Nature Note: A Naturalist's Travels Through Nature

As my first weekend in Horsham continues, I took a trip to two nearby reservoirs to try my luck at finding some migrating waterfowl and shorebirds. It has been an interesting transition with having gotten a bigger room than I had last spring*, nearly getting Poison Ivy ( Toxicodendron radicans ) the first day here, dealing with itchy bug bite ridden legs from having refused bug spray at a barbeque on Labor Day, and anticipating the prospecting of using washing machines that I'm fairly certain use a type of detergent that I'm allergic to. Other than that, it's been smooth sailing. As I left this morning, I drove along the familiar routes that I'd taken in the spring to a local spot called Bradford Dam Recreation Area. Located about 5 minutes up the road from where I'm currently living, it's where I saw my first Bobolinks ( Dolichonyx oryzivorus ) and Broad-winged Hawk ( Buteo platypterus ) of the year. As I trod near to the pond, I looked at the murky pond weed...

Just what is "geocaching"? It's one of those new outdoor hobbies that has sprung up in the 21st century alongside flying remote controlled drones or bow hunting Asian carp ( Hypophthalmichthys molitrix ) from a speeding motorboat. Well perhaps it isn't as crazy as the last one, but it does involve searching for Tupperware containers in the woods containing a logbook and small tradeable objects that can only be located by using a GPS unit. That's the basic gist of it anyway. I first learned how to geocache while working as an intern at the Stony Brook Millstone Watershed Association in Pennington, NJ. My fellow teacher naturalists would go out with local girl scout groups on our 930 acre property to look for the various caches which could range from the size of a shoebox to a test tube or even smaller. I've even seen some artificial caches that are modeled to look like rocks, pine cones, and even a golf ball. After using the GPS unit to get close to the cac...