Week 8: Bird Watching Adventures

Time: 10:20 am

Weather: Cloudy, 61 F

Place McCollum Park

This week at my site there is no drastic changes. Vegetation is greener and taller, that's about it.  Berries are growing on the Tall/dull Oregon Grape, Salal, and snowberries. The salal berries are dark blue/purple resembling blueberries. The salmonberries that were plentiful and slightly unripe last week seemed to all disappear. I only saw a few handful, and they were ripe this week, so I'm assuming the wildlife gathered it for food, especially the birds. The berries are bright red! I ate one and it was still sour though. The birds were very active and were congregated in the canopies around fruit bearing bushes, whereas areas without fruit bushes seems to have less calling birds. Smaller, weedy plants have grown taller, along with the grass! All leaves are fully grown on the trees and bushes. I've identified a lot more plants I haven't seen before.

Weekly growth: taller bushes. Smaller sticky currant are growing fully on the trail.

1 meter site! The leaves are bigger than usual and are in full bloom!

Bracken Fern. Found it growing! I guess everything looked like a sword and lady fern. This has rounded edges, triple pinated.

This is growing everywhere! I've tried ID it from the book, but I spent hours and couldn't find it based on the leaves or the flowers. So I'm enlisting the help of the interweb!

Another picture of the above but with leaves that are 3 leaflets, edged, and tall growing. There are hairs on the little flower stems.

This is one of the sites that I took early on in the quarter but felt it wouldn't change much. I was wrong. It's a beautiful little swamp pond with so much vegetation growing near it!

 Some bird pictures:

Spotted Towhee staring and singing. A pretty chirp chirp dededededede noise it makes! Followed by an ugly car breaking noise ""eeearrrrrrk". It was calling with another bird, exchanging calls back and forth. They were having a conversation! Cute :)

Pilleated Wood pecker. I was hearing the "nuk nuk nuk" dolphin sound of this bird but couldn't find it. While scoping around with my binoculars I spotted it! It was looking for insects on a Beech tree.

Different Bird Poses:

Pileated Woodpecker looking for food. Male.

1. Pileated Woodpecker foraging for food on a Beech. It landed on the top of a tree, then incrementally hopped down the tree to look for food. I didn't know they did this!!! But this is a male bird because I saw his red mustache on his face. It pecked its head in the open tree looking for insects. I didn't see it catch anything so maybe it didn't find anything. It wasn't pecking--I didn't hear a pecking noise that I usually do. Probably because the tree was already split open and it was easy prey for the bird. There wasn't any other woodpecker nearby, so there wasn't any interactions with birds. All the sparrows and chickadees left this bird alone. It's too cool to mess with any little birds. This species isn't competitive with other species since it was relaxed and chill.

Pileated Woodpecker in flight. Nice feathers shown.

2. Pileated Woodpecker in flight! I've never seen it up close in flight before. I've only really heard this bird's "nuk, nuk" dolphin like call. But it was soaring from one tree to another area. I was surprised at how low it was flying. It flew about 6-8 meters high, under the canopy. I would've thought it would fly over the canopy since it is such a big and bulky bird, but it didn't. It beautifully navigated itself through the hanging tree branches and leaves like a boss, yo! This bird is so dope it deserves some street cred! Any who... I was watching it through the binoculars and with my eyes, and it was much more beautiful through my own eyes because I could see the whole picture.
The wings were spread so I could see individual feather "fingers". It was white on the upper half and black on the bottom half. I could definitely see its little red mohawk. As I was following it with my eyes, it flew up and out of the canopy to another part of the park that was too far to run to and still see the bird.

Calmly chirping and singing Song sparrow

3. Song sparrow perched on a Maple tree and chirping/calling. I decided to have a little fun with this birdie and play songs with it from song sparrow, junco, thrush to see how it reacts. When I played the sparrow song, it was frantically flying from one bush to another on the other side (kept going to same bush) to try and hide. When it heard the call, it went under a sword fern and huckleberry bush to hide, then flew to a maple tree and perched itself to look for the predator, repeating this pattern at least 5 times. When I stopped playing the song, it repeated patterns another time, then stopped on the maple and stared at me. No joke, it stared at me probably because it heard the song in my direction. Then it calmly started "chip chip" chipping around. This is when I caught a nice sketch of it since it remained there a long time. It was an adult birdie, but not sure if it was female or male. It was a really plump bird, bigger than what I've been seeing at Ravenna or UBNA, so maybe it was a female about to lay eggs? But I don't know if a female would have been acting in the strange way that it was.
After my fake birdie was gone, this birdie was talking with other birds. It was chirping, then singing and waited for replies in which other birds replied. I listened to this bird and another bird (about 15-20 meters away?) exchanging songs and calls. They did this for over 5 minutes. It was fascinating! But the most awesome part is coming up. Brace yourself...

Fighting Song sparrows. Incredibly fast. Never have I seen before.

4. Song sparrow fighting! Okay, so technically it wasn't this sparrow that was fighting, but it was two smaller males fighting near my plump little birdie friend. This is why I think my bird is female--because two smaller males were fighting near the female and the female just watched. It didn't move from its perched tree, it only re-positioned itself.
Here's what happened: while I was watching my birdie, I suddenly heard a loud wavering flag sound (imagine a flag violently waving in the wind. THAT sound.) When I looked over to my left, I saw a salmonberry bush rumble. Then I saw the two males fighting with each other! I quickly sketched this awesome display. But they were violently fast! Then one bird flew back into the trees/bushes more while the other closely followed suit. Then they flew high up into the upper canopy (40 meters?) and I lost sight of them.
I have a couple of hypotheses for the events. One: my plump birdie friend was the female for one of the male birdie chasing the other out because it was a threat. Two: One male got too close to the other male's territory (the female is already in it) and so they were fighting. Three: the bird songs I was playing with my birdie and aggravated the male bird, so it found a song sparrow nearby that thought was calling to the plump bird so it fought with it (if so, I'm sorry little birdies :( ). Four: it was purely coincidental and two males just happened to be fighting next to my birdie friend while it didn't move.  They could've been male friends, or mates, or just a wandering passerby that didn't care.

Week 7: Invert Hunting!

Place: McCollum Park
Time: 11 am
Weather: Clouds... :(
Temperature: 55F (Mid 50s low 60s)

I haven't been to this park in 2-3 weeks so I was excited to see the changes! And boy did it change.
Salmonberries were in full bloom! There are now fruits on the bushes, but the white flowers of the bush disappeared.

Weekly Phenology Update:
The picture doesn't do the spot justice. The foot shrubs grew about a 0.5-1 foot taller in general. I now recognize Vanilla leaf as one of them! Then there are a bunch of clovers. The small trailing flowers actually disappeared and are replaced with full grown leaves. There are now taller grasses than before! There didn't use to be so much grass. Also, there used to be a couple of dried out, dead ferns in the bottom corner of this picture frame. When I was taking this picture, it was gone! That could only mean one thing..... it regrew and became fully green!!!
There is definitely more green and less woody brown in this area. It's odd though, this area used to be filled with flowers from thimbleberry, salmonberry, and trailing weeds/species. The flowers were pink, white, purple, yellow. Now, there doesn't seem to be much flowers! The only flowers I've been seeing are either dead and withered, or the yellow dandelions. In exchange, the Salmonberry have grown and are now an orange color!
As for the wildlife, I came here in the early afternoon, so there weren't much birds chirping as usual, or as many bugs. But I did see a good variety just looking around.

Landscape: My weekly spot. What I thought were bushes in the back were actually small trees! They have grown.

Following the area around this small maple tree (1 meter). The Sword Ferns grew much taller and are more erect than before. It used to be loose, flattened near the ground, and slightly brown. Now it stands tall and full. The young Acer macrophyllum has leaves now. No more little helicopter like buds, and no longer nakey.

Close up: I haven;t been here for a bit so the angle isn't exactly the same, but the tree and area is. The tree went from a barely budding, empty tree three weeks ago into a blooming tree with an underbrush growing!

The other 1 meter picture. The hazelnut (it's been I while, and it's not here anymore so it's either beaked hazelnut or thimbleberry) seems to have fallen from the wind. The shrubs have grown just as expected. There aren't many flowers around here anymore though.

Again, not exactly the same angle since the "marker" tree/bush I used now looks different and was difficult to find. BUT I assure you this is the same 1 meter area, just a different angle! I'm not making this up XD You can even see the D. Fir stump in the background.

Another view of the same 1 meter area.

INVERTS TIME!

1. Banana slug Banananannanana ! This banana slug was a greenish yellow color. I found it near the roots/trunk of a large Douglas Fir. It's a mollusk. It was somewhat sideways and not moving, or moving very slowly. It moved when I wasn't watching it -___- Other than that, there's not much to describe about the slug, other than it was slightly shiny and wrinkly like an old man (more like a middle-aged man). It had small little dots on the entire body. The underside was whitish/yellow and had gray lines running vertically. It's called the "skirt". Running along the slug's body, it starts from being wide to being narrow once you hit the tail end. The tail end is a rounded point. 

It was super squishy! I kept poking it and it responded by contracting a bit and it moved a bit. There's a weird hole on the mantle (only saw one hole). It's the lungs and pooping hole and reproduction hole for the mollusk. It had two feelers in the front.

Banana Slug! Descriptions in drawing. The only addition I added was the eyes. It doesn't have those black dots. BUT I did see a weird jagged line that looked like a mouth.

 2 and 3: A two-for-one deal! These are quick sketches since the two kept moving too much and too fast, so I didn't have time to turn the page. I later made more detail from what I remembered.
Both have 6 legs and two large main wings that look like one wing when it's closed.

Two inverts:
TOP: Diptera
BOTTOM: Odonata

2. The top is a small fly diptera order (type I don't know). It was orange, about 7-8mm long, and had a large hump on a side view. It was walking around on a leaf and flying away then back. I don't know if the hump is for babies or if it's just a characteristic of it.

Diptera

3. The bottom is of Odonata order: a dragonfly. It was about 2-3cm long (it was really small!!) It had three segments: the head, the abdomen, then the tail. The "tail" was a striped brown and red color similar and was a rounded tip at the end (which leads me to believe it's a baby dragonfly, as I haven't seen any flies look like this). The abdomen is a dark brown color with a white light circular spot (I drew on the picture). It too had 6 legs and wings that hid its tail.

Odonata

 3. My favorite! The Bumblebee bumble bumble bumble.... It's in the Hymenoptera order. Since it was within distance and kept flying in the same vicinity, it was pretty easy to capture the main characteristics to draw it. I counted 6 legs, 4 on top and 2 large ones on the bottom half. It had 2 large wings, and I faintly detected two small wings (I could be wrong). It had 2 antennae. Its body was black with 2 main yellow stripes on each segment. One at the tip of the head, one on what I like to call its butt. Oddly enough, I didn't see a stinger when I was observing it. Perhaps it was hiding or the angle was never right because I do know they have stingers, but unlike honeybees, they don't die after a sting. Bumblebees can sting multiple times without dying since the stingers don't come off when they sting.
The ends of their feet look pointy and also point in two different directions (like a U). This bee was bumbling around a Thimbleberry flower (one of the few ones still around). It had a pink flower/pollen with it. I think it was all the pollen it gathered (so it gathered a lot!!!!!! 0.0) It was actually pretty incredible. I watched and followed it while it was buzzing around collecting pollen for about 10 minutes while I drew. It kept coming back to the same flower at least 4 times after it visited another flower.

Bumblebee: Hymenoptera order

POEM TIME!!!!!!

Poem 1: The Majestic Death of Me, Kelly

Oh how thy efforts go not to waste,

As creating a masterpiece makes not haste.

Diamonds, circles, floating in mid-air--

Its function is a two-fer: one of beauty and of food thy hope to ensnare.

Hanging in the middle as if thy life depends on it,

No humans, nor winds can disturb what thy knit.

Spinning and spinning the art endlessly around,

Thy bring it back up when a better place is found.

Creepy, crawly, thy movements are quick,

When you crawl onto my arm, I scream then I flick.

Thy bottom gives way to the weaves for thy life,

In nature it's beauty; in my home---

I chase you down with a butcher's knife.

When thy hear a ribbit, a caw, or a meow meow

Thy better fear for thy life, as it'll end right nyow.

BWAHAHAHAHAHAHA

I tried to make the creature sound pretty and majestic, but I couldn't keep my feelings out of the poem. SCARY!!! D: I admit Spiders are pretty cool, but I've had one too many in my house, and they are the death of me, thus the title. This is more of the silly one that I wrote. It started off nice but ended up weird at the end, but I kept it so you all can enjoy =D

POEM 2: The Life of a Bubble

Safely encased in a frothy bubble,

It looks like a human was there, the kind that makes trouble.

Safely living your life in a warm encasing,

You are protected from the birds that aren't embracing.

You spend your early days in your protection,

Eating the green grass of which you've grown affection.

You suck it up and eat it dry,

It's as though you made it acidify.

When the time comes, your encasing dissolves,

Out comes a small youngster with lots of resolve.

Armed with a pair of wind surfers, and six little helpers,

They allow you to forever fall and land you in shelters.

Shelter from rain and snow and wind,

The six of them support your body and help you find skin--

The skin of all things green and readily available, that is,

And finding a mate to help you procreate!

Small in size, about a millimeter or two,

The strength it takes for you to fly or do.

When you procreate you leave your young somewhere familiar,

With lots of food when they wake, and in a casing you hold dear.

It's the frothy bubbles conglomerated together, the ones you grew up in,

And the cycle continues when a new life begins.

Hopefully I was clear in what this insect is >.< I saw a lot of them on grass in my area, but not ones that were grown. I did see small nymphs in the bubbles though after observing carefully. This is a Spittlebug! Or a Froghopper is another common name. 

Note on second line: I was trying to describe spit as coming from people who often spit in public anywhere at any time. It's not true, but I was trying to portray a troublemaker spitting all over the place because they don't care what they do.

Week 6: Skyroot Farms and Ebey's Landing

This week we went to Whidbey Island to visit beloved Beth's totally rad Skyroot Farm and to explore Ebey's Landing. I live so close to this island, yet I've never actually been to explore it.

Skyroot Farm is a very diverse little world harboring many different ecosystems all within that one land plot. In it we saw riparian habitat, prairie habitat, forest habitat, heavily managed farming habitat, and more but these are the ones I remember most.
When I heard we were going to a farm, my first thought was "uhhhhh, boring! There's nothing to see there!" Boy was I wrong. The first thing I noticed when entering the farm were the chicken--the amazing chickens! One I designated Big Bird because she looks like Big bird from Sesame Street. It's a Chamois Polish Chicken I believe, since those are the only hens that look like Big Bird. But that's not native to the northwest. But I was super happy that I figured out the species of the bird!

It's Big Bird!!!!!!!!!!!

As we walk into the entrance of the farm, I see the actual farm with plants and flowers! But that's not really part of this journal so I'll skip what I saw.

When we split up as groups, I joined the forest group, which turned into the riparian zone group, which turned into a little mini tour group. The first thing I notice in the forest is how young it is. There is virtually no understory, except with a few ferns and knocked down wood here and there. It was littered with slugs! I found a Black slug, which is actually invasive to the area since it outcompetes with the banana slug and also consumes fungi that is important in the ecosystem. They usually prefer moist environments, so most were found near the water but some were found in the drier spots of the forest. I also saw Banana slug . The forest consisted of the typical trees we've learned: Douglas Fir, Redcedar so nothing really new or interesting. The forest was dry and cool from the upper canopy blocking direct sunlight and rain going down.

Black slug. It looks cut in half and dead... Unless it's a baby. It was hanging around near the wet area.

Moving down to the water zone, there is a sudden shift of forest into a riparian zone. What was shaded, uneven, cool,, and big tree filled turned into a semi-open, wet, thin tree area. There in the zone we found lots of common horsetail and Red Alder. This area had bushes blooming so there were more insects around. Butterflies were flying over and around the areas. Butterflies rested on the Lady fern and bushes nearby. Both Horsetail and Alder need constant water sources since they aren't good at retaining water, therefore explaining their abundance in the riparian zone. The creek was actually smaller than I thought. Around it were birds, and is a good spot for birds to nest. The butterfly below was flying around and landing on the bushes. It looks as if its trying to camouflage itself or to gather pollen/nectar and spread it to other places.

Lepidoptera order! It looks like it's hiding from predators (us) or transporting pollen from one place to another.

Exploring the farm was a lot of fun. My favorite was observing bees do their thing. I have an affinity with bees. I think they're so awesome and little, and are my favorite flying critters. Walking around the actual farmed plants, I saw the honeybees flying from flower to flower trying to get some nectar. I also found bumblebees doing the same thing, but bumblebees are predatorial and eat smaller honeybees. Both bees rarely stayed still for me to get a decent picture in.

I liked watching the birds, but it's so difficult knowing what they're doing when they're so far away. The Songsparrow Tim caught was my first time seeing a live bird up so close. I could see the evolutionary history of the bird being related to dinosaurs. The claws are talon like and scaly, as with their legs. The wings are like little fingers for birds filled with bones. I think the best part I saw was when the bird pooped on Hannah and she forgot and touched her hair! The cutest part is when the bird opens its beak. The bird was male because only they would be aggressive enough to fly into a net and get caught. It was obviously stressed out a bit.

Tim and Jorge giving lesson on Songsparrow. How to measure and the history of it.

I really liked Tim's discovery of the little frog. I think it was a red-legged frog? I'm not sure if that was the right identification we came up with. I don't remember anything about it, but it was cute.

Red orange legs of the frog. The way we tried identifying it.

Calmly sitting in Shelby's hand. It's soft, squishy and slimy. The frog kept wanting to jump away.

And although this technically isn't native northwest species interactions, the chickens were the best display of competition I saw all day. The two males constantly competed with each other to be top dog and get the hens. I noticed that when I got close to a hen, the rooster would come out and puff up his chest and look intimidating. It was cute. But when the two roosters were together they didn't seem to fight. They were just calling.

This rooster tried to intimidate me. It seemed to be protecting the hens and acting territorially.

Up on the meadow prairie there were lots of Cleaver. They are edible herbs and are Native! I wonder if Beth planted these, or if these naturally came after they manually cut out all the Blackberries.

Cleaver growing out in the meadow prairie field.

There were lots of these Spittlebug like things on grass. These bugs are drawn to moist areas, so most of them were found in the parts of the farm nearest the water and shaded areas. The bug feeds on the grass. The spit helps to protect the baby bugs called nymphs while they feed until adulthood. These are pests and could greatly hurt Beth's grassy farm. I'm not sure if there are any benefits of having them around.

Cool spit bug things. They live in this spit like thing to protect the babies!

The landscape picture I decided to draw incorporated three different types of habitats. In the far back is the coniferous evergreen forest, where the trees are tall and have pine needles. In front of that are shorter and rounder deciduous broadleaf trees. In the middle is

Skyroot Farms sketch. It's not the best since I have trouble drawing plants. But you can see how there's different landscapes. There's the coniferous forest largely looming in the back. In front you see broadleaf deciduous trees. Then in the middle we see Alders and the water zone, along with a random brown patch of grass I still don't know anything about.

One of the insects we caught was a Pill Bug I assume.

Pill Bug! This bug was fun to watch. Note, it was difficult for me to count the legs, so I drew what I saw. It's not representative of what the legs look like. All other things are as accurate as I could draw.

Next we went to Ebey's Landing. Here we got to see what was on top of the cliff area. It's interesting that the landing had two types of ecosystems: one marine and one mountainside like. Near the walkway up the stairs I see a Red winged blackbird perched and surveying the area. We were in his territory, but there was no other bird around. Walking up the mountain gave a beautiful view of the mountains. Looking across the fields, I notice a farm and the patch of land they work with. Compared to the mountainside, the farm field looked odd. It's a reminder that people are using agriculture to their advantage. Walking up I found very few birds and mammals, but lots of plants. We found the Prickly pear cactus! It was smaller than I thought. These prickly pears enjoy very dry areas. Since they contain and retain water really well, they do not need water.

This little cactus hiding in the midst of the dry grass.

Clusters of Prickly pears congregated in the dry grass up on the hill.

It was hiding in the dry grass, next to the Seashore Lupine. The lupine has little hair all over it. Since the hillside has no coverage from the wind, all plants are exposed to it. The wind can break the stomata of the plant, causing it to lose water and become less efficient. The hair is there to make the wind fly over the plant, causing the plant to stabilize and not move as much. This is a smart plant.
You can definitely see how the landscape on the hillside was changed by the wind. All of the trees are pointing to a certain direction, revealing how the wind constantly blows that way and shapes it. The plants that succeed in the windy hillside area are those well adapted, such as the lupine and cactus.

Close up of the Lupine. You can see the hairs all over the plant.

Ebey's Landing Landscape. Where the Blluffs are located is where we went up the mountain (I think). You can see how the ocean creeps up the sand. In the past it seems the ocean shaped the bluff and the cliff we were standing on.

I couldn't fully enjoy Ebey's Landing because being up on those mountains kicked my allergies into high gear and I was battling a massively stuffy nose and headache, to the point I couldn't breathe or naturally swallow my spit. HOWEVER, I am glad I went on this trip and got to see such a diverse ecosystem within a confined space. It changed my thinking on how to view outside places: give them a chance even if it sounds boring because it might surprise you! I know the farm definitely surprised me! 

I especially enjoyed the chickens, the pig! and of course the honey bees flying around working.