Final Reflections

Date: June 12, 2014

Time: 12:00-2:00

Weather: Party Cloudy

Temperature: 65 degrees

Part 1. Phenological Observations

I started the day around the CUH. I saw a couple Bullock's Orioles hopping around and then saw this wonderful sight: 

I found two fledgling American Robins who were about to be fed worms by their parents. I crept into the bushes and took this photo, and I don't think these babies could fly yet because they just looked at me and weren't reacting other than calling out in short barks. There were two adult Robins that had worms in their mouths and visibly upset, Their crowns were fluffed up and they were making what seemed to me warning calls high in the trees. I left the babies alone after this, and gave them some space. The babies were really cute though, and had mottled, dull colors compared to the adult and their feathers were all puffed up. From here, I went around the backside of the CUH and saw a Song Sparrow eating all the good Salmonberries before I could get them. 

A Bombus vosnesenskii on a Nootka rose. Buzz pollination in action! This bee was buzzing in a circular motion around the middle part of the flower as a way to seemingly pile up the pollen in the pollen sacs on the legs. This bee was moving very rapidly from flower to flower, and seemed to be very efficient with its pollination. Go bumblebee!

Some kind of bee on a Mock Orange flower- I think its a Leaf Cutter. It was much smaller than the bumblebee, with a clearly striped back and a curved body.

The Tule (Scirpus acutus) is now over 3 m! I could not believe how towering this sedge was. I can see how the tule grows in colonies- due to the rhizomatic root system. 

Shoveler's Pond in summertime (above) vs early spring (below). What a difference!

Before, it was actually a pond. Now, in summer it is just a swampy marsh! Sedges, grasses, and rushes are growing throughout the swamp and the water is probably no more than 6 inches deep. In the early spring, its most frequent visitors were waterfowl- today I saw mostly odonata and savannah sparrows. With the change of seasons comes a change of habitat, and new species to host. 

Yarrow (Achillea millefolium) in full bloom near the prairie mounds. The blooms seemed to be taking up most of the energy of the plant, because the leaves were shriveled and pale. The priority at this point must be pollination! 

Unknown flower on the prairie mounds- any ideas? 

Cow Vetch flowers- I'm guessing these are buzz pollinated? An invasive species native to Asia and Europe. As a legume, it is a nitrogen fixer through bacterial nodes in the root. 

Some asteraceae? Seems to me like a giant daisy "wishie" 

These bees must be busy- there are so many flowers to pollinate! Although this plant is invasive, Himalayan Blackberry flowers provides a huge source of pollen for bees around here.

White Morning Glory (Calystegia sepium) also invasive

Before and After: My Site in summer (above) and in early spring (below). This pond has entirely dried up (I walked across it today)- there isn't even mud. To consider that it was a huge pond before! 

Other Observations: 
I saw a lot of insects today- primarily Bombus, Monarchs, tons of Odonata. I saw a hummingbird flying straight up into the air, and then dive bombing down. I saw some Savannah sparrows flying low out of a patch of Tule, a Bewick's Wren in a shrub around the marsh, and I had a special moment with a Common Yellowthroat. I could hear the "whitchity whitchity whitchity" from the cattails near the trail and crept up into the grasses. The Common Yellowthroat was probably a few feet away from me but totally invisible- I think it was low in the grass. I really wanted to see a Yellowthroat up close so I did a song playback- And out of nowhere, I see the bandit! The little yellow bird hopped up on a high branch and looked at me accusingly. He seemed visibly alarmed, so I turned off the playback and for a second longer, got to look at the beautiful Yellowthroat.  

Part 2: Three Poems

1.
I hear soft rustles, 
see swirling light,
as a silver-speck cascade
caresses the wind. 


2.
I settle into tall bunches of green
you are whistling, chortling

suddenly out of the din
a slight body, splash of yellow

and a curved black mask
we look at one another

with equal curiosity. 


3. 

a cluck, a pinch, 
a buzzy trill, 

a jagged chortle,
a throaty humm,

she skips a beat,
then again  

a cacophony.




Inspiration: 1) Cottonwoods 2) Common Yellow throat 3) Savannah Sparrow! 

Part 3: Reflections

1) How has your perception of your observation site changed through the quarter?

Its amazing that once you start noticing the abrupt changing that comes with the seasons, it startles you how rapid and dramatic the changes are. In the early spring, when I first started making my natural history observations, I forgot what the UBNA looks like in the summer even though I had been there before. I was shocked by how much the landscape changed. I’ve started paying attention to the insects, birds, and plants, and a new world has opened up to me- especially with birds. I’ve come to find that I love birdwatching! There is so much detail and complexity that I missed before. Certain calls are now becoming familiar, and I now recognize some forms that I never noticed before. I get a lot of joy out of running into a Bullock’s Oriole on campus, on seeing a Downy Woodpecker on a Cottonwood at Greenlake, and watching a flash of yellow and see it turn into a American Goldfinch.

I also love all the work we did around sketching. I’ve become more interested in making biologically accurate sketches. I’ve always sketched for fun but it is great to add a level of intention- and recordkeeping. I want to continue to keep a natural history sketchbook.

2) How has your sense of the Puget Sound Region changed through the quarter?

This class has reminded me and reinforced what an incredibly diverse and beautiful place we live in within the Puget Sound Region. I can appreciate the natural environment in new, exciting way. I am still pretty new to Washington (I’ve lived here for 4 years) and there is still so much to explore. I first started realizing the depth of the natural beauty around me when I started mountaineering last year. Yet, even on these trips I feel that I missed a lot of the complexity and diversity of the life because I couldn’t recognize what plants and animals I was seeing. I have improved my observation skills in this class and I am looking forwards to more opportunities to be outside so that I can expand these skills. We have learned many new lenses for looking in depth at the natural environment- through thinking about its geology, its flora, and its fauna.

3) What does it mean to intimately know a natural place?

Knowing the names of the birds, insects, fungus, plants, etc around me makes me feel more grounded in my environment. It makes me feel like there are always familiar faces in the woods around me. It also makes me more excited to explore the outdoors because I want to find animals and plants I have never seen before. Especially with birds, I want to greater understand their behavior, their migrations, their clever adaptations to the world around them. The world is a more exciting and beautiful place when you pay attention to the birds.

Ornithological Observations at the UBNA

Date: 6/1/14
Time: 12:00-1:00pm
Weather: Full Sun
Temperature: 75 degrees (approx)

It was a great day for bird watching! I had a lot of really great bird moments today, starting with when I was walking over here on the Burke. I was close to the IMA and I saw these two fighting hummingbirds! I think they were both Anna's Hummingbird males, and they were all out fighting- they were buzzing like crazy and running into each other, and they almost ran into me in their fury. They tussled in the air over the Burke and down the hill, then when out of sight. It all happened in like three seconds! It was quite a scene! I've never seen birds be so aggressive.
At the UBNA, I observed a few birds in depth- female and male Redwing Blackbirds, and a Great Blue Heron. 
 I saw these birds on Lake Union near the Black Cottonwood copse, where all the cattails are. The female Redwing was hopping around the logs in the swamp looking for insects, dipping her beak into the water, turning up Yellow Pond Lily pads, then flying back to the cattails. She had a swervy, low flight, and only left her routine of pecking in the water and sitting in the cattails once, when she flew high out of sight. Here are a few gesture drawings I made of the female Redwing- while flying, standing on a log, pecking at the water and perched on a cattail:

Some field notes I made: She has light brown tips of her wings and darker tail feathers; a big tail and a small body. She has a spotted, lighter chest then the rest of her body. When she's hopping on lily pads, she catches some kind of bug from the water, and flying back up to the cattails, to sit on top of a cattail with her tail feathers wide, in a diamond shape.
Song notes: She clicks while she moves around, a click that sounds more high pitch and plucky then the male red wing. She calls this while she forages and also while she perches in the cattails.

As I was observing the female redwing, I also noticed that dominant male of this territory- a very aggressive one. He was making rounds between the cattails and a high branch on a Cottonwood. When a Great Blue Heron swooped into the swamp, the Redwing was very territorial towards this Heron (which surprised me). He perched on a cattail closest to the heron and puffed up his feathers. The Heron stood very still for a couple of minutes, and after a minute or so, the Redwing swooped and brushed the back of the heron. I'm guessing he was trying to chase the heron out of his site, but it wasn't really working because the heron just stood there, completely still for about five minutes. The Redwing swooped onto its back on more time and then the heron moved out a few feet and started fishing. The Redwing after that point left it alone. I don't know who got their way, but now the heron had its own territorial concerns. As I watched the heron stalk fish in the lake, another heron flew over and the heron crouched with all its feathers ruffled, and then silently disappeared (I had only looked away for a moment and it was gone). Here are some sketches I made of the heron:

Some other field notes:
The monarchs are out, and are flying alongside the swallows above the swamp. Two American Goldfinches (I think- a couple) fly over my pond site. At my site, all the Yellow Irises are flowering and the cattails are taller than me, about 6 ft tall. I made a sketch of a group of cattails on the pond, there are two patches of cattails amidst the yellow pond lily, each patch about 20 cattails. The pond is now mostly a marsh, and the ducks don't seem to be coming to this puddle anymore. I saw the Northern Flicker making its rounds again, flying over my site again to travel between the Cottonwood copse and the large solo Cottonwood in the grassland. Here's a sketch of the cattails (looking North towards the solo Cottonwood):

Observing the Smaller Creatures: UBNA

Date:5/30/14

Time: 2:00-3:00

Weather: Full Sun

Temperature: 70 degrees

Here are some of the lichen I saw at the Union Bay Natural Area:

 1. This is a crutiose lichen, the Pixie Cup lichen (Cladonia asahinae) I found it on a rotting log near the trail and its very small- each cup is about 1 mm wide or less.  It is a Ascomycota and I'm guessing foliose and frutiose, based off the base formation and pixie cups. It grows off of mosses like the ones in this photograph.

2.  I found this lichen growing slightly farther down the log, but I think it is either the same Cladonia asahinae or a different species. They look very similar aside from the cup shape.

 

3. Here's the other lichen I found that is all over the willow, cottonwood, and orchard trees around the UBNA. This lichen, called Xanthoria parietina, is a crutiose (and maybe foliose?) lichen in the division Ascomycota.

When you look at Xanthoria close up, it looks like this, with cuplike crutiose formations and also foliose formations.



4. I spotted a foliose lichen called Parmelia sulcata growing on the branch of a scouler's willow alongside some Xanthoria. My camera had died by then, but here is a photo of the lichen I found online. I think this is the lichen that Noelle was saying some use for their nests because it sticks like velcro: 





5. Enough lichen! I found these Turkey Tail, Trametes versicolor, shelf fungus growing off a decaying log at UBNA:

6. In the lawn near the CUH, I found a mushroom that I think is a Corprinus plicatilis:




7. Lastly, I saw a Phellinus igniarius, which is in the basidiomycota division and has spores (white base).



Here are some phenological observations I made this week at my site:
The water levels at my pond were so much lower to the point that my site has become more of a marsh than a pond. Here are some specimen I collected this week:



The flower on the left is the unidentified bog plant that is getting denser and denser in the mudbanks of the pond. It has diamond shaped leaves, purple flowers, and is pretty delicate. The next specimen, the rush, is starting to flower with these tight compound florets. On the Salix scouleriana branch are the two lichens I found- the Xanthoria and Parmelia. The leaf is also scouleriana and has a Willow Apple Gall- an infestation by sawfly, Pontania californica. This is at least my best guess after a bit of searching, I can't figure out the range of the californica species but it is probably this species. Apparently, this gall is planted by the sawfly mother, and which has larvae inside that will develop and then exit through a hole in the back of the gall. I collected a couple leaves with galls on them (the tree was completely infested, probably over 100 galls) and I cut one open but there were just small egg like dots inside. I think the galls were just "planted" and that it will take a while for the larvae to develop inside. Crazy!
The last specimen I collected is the Red Osier Dogwood flower, which is no longer blooming but now seems to have fruit like formations. I'm curious about this because I don't really know what the dogwood fertilization and seed dispersal process is. I'm guessing that birds would eat these small fruits and disperse the seeds.

Coprinus plicatilis

Coprinus plicatilis

Coprinus plicatilis