The State of Drought

Posted on November 18, 2023 by Roger Gosden
Drought Monitor for Virginia
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 declared a state of emergency. I’m sure farmers, beekeepers, gardeners, foresters, and firefighters have worried for weeks, if not longer, about the lack of rain. The difference in perception depends on how close we live to the soil. I noticed a deficiency before my garden well ran dry and a blanket of fall leaves crisp as cornflakes and far more flammable.

I understand puzzled reactions while lawns remain green, and we haven’t had a hose-pipe ban yet. The drought is less severe here than in Shenandoah and north-west of the state. Besides, plants are getting some relief on dewy mornings and there’s less evaporation than in July and August.

A drought can be overlooked until it becomes severe from creeping forward slowly and having impacts that vary with soil type, plant species, and temperature. For the same reason, climate deniers take cover when a sizzling summer is followed by a wet autumn and/or a chilly winter.

Rising sea levels and melting glaciers are undeniable evidence of global climate change whereas the weather is debated more, sometimes hotly. What is normal? Are memories of idyllic summers spent on the beach and winters sledding in our youth our baseline? Most people prefer a plain plus or minus answer whereas it comes down to probabilities (plenty of scope for politically motivated interpretation).

The US Drought Monitor keeps an archive of dry and wet periods since records began in 1895 (and from 400 AD based on dendrochronology). The dark red spikes on the graph for Virginia represent intense drought, and the reciprocal navy blue spikes show extreme wetness. The range between extremes is huge, and much greater than the famously damp UK climate (though recent storms begin to undermine its reputation for moderate weather).

Anthropogenic impacts on climate are reckoned to be notable after 1950. The graph doesn’t reveal much difference to my eyes. An algorithm using the raw data is needed to check if the pattern is random or has a subtle periodicity.  

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Poppy Day

Posted on November 11, 2023 by Roger Gosden
Poppy for Remembrance Day

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 Church, Yorktown. There are 107 graves from seven American conflicts, including two British burials. The last battle of the first war ended nearby in 1781.
We grew up wearing poppies on Remembrance Day (the British name) and looked undressed without one. We stood at town memorials with veterans of World War 1 and World War II. All have since passed away and fewer descendants mark November 11, although never-ending wars somewhere in the world since 1945 is surely another reason.
The poppy is an apt symbol, but the real flower is too delicate and short-lived to wear. But their seeds are resilient, shooting up to flower abundantly in disturbed soil. A fluttering mass of scarlet is a head-turner. The poem Flanders Fields launched the poppy as a symbol of public mourning.
In Flanders Fields the poppies blow
Between the crosses, row on row …
John McCrae, a Canadian doctor, composed it in the First World War. Poignant for me because my great uncle Leonard Saunders emigrated to Canada, dying at Passchendaele in 1917. A hundred years after McCrae was a pathologist at the Royal Vic, I joined the faculty. I often visited McGill’s Osler Library during my time in Montreal where you can see on exhibition the original poem he sent to a friend from the Front.

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Common Combustion

Posted on October 25, 2023 by Roger Gosden
Logs on the fire

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 wood, our names unknown,
And like you, we all journey to the afterlife.

Some stand short and hot, while others mellow,
The sole distinctions in our fiery tribe
Of red, white, blue, and yellow, we bellow,
No division, just words to ascribe.

Living like you, we burn the whole day through,
Making oxygen and fuel connected.
Till carbon in the plasma flows and renews,
And that’s how we are, our fate resurrected.

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Wings in the Night

Posted on September 21, 2023 by Roger Gosden
Bird Cast

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 feeders didn’t turn up today. I saw only one Osprey flying over Powhatan Creek last week and it has probably left to join others in balmy Caribbean waters.  Purple Grackles and Red-Winged Blackbirds are flocking, and other feathers are flying, though mostly unseen.

Bird migration has held me in thrall since senior student days long ago. I gave a nervous presentation to my department about a new Science paper that conflicted with the theories of one of our professors sitting in the front row. We know why migration happens, and expect it will be impacted by climate change, but how birds navigate thousands of miles, sometimes traveling as lone juveniles, is still poorly understood.

If a bird’s brain seems too small, how can an insect’s brain manage the task? We still have Monarchs filling up with nectar from Mexican sunflowers and Lantana. This last generation of the year will head to their wintering grounds in Mexico. To coin an overused word because I can’t think of a bigger one—the feat is AWESOME.

If you are curious about local bird migration, I suggest googling Bird Cast. This tool was created by the Cornell Lab of Ornithology and academic partners using radar technology to detect flocks of migrating birds across the continent.

When I visited the website on September 11, it recorded 546,000 birds crossing my county (James City) the night before. The peak number was 51,000 at 11.10 PM. They traveled at an average speed of 16 mph and at 2,600 ft. Migration mostly occurs between dusk and dawn to avoid predators and rest and feed in the daytime. Only 78,100 birds traveled overhead last night, but migration will continue for many more weeks. Bird Cast doesn’t identify species (pending refinements from AI and machine-learning), but, based on other observations, the flocks probably included warblers, flycatchers, tanagers, orioles, and thrushes.

At this time of plenty, farming communities traditionally celebrated bringing in the harvest. Vivaldi represented it with zest from violins in his suite, The Four Seasons. Birds are busy, too, fattening up before a journey that depletes energy reserves and knowing that staying behind is courting starvation in winter. The violins play a mournful largo for that season when the countryside sleeps and our birds sing to foreign ears.

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Welcome some non-natives

Posted on September 6, 2023 by Roger Gosden
mix of non-native plants
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, Burmese pythons, Japanese knotweed, chestnut blight, spotted lanternfly, cane toads, kudzu, and giant hogweed … The list that harms our interests and natural ecosystems seems endless. Human traffic is responsible either through deliberate or accidental transfer of aliens. We don’t notice threats until too late to reverse. Most conquerors of natural habitats arrived after 1900, thriving in new worlds where natural controls of foreign population growth are weak and evolve too slowly. They came hidden in commercial cargo, on the soles of hiking boots, and chosen by well-meaning horticulturists, plant collectors, and others who never imagined a downside.

For example, I see miles of roadsides and nature trails bordered by dense Japanese stiltgrass that swamps native plants. Native grazers, ignore the pernicious weed. This is the season when left unmown, it sheds billions of seeds for germinating next year or lying dormant in the soil for years. That is only one of countless challenges to healthy ecosystems and farms. A recent U.N. report estimates a global annual cost of $423 bn.

We are urged to cultivate native plants. It’s sound advice though few garden centers sell them; some species no longer live where they used to thrive because of the changing climate. It’s easy to feel beaten by aliens spreading across land, river, and sea. As an elder now, I sadly remember things were different when I was a kid. But I have made peace with some non-native plants, pretty good guys that bring more benefit than harm to a garden. Without them many native species would not hold on.

After experiments, I found non-native plants to nurture that are attractive to us and to local wildlife welcome here. Each year gets better. Visitors are delighted with clouds of butterflies and the buzzing of contented bees navigating flowers. In late summer a flock of goldfinches rock on seedheads, and if we attract Japanese beetles, insectivorous birds soon follow!

The composite image shows my top five non-native plants: Mexican sunflowers, Blue Fortune sage, White clover, Lantana, and Mountain mint (native to VA but formerly absent in this district). They spread without my help and don’t aggressively displace our beloved natives. But what would they call us if they could? Worse than the worst, the most invasive species in Earth’s history, spreading on every continent to disrupt the evolved balance of nature.

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