Exploring Ravenna Park: 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.