Date: November 27, 2018
Time: 10:15 AM
Weather: 13º C, very cloudy, chilly wind, small amount of sunlight streaming in through the clouds
Repeat Photographs:
Due to Thanksgiving break, I hadn’t visited my site in a long time and I expected a lot of things to be different. It has been raining a lot for the past 2 to 3 days so there were a lot of large puddles throughout the IMA and the Union Bay Natural Area. My site had also gotten very muddy and the wet mud was sticking to my boots (it took a long time to get them out. It seemed like the rain had also flushed a lot of insects out of the soil because I saw many earthworms. I also saw this dead insect floating in a puddle right next to my site:
I could be wrong but this seems to be the Forest Tent Caterpillar (Malacosoma disstria).
Because of the rain, or perhaps just the passage of time, most of the mushrooms at my site had begun to rot:
However, I noticed some new mushrooms too. Some of them were the False Chanterelles that are dominant at my site but I also saw some new species. These mushrooms had a
The stem of the mushroom was extremely long and delicate. I identified the species to be the Nitrous Bonnet (Mycena leptocephala).
Other changes that I noticed around my site:
1. The Devil’s Beggarticks plants at my site seemed to be drying up and had less seeds. I know this because this time the number of seeds that got stuck on me was only three versus the fifteen-twenty seeds that would get stuck on me earlier in the quarter.
2. The berries on the Nootka Rose (Rosenutkana) seemed to have gotten bigger. Maybe it was just because I was seeing them after a long time?
3. I noticed that the horsetails at my site, the ones I wrote about in my previous journal, had gotten bigger.
BIRDS AT/NEAR MY SITE
1. American Crow (Corvus brachyrhynchos)
These are the birds that I see most often at my site. The crows around my site were very active at the time. I noticed a murder of crows flying from the direction of downtown Seattle over the lake. One of them left the group, but most of them were flying in the direction of the Waterfront Activities Center, where there seemed to be a lot of crow activity and I could hear the sounds of a lot of the cawing coming from that general direction.
sketch 1:
2. Bewick’s wren (Thryomanes bewickii)
Since the weather was quite cloudy and it had started raining it was really hard to find the smaller birds (like wrens, sparrows etc.) that I usually see at UBNA. However, as preparing to leave, I heard the calls of a Bewick’s wren. At first, the bird was perched on the top of a small tree. Then it started making it way down by jumping from branch to branch. It then flew to another tree a few feet away. At this point, I think the wren noticed my presence and flew away. I tried to follow it through the trees but I lost my balance and fell (it was quite embarrassing and I’m glad no one was around to see that) and lost track of the bird.
sketch 2:
3. Song sparrow (Melospiza melodia)
I saw this one just a few minutes after the Bewick’s wren. However, it didn’t stick around long enough for me to take any detailed notes on its behaviour.
Ducks: Since my site is right next to Lake Union, I usually am able to see a few ducks. They usually swim in groups of their own species but I saw a male Bufflehead swimming among a group of female Mallards, which I thought very cute considering the size difference between the two species.They’re pretty far away though so it is hard to take good pictures of them using just my phone.
4. Bufflehead (Bucephala albeola)
5. Mallard (Anas platyrhynchos)
Field Journal 