Natural Path

Weekend Near the Skagit

2011-07-24T21:36:00.000-07:00

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!

2011-03-01T22:43:00.000-08:00

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

2011-02-14T13:14:00.001-08:00

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

2010-09-06T00:52:00.000-07:00

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

2010-06-17T16:01:00.001-07:00

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

2010-06-15T18:46:00.001-07:00

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

2010-04-22T18:20:00.001-07:00

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

2010-04-08T18:31:00.000-07:00

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

2010-03-10T13:58:00.000-08:00

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

2010-03-08T19:45:00.001-08:00

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!

2010-02-07T21:32:00.001-08:00

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

2010-01-04T17:18:00.001-08:00

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

2009-12-03T22:22:00.000-08:00

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

2009-12-02T17:12:00.000-08:00

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

Canine Tracks

2009-10-15T12:14:00.000-07:00

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

2009-10-10T12:45:00.001-07:00

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.

Oregon Dunes

2009-10-02T23:27:00.000-07:00

I just got back from the Oregon dunes on a trip with the Anake program at Wilderness Awareness School. It was a great group of people in an always amazing place!

One of the Benefits of Getting Up Too Early

2009-09-27T14:46:00.000-07:00

Keying Out a Mustard Part 3

2009-09-25T15:37:00.000-07:00

Part 1

Part 2

This post has been waiting for a long time! I am again using Hitchcock and Cronquist's Flora of the Pacific Northwest and this time am starting at the Cardamine key. Thanks again to Kitty for looking it over and providing the commentary in italics.

The leaves are compound so we take 1b and the petals are small and white leading us through 4b to Group II.

It isn't always clear to me what counts as taprooted, but the petals do not approach 7mm, I believe the plant is annual/biennial and it is definitely weedy so I will go with 12b.

Seems like the length of the petals is the most straight forward character at this couplet. I felt compelled to look up taproot in a handy little book, “How to Identify Plants” by Harrington and Durrell. Their definition was pretty straight forward; (a thick tapering root, that can be slender or as thick as a beet). So how to decide if something is a taproot if it is slender? I thought that the discussion of annual root systems in the same book offered a bit of useful information “ …seldom much enlarged, has no special food storage structures and usually merges into the stem without a break caused by scars or constrictions” In other words, I’d look for a scar of constriction to help decide about the nature of a root.

This last bit is a little more fiddly, but not too bad. When I count the seeds through the silique in the above picture, it looks like there are 11, but since there will be a similar number on the other side, that gives 22 seeds for the silique. None of the siliques appeared to have significantly more than that where as option 14b calls for 24-40 seeds. Also when I enlarge the image of the whole plant I can see that the lateral stem leaves appear relatively egg shaped rather than lanceolate. This leads me to choose 14a: C. oligosperma. We can go further in this key and since the plant is growing at low elevation and would not be surprising to find as a garden weed it is likely var. oligosperma.

Seems like this one worked out to species easier than I thought it might. The distinction between C. oligosperma and C. pennsylvanica seems pretty straightforward as long as the fruit are available.

I tried the key in Cruciferae of continental North America that was posted anonymously. I used the key to Cardamine occurring north of Mexico and followed a pretty straightforward path until couplet #24 which required a bit of wiggling. In order to get to C. oligosperma, the plant should have abundant basal leaves in the form of a rosette and spreading hairs on the stem bases and petioles. The basal leaves don’t look particularly abundant, but there are at least a few basal leaves. I’m willing to describe the basal leaves as forming a rosette (although weak). Seems like we established that there were a few simple hairs in Part II of this exercise..

If I take the path that leads me away from C. oligosperma, I can eliminate from consideration the species because of geographical distribution (e.g. C. debilis) or number of seeds (e.g.C. pennsylvanica) or leaf shape and abundance (C. parviflora). The only species remaining is C. flexuosa. I’m having a bit of trouble eliminating this last species from contention. I think that the number of seeds is probably a good characteristic, but am having trouble finding the number of seeds per silique in flexuosa. One clue is that this flora talks about the similarity of flexuosa and pennsylavanica and a discussion of a bitter cress found in West Vancouver BC. http://www.ubcbotanicalgarden.org/forums/showthread.php?t=22568

Although tempted by flexuosa, I think I’ll stick with oligosperma

Lopez Island Camping

2009-09-17T14:06:00.000-07:00

I went with some friends to Lopez island a few weeks ago. We had plans to play lots of games, stay up late sneaking around in the woods and so forth. The island had other plans for us though. It ended up being a very lovely, lazy weekend.

That was the first time I have been on Lopez and I liked it a lot. It made me a little homesick for my island roots. There weren't a lot of commercial places to go and a lot of the business shut down at 4pm, which works out nicely when your intent is to spend time outside anyway :). The town area was small and cool. We picked blackberries nearby and traded them in at the local bakery. We hung out in the used bookstore/adjacent coffee shop and chatted. We went to various beaches and watched seals out on the rocks and the sun set behind the horizon. We collected and dried seaweed and made little slings and practiced throwing smooth beach stones with them. We visited Jeff's grandma and had pie and played boggle.

I need to have more weekends like that.

Blackberries

2009-09-09T10:54:00.000-07:00

It's been an interesting blackberry year. As hot at as it was earlier in the summer patches that had good water had spectacular berries. However, there are a lot of drier patches with plentiful but small blackberries.

A few weeks ago I ate some trailing blackberries up along the pass that were some of the best berries I have ever eaten. They were in a recently logged area and so got plenty of direct sun. They seemed to be in a fairly dry area so I'm not sure if trailing blackberries don't need as much water or if there is some feature of that area that kept it better watered earlier in the season.

Slug Feeding

2009-09-06T12:10:00.000-07:00

I have seen slugs on trees before, and evidence that they had been eating the lichen growing on trees, but this was the first time I have seen a slug eating leaves up in a tree. I am not sure why it surprised me. I tend to think of them more as eating decaying matter, but if that were the entire case they would not be the terror of the garden that they can be.

Nice View

2009-09-01T16:36:00.000-07:00

Pika in a Rock Stack

2009-08-16T23:11:00.000-07:00

Pika (Ochotona princeps) are a type of lagomorph that like to live in rock piles in the mountains. They are very vocal, making a high pitch squeek as an alarm call. Apparently they also sing during breeding season and the fall.

It is possible (just barely) to see a pika in the blog-sized version of this picture. I recommend clicking on the image to enlarge it for a more reasonable challenge though. I think the uncropped version might make a fun jigsaw puzzle.

Caterpillars

2009-08-10T15:22:00.000-07:00

A few weeks ago I was out scouting locations for a tracking class and I noticed these caterpillars. They really seemed to like this plant, as every plant like this I noticed in that area was demolished and had up to a couple of dozen of these caterpillars on each plant. Unfortunately the remnants of the plants were not familiar enough that I could figure out what kind of plant it was.

I tried to identify the caterpillar on cool identification site, but though it returned a result (Utetheisa bella) the pictures of that species look enough different from mine that I suspect they are not the same critter.