DC-area meet-up: Sunday July 23 @ Meadowood


Group photo (names in no particular order): Amy, Jen, Matt, Carrie, Ashley, Judy, Michael, Lee, Natalie, Marshall, Holden


Calling all DC-area iNaturalists -- it is time for a mid-summer gathering.

After previously meeting up in suburban Maryland (see @carrieseltzer 's journal post) and Rock Creek Park (see @treegrow 's journal post), let's try Northern Virginia. Near Woodbridge, Meadowood Recreation Area is one of few Bureau of Land Management lands east of the Mississippi, and houses an adoption program for a few wild horses and burros moved from public rangelands in the West. It also has a great mix of habitats and trails with over 450 species recorded so far by the iNat community (over half by @judygva alone!).

http://www.ridetamarack.com/docs/meadowood-trails.pdf

The plan is to meet at the Hidden Pond Trailhead parking area on Belmont Blvd. In the trail map linked above, it is near the bottom in the middle. I will try to arrive around 9am, and will wander to the pond and in the immediate vicinity, including the milkweed Judy references in the comments, for those arriving later. Please add a comment below if you need a ride, or can provide a ride, and we will try to carpool to the extent possible.

If you haven't attended one of these gatherings before, you are welcome! They are loosely organized and fun, very informal, and people can come and go as they please. The group usually spreads out and moves at a naturalist's pace. Impromptu picnics are known to occur. I don't think any of us are axe-murderers.

Here is the iNat project created to compile observations from these DC-area field trips.

Tagging recently active users & participants from previous field trips. Please tag and invite others freely.
@treegrow @carrieseltzer @calopteryx @peggyo @jhammock @briangratwicke @judygva @botanygirl @belyykit @ashley_bradford @elliotgreiner @mellis @achang @jgingold @krosenthal @tminatbe @mmn_noriko @mdnaturalist @treichard @kestrelsparverius @gwh @lorax32 @lynnparsons @tkirk304 @lucareptile @jacobogre @kellykrechmer @annagypsy @kisaacson @etotin @yogagalen @eglaeser @mkoenig @nicocampalans @klthomasart @ecologyelise

Posted on July 16, 2017 02:24 AM by muir muir

Comments

Re: carpooling. I should have 1, probably 2 seats, in my car. Prefer to pick up at Eastern Market metro stop, ~830.

Posted by muir over 6 years ago

Hidden Pond is not visible from the parking lot, but there is a great field with milkweed that is visible from the parking lot, so that's where I'll be. Later on, we can go to other areas of Meadowood, including an incredible Pollinator Garden. The Mountain Mint there is humming with wasps, bees, moths, butterflies and flies - a real treat. I'm looking forward to seeing you there. Judy

Posted by judygva over 6 years ago

Cool! I will try to make it - it would be great to put faces with these names. Judy, do you know the tick situation of this location (as in, should I wear my tick armor :-) ?

Posted by ashley_bradford over 6 years ago

Yes, please wear tick armor. This is not nearly as bad as Occoquan Bay NWR, but there are ticks. I'm looking forward to seeing you!

Posted by judygva over 6 years ago

I will try my best to be there, a bit far.

Tagging others: @jorbogmont @anacostiabiota @jgingold @michaelskvarla @lakekoshare @pgugger @shinnickj

Posted by mellis over 6 years ago

@muir I can't get your "over 450 species recorded" link to work. Does it have a Place Name in iNaturalist? I couldn't find it while searching for Meadowood Recreation Area. Do we need to add this place to iNaturalist?

"No matching places" https://www.inaturalist.org/places/search?utf8=%E2%9C%93&q=Meadowood+Recreation+Area&commit=Search

Oddly it is listed as a place in some observations such as https://www.inaturalist.org/observations/5483476 but I can't seem to open up a page about it.

Posted by mellis over 6 years ago

@mellis it would be great to meet you, hopefully you can make it.

You're right. Link is broken. No place created in iNat yet -- let's try to do it before Sunday. With all the private property and funny boundaries of Meadowood, I hesitate to draw it manually, so hopefully we can find a shapefile online or BLM can provide.

In my salamander observation you linked to, "Meadowood Recreation Area" is listed in the Location field (the text of which is controlled by the observer, and not associated with boundaries -- so for example, I could also create an observation in my backyard and call the location, "Matt's house" without creating a polygon for it). Only the Place fields are standardized across iNat, with associated kml files. Make sense? Balance between customization and standardization.

Posted by muir over 6 years ago
Posted by muir over 6 years ago

Thanks for organizing, @muir! I plan to be there with Natalie. I hope Marshall is coming too? Now that they are bigger we can leave them to their own devices more!

Hope to see many of you there :-)

Posted by carrieseltzer over 6 years ago

That's the plan! Glad you can make it. Yes, all should be aware that Carrie and I's children will be there (ages ~3-5) and others are welcome.

Posted by muir over 6 years ago

@mkoenig Maddie, next time! Hope to meet you soon. Cheers, Matt

Posted by muir over 6 years ago

Hi, Matt,
Meadowood isn't that far from where I live and I was looking forward to going and meeting everyone, but I'm afraid I wouldn't last very long in the heat. If things should change, I know where to find you!

Posted by peggyo over 6 years ago

Thanks Peggy @peggyo . That probably means that you're more sane than the rest of us. Feel free to come earlier, meet up and leave before the temperature starts climbing. If the weather forecast holds, there's a slight chance that rain and thunderstorms would chase us back to the parking lot around 1pm. Matt

Posted by muir over 6 years ago

Oh, look, carpooling! Yes, please, @muir, I can be at Eastern Market at 8:30. With a large frozen water bottle, I think...

Posted by jhammock over 6 years ago

Sorry, meant to reply earlier. Unfortunately, I won't make it this time around. Looking forward to seeing your observations, although they'll probably make me jealous.

Posted by treegrow over 6 years ago

Sorry to miss you Katja! I will see you Sunday morning Jen. I'll email you my cell in case you need it. I had another person reach out to me about a ride, so my car is now full.

Posted by muir over 6 years ago

OK, not totally ideal to manually create a place in iNat with funky boundaries, but I never heard back from the BLM contact email on their website, so I went ahead and created one for now. Hopefully we can replace it with a more official map at a later date.

http://www.inaturalist.org/observations?place_id=121199

So, as of today, 306 species, 451 observations, and 9 observers. Let's boost all those numbers! Will be humid, bring water.

Posted by muir over 6 years ago

Looking forward to tomorrow, despite the heat! If anyone needs a last minute ride, I'm driving from Brookland (NE DC) with room for 2. If you need a ride, please text me at 747-934-3213 (reverse that number--starts with 312).

Posted by carrieseltzer over 6 years ago

@muir I updated the place with a more official shapefile I isolated from http://data-fairfaxcountygis.opendata.arcgis.com/datasets/non-county-parks

It increased the count by 1 species! http://www.inaturalist.org/observations?place_id=121199

Hope to see everyone tomorrow!

My #: 240 429 5042.

Posted by mellis over 6 years ago

Excellent, thank you @mellis. See you soon.

Posted by muir over 6 years ago

It was great meeting everyone today, and thanks for getting me out there, what a special place! I stuck around and went back to the trails after the rain passed. I still have many observations to upload, check these out:
http://www.inaturalist.org/observations/7183825
http://www.inaturalist.org/observations/7183879
http://www.inaturalist.org/observations/7182595

Great netting @muir. Good to see some great camera work out there. I need to invest in macro lenses.

Posted by mellis over 6 years ago

@mellis - It was great to meet you too. Hope to see you on another outing.

Posted by judygva over 6 years ago

It was really great to meet everyone! Can we get an iNat username list of who was there, other than the people posting here? Since I'm a newbie... Thanks to Matt for organizing, and I'm glad the rain held off long enough to get in a few hours. I have a lot of photo processing ahead of me now.

Posted by ashley_bradford over 6 years ago

Here is the list of users who have submitted Meadowood observations from yesterday:

http://www.inaturalist.org/observations?on=2017-07-23&place_id=121199&view=observers

@mellis
@muir
@achang
@ashley_bradford
@jhammock
@lagin6489

Have not yet submitted observations:
@carrieseltzer
@judygva

Am I missing anyone?

Posted by mellis over 6 years ago

I think that's everybody. Well done everyone! I'll wait for Carrie and Judy to upload for a final tally, but >350 observations >200 species is really cool. Great to meet everyone -- thanks to Judy for being our local guide to Meadowood, thanks to Michael for finding the file of the place boundaries. Group picture posted on the top of the journal post....

Posted by muir over 6 years ago

Great photo - thanks! I'm going to be posting observations from this outing for a while - I took 760 photos, whittled down so far to 722, uploaded 51 observations (of course it isn't one photo per observation - thankfully!), and I haven't even made it out past the first part of the trail yet...

Posted by ashley_bradford over 6 years ago

It was really great to meet everyone, I had a lot of fun. Thanks again Matt for organizing! And everyone for helping me with IDs :)

Posted by achang over 6 years ago

I should have my observations posted within the next day. I had a great time. Matt, thanks for organizing!

Posted by judygva over 6 years ago

Oof! Sorry I'm the slow one. I think I have about 60 observations and I'll try to get them up tonight. I loved meeting all of you and I look forward to the next one! I hear @mellis has suggestions in Prince George's county for our next one... tell us when and where!

I love getting to meet iNaturalists (aka "supernaturalists") in person and hear what you get excited about :-)

Also, everyone should save the date for the Anacostia Watershed Virtual BioBlitz in September 21-24 (@jorbogmont is organizing). No BioBlitz project to link to yet but there is an ongoing one: https://www.inaturalist.org/projects/biodiversity-of-the-anacostia-river

Posted by carrieseltzer over 6 years ago

Thanks for the link to the project, @carrieseltzer!

Posted by ashley_bradford over 6 years ago

Also, I thought I heard discussion about the computer vision on the website. If you want to try it and you don't have an iPhone, here's the link: http://www.inaturalist.org/computer_vision_demo

It didn't always pull in metadata from my pics, but I did save the link on my home screen so I could use it on my phone too in the field. Android users may want to try that as a temporary measure!

Posted by carrieseltzer over 6 years ago

Hi, Carrie: Thanks so much for the link to the computer vision. I just tried it and it's amazing!
Peggy

Posted by peggyo over 6 years ago

I have been discussing with coworkers, the Department of Parks and Recreation, Prince George's County would love to host the next iNaturalist outing to Suitland Bog. It''s inside the Beltway, near Joint Base Andrew's.

I am currently trying to catch a sneaky coyote and a flock of wild turkeys there on trail cam to upload to iNaturalist.

Suitland Bog Natural Area
5904 Suitland Rd, Suitland, MD 20746
(301) 627-7755
https://goo.gl/maps/U2hjBkVmDY62

I can pick up folks from the nearby Suitland metro stop.

Posted by mellis over 6 years ago

That sounds intriguing! Good luck with the critter cam. :-)

Posted by ashley_bradford over 6 years ago

That's great, @mellis! Just tell us when and write a new journal post with all of the details and tag a bunch of people.

Posted by carrieseltzer over 6 years ago

I just officially created the place on iNaturalist. This site may hold more endangered species(plants) than perhaps any other known site inside the Beltway, and home to one of Maryland's most famous bogs. The plants are extremely well studied, but the other species are not so well documented.

Current Observations: http://www.inaturalist.org/observations?place_id=121243

Place page: http://www.inaturalist.org/places/suitland-bog-natural-area

It is a must see site for DC-based ecologists.

Posted by mellis over 6 years ago

Sounds good. And it could use more iNat observations. Woo hoo PG!

Posted by muir over 6 years ago

@mellis when do you want to meet up at Suitland Bog?

Posted by carrieseltzer over 6 years ago

Hi all, I'm new to iNaturalist (but not to field observations), and in Northern Virginia. I'd love to tag along on an upcoming get-together if possible! @muir, @carrieseltzer

Posted by jlechtm over 6 years ago

Great, @jlechtm! Mark your calendar for September 21-24 if you want to come over to DC/MD for the Anacostia Watershed Virtual BioBlitz: http://www.inaturalist.org/projects/anacostia-river-virtual-bioblitz

@mellis did you want to declare a date for the next meet up?

Posted by carrieseltzer over 6 years ago

@carrieseltzer I would love to, but will be out of town. I'll keep an eye out for the next meet up date.

Posted by jlechtm over 6 years ago

I have been swamped at work, how does Sunday, September 10th sound for Suitland Bog? @jlechtm @ashley_bradford @judygva @mkoenig @carrieseltzer @muir @alona2

Posted by mellis over 6 years ago

I think I will be around then...

Posted by ashley_bradford over 6 years ago

Same here - I think I can. tagging @treegrow @peggyo

Posted by muir over 6 years ago

Thanks, I should be able to make it.

Posted by treegrow over 6 years ago

I can't make the 10th (my husband is running a board game convention that weekend—WashingCon) but I look forward to hearing how it goes!

Posted by carrieseltzer over 6 years ago

... aaand my dad just told me he's coming to visit that weekend, so it looks like I'm out.

Posted by ashley_bradford over 6 years ago

I would be interested in going. I don't think calopteryx can make it, but I'll let him know. Would appreciate any additional info. Thanks!

Posted by peggyo over 6 years ago

Would it just be three of us? Should we reschedule? The rest of my September schedule is full.

Posted by mellis over 6 years ago

My husband would be coming with me, but it's not a problem if you need to reschedule.

Posted by peggyo over 6 years ago

I just found out that I have to take my son and his wife to the airport on Sunday.

Posted by peggyo over 6 years ago

Still planning on it. Would bring wife and son.

Posted by muir over 6 years ago

I'm planning to come and may bring a friend.

Posted by judygva over 6 years ago

Possibly. Can I bring Dave?

Posted by abookb over 6 years ago

@mellis I recommend making a new post and tagging all the locals who have made observations in the last month (or at least the list tagged above). Only people who have commented on or been tagged into this thread recently will know about Suitland Bog on the 10th.

Also, @abookb, are you related to @eliana? I met @eliana at Earlham a couple of years ago and introduced her to iNat. I recall she's from MD, and Bookbinder isn't a very common name... :-)

Posted by carrieseltzer over 6 years ago

What time do we want to meet? How about 10am?

Posted by mellis over 6 years ago

@abookb, of course bring Dave! @carrieseltzer, @abookb is my co-worker, and @eliana is her daughter, what a small world!

Posted by mellis over 6 years ago

For thoes that may have missed it, here is the post regarding tomorrow's meetup, hope to see many there!

http://www.inaturalist.org/journal/mellis/11488-dc-area-meet-up-sunday-september-10-suitland-bog-md

Posted by mellis over 6 years ago
Posted by muir over 6 years ago

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