Insect Scavenger Hunt

Temperature: 60°F, sunny weather

Date: May 27, 2015 at 3:00pm

Zoomed out view of main site

For this week's journal entry, our class was assigned to document at least four invertebrates at our site. The first insect I spotted on the ground was a pill beetle crawling around on a dry area of my site. It moved fairly quickly over the small pebbles as it blended fairly well with its grey surroundings. 

Pill beetle

Sketch of pill beetle

The second invertebrate I found was a fly resting on a leaf. It seemed to be sucking on what looked like white pus centered on the leaf, it stayed there for about five minutes before it flew away. It was difficult to follow where the fly actually flew off since it was in the direction of a ton of leaves and branches. 

Fly on leaf

Sketch of fly on leaf

As for my third invertebrate, I found a small ladybug also resting on a leaf. It was crawling pretty quickly on the leaf's surface but did stay in one spot for at least two minutes. Personally, I have always been fascinated by ladybugs and they're probably the only insect I'm not creeped out by.

Sketch of ladybug

The fourth invertebrate I found was a mayfly sitting on a large rock close to the river. It was resting on the rock quite still and made no intentions of going elsewhere. The three antennas at the bottom of its body were quite distinctive and obvious and its wings were fairly see-through.

Sketch of mayfly

As for my fifth invertebrate, below is a haiku describing the behaviors of one insect I learned about in class this week. 

Feeding from within

Spinning webs of foam only 

To protect myself

Above are several pictures of what my poem attempted to describe, the evidence of a spittle bug from within its foamy protection. This is one of my favorite insects I learned in class, mainly because I have always seen these on leaves yet never knew that a bug is actually within it. It was pretty amusing that after I learned about them, I began to spot more of them on both plant stems and leaves. Some fun facts I retained from Tuesday is that spittle bugs do molt several times and are extremely similar to aphids as they are sap feeders.

For my overall site, I did notice small changes within the various plants and flowers. For one, there are more salmonberries ripening, yet I did not find any ripened ones. Despite seeing a ton last week of the red/orange berries, they were all green this time around. I also spotted less of the salmonberry flowers, they were mostly leaves or the berries ripening.  

Salmonberry

Furthermore, there are more signs of the small trees splitting at one point of the trunk/stem. For example, as the image shows below, the bigleaf maple has a drastic split causing the top part to lean towards the ground. There was also another small tree that was entirely uprooted as it leaned all the way to my right side with its roots sticking up in the air.

Bigleaf maple splitting

There were also a lot of signs of the leaves beginning to wilt and turning into different colors. As seen in the picture below, the leaves are clearly wilting and turning into a lighter shade of brown.

Signs of wilting leaves

I also noticed strange spots of white fuzz on the leaves, of which I could not figure out what this phenomenon actually was.

White fuzz on leaves

Field trip to the Cascade Foothills

Date: May 16, 2015 - 8:00am to 6:00pm

Landscape photo of the Yakima River Canyon

This weekend, our class traveled to Eastern Washington with the purposes of birding, identifying plant/flower species, as well as hoping to uncover lizards or scorpions. Overall, the day started off overcast but got much sunnier later on.

Our first trip started off with following the Yakima River to Ellensburg. It was about an hour and a half drive from Seattle. Once we arrived at our first location at the Yakima River Canyon, we were met with majestic sights of the dry terrain of the mountains. Although we did hike, we spent most of the time listening and observing birds. I had a difficult time seeing the birds that Jorge pointed out, but I did see the turkey vulture flying above us.

Second landscape image of Yakima River Canyon

Tall sage brush can also be seen all over the Yakima River Canyon, as exemplified in the pictures below. An interesting component of the tall sage brush is that it has a fruit-like object scattered among the leaves. If Tim hadn't mentioned it, I would've never guessed that there's an insect nestled in the middle of the "fruit" as protection and nourishment.

Tall sage brush

Fruits of tall sagebrush

Insect in one of the fruits of the tall sagebrush

After our short trek up the mountains during the bird-watching session, we started walking back down the hill for lunch. Along the way, we took a small road that led underneath the bridge that we crossed earlier to get to the mountains. Below the bridge, we observed at least thirty birds flying back and forth to rest on the rungs below the bridge. It was interesting to observe their flying movements, they would hover every so often before finding a place to land on the rungs. It was difficult to capture a picture of the birds since they were flying so quickly.

View beneath the bridge

A few birds captured on camera flying below the bridge

Perspective of the Yakima River Canyon from the left side of the bridge

Once we finished with our birding component of the trip, we started heading on our second trip of the day. My main highlights from this entire trip were definitely from this part of the trip when we traveled to Umtanum Ridge. This area was full of flowers that ranged from bitterroots to thyme buckwheat. Below are some pictures of these flowers I was able to capture, the thyme buckwheat had multiple colors: white, reddish, and yellowish colors.

Thyme Buckwheat

Thyme Buckwheat

Thyme Buckwheat

Thyme Buckwheat

Thyme Buckwheat

My favorite flower from this trip was the bitterroot for its fragile and gorgeous appearance. I thought it was incredibly intriguing that this fragile looking flower could thrive easily in such a dry habitat. 

Bitterroot

Bitterroot

Bitterroot

In addition to the flowers at this area, we also uncovered as many rocks as we could in hopes of finding a scorpion or lizards. We always made an effort to put the rock back in its original position to cause the least disturbance in the habitat. After about thirty minutes, someone was able to spot a scorpion as shown in the picture below. Tim ended up using a tool to hold the scorpion up by its tail. The second image shows it curled up in a paper funnel.

Scorpion being held by its tail/stinger?

Scorpion laying in a paper funnel

After observing the scorpion, one of the girls in my class discovered a horned lizard crawling over rocks. Once she held it in her hands and other people held it, the lizard seemed catatonic. It stopped moving and only budged when it moved from one person to the next. I can imagine how frightened it must have felt.

Small horned lizard

After holding this lizard and then setting it free on the ground, another horned lizard was found. This time, this lizard was much larger in size and seemed less catatonic. However, it did keep still for a long time.

Second horned lizard

Second horned lizard - close up

As we left this second part of the trip, I also sound a bee making swift movements at our van.

Bee

As for our the third part of the trip, we only traveled by car for a few minutes before we arrived at our new location. While half of the class observed the caddisfly, my group hiked on the trail leading to the waterfall.

Waterfall 

It was about a twenty minute hike and we only spent about two minutes at the waterfall. Although it was very beautiful, I'm not sure if it was worth the twenty minute hike when we barely stayed there. Other than that, I had a really great day during our second field trip!

Birds and more phenomenology observations

Temperature: 63°F, partly sunny weather

Date: May 12, 2015 at 4:49pm

Zoomed out view of site

There were a few changes that I automatically noticed when I entered my site this week. One of the visible differences was that either the salmonberry were wilting or ripening. As shown in the pictures below, the wilted ones closed into itself and turned into a dark brownish color while the ripening ones transformed into an almost bright orange color with hints of green throughout.

Salmonberry wilting

Salmonberry flower bud

Salmonberry beginning to ripen

After noticing the changes for the salmonberries, I began looking at the mushrooms that I found last week all over a stray log. Although they were generally located in the same locations, on the side of the log as well as in the inner far back of the log, one change that stuck out to me was its color. The fungi turned a slightly darker brown and they seemed drier, less gentle than last week. I didn't touch it to test this theory out but it seemed more clumped together into clusters as well. It was a little tougher finding these mushrooms the second time around with less of them spread out everywhere, with most of them in shadier and darker spots.

Mushrooms growing from the side of a log

Mushrooms growing in the far back of a log

Other observations included the increased toppled state of the Oregon Ash trees located close to the stream. Their trunks were already thinner than the other Oregon Ash trees I found elsewhere, but I didn't expect them to fall over even more than usual. Most of the branches were broken off and there were barely any leaves left.

There were also a few Bigleaf Maple trees nearby that was also falling off but I paid more attention to the wilted state of its leaves.

Wilted bigleaf maple leaves

Zoomed in picture of wilted leaf

In addition to documenting the changes throughout Ravenna Park, another requirement of this journal was to observe the behaviors of birds. During my attempts to spot some birds, I did capture a picture of a squirrel running frantically through bushes and up a tree. I also found a lot of evidence of Artist's Conks on the left side of the path. 

Frantic squirrel

Artist's Fungus (looking up perspective)

After five minutes of walking down a straight path, I eventually heard some birds in the background. At first, there was only one crow but it started to get louder and as I looked up, I saw at least five crows flying around amongst the trees. I spotted one crow bathing itself in the stream below me but as I got closer, it flew off towards the upper part of a tree. Most of the crows rested on a branch of a different tree but there were two crows that were resting on a branch extremely close together. It was difficult to make out what they were specifically doing except occasionally cawing and moving their heads back and forth. After ten minutes of observing them in the trees, I started walking on the path again with hopes to find a different type of bird.

Crow flying above me

Crows resting on the tips of branches and/or flying away

About seven minutes after walking along the same path, I ran across two small birds pecking at the ground, for what I assumed was food. As I tried to get closer to get a picture, they flew off right away. It was probably the combination of me and a large black lab walking closer to it, but that's besides the point. They were both a darkish grey/brown color so although I was not able to identify the species - they were probably female birds since male birds are generally more colorful. The bird on the left flew off towards the high canopies of one tree while the bird on the right flew into some bushes. 

Two small birds pecking at the ground

Assuming it would be easier to observe the bird within the bushes, I watched it burrow further and further past branches and leaves. Occasionally, it would stop and stayed still so the bushes stopped rustling immediately. The bird blended very well within its surroundings so it was hard at times to see where it was currently resting. It was only when the leaves and branches of the bush moved that I knew where to look. It was only after I no longer knew the bird was that I stopped my bird observations. 

Small bird hiding between shrubs