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.