3/11 - 100: Spinus Pinus

Pete's bird

A good birding friend of mine passed a few years back. My son and I attended the memorial, and as we walked out of the church one last time with Pete, a flock of Pine Siskins erupted from one of the trees.

These are a species of finch, and finches are a hit or miss species from year to year. They've been hard to come by this year, but I had a chance to catch them calling in this video:

At about 8 seconds, and again at 18 - the rising zeeeeee! is coming from a flock of siskins up in the trees.

It was always a joy to head out with Pete, and he had a few nuggets of wisdom he'd share now and then:

"People ask me, Pete, how do you find all of those birds? And I'd tell 'em… I go out... and look. for. them." Simple wisdom that I can put to use as I'm out looking for 425 things. If I'm sitting around inside, there's really not much to be seen (I mean. . . except for those moths).

"Funny thing about birds - they can fly." This was usually in reference to some isolated bird sighting - a bird that Pete missed, or a bird he found and nobody else had a chance to see. I like it as a reminder to enjoy the birds as they come. It's not a bad reminder to enjoy the people in your current orbit. Pete is a fine example of someone who was here, and then was not. Whether it's family or friends, it's good to remember how awesome it is that your paths have crossed - every time that they do.

"Never show up without flowers." - totally unrelated, but not a bad thought. And that one encapsulates what a classy man he was.

He's missed, but every time I hear siskins, I think of him and smile.

Do you have a connection like that. . . ?

3/7-10 Worm Moon

Signs of Spring

The week has really been full of signs of spring - even to someone who has been tied down with writing, it's impossible to miss them during the brief trips out into the sunlight:

1. The first yellowjacket of spring. Interestingly, this is two genuses worth of insects. How many live around here? Not sure, but this site seems to be telling me that the most likely suspect is Vespidae Pennsylvanica. Stinging insects had always been something that put me into fight or flight, until I finally got bitten by one of these a few years back. It hurt. Not much. Since then, I have been trying to get to know the pollinators around here. We fear what we don't understand, right?

2. First worm. Fittingly, with the worm moon, I saw a robin pulling a worm up out of the ground. Not sure what kind of annelid it was, but the ground is warm enough for them to be moving around just fine.

3. Pacific chorus frog (or Pacific tree frog). They're singing! Nothing says spring like the sound of these guys filling the night.

The other two animals of note in the last week: Common Raccoon, and . . . a fish. I was at the mouth of the Cedar River and a fish - easily over a foot long - jumped up out of the water. Twice. And I realized that I have not a clue what the list of possibilities even is at this time of year.

So fish and worms will be my homework until next time!

3/5 A Rude Awakening

I did my daily peek at the front porch light on the way out the door, and saw a moth tangled up in a web. I blew some air past it and got no response. A sad way to get a moth, but it was pretty well intact, so I went inside, got a utensil and a plate to scoop it down and brought it inside.

As I was getting ready to draw it. . . the moth, which had previously allowed itself to be nudged around and moved, suddenly started twitching, flicking its wings, and then walking! I got the little thing back outside, undrawn, but apparently woken up from some kind of hibernation.

An interesting round of searches

I tried "do moths hibernate in winter", and came across "Winter Moth". The pictures looked a lot like the moth I had just set free. Yay!

I read up on Ortheroptera Brumata, a.k.a. Winter Moth, and found out it was an invasive pest in the Pacific Northwest. Boo!

(image from bugguide.net - Molly Jacobson)

And then I continued on with the search, trying to figure out what family this moth was in, and learned that Ortheroptera Bruceata, Bruce Spanworm Moth looks very similar. Hm.

(image from TheDistractedNaturalist)

Compare both to the picture I shot of (undoubtedly) the same moth a few nights ago: 

Ortheroptera sp?

So I don't know exactly what to think, but I was happy to get the moth down to two species!  These two are similar not only in appearance but in habits. They are active in winter months, and have females that are flightless. They are in the family Geometridae, which oddly enough is not on the Pacific Northwest Moth site. The name of the family comes from the larvae - inchworms!

(Istocphoto - Eric Shaw)

So that was the excitement for the morning, and I will be able to count it as "a thing" for now. Other moths, as long as I know they're not one of those two species, can count on their own. Maybe I'll be able to find one of these moths again and identify it, but we'll see.

Close to 100 things so far!

3/3 A different approach

Let's do this backwards

It will take a lot of different approaches to find and identify all of these living things. After my moth encounters last week, I thought I could just keep going out to the porch light any time the sun was down and find any number of moths waiting to be identified. Nope!

So I thought I would spend a little time this morning in, out of the rain, learning about moths. Try to get an idea of how they're organized, when and how to find them - just trying to fill in some of those gaps.

I started here. Pacific Northwest Moths. And that's the beautiful thing about all of this. Nearly every kind of living thing I take an interest in will have a whole site dedicated to it, and experts to reach out to.

Fun fact: Butterflies have a little ball at the end of each antenna.

(www.pestwiki.com)

Horrifying fact: There's a moth in the Pacific Northwest that is 6.5" across - the Polyphemus Moth.

(Wikimedia Commons)

And why was this so viscerally upsetting to me? It's interesting to stop and think about associations with butterflies and moths. Butterflies we see flying around at a distance, from flower to flower on nice summer days. Moths are almost always unexpected. They stumble into our houses, and mindlessly chase whatever source of light they can find. For me, maybe that's a piece of it - the enclosed spaces?  Butterflies have bright colors, moths have the dull brown and grey camouflage. I guess it just all adds up!

But I used to have the same reaction with flying stinging insects - wasps, bees, hornets - and I've softened a little on them since I started trying to identify them. Something about the fear of the unknown just needs to be addressed, perhaps.

On that note:

I snipped this from the Pacific Northwest Moth site. They're coming! But I have a little reprieve before Mothra shows up outside my door.

The distribution there was not uncommon, and it's not too surprising that I haven't seen too many moths in my little explorations. The fact that I found two of them in February was a little surprising, I guess. If I knew them as well as I knew birds, I might even have some ideas about which species would show up this early.

1200 species are in the PNW Moth database, and they sent me off to another site that listed 32 superfamilies for the US. But neither of these gave a quick guide showing how they broke them into these groups. Then I got it narrowed down a little:

The PNW page deals with: "Pacific Northwest moth species within the families Drepanidae, Uraniidae, Lasiocampidae, Saturniidae, Sphingidae, Notodontidae, Erebidae, Euteliidae, Nolidae, and Noctuidae."

Ten

Ten I can deal with. In the spirit of reinventing the wheel, I thought. . . why not make a dichotomous key for this? It couldn't be more than 9 questions to get it narrowed down to a family, right?

But it wasn't happening. Moths are pretty crazy. . . and not always in dichotomous ways. So, in a kind of one-by-one way, here's those ten families: 


1. Drepanidae - Hook-tip Moths

These guys have forewings with hooks at the tip. Easy peasy. 13 species listed in the PNW moth database, so IF I found one, it wouldn't be too too hard to narrow down. 

2. Uraniidae - Pretty much just this one guy:

Wikimedia Commons

The Gray Scoopwing Moth.  Those wings are funny-looking, and should stand out. 

3. Lasiocampidae - Lappet Moths

Oh... I know these guys. Tent Caterpillars. 7 species. Many many summers ago, I squished a whole lot of these that were eating away at some arbor vitaes in the yard.

4. Saturniidae

This is where the Polyphemus above resides. All ten species in here are pretty darn big, and not all are nocturnal. Hopefully I'll remember this when I find a butterfly with funny antennae in the summer...

5. Sphingidae - Sphinx Moths 

These actually do have kind of a distinctive shape, all in all, so I'll include this image of a Eumorphus Pandorus.

By Patrick Coin (Patrick Coin) - Photograph taken by Patrick Coin, CC BY-SA 2.5, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=642730


Many of them have this basic shape, but not all. 34 species in the PNW database.

6. Notodontidae -Prominent Moths

28 species, and the "prominent" part is kind of a hunchback thing - prominent bit/piece sticking up from their back.  Hunchback Moth or Shark Moth may have worked as well. 

7. Erebidae

Yep. I get a little lost here. This supposedly includes tiger moths, lichen moths, and wasp moths. But then. . . on the PNW site, I don't see wasp moths.  I'm not sure what ties this family together, but it's pretty big, with 170 species of moths wrapped up inside.

8. Euteliidae - Batman Moths. . . because they have Euteliidae belts. . .?

Only one species, and it doesn't show up on the wet side of the state.

9. Nolidae - Tuft Moths

Tuft moths have little tufts on their face. Or on their head. Or. . . maybe on their forewings. Or no tuft.  That's what I can tell from the image search. Just 7 species here.

10. Noctuidae - Owlet Moths.

980 species? Ha. oh well. This may be pretty unmanageable! Hopefully I can start finding some and ruling out other families before I get mixed up in this family.

Finding some moths

It's been interesting to read some of the ideas for viewing moths out there. Painting a tree with a mixture of sugar and beer has been suggested. I like the sheet method. Put out a white sheet and shine a light on it at night. Go out later and look at the moths on the sheet!

More to come. . . 

3/1 "Cedar" River Trail

First things first

That is Western Red Cedar, and it's not a cedar. It's a cypress. I have to say, as a Rentonite, it's hard news to hear that the Cedar River actually has no cedars growing along its banks. We are still ahead of the curve, though, taxonomy aside. 

Not looking like a snake. . . 

I made two stops along the Cedar River today. Many more would be possible, as the Cedar River Trail runs over 17 miles from Lake Washington to Landsburg, near Maple Valley. The first stop was at this little pull off from the Maple Valley Highway, right near 140th Avenue. The trail heads under the highway from the gravel lot, and over to the golf course side of the road. I've had American Dipper along the river at this spot, although the river has been so full that there haven't been rapids in the same spots. Dippers love to play in the rapids, and I'm sure I'll see some along the river during this whole thing. 

What I did see as I came around the corner was motion! Three Common Garter Snakes were all sunning themselves on the warm pavement on the otherwise nippy day. All three showed the turquoise stripes that point towards Puget Sound Garter Snake. 

I was pretty sure I had missed them with the camera as they slithered off to cover:

But then I looked closer. . . 

Just got the sucker before it disappeared!

Cedar River Mouth

The Cedar River empties into the south end of Lake Washington, and gets pretty busy bird-wise in the winter (gulls, grebes, ducks), and migration (nearly anything, including shorebirds). Today, I got distracted by some tracks and a tree. 

The tracks were left in the river, and appear to be feline or canine. . . but which? There are no claw marks at the very end, but I would otherwise be leaning towards coyote. It was interesting to see how well the track was preserved in the mud. Would it be there in a day? A week?

The tree is a Shore Pine Pinus contortus.  I wouldn't have known this a couple weeks ago, but someone pointed out a Shore Pine to me during the Marymoor walk on Thursday. Apparently, this is the same species as a subalpine tree - lodgepole pine. Two different subspecies just grow very differently in different habitat.