A Visit to Occoquan Workhouse (2010) /  by Todd Henson

A Visit to Occoquan Workhouse (2010)

Built in 1910, the Occoquan Workhouse was originally a lower security prison facility run by the District of Columbia and located in Lorton, Virginia. Later it began housing people convicted of more serious crimes and was renamed Lorton Reformatory and eventually Lorton Correctional Complex. Before it finally closed in 2001 it had become overcrowded and known for frequent violence and occasional escapes. I remember times when local alerts would go out of an escaped convict and the police efforts to bring them back.

The photo above was created 100 years after the site was built, in 2010. It was a very overcast day, and later in the day it rained, but it hadn’t yet begun when I walked through this portion of the location. I hope to share more photos in the future as I sort through them, some of areas that have since been demolished.

Thankfully, this part of the location, once full of problems was destined for a more hopeful future. In 2005 it was added to the National Register of Historic Places and in 2008 it became home to the Workhouse Arts Center where local artists could set up studios and invite the public to come see them work, purchase their artwork, and attend classes, exhibitions and special events. It’s now a wonderful location to visit, in many ways similar to the older and perhaps better known Torpedo Factory Art Center in Alexandria. Stop by if you’re ever in the area. It’s worth a visit.

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Bullock’s Oriole Building a Nest at Barr Lake State Park, Colorado /  by Todd Henson

Here a Bullock’s oriole is just leaving its nest

Oriole’s are beautiful and somewhat iconic birds. In the Northern Virginia area I’ve often seen orchard orioles while out hiking through the right environment, and occasionally in some areas I’ll see a Baltimore oriole. But that’s it. The other oriole species of North America are all further west or southwest.

The first thing I noticed was an empty nest

So when I had the chance to visit Colorado in early June (many years back) I was very pleased to run into a Bullock’s oriole working on its nest right along a main trail in Barr Lake State Park. I saw the nest first. All the photos of the oriole are cropped in quite a bit to let you see the bird a bit closer. But the photograph of the empty nest is just as it was framed at 230mm with a 70-200mm lens and a 1.4x teleconverter. So the nest was very close to the trail. But when I noticed the bird trying to come back to the nest I moved further back to give it space. And that’s all it took.

An early view of the Bullock’s oriole perched in a tree near its nest

For whatever reason I struggled to identify this bird at the time. I wasn’t sure it completely fit any of the photos/descriptions in my field guides. It seemed a bit more yellow than orange which seemed to point towards a female or younger male (except for Audubon’s or Scott’s orioles, but it didn’t appear to be either of those). The blacks weren’t the stark blacks that photos of the males seemed to possess. The black goatee/chin seemed to indicate a possible male, though I read somewhere you might sometimes find a female with one and they’re thought to be older females. The narrowness of the goatee and the dark eye line pointed me towards the Bullock’s oriole, and a photo in National Geographic’s Complete Birds of North America shows a 1st spring male Bullock’s that appears to match my specimen, one that is just starting to develop the stronger black markings. And it could be complicated by the fact that Bullock’s and Baltimore orioles do sometimes interbreed (hybridize) in areas where their ranges overlap. Colorado seems more the Bullock’s range but the Baltimore’s range isn’t too very far east, so maybe? Probably not as that overlapping range is apparently a narrow one.

Another view of the Bullock’s oriole perched in a tree

The more I thought through all the field markers the more I kept leaning towards a Bullock’s oriole given the area where I found it, but I wasn’t willing to accept my own identification until years later when I ran two different bird identification apps against each of the photos and both apps identified them as a Bullock’s oriole (Icterus bullockii). And so I believe this bird to be a young, perhaps 1st spring, male Bullock’s oriole. But if you feel I’ve misidentified this bird then please leave a comment letting me know what you think it is and why, what identifiers or field marks you used to identify it.

The Bullock’s oriole has just landed at its nest and gives us a nice view of its black goatee

Interestingly, at one point in time the Bullock’s and Baltimore orioles were thought to be a single species and at the time were called northern orioles. But as happens, they were later differentiated based on DNA studies and other criteria. The name Bullock refers to William Bullock, an English amateur naturalist.

The Bullock’s oriole sticks its head in its nest

I was so fortunate, not only to find an oriole species we don’t have back east, but to find one working on its nest. I love finding birds in and around their nest. You can see such incredibly interesting behaviors, as visible in some of these photos.

I love this view of the Bullock’s oriole completely inside the nest with just head and tail showing

I hope you’ve enjoyed this look at a Bullock’s oriole working on its nest, as well as some of my struggles with identifying it. Have you ever seen this species of oriole, or any species of oriole? Let me know in the comments below.

Resources

Below are the three field guides I used most when identifying the Bullock’s oriole. Of them I found the National Geographic Complete Birds of North America the most helpful. It’s by far the largest book, not a guide you’d take out into the field, and that gave it the extra space to show some extra photos which made a big difference for me.

I am including affiliate links for the field guides and as an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases. This is at no extra cost to you and helps support me and this site. Thanks for your support.

The two apps I used and found very helpful were:

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Make Time For Playtime /  by Todd Henson

They’re Here!

Putting a lot of serious effort into crafting intentional and meaningful photographs is a worthy pursuit. But sometimes it’s a good idea to just relax a bit, to let go, have a little fun. Make time for playtime.

A shaky drive down 95

The photos in this post may not be spectacular in any way. But they’re an example of not taking what I’m doing too seriously, of just experimenting a little, having fun, trying things I doubt will work and sometimes realizing I’m right but still trying it anyway.

Being light painted by passing cars

Stitches in the sky

Specifically, each photo is part of a drive south on Interstate 95 after dark (yes, I was a passenger, not a driver). They are each from a phone using an app that allowed for longer exposures, most between half to a full second. Then I moved the phone/camera around during the exposure. Because of this each photo will be unique and unlikely to be duplicated (of course the question stands whether anyone would ever want to duplicate them! 😅)

The glow below the overpass

Though it was almost 13 years ago I still fondly remember creating these that night. And I still wonder what some of the people in nearby cars thought of the crazy guy moving his phone all around as he drove by? Or were they too absorbed in their own phones to notice? 😊

Ribbons of light

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