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.