Smithsonian Environmental Research Center

American Wetlands Month: Beaver Ponds

It's the last day of May, which means  American Wetlands Month and National Photography Month are coming to an end! This wetland features a beaver pond inside Flag Pond Nature Park, in southern Maryland. Beaver ponds form where beavers build dams in streams and create their lodges. Though beavers' eating and construction projects can make life hard for trees, beaver ponds can play a role in protecting fish, crabs and other aquatic life miles downstream by removing nitrogen pollution. (Photo: Dennis Whigham) #WetlandsWork

Do non-native sika deer on Maryland’s Eastern Shore prefer invasive or native plants? Lisa Koetke, terrestrial ecology intern at the Smithsonian Environmental Research Center, set up bucket buffets to find out!

Citizen scientist and "Trail Master" Dave Gillum checks a bluebird box at #SERC. #citizenscience intern @coraline_k profiled three Bluebird Project volunteers here: http://sercblog.si.edu/?p=6265 Photo by Karen McDonald. #birds #bluebird #nestbox #nest #nature #birding #birdhouse #birder #Maryland #volunteers #volunteering #research (at Smithsonian Environmental Research Center, Edgewater, Maryland)

Go on a walk in #SERC's woods! You won't regret it. (at Smithsonian Environmental Research Center, Edgewater, Maryland)

Inside a Phragmites patch. Photo by Matt Sievers. Read how #SERC researchers used environmental #forensics to piece together Phragmites' invasion. http://sercblog.si.edu/?p=6232

A banded tussock moth, Halysidota tessellaris. The species name tessellaris refers to the tessellated checkered patterns on its wings.

Photo by SERC, taken at BugBlitz in Edgewater, Maryland.

A summer azure (Celastrina neglecta) on a clover head. This small butterfly has a wingspan of about one inch. 

Photo credit to Bonnie Ott. Taken during SERC’s BugBlitz in Edgewater, Maryland.

The Java Plantation fields at dusk. Photo credit: Josie Whelan.

A couple of “blinking” black-eyed Susans spotted on a walk along SERC’s wetlands.

Hormone imbalance, bacteria, or viruses can cause this mutation, known as fasciation. 

http://www.sciencefriday.com/blogs/01/30/2012/fasciating-flowers.html?interest=1&audience=4 sciencefriday

(Photo: Mary Zevely)

Damselflies and dragonflies...what’s the difference?

Damselflies are more slender and their wings come to their sides at rest. Dragonflies have thicker bodies and their wings remain extended when perched.

 http://www.ucmp.berkeley.edu/arthropoda/uniramia/odonatoida.html

Photo credit: Bonnie Ott. Taken during the BugBlitz at the Smithsonian Environmental Research Center in Edgewater, Maryland.

An iridescent find from SERC’s recent BugBlitz! The dogbane beetle eats and lives on dogbane and milkweed plants. 

http://www.biokids.umich.edu/critters/Chrysochus_auratus/

Photo by Robert Aguilar, Smithsonian Environmental Research Center, Edgewater, Maryland.