Mushrooms and Lichens Scavenger Hunt

Temperature: 55°F, chilly weather

Date: April 29, 2015 - 9:00AM

One of our tasks for this week was to find at least six mushrooms and/or lichens. Although I was a bit wary of this part of the assignment at first, it really helped me pay more attention to my surroundings and forced me to stray farther from my one default location. 

Since I arrived to my site in the morning, I ran into fewer joggers and bikers than I usually do. This may have been why I heard more birds chirping than usual, even if I wasn't able to see them myself. Luckily the weather was fairly warm, it was a good day to be outside. 

Zoomed out view of the site

                                     

Lichen

One of the first lichens I was able to find was found all over one of the branches of a Western Red Cedar tree. Since it was found on the twigs, the lichen is considered ramicolous.

Lichen

Mushroom 

As I walked deeper into the forest past a bunch of Douglas Fir trees, I eventually found two small patches of small bracket mushrooms growing out of a huge log. The log itself was covered with dead leaves and twigs. The mushroom caps were fairly flat for the section on the left but were more bulbous and irregularly shaped for the section on the right side. It seemed the mushrooms on the left section were younger than the ones on the right section.

Zoomed in view of the mushrooms on the right section

Below are two pictures of another type of lichen I found on twigs and branches.

Lichen

Lichen

Mushroom

As I walked further down the path uphill towards wetter ground, I found another type of mushroom. This mushroom's base was nestled within the wet soil and I was able to capture a picture of a small bug underneath the mushroom cap with its long stalk. The mushroom cap is smooth with a slightly uneven umbrella shape.

Mushroom

After I moved on from the umbrella shaped mushroom, I discovered more evidence of lichen on the branches of a cedar tree. Since lichens tends to grow very slowly and noticing the fact that it didn't cover gigantic areas, this particular lichen is probably more recent than the previous lichens mentioned.

Lichen

As for my sixth lichen/mushroom find of today (more specifically the fourth lichen), it was found on the bark and upper trunk of a tree that also had all types of moss running over it. This particular lichen in my opinion was the most interesting I found today as it varied in shape and size.

Lichen

Lichen

                                                                                                                                                                  Overall, I encountered a few of the same plants around my site such as the lady ferns, salmonberries, horsetails, and  western sword ferns. One of the flowers I encountered that I had not previously seen before at Ravenna Park was the Western bleedingheart. The first time I identified and saw this flower species in person was during our last class trip to the Olympic Peninsula.

     

Lady Fern

                                  

Western Bleedingheart

                                           

Western Bleedingheart

Another observation I made during my scavenger hunt for lichens/mushrooms was seeing what seemed like small Big Leaf Maples starting to sprout on top of a trunk of another Big Leaf Maple. I thought this was really interesting as I had never seen it before. I was also able to capture a small bug on one of the leaves in the left picture.                                                                                                                                                                                                                            

Bug on Big Leaf Maple

Big Leaf Maple

Weekend Field Trip at the Olympic Peninsula

Last weekend, my natural history class took a trip to the Olympic Peninsula in order to work on plant identification, bird watching, owl watching - basically just appreciating nature and wildlife. It was an amazing experience and I was able to learn a lot of valuable information from this trip!

Figure 1 - view looking up at the trees from below

After my group accidentally got separated from the other vans, we eventually arrived at our cabins. Our first location for exploring nature was the old-growth forest at Lake Crescent. Jorge led us on a short tour, pointing out pertinent identifications along the way. One of my highlights of this tour was observing the hairy woodpeckers (Figure 2), identified by the red spot on the top of its head. The two woodpeckers were parents flying back and forth to bring food to their young - presumably to give each other breaks in between. Jorge also pointed out to us how to find evidence of woodpeckers living nearby, which is to find the holes bored within the trees (Figure 3). It seemed that with enough excessive marking of these holes, the trees would probably get weaker overtime. 

Figure 2 - Hairy Woodpecker

Figure 3 - Evidence of the holes bored by Hairy Woodpeckers

After Jorge's tour, our group split off to explore the forest on our own. One of my highlights included finding an erratic in this forest. Although we recently spent a lecture in class learning about how erratics are formed, this was the first time I saw one in person (or at least realized that it was an erratic). 

Figure 4 - Erratic, evidence of glacial activity

Another find  I was extremely excited about seeing was the morel mushroom. I have never eaten one myself before but from listening to my TA and professor, this type of mushroom ranges from $40-70 a pound. As for other species, we also found an Artist's Conk on the top of a tree trunk, which is a large fungi that usually grows on the sides of stumps or tree trunks. There were also an abundance of Old Man's Beard scattered throughout the forest. Since this lichen usually grows on sick and dying forests, the appearance of Old Man's Beard is an indication of the poor state of a majority of trees.

Figure 5 - sketch of a morel mushroom

Figure 6 - morel mushroom

Figure 7 - Artist's conk

In addition to the erratic and mushroom, I was also fascinated by the small and delicate flowers hidden within this old-growth forest. Some of the flowers we saw was the Western Bleeding Hearts, the Fairy Slippers, Forget-Me-Nots, and the Trilliums. These beautiful flowers were a small reminder that in order to not miss the small beauties in life, people need to stop and look around at their surroundings.

Figure 8 - Sketch of Fairy Slippers flower

Figure 9 - Trillium flower

Figure 10 - Forget-me-nots

Figure 11 - Western bleeding heart 

We eventually ended the night by forming a small group led by Jorge for owl watching. Although we weren't able to spot any owls, we did hear the sounds of barred owls. It was unfortunate that after our group left to go back to our cabins was when the owls began to go crazy and sounds of their hooting even permeated through our cabin walls. 

Once we woke up for the second and last day of our trip, we did some bird watching with Tim & Jorge where we were able to spot the woodpeckers again. This time, we witnessed the two woodpeckers alternating the job of cleaning up their young and habitat by carrying poop from the nest to a place farther away. From what I inferred, this is so that predators cannot easily locate them.

After our bird watching session and breakfast, we began to travel to our next location - Salt Creek. 

                               Figure 12 - Heading to Salt Creek

Figure 13 - Salt Creek

Figure 14 - My landscape sketch of Salt Creek

Although I didn't know there was an octopus at this location until after we got ready to leave, I did find a lot of interesting specimens. Going off on our own, I spotted two starfishes as well as a number of anemone. My favorite anemone that I saw was one slowly consuming a crab as seen in the picture below. The anemone was taking its time with consuming the crab and I assumed the crab was already dead at that point since it wasn't moving. 

Figure 15 - Starfish

Figure 16 - Anemone consuming a crab

Apart from the starfishes and anemones, I was also fascinated by a fish that blended seamlessly among its surroundings. In this case, it blended with the various rocks and seaweed causing it to take on speckled shades of whites, browns, and blacks. We also saw a lot of hermit crabs, all of different sizes. We ended up seeing a large hermit crab in addition to a small baby hermit crab.

Figure 17 - Fish camouflaged with its surroundings

Figure 18 - Adult hermit crab

Figure 19 - Baby hermit crab

Overall, this class trip to the Olympic Peninsula was amazing and I learned a lot from identifying different specimens from both Lake Crescent and Salt Creek as well as the short trips for owl watching and bird watching.

Figure 20 - Just arriving at Salt Creek

Also, for my last set of pictures - here are some deer my group spotted at the last stop of the trip, Hurricane Ridge!

Witnessing signs of flowering + sketches!

Temperature: 45° F, cloudy weather

Date: April 14, 2015 – 11:27AM

Zoomed out view of the site

Since my last visit to Ravenna Park, I do notice small changes in this area after only one week – some caused by humans and some caused as a part of nature. One example of a change caused by humans are the two stray branches on the ground. When I got to my site, I noticed a small group of children dragging these branches to their father from a small enclosing next to a cluster of trees. Their father yelled at them to leave the branches so it ended up about five inches from the creek. I guessed the branches simply broke off on its own, there is no signs of budding or flowers on the branches. After the father and children disappeared, five minutes passed before I heard sounds of crows cawing and other birds chirping surrounding the area. I have yet to see an actual bird though. For this visit, I decided to walk farther away from the trail/area where I sat last time so that there would be less disturbances from joggers and dogs. After about two minutes, I settled down and started observing as much wildlife as I could around me. 

As I looked closer at my surroundings, I tried to find signs of aging or flowering. 

One of the first signs of budding I found was from a shrub with a cluster of drooping leaves. Although it had not completely finished transitioning, there was a section in the middle of the stem that looked like either a new leaf was unfurling or signs of imminent flowering. With sharp and jagged edges, it splits off into multiple sections. It looks similar to the redflower currant to me, except droopier leaves than the examples in my field guide.

Signs of budding, unidentified (redflower currant??)

As I moved on to other areas of the site, I observed a patch of vegetation near the bottom of a moss covered tree leaning and slanting to my left. The oblong leaves are turning brown with the edges around the leaves curling into itself. The changing colors has the effect of blotches of brown as well as green all over the leaves - it does not change uniformly. Many parts of the leaves are also missing as small pieces are broken and falling off. They all grow out of one area in the center. (There is also a random lemon on the ground.) 

Signs of its leaves dying, unidentified.

Zoomed in image of the dying leaves

After having spent around fifteen minutes at this site, I began seeing multiple crows flying around the area.

Moving on to the next observations, I saw signs of flowering from what I personally identified as salmonberries. The flowers has a regular shape with four petals total. I also noticed that there are small thorns on its thin stems. The leaves has a lobed shape with three separate leaves encompassing the main leaf. The leaves has jagged edges, each section of the leaf meeting at its middle tip. The leaves are a bright green color, no signs of discoloration whatsoever. I believe these are salmonberries after my last lecture involved identifying common species at Ravenna Park.

Signs of flowering, salmonberries?

Below are some of my practice drawings using Leslie Field's recommended field sketching techniques.

Memory Sketch of Figure 1

Contour Sketch of Figure 1

Gesture Sketch of Figure 1 (5 seconds)

Gesture Sketch of Figure 1 (15 seconds)

Gesture Sketch of Figure 1 (35 seconds)

Diagrammatic Sketch of Figure 1

Experimenting with a pencil line (shading) for Figure 1

Combined sketch (combo of techniques) for Figure 1

Quick sketch of Figure 2

Quick Sketch of Figure 3

Quick Sketch of Figure 4