Winter Shorebirds of Budd Inlet

A few days ago Glen and I were taking a walk along East Bay in Olympia. This is the southern terminus of Puget Sound, where Indian and Moxie Creeks pour their waters out, and feed nutrients into the East bay estuary. We happened to take our walk at extreme high tide, and only the boiling turmoil on the surface of the bay showed the outlet of the creeks.

As we walked along, Glen remarked on the squeaky sounds of birds, and pointed out some American widgeons in the distance. Then he stopped suddenly as he realized he was wrong, and showed me a group of birds perched on some rocks just below us: a flock of Dunlins, shorebirds that spend their winter lives around the estuaries of Puget Sound. Here, ten feet away from us, was part of a resident flock in Budd Inlet making their peep noises of alarm.

Dunlins are shorebirds, which means they spent most of their lives on muddy tidelands, probing those long bills into the fine silty muds, seeking by touch a wide variety of polychaete worms and arthropods. They feed as long as they are able throughout the tidal cycle, but once the incoming water covers the mud flats that are the dinner table, they retire to some safe perch. This is their high tide roost, and here they digest, preen out their feathers, take a quick nap and wait out the tide, watching the fall of water that signals that the dinner table is available once again.

Notice how well their color blends into the surrounding rocks. This is no mistake; they blend beautifully into their surroundings and if they hadn’t made their alarm calls, Glen and I would never have seen them. A safe high tide roost is a necessity, as these birds are the favored prey item of Peregrine falcons, Merlins and pretty much any other hawk that can catch them.

The location of the roost is no mistake either; just below these rocks are the highest mud flats in East Bay, and as the tide turns and drops, these are the first mud flats available to the Dunlins.

Shorebirds are notoriously hard to identify, especially when they are in their drab winter plumages. How do we know these are Dunlins? Some key identification marks include dark legs, dark long bill and dark eyes. The long bill has a characteristic slight droop at the tip. In winter they are a uniform brown; their heads are very round and the dark eye is like a bull’s eye in the middle of that round head.

If you look carefully at the feathers on the backs of many of these birds, you will notice they are very faded and worn around the edges. These birds molted in new feathers last July, while on the breeding grounds in Alaska and in preparation for their long migration flight south to Puget Sound. By now, through many months and the storms of winter, those feathers are both faded and very ratty around the edges.

However, some of these birds are juveniles; born last summer, they molted in a different way and in a different timing, and so their feathers are more fresh. Here you can see a bird of the year, with a few dark, gold-rimmed feathers on its back, and the gold-rimmed flight feathers below. This bird has not yet seen its first birthday, yet it has made it through the long flight south, and the hard winter. It is a miracle of survival.

Over a long and varied life as a naturalist, I have spent many many long days sitting on the mud flats, watching shorebirds as the incoming tide pushes them in. Some of the best memories of my life are these vigils in the wild places, my butt planted on cold sand, beach grasses whipping my face, the calls of wild birds filling my ears. There is a feeling that if I wait long enough, quietly enough, the tide will push the flock all around me and I too will become one of the wild migrants, travelers from an unknown land, making my living on the rich dinner table that is a muddy estuary. Such is the beauty and magic of shorebirds.

Janet Partlow
Resources: Photos by Nancy Partlow

Subtle Signs of Spring

This Sunday morning we woke to pounding rain on the roof, and sheets of water slobbering down the street in front of our house. It was 53 degrees at 7:00 am, which for the maritime Northwest in January can mean only one thing: a Chinook is blasting through.

These are warm weather events wherein the jet stream entrains plumes of warm moisture straight from tropical Hawaii, shooting them northeast and aiming them (in the classic meteorologist's phrase) like a fire hose on Cascadia. These Chinooks often follow a period of landlocked cold and ice and come as a welcome relief to all living here.

So when the fire hose took a brief sun break at noon, I hot-footed it down to the Deschutes estuary, to take one of my favorite walks through the wetland along the river.

Here, if you look closely, are many signs that winter is losing its hold; the earliest native plants along the estuary are breaking dormancy and getting ready to grow leaves. The Indian Plum is one of the earliest: here the bud sheaths have fallen away and there are tiny green furled leaves, getting ready to unfold. Soon they will produce long chains of delicate white flowers. The first spring I knew this plant, I brought the flowers into the house, but I only did it once: after a few hours inside these flowers left the lovely scent of skunk, permeating the entire house.

The Oregon grape also looks ready to bolt: here the tight buds of flowers are poised to open into early spring sunshine, providing a rich source of nectar eagerly sought by our native pollinators, such as the earliest bumblebees. Notice, too, the prickly evergreen leaves, their flat surfaces turned up to take in every possible bit of sunlight, to photosynthesize and rebuild their carbohydrate stores.

In late winter, sap begins to run up the branches of the woody shrubs and trees; some of them are thin-skinned enough that you can see the color changes. Here the whippy branches of a (non-native) Weeping Willow are showing bright yellow, a clear sign of sap moving up and out.

These Chinook events bring with them inches and inches of rain; as I walked along the river, the nearby hillsides were bleeding out gouts of water. All around me I could hear the sounds of running water, pouring down the hills and into the river. This is a noise that triggers the beavers: they emerge from the winter lodges with a powerful urge to DAM EVERYTHING!! BLOCK IT! STOP IT! MAKE A POND! So all along my walk, I saw evidence of mid-sized deciduous trees sacrificed to this urge; in this picture you can see the typical pointy stump of a beaver chew, and large chips scattered at the base. This is one cherry tree that will not see another year.

My favorite tree ever is willow; each spring I eagerly anticipate the showing of the first pussy willows. My walk was complete when I saw a native willow with some pussy willow catkins; in this picture you can see them, fresh & rain-speckled, behind the sap-filled branches of Red-osier Dogwood.




Then I reached the point where the Deschutes river flows out from under the I-5 bridge. The water here is thick brown with muddy sediment, washed down by the Chinook rains. Here we are at sea level; these are the warmest places in winter, where the maritime influences moderate the icy grip of winter. And here is a Red Alder tree, leaning out over the river, showing its catkins getting longer, getting ready to produce clouds of February pollen. I checked one catkin; it was turning from brown-green to red, and was softening up. Signs of spring, indeed.

Finally I turned around to head home. Looking north I saw some blue sky- YES! A break in the weather! And in the distance a faint half rainbow, trying to find its way through the clouds. It was a much-needed sign of hope that the season of winter is losing its dominion; soon we will see the light and the life of spring return once again.

Janet Partlow
Resources: "A Field Guide to the Common Wetland Plants of Western Washington and Northwestern Oregon" by Sarah Speare Cooke

The Coming of the Ducks

It is now late October. Down the hill from our west Olympia house, where the Deschutes river is impounded behind the Fifth avenue dam, sits its current morph, Capitol Lake. In these days of sunny fall, the lake is very quiet. The autumnal colors of maple trees reflect into these waters, preening themselves in this mirror. The lake shapes itself into its stratified layers of hot and cold water, and only a few ripples stir its gelid form. During these bright October days, the lake is an autumn-colored jewel and there are few signs of any animal life: only a few resident Glaucous wing gulls loafing on a sand bar, screaming their petty squabbles to the skies. It looks like it could go on forever.

But not so: there’s the first big fall storm coming. And for the next few days, everything looks more like the maritime Northwest: lashing winds stir the lake into a froth. The colors fall from the trees into the dark waters, leaving behind bare branches. The rain slashes down in sheets and the mighty dam keepers have to play around with the water levels to prevent flooding . The lake is brim-full, mud-colored and hardly visible through the heavy veils of rain. It is now winter on Capitol Lake.

And somewhere in these nights of pounding rain, where we humans huddle gratefully in our warm houses, large flocks of waterbirds leave their nesting grounds in the interior of Alaska, the Yukon, the Northwest Territory. They leave their freshwater aspen wetlands, and for many, the place of their birth. They answer some wild, internal call and head south, looking for a place to spent the winter. They fly into the teeth of the storm, pounded by winds, often flying at night at high altitudes and calling their mournful cries into the dark. Many of them end up on Capitol Lake. After the storm breaks, after a clear morning dawns, we head back down the hill to the lake, and we find these first migrants of the year.

They huddle together in the north basin, usually the first place new arrivals come to. They have left the deep unpeopled quiet of the Canadian taiga and find themselves on this urban lake, surrounded by people and dogs and cars. They stay closely grouped together; they seem watchful and twitchy and quickly take flight at the slightest sign of possible danger. As we gaze, they splash water on their backs, washing and preening those all important feathers. Some dive to feed; a big food draw in this lake are the seeds left over from the thick summer algae mats.

Many different migrating ducks and geese can be found on the lake. They tend to form their own clubs and keep to themselves. See here, the swans keep a distance from the other birds, while the Buffleheads form small groups a clear space away from the swans.

Some of the first migrants are small flocks of Bufflehead ducks: the males are an eye-catching white and black, with crested heads. These are fiercely territorial ducks, and fight amongst themselves year around: for mates, for territory, because they feel like it, etc. It is said this is why they have only small flocks of 50 or less, because they can’t get along. If you watch the males even for only a few minutes, you will inevitably seen one lower his head and point his bill in a distinctively threatening posture, beat his wings and make a run at another bufflehead. They weigh about one pound, but emotionally they seem to believe they are the size of elephants.

Another common early migrant on the lake are the American Widgeons. As we watch, a small flock comes in, calling in a squeaky burble that is the ultimate rubber ducky sound. They form their own group and seek the lake edge, where they make shallow dives in search of vegetation.

As November comes in and advances, so too will the ducks. By the middle of November, hundreds of ducks will be making a their winter lives on this water. Here they spend much of the next few months, feeding and getting through the year. The different species will find microhabitats they like and hang out there. All the birds will get accustomed to the joggers and cars, and only the occasional pass by the local Bald Eagle pair will be enough to pull them, shrieking in terror, out of the water and back into the sky.

For me, it’s one of my favorite winter birdwatching hangouts. It’s a veritable Who’s Who of the waterbird world and one of the best places in which to learn about ducks and their lives. Maybe this winter, we will meet at the birdwatching bench, down by the lake...


Janet
Resources:
Waterscape photos by Nancy Partlow
Bufflehead: HRHunting.com

In Search of the Wild Field Cricket

As a child growing up in Olympia, I spent a great deal of time playing outdoors. Yet I don't recall ever seeing or hearing crickets. I never even knew we had crickets in Thurston County. That is why it was such a delightful surprise when I moved to a Tumwater mobile home park to discover that along with some really neat human neighbors, I had acquired some really cool insect ones as well, from the species Gryllus pennsylvanicus - Fall Field Crickets. As the name implies, these crickets are usually found in fields, but I can personally attest that they also flourish in mobile home parks.

For several years I have kept a list of all unusual or notable nature sightings from around my home. The list records the dates of when certain animal species are first heard or seen every year; the first frogs chorusing from a nearby wetland, the first male Rufous hummingbird, etc. Reviewing this log, I note that the first Fall Field Cricket is reliably heard between the last week of July and the first week of August. This year the date was August 4th.

I have always cherished the crickets' songs (one recent and memorable hot August night, my entire house - and heart - resonated with the sound), but I've rarely ever actually seen one of these secretive insects. Occasionally I've glimpsed a cricket out in the open, but I'd never tracked one down in its habitat until about a month ago.

Since they seemed to be more active after sunset, one evening I took up my trusty flashlight and went "cricketing by ear". It wasn't easy. These creatures are masters of concealment and ventriloquism. Not surprising, since the noisy males would provide tasty morsels for inquisitive small mammals, birds, or other predators. In the red landscape rock beneath my neighbor's metal awning (great acoustics), I distinctly perceived two different crickets. Even though I knew they were only a few feet away from me, I still couldn't locate the source of their chirps. If I stood in one place, they sounded like they were in front of me. One step forward, however, and I could swear they were behind me. I never did pinpoint their location.

Roaming the mobile home park, cognizant of my reputation as the neighborhood bug nutter, I could hear crickets all around, but couldn't find them. They were hidden in rockeries or under groundcover foliage. Most of the calls seemed to be emanating from right next to the curb, where the insects were holed up in the gap between the cement sidewalk and the street asphalt. Eventually, I zeroed in on a large, dark insect nestled tightly against the sidewalk rise. Victory! Taking some photos, I really wanted to see what this critter looked like.

Downloading the hard-won camera shots to the computer, what they revealed surprised me. The cricket is an amazing looking animal! From its long antennae, round head, circular garnet eyes, black leather neck choker, yellow wing stripes, cerci and ovipositor, it is obviously a miracle of natural adaptation. But wait! What's an ovipositor doing on a male cricket? An ovipositor is the specialized organ that female insects use to lay their eggs through. The ovipositor on a female cricket is the long, dark, needle-like apparatus poking out dead center from the rear of its abdomen. But this cricket was supposed to be a male. I had tracked it down by ear, and only males "cricket". What had happened?

After mulling for a bit, I was forced to conclude that the female cricket, attracted by a sequestered male's stridulations, had been very near to consummating the procreative act with him when I came along. A male cricket had foiled me once again.

A few weeks later, determined to capture an image of a male, I set out anew with flashlight in hand. I was haunting street gutters when a neighbor out walking his dog saw me and inquired, "Did you lose something?" Explaining my quest, he expressed mild interest in my pursuit. He stood nearby until I discovered a male cricket deep in a crevice next to the sidewalk. I asked my neighbor if he would hold the flashlight and shine it down into where the cricket was hiding, so I could take a picture. He agreed. His previous indifference evaporated when he caught sight of the insect, proclaiming excitedly, "There it is! I see it!" But I still couldn't get a decent shot. Too deep.

As summer wore into autumn, I had pretty much relinquished my goal of photographing a male cricket. The advent of shorter days and cooler nights had reduced the trillings in the park to a precious few. Yet finally in mid-October, at the tail end of cricket season, I heard a very loud chirping directly in front of my house. Investigating the source of the ruckus, I was gratified to identify a male cricket, conspicuously wing-rubbing his amorous serenade into the late afternoon air.

"Kind of risky", I thought, but then I noticed her. The male was stridulating madly to a nearby lady love. Listening intently to his aria through eardrums in her front legs, she approached him tentatively, coyly, then turned away. But unable to withstand his ardency, she soon joined him in discreetly repairing to the shrubbery, from whence emitted a quite different kind of chirping (which I imagined as a sort of drunken ecstasy) as the deed was done.


Two frosty nights later, cricket song ceased from the mobile home park entirely. After more than two months of nearly non-stop activity, the insects had gained their well-deserved rest. But deep within the sandy soil, the females' oviposited eggs abide, waiting for the planet to tilt on its axis once more. Waiting, for the life-giving warmth of the sun to pour upon the earth. Waiting, for the cycle of life and death to begin again.

Nancy Partlow

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Resources:
Observing Insect Lives by Donald Stokes
The Songs of Insects by Lang Elliott & Will Hershberger

At Tongue Point: Goodbye to Summer

It is the end of September. Glen and I are sitting at the viewpoint at Tongue Point, a rocky protrusion of land poking north into the Straits of Juan de Fuca, just west of Port Angeles. We have been camping at this lovely site for a few days, enjoying the last days of a fading summer.

Around dusk we decided to finish our day by taking our camp cooked bean tacos and sitting at the outlook. This day has been a dream of a sunny day, now fading into dusk. The sunset in the west is sensational. I remark that this is a watercolorist’s dream (I dabble in watercolors); Glen shoots back, “Or a nightmare!” And I have to laugh. How is possible to catch and hold such unearthly colors?

This place is that rare thing along the the Washington seacoast: an easily accessible rocky shore. This is very different than the long sandy stretches of Ocean Shores or Long Beach: here the salt water from the Pacific rides east for 60 miles in great rolling swells that crash upon the rocky shore. All night, bedded down in our warm camp beds, we hear and feel the BOOM POUND THUMP of big swells pushing in a full tide and breaking at last on the stony reaches of the point.

These rocky beaches provide an excellent place for a sea garden of kelp to establish itself and flourish. We were here last spring for a brief visit and there was no sign of this garden; we have the photo to prove it. Upon our return this fall, the bull kelp is thick, floating and swaying some 20 feet from shore.

Kelp is a deciduous plant, like many of our leafy land trees. It starts from a spore deep down in the intertidal floor which sprouts in spring and puts out rootlike holdfasts which anchor to the rocky substrate . The plant then sends up its stipe at an incredible rate (up to 10 inches a day) growing towards the sun. Finally, it reaches the sun, and starts to photosynthesize, making carbohydrates which fuel its continued vigorous growth. It forms a bulb or float, which keeps it at the ever-changing tidal surface. It sends out long blades to collect even more sunlight. Throughout the summer, it grows and grows at a phenomenal rate: some kelp reach 200 feet from holdfast to bulb. Finally in this season of late summer, it reaches the end of its life, loosens its grip on the rocks and the tide casts it up on the beach in great heaping piles, just like the maple leaves in our front yard. Here many beach critters hide in it, and feast on it, helping to break it down, decay and provide nutrients to the next generation.

During its summer life, the kelp provides a floating mat island, and many birds take advantage of it; several gulls with crops full after a day’s feeding, perch on the kelp, facing west and watch the sun sink into the hills. A lone Great Blue Heron manages to balance itself on the mats !*! and continues to fish even in the last minutes of light. The bobbing bulbs of kelp look like so many seal heads and we are fooled, over and over again.

The rocks provide another feeding habitat that many rock shorebirds specialize in using. This is the country of Black Oystercatchers: as we watch the sunset, they vocalize back and forth from rock to rock, a mournful piping call.

This is a season of migration and transitions: we watch Pigeon Guillemots in their white winter coats, getting ready to fly to the north Pacific for the winter. Other birds come in to stay: small bands of Scoters and other seaducks move into the Straits for the winter.

This is a place of breathtaking beauty. This is a time of saying goodbye to summer. There are so many feelings: a feeling of mourning for summer lost, of reveling in in the beauty laid out before us, of anticipation for the change of the season. My heart is full.

The sun continues to sink, painting the sky and the water, too, in ever-changing colors. We watch and wait, until finally, the water turns black.

Janet

Resources:
Salt Creek County Park (Tongue Point), Clallam County, Washington
close up kelp from seaotter.com
Black Oystercatcher from usgs.gov

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

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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