Walking in the Rain

A rainy Spring weekend.  In high contrast with last weekends sunny and 70, it is low clouds and barely 50.  In the mountains, snow is once again falling so I must stick to the wet side.

Yesterday was Biosurvey at Ohop.  My love for this place cannot even be diminished by the rain.

Newly arrived swallows; Violet-green, Tree, Barn and Rough-wing were found swooping all over the fields.  The Rough-wing traced its way up and down the creek, while the others took higher to the sky.

The creek is flowing deep.  During salmon runs it is fairly shallow.  If you look closely at the creek you will see a line across.  This is a device that counts salmon that have microchips.

We rambled the fields for a soggy 2 1/2 hours looking for signs, sounds and sights of living things.  It was slow going.  I am happy to say my waterproof pants boots and coat really do the trick.  Even they, however, could not keep my electronic data recording device from seizing up.

Another two months and this field will be alive with greenery and, no doubt, bugs galore.  The birds eventually will find great feeding in the hundreds of young trees.

The trees and shrubs planted over the last few years are thriving.

Today with rain coming down in buckets I revisited Washington Park to see my flowers.  The rain was really coming down as I neared Anacortes, but by the time I parked it was a more sedate rain.  I figure as I was going to be in the woods most of the way, it really didn't matter that much.  There were only a few souls out.  All were well protected from the rain by a wide variety of foul-weather gear.

And I got my prize.

White Fawn Lily are abundant in the mossy glades. 

The Calypso Orchids are going strong. 

 

 

I even found a large number of Coralroot Orchid starting to spike.  Right now they look like red asparagus breaking through the forest floor litter.  I found them all along my route and I don't remember seeing this many in the past.

On the south slope the Serpintine soil supports a wide array of unusual flowers.  Yellow Monkey Flower decorate the rock faces

Spring Gold, Sea Blush, Blue-eyed Mary and buttercup carpet the open slopes.

The rare Puget Sound Juniper thrives on these slopes.

A Banana Slug slips easily along the glacier gouged Serpentine rocks.

That is the front of my size 11 Ahnu boot so you can appreciate how big this fat fellow is.

I officially love my boots.  I got a gel insert and now they fit perfectly!  They are comfy and waterproof too!

Perhaps next weekend we will see how the comfy boots face the threat of cactus

Seven Maids With Seven Mops

"If seven maids with seven mops
Swept it for half a year.
Do you suppose," the Walrus said,
"That they could get it clear?"
"I doubt it," said the Carpenter,
And shed a bitter tear.

While the Walrus was talking about getting the vast quantities of sand cleared away from their beach, these days our concerns are with the vast quantities of human pollution on our beaches.

Last January I joined a community beach clean in Long Beach ( "Whoopee At The Beach" January 2012) .  Last weekend on Earth Day weekend, I joined 1300 other people with Coast Savers and volunteered to participate in Beach Clean 2012.  For this effort I selected Shi Shi Beach a place we have visited before. Most of the coast, except the most isolated beaches, was well coered.

Shi Shi is remote and has almost a mystical quality.  For folks like myself, it is a wonderful beach that is reachable with reasonable effort.  The two mile hike from the trail head is muddy most of the year.  Usually for the early bird, you can feel like you have the place to yourself. 

I spent the weekend at Bullman Beach Inn, my favorite little place on the Strait of Juan de Fuca.  This beach is surrounded by sea stacks and rocky kelp beds.  This weekend held some surprises I had not seen before.  Rock Sandpipers were busy offshore in the rocks.

Those are the mountains of Vancouver Island in the distance.  From my window I watched a River Otter hunting in the kelp beds and further out I had the thrill of spotting and watching a Gray Whale which stuck close for about 1/2 hour.  Last time I visited the beach was filled with a lot of kelp which had washed ashore.  Today the ever changing beach was very clean and only a few collections of kelp were found.

The weather was promising for Saturday.  I was able to fly my kite for a little while but there was hardly any breeze to really send it up high.  The sunset was looking good.

Saturday morning I checked in with the volunteer desk and got some information I would need for the clean.  I was shown pictures of some of the items of interest.  These were mostly types of fishing and boat floats from Japan.  Most of the floats were had plastic, but some of them were Styrofoam barrels.  I found one of these during my clean up event at Long Beach.

I also learned about the mysterious yellow pieces of line I found all over Long Beach.  These uniform 6 inch long yellow lines ( ropes) are parts of oyster growing nets.  The Coast Savers are collecting data on all of these items in hopes to understand the impact of the net design on the environment.  Clearly there is a need for improvements.

I drove down to the beach head and started my hike in.  There were some nice volunteers who offered me some extra bags.  Sure, one should always have extras.

I hiked through the woods listening and watching.  Not much was stirring in the woods.  This Banana Slug was fat and happy in the Skunk Cabbage.

I reached the beach about 845.  Low tide was turning and the beach was full of campers who were just getting started with their day and those who had hiked in ahead of me.  I have never seen the beach so full of people.  Nor had I ever been to the beach with such a low tide.

 I was thrilled to get a quick visit to the exposed rocks on my way down the beach.  I found great array of anemone and starfish, as well as mussels.  I would have loved to poke around further, but the waves were menacing and I had work to do.

I met the gentleman coming up the beach.  He must have been an early bird camper.  I was amazed at his Zen-like ability to balance his load.  The Styrofoam barrel perfectly counterbalanced the sack of junk.

I headed south towards Point of The Arches noting all the footprints and how the beach, so far, looked pretty clean.

After about a mile, I noticed a large white float up in a pile of driftwood logs.  I decided that this was a good landmark and decide to climb up , get the float and work my way back up the beach.  No sooner did I get into  the logs then I knew that I would not be going back up the beach.  Here was a big problem.  All through the logs hundreds of bottles and floats, line and Styrofoam pieces.

I spent about two hours throwing debris down the pile.  I would toss as far as I could then climbed down and tossed again.  I then gathered as much as I could into a sorted pile.


 Bottles and floats

Big floats might serve as markers for nets and pots

the little blue one likely is woven into the top of a net.  This blue float is Japanese, the white one is Korean.

I then went back into the drift pile and collected as much of the broken Styrofoam as I could.

I knew that I would not have enough bag space and decided that I would remove the caps from all of the bottles so they could be easily flattened and placed in bags of those return from further down beach.

This is Chinese but the majority of the bottles I found were Japanese.

Many people reported finding construction timber.  Perfectly clean, unhammered 4x4 timber all of them marked with stamps were found along the beach.  As the wood is organic and will eventually break down, there is no effort made to remove it.

I loaded up all four of my bags with Styrofoam pieces and as many bottles as I could.  I strung floats on some line that I found, and strung all the bags and line on a branch.

I then took a break to eat my snack and drink a lot of water.  I knew I had three miles of very challenging walk ahead of me.

I hoped that my organized pile of remainders would make it out in other volunteers bags.

I carried the garbage like a milkmaid pole across my shoulders.  My little backpack served me well by taking a bit of the weight every once in a while, giving my neck and shoulders a break.  I could not keep it up for long as it would pull against me, backwards.

I was apprehensive about going up the slope from the beach to the trail, but I was surprised at how easily that obstacle passed.  I took it one careful step at a time.

It really isn't this steep, it only looks that way.

My pace could only be described as plodding.  I listed for birdsong and kept a steady pace.  There were very few folks about but I did encounter hikers coming down the trail going to the beach and they are always wanting to know "how much further"?

But I encountered one person and I looked at him and he me...

"Now its my turn" and he whipped out his camera.  It was the Zen Master of Balanced Loads and he took my picture.

 A few days later on a Northwest Hikers forum I saw a trip report for the Shi Shi Beach clean by a member named "Hulkmeister" and sure enough it was he.  His picture above of the slope climber and that of myself he kindly gave permission to use.

My neighbor works for KING TV and they featured some of my pictures on the news Sunday.  I heard from KPLU radio and Coast Savers themselves that media outlets were wanting to use the pictures, and I gladly gave permission.

Coast Savers reports approximately 30 tons of debris was removed from Washington beaches.  Yes much of it is thought to be the first of the tsunami debris.  The light, floating items which will be pushed by the winds as well as the currents.  When I was filling out a data form about the large numbers of bottles I found, another volunteer was talking about a beach she was on (Sooes), about 3 miles north of Shi Shi.  She reported that their beach was covered in the yellow oyster net lines.  In the hundereds she said.  I found only three on my area of the beach. 

Today on the news this item out of Alaska shows that this is the start of a wide spread problem that needs a plan of action

http://www.nwcn.com/home/?fId=149287345&fPath=/news/local&fDomain=10212

It will take more than seven maids with seven mops.

I doubt I will ever walk on a beach without a plastic bag to haul out a little bit garbage.

B ~ Banana Slug , Ariolimax columbianus

Banana Slug


Ariolimax columbianus is our almost iconic slug of the wet forest in the Pacific Northwest. Bananas are the second largest terrestrial slug in the world. They feed on dead and decaying organic matter and serve an important role in the composting cycle of the forest. They are eaten by raccoon, snakes, ducks and geese.

The Mascot of the University of California at Santa Cruz, the approximate southern most limit of its common range.

Go Sluggies!

A Gentle Walk to Work Out the Kinks

A little four mile ramble to get the muscles and joints recovered from yesterdays extra long hike. I got a late start after a long morning of noodling with my pictures and writing the last entry. I decided to just go up the road a ways to the Watershed Park. I wrote about this park on Christmas Day 2009.


I decided to take both of my cameras today and just play around with pictures. I walked the length of the park to the far corner where I knew there was a large pond. Near the entrance of the park there is a small pond and I was happy to get this shot of a Pond Lily.

I found a feather I believe is a filoplume from a Great Blue Heron.

Folks bring their horses to this park. I recognize this "cute look" a mile off.

The woods were strangely quite. No bird song, not many people about.

Mr Banana was heading eastbound on my trip in. Coming out of the trails I swear I encountered him heading west.

I like how someone placed this lost hat on a signpost. Perhaps its owner will return. That is a little fishing fly stuck in by the tie cord.

I found a lot of Trailing Blackberry, our true native blackberry. They are so small and so hard to harvest in bulk.

By the time I got out to the far pond the sun was trying to break through the clouds. It was odd for the clouds were casting an odd pinkish glow. I am pretty pleased with this photo of the sun reflection in the pond water and the shadow of a Vine Maple going across the surface. The sky color is due to forest fires in the Interior BC. The air flow from their is reported to be causing this effect and from the weather satelites the whole of interior Puget Sound is covered in this haze. Should be a great sunset!

Lovely local woods.

Thanks to all my regular readers for the nice comments!!!

To my OLDER sister who chooses to make comments in private

ALL snakes are beautiful in my eyes, so poop on you!

and the comment about the skunk cabbage... flimsy excuse, back then I wasn't a nature nut

:-p

Discoveries Big and Little

I spent the morning with the Nisqually Land Trust at their Salmon Creek property. I had never been to this property before but had driven past it many, many times. It borders I-5 right before you enter the Nisqually NWR, at the Mounts Road exit.

One would never guess that this magic little place is tucked in this spot. It was a wonderful day to discover it. Bright blue skies, lovely clouds that hold no threat of rain. Today was different from the usual work parties. Instead of lovingly, peacfully planting trees and shrubs...

Today we armed ourselves with Weapons of Invasive Destruction...

and pulled out English and Climbing ivy from a woodlands.

Non native ivy "runs" and will readily climb trees. Some trees can become so choked with ivy that they are brought down. The ivy robs the trees of their water and on the ground they compete with native plants.

It was tricky work. In areas where the ivy climbs trees it was easy to spot and pull the ivy. The ivy must be rolled into bundles as you work . Runners dropped or left will simply re-root and start running again. In spots where the ivy is not so dense you start losing the eye for spotting the leaf. There was a lot of native trailing blackberry and other lovely native plants. I tried very hard to spare our good plants while hunting for the bad.

The road to the property cut through a golf course and then made its way back towards the NWR. as the road turned and headed down to the property I saw a treasure, a sweet little cottage, just my style.

At the end of the road I was stunned to find another house. Raw wood plank sides and everywhere ceramic art.

Two artists who had lived here for many years greeted us. Both in their 80's they shared a little information about the property. They pointed to a lush green area and cautioned us to not get our cars in it. The soil was clay. They said that they use to harvest the soil for their ceramics. They pointed out their old clay processor still standing by a shed.

We grabbed our tools and set out for the woods. I instantly saw what the gentlemen meant. The surface of the pasture was like walking on wet mashed potatoes.

As we made our way to the woods I noticed many roses with thick mats of lichen. The hips were noticeable small. One of the managers mentioned that the clay soil dries out so severely in the summer and that the roses are somewhat stunted. There were so many, it must smell wonderful in bloom.

In the woods there were times when you really had to search hard for ivy. Ferns needed to be lifted and looked under and leaves gently sifted through.

Naturally I found many delights.

Every ones favorite, Banana Slug , Ariolimax columbianus. School mascot of the University of California , Santa Cruz

Haplotrema vancouverenses, a pretty native snail. This shell is empty.

Mushrooms in a hole protected by a log.

Indian Plum is starting to burst into bloom

An elk spent the night here

Snowdrops, a non native garden flower that has escaped from one of the houses.

Violets, also a non-native type, found all about the property.

The artists house overlooks the clay field and new plantings.

A grove of oak trees. Native oaks have become quite rare here. The Fort Lewis reservation and the areas around them hold some of the last Oak woodlands in western Washington.