Observations of the passing seasons |
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2003 - July - May - April - March - February - January - Nisqually National Wildlife Refuge visit, March 2001
- Insiders' Guide to the Olympic Peninsula - Creeping with Utah Nature Study Society - Tidepool - Association for the Study of Literature and Environment
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I have been watching the lavender patch along our front porch over the last couple of weeks so that I could mark the date that the first Woodland Skipper shows up in the yard. Today is that day. Natalie and I were on our way home from a quick shopping trip when I saw the first of the jet-shaped skippers on the bright lavender, where it was competing for space with the bumblebees that are so widespread in our yard right now. So far there is just one skipper, but since they are just starting to show up, there are bound to be more soon. In The Butterflies of Cascadia, Robert Michael Pyle says that the Woodland Skipper is on the wing from June through October, with its peak in August. The populations have just grown widespread enough to start spreading into the cities. The only other butterfly I am seeing regularly in our Tacoma yard is the Cabbage White, which also visit the lavender patch and the rest of the garden throughout the sunny days... We just couldn't take it any more. This evening Natalie and I decided that after going without a birding trip since the end of May, it was time to get out for some relatively local birding. Our goal was to find Foulweather Bluff and to check it out and then to bird at Point No Point. At the end of the evening and a 130-mile drive, we did neither. We have never been to Foulweather Bluff, so we drove right past the parking area and trail that leads into the site and instead we drove to the end of Two Spits Road in the Hansville area and ended up birding and watching more crab than we have ever seen in one place in a small bay at the end of the road. We were at the end of Foulweather Bluff, but not at the site known to most area bird watchers. The site we found was a great place, although I am unclear whether the beach we walked was actually open to the public as it appeared or that it was privately owned. Since we don't agree with people owning the beach, we walked anyway. Along the way we saw a single Bonaparte's Gull in the bay, an Osprey tending to its nest, from the sounds of things, and a couple of Rufous Hummingbirds among others. The real highlight was the number of crab in the shallow waters at the far northern end of the beach, where the tide flows in and out of a small sandy estuary, carrying food past the crab on each tidal change. There must have been a few hundred crab ranging in size from thumbnail sized up to two or three inches across, all jockeying for space on the floor of the narrow channel and on logs and debris along the edges of the channel. After checking out this site - and unfortunately managing to knock over our spotting scope alongside the bay, where it splashed into the saltwater before I could grab it - we ventured over to Point No Point to eat our dinner. The scope appeared to be fine, and after eating and watching a Bald Eagle flying overhead while Pigeon Guillemot stuffed themselves with fish just offshore, we decided it was getting too cool to want to walk around the point for a shot at seeing shorebirds. Our bird watching itch had been scratched. Now we can get back to writing Birding Washington...
Natalie and I ventured over to Titlow Beach Park tonight to check on the Purple Martins and also to catch a glimpse of the work taking place today on the new Tacoma Narrows Bridge. Today was the day that the construction crews hauled a huge platform and concrete tower to the bridge site, where it is anchored in place and being held steady against the strong currents by three tug boats in the photo above. This tower is the start of the caison that will be the footing of the bridge, so we were among a dozen or so people picking our way along the beach from Titlow to take a look at the project. Along our walk, which turned out to be much longer than I imagined - and longer than Natalie and I were prepared to walk since we were both wearing Birkenstocks - we didn't see too many birds, but we did see a Lorquin's Admiral flying over some blackberry brambles. We ended up chatting briefly with someone who asked if we were ornithologists, probably because he saw our binoculars and our spotting scope. Then this fellow asked if we were lepidopterists as well, since we were checking out the admiral earlier. It turned out he had been to a writing retreat with Robert Michael Pyle and the North Cascades Institute. After wandering down and taking photos of the bridge work then we walked through a portion of the park that I had never seen - great habitat for forest birds, even though none of them were present on this evening. It looks like more fodder for the chapter of Birding Washington that will be devoted to Titlow Beach Park.
Tonight's sunset was amazing, enough to draw me up onto the roof over the back part of the house and to shoot the photo above as I looked to the west toward the Olympic Mountains. Every now and then nature forces us to consider just how committed we are to letting things go wild in our small urban yard. This evening was one of those times, as Natalie and I contemplated whether we would continue to simply watch the progress of a bees nest that has started under the eaves of our North Tacoma home, just 15 feet or so from the back door and about 10 feet above the ground. Our first task was trying to decide which bee species was building the nest, which wasn't easy since our general insect identification guides are pretty woeful right now. We ended up turning to the Internet and found a few useful resources - enough to confirm after close examination of the bees through my binoculars that the bees are likely paper wasps, which is good news since paper wasps are not as aggressive as yellowjackets, which was our first ID of the small hive. Since paper wasps, and wasps in general for that matter, are so beneficial for those who maintain an organic regime in their yards and since I am curious to watch the development of the nest through its life cycle, we have decided to let the nest grow and let nature have another small measure of wildness in our yard. This is different than the decision we made a few years ago when a wasp nest started growing in a rhody bush next to our front porch. In that case we figured it wasn't worth the risk of friends being stung when they would walk up to our front door, so we used the over-the-counter nasty insect killer to get rid of the nest. We have since sworn that will be the last time we use such a toxic solution to deal with bees nests. I don't like the idea of perpetuating the toxins in the environment, so those solutions are no longer viable in our minds... In what is rapidly turning out to be the week of the insects, I also spent some time watching for signs of the Red Admirable butterflies we released over the last two days. I didn't see them, which isn't all that surprising, but I did find a host of Western Tiger Swallowtail flying around the yard in search of suitable nectar and mates, and our lavender patch along the front sidewalk is teeming with Cabbage Whites. Still no signs of Woodland Skippers, which should be everywhere here in another week or two.
Over the last 24 hours, Natalie and I have enjoyed watching a pair of Red Admirable butterflies emerge from their chrysalises that we had in a large glass jar with cheesecloth as a lid for the last couple of weeks. This morning, as the temperatures rose and the sun was shining brightly, I took the second of the butterflies - one that emerged too late last night to set loose in the fading sunlight - and released it on the north side of our house. It flew out of the jar and landed on the sidewalk on top of some spent blooms, then I licked my finger and coaxed it on for a few seconds before it flew east and out of sight...
After spending all of my time with birds and turtles over the last couple of months, today it was the insects' turn for attention. On June 26 Natalie gathered a couple of caterpillars and some stinging nettles from alongside the turtle ponds at the South Puget Sound Wildlife Area, and we brought them home to raise them in a large jar and watch them go through their change from fuzzy caterpillars to creating a chrysalis and then, with luck, emerging as bright butterflies. Today was that lucky day! The caterpillars remained in their fuzzy form for a day or two, nearly decimating the nettles we had gathered for them, and then they each climbed up and formed their bodies into a J shape before creating the chrysalis that would be their home while they transformed into butterflies. The chrysalises were pretty static for a week, hanging by their anchors as the butterflies developed inside, until Sunday night, when Natalie noticed one of them shaking from side to side, rattling against the edge of the glass. We started watching the chrysalises more closely over the next couple of days, and I was working in the kitchen this morning when I glanced up and saw something new in the jar - a wrinkly, just-emerged Red Admirable butterfly! The first to emerge was the smallest of the two chrysalises. And while I didn't get to watch it tear out of the chrysalis, I did watch as it slowly unwrinkled its wings, pumping fluids into them and letting them harden to create the transport system that would soon carry it from bloom to bloom. I continued watching the butterfly throughout the day, along with gathering some blooms for it to nectar from and placing a cotton ball soaked in sugar water as another possible food source in the jar. I never did see the butterfly nectar, and after seeing it flail around in the jar and land upside down with its wings against the cotton ball, I eventually removed that just in case it would cause the butterfly's wings to get sticky. Around 5 p.m., after Natalie came home from work, we went out and released the Red Admirable into the evening sunshine. It nectared on a bloom in the yard, then flew off to the west, gone in a flash... Since my mind was so tuned into insects today, I was noticing all kinds of other insect life happening in our yard - very active yellowjackets that are building their nest just a few feet from our back door under the eaves of the house, Cabbage White butterflies by the dozens, and for the first time this summer there were two dragonfly species working the yard for insects - a Paddle-tailed Darner like the one I netted in the yard last week and a Cardinal Meadowhawk, the first of its kind I have seen in our urban yard. With the bright sunshine and warm temperatures during this time of relative birding doldrums, it was nice to pay attention to the insect world and even nicer to find new species in the yard. My day's insect encounters were not done until about 7 p.m., when Natalie and I returned home from some grocery shopping and noticed that the chrysalis of the second butterfly had changed in appearance while we were away. It was nearly transparent, offering confirmation of the type of butterfly that was inside by the bright red and white colors showing through the paper thin chrysalis! We each stepped away to get things put away from shopping and the next time I looked at the jar there was another fresh and wrinkly Red Admirable, this one a little bit bigger than the first that emerged this morning! |
