2/29 Leap Day laptop licorice

A busy day meant that I didn't get out to explore. A little bit of leap day snow fell, complete with a little thunder and lightning. Before heading to bed, I thought I'd look through the pictures from the first few days and identify at least one of the things I'd photographed. Here was the winner:

The ferns running up these maples are apparently Licorice Ferns. Each fern grows from a rhizome which runs down through the mossy surface. The rhizomes, it seems, have a sweet flavor, although several sites encouraged me not to have much more than a nibble.

2/28 Renton Natural Area, and a couple paws with claws

Be it ever so humble. . . 

Renton is home, and this wild space is where I will do a lot of the exploring for this project. I thought I had seen somewhere that it was called the "Renton Natural Area", and now I can find no such name, but I'm sticking with it. If you're heading out from Renton on the Maple Valley Highway, and peek at the massive slope to your right, that's the place. The north end of it, closest to the lake, is called "Renton Hill", although that term seems to be used for that specific neighborhood. The picture above should, in any event, give a little reference.

And this area is as humble as it is large! Scotch Broom, powerlines, and blackberries are a lot of the landscape. Closer to the top of the hill, a greater number of trees hold the soil in place - mostly Bigleaf Maple, with a mix of Western Hemlock, Douglas Fir, and Western Redcedar. The understory for these trees is Western Sword Fern, Oregon Grape, and a typical mix of other plants, both native and invasive, commonly found in the Pacific Northwest.

Once a person descends out of this forest, the view above is pretty typical, with the species mentioned above, as well as a lot of Bracken Fern. There's stories of coyotes, cougars, and bobcats out here, and deer use the area as well. It's not heavily trafficked, but people do use it for walking their dogs, and in a small number of spots, roads cut through to little gated developments.

All of the water from the top of the hill makes its way into streams, some of them with names that I'm sure I'll learn. Many of those cuts lead to these deep, inaccessible ravines, and it prevents the whole area from being connected by a single network of trails. As you get closer to the Cedar River, the forest becomes a little more dense, and dominated by Quaking Aspen, Black Cottonwood, and Red Alder.

I've come across a few plants, mushrooms, and animals of interest in here over the past few years, and I hope to find more. It won't be the only place I visit this year, by any stretch, but it will be the most visited area.

Paws

Dog. . . and Dog Lichen

Fun fact time. The tracks on the left are not cougar tracks.

I didn't know this when I saw them. I saw big tracks, and in my head. . . yeah, cougar for sure. But I got online and found there are a few ways to tell the difference. The big giveaway? The claws at the end. Dog. Cougars will have the same big fat paw print without the claws. This will save me a lot of excitement and give me something to look for.

The lichen is Dog Lichen for the same reason. There's the big flattened pad, and then the little. . . claw. . . things. I've got to look up what they are, but I'm assuming it's some kind of spore producing thing. Lichen is not disappointing me on this project so far - I'm enjoying how crazy things can get when a fungus and algae meet and make friends like this.

2/27 - Bump in the night; bouncing ball

Neither of us were ready for this

Mothra

Got a moth in my room. The moth was like "Aaaaah! let me out!" and trying to knock a tiny hole in the wall. I was like, "Moth, I'd like to, really. But you are a sign. I must identify you.  Hold still one sec."

Pint glass + coaster + moth + bad lighting. This didn't go all that well, and I have to tell y'all, this is an unindentified moth. I got some video of the little dude, and thought it would be enough to let him go and ID him later. I took him outside and

Oh, Hi!

Yep, that was my big plan. get crappy pictures, and then identify them later. I was amazed at how little I know about how to even look at a moth. I found a very helpful site with dozens of questions to narrow it down from 8 billion moths. And then, so many of the pictures have the dead moth pinned and splayed out. I'll have to see if I am up to the task, but I just don't know if I'm ready to start pinning them, folks.

So off they go into the question mark page (at right), and I'll just make a mental note that the porch light is there any time things are seeming a little slow.

I really did get to sleep

After the moth was excused, I got to bed, and then up in the wee hours to join the Marymoor walk Thursday morning. 

This was the highlight of the morning, for sure - getting to hear the bouncing ball call of a Western Screech-Owl from the boardwalks that head out into the north tip of Lake Sammammish. You can hear a few ducks in the background, and we also found a couple of North American Beavers, making a ruckus and swimming around in the water. 

Pixie cup lichen

Western Screech-Owls are a species of owl I had not come across yet this year, and it was nice to find one. They have had better days in King County, back before Barred Owls came in and pushed them out of several prime nesting areas. But they're hanging on! The wooded area on the south end of Marymoor is just about perfect for them. Large enough to be habitat, but not large enough to be of interest to a Barred Owl.

It can't continue like this

The tally is at 66. . . and it's 50 or so birds. The walk at Marymoor was 40 or more of those. I just want to clarify that I'm going to be finding birds and adding them to this list, but it can only go so far. 425 is going to take a couple hundred other things to get me to the finish line, so I'm not anywhere near 1/7 of the way there, as the math might imply. I almost made it 67, as the group saw a weasel during the walk, but I never had a look at it.

The lichen here is one of the few that I am familiar with by name. it's so distinctive with the tiny little cups on the ends of the stalks. I thought it was a hornwort the first time I found them - totally different kind of plant - but it was instead a lichen, part of the fungus kingdom, if I'm reading sources right.

Fungi have found ways to hijack algae, full-blown plants, toenails. . . they form relationships with organisms that are usually beneficial both ways. It had been my previous understanding that both members in this relationship would be their own species, and lichen was just like. . . lichen, but not a "species" per se. They appear to have their own little corner in the fungus kingdom, so maybe things are changing. 

2/26 - plums, butter, and escargot

What's ten minutes?

I had errands to run, but had about ten minutes, so I thought I'd head down the trail a little. Just for clarity, "the trail" is not far from home, and heads down into the Renton Natural Area, above Maplewood. It's good for a three mile walk or so if I have a free hour. Today, however was just a little foray.

Indian Plum

Indian Plum is a plant that was only recently pointed out to me on a walk. All of a sudden, it's everywhere! It's not even March, and it is in bloom, and fairly dense at the start of the trail. The fruit is edible according to the interwebs, so I'll be watching it closely!

It has been raining off and on lately, but wasn't today, so I brushed some of the leaf litter around, to see if I might come across some insects or some other surprise.

Some other surprise

Beaded Lancetooth 

One of the first opportunities to demonstrate how easy I would be with myself on this list. This is clearly not a living thing, but the shell belonged to a pretty specific creature. Thankfully, the Oregon Department of Agriculture has a nice little guide to slugs and snails that helped me identify this mollusk.  The shell was wide, rather than long, without much patterning. There were the ridges that give it the beady texture, and it came in at 11 mm.

Apparently, it is one of our smallest snails, and a native to the area. It is carnivorous, and eats other slugs and snails. Slugs are absolutely everywhere after it rains, but I always feel like it's infrequent that I come across snails! Fun find, and I'm glad that I poked around in the leaves a little.

I can't believe it's not butter

Witches' Butter

Okay, mushrooms can be tricky, but this one seemed like an easy identification after a little searching. Gooby jelly-like fungus growing on a fallen log - it's called "Witches' butter" among other nicknames. Not toxic, but not notably delicious. Nonetheless, it may be of interest in the world of biopharmaceuticals. The genus tremella  are fungi that produce some molecules that may have cancer-fighting abilities, among other positive properties.

So there ya go. A ten minute walk can turn into an hour of research if you stop and look around you.  you've been warned good reader. . . it's early in the blog, and maybe a good time to just keep on walking.

2/25 - Why wouldn't it start with a crow?

It's usually a crow

I'm a birder, primarily, and I think other birders may enjoy the fact that the first on the list is the good old American Crow (1).

In birding, we keep our county lists, our state lists, etc. and of course, there is the year list. On January 1st every year, birders will post to announce their first bird of the year. We always dream that it will start with a "good" bird - either a personal favorite, something rare, or something romantic like a Great Horned Owl.

But it's usually a crow.

Efforts can be made to get outside before the crows arrive, or one could put fingers in the ears so that there's a chance of not hearing them call, but there's no guarantee here. Crows are just so ubiquitous in metropolitan areas, so boisterous, so loud. Today was no exception.

As I got the morning coffee going, I heard the call and smiled as they got me again.

The locals

It's worth noting that the crows around here have been the topic of interesting genetic discussions. It even gives me my first opportunity to throw doubt on my ability to identify things! Here is the range map from Cornell's "All About Birds" site for American Crows:

Note that they don't even show American Crow for the northwestern corner of the state! Why? Because there's these crows you find out here that may or may not be a separate species - Northwestern Crows.

My eyes and ears have told me that they're different. Big crow out in the suburbs that sounds "normal"? American Crow. Smaller crows with higher pitched voices playing around in the salt water together? Northwestern Crows. The only problem is, these birds have gotten friendly enough with each other, and the genes have gotten a bit mixed up. The fact that the genes *can* get mixed up implies that these are not two different species. So I'm going with American Crow.

A little about them

As common as they are, we tend to let crows blend into the background, but many people have taken the time to study crows, and there's a lot going on with them. They seem able to socialize, play, mourn. . all things that seem like anthropomorphizing, but it's hard to frame it any other way.

Locally, they spend the winter months gathering at large roosts (thousands of crows. . . lots of thousands of crows) for the night. In the mornings and evenings they do the commute to and from "work", with huge streams of them seen overhead.

In the summers they will stick around their nests, and they will be quite defensive of this space. There are many stories out there of crows diving at people who have gotten a little too close to a nest. My crow story is a little different.

I had a pair of crows in my neighborhood a few years back during the summer. I'd see them from the back deck, and got it in my head that I should get them a little food and see if we could be friends. A few goldfish crackers on the corner of the deck became part of the daily routine. One of the crows would come in and take them, I'd say hello, and they'd go on their merry way. One day, I had put out the crackers, and returned later to find. . . dog food!

I've tried to step through this and figure out what they were trying to do. My best and only guess is that they were saying thanks, and offering some food in return. It's an interesting observation that highlights how easily these crows found the food they needed as they scavenged through their day. What else it might say about the ability of crows to show. . . kindness? to other species. . . I will leave that up to the reader.

Also

In peeking out the window, I noted two other things outside - Bigleaf Maple (2), and Western Swordfern (3). The maple had lichen and mosses all up the trunk and hanging from the branches. That is for another morning!

What's all this, then?

Hello!

I obviously have to explain this blog.

I've done a few birding blogs at this point, starting with 39counties (www.39counties.blogspot.com), and continuing with close looks at Mason (www.masoncountybirding.blogspot.com) and Chelan (chelancountybirding.blogspot.com) counties here in Washington. It's always been birds, it's always been a year, and it's always been off to some part of the state that's a little off the beaten path.

This one will be a little different.

There will still be birds. Birds are amazing. They make up most of the sounds of life around us, and they're the most likely to surprise us by showing up somewhere we just weren't expecting them. But I want to take a deeper look at everything around the birds – the habitat; the life around them that works to make them happy and healthy, or in some cases not.

I'm still going to be on this for about a year, but with a little extra time tacked on – 425 days. About an extra two months on top of the usual year.

I'll still be exploring, but not off to some other part of the state. I'll be focused on home. I saw on Tweeters a little while back that someone had accomplished a feat – finding their 253^rd species of bird in Pierce County, which is largely area code 253. I actually thought for a billionth of a second, “Hey, I should try to oh yeah never mind.” Seeing 425 species of birds in the state is not likely a goal I would ever hit, let alone 425 in the area code east of Lake Washington.

But what if I added butterflies? Salamanders? Mosses? Mushrooms? I think an article about fish in Puget Sound pushed me further towards this idea. Over 100 species of fish are running around in the sound. and this sent my brain reeling a little. And my knowledge of fish is like... PhD level, relative to my knowledge of sedges or beetles.

So there's the goal:

425 kinds of living things in the 425 area code in 425 days. 

This will all end, interestingly enough, on 4/25.

Where is this... 425?

Figuring out the lines for this has included a little tiny town trivia. Ravensdale is 425. Kanasket is not. Maple Valley is 425. Black Diamond is not. Renton is 425. Kent is not. That defines the southern end, and then in the North, it swings all the way up to Duvall, and all the way East to Snoqualmie. Skykomish? Nope.

On the North end, to be honest, I'm a little stymied. Monroe is not in the 425, but Edmonds is. Even Everett is in the 425. Will I need to go that far North? I thought of this as a freshwater challenge, but I may find that come next March, some sea anemones, seals, and murrelets might be necessary to get to 425. We'll see.

It's also worth asking. If a tree calls in the forest. . . does it have an area code? My answer will be yes, and it will be the area code of whatever town is closest to said tree, or mountain, or peat bog.

What counts?

People? No. Birds? Yes, with the same restrictions I always apply – alive, free, wild. Mammals? Goodness. . . I have seen a cougar before in the wild, and if I don't see one this year, honestly, I'm good. If I find cougar tracks, I may count it. Once I came across a shrew-mole carcass. I don't think I'm likely to see one of those alive unless I start in on trapping, night vision goggles or some other method that is just beyond what I'm interested in doing. I do want to try for some nocturnal species, but I'll be gentle with myself on the ID's. I will do my best to identify living things down to the species, but if it needs microscopes or DNA, I'll pass. Spore tests? Careful looks? Measurements of plants? Sure!

Plants are a funny one, however. Douglas Fir? Yes. Uncle Stuart's prize tomatoes? No. Scot's Broom? Well, yes. I don't want to go overboard with invasives, but I want to include them. Understanding Scot's Broom is part of understanding local ecosystems now.

Rubber boas, spotted owls, and chanterelles. I think the deal with all of the above (and perhaps numerous other species) is that some level of secrecy is needed regarding locations. I'd love to come across any of them. I'm not going to work too hard to do so, but hopefully a year of exploring will turn up some nice surprises. Regardless of what turns up, there will be a gazillion common things that have been living around me this whole time that I'll finally take the time to notice.

Car miles will be down. Foot miles will be up. Breakfast at the local cafe. . . I'll still try to work that in. These blogs have always been a way to shine a little light on good places out there, so I'll be sure to include a picture of a plate of eggs and hash browns at some point.

Documentation: I want to do as much as I can to document things well with pictures and sound. I want to find ways to clarify how I knew that this was Notodonta Pacifica and not some other moth. Sometimes it will mean highlighting the pictures, and it will certainly mean adding links to the many sites available online.

I will say again. I have no idea what I'm going to find. I hope that this adds to your walks.

Tim Brennan

February, 25 2020