Day at the Pass

On Sunday Mallory and I went up to the pass to do a couple of summer transects for the Cascade Wildlife Monitoring Project. We attempted two of the transects, but it was a bit tricky since the transects were set up in the winter and deep snow makes it a bit easier to travel in straight lines there.

Anyway it was a satisfying outing. It started out with a miserable amount of mosquitoes, which I think just served to make the things after that portion of the day seem all the better. There were a bunch of highlights for me: Finding a spotted sandpiper's nest with 4 eggs in it (the bird spooked off the nest when I was only a couple feet away or I wouldn't have noticed it) Getting to within 15 feet or so to a big buck with large velvety antlers while I was walking through some willow thickets. Finding weasel tracks (which I've only seen once before despite the fact that western Washington is supposed to have one of the densest populations of weasels anywhere). On the plant end of things I found rattlesnake plantain (Goodyera oblongifolia), wild ginger (Asarum caudatum), and high bush cranberry (Viburnum sp.).

And here's a picture from my previous outing:



A western toad (Bufo boreas) in a black bear (Ursus americanus) track.

Day at the River

I hung out on the middle fork of the Snoqualmie with some friends today. It was awesome. The water was still a bit cold, but I got sort of used to it and the sun was nice and warm when I got out. We mostly waded along side streams and the river with short forays in to the woods and walks along the beaches. There was also a time or two of swimming.

Aside from the gorgeous weather it was an outstanding day for being a naturalist. Our animal species list totaled 42 and I'm sure we could have easily increased that with a bit more attention to birds and bugs (particularly if someone with more experience in those areas had been along), but what was the most exciting (for me anyway) was that we saw tracks/sign for 19 mammal species - there aren't many mammals that occur in the region with any regularity that we didn't get.

Amongst the mammals was black bear and we saw tracks of a mother with two cute cubs. Well I can imagine they are cute anyway. Their tracks were cute. And based on size comparisons we think that we may have seen the tracks of 5 distinct black bear in that one little area.

Another highlight was being able to stand in one place (without moving my feet) and pick a handful of ripe berries from four different native Rubus species - salmonberry, trailing blackberry, thimbleberry and black cap raspberry. I also discovered the most productive patch of trailing black berries I have ever seen, gathering a large handful and just denting the population. Usually when I find those ripe the quantities are quite limited.

Cool Plant Names

I've been studying for the informal final in the native plant stewardship program I've been participating in for the past ten weeks. One part of the exam is recognizing plants and being able to give their scientific name, so that's what I've been studying. We have a list of around 60 plants that the plants will be drawn from - I was already familiar with identifying most of them so mainly I have just been brushing up on the latin.

It helps me remember when I can associate more things with the name, so I've been looking up the meaning of some of the words (There are several good websites around to do that, the one I've been using is Dave's Garden.)

Some of the names are just fun like:

• Arctostaphylos uva-ursi - Bear grapes, bear-grape - I think these are from two different languages.


• Pteridium aquilinum - Like a bird wing, eagle like


• Petasites palmatus - hat like, shaped like the palm of a hand

But what I really like (for memory sake) is when the names correspond to something obvious in the plant:

• triphylla - three leaves - the species name of our local trillium


• sanguineum - blood red - the species name for red flowering currant


• millefolium - thousand leaves - the species name of a local yarrow

And there are parts of the words that show up in a bunch of different scientific names, so are particularly useful to now:

• parvi - small


• folium - leaves


• flora - flowers


• albi - white

and the list goes on.

Robins and Shakespear

The native plant stewardship program I have become involved with went on a field trip to Shadow Bog last Saturday. It was a neat place - lot's of plants I haven't seen too much outside of the muskegs in Southeast Alaska. The people there seem really neat. They started a foundation to acquire lands important to that water system back in the 90s I think and so far have acquired 10 of the 11 parcels they identified as being critical. They've worked on restoring the habitat and encouraging amphibians and providing educational opportunities for people in the area.

We took a walk on a boardwalk that is built out into the bog. When we stopped to talk a bit in one spot there were a couple of robins freaking out up in the canopy. Eventually somebody noticed the nest at about chest height just beside the boardwalk where we stopped.



On Sunday I went down to the Fremont Fair for a few hours. There they have a lot of booths selling things and of course overpriced fair food. They also have several stages with music groups performing, street performers (one group of jugglers was pretty entertaining, even if it seemed that their actual juggling skills were not particularly high) and some impressive art cars.

On my way back home I went under the Troll Bridge. Turns out there was a group putting on a production of "As You Like It" right there next to the street. I thought that was a really cool idea and would have liked to watch it, but it had already been going for quite a while and I had someplace to get to.

Insects

Megan and I went to the Sun Lakes area of central Washington last weekend and explored around a bit.

While wandering among the rocks and brush I came upon this scene.



I'm curious what kind of ants and beetle these are. I also wonder if the ants killed the beetle or found it already dead. In the full size version of the image hairs are visible on the hind end of the ant (the metasoma?)