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This week on Birds of Georgetown, GM is exploring woodpeckers.

Woodpeckers, for those not old enough to remember a certain famous cartoon, get their name from how they strike trees with their beak to find bugs to eat.

Here in DC there are a few varieties you might see. (Although typically you hear them first!). Above is the downy woodpecker. It is the smallest common woodpecker. It can be identified partially by its size (normally only 5 to 7 inches long) and its white spots on black wings. The males have a bit of red on top of their heads.

Another small woodpecker you might find in Georgetown is the red-bellied woodpecker:

These guys are a bit bigger than the downy woodpeckers, at 9 to 10 inches. They have a striking reddish orange stripe on their heads, although the female’s stripe is not as prominent: Continue reading →

Tudor Place

Photo courtesy of Compass Coffee.

In transportation planning there is a concept called “induced demand”. It states that if you build additional supply of something (typically new travel lanes) rather than reducing congestion proportional to the amount of added supply, you will only create new demand which will quickly use up the new supply. It’s hard not to think of that concept when considering the astounding number of coffee shops now open in Georgetown.

The newest is possibly the biggest. Namely, that’s the Compass Coffee, which now occupies the old Georgetown theater building on Wisconsin Ave. Still brand spanking new and it is already full of customers when open.

Consider the number of coffee shops we now have in Georgetown. Defined (by GM) as places you can get an espresso/cappuccino to go (so not simply stores that happen to have a pot of coffee), here’s what we’ve got:

• Starbucks at Wisconsin and S
• Starbucks at M and 34th
• Starbucks at M and Thomas Jefferson
• Starbucks at Washington Harbour
• Starbucks at the Safeway
• Corridor Coffee
• Pattiserie Poupon
• Via Umbria
• Boulangerie Christophe
• Wawa
• Saxby’s
• Cafe Georgetown
• Peete’s Coffee
• Blue Bottle Coffee
• Bluestone Lane
• Grace St. Coffee
• Dog Tag Bakery
• Paul
• Dean and Deluca
• Baked & Wired
• Pain Quotidian

Continue reading →

Photo by M.V. Jantzen.

Good morning Georgetown, here’s the latest:

• GU announces plan to restore Holy Rood Cemetery. GM will believe it when he sees it.
• Georgetown’s most ubiquitous (and GM’s personal favorite) realtor, Nancy Taylor Bubes, will be at the next Q&A Cafe this Friday.

Tudor Place

Photo by Jon Hayes Photography.

It’s that time of year again when GM harangues you about caring for our precious street trees. So here is goes:

Water your street trees!

It’s still early in the spring, and trees are only starting to leaf out, so you do not need to start watering street trees immediately. But it will become necessary sooner than you think. So if you have a young tree on the sidewalk in front of your house or apartment, please, please keep it in mind this summer and water it. The basic goal you should have is to water young trees at least once a week, so long as you get a good 20-25 gallons of water.

The preferred watering device is the ooze tube (the bags that go around the bottom of the trees). You can differentiate them from the not-preferred gator bags because the gator bags have zippers. (They’re not preferred because they can create an unhealthy environment around the trunk and you have to remove them after each use.) With the ooze tube you can just fill it up and let it go. Continue reading →

Photo by M.V. Jantzen.

Good morning Georgetown, here’s the latest:

• A couple places to get good pastrami in Georgetown (and elsewhere).
• When a house built in the 80s looks like it was built in the 1880s. (The article wrongly says this location is outside the Georgetown historic district. It isn’t.)