Nature of the Pacific Northwest

2005 Nature Notes by Rob Sandelin. 

This is a compilation of  the years worth of nature articles I sent out in email about the happenings in the natural world of the lowland Pacific Northwest. I have merged them all together into one longish document.  If you want to receive the current monthly email, send an email to floriferous@msn.com and ask to get on the, This week in the woods list, or to get the most current article.

Mid February

We have moved through an important milestone, one which affects many things but often escapes our human notice. During the month of February the amount of daylight expands into the subconscious and we go from 9hrs 45 min to a full 11 hours of light each day by the end of the month.  The length of the day is a timer which determines many natural cycles and events.  When the duration of light hits about 9hrs 30 minutes the local birds begin to tune up their songs. For seasoned birds its old hat, but  this is the first attempts at music for last years hatchlings, and they often don’t get the songs quite right at first. But practice makes perfect. So does listening to your elders.  By mid February  the morning is graced by the songs of Robins, Song Sparrows, and the trill of Dark-eyed Juncos.  Soon the Towhees will move from their Creeek call into a trilling song.  The dark days of winter have passed and the birds rejoice and remind us, spring is near, spring is near!

The warmer than normal temperatures coaxed out some Chorus frogs in late January, but the cold front of early February cooled their jets for awhile yet. Frogs don’t sing unless the nightly low is above 41 degrees,  and it is somewhat of a mystery what happens to the early singers. Do they reenter the cold hibernation state they entered last fall, or do they somehow escape the subfreezing temperatures?  Many amphibians can supercool, which means they can survive temperatures well below freezing without enduring the kind of cell damage which inflicts us warm blooded critters

 

The call of a frog is one of the most energy consuming mating activities of any animal, they belt it out, all night, at times so loudly that it can reach over 85 decibels from a meter away.  Only the males sing by the way, the females choose males by some aspect of their call, loudest, longest, coolest. Who knows why.  Well, obviously the  frogs do. Chorus frogs are still called tree frogs in some parts, and they actually call anytime of year.  It is always a delight to be walking along  in August and hear a dry, wreckit.  The mating calls are much louder and persistent. By early March they should be going in force, maybe 40 calls a minute, all night. It’s a wonder the females mate at all. Not tonight honey, all this noise has given me a headache…..

 
While the Midwest still has several feet of snow, we can enjoy the gray relatively warm moist days of early spring.  Early spring is celebrated with the first green leaves of the Indian Plum, and in select locations, a few dangles of tiny white flowers.  Each year, northwest nature watchers eagerly scour the forest edges for this omen of the change. You can easily identify this shrub by the strong cucumber smell of the crushed leaf.  The flowers will come in force over the next three weeks, and provide early pollinators something tide them over until the critical Big-leaf Maple blooms of Late March and April. Indian plum has gender, some plants have male flowers, others female. The early bloomers are all males, the females wait for better conditions.  The buds are fat on the Salmonberry and a few of the tissue delicate red-flowers are out. Early blooming is a risky gamble. In our latitude a harsh cold snap, even snow can take out early buds and exposed flowers. However if you closely examine the shrubs that put out early flowers, they do so cautiously, only putting forth perhaps 10% into this risky investment, maintaining the bulk of their capital for more prudent later bloom.
Several salamanders are well into their breeding cycle at this point. The large baseball sized jelly globs of the Northwestern Salamander have been deposited on stems in creeks and lakes for almost a month now. So have the smaller egg masses of the Long-toed salamanders. Both these creatures tend to be active on those warmer than 40 degree nights, hiding during the day under logs, old boards or whatever other cozy covers they can find.  On warm rainy nights these dual life creatures move from land to water, sometimes traveling up to a mile to their breeding ponds or creeks.  The huge egg mass of the Northwestern can get up to a quarter of a pound and reach the size of a softball.  How can a creature of such diminutive size pass such a huge collection of potential babies? Its an old amphibian trick; the eggs are quite small when laid and then absorb water and expand to 20 times their original size.
I heard a rustling in the thick brush and slowly and carefully stalked to a watching place. I kept hearing the noise but could not see any creature that would make it. I imagined the creature must be quite large from the volume of the sound. It turned out to be the spring cleaning of the Mountain Beaver. What I heard was the dirt being violently pushed to the surface of a tunnel and the excess would avalanche downhill into the grass.  Mountain Beavers are a primitive vegetarian, an oddity of the mammal world who graces the moist and humid coasts of BC to Northern CA.  They dig extensive tunnel systems, storing food in some chambers, giving birth in others.  They are a true denizen of the northwest and die out if they get too dry. During dry summer periods they stay in their burrows which they close up to keep humid.
 
Overturning an old board this week I found a grassy nest of the Townsends Vole filled with 8 pink squirming hairless babies. This animal is may produce 6 or more litters in a good year, and a suitable acre can pump out hundreds of these tiny trail builders in a season.
 This is why they are the predators lunchbox,  supporting families of hawks, owls, coyotes and weasels.  In areas of tall grass these 4-5 inch engineers create a system of highways and byways to try to conceal their movements.  When their populations are at a peak, you can sit in suitable habitat and hear them munching and scurrying about.   I caught one by hand a few weeks ago, and since I did not have my camera I decided to bring it home to photograph. As I was carrying it, it begin to sing!  It was a high pitched sort of eeeeeek, so high pitched it was almost at the edge of my hearing range. To my astonishment and delight, this song brought a Northern harrier up out of the grass. The Harrier, a kind of low soaring hawk, swooped quite close to me, intent on finding this singing snack.  I hastily put the creature into my pants pocket, hoping it would settle down and not gnaw through into the interior of my pants, which even for a naturalist, would pose a dilemma.
 

If you are inclined to head out in search of a drive you might want to check out the Skagit flats.  In addition to several hundred Trumpeter swans, the fields host more than ten thousand snow geese, which often hang out together in one place, at a distance looking like a snow patch. When an eagle or other large bird flies over a big chunk of the flock can take to the air with thousands of goose calls reverberating across the landscape.  The fields and farmlands also attract and host several hundred eagles, hawks and falcons. 

Mid March 05

Water. Amazing stuff, this hydrogenated oxygen. It comes in three forms, liquid, solid and a gas, and like Houdini, it can magically change from one to the other in the blink of an eye. Splish splash the water drips down the window during a rain squall and before it reaches the ground, the sun comes out and turns it back into vapor that goes floating off over the tree tops as whispy ghost-like writhing mists.  Sometimes water goes from ice to air, without turning liquid first. This is called sublimation.  Water is the only naturally occurring substance on earth that does this trick.   Water is sticky stuff, the molecules hug each other tightly, loathe to break into their own parcels. A rain drop, when it lands and lays there, forms a shallow dome shape. Defying gravity, a water strider skates across this tension on the waters surface.
The stickiness of water defines how tall trees can grow. Inside a tree, long wooden pipes ship water from root to branch. As water evaporates from the top most branches it pulls a long chain of water molecules up, like a straw. However, water can only hold together against gravity for so long, then it breaks. The highest a tree can grow is about 130 meters, because that is as long a column of water can stretch before breaking. 

 
Water comes to us from huge rivers of air that move  through the sky. As they scamper across the ocean they sweep up water molecules and carry them as vapor. As they rise and cool they form clouds, which get squished against the mountains, compress and wring out like a sponge. At least that’s what is supposed to happen.  But climate is what you expect, and weather is what you get. So in this year of the great drought,  the sky is not following the script. Giant bubbles of high pressure air have pushed the cloud rivers to the north and south, bringing record rainfall to places like the Mojave desert.  Death Valley National Park in eastern California is right now showing off more flowers than anyone alive has ever seen there. Botanists are scrambling and finding species nobody even new grew there.  But our mountains, brown and dirty, have only tattered shawls of snow cover.  Lakes and rivers will be at half mast this summer, some smaller streams will likely go away altogether. Tough times for forests, salmon, and other water needy things.

 

Besides the sky, there are two other sources of water for  the thirsty. One lies hundreds of feet below us, tapped only by long tubes called wells. Water has mass, and thus gravity pulls it, lower and lower into the ground. Sometimes this ground water moves along seams and cracks in the bedrock and end ups downhill in streams or lakes. Some gets stuck in underground basins for several thousands of years, until plate movements break apart new pathways. One such basin lays under  Tucson Arizona. Open the bathroom sink in your Tucson motel room and the water you drink was last on the surface when Trex ruled the earth.  Fossil water, mined at the rates of  hundreds of thousands of gallons a day. Seems like a dicey thing to base a city on.

As we develop cities and parking lots, rainwater hits the impermeable surface and is channeled from the ground into a concrete labyrinth of sewer systems.

The pavement of a small city like Monroe diverts as much as 5 million gallons a year from ever getting into the ground water, a large city like Seattle removes billions of gallons, and channels it in concrete tubes into Puget Sound. Our own water  comes from well #6, a 230 foot deep hole in the ground somewhere east of Echo Lake. Unlike all the rest of the water shipped off to customers, our particular water has nothing added, no chlorine, no fluoride, no alum, no nothing.  The rest of the County  gets its water from an above ground basin, called the Spada Reservoir, which is located to the NE of Monroe. There is 50 billion gallons of water stored there behind Culmback dam on the Sultan River.  Interestingly enough, even though it is only about 30 miles as crow flies, this watershed gets an average of 160 inches of rain a year. A huge underground pipe ships about 5 million gallons a week into Lake Champlain,  the end of which is a treatment plant where the water is filtered and fluoride and chlorine is added. That water, 3-4 million gallons a day then travels dozens of miles, through an underground river of concrete pipes to faucets from Monroe to Everett.
If aliens landed on earth, I doubt they could possibly look much weirder than some the creatures that call a drop of water home.  A bit of water, sitting around for a week or so becomes infected with life, oodles of squirmy stuff.  I took a microscopic look at some water from a puddle in the road. I thought it might have a bit of algae in it. I was astonished to find it was thick with writhing long translucent worms. Like a plate of spaghetti, come to life. Where do they come from? Where do they go when the puddle dries up?  An amazing transient wonderland.  And of course a drop of pond water is absolutely frenetic with odd ball bits of life, zooming and crashing and gobbling up each other.  A neighbors dog came and lapped up some water out of our garden pond. Entire civilizations of rotifers and daphnia down the hatch.

For a cool website full of pictures of  microscopic creatures check out Molecular Expressions.

 

The long procession of sunny days this spring adds to a growing pattern of rainfall reduction and temperature increases. Over the past ten years the annual high temperature record was set and reset 3 times now.  What this means in the natural cycles we can barely begin to understand. 
For example, the first flowers of spring are blooming earlier than they were twenty years ago, and the date of the last frost seems to be moving back annually. These early flowers  provides an energy source for increased numbers of parasitic wasps, who lay their eggs on the backs of emerging caterpillars of spring. These reddish creatures are showing up attracted to the lights on your porch. They are quite stingless  and very pretty.  When the poor wasp-egg infected caterpillars curl up to do their cocoon thing, at the end of the party, instead of a butterfly or moth, out pops a wasp.  So, are butterfly numbers declining? Apparently nobody counts butterflies until  somebody notices they are disappearing, then we start paying attention. Since there is always a variation in butterflies anyway, slow gradual declines are hard to spot. And nobody counts wasps.  If butterflies are declining is it because of increased parasitic wasps, or some other factor? It can take years of study just to understand part of one question.  And of course, as sub-freezing winter nights become less and less common, more things that usually die off in the winter are surviving.  This will be a big year for bark beetles and bald faced hornets

A parasitic wasp, genus Macrocentrus?
An interesting insect out and about on these sunny afternoons are the dance flies. These are largish flies with a distinctive round, ball-like head that ends in a bird-like beak. They use this beak to snatch and eat other insects.  Dance flies dance of course to attract mates, and they dance together in a mass. If you see a small cloud of flies moving up and down you have found one of their dance parties. Some of these flies look enormous and that is because they offer presents to the females in the form of food. Sort of like disco dancers with steaks on their heads. The male with the best food tidbit probably gets the first mate, and as she grabs on to the food, they tumble into the dust to mate.  

The bright  flowers of the Red-flowering currant are out now, and thus the Rufus hummingbird is also back. These early migrants are probably heading north still, the nesters will show up in early April and begin staking out territories. Our little red hummer lets you know about his space with a sneezy sounding KA chewwwwww call, often coming as an exclamation point at the end of a looping circular flight pattern.

 The white drooping flowers of the Indian plum are in full production now, and Salmonberry is also showing  lots of blossoms. The Salmonberries are the early morning food for the queen bumblebees, that are out in search of pollen for their egg making. Bumblebee queens have a hard time competing with the honey bees here, but they have an edge on the colder mornings because they can operate at lower temperatures, thus the early bee gets the pollen. In the forest the green flags of the sprouting Mianthemum are unfurling to revel the heart-shaped leaves and while the Trilliums are still hidden, within the next week they should begin popping out leaves and flowers into the forest floor.  The wetland has a green mist about it as the Spirea and Elderberry begin to leaf out.

 

Red flowering Currant

The Robins are back, and so are the Violet Green Swallows, who are a full week early of their usually arrival time.  The morning chorus is dominated by the loud voices of the robins, but the Song sparrows, Towhees and Juncos are adding their music to the mix.  The Winter wrens also send out their squeaky bicycle wheel of a song pretty much any time of day and their cousin, the Bewicks wren gives his Chew chew chew commentary.  Although summer migrants such as the warblers and tanagers usually don’t show up until mid-April, this year we might hear their voices much sooner.

As we enter into this summer of drought,  maybe you might rethink your water usage patterns and find some ways to take a bit less out of good ole well #6. The water district has lots of good info on water saving ideas, and I would expect mandatory water reductions will be put in place before any too long. The window of precipitation for refilling our parched watersheds is rapidly closing.

 
Mid-May

It's snowing!  Brief moments of sunshine become filled with swirls of  the tiny white seed drifts of cottonwood. The seeds form markers which allow us to watch the patterns of the swirling winds.  I brought a branch of this tree inside, the leaves were offset with a drooping stem of green pea sized seed pods. Overnight the pods opened and my office exploded with white fluff.  The seeds in the pods are marvelously compressed, packed tight. As the pod breaks open along obvious seams, the seeds seem to spring out, anxious to find their way in the world.

Each day the morning is heralded by the symphonic calls of the resident birds expressing their hopes, loves and homeland security. The residents have long since established their territorial boundaries and now are busy tending to the first crop of babies.  Towhees, Song Sparrows, Dark-eyed Juncos and Chickadees all can be seen frantically gathering food as their eggs are hatching. Yesterday I watched a Song Sparrow gathering up insects in the garden, sticking out of its beak was an odd assortment of legs and bug parts, then it was off to the secret nest location.  It returned less than two minutes later to continue the hunt. When you see a bird carrying food its usually a reliable sign that it's feeding young.  

A couple of  migrants into the neighborhood are a pair of flycatchers, the Pacific -slope Flycatcher, and the Western Wood Peewee. These birds are called flycatchers because of their tell-tale behavior of perching in obvious places, then flying out to nab a fluttering insect, then  returning back to their original perching place.  There are many kinds of flycatchers and some of them look almost exactly alike, leaving bird watchers everywhere confounded. However, each species has its own unique voice, and so you can use their calls to differentiate them.  In fact, this time of year is a great time to work on learning the calls of the many birds as they perch and sing to establish territories.  

Watching birds is the way I stay alert to the world. Head up, eyes scanning, ears open I process the state of the always changing reality of nature. Because of this, I see other things. Looking for Towhees I see a bumblebee slowly crawling up the wet grass, hoping for a ray of sunshine to warm her up enough to fly. A robin alerts me to the mouse trails at the edge of the grass. Looking for birds in the middle of the city I see the dramas of crows searching, of starlings fighting. I notice each green patch where a few native shrubs struggle to stand above the strangling blackberry under an underpass.  And on a regular basis, I am suddenly kicked out of middle-age and back into the wonder and awe of childhood, staring, mouth agape at these marvelous creatures who soar among us like angels.

The frog music continues but is beginning to decline as the amphibians move out of water and back onto land. Chorus frogs only come to water to reproduce, and that being done, they find more to eat in the woods, or along grassy pathways.  The eggs are hatching and ponds and swamps are full of squirming pollywogs, lapping up algae and other smallish plant growth.  The warmth and sun combine to create a explosion of insects, who then cower and hide as the sunshine is swallowed up by black clouds and then violent pummeling rain and hail. How do insects survive these outbursts?  Some don't. But many find the undersides of leaves to make wonderful shelters. I found a dragonfly, laying twitching on a trail. A sudden hard rain had knocked this most agile of fliers from the sky. I placed it on my finger, a glittering jewel of blue and yellow, a Darner. Its radar eye scanned all around and I wondered what it made of me.  With a shudder to shake off the final drops  it took to the air and hovered near my face,  slightly dancing back and forth, and then almost too fast to see, it zipped off, chasing the sunshine.

Salmonberries are at their peak, full of water and that particular aftertaste which true consumers of the fruit relish. The Western Tanagers greedily pound these morsels down while awaiting the next crop of berries.  The Banana slugs, those greenish yellow behemoths can also be found enjoying the fallen fruits. These slugs, which many people find disgusting, take refuge up plant stems at night to avoid the tiny voracious shrews who must eat twice their weight to stay alive. A slug makes a gourmet meal.

Another slug eater is the garter snake, who patrols the edges between shadow and sunlight seeking slugs and other small delicacies.  There are three kinds of garter snakes you might encounter in our area. The one I see most often is the Common Garter snake, often called the Puget Sound variety with a pale cream or dull yellowish stripe. However, you can't always judge a snake by its stripes, as there is considerable variation in stripe color. If for some reason you really need to know your snake species you need to count the scales of the upper lip of the snake to see if there are 7 or 8. The 7 scaled snakes are the common and the northwestern, the 8 scaled snake is the Western terrestrial.  The Northwestern garter snake most often has a reddish stripe, and was known in my childhood as the red racer. We actually tried to race them once to see how fast they could actually go, but all three snakes went off in different directions, thwarting our plans. All our garter snakes have no fangs but are still effective predators, eating things as large as mice, but mostly subsiding on smaller fare such as beetles, and slugs.  If you pick up a garter snake it will wrap itself around you and cover you with a musky smelling secretion, which if tasted would be quite bitter. To avoid this honor, pick up the snake by the tail end first, then grab it behind the head.

This is a time where nature is at her most voluptuous, exploding with juicy life forces. The force is all around us. The bracken fern is shooting up 4 inches a day, tender shoots swell, expand, reaching ever further. A tiny caterpillar one day, becomes a big, bursting at the seams crawler a couple days later. It seems as if all of nature is rushing, faster and faster to keep pace with the long days. Inside an old stump, a sharp ear might detect the tiny whimpering of  nursing chipmunk babies, the soft wheedling of baby birds in a well hidden nest, or even the thrumming of a fly, singing its tiny song for all who listen to enjoy.
 
Mid June

The sun has made its year long lumbering climb to the top of the sky and we enjoy almost 17 hours of  light. This is the time of year for babies, and the woods are full of them. In a dead, standing hemlock one side hosts a family of chickadees, the parent birds stopping at the nest hole every 2-3 minutes to feed their relentlessly hungry brood. On the other side of the same tree a red-breasted nuthatch pair keeps the same schedule: Up at dawn, gather food until too dark to see.  Warbling Vireos, Wilson's Warblers, Western Tanagers Black-headed Grosbeaks, Swainson’s Thrushes, and Rufus Hummingbirds have all traveled up to our woods to raise their families.  You can hear their voices calling out their territories starting at 4:05 am.  There is a progression, which seems to start with the robins, whose lilting call of, “GetupgetupgetUP,” graces the morning and kicks off all the other singers.  Folks who study breeding bird territories use the first couple of weeks in June to map which birds are calling in order to understand bird population dynamics.  The birds that sing now are holding territories and nesting, thus by listening to the singers, you can make a list of what birds are raising young in a particular place.  

Many of our bird singers come from winter homes in the tropics, and fly hundreds, even thousands of miles to get here to join in on the chorus. Our Sharingwood is particularly attractive because of its diversity of tree sizes and types, openings, dark spaces, and shrubs.  But why do these birds come all the way up here, why not just stay in the tropics? After all, its hugely dangerous to fly all this way up here, not to mention all that work.  In the life of a bird, the most hazardous time of life is between when you are laid as an egg and until you can fly well. This period, 6-8 weeks can be shortened if you can feed the young nestlings longer. Since the equator has very little change in day length, it has long nights, even in the summer. Birds mostly feed their young insects, and most birds can only hunt during the day when they can see. So having a 17 hour day means 5 or more extra hours of being able to feed your young, which might take as much as 10 days off the development time of the young. This extra 10 days is apparently well worth all the effort in terms of survival of the young.
 
There are many babes in the woods, silly youngsters fresh out of the nest. The first crops of Robins, Towhees, Song Sparrows and Juncos are all bobbling about along the edges, learning the ways of the world. If you are slow and quiet you might be able to engage one to climb up on you. These youngsters have instinctive reactions to predators but are slow and clumsy still, easy prey. If ever there was a time of year to keep your cat indoors, this is it.
 
Crows are prime nest poachers in our woods. Their keen intelligence and sharp eyes help them find nests which they raid to feed their own young. Sometimes they actually wait after they find a nest, until the young birds are at their prime food value before they strike.  When you see a crow, soaring fast and low around the shrubs, it's hunting for signs of bird nestlings. Since the babies, like all babies, have little thought other than food, their small, “feed me, feed me” cries can easily by heard by both parent and the crows, who then can zero in on the sound. This is a natural part of the way of nature, and while humans might place values on eating babies, crows and other predators are simply making their living as they were designed to do. Such things are nature’s plan, ensuring that the craftiest and most clever birds at hiding their nests are the ones that pass along their genes to the future.
 
In the wetlands, the extra water from our  wet spring and early summer has provided lots of slack water for mosquitoes to raise their young. Mosquitoes come in hatching waves that last 4-7 days. As soon as they hatch they are targeted by swallows and dragonflies and bats. The females seek out warm-blooded creatures for protein for her eggs. A good mosquito bite can generate up to 1,000 eggs, so if you get bitten you can be comforted that your genetic material is shared with 1,000 or so new mosquitoes.
   In terms of death and human suffering, mosquitoes qualify as the most dangerous animal to humans, with mosquito transmitted diseases like Malaria and Dengue Fever killing up to a million people a year!  In the NW we are relatively free of such diseases, although the introduction of West Nile virus lends a possibility to change that. In 1999 West Nile was discovered in New York and since that time it has passed into almost every state.  West Nile virus is primarily a bird virus, and people are deeply worried that it could dramatically reduce the populations of many species of birds. Fortunately, it does not cause a large problem in humans, only a tiny percentage of those infected even know  they have had the virus, and of those, only a tiny percentage have serious complications.  Each year the flu kills many times more people than west Nile virus does.  The losses among bird life however are staggering in places, with reductions of hawks and owls especially problematic, since those animals numbers are low to begin with.  Thus far, Washington State has had few cases in birds, and none in humans.


 
 

The next crop of frogs is well underway in the breeding cycle. The  gooey masses of red-legged frog eggs are clustered in the deeper places in the wetland pools and ponds. As they mature these masses might float to the surface, where they look almost frothy.  This frog has distinctive reddish on the underside of its legs, which flashes as it jumps from its shore side hiding spot. This is perhaps why its Latin name is aurora, which refers to the reddish light of dawn. Unlike the pacific chorus frog, these frogs are weak singers.  A much louder chorus, a deep ROOONK call comes from the invasive Bullfrog. These frogs are huge and have a huge appetite, eating anything which they can catch, which includes most of the other amphibians and even baby ducks!  These massive invaders can strip a wetland of its native frogs and they are prolific breeders, turning shallow shoreline waters black with their squirming tadpoles. This frog is easily identified by the large tympanum, or eardrum behind the eye.  I kill them whenever I find them and encourage others to do so as well. They can be painlessly dispatched by placed them in the freezer until frozen solid.
 
In a ferny quiet spot, the baby deer of the year are patiently waiting for their mom to return. Deer are born scentless and well spotted and instinctively stay absolutely still. The mother gives birth in a carefully selected spot, one which has no scent of dog or human or other potential danger. She will forage nearby until the youngster is a couple weeks old, then they will travel together for the rest of the summer. When the baby is young the mother eats its dropping and urine to reduce its scent and also may bed down away from the youngster to further keep it safe.  These youngsters are very vulnerable to dogs, and unlike the movie Bambi, a mother deer usually abandons it young if it is attacked.  Deer live in a world of smells, and they have highly developed noses. They scent mark their spaces using glands on their hooves, and chins, leaving messages for other deer. They are also highly aware of other animals scent, which is why they tend to avoid places with dogs, who also mark their territories with scent.  This is the rich time for deer, as browsers the many shrubs they eat are at their nutritional best and the living is easy, unlike winter when they must eat things like evergreens in order to survive. Deer often form distinct routes of travel, and often return along the same pathway day after day.  When the deer started eating our trees, we planted some willow and red-osier dogwood along their path out of the woods which for awhile kept them busy. Willows are a favored food and the browsed branch tips are easy to spot.  Cars are probably the leading cause of death for deer, thousands are hit each year.
 
The Salmonberry season is coming to a close soon, the red huckleberries are coming on. The purple berries of Indian Plum make for a different taste, and are quite edible when ripe, although they are mostly seed. Some have a wonderful smoky flavor that is, like fine wine, an acquired taste for some. I found a coyote scat the other day full of the distinctive large seed pits of Indian plum.  By the end of the month the large clusters of Red Elderberry should be gone, consumed by hungry birds and chipmunks. These red berries are not edible for people, and will give you a good stomach ache and flu-like symptoms.  These wild berries draw to our woods the Western Tanagers and the Cedar Waxwings, a couple of the most attractive birds we host.
The next eight weeks are the primetime in the insect world as the temperatures move in the seventies and above. The large showy, yellow and black Tiger Swallowtail butterfly flits about the nectar rich flowers. These insects can be territorial, a pair of males may swirl around each other to establish dominance. The eggs are laid on many broadleaf plants such as maples, plums, Willow and cottonwood.
 Because of  the dry and mild winter, many of the over wintering queens of the social wasps probably did very well. The small paper nests of the Solitary wasps are taking shape and size now as the single moms are out gathering prey and paper. These insects can be seen on untreated cedar furniture and deck boards scraping off a thin layer of wood, which they digest and regurgitate into paper for the expanding nest. These small open nests are tended by a single female who lays an egg in each chamber then adds a juicy morsel like a caterpillar. She is all alone and has little interest in stinging, since this would probably mean her death, and she is a predator on many of the leaf munching caterpillars that eat up the garden.  The much bigger and closed nests of the  Bald faced hornets are much more imposing. These wasps are mostly black with a few white rings near the stinger. If a large paper nest of wasps is in a place that you do not want, an effective way to remove it is simply stand back with a hose of high pressure water and wet the nest. Since it is made of paper, it will quickly dissolve and fall down. The bees will buzz about for a day or so, then disperse, usually making a nest in a new place. I have done this several times and the hornets have never figured out that I am at the end of the water and stung me, so I guess they must just think, darn, it sure rained hard and wrecked our nest.

 
Yellow jackets are much more colorful, with yellow bodies with black chevrons along the back. These social bees usually make nests underground in old rotten logs. They are fierce defenders of their nests and an individual bee might sting several times to drive away a threat, like us.  If you should be so unlucky as to disturb the nest of a social wasp, the first responders from the nest will land on you and instead of stinging will mark you will a chemical scent which tells all the rest of the nest defenders where you are. Dozens can home in on this signal and then its attack time. They can follow this scent for more than 100 yards from the nest so you will want to move well away.   
While the wasps and hornets make few friends for bees, the gentle fuzzy bumblebees are hard at work to improve the image of their kind. The first broods of daughters are out gathering nectar and pollen for their mothers next brood which will include the reproductive drones and females. They mated female will over winter to start next years colonies. Bumblebees like to make their nests in old abandoned mouse nests which the queen finds in early spring. These fuzzy bees are wonderful pollinators and rarely sting, I have held them in my hand many times. You can pet them as they land in flowers, and if they are annoyed by your intrusion they will raise one of their hind legs as a signal to leave them alone.

The natural world is at its peak of activity and each day brings more wonders.

Mid August

These are the dragonfly days of summer, hot and shiny, they seem to float by so fast.  The hours of daylight are beginning to slip a bit, sunset drops before 9pm this month and dawn comes later each day. It is the time of fruits and fullness, the hot sultry days send us scurrying to the lake or river for relief, and ripen the fruits around us.  The air is alive with the scent of blackberries ripening, leaves drying and we cherish each cooling breeze.
The baby birds of June are now teenagers, many are being  pushed away by their parents to find their own way in the world. Waves of birds are passing through from further north, the beginnings of the fall migrations.  A collection of Robins and Cedar waxwings stopped in for a snack and stripped the Red-osier dogwood of most of its white berries. Deer fawns are just now becoming a bit more independent and leaving the comfort of mothers side to explore their new world and skills.  They now are sleeping next to their mothers at night but might spend most of the day making little forays away, quick to scamper back at the slightest hint of anything scary, such as a bird, a chipmunk, or a two-legged.

The warblers that passed us in May and June are back, but they are silent now, furtively plucking a few insects here and there to stay the hunger. A brief flash of yellow in the trees and then they are gone. Some of these birds seem tired, they perch momentarily, wings drooping. They have earned their rest, as short as it is, having spent the past forty days or so raising young with 20 hour days fetching food for the growing nestlings.  Now they are flying hundreds and hundreds of miles to the wintering forests of Mexico, Costa Rico and beyond.  Swallows are beginning to line up on wires and the hummingbirds have been gone for nearly a month, the ones that nested here are in Arizona by now.

The resident birds, such as song sparrows and towhees are juggling places as the young of the year begin to try and make their way in the world and the adult birds who until recently fed them, now drive them from the best resources. Under the bird feeder the hierarchy is obvious, with the adult males taking first dibs at the seeds that the squirrel so generously  stirs from the feeder and sends to the ground below.  The juvenile towhees, which are easily identified by their dull plumage, sit and wait at the edges until the adults have finished. Should one show the temerity to try to feed, it is charged and chirped at by the male, who clearly owns this place until he leaves.  While this sort of bullying seems unfair, it is natures way, and ensures that the strongest animal gets the best resources and thus lives to breed again.

 This is the hard time in the life of a tree. The forest soils are quite dry on the surface and the rains of October are still weeks away. Since trees get their nutrients entirely in solution, they need water to pass the many elements they require. The fungal mat under the ground continues to extract its pay, getting as much as 40% of the trees photosynthetic sugars, and whatever water can be squeezed out of the soil by the fungus is being pumped full on into the tree. An acre of medium sized Douglas Fir will use 1,500 gallons of water a day.  The ace in the hole is the many decaying logs in the forest, which still hold enough water that you can reach in, grab some of the reddish material, and squeeze water out of it. This is no accident, but part of the grand plan of the forests, and how forests can survive three months of drought each year.
When a tree dies it is colonized by hundreds of  kinds of things, many of which tunnel into the wood for food, nest making or other purposes. Fungus and bacteria move in almost as soon as it dies.  Beetles burrow to eat the fungus inside the wood, termite larvae burrow and eat the wood directly, Carpenter ants burrow to make nests. Within a few years of its death, the log is honeycombed like a sponge with  more air than wood. During the rainy season these porous forest sponges soak up and retain great amounts of water, which is one of the reasons young seedlings that fall on such containers tend to thrive while those that get started on the forest floor are more likely to grow more slowly or fail altogether. The underground fungal network  transfers water from these reservoirs to the roots of the trees.
On these hot, dry days of August more than a few creatures of the woods take refuge in the pockets of forest floor dampness. Turn over a well decayed log and numerous creatures will scurry out and seek cover again. The largest of these will be the Carabid beetles, black and shiny. These beetles are feeding on some  small creatures that go unnoticed by the human eye. Grab handful of the slightly damp soil and throw it under a microscope and a circus of colorful life explodes. All these tiny creatures feed bigger creatures who feed yet bigger ones.

The local western toads know these places well, and they hunt along the edges of fallen logs, searching for those insects that might wander astray.  Often if you closely observe the edge of fallen logs you can find all manner of holes and tunnels of all sizes. Shrews, salamanders and even deer mice hunt and live in these well hidden niches. Often as a tree decays, sheets of the bark peel off and fall to the ground, making a perfect moist and well covered home. Twenty years after its death, a tree hosts infinitely more life than it ever did while alive.

 In the gathering twilight, the Pacific Dampwood termites are on the wing. A flying feast for bats and late active birds.  These large 4-winged insects are the reproductives  and once mated they will seek out decayed wood with just the right kinds of moisture and decay. Apparently the rotten wood they seek out contains certain kinds of fungi which the insects can smell. Panicked homeowners can relax; these insects only seek seriously rotting wood, and so having these insects on your house or deck does not mean an infestation is at hand.

The female will stay in her chamber all winter and lay eggs and the next generations of larvae will eat considerable amounts of the wood. The cellulose and other fibers in wood are not very palatable for most creatures and the termite can only consume this rough fare by having some help. Inside the gut of the termite is a mess of protozoans. These tiny creatures break apart the cellulose and wood fibers and produce a chemical secretion which provides for the needs of the termite. A nifty exchange, the protozoa get a safe, moist place the live, the termite gets food.  Termite larvae are rich in vitamins and nutrition. I once watched a Douglas squirrel as it scratched apart a fallen log. I could not figure out what it was doing, so I scared it off and broke open the place it was digging to discover a squirmy yellowish mash of termite larvae. Native people apparently ate these with relish as handy trail snacks.  I have eaten these before, and they taste like sesame snacks, although they are too high in fat for my current diet. Try one and let me know what you think.

 A pair of baby chipmunks dared to explore the road and got passed over unharmed by my car, and hopefully they got a bit wiser about roads and cars. Mortality is high for young animals, they are on their own now, and maybe one out of a litter of six will make it through the winter. As they first  head off  to explore the big world they often stay in small groups or pairs, which of course makes them an easy target for predators such as house cats or weasels, who can kill 3-4 in a couple of seconds.  Weasels of course eat them in order to stay alive, house cats, which are super predators, just kill them from instinct, since the cat is fed and cared for and has no need for additional food.  The small size of the young chipmunks enables them to crawl out onto the slenderest of limbs in order to nab a berry or seed.  One day the vine maple off my back deck was a jungle gym for three chipmunks, who once they had their fill of seeds,  jumped and chased each other over, under and through the labyrinth of branches.  Play is fun, and it also sharpens skills which young animals may suddenly need to rely on to survive.

 The harbinger of late summer, Himalayan Blackberry is setting forth its crop and it looks like a good one this year. These plants came from eastern Asia, planted for their fruit by some distant gardener and have spread throughout the West.
  They are highly invasive, in places with enough light and moisture, they grow dismayingly fast. The branches which arch out and touch the ground will root, creating a new plant potential, sending this invader leap-frogging across the landscape. These plants will take over a space 10 foot diameter in a year, and armed with stout, sharp thorns, who is going to argue with it’s land use decisions? Entire buildings have been covered up by this aggressive usurper.  Its underground root crown is well protected and no amount of slashing, burning, mowing or cursing makes the invader go away. My mother-in-law mowed a blackberry bush to the ground for 10 years before finally giving up and digging it out.  This plant even keeps some of its leaves and continues to grow through the winter months while the lawn mowers sleep.

Another strength of this invader is that it needs no pollinators, it can set fruit and seeds all on its own. And such seeds. Although fruit eaters scarcely notice them, each flower can create more than 5,000 tiny seeds.   However of all the non-native invasive plants,  this one pays the rent by providing a treasure trove of juicy sweet, highly nutritious berries.  The berries are high in Vitamins A and C, and also high in potassium, calcium, magnesium and phosphorus.  They're also a good source of folate. Plus, next to blueberries, blackberries have one of the highest levels of anthocyanin, a powerful antioxidant that may help the body fight aging, cancer, and heart disease, and improve vision. So even though we may not approve of its land consuming talents, the fruit is a clever peace offering, causing us to lower the clippers and grant its existence.

 The mountains are calling and I must go. Let me know what you find out there.

 

End of September

 

The evenings are growing longer, daylight comes later each morning, sunsets a little earlier. We are past the place of equality,  the fall equinox, when the tilt of the earth is such that the length of night is equal to the length of day. From this point on we enter the darkening time of year, the land cools and nights get longer and longer.  All the natural life around us is keyed into this change. Birds that have come here for the summer have mostly left and gone back “home”. We often think of these birds as leaving home to migrate south for the winter but the reality is that these birds homes are in the south, they live most of their lives in the southern, warmer climates and only visit us during the summer.

 

 

 

A dragonfly pauses on a stick, perhaps reflecting back on its life. For several years it was the dominant predator in the small pond where it lived the life aquatic. Then this spring, it crawled up and out of its watery world and transformed into an aerial hunter, expanding its horizons hundreds fold, like an angel, glittering in the sun of a different place. It owns this bit pond and sky, and patrols and defends it, scooping up hundreds of insects during its 140 or so days of aerial life. Its days are now numbered, a life story about to transition again. It has successfully passed off its genes into the eggs that lay clinging to a stalk of pond side grass.  Mission accomplished. The killing frosts coming in October will end its time in this place. Will it transform again into another being in a another place? That is the great mystery for which we all eventually find the answer.

 

 

 

As the nights grow longer the ground is cooling which bring us local fogs over the next couple of months. Fog comes in two varieties, the most common in fall is ground fog. On the Indian summer days, the sun warms the ground and this increases the humidity a little bit as water in the ground evaporates into the air.  Then on cool, still, clear nights, the ground temperature rapidly drops and as the air near the ground cools, its ability to hold the evaporated moisture is reduced, thus the humidity increases. When the air reaches 100% humidity it’s called the dew point, and water in the air condenses into droplets. The accumulation of these droplets have mass and they tend to sink to the ground, causing fog. The water also condenses on the ground, bushes, trees and this forms dew.  If there is a breeze at night, it often churns the air enough so that it raises the dewpoint and fog will not form. 

 

During our Indian summer days the sun warms the air, which increases its ability to hold moisture and the fog slowly dissolves, writhing and undulating and forming fanciful shapes. On these sparkling mornings, the nights dew or fog coats each leaf, twig and blade of grass with shining drops that glitter in the low morning sun. This transformation each day is especially noticeable on spider webs, whose intricate lines flash and sparkle like small diamond necklaces adorning the bushes and trees.  If you want to count how many spiders are in your yard, these days are the time to do it, as each web is highlighted and easy to see.

 

 

The most common web weaver in the lowlands is actually not a native spider. It is the European Cross spider, an import from overseas that has taken over the spider world in the lowland NW.  This is an orb weaver and like most of that tribe, the female is much larger than the male. 
They can be many colors and patterns but they all have a strong white line down the middle of the back of the abdomen and usually a cross line as well, which is why they are called cross spiders.  Orb spiders start their webs by playing out a fine sticky thread and letting the breeze carry it to an anchor point. So the orientation of their webs can tell you which way the breeze was blowing that morning. You might also notice that all the spider webs in a particular place are all kind of lined up in the same direction.   After making several anchor lines, the spider spins a series of concentric circles to make the characteristic orb web. The last step, and most tricky one, is to lay the sticky lines which actually collect their food. All the other lines are not sticky. Orb spiders have to be very careful because if a sudden breeze should come up, they could get flipped onto a sticky line and be caught in their own trap! If it doesn’t rain and the dew is not too heavy, the spiders web might last a couple of days, although it will lay new sticky lines each day. When the rain, or a monkey with clothes damages a web, the spider will eat the remainders to recycle the  protein and spend a couple hours building a new one.

 

People who are afraid of spiders must absolutely hate the fall because the spiders are at their largest this time of year. The masses of termites, moths and other insects have bulked up some of the cross spiders to impressive sizes. However, like almost all spiders, they have tiny mouthparts, which can not penetrate human skin, so spider bites are extremely unusual. Only a few spiders have the equipment that can pierce our tough hides, and none of them have any real interest in ever doing so, since we clearly are much too big to be food.  In fact, we are so big that few web spiders can even comprehend we are alive since their eyes are not designed for anything other than close vision.  Some spiders, like jumping spiders and wolf spiders have eyes keyed to motion and so if we move in their view they know we are moving, although since we are so large, they typically hide or otherwise avoid us. So, if you want to get a spiders perspective of humans, image a giant skyscraper goes moving past. You can only see at most a couple of stories of it, but you might feel the ground rumble as it goes past.

 

If you try and hold a spider in your hand, they will most often do their best to get away. This is not because they are necessarily afraid of you, but your hand is really hot, 90+ degrees, and since a spider is typically at the air temperature outside, your hand is like a hot desert and the spider, or frog, or most any other outside critter you pick up, will want to escape from the heat.  

 

Another spider that gives people the willies are the giant house spiders. These spiders come out in the fall from their comfortable dark hiding places and search for a mate. They can be about the size of a quarter or slightly bigger and they are fast, zipping across the floor at high speed. The males have swollen sex glands on their front pedipalps which also add to their menacing looks because people think these are giant fangs just waiting to bite them!  Nothing could be further from the mind of a mate seeking spider, in fact the males can die of starvation at this time since all their energy is going into chasing females.

 

A close and not very common relative of the giant house spider is the hobo spider. This is one of the few spiders in Western Washington that are poisonous to people. The venom of this spider causes a nickel to quarter-sized ulcerous wound which is very similar to the brown recluse, which does not live in the NW at all. Both house and hobo spiders are in the genus Tegenaria and require very close examination to tell them apart.  If  you are interested in spiders one easy way to separate the non-poisonous giant house from the poisonous hobo is to examine the sternum, which is where all the legs come together under the spiders body. (Note: if you do this with a live spider you might want to place it in clear ziplock bag first so you can pin the spider to keep it from wiggling so much).  With a handlens look for a set of 4-6 dots or spots between where the legs attach to the body. If it has spots, its not a hobo spider. If it does not have spots, it still might not be a hobo spider either, since the spots can be very hard to see. Hobo spiders often have a light stripe running down the center of the sternum. If it does not have spots it takes a microscope to determine for sure if it’s a hobo.  67% percent of Tegenaria found in Seattle turned out to be giant house spiders, so the odds are good, if a large, fast moving spider is running along your wall its not a hobo spider. It is really difficult to get a hobo spider, or any other spider for that matter, to bite you. They do not chew on humans as a matter of course, and so if you wake up with a odd bump on your arm it’s from a flea or mosquito, who very much want to chew on you.

 
The cedar trees are turning orange as they shed their oldest leaves in preparation for the low light levels of winter. This is a normal condition and trees might drop off 15% of their leaf mass. These dried fronds make good fire starters, although on the ground they quickly decay into a acidic mulch. 

 
On a local valley road a fog shrouded tree was covered in large lumps which as I got closer turned out to be a group of turkey vultures, who were resting up on their way south. Thousands of these large birds are passing through on their way to California and beyond.  More than a few find a meal or two from the spawned out Pink Salmon which in places line the creeks and add a fishy bouquet to the air. Pink Salmon are a two year salmon and return to spawn in odd numbered years. In 2003 the great flood of October of that year washed out many of the pink salmon nests and so numbers of this fish are somewhat lower than in recent years.

  Even so, there are more than a few of these fish splashing about in local rivers and creeks.  Osprey Park in Sultan and Al Borlin Park in Monroe both host waters with nesting pink salmon this time of year. Salmon are a key ecosystem component because not only do they feed all manner of creatures, from Monkeys to Mink, their decaying bodies provide nutrients to the stream. Salmon are like barges, moving nutrients from the sea back to the rivers and streams. These nutrients fuel a food chain, which creates an abundance of aquatic insects next spring. Next February and March, as the salmon eggs hatch and the baby fish tentatively poke their noses out from their gravel nest, there is a smorgasbord of food  provided for them courtesy of their dead parents.  

 

 

As the nights cool off some of the rodents from outside are keen to find a warmer spot and look for ways to squeeze into your house. House mice are quite numerous and can squeeze into cracks only 1/3 of an inch thick, the only limiting factor they have is how wide their little skull is. House mice and deer mice are prolific breeders, both can have 5 or more litters a year, thus one female might produce 35 or more of her kind.  Since both species become sexually mature at about a month old, the mouse math quickly goes exponential.  Thankfully,  mice are sort of the lunchbox of the predator world and mice can only breed in relation to food supply, which varies. 

The odd ghostly notes of the Barred Owl are sounding in the forest now, no doubt sending shivers up the spines of the young Douglas squirrels. It can be a tough time to be a squirrel right now. Your parents have kicked you out and you need to find your own cache of cones and seeds to make your winter larder. All the yelling you hear from the squirrel tribes this time of year is related to defending winter food supplies. Squirrels gather Douglas fir cones and maple seeds and cache them in piles for the winter months. Of course mice and chipmunks and other squirrels try and sneak in and pilfer what they can.  One day I caught a bit of red up in a cedar tree and thought it was some kind of bird. It was a mushroom, which a squirrel had tucked out on a branch to dry. When a squirrel is collecting maple seeds it will cut off whole bunches, then clip off the “wings” and use the wings to line a hole in the ground. Once the hole is well lined, the seeds are stuffed in, then the whole thing is covered with more wings to make a more or less water tight container.  I once counted out the seeds in one such cache and found 357. I had carefully placed the seeds in a pile and was going to weigh them but I was distracted and left the project for the next day. By the time I returned the squirrel was just picking up the last of the seeds and carrying them off to another place. As I approached I got a good scolding for my monkey business.

 

End of October

The Big Leaf maples glow in the low afternoon sun, like a fire raging through the tree tops.  Many leaves have fallen, but there are still more than half clinging tenaciously defying gravity. The light is rapidly declining now, we are down to close to ten hours of light each day.  The declining hours of light causes the deciduous trees to grow a layer of cells in the stem of the leaf where it attaches to a branch. Eventually that cell layer cuts off the leaf from the plumbing system of the tree, depriving the leaf of the water and nutrients brought up from the tree roots. The amazing chemical factories in the leaves shut down, and the green chloroplasts, which is where photosynthesis takes places, begin to break down. As the green goes away, the yellows underneath show up.
 The yellow has been there all along, its just been masked by the green.  In vine maples and other trees where the leaves turn red in the fall, the red comes from sugars left over in the leaf when the leaves are cut off from the tree. These sugars react to light, and cause the leaf to turn reds and oranges. If the weather is cloudy during the couple of weeks it takes for the leaves to break down, then they just turn brown. This is also why the trees along highway 2, which are very exposed to sunlight turn such brilliant reds, while the trees in our woods, just turn yellow or brown. The trees under the canopy don’t get the light in order to turn the sugars red.

 
The relatively warm and moist days over the past couple of weeks have the banana slugs on the move. Slugs are notable because they are mollusks, relatives of the clams which have left the water. In order to survive in this dry inhospitable place they have special glands which produce slime. The slime of a slug helps it breath, since slugs breath through their skin and they need it to be moist in order to breath. If a slug is really motoring, in order to meet the additional needs for oxygen the slug has an opening which is a secondary lung, which is uses when it needs extra oxygen. Slugs slime actually gets stickier when in contact with water, so if you cuddle a slug and want to get rid of the slime its best to let it dry. It then rubs off in little balls, kind of like rubber cement does when you get it on your hands. 
Obviously slug slime is also a great defense. Who wants to eat something which sticks to the roof of your mouth and does not come off?  If you are inclined to eat slugs, and people actually do eat them, you deslime them by dipping them in vinegar. Then, you roll them  in some tempura batter and fry them up.  I have been told they are very tasty. Let me know if you try this.

Slugs do not have eyes and so they navigate the world using their two sets of tentacles. The upper set have a light sensor on them and so the slug can sense which way is darker, which is usually their preferred direction. Slugs often follow the same pathways, and will spend the day safely tucked into a moist dark log or other place, returning to the same safe spot day after day.  The lower tentacles of the slug are kind of like a nose, and the slug “smells” odors along the forest floor. Both tentacles can be retracted to protect them when the slug bumps into things.  One of the few animals in the forest that will eat a slug are the tiny, but voracious shrews, which apparently have some sort of chemical in their saliva which neutralizes slug slime.  I have come across half consumed slugs a few times and shrews appear to like to eat the slug head first, perhaps that is the less gooey end.

 
The reason the banana slugs are on the move these days is their favorite food is out. Slugs are prime fungivores, and they have clear preferences to which mushrooms they like to eat. In particular the banana slugs in our woods prefer mushrooms of the genus, Russula. These mushrooms barely make it out of the ground before being converged upon, sometimes by several slugs at once, who can nibble it all the way down to the ground. This is not a bad thing for the mushroom, since the slugs poop out the spores and spread them around as they travel, which is the purpose the fungus produced the mushroom in the first place.  October is typically mushroom month, and this year is a modest one for fungus fruits, with several dozens of kinds readily fruiting.  As the fungi fruits multiply then decline, there is a rise in the numbers of white fungus gnats. These tiny translucent to white insects are thick in the air of the last warm days of fall, seeking a mate. The female lays her eggs on the mushrooms and the larvae consume the decaying fungi flesh.
 
Another critter on the move these days is the black and orange wooly bear caterpillar. There are dozens of them wandering along roads and clearings. They prefer roads because on the sunny days the black asphalt absorbs heat and warms up a few degrees warmer than the surrounding soil.  These engaging little bears are fuzzy and have delightful little faces. There is actually a festival of the wooly bear in Cleveland and they have many activities including a wooly bear race which lasts all day!   If you pick them up, they will curl into a ball and present their long black guard hairs. Most people can pet these little bears without a problem but the long black hairs  contain a substance that can cause a rash on some people and can be  very painful if you get some of this in your eyes. It has long been said that the severity of the winter can be determined by the ratio of the black ends to the orange middle. The larger the orange band the milder the winter. Whether these creatures can forecast the winter I don’t know but their color ratio is caused by the amount of feeding and growth they have undergone. The better the growing conditions, the longer the caterpillar is, thus the longer the middle section is.  These critters do care a bit about the winter because they overwinter as caterpillars, hiding under leaves or other spots. They can survive very cold temperatures because as they snooze away the winter they create an antifreeze in their cells which keeps them from freezing. In lab conditions these little bears have survived being frozen to more than 70 below zero!  In March  they will emerge again, feed a bit, then pupate, turning into the Isabella tiger moth of  summer. You have probably seen this moth at your night windows or porch lights, typically out in April through August. It is a large, thick bodied moth, grayish and sometimes slightly yellow tinged with a very fuzzy upper body. The moth lays eggs, which hatch into more caterpillars, often there can be two generations a year, with the later hatching generation sleeping through the winter.

As the weather gets colder and wetter the intervening sunny days of October are the last frantic days of activity for many creatures.  The squirrels and chipmunks scurry with intensity to gather seeds and mushrooms for their winter larders.  As I look out my window on this day, the air is filled with flying insects taking care of the last opportunities to mate or feed before the cold, wet and dark conditions of the cold season. The smallest of the voles, the Oregon Creeping Vole has once again set up shop under our bird feeder. This tiny dark brown mousey tends to dash out of his burrow, grab a seed or other morsel, then run backwards, back into his little hole. The small critter popping in and out of the ground reminds me of a jack in the box. She pops her little head out of the hole and should a bird or other scary thing be in the way, down she goes. Up, down, up down. Fresh coyote tracks along the wetland edge remind me that the hunters are still here, watching for the unwary and slow.

 

Thanksgiving

The clouds have descended and the forest is dark and mysterious as the light gray background brings out the silhouettes of the trees and branches. Go outside and you are literally walking in the clouds. The mountaintops are clear and sunny while the lower lands are mysterious and unclear.  The days are noticeably short now, we are down to 8 hours and 45 minutes between sunrise and sunset.  The bare bones of the trees, branches and twigs are highlighted in the late afternoon sunset, each tip glistening with condensed water. The moisture laden air coats everything with a fine blanket of mist, the sky paints everything with a signature of water.
Many of the shrubs are turning colors now, following after the trees. The inscrutable walls of greenery are now color coded, the thimbleberries splash their patches of golden yellow, the red-osier dogwood shows its red and yellow, and the bracken ferns stand golden brown at the roads edge.  A purple and brown stand shows the latest incursions of the Japanese Knotweed, a vigorous invader which grows from underground root to over 7 feet tall in a mere 70 days each spring. This plant is rapidly moving into wetlands and creeksides, much like the dreaded Kudzu of the southern states. It thrives on floods, its broken stems when buried create new colonies which muscle out the slower growing native plants.

 
The cold dripping weather does nothing to subdue the fiery enthusiasm of the chickadees, who form large bunches of  avian energy that bounce around the forest edges. On even the coldest and wettest of days their dee dee calls say to me, have cheer, have cheer, all is well,  Chickadees form groups in the fall and winter, usually a dozen or so birds, moving in an expanding and contracting formation for food during the day and perching together at night within the same tree. Often bird feeders will attract  2 or more groups that join peacefully together at this super food resource. By using colored leg  bands to identify individuals, researchers have found some interesting behaviors in these winter bands. 
Even  though breeding is months away, chickadees have paired up already. There is a dominance hierarchy and the head male and female of each group get the best foraging opportunities. On a feeder, it is typical for the lower ranked chickadee to grab a seed and leave, while the dominate birds might stay at the feeder to eat their prize.  The maintenance of the hierarchy can be seen at a feeder by watching for displacement. This is where one chickadee flies up and lands directly on, or very close to the spot where another bird is sitting, causing that bird to fly away or be landed upon. The bird which all other birds displace is the lowest in the hierarchy.  Often the lowest bird is a floater, who is unpaired and who moves from band to band.

Photo by Joseph Higbee
Floaters have a special advantage because they can trade up in status by pairing with a chickadee whose mate has died. So, should the dominate female in a band be snatched by a pygmy owl, a floater female could, and usually does, pair with the dominant male, thus within a few days moving from the bottom of the hierarchy to the very top, displacing those birds which only a few days before were displacing her. 

These tiny feathered puffballs maintain a high body temperature which means they need high energy food to stoke the fires.  The natural diet of the chickadee is about 70 percent animal matter and they are brilliant at seeking out and finding high calorie insect eggs and larvae. Often wintering chickadees group with other birds into mixed bands which include kinglets, creepers, and nuthatches. Sometimes even larger birds like woodpeckers will join this loose cloud of birds. Each of this feathered club searches and feeds in different areas but the end result is a very effective scouring of the area for insect eggs or over wintering larvae. These mixed bands often feed quite low to the ground and several times I have found myself in the midst of a constantly moving cloud of birdlife, sometimes eye to eye with a bright-eyed plucky forager.  These flocks form an  army of forest protecting bug eaters who scour your woodland for things like hemlock looper and other tree damaging insect species.  Observations show that even with a super resource like a feeder, chickadees still spend more than 2/3rds of their time foraging for insects.

 
While chickadees and birds are testimony to the vibrancy of life, millions of other creatures have retired into natures dormitories until the warmth and daylight increase. An uncountable assemblage of life takes to the soil, finding niches under logs, below leaves, under boards. Lifting up the garbage can which holds our bird seed I found 2 curled wooly bear caterpillars, six cottony nests of spider eggs and tiny circular orbs of some other egg.  Holding the centermost location was a small translucent Ensatina salamander. 

In the Northwest, sky water is one of the primary limiting factors that determines which species can survive here.  The cold rains of November through January pose a survival condition which seems easy perhaps compared to the sub-zero chilling and snows of places such as Minnesota or even eastern Washington. Yet, it is the rain which decrees that Magpies, a common corvid in eastern Washington can not make it in our climate. The attractive black widow spider, with her shiny black abdomen and defining red hourglass finds that the searching dampness of November fogs rots her egg sacs, thus limiting this creatures presence to such places as the sunny San Juan Islands, a disjoined population spread by humans but separated from their kin by hundreds of miles of moisture laden airstreams. 

 Those creatures who take to their burrows and winter slumbering chambers must find or create shelter not just from cold, but from the penetrating wetness that seeps and oozes in all directions during our moist gray winters. The winter sleep for most larger creatures is a restless one with much waking and dozing. The chipmunk might sleep for a few days, then wake, rummage around its store for a snack, visit the toilet chamber, then curl back up for another snooze. Should a pineapple express deliver warm winds and 55 degree daytimes temperatures our little rodent may pop out of its snug den and wander about in search of a stray seed or two, or just to stretch its legs.

While most of the larger creatures find solitary winter beds, a few cluster together, seeking not companionship but reduced exposure of their bodies to the cold.  Under a barn floor a dozen or more garter snakes twine together in torpidity, ensuring not only some group advantage in reduction of body exposure, but also making easy the task for finding mates in early spring.  Under the ground, in soil not too wet, not too dry, a hundred or more earthworms are wound together in a tight ball of slowly squirming invertebrate.  This is the ultimate prize, the holy grail, for the ever searching Townsends mole, who no doubt dreams of such buried treasure.  Townsends  moles are active all winter, wandering the furthest during this time of year since the soil is often moist and the colder weather makes finding their worm lunch a bit more difficult. In the lowlands during floods, moles will be forced to swim for safety, which they do surprising well with their broad, shovel-like hands. Being both nocturnal and subterranean moles seem to have little difficulty with winters long nights. 

 
While the  birds of summer have moved south, others are arriving from northern climates to spend the winter with us. Perhaps the most noticeable are the trumpeter swans which forage in farm fields. These huge white birds can be seen from considerable distance and they spend their days mucking about the retired cornfields and sleeping at night at some protective lake.  In our area of Snohomish County, more than 100 swans spend the night at Shadow lake at the Bob Heirman Thomas Eddy park and forage during the day at nearby fields.  On these foggy days, having a troop of these birds fly overhead is magical, their long wings clearly audible as they push the air to move themselves through a sky that seems more water than air.

 
Unfortunately  some of these magnificent birds pick up bits of lead on their wintering areas, remnants of lead shot from duck hunters, and thus die of lead poisoning.

As late fall transitions into winter,  a few stragglers hold on to a declining lifebeat. A few spiders, a stray dragonfly, even a butterfly or two still carry summers flag, until the first real hard frost sends them back to the soil.  I encourage you to get out for a walk or two during this transition time, get the blood pumping, blow away those mental cobwebs. Research shows more than half of people who complain of seasonal depression are cured with a two hour walk outside.

 

Winter Solstice

Patience.  For those animals which stay here, winter is all about waiting it out. The tree frog sinks to the bottom of the wetland, snuggles into the mud, and slows down, reducing its needs to so little that a tiny trickle of oxygen through the skin is all it takes. While scuffling about in a thick pile of leaves I unearthed a bumblebee queen, all fat and fertilized, waiting for warming days. A robin sits motionless on a cedar branch outside the window, two hours later its still there, conserving its energy until the temperature rises enough and the steady dripping of the melting snow moves it into action. It’s a dim light, filtered through clouds, the low angled sun scarcely clearing the trees. And it’s a long night,  17 hours, 23 minutes from sunset to dawns early light. Plenty of time to catch up on your sleep. The photoperiod which drives the internal working of all of nature, affects us also. We are inclined to sleep more and our bodies have been  converting extra calories into fat, a mechanism which is designed into our cells, a survival tactic inherited from times when we too, lived closely off the resources available and had to adjust to winters lowering of the food supply..

 It seems odd that this time of darkness and cold is also the mating season. Owls are partnering up, hooting their love songs to each other and by January they will be hosting eggs. The largest of the owls which has occasionally graced our woods is the Great Horned, which is easily identified by its large size and ear tufts which look perhaps a bit like horns. The owl does not build its own nest but appropriates a hawk or squirrel nest, sometimes eating its maker in the process. The young owlets are born in February and by the end of March they are roaming about the branches of their nest tree, often called branchers at that time of life. By the time they fledge in late April the first round of song birds babies are bumbling about and make tasty meals for the young owlets.  Should other birds find a daytime roosting owl, they will call up a squadron of squawkers and yell and dive at the owl trying to drive it away from the neighborhood of their babies.

 These owls can carry prey as large as skunks, and in fact have no problems with eating this odoriferous mammal since they have almost no sense of smell to hinder their feast. As a child I once found an active owl nest by following the skunk scent that was heavy on the breeze until I found the remains of several below the nest. This owl can swallow its smaller rodent prey whole but uses it sharp talons and beak to rip apart larger animals.  Banding studies show these predators live on average about a decade, and some in captivity have lived over 30 years. Their only real threat are humans who shoot them, or inadvertently poison them by using rat poison which passes on from rat to bird. Another growing threat to this most excellent of owls is west Nile virus, which in the Midwest states has apparently hit birds of prey quite hard.

During breaks in the rain, and when the temperature is a bit above freezing, a surprising number of insects are about. Wooly caterpillars romp over the wet leaves and large fuzzy Noctuidae moths flutter slowly around  the Christmas lights. In the shadowy realm under the forest canopy, large crane flies sally forth from their tree bark hiding places in search of a conjugal alliance. The  brief moments of pale sunshine that leak through the gaps in the trees make stages for these insects which dance to a music only they can hear. Mating in the dark and damp days of winter is not a bad strategy since many of the predators are in the dormant part of their cycle.

Not all the predators sleep however. In the shadows of the sword ferns a tiny brown flicker of life emerges into a clearing to closely examine the forest floor, alert to any movement. The Winter wren, a tiny lively sprite of a bird, patrols the forest floor year around. This is the most foresty of birds, seldom if ever leaving the cover of the dark, evergreen forest.  There is no mossy corner unturned by this small brown bird, it owns the forest and knows each sprig of moss and curled fern frond underside. One rainy winter afternoon I encountered this bird who displayed a thoroughness and tenacity of purpose worthy of praise as it made its rounds through its Salmonberry and fern territory. There was no leaf not examined, no stem that escaped the scrutiny of this little forest floor forager.  In just a few more weeks, the forest will ring to the modulating song of this most dedicated of northwest forest birds, heralding in the early spring of Mid February.

This is the time for moss gardens to grow and send forth their primitive spores. A close look shows many of the green carpets have sprouted tiny antennae like sprigs which host the reproductive cells of this most simple of plants. The cool wet conditions are encouragement for the tiny birds nest fungus to send forth its clever packages of spores. This tiny mushroom forms a cup which resembles a miniature birds nests. Within the nest are “eggs” which house the spores. As a raindrop hits the nest, they splash the eggs out of the nest, sometimes ejecting the egg as far as three feet.  Each egg has a small almost invisible filament which quickly attaches the eggs to wherever they land and the spores then waft out of the egg.  Another odd fungus of winter is the bright orange witches butter, the jelly-like clumps can be easily spotted on dead trees.

Under the soil a group of fungi is fruiting, having carefully timed their primary expenditure of resources to maximize their effort. These fungi, commonly called truffles, produce ball like fruits which lay 3-10 inches under the soil. In order to spread their reproductive spores they emit a distinctive and appealing odor to entice the local mammals to dig them up and eat them. They time their fruiting to the winter months in order to ensure the competing above ground fruits of other fungi have long since passed into mush and thus guaranteeing  a monopoly on the culinary attentions of the resident mammals. You can find small holes and scrapes where mice, Douglas squirrels and even Flying squirrels have dug up these tasty morsels. The consumed spores end up coated with bacterial partners and yeasts from the guts of the mammal and then get distributed around the forest in the scats.  An acre of forest can produce several pounds of these truffles, and their delicate and distinctive flavors are eagerly sought after by truffle hunting humans who employ the sharp noses of truffling dogs or specially trained pigs to sniff them out.

On this longest of nights, as we huddle around the fire, let us give thanks that the abundance and mysteries of nature still surround us and give us opportunities to reflect and wonder about the many lives that make up our world. Let me know what you find out there.