WEEK 8

Field Trip to the Yakima Valley 5/21/16

View of the Yakima Canyon

I couldn't sleep the night before and we had to meet at 7:30 AM, so I was so tired that I only remember the first location as a confused blur. The canyon was beautiful, it's always weird to cross the cascades and see a landscape so wildly different than the one I grew up in, yet so geographically close. It was a rare cloudy day, and it was a little chilly, but it was still pleasant enough. When I finally woke up it was actually a pretty amazing day, and we ended up seeing a lot of things I'd never seen before.

Lazuli Bunting

Salsify

The landscape was dominated by an aromatic shrub called big sagebrush. It appears a light blue/white because it's leaves are covered in little hairs that prevent the plant from losing water during the frequent windstorms that hit the shrubsteppe. Right off the bat we saw a beautiful Lazuli Bunting perched in a patch of sage barely 10 feet in front of us. I'm not a bird person at all, but I was told that this was a pretty exciting, rare sighting? The bird was one of the prettiest I've ever seen, with it's dark blue head and orange neck. We also saw another colorful bird on the other side of the railroad tracks– a Yellow-Breasted Chat. We had some free time and, like I said, I was pretty much in acoma so I wasn't feeling very social and I wandered around alone until I found a nice place to sit. It was a very relaxing place to exist. I saw many examples of an exquisite flower that I'm pretty sure is called a Salsify. It's buds look like the tips of spears and they open up to reveal a yellow flower with black spots in it's center.

Gross ants being gross

bitterroot in bloom

The next location we went to was on the side of a road in the middle of nowhere. I can't remember what kind of ecosystem Tim said it was– litho-something. It's a rare and fragile arid environment with very rocky soil. Tim said we could find scorpions if we turned over rocks, so a group of us made it our mission to find one. A couple times I flipped over rocks I found weird little ant homes with white grubs and hundreds of swarming ants. My instinct is to say those are eggs or premature ants, but they were larger than the ants themselves, so I wasn't sure what to make of them. The ground was covered in mysterious Bitterroot flowers, which are the only above ground part of the plant itself. I'm not sure how the Bitterroot survives, but it certainly doesn't make it's own food with photosynthesis because the stalks and flowers were a dark shade of red, not green. Little stalks of Wild Onion could also be seen, with small clumps of purple flowers. I tried a stem and it tasted a lot like chive, it would probably be good on a bagel.

Some kinda crazy beetle

Scorpion 

After about 20 minutes we actually did find a scorpion. I'd never seen one in the wild before and it was really exciting– I don't remember being so taken aback by something I found in the wild since childhood. Scorpions have to be some of the most alienesque animals on the planet– their bodies just straight up don't make any sense. It didn't like having it's picture taken and it tried to attack the camera, raising it's claws and running at the plastic wall of it's prison. We also found an enormous black beetle in the same area, about as long as my pinky finger. Further up the hill there were weird mounds that rose like islands our of the rocky soil. Tim said that geologists still debate the causes of the formations, they didn't make any sense to me. They were covered in a different variety of sage– stiff sagebrush. While the big sagebrush had fatter, trident shaped leaves, this new sagebrush had narrow, pointed leaves, and was often accompanied by Thomson's paintbrush, a parasitic plant that apparently fed on the nutrients collected by the sage's roots.

Camel Spider/Alien Lifeform

Rubber Boa got skates

The real high light of this location was the Camel Spider that I found at the very end, under the last rock I turned over. Tim didn't actually know what this thing was. It looked like a cross between a spider and a scorpion, with a fat, long body, big pincers, and 8 legs. Like a scorpion, it had arms of some kind that extended in front of it, but without pincers at the end. The arms were almost as long as the creature's body itself, and it held them up in an awkward position that made it look like a forklift. It was very fast, and it tried to dig itself away from me when I first saw it– I figure that's what the arms are for. I also saw a Rubber Boa, which was ridiculously quick for having no legs and no one could quite catch it.

Maaad pretty waterfall

The final location we went to was the site of a waterfall. We didn't have much time, so I didn't do much species observation because I was focusing on moving as fast as possible to get to the waterfall in time, but I did stop for a minute to look at the Aspen trees, and marvel at the fact that an entire grove of them is, in fact, a single organism. The creek we were following emptied into a beautifully carved bowl of rock, falling 30 or so. But the coolest thing I found was on the top of the adjacent hill– a basalt structure that I could have sworn was built by humans. The rocks rose in uniform hexagonal pillars, and upon closer inspection, the rocks themselves weren't even connected, they were just stacked perfectly on top of each other by some unseen God. I've never taken a geology course so I have no idea what could have possibly caused this, but I enjoyed climbing around on them, the view was amazing from the top.

All in all it was a pretty rad trip, and when I got home I slept for 11 hours.

Close up of massive cracks 

Crazy Basalt structures

WEEK 7

Wednesday, May 18th
6:00– 6:50 PM
56˚ and Cloudy, off and on drizzling

Orange salmon berry

Dull Oregon Grape fruit

So this is probably the first time I've been out here on a shitty day. I'm shivering and a little wet but the forest seems indifferent. For some reason it seems like all the plants made a mutual decision during the week to go all out on their fruit production. Out of nowhere all of the salmon berries are bright orange and ready to eat. Little patches of color are scattered everywhere– I had no idea salmon berries were so abundant in the area until now. I tasted one and it was delicious– still a little sour of course but that's how I like them. A dull oregon grape plant I've been keeping my eye is making huge moves too, stuntin' with it's clumps of light green berries that I hadn't noticed before. The samaras on the bigleaf maples have made progress since last I noticed them too– they're much larger and appear more or less fully formed now. Finally, the fruit of the Indian Plum that I've been observing has turned from light green to bright, almost fluorescent yellow that sticks out like a frat boy in a gender studies colloquium.

Near fully formed samara

Yellow Indian Plum fruit

As my biology major mom pointed out, this isn't a good time for bugs, so invertebrates were very hard to find. It's early in the spider season calendar, which peaks around halloween, so I found quite a few Garden Spiders but they were babies– so tiny that some were barely visible to the naked eye. I watched one cross from one branch of a tree sapling to another, suspended above the ground on a nearly invisible thread. It was very light yellow– nearly translucent. I've always found it weird that Seattle is such a spider infested city– it seems so random. I hate spiders so I'm savoring these spring months where they're all so tiny that they're almost (not quite) cute.

The next invertebrate I found was a pretty basic one– a pill bug. Actually, a few dozen of them, all scurrying for cover when I brushed away a patch of mulch. The one I focused on had a dark grey outer shell that was divided into 8 segments, and I counted 7 pairs of legs. I picked one up and it immediately curled into a ball, protecting it's vulnerable body with the hard exoskeleton.

Next I found a slug whose dull brown body was covered in black speckles. It A curved line seemed to seperate one part of it's body (a head?) from the other, which had two distinct black stripes down the length of it. It had antennae although they were so small that you can't see them in the picture. I had a very hard time identifying it– apparently the northwest is home to an insane variety of slug species– but I think it was a Giant Garden Slug.

I found a millipede that I couldn't identify either. I've never seen one like it here– I'm used to the ones that have yellow stripes going down on either end. but this one was jet black, with rounded segments in it's body. There were too many segments and leg pairs to count, but the way it moved was really interesting. It was quick, and it slid across the ground like water– effortless motion.

And Now, A Poem

Why do you hide?

I see you

Absurd cave

cosmopalongo

you have nothing to fear

I listen

of
conversion,
subduction;

all you knew was foam

all you knew was hate,

and
knowing foam

as insulation

as isolation

You can't stay
away

You know
foam

and thats all you know

of white

and white

and maybe that is

wrong
but

you are safe

and that is all that matters

Week 6
Wednesday, May 11th
6:15 pm
Sunny, 77˚

 It's been a while since I last visited and things are very different. Everyone has finally gotten with the program– there aren't any plants without leaves and the undergrowth is so thick that I can hardly walk down the little trail to get to my spot. It's an absolutely beautiful day, the temperature is perfect and it smells like my childhood.

Progress has definitely been made by the plant community. The Red Huckleberry by my spot has finally bloomed little globe shaped pink flowers. The other plant that I can't seem to identify has bloomed as well– 5 petaled pink/white flowers. It's driving me crazy, it's got tiny, ovular, serrated leaves, with thorns on it's stem and I can't seem to figure out what it is! My picture taking game was very off point today, my phone screen cracked and my camera became impossible to use but I got a very blurry picture of the Salmonberry plant, whose berries are starting to really take shape.

baby salmonberry

The birds were refusing to cooperate. I spent like 45 minutes desperately searching and I only saw a few and just two that stayed in one place long enough to draw and observe. I glimpsed a hummingbird briefly– it's wings nothing but blurs as it magically suspended itself motionless in the air. It appeared and disappeared before I could really get a good look, but it's head looked an odd metallic blue/green, and I was struck by how small it was.

downy woodpecker

The first bird I really saw was a Downy Woodpecker. It took forever to locate it, playing hot and cold, blindly following the tapping sound through the forest, but I finally saw it– about two stories up a huge red alder tree towards the top of the hill. I've seen one here before, but it was still very beautiful. It's breast was white, and it's wings were black with spectacular speckles lining the feathers. There was a distinctive white smudge on the back, and a red patch on the head looked like a silly little baseball cap. The red splotch made me think it was a pileated woodpecker, but randomly bird-wise little brother put me in my place after I showed him the picture. The woodpecker would tap vigorously at one spot on the tree, then wait for a moment, and tap the spot again. After 2 or 3 rounds it would hop to another spot on the bark and try again. A couple times I saw it dig in and pull back like it had caught something, but it was too far away to tell if he (and it is a he, only the males have the distinctive red patch) was actually eating anything. This went on for about 10 minutes and I was about to leave out of boredom, but he beat me to it with a sudden leap. He glided down the canopy, straight towards me and over my head, and then off into the canopy behind me where I couldn't see him. I got a quick gesture sketch of the flight and filled in the details later after looking at my pictures.

The second bird I really saw was much less interesting. A crow found it's way to a perch in a Douglas fir right next to my spot. I couldn't figure out what it was doing there. It just sort of looked around manically, readjusting its grip on the branch and occasionally unleashing an obnoxious "CAW CAW CAW" (at me maybe?) After about a minute the crow got up and glided across the ravine to a tree on the other side and proceeded to do the same thing. After a minute there it moved again, and again, and then right back to the same tree it started at. This whole process took about 10 minutes and it was very confusing for, the crow seemed anxious, like it was waiting for a date and was starting to get the feeling that it had been stood up. Finally the crow called it quits and abandoned it's post, soared up above the canopy and landed on a telephone post back by the road. I'd been looking for birds for long enough anyways so I followed it down the street, where it continued to pick a perch, nervously caw for a minute or two, then glide over to the next one. At some point I realized that this crow was exactly as aware of me as I was of it, and I started to question who was following who (the crow just happened to be leading me back to my parents house in this weird way.) This is sort of how crows are, though, sometimes you have to wonder if it's just our human egos that makes us feel like we're the smart ones making all the calls.