CLOSE UP Video Interviews

Your correspondent asked a young man he saw crossing the Wissahickon Creek from the side opposite Valley Green Inn what it was like. He says he was a little nervous at first because he didn’t know how deep the creek was or how strong the current would be. But he deliberately place one foot in front of the other and made it from the east to the west side without slipping or the water rising much above mid-calf.

“It feels good, the water’s cool…” It was only his second time there. He remembers coming years ago to the spot and spent the previous two weeks trying to rediscover it. He had hiked down from Ridge Avenue into the park. He couldn’t see the bottom so trusted his instincts. “If the ducks can do it, I can do it!” Overhearing our conversation, a regular park goer got his attention and walked him back to water’s edge to take a look at the water snakes that hang out in the rocky area at the edge.

Watch video and interview  of young man crossing Wissahickon Creek here.

Two vacationing young couples from D.C. and the Philly area came out on the Cape May beach before 7 AM on the first day of spring to catch the sunrise. Because the beach faces more southerly than east, they had to position themselves out on a jetty to better see the sun peek above the horizon. One of them planted her phone in the sand to capture a time-lapse movie of the sunrise. Your correspondent had come to the beach at the same time to do the same! The friends had not yet visited Sunset Beach and your correspondent recommended an excursion there to witness a spectacular sunset from bayside on the west coast of the cape. Watch Cape May sunrise and conversation with vacationers here.

Shawnee Street resident Beth Eames was very sad to see the grand, 100-some year old sugar maple tree in her front yard succumb to disease and have to be cut down last year. So, to honor the tree, she commissioned noted local ice and wood carver Roger Wing to convert the 12 foot high remaining trunk into a work of art, only giving him the high vision prompt of "flowers." After working two straight weeks in the heat, Wing just completed carving what appear to oversize sunflowers, using a special wood-burning tool to set the flowers and stalks off against a dark background. He will return twice a year to apply a natural oil to preserve the work. Eames also had Wing carve an alcove with a seat in the trunk so that people can come by, sit and take selfies. (Why not take a selfie and post it here: https://www.instagram.com/explore/tags/chtreetrunkcarving/ ) The current times were added motivation for Eames to do something nice for the neighborhood and give an artist good, paying work. Watch video of tree trunk sculpture and interview here.

Amanda Miles of South Philadelphia tightens screws on a bird box while Dave Stehman of Conshohocken cleans it out on a Friends of the Wissahickon work day at Andorra Meadow. The previous day a large volunteer crew worked on the bird boxes at Houston Meadow. FOW Field Assistant Varian Bosch who was overseeing the projects and simultaneously training new crew leaders says the boxes are occupied by bluebirds, sparrows, swallows and wrens. Each box is numbered so the birds frequenting the meadows can be tracked from season to season. Watch video of volunteers maintaining bird boxes in the Wissahickon meadows.

In a short time, aquatic biologists from the Susquehanna River Basin Commission netted hundreds of fish from the Wissahickon Creek just above the covered bridge - and then returned them to the water. Biologist Aaron Henning (center in photo) relayed that SRBC had won the contract to assess the health of the waterways in this region as part of a national study commissioned by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. The day before, Henning, his teammate Matt Shank and Michelle Peck from Region III IEPA were working down on the Schuylkill River in the less scenic refinery area. Electrofishing entails putting a weak electrical current in the water through a rod, which actually attracts the fish Henning says, to momentarily stun them. This gives the biologists enough time to identify them by species, take measurements and, for some of the larger specimens, take plugs of tissue to test for PCBs and other contaminants. Henning showed off two large, American eels, a species that lives in fresh water but migrates to spawn in the ocean. The squirming pair were eager for release. More photos here

Watch video here

Electro #Fishing the #Wissahickon #creek @SRBCnews @EPAregion3 @FOX29philly @TreeHouseWEC @ChestnutHillPA @PhillyH2O @phl17 @myphillypark @FOWissahickon @pafisherman #electricity story here: https://t.co/PPgNSTgUoL pic.twitter.com/vCjHIEoagS

— brian rudnick (@buhrayin) August 29, 2019

Jonathan Shaw hunts with hawks and falcons from horseback at his 467 acre farm in Queenstown on the eastern shore of Maryland. At the World Horse Expo 2019 at the Farm Complex in Harrisburg, he had two prey birds, his horse and two assistants. His avian hunter is Geronimo, a gyrfalcon, which will hunt ducks and pigeons. His Harris Hawk goes for rabbits, squirrels and, he adds tongue in cheek, “small children.” Historically, Shaw says, falconers would ride horses because they could catch up with the falcon which otherwise would eat the falconer's dinner! The tradition didn't die out until the invention of the gun, the first of which was named after a sparrow hawk, a "musket." Shaw goes on to tell about all the now common expressions that come from falconry like "hoodwink", "under my thumb" and "wrapped around her little finger." Shaw's ideal horse is a pasofino because of its even gait. It won't jostle the falcon up and down when it's sitting on the falconer's glove before release. Prior, he had hunted with American Paint horses but when he was trotting around the farm his "hawk would think I was shaking a cocktail." Watch video interview of falconer describing how he hunts ducks and rabbits with his hawks and falcons while riding horseback."

Naturalists at the Wissahickon Environmental Center Treehouse are raising and launching monarch butterflies. In the Andorra meadow a short distance above the Trreehouse, Philadelphia Parks and Recreation staffers Christina Moresi and Maris Harmon harvest milk weed leaves on which monarch butterflies have laid their small white eggs. They bring the leaves down to the Treehouse where the eggs hatch into caterpillars. They demand an abundant supply of milkweed leaves to munch on and grow. Moresi has filmed the whole metamorphosis. The grown caterpillars will climb to the top of a screen mesh and spin into milky green colored pupae. As the pupae mature, their casings become translucent and the butterflies' distinctive orange markings become visible. Finally the encapsulated butterflies emerge out of the bottom and pump blood to stretch out their new wings.
The naturalists place a small round tag on each newborn's wing and register it in an online database so if it is found in Mexico or en route, it can be identified. Moresi (right in photo) explains that the butterflies which lay their eggs in the Andorra are the fourth generation of butterflies migrating from hibernation in Mexico. Before they are released, the young monarchs are fed a rich diet of nectar and become flight worthy in a tall netted enclosure. The Center announces when they are about to release a group of monarchs. They are bound for Mexico, an extraordinary 2000 mile journey.
(Interviewer's Note: Conservationists have been actively engaged in combating a severe long term decline in the population of the monarch butterfly, a beautiful and important pollinator, that has been attributed to habitat loss from logging and pesticide use)

Watch monarchs metamorphosis and interview here