Crab Creek (April 2015)

Crab Creek is an old acquaintance I get along well with, but haven't seen in years.

Chris says he will camp near the bridge over the creek. "Sure - I know where that is," I told him. But I arrive in the dark and suddenly remember there are multiple bridges over the creek - two of which we have camped next to in the past. Each parked vehicle becomes a mystery: Chris's car?

Not convinced of any, I choose to camp next to the farthest bridge - the last checked and the most likely. There are people around, but not where I park and none that I recognize. I do not know the people joining Chris and I am shy to disturb strangers in the quiet, dark night. I go for a walk and in the darkness rely on my ears as much as my eyes - am surprised on the bridge when after walking past I hear a noise. I turn and can make out two darker figures if I don't look directly at them. They say "hello" and we move on.

Fortunately the night is warm, though windy. I don't want to set my tarp tent up in the dark and decide instead to lay out in the back of my truck - tarp pulled tight around my sleeping bag, holding my warmth against the wind. It is a restless way to sleep, every hour or two waking up to a chill, or an aching body part. Re-adjusting myself and my tarp, I check on the stars that show the gaps in the clouds, then I am back asleep. It's a great way to wake in the morning. Too uncomfortable to be lazy, too beautiful to be sad about that.

I wrap my sleeping bag around me as the horizon brightens and I walk out to get reacquainted. It is a landscape of subtle color. This season's wildflowers are vibrant up close but at a distance and in the early dawn, shades of grey, brown, and pale green predominate. As the sun's gradual appearance adds color to the scene I see Chris across the creek and we join our explorations. Small dunes spotted with sage brush stretch along the creek. We wander through looking for tracks and sign, catching up on the months since we've seen each other as we catch up on what has been happening in the previous hours and days of life along the creek.

After an hour or two, we head back to the bustle of camp as people prepare breakfasts, kids run about, and the last stragglers rise from bed. It is good to be back.

I went down to the beach today with a couple of friends. There have been some very low tides these few days: a -3.6 at the beach we went to today. We saw a lot of cool stuff (though it makes me realize how inter-tidal spoiled I was growing up in southeast Alaska), including this guy who looks like an escapee from an H.P. Lovecraft story. I imagine that's going to take a while to digest!

Went tracking at a local park with a couple of friends this weekend. One of them has spent quite a bit of time there and showed us several really cool things including several black bear beds/dens.

Here's Mark enjoying a cushy den built under a nice sheltered overhang.

And here is a nice bed with a thick layer of sword ferns. So cozy. Note as well the marking on the tree behind the bed.

The Mystery of the Mouse in the Tree

While doing a wildlife survey this weekend, we happened upon a mouse - its head sticking out from a hole in a tree. Was it just the head? Was it still alive (seemed unlikely)? What was it doing there? It was about 9 feet up in the trunk of the tree with no branches nearby. We reached up with a stick and managed to pry it part of the way out - it was whole, definitely dead, and wedged in there pretty tightly.

The wood around the mouse appeared to be recently gouged. It was difficult to see it clearly, but it looked like the marks might have been made by a beak. If it was a beak, that leaves us with the question of what bird could and would do such a thing? The only bird we came up with that would seem likely to have the capability of doing it would be a woodpecker (needing both the ability to comfortably hang on the side of a tree and dig into solid wood), but why would it do so? What other possibilities might we not have considered?

Weekend Near the Skagit

It was an eventful weekend. I went up near Concrete to go trailing with Brian McConnell and some members of the tracking team.

I got to:
-Follow the trail of a pair of elk around for several hours
-Get eaten by mosquitoes
-Get eaten by flies
-See some black slugs copulating (Just learned from the wiki article that they were used in Sweden for axle grease. A much better use for them than mine which is so I can avoid eating my home grown veggies)
-Follow a couple of bear trails
-Touch the still warm insides of a next recently occupied by thrushes
-Get my first ever bee sting - it reminded me a lot of a nettle sting, though a bit more potent. Somehow the bee made it up my pant leg and near the top of the inside of my underwear before I got her out - fortunately the sting occurred on my knee!
-Sleep on a mountainside
-Follow another bear trail for several hours
-Discover that at least one bear really likes the brush - particularly it enjoyed going through thick patches of devil's club. At one point we were trying to figure out where it had crossed the creek, having lost its trail shortly before. Hugh decided he knew where to find it - he figured it would be in the thickest patch of devil's club around and he was right! And that was near the beginning of our travels through devil's club
-Find out what it is like to crawl through thick patches of devil's club on all fours somewhat like a bear, turns out bears can fit through pretty small places - I don't think I've ever had as many devil's club thorns in my head before
-See where the bear had knocked over and eaten on large chunks of devil's club
-Oh, yeah - last and probably least (as far as size is concerned) - got to see/walk through/get dripped on by/accidentally taste/etc. a profusion of spit bug froth.

All in all a great way to spend a summer weekend in Washington.

Tumbleweeds!

Before seeing the porcupine in the previous post, we went out to Hanford Reach. We'd planned to go tracking there, but the wind was quite brisk - blowing sand and tumbleweeds all over the place. So instead we had a nice drive around and on the way back stopped to appreciate the storm and take this video.

My friend who lived in the south most of her life and so is more familiar with such things tells me that there is a funnel cloud behind us that shows up in the a few bits of the video. Guess we were lucky the storm didn't get even more exciting.

Porcupine

Saturday night while heading to our camping spot at Frenchmen's Coulee we heard shifting rocks in front of us. In the half-moon light, after a couple of minutes watching and listening, I was able to make out the shape of ... a porcupine? It was hard to be certain: when I looked directly at it its shape disappeared - I could only see it in my peripheral vision. When it had been quite for several minutes, we investigated with a flashlight and were able to confirm a smallish porcupine, now huddled behind a small boulder.

In the morning we spent a few hours exploring in the morning light. We each went back to investigate the spot of the sighting, though I did not see too much evidence of its passing. I thought it may have come down from the edge of the adjacent cliff band, so up the scree I climbed. There was certainly porcupine sign there - under overhangs, behind masses of vine brambles and out in the open - but no obvious sign of regular habitation. Shawn explored further down the canyon though and found a couple of porcupine sized holes overflowing with scat.


On our way back out, in almost the exact same spot we again encountered the porcupine again. I guess he had the bad luck to be heading out and back in at the opposite times as we did.

Idaho Hawk

I was in central Idaho helping out with a wolf tracking class this summer. We were walking a trail into the area that the local pack had denned earlier in the year when we came into a small meadow and spooked up this hawk. The meadow was covered in vole and gopher runs, good food for the hawk!

As best I can tell, it is an immature red-tailed hawk (Buteo jamaicensis).

Coltsfoot

Another one from up at the pass last weekend. I love how these leaves had a spot of dew on each tooth. I think they are palmate coltsfoot (Petasites palmatus) though they look a little different than I am used to.

Log Microcosm

I found this while out doing a mammal survey up near the pass. I'm guessing it is a slime mold or fungus of some sort. It reminds me of a jellyfish or sea anemone (or some really gnarly snot). And near the bottom of the picture it looks like it is forming appendages.

Deer Camouflage

While scouting out tracks before tracking club this month, I caught a glimpse of something at the edge of the woods. I thought it was a deer, but wasn't certain until I went over and found really fresh deer tracks. I still had awhile before we were supposed to meet up again, so I trailed it. It was pretty easy to follow at first as the deer had been moving pretty quickly and even when it moved into more duffy terrain the tracks were easy to see. After a few minutes though, it had slowed down and the tracks were more difficult to follow. Still I managed to get close enough where it startled and made some noise and I was able to see it again.

Hopefully in the future I will get a bit stealthier and start seeing the deer before they see me. But this time I guess I didn't scare it too badly, because it looked at me for a little while before walking off and I was able to get this picture of it. I think it is interesting how much more difficult it is to pick it out in black and white than in color (though color isn't all that easy either).

Click to show color version.

March Tracking Club Mystery

This March's tracking club may have had the best tracking club weather of the year. We got out to our meeting place with the sun beginning to rise over the horizon and the spring colors (particularly the budding cottonwood leaves) were gorgeous in the early light.

There was a lot of coyote, robin, deer, hare and mouse activity evident in the sand. There was also a partial answer to a mystery I have been holding on to for awhile:

Two years ago during the spring we found a lot of little digs at the sandbar, but we were unable to determine what had made them or why. One of the nice things about going to tracking club on a monthly basis is getting to know what is normal. We did not remember seeing digs like those in previous months and they didn't show up in later months either. Were they specific to that season or did we just not pay enough attention other months?

I recently found a journal entry I had written about the digs and I have been looking forward to getting out this spring and seeing what might unfold with this mystery. Was it a one time thing? Would they show up again at the same time of year? Would there be any clues as to who left them and why?

I was not disappointed. We got out to the sand and there they were! Though not as many of them as I think there had been the previous year. Perhaps the digging behavior hadn't been going on as long yet, which is interesting because this was the third Saturday of March and according to my journal it was mid-February when we found the digs before. Considering how warm the winter has been, what factors might have made the occurrences later this year?

This year there was a clue to their identity. The condition of the sand was such that we were able to easily see deer mouse tracks (often the sand is too damp for their tracks to show up much). Around several of the little digs a lot of deer mouse activity was in evidence and I saw no evidence of other animals of the appropriate size near those digs. So it seems likely that deer mice were doing the digging, but there are still a lot of questions remaining for my mystery.

The Birds in My Neighborhood: Sam

The last week or two I have been hanging out on my balcony for a little while almost every day. Mostly I will drink some tea and do a bit of stretching while I listen and watch the birds. I thought it might be fun to start posting about some of the birds I encounter.

This one is Sam the song sparrow (Melospiza melodia). He is a little shy, but most of the time I can see him hanging out on the ivy hedge bordering the yard next to ours. He is the only bird so far that I recognize as an individual (not that I could pick him out of a line up, but based on his consistent location and behavior). Fairly often he will get a bit sneaky and come over to the bird feeder in our yard. He likes to fly under the porch next to the feeder first, then hop out to where the food is.

Sam has been singing from his perch since before I started doing these sits. Recently I started to wonder if he would get a girlfriend soon. This morning when I started photographing him I noticed another song sparrow on the hedge a foot or two away. She would sit there quietly while Sam sang, or sometimes would hop down to feed on the ground while Sam perched on a shrub nearby.

It will be interesting to keep an eye on them as the season progresses.

Beach Pebbles

I don't tend to spend a lot of time look at pebbles. But these ones from up near Bellingham sure were pretty. I'm curious about all the different colors and textures. Most of the larger rocks I see are fairly uniform, why does this stretch of beach have such a high degree of variation?

Spring!

It has been a pretty warm winter here near the Puget Sound and from what I read, it will likely continue that way. Last week I picked my first batch of nettles (Urtica dioica), some of them were already nearly a foot tall. I have seen house flies buzzing around for the first time in what seems like a few months. Indian plum is well on its way to being leafed out. I'm not sure if it is related to spring or not (seems like it might be), but my cat caught and ate two mice (or at least that is how many he brought in to the house) after having had a pretty dry spell for the last couple of months.

It's an exciting time of year. I will be headed on a trip south for a couple of weeks and when I get back it will be time to start putting in some work on the garden!

Thanksgiving Walk

Thanksgiving vacation was spent on Whidbey island. The weather was lovely on Friday, so we went on a drive and ended up taking a walk on one of the beaches there (I think adjacent to Cultus bay). It was a protected little bay and there were large slow eddies out in the water; logs and other debris floating in lazy circuits.

There were several great blue herons out there. My favorite was the one hitching a ride on a log out in the bay.

There were also a lot of shore birds flocked up out at the point. Many of them were just standing there, but at the edges they seemed more active. I saw an individual of the smallest shore bird species hopping around on one-leg. I wondered how it managed to survive one-legged long enough to get good at it. After observing for awhile longer I noticed that there was more than one doing that, and then I saw one of them put down a second leg and pull the other up. I guess they don't mind hopping around on one leg while keeping the other warm.

Growth of a Fungus: a Puzzle

I went out to a friend's neighborhood to look around in the woods for signs of wildlife. The housing development is right next to large forested areas and there have been problems with bears raiding garbage so she is interested in helping her neighbors be more aware of the animals around them - hopefully with increased awareness will come increased responsibility.

While on our wander through the woods I noticed this bracket fungus with an alder stick going through it a little more than an inch in from the edge. The stick was detached from its tree, but was still fairly firm with much of its bark remaining. Fallen alder branches seem to rot fairly quickly in our wet northwest winters, so I suspect that this branch had fallen since last winter. It was quite firmly encompassed by the fungus though. I have never seen anything suggesting that a shelf fungus would grow so quickly to engulf the limb like that in less than a year. The only alternative that comes to mind (which also seems unlikely to me) is that the stick remained upright and in sturdy condition for the years it might take the fungus to grow that much.

Any ideas?

Evening Scene

We've been having a pleasant (if a bit chilly) sunny break lately.

Canine Tracks

While out tracking the other day near North Bend, we came upon these canine tracks. They look a lot more like a wild canine track than your average domestic dog track, but they are quite a bit larger (these were just over 4 inches with the claws) than coyote tracks which are the only really common wild dog nearby.

Earlier this year I went to a presentation Linda Bittle gave about a research project she's been doing - tracking domestic dogs. Based on the information she presented I think these may be tracks of a Great Dane - a large dog and a hare-footed one. Hare-foot dogs have longer middle toes so that they stick out in front of the side toes more than the more common shapes of domestic dog tracks and give them a more similar appearance to wild canine tracks.

I'm hoping that Linda will leave a comment with her thoughts about these tracks.

Tumbling at the Dunes

One of the traditions of going to the dunes is jumping and tumbling down them. I was never personally so bold as to flip and somersault down them like these guys, but I did get some good rolling, jumping and 'otter sliding' in.