feet above the Congo, I scr… Read More
A Hardier Zone
2023-11-26 01:07
USDA Plant Hardiness Zone Map 2023The USDA updated the Plant Hardiness Zone this week, changing our zone to 8A. This is an example of how climate change is affecting gardens and farms throug… Read More
The State Of Drought
2023-11-18 20:34
Drought Monitor for Virginia “Drought—what drought?” That was a typical response to my question before this week’s news of wildfires in Virginia and the Governor d… Read More
Poppy Day
2023-11-11 20:13
This week you can tell a Brit from the red poppy worn on his or her lapel. Today, I was a lone poppyist in the congregation for a Veterans Day service in the graveyard of Grace Episcopal Chu… Read More
Common Combustion
2023-10-25 18:40
Poem read by the author: https://youtu.be/OFiM0xGgF5o We’re alive within the flames’ bright glow,Dancing, enhancing, flashing in our strife.We’re children of the woo… Read More
Wings In The Night
2023-09-22 00:17
My electronic calendar reminds me it is the autumnal equinox and the first day of another season. Wildlife has its own calendars and clocks. The hummingbirds who pay hourly visits to our… Read More
Welcome Some Non-natives
2023-09-06 23:03
Mix of non-native garden plants I make a distinction between two groups of non-native species that settle down and reproduce outside their homeland. The bad guys include Asian hornets… Read More
Climate Change Impacts York River
2023-07-10 17:06
Excavator transferring rock from a ship on York River I reported last year about shoring up Jamestown Island to avoid incursions from the James River. Simple measurements with a conductiv… Read More
Abandoned In Appalachia
2023-07-04 19:44
Pocahontas County, WV If you go on a road trip through the Appalachian mountains you will see lots of old abandoned houses. I often wonder who lived there and why they left. Please click… Read More
Clover Isn’t A Weed
2023-04-19 22:11
White clover on my lawnYou know spring has arrived when the aisles of big-box stores are filled with sacks of grass seed, lawn fertilizers, and garden poisons. The suburban obsession with gr… Read More
What Is Pollution?
2023-03-26 01:46
The James River I prevented our dogs from wading at Jamestown Beach today. The rising tide carried a floating mat of yellow scum. I suspected pollution, which made me wonder about the mea… Read More
First Swallow Of Spring
2023-03-21 02:04
Tree Swallow. Photo: Patrice Bouchard, UnsplashOn the last day of winter, I saw my first Tree Swallow of the year. It flew beside the James River in the direction of Jamestown Island. Soc… Read More
Spring Offensive
2023-02-24 19:29
Bohemian lake: UnsplashOn this somber first anniversary of the war in Ukraine and anticipating a spring offensive, I expected to read historical reflections in the media about the invasion o… Read More
Cocky Coyotes
2023-02-17 17:45
Photo: Unsplash (photographer unknown) Two fully-grown coyotes crossed the road in front of us at 10 AM today before I turned into Jamestown Beach. A patrolman told me he had seen others… Read More
Tango In The Snow
2023-02-14 23:51
Photo: Inge Curtis On Valentine’s Day, I queried an AI bot about the idealistic love that Ancient Greeks called agape and compare it with the romantic notion of love. This is how it… Read More
Flight Of Spoonbills
2023-01-31 23:31
Unsplash: Julia Craice The sun is setting in the west, The Spoonbills fly with no rest, Their wings are strong and they will go, Until they reach their winter home. (Poetic st… Read More
Hope Emerges
2023-01-28 00:09
In icy ground . . . Daffodils sprout forth, bright buds In yellow hues, their faces Smiling in the cold earth, Promising springtime to us all. (Style of a Japanese tanka in 31… Read More
Downy Woodpeckers
2022-12-20 22:14
Photo: Inge Curtis “… suddenly there came a tapping, As of someone gently rapping, rapping at my chamber door. “’Tis some visitor,” I muttered, &ldquo&helli…Read More
Pollinators And Our Plates
2022-12-16 22:04
Guess the replies if you ask if wasps and flies have any virtues. Many people wish them extinct, but they are important pollinators along with wild bees, honeybees, and lepidoptera. T… Read More
2022-11-22 22:31
Photo: Inge CurtisThese cute warblers are resident in this region year-round but seen more often in fall and winter when more northerly breeders join their brethren in this warmer clime. As… Read More
Humans Boom While Birds Crash
2022-11-18 22:58
European Starling murmuration (James Wainscoat: Unsplash)The United Nations estimates that our population reached 8 billion this week. In 1900, it was 1.6 billion but by the turn of the 21st… Read More
Bring Your Cat Indoors
2022-11-15 23:56
Photo: Ryk Naves (Unsplash)We heard a different owl calling in the woods behind our home today at twilight, not the familiar sound of Barred Owls. It hooted softly, as a tiger might purr to… Read More
Piketty About Inequality
2022-11-11 20:45
Superyacht resembling one owned by a Russian oligarchAs world leaders prepared for COP27 in Egypt, the acclaimed French economist, Thomas Piketty, warned in La Monde, “It is impossible… Read More
The Long Stillwater
2022-11-04 22:07
Robert Morris operating at Bellevue Hospital, NY, c. 1895The Long Stillwater is a chapter Robert Morris, M.D. wrote to celebrate a love of nature from a trove of memories. Stillwater is hard… Read More
2022-11-01 22:34
Deer munch on our flower borders, strip foliage to head height, and rub bark off trees with their antlers in the rutting season. We grumble yet feel sad coming across a beautiful animal that… Read More
Last Flight Of The Marlins
2022-10-28 22:25
Eskimo Curlew. From Audubon’s The Birds of AmericaMemories of the Canadian wilderness forty years earlier were still sharp in Dr. Robert Morris’s mind as an old man in the 1930s… Read More
Tracking Whimbrel
2022-10-15 01:23
Photo: Inge CurtisAn elegant shorebird with a lovely piping call of the wild. After they leave their breeding grounds in the tundra,  Whimbrels stop to feed on fiddler crabs in the mudf… Read More
Jamestown Is Drowning
2022-10-09 01:19
Erosion control on Jamestown Island, VAHistoric Jamestown celebrated Archeology Day today with various events and demonstrations to make history seem more authentic. Artifacts discovered on… Read More
The Boy Who Could Bee
2022-09-30 18:25
Published September 2022Why should anyone care about my debut novel for middle-grade schoolchildren? THE BOY WHO COULD BEE was inspired by poring over my beehives and written under a pen nam… Read More
A Tornado Not Heading To Oz
2022-09-27 23:35
A victim of nature’s wrathSuddenly Uncle Henry stood up. “There’s a cyclone coming …” he said. Thus, began Dorothy’s voyage over the Kansas prairie with… Read More
Queen Elizabeth And The Bees
2022-09-18 18:15
Queen bee ‘crowned’ with a dot (Boba Jaglicic, Unsplash)While observing expressions of public affection and admiration for Queen Elizabeth II from afar, I began to muse about… Read More
End Of Second Elizabethan Age
2022-09-08 19:24
We are no longer Elizabethans. This view is one of my first memories, from sitting on my father’s shoulders as the golden state coach paraded along the Mall after the Coronation. A sym… Read More
World Honeybee Day At A Meadery
2022-08-20 19:59
Silver Hand Meadery, Williamsburg, VAPlans for the morning were interrupted when I heard the Silver Hand Meadery in Williamsburg was filling glasses for all-comers this morning. And why? It… Read More
Night Flight
2022-08-12 19:16
Barth Bailey (Unsplash)Do you fly at night sometimes? I flew in my dreams last night with arms outstretched for gliding over rooftops. I didn’t see any birds although on landing back i… Read More
Scarlet Tanager
2022-08-08 01:09
Photo: Inge CurtisSpotting a Scarlet Tanager in the upper story of an Eastern Forest transports me to the tropics. And it is a tropical forest dweller in our winter months. Our Northern C… Read More
Appreciation Of James Lovelock (1919-2022)
2022-07-28 21:53
Ozone hole shrinking in the southern hemisphere (NASA, 2021)Did you ever regret you hadn’t met someone after hearing it was too late? I did today. James Lovelock was one of my scientif… Read More
Epitaph To A Dog
2022-07-06 15:15
Lilah (Golden Retriever, 2010-2022)We released Lilah today, sending her along the path ahead of us. “You can run to the end and wait for us there!” The path feels empty without o… Read More
2022-04-27 01:59
Photo: Inge Curtis Almost all the Yellow-rumps have left for breeding grounds in the north. They are a pleasure to welcome back in the garden in early fall, quite unmistakable with their… Read More
Overshooting The Human Project
2022-04-23 02:46
NASA: public domain image The first astronauts described Earth with mystical awe as a vulnerable pearl in the barren wastes of space. It had looked the same since before the rise of mamma… Read More
White-throated Sparrow
2022-03-27 15:28
Photo: Inge CurtisThese plump sparrows arrive in late fall and are still here, waiting for an impulse to fly to their breeding range in northern states and Canada. White-throated sparrows pe… Read More
2022-02-12 22:05
Photo: Inge CurtisHereby begins a short series of our winter visitors. The Tundra Swan is smaller than the other two swans found in Virginia. The Mute Swan was introduced and breeds here… Read More
A Magnificent Hummingbird
2022-02-01 20:11
Photo: Inge CurtisJust as the most famous sultan of the Ottoman empire,  Suleiman the Magnificent, was known by different names according to region, the formerly named Magnificent Hummi… Read More
Rewilding South Georgia
2022-01-28 23:19
Former whaler at Grytviken. Richard Meyer: UnsplashThere’s something about being island-born that calls you back, even if delivered there by accident (instead of London). Gazing fro… Read More
Northern Jacana
2022-01-25 21:31
Photo: Inge CurtisThe Northern Jacana is a pheasant-sized waterbird with long toes for walking on lily-pads. Found in Mexico and occasionally in Texas, there are other species in the tropics… Read More
Great Curassow
2022-01-16 21:51
Photo: Inge CurtisThis is a species I may never see in the wild but grateful for this wonderful image of two female Great Curassows in the jungle of Costa Rica. It introduced me to a whole n… Read More
Aquamation-Graveyard Talk
2022-01-09 01:08
Photo: Mike Birdy (Pexels)Watching sparks fly in the night around a scout camp fire, we often burst into song. One of our favorites was the graveyard song, called the hearse song in other ve… Read More
Green Ibis
2022-01-06 19:40
Photo: Inge Curtis Virginia has recorded three species of ibises (surely not ‘ibi’), but never a Green Ibis as far as I know. Inge photographed this one in Costa Rica, close t… Read More
2021-12-29 15:23
Photo: Inge Curtis A head like a heron, body like a wild turkey, flies thermals like a vulture, swims like a diver, but genetic analysis shows Anhingas match closer to families of cormora… Read More
Boat-billed Heron
2021-12-21 21:02
Inge Curtis Goofy looks make the Boat-billed Heron a character to remember. A lucky sighting for Inge in Costa Rica as this is a shy, nocturnal bird and a permanent resident of tropica… Read More
Green Heron
2021-12-14 20:58
Inge Curtis December is our heron month. More common than the Little Blue shown last week, the Green Heron is another summer resident that winters in Central America and the Caribbean whe… Read More
Peppa Pig Has Missed A Vocation
2021-12-10 21:07
Large White (Yorkshire) pig (Pixabay) Starved of spicy stories or constipated by covid, the British media wrote about Prime Minister Boris Johnson’s bad hair day. In a speech to bus… Read More
Little Blue Heron
2021-12-07 20:55
Inge Curtis At one time, the Little Blue Heron was a common wading bird in the Coastal Plain and Eastern Shore, but it has been in steep decline since the 1950s (from habitat loss?). Loca… Read More
King Vulture
2021-11-30 22:59
This image arrived last week from my friend in the jungles of Costa Rica. King Vultures are so spectacular they look photoshopped (I promise this picture isn’t). Kings weigh up to… Read More
Ring-necked Duck
2021-11-23 21:34
Photo: Inge Curtis Ducks are back to spend the winter on the coast and inland waters around here. Teal, Shoveler, Canvasback, Scaup, Eider, Bufflehead, etc., and Ring-necked Ducks like th… Read More
Ride The King Tide
2021-11-20 22:17
Powhatan Crook, James City County, VirginiaI never saw water so high in Powhatan Creek. Living in Norfolk, Virginia, I occasionally encountered flooding in my neighborhood after exceptionall… Read More
Indigo Bunting
2021-11-17 02:16
Photo: Inge Curtis The canary yellow of goldfinches in summer may be more eye-catching, but the male Indigo Bunting is an attention grabber, far more than the female who might pass as a b… Read More
Male Alligators & Crocodiles Like It Hot
2021-11-13 02:37
Nile crocodile: Pixabay I might live to see gators from North Carolina colonize our local swamps and creeks. Warmer winters from climate change will entice them and torrid summers push th… Read More
Bald Eagle
2021-11-09 23:58
Inge Curtis I often look up to check for a flash of white on the head or tail of a large bird soaring overhead or ascending a thermal. Not so many years ago, it was a red-letter day to se… Read More
2021-11-06 16:19
Wildfire: Pixabay I had first sight of Jane Goodall decades ago at Edinburgh University where an excited audience gathered for her seminar. Looking like a slim owl in brown plumage, she w… Read More
2021-11-03 00:22
Inge Curtis I love the thrush family. Friends of gardeners, they are wonderful songsters too. Many family members have bold spots on their breasts to help identification, along with a ruf… Read More
Androgenic Anxiety And COVID-19
2021-10-29 22:18
Normal (left) and abnormal forms of sperm Early this morning, January 1, 2021, three minutes after midnight, the last human being to be born on earth was killed … Thus begins Ch… Read More
2021-10-27 00:13
Photo: Inge Curtis These tiny birds look like cute Christmas tree decorations. Inge photographed this male and female who probably arrived recently in Virginia as winter residents or tran… Read More
Bonchurch Through Time
2021-10-23 20:15
G.H. Thompson, 1920 My great grandma bought this watercolor by a minor artist of an Isle of Wight scene a century ago. It has hung in our family homes ever since. A housemaid carrying… Read More
2021-10-20 20:58
As I resume posts after an absence, I chose Inge’s picture of a Cedar Waxwing. Not an uncommon bird in Virginia and seen here any month of the year, but a sighting always draws a long… Read More
Tawny Frogmouth
2021-10-05 20:22
I can’t resist posting this image, although Frogmouths are native to Australia. Inge took this picture of a captive bird exhibited at a Williamsburg Bird Club meeting. If you th… Read More
Black-and-White Warbler
2021-09-28 20:18
A perky little warbler of mixed woodlands that migrates through Tidewater Virginia. A few remain here to breed. It creeps along branches and up and down tree trunks looking for insects i… Read More
2021-09-21 20:13
You may have to travel a long way to see this species. Inge saw it in south Texas, at the northern limit of its range. A tiny owl with a longish tail, it is no bigger than an Eastern… Read More
2021-09-17 20:30
Photo: Aaron Greenwood (Unsplash)Lord Byron’s first meeting with Lady Wilmot Horton at a fashionable party inspired him to compose the poem: She walks in beauty, like the night O… Read More
Peregrine Falcon
2021-09-14 19:40
These iconic falcons have slowly re-established in Virginia after their decimation decades ago from pesticides. This pair of young adults considered nesting under the Chickahominy river… Read More
Yarns About Mountain Lions
2021-09-10 21:50
Photo: Zach Key (Unsplash) Ask local folk if mountain lions (aka cougars/ pumas/ panthers) still prowl the Allegheny Mountains of West Virginia and you’ll likely get a nod or they m… Read More
Wood Stork
2021-09-07 20:28
Photo: Inge CurtisCompared to the handsome storks of Europe in Hans Christian Andersen’s story and those that carried us in a natal cradle, American Wood Storks look like old countryme… Read More
Urushiol Pain And Products
2021-09-03 21:04
After more than a century, lacquer has cured on this Chinese ancestor chairA week after nightly creaming my face and arms with hydrocortisone I’m still itching. Each exposure makes the… Read More
Eastern Bluebird
2021-08-31 22:11
Photo: Inge CurtisOne of our most popular residents, there is even a Virginia conservation society dedicated to Bluebirds. Someone who grew up locally told that they were uncommon when she w… Read More
2021-08-27 21:39
Drone view of allotment in the Wirral, UK (Phil Kiel: Unsplash)I suspect former neighbors laughed from behind half-drawn curtains: “There’s a weird gardener next door who toils i… Read More
Great-crested Flycatcher
2021-08-24 22:49
Photo: Inge Curtis Flycatchers are allies of those who loath mosquitoes and blackflies without spraying their yards. This handsome bird is found east of a north-south line splitting the N… Read More
Living Or Livid With Nature?
2021-08-20 22:58
Black bear chews the shed (again)We weren’t always doggedly efficient extirpators—of insects for eating crops and stinging, of moles for spoiling perfect lawns, of predators for… Read More
2021-08-10 17:26
Hummingbirds don’t visit feeders to quench a thirst. They have a taste for sweetness, like us, although different receptors on their tongues (T1R1 + T1R3). Now, we learn that so… Read More
Time Flows Down Powhatan Creek
2021-08-06 22:19
Venerable Bald Cypress growing in Powhatan Creek Time flows down Powhatan Creek As I lowered my kayak into the creek, I knew the water wasn’t the same as before, nor am I the sam… Read More
Hummingbirds
2021-07-13 18:29
Photos: Inge Curtis Garden residents in eastern states from April to September they fascinate us, beating wings to a blur as they hover, even trusting us at arm’s reach before flyin… Read More
2021-07-09 22:05
Camping at the ruin in Skomer, 1968 To return to a beloved place after an absence of 20, 40 and especially 50 years is to risk battle between nostalgia and disappointment. Never can that… Read More
Black Vulture
2021-06-30 00:40
Photo: Inge Curtis This fine fellow sat on a wooden post for a portrait. Never long out of sight in the skies around here, Blacks are the more sociable of the two species of vulture. With… Read More
2021-06-27 19:39
Isle of Rum, Inner Hebrides You don’t have to be born on one to love islands, though I have a double reason, born on an island off another island. A BBC article about a young cou… Read More
American Goldfinch
2021-06-23 02:47
Photo: Inge Curtis Not hard to imagine a common ancestor of American and European goldfinches managed to make the hazardous passage across the Atlantic to found a colony on the other side… Read More
Tribute To Sunderlal Bahuguna
2021-06-20 15:17
Photo: Annapurna range (Giacomo Berardi, Unsplash) I confess to be an inveterate obituary hawk. The ‘vet’ bit in inveterate is telling as my compulsion comes with the territor… Read More
American Robin
2021-06-15 22:01
Photo: Inge Curtis Early colonists in North America who felt homesick called some of the birds they saw by the names of those they grew up with 3,000 miles away—blackbirds, goldfinc… Read More
2021-06-11 22:43
Colorimetric phosphate test My swimming pool has a thin green carpet. The fish and frog pond is choked with weed and slime. Even sugar water in the hummingbird feeder turned cloudy in 24… Read More
Common Tern
2021-06-08 22:31
Photo: Inge Curtis Bird-lovers and conservationists waited anxiously if a colony of some 25,000 seabirds would adopt an alternative base for breeding in May 2020. The south island where t… Read More
2021-06-04 22:47
A ‘treed’ Black BearDeer came in the night to crunch the corn, a wild turkey arrived at breakfast to nibble wheat berries, and a raucous family of ravens cleared the rest. I rare… Read More
2021-06-01 22:29
Photo: Inge Curtis Last week Great Blues and now great whites, colonial nesters in the same locality. The Great Egret is a summer resident that catches the eye in flight, its extraordinar… Read More
Cicada With A 17-year Itch
2021-05-28 22:35
‘Have your cicada’s broken ground yet?’ I need to tell people that our last big bug year was 2013. Brood X is now emerging in north-eastern and mid-western states but t… Read More
2021-05-25 22:16
Photo: Inge Curtis Normally solitary, I see Great Blues poised on the banks of saltmarsh, staring into the creek at a respectful distance from the next neighbor. Occasionally one lands by… Read More
2021-05-21 22:46
How often does science news make you feel guilty of environmental harm?  The list of ways we contribute to greenhouse gases that are warming the planet is endless. Carbon-dioxide is… Read More
2021-05-18 21:54
Photo: Inge Curtis Downies are the smallest and cutest of eight species of ‘peckers in south-east Virginia. Inge captured this picture of a male downy at a food bank. It hammered su… Read More
Alpha In A Wolf Pack Is A Fallacy
2021-05-14 21:12
Photo: Dušan veverkolog (Unsplash, CC) At dawn in Yellowstone’s Lamar Valley I had my first and only glimpse of a pack of wild grey wolves, but they always loomed large in im… Read More
2021-05-11 09:58
Photo: Northern Parula on a willow tree This little wood warbler wearing his dark necklace recently arrived from Central America to breed near wetland. Formerly classified in the genus Pa… Read More
The Kindness Of Rehabbers
2021-05-07 09:15
In a week bringing news about grey wolves shot and poisoned in Idaho and a naturalist attacked and left for dead by badger baiters in England, I have also seen love and devotion for helpless… Read More

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