An Armada of Admirals in the Fall Garden

A few days ago I was out in my garden taking photos of the pollinators that use fall asters - the very last of the summer bloomers. I was minding my own business snapping shots of bees and flies, when I caught sight of a Red Admiral butterfly drinking nectar from the tall daisies. I gasped and began madly clicking away. I was entranced by its beauty; the underside of its wings were a phenomenal 60's acid trip of pattern and color.

Slowly, I came to the realization that I was actually taking photos of two different butterflies. There were two! I was blown away.

When I had just gotten used to that idea, I looked up and noticed a third! It's so rare to see one Red Admiral per summer, and here were three! I was so jazzed.

These were crisp, gorgeous butterflies fresh from the chrysalis. But where did they come from? Red Admiral butterflies usually lay their eggs on nettles, but I wracked my brain and couldn't think of any nearby stands of those prickly stingers. So I decided to pull out my "Butterflies of Cascadia", to see what Bob Pyle had to say about Vanessa atalanta. In reading his great description, I learned that yes, admirals (which he calls Red Admirables) use nettles as a host plant for their larvae, but they will also use hops, which are in the same plant family as nettles. Suddenly, a big light bulb went off in my head. I had planted hops more than ten years ago only a few feet from where these adult butterflies were nectaring on asters. I remembered that I had specifically chosen the vine in hopes that Red Admirals would lay their eggs on it, but had completely forgotten in the interval. It only took ten years, but the plan worked!

The next day, I went out to the garden again and darned if there wasn't a fourth admiral on the asters. It was a veritable festival of butterflies.

I don't know if it's because we had such a short summer this year, but those asters have been just crazy with pollinators of all kinds - bumblebees, honeybees, wasps, butterflies, syrphid and tachinid flies. I thought the poor insects might perish with all the September rain we've had, but whenever there's a dry spell, they are out there, frantically taking advantage of this last nectar source of summer. There are so many pollinators that they fight for space on the hundreds of flowers. It's quite amazing.

I guess the moral of the story is, if you want to attract pollinators, you can't go wrong planting fall asters. Given room, they will reseed themselves to become a terrific pollinator draw to any garden. One other really nice thing about asters - they're so tall that you'll be right at eye level to witness one of the greatest shows on earth.

Nancy Partlow

---
Nancy is our guest writer for this blog. A "silent partner" in our Bees, Birds and Butterflies work, she is a very gifted naturalist and gardener.  Janet & Glen

Resources: The Butterflies of Cascadia by Robert Michael Pyle

Beaver ponds and big lunkers

In the last two weeks, there have been some gloriously sunny days, the kind of spring days that make us remember why we live in the maritime Northwest (and why we put up with months of sullen rain). During this season I scrutinize the Weather Channel carefully, checking out the satellite view and planning ahead for those rare, warm days. We got one on a Saturday and Glen and I took that opportunity to go to McLane Creek DNR park, a beaver pond wetland not far from our house.

I have been visiting this pond for over 35 years, on and off. Our goal on Saturday was to see if there were any dragonflies, emerging from their larval state and taking that first spring flight. But in the southernmost reaches of Puget Sound, it’s still a little early and cold for emergence, so there were no dragonflies on view . But as experienced nature watchers, we knew there would be plenty of things to see. And so it proved.

We perched ourselves on the dock that sticks out into the beaver pond. Here the sun was strong, we were surrounded by fertile freshwater marshlands full of lily pads, and encircled by cattails, sedges, rushes, willows and spirea. Here the wood ducks came eagerly to the dock, hoping for bread. Here one and only one Canada goose roosted nearby, ignoring us and preening its feathers. I kept fretting why there is only ONE goose, and remarked to Glen how weird that is, until he finally spotted a second goose, across the beaver pond, sitting on a nest. YEEES! It is a mated pair, they own this pond and for the time have successfully trounced and driven off all others. That’s why there’s just 2 geese. Soon there will be 2 geese + 6 golden-downed fledglings.

In May, one of the best treats McLane has to offer is the sight of Rough-skinned newts, patrolling the waters below the dock. This is a kind of salamander, common in our area. In winter they live a life in the woods, hiding out under logs, slowing down and finding ways just to get through the icy times. In spring, as the daylight lengthens and the warm rains come, they head for the wetland ponds to breed. The males’ bodies shift from a rough, dry winter skin to a smooth sleek finish suited to life in the water; their tails become flat flexible blades like fins, useful for propelling them through the water. Sexual hormones surge, and their cloaca at the base of their tail swells and protrudes.

Our friend Rain recently saw a spring migration of Rough-skinned Newts. She lives near a beautiful patch of DNR woods and wetland, north of Olympia. A few weeks ago in April she went to walk the trail that runs through these woods, and was startled to see at her feet masses of newts, heading in one direction along the trail towards the wetlands. We speculated that she had stumbled upon a mass migration; there had been a few days of wet, warm rain, which may have triggered the surge to water.

In the water of the beaver pond today, we see only males. They spend the spring and summer months almost exclusively in the pond (some may spend all year there), patrolling and fighting over the rare female. The females come to the pond only to mate, lay eggs along the shallow water edges, and then leave. Discretion is the better part of valor for these females.

We are struck by the sight of one HUGE rough-skinned newt. We hang perilously over the railing, gaping at it and making rude remarks about obesity and BMI (basal metabolic index). It moves well through the water and appears healthy. Glen manages to scoop it up in our dragonfly net and we get a few pictures. It is nearly twice the size of the other males. We wonder if it is diseased in some way and perhaps has trouble excluding pond water from its body.

After we returned home, I emailed Bill Leonard about this animal. Bill is a herpetologist extraordinaire, and co-wrote the book on Amphibians of Washington and Oregon. He looked at our pictures, and said that he and his co-author Bob Storm call these guys “the big lunkers” and that they are not uncommon. He believes that this one is healthy and very well-fed. They speculate these big lunkers may be as old as 50 years (up to 30 is more normal for Rough-skinned Newts).

My jaw drops at this news. Rough-skinned Newts are such small animals, migrating year after year from woods to water, struggling to get through winter, fighting with other males over females, dodging its only predator (garter snakes) . It is beyond belief that they can make it to 50 years of age.

It was a beautiful day at the beaver pond. We spent several hours that sunny afternoon at McLane creek, sitting on the dock. We watched spring come alive, in bird song, bursting green plants, blue sky and quiet fertile waters. We came home with our first sunburn of the season. And later that night, safe asleep in our warm bed, a big lunker prowled purposefully through our dreams.

Janet

In Praise of Unkempt Gardens

Peering outside from the kitchen window, I consider how much longer I can delay mowing the grass and forbs patch that we call a lawn. I notice movement, and start counting one, two, four, seven birds gleaning seeds off the dandelions, now gone to fluffy seed. I watch one bird as she pops up and with one foot grabs a stem below the seed head. She pushes the seedhead to the ground, quickly picks through the tuft of seeds, and moves on. Although their motions vary, each member of this guild is moving just as quickly, intent on filling up on its share of the plunder. (Eat hearty friends, the larder is FULL in this garden!)

Of these birds, some are clearly Golden-Crowned Sparrows - we’ve been seeing and hearing them pass through for a while now. They are a big gray sparrow with an unmistakable head - a black cap with a yellow patch running as a wide stripe from the forehead back across the crown. In fresh breeding plumage and in the right light, as is my view from this window, the yellow is a strong color and the bird is aptly named. Its call too is unmistakable, almost tedious for its constancy - a few wheezy notes sung like a morse code operator falling asleep as he keys. Daaah dit dit Daaah dit dit dah daah, and over again. No resonant Song Sparrow he, his song nonetheless assures me, for a few weeks anyway, of his presence. Soon these sparrows will fly north to mate and raise young in mountain and tundra areas.

This is, however, a mixed sparrow flock and within the flock is a different bird of noticeable contrast. My eye is caught by a much smaller strongly striped buff-brown sparrow, at most two-thirds as big as the larger Golden-Crowned. As attention-getting as its size is its own distinctive crown. Like many sparrows, it has a colored stripe from its forehead back: on this little sparrow, the crown stripe is a bold rusty brown. Janet, who has joined me at the window, agrees that this is a Chipping sparrow. It is named not for its color pattern, but for its voice. As flocks of these birds move around, they keep in contact with each other by using a distinct chip note, hence their name.

Chipping sparrows are considered a fairly common sparrow, but it is a first sighting in our backyard. It too is passing through, looking for open lands to nest, and gratified to stop in our backyard for a traveling meal of dandelion seeds.


Here in early May, this flock of mixed sparrows is probably in migration. Kind of like us humans who stop off the freeway at the food mart and gorge on nuts and chocolate, (burgers and fries), before getting back on the road, the sparrows have located some high-energy food before resuming their flight. The birds are moving through, quickly grabbing quality snacks to restock their stores of fat, then taking to the skies again, searching for prime breeding habitat. We may well not see them again this year.

Though observing this particular mixed flock is a first for us, watching birds glean dandelion heads in our under maintained garden is something we have seen before. While I do make some effort to weed and mow, I know that an overzealous attempt to pare down our garden to just the most disciplined plants, and to impose too much order, also pares down the number of wild visitors to our garden. Janet insists on keeping some dandelions; in her other life as an herbalist we pick the flowers and infuse them in olive oil, making a wonderful remedy for muscle pain. In early spring I like to nibble the tender new flower buds still tucked tightly at the base of each plant. It is easy to keep some dandelions, (hard not to). As we watch this flock today greedily gulping down the seeds, we are reminded of other uses of this plant, and its role in feeding the wildlife around us.

Here’s to unkempt gardens!

Glen and Janet

Resources:
• Sparrows and Buntings by Byers, Curson and Olsson
• closeup sparrow photos from www.birdseek.com and SDakotabirds.com

Here Be Ssssssssnakes...

In early March, a friend was out walking the river trail at the Nisqually Wildlife Refuge. It was an unusually warm sunny early afternoon when he stopped to admire some frogs in a pond. While watching the frogs, suddenly at his feet he noticed a seething mass of garter snakes. He told me he saw several large ones, and then a large wriggling ball of snakes (a mass of male snakes trying to mate with a female). He had stumbled upon a winter snake den or hibernaculum.

This is what garter snakes do in winter. They find a convenient depression in the ground, below the frost line, but above the water table and there with hundreds of their compatriots they hole up for the winter. As cold-blooded animals they do not enter a true hibernation state, but use the protected space and the shared heat of the other inhabitants to get through the winter months. In our area, in early March, on sunny days, you can often find these snakes making their first spring forays out into the world. This is what my friend had found.

I've long had an interest in garter snakes. I grew up with six siblings on the rural edges of Olympia near Hazard lake, and we had miles of abandoned cow pasture to explore. I remember with great fondness how I would catch a garter snake, and then menace my younger siblings with it. Even now, the memory of the terrified screams of the young'uns, running for their lives, warms the cockles of my heart. (Yes, I was a BAD sister.)

My friend JoAnna and I decided to go out to the refuge and see if we could find this hibernaculum. Armed with detailed directions, we walked along the river trail and found a certain middle-aged Black Cottonwood tree, growing out of the raised dike that keeps the Nisqually river at bay. This tree has a fat root that is only partly embedded in the soil; underneath it is a perfect dry location for snakes. And about noon each day, the sun comes out and shines with full strength on this site. That is enough to bring out the snakes.

In our first visit we sat and watched for awhile and saw nothing. We were about to leave when another refuge visitor passing by looked down and remarked: "Look! Snakes!" Apparently it had warmed up enough and the snakes were starting to come out to bask. We got up in a flurry of excitement and watched for a couple hours. We estimate we saw about 30 snakes on that visit.

We've visited the snake den a few times now. Each time we learn more about the garter snakes and their habits. In our most recent visit Glen came along, which was great, because we managed to persuade him to pick one up. Glen is a skilled snake wrangler, and made it possible to get some great pictures. He also held the snake long enough that it got unhappy; it produced a pea-size drop of pink poo from its cloaca and the stench was palpable several feet away. I didn't get a picture of that.

I sent a few pictures along to Bill Leonard, a local herpetologist who very kindly answered my emails. It turns out we have 3 species of Garter snakes in western Washington. It turns out all three species can have a wide range of colors, but if you look at head size, and count the scales above and below the lip, you can sort out the different species. Bill is a co-editor in the book Reptiles of Washington and Oregon, which helps you learn how to do this.

The snake that Glen held is probably a Western Terrestrial Garter Snake, based on labial scale count. These snakes are widespread and commonly found near water. They feed on slugs, snails, earthworms, fish, salamanders, frogs, lizards snakes and even birds. Females are typically larger than males. These snakes may live as long as 10 years.

The snakes we saw at the hibernaculum were probably males. The story goes that on sunny days in early spring, the males emerge first, to bask and to keep alert to the scent of a likely female. If one appears, every male snake in the vicinity will try to mate with her, which is how my friend saw a snake ball. Once mated, the females leave the den and head for likely foraging territory. The males may stick around for awhile, and then they, too, will disperse. Come early October, many snakes will return again to the same hibernaculum, using it to help with their winter survival. We plan to keep our eyes on this hibernaculum for some weeks to come.

You can help garter snakes prosper in your own backyard. At the end of this blog entry, I am posting a link to a description of how to build a backyard rock pile (Glen and I are in the process of putting one in as we speak). A more simple addition is a snake board; this is described in the Washington Fish and Wildlife webpage. We hope you enjoy these fascinating animals!

Janet
Resources:
• Fish & Wildlife info about snake boards: http://wdfw.wa.gov/wlm/living/snakes.htm
• Info about Rock Piles: http://www.wildlifegardeners.org/forum/habitat/1413-log-piles-rock-piles.html
• Check out Manitoba's Narcisse Garter Snake Dens: www.manitobaphotos.com/narcisse.htm
• Thanks to Bill Leonard for answering my questions.

The Tree of Life

We first discovered this willow tree in spring 2006. I had just had major surgery and was unable to drive. My sister took pity on me, taking me for an outing. We rambled south and stopped at a favorite birdwatching place along the Black River in southern Thurston county.

It had been a cold, wet, gloomy winter that looked like it would never end (never have major surgery in winter if you can help it). I had had excruciating pain for months before the surgery - the worst of my life. It had been a profoundly difficult journey to the Underworld and at that point of time in late March, just 5 weeks after surgery, I wasn’t sure I could (or wanted) to come back. Then we found the Tree.

It was midday, about 50 degrees, with weak sun pushing through clouds. We parked next to the Black River, and “happened” to park next to a lone willow tree, probably a Sitka willow. We briefly looked at the willow, noticed it had tons of fuzzy gray pussywillows and dismissed it. We wanted to see BIG wildlife: the Red tailed hawks, the Great Blue Herons, the first migrant swallows of spring.

But oddly for this place, none of the big things showed up. And as we sat there, using our binoculars to scan the horizon behind the willow tree, I suddenly noticed: hundreds of bumblebees flying in to the tree. We watched carefully for awhile and realized: they were the new queens of the year, starting up their hives, and flying into this willow. They went to the gray pussywillows that had progressed on to yellow pollen, and proceeded to collect this pollen to provision their young brood of worker bees. In this picture, if you look closely at the sky to the left of the tree, you can see many black dots: these are all queen Bumblebees heading to the willow store.

The sun came through the clouds and the day started to warm up. We then saw a Rufous Hummingbird female come into the willow. We watched, spellbound, as she delicately, carefully inserted her bill into an individual pussywillow, clearly collecting nectar. I was astounded; while it was obvious that the massive amounts of pollen were nourishing the bees, I had no idea that pussywillows could also provide nectar. As we watched, more females came in, then a male hummer, who promptly started a territorial fight. It was quite a show.

Then the sun really started to break through the clouds. Suddenly we noticed a BUTTERFLY flitting through the pussywillows. (Butterflies in March are pretty rare). It was a California Tortoiseshell, coming to the willow to collect nectar. These butterflies overwinter as adults and sneak out on the rare warm sunny days for a quick burst of nectar energy. This one stayed for awhile, and was joined by others of its species. We stared, our eyes glued on the tortoiseshell as it inserted its proboscis (drinking tube) into the pussywillows, clearly finding and drinking nectar.

We sat for a long time, the sun warming our backs, the rich life all around us, the Tree of Life bringing its abundance and fertility back to the Earth and her creatures. It was a profound lesson in the seasons of life: to everything there is a season and the Tree of Life was bringing all of us: the bees, butterflies, the hummingbirds (and me ) back into the warmth and life of spring.

My spirits lifted for the first time in months. Life once again held hope, beauty and possibility. The Tree of Life brought me back from the Underworld and back to life. Ever since, that willow has a special place in my heart.



Janet

Resources:
Photos by Nancy Partlow
Check out the Black River Unit of the Nisqually Wildlife Refuge at: www.fws.gov/nisqually/getinvolved/bru_general.html

The Deschutes Estuary: The Tide Runs Again

A few days ago I was driving around Capitol lake in Olympia. For those unfamiliar with the area, this lake was formed in 1951 when a dam was put in to impound the Deschutes River at Fifth Avenue. Since this time, the river has backed up behind this dam, only flowing northward to discharge the overflow of fresh water. The impounded lake is a series of three basins, running north to south. You can drive south along these basins, on the Deschutes Parkway.

Before 1951, the Deschutes River met the salt waters of Puget Sound in a tidal estuary. Prior to the first American and European settlers, this estuary was a thanksgiving feast richly laid out for the Squaxin Indian bands who lived along these waters. Seafood, waterbirds and wetland plants all provided great sources of food year around. The Native Americans knew this well, which is why they had their year around longhouses near the lower falls of the Deschutes, at the beginning of the estuary.

By the 1840’s the first European American settlers showed up. In 1908, my grandfather Partlow left the snow-bound farmlands of Michigan and set up a medical practice in Olympia, settling in a house on the bluff above the estuary. A descendant of Scots & Irish emigrants, he planted roots in Olympia, right on the shores of the estuary. I often thought he chose a place that looked very much like the firths (estuary) of the family's roots in Scotland. His grandson my father Bud was born in 1918 in the “old” St. Peter’s Hospital on the grounds of the Capitol campus, near where the totem pole is today, and also, just above the estuary.

By 1925, my father was growing up around the estuary; he well remembers the stinking sewage, the garbage, the shanty houses of Little Hollywood that lined the edges of the estuary prior to the dam. (You can see Little Hollywood in this 1946 photo taken from the hill below the Capitol, looking north). Now in 2010 he thinks all estuaries are dirty, stinking, disgusting mudholes, and he wants Capitol lake to stay an impounded river forever.


In 1921 my mother Shirley was born in Maxwell Maternity home, on the western side of the estuary, where today the 5th avenue bridge becomes a roundabout. (Here is a picture of Maxwell, taken from the west side hill facing east. You can see the estuary at full tide - minus the dam and Fifth avenue.)

She too grew up on the mudflats, and for all the days of her life found them a source of joy, of wonder, of great seashells and fabulous agates. She would not at all agree with my father that estuaries are worthless mudholes. She dragged her children out for regular jaunts to the tidal mudflats and showed us sand dollars and moonsnails, seaweeds and seashells. I have never forgotten her lessons.

By the time I was born in the fifties, the Fifth avenue dam had been built and the river was blocked behind it. That was the end of the tidal estuary.

So when I was driving around the lake a few days ago, I saw an amazing thing. There had been a low tide and the dam had been opened up. The water was entirely drained from the lake, leaving only a thin ribbon of the Deschutes river, snaking its way over a thick muddy bottom.

( This was being done as part of a plan to eradicate invasive New Zealand Mudsnails. Somehow they have been introduced to the north basin of the impoundment and threaten not only that lake but all other local and regional lakes. So the plan is to drain Capitol lake and refill it with salt water, allowing the snails to pickle in a salty brine for a couple of days in hopes of killing them off).

I had some errands to do; it was several hours later when I came back around the impoundment. By this time, the tide was coming in through the open dam with a vengeance: two of the three basins were nearly full of saltwater, and the water was moving rapidly into the southern basin by Tumwater Historical Park. I went to the Fifth avenue dam and stood next to it. The rush and roar of water pouring southward was impressive; it was so loud I couldn’t hear my own voice.

I sat near the dam for a long time, watching the water flow south. I couldn’t quite believe it; it seemed weird to see the water flowing the “wrong” way. Yet, at another level, it felt profoundly right.

As I sat there, I was filled with a sense of an old mistake, an old wrong, being corrected. The vigor and energy with which the tidal waters flowed back into their old grounds spoke to me of a natural system that wants what it wants, and that is to be the estuary it has been for thousands of years.

As I watched by the river, I felt in the marrow of my bones: there are bigger forces in the Creation and they are at work. See the tidal waters, sweeping back into the place that for thousands of years has been theirs, reclaiming the tidal pull and tug that is generations old. Smell the salt water all the way up to the old Brewery. Watch the Cormorants on the lake, calling excitedly, flying up and down, basking on the new logs brought in with the tide.

There are Greater forces at work. Long may they run.

Janet

Resources:
• Photo of Little Hollywood by Merle Junk/Shadowcatchers
• Photo of Maxwell Maternity House -undated photograph from History of Olympia website
• Deschutes Estuary Restoration Team (DERT): check their blog at www.deschutesestuary.org.

Salmon at Kennedy Creek

On Saturday morning we awoke to a deep frost, crusting the grass and roofs with white crystals, cold and still. It was foggy too, with clouds of billowing fog sneaking fingers through the neighborhood trees. I sat inside by the big window, in my warm jammies, reluctant to even think of going outside. But my friend JoAnna and I had made plans to go to Kennedy creek, to see the annual flood of Chum salmon making their way upstream to spawn. This was an invitation from nature not to be refused.

Kennedy creek is a beautiful healthy creek that flows out of the Black Hills in northwestern Thurston county. If you head northwest on highway 101 towards Shelton, about ten miles out of Olympia, the highway drops down to sea level and you cross the Kennedy creek estuary. I have spent many happy hours at this estuary, counting shorebirds and watching the tide flow in and out.

On Saturday, the tide was coming in strongly, a new moon high tide swollen with the recent rains. This is the kind of flow that triggers the Chum to go up the river. Here in November, this is their month: all month long they will run the river of their birth, seeking places to spawn.

So here in this amazing place, JoAnna and I found a quiet place by the rain-swollen creek and settled in to watch. At first we saw nothing and thought we'd missed the fish. But as we quietly settled in, suddenly we heard the wild splashing of nearby salmon. The splashing, churning, chasing behavior is usually done by the males, in perhaps a territorial or dominance display. I never see the females do it; JoAnna and I remarked to each other how females in general have better things to do.

Among salmon, there is sexual dimorphism: the females are small and more gray. The males are larger, much more brightly colored in mottled green and red, and among the Chum, the spawning males develop an elongated snout and enlarged teeth, which give them the look of fighting dogs. Hence their other name: Dog salmon.

The name of Chum comes from the Chinook jargon language "Tzum", which means mixed colors, spots or stripes. This certainly fits the Chum in this fall season.

The females look for likely gravel beds in which to make their salmon nest or redd. The gravel must be clean of sediments, well-oxygenated, and protected from the main stream of the creek, to avoid washing out in flood times. This sort of real estate is at a premium in Kennedy creek; where the females find it, they congregate, along with a swarm of males all eager to participate in fertilization.

In general, there is a dominant male who guards the female and sticks close. He often chases off other intruding males - hence the splashy displays. He wins by virtue of his size and ferocity. When his female completes her redd and lays her eggs, it is his sperm that will fertilize them.

Other smaller males, called jacks, cannot hope to win these battles of size and temperament. Their strategy is to lurk in the shallows, making use of their lighter colors to blend into the murky water. When the dominant male has his back turned, chasing off other intruders, the jack sneaks in and fertilizes the eggs. It is strategy that works more often than you might think.

After the eggs are laid, the female is done and she dies. The males hang on a little longer, traveling up and down the stream to look for other fertilization opportunities. Then they, too, die. Sometime in their long journey from ocean to Puget Sound to Kennedy creek estuary, the salmon stop eating. They digest their own stored fat, and later, their own protein to survive just long enough to spawn. As they stop eating, their immune system weakens and their bodies are attacked by a wide variety of pathogens. You can see in the picture, the dead male is a blotchy white-red: the white is a fungus that overwhelms the salmon's immune system.

Along the banks of Kennedy creek, bloated white carcasses of salmon lie. They provide a crucial last service to the ecosystem; in our temperate rain forests, rain washes away a lot of the nutrients. The bodies of salmon fertilize the streams, providing nutrients to all of the forest. The caddisfly larvae in the stream, the young salmon smolts, the nearby threads of fungus, the tree roots all feed from these dying salmon bodies. And when the caddisfly molts into an adult fly, it is the nearby Wilson's warblers who catch them to feed their young, while the young salmon grow up and head out to sea. All these animals carry within themselves the life that was gifted to them by the death of the salmon.

JoAnna and I sit quietly in this frosty morning, looking on this dance of life and death. Overhead, the Bald Eagles lurk in the trees, their high-pitched loony cackle drifting through the lichen-shrouded trees. There is the damp sponge of Earth in fall, the leaves dropping off the trees, the smell of damp and fungus and dying fish, all wrapped around us. And in front of us, in the greatest nature show of all, we watch the last days of these magnificent animals, creating the future in the waters of Kennedy Creek.

Janet
Resources: webpage of Kennedy Creek salmon wildlife watching area:
wdfw.wa.gov/fish/chum/viewingchum_kennedy.htm