Explored part of the Bull Run river Watershed today to see what I could find in the form of flora and fauna.

Saw some really nice wild flowers-

spiderwort, Swamp mallow, bluets, spring beuaties, purple hyacinth,

blue bells to name a few.

There were some neat fungi in fact a very large “polypore” looking thing that was the size of the old tree stump it was consuming.

Some real cool arthropods too. Black widow spider

and two types of milipedes

In the phib category I was able to find some red backs in both lead and red morphs. One red almost looked tan where the red should have been. There were plenty of two lines as expected, along and in the streams. Pickerel and green frogs lined the banks or were under dinner plate sized or larger rocks. One tree with its exposed root system from stream erosion, housed a pair of northern water snakes. Down stream I caught a quick glimpse of a pair of black ducks just before they took flight at the site of me. Wood peckers of different types- red bellied and pileated with and the titmouse and wren permeated the air with their drumming and songs. My favorite event of the day was capturing a queen snake foraging for food along the bottom of the stream.