Special sections
- Nisqually National Wildlife Refuge visit, March 2001

Rob's books

- Insiders' Guide to the Olympic Peninsula

Nature writing sites
- Nature Close to Home
- Creeping with Utah Nature Study Society
- The Nature Web
- Nature.net
- Nature writing references
- Nature writing

Environment news
- Tidepool

Resources
- eNature.com
- Olympic Park Institute
- North Cascades Institute
- Orion Society
- Open Spaces
- Second Nature
- The World as Home
- Association for the Study of Literature and Environment

Rob's other Weblogs
- Mac Net Journal

Other stuff
- Rob's Resume
- Natalie's Resume
- Rob's Portal
- Picture Album

Old Blogger archives

Week Sixty-Four, June 3-9, 2002

Sunday, June 9, 2002

What a great day for butterfly watching! Today we took a break from book research to finish up the Butterflies of South Puget Sound class we took over three recent weeks at the Tahoma Audubon Society. The class, taught by Idie Ulsh who is the president of the Washington Butterfly Association and a photo editor and contributor in the great new guidebook, Butterflies of Cascadia. Idie is a great host and her excitement for butterflies rubs off on those she teaches, though I have to admit that I was already excited about butterflies before I even heard of this class.

Our trip took us back to the Tahuya Peninsula, a forested area alongside Hood Canal that I have visited quite a bit over the last few years and that I wrote about in one chapter in the second edition of Mountain Bike America: Washington. It is an area covered with second-growth trees, meadows and clear cuts. As Idie puts it, the biggest industries in the area are brush picking and logging. And, although the clear cuts are not a good thing by any means, they do open up areas for butterflies. Those clearings helped us see at least 17 species of butterflies today, including the Gray Hairstreak on Katrina's finger in the photo above.

I didn't spend much of my time photographing butterflies, since the goal of this trip was to see and identify many butterflies. This was also the first time I have netted butterflies, so I found it hard to carry around a net while also carrying binoculars and the digital camera. But I did get a few other shots, including the Western Meadow Fritillary that was missing a large section of its lower left wing in the shot above.

By the end of our butterfly trip we had seen 17 species: Three swallowtails (Western Tiger, Pale, and Anise), Brown Elfin, Bramble Green Hairstreak, Gray Hairstreak, Mylitta Crescent, Spring Azure, Lourquin's Admiral, Clodius Parnasian, Silvery Blue, tons of Western Meadow Fritillary, Persius Duskywing, Silver Spotted Skipper, Margined White, Western Pine Elfin, and a host of Purplish Copper.

This sure beats the pants off the numbers of butterflies I saw throughout last year right here in the North End of Tacoma...

Saturday, June 8, 2002

Eastern Washington is usually much warmer and more sunny than the west side of the state during the summer months, but today was an exception. Natalie and I drove over Snoqualmie Pass and then over Blewett Pass en-route to Blackbird Island and the Icicle Creek canyon in Leavenworth. When we arrived at Blackbird Island it was cloudy, humid and warm. We spent a couple of hours walking around the small island, spotting birds including the Gray Catbird in the photo above and noting the habitat on the island that was created by the silt behind a lumber mill that once sat on the site.

By the time we started walking away from the island in search of some food in the tourist town of Leavenworth, there were clouds hanging over the craggy peaks to the west of the town and it was obvious that rain or snow was falling on the higher mountains. The weather was changing.

We ate at a small cafe and set out again around 3 p.m., this time to drive up the canyon that hold Icicle Creek - a popular hiking and camping destination that I had not seen before today, unless you count the endless news coverage from this area a few years ago when horrible fires swept through the canyon and threatened to roll into Leavenworth itself. I think those fires took place around 1993 or 1994, and the signs of the fire are still obvious. Ghost trees - trunks without any foliage - stick up from the rocky terrain, much like the standing ghost trees just at the edge of the blast zone from the eruption of Mt. St. Helens in another part of the state far to the south. There would be no new fires today, though. Rain and a cool breeze blew through the canyon, keeping the birds nestled in the trees and brush and making it hard to get out of the car and manage decent photos of the area.

I did step out at the Twin Lakes trailhead to snap the black-and-white shot of the water pouring over the rocks through the narrow canyon, and further up the road in one of the many campgrounds Natalie and I got out and walked around a bit and lamented that we didn't plan to camp tonight. But as our explorations continued, the rain kept getting heavier and heavier, making it hard to imagine that we were in Eastern Washington.

We ended up calling off our third research stop of the trip and just driving home over the mountains, where there was rain mixed in with the snow at the summit of Blewett Pass at an elevation of 4,100 feet. Surprisingly, when we drove over Snoqualmie Pass and back home the weather kept getting better as we headed west, and we were able to watch a great sunset as we drove into town after another short research stop at nearby Hylebos State Park.

We covered 350 miles in about eight hours of research today...with two more chapters researched and photographed. Maybe Birding Washington will come together yet!

Friday, June 7, 2002

I made the trek to Browns Point, across Commencement Bay from home today with M, just to hang out and eat lunch. And, as things turned out, we were able to have a front row seat for the passing of a thunderstorm that dropped hail on us, sent a few thunderbolts to the ground nearby and gathered strength on its way to causing more havoc up north toward Seattle. Before the clouds moved in I was able to take the photo above of the old lighthouse tender's house in the upland part of the park, and then we spent some time looking at birds through the spotting scope - Western Grebe, Marbled Murrelet, Caspian Tern, and gulls.

What a pleasant way to take a few minutes' break from the routine of online work...

Thursday, June 6, 2002

Like a kid who thinks that if he concentrates enough that he can make himself invisible, the Wood Duck in the photo above tried as hard as it could to hide behind the insufficient reeds in one of the smaller ponds at the South Puget Sound Nature Area near Lakewood tonight where Natalie and I were doing our weekly stint of Western Pond Turtle monitoring. This was a great night for shooting digital photos through the spotting scope, since we also took a couple of great mirror image shots of the turtles on one of the logs in the larger pond, and I snapped a shot of a wild rabbit feeding along one of the perimeter fences just before we packed up the gear and drove away.

Doing this volunteer work is a good thing. It can have a small impact on possibly saving an endangered species, but it is also refreshing to get out in nature on a weeknight, to enjoy what She has to show us each time we set out with the camera, spotting scope, radio gear and notebook in hand.

Wednesday, June 5, 2002

After reading a few of his books, including carrying a copy of Chasing Monarchs across Eastern Washington two years ago as I biked the John Wayne Pioneer Trail while doing research for my revision to Mountain Bike America: Washington, tonight I finally got the chance to meet Robert Michael Pyle. Pyle was in Seattle for the official launch for his new butterfly guidebook, Butterflies of Cascadia. And so after listening to Bob Pyle talk about his book and the butterflies of this region, we stood in line to get our books signed and to finally say hello to the well-known author who is an acquaintance of Natalie's parents down in Longview, Wash.

It was a fun night, meeting some of the butterfly experts from Western Washington who are members of the Washington Butterfly Association and talking with one of those experts, Jon Pelham, about a butterfly sighting I made on August 18, 2000 of a Queen butterfly that visited our herb garden in the front yard (see the photo above). There is only one other documented Queen butterfly found in Cascadia - meaning Washington, Oregon and the very northern section of California. Of course, when I saw and photographed the butterfly during its visit in our yard, I didn't know it was that rare. I figured it was an escape from a classroom or released from a wedding or something, since these brilliant butterflies are not found in this area.

I sent photos documenting my sighting to Jon tonight. What will happen with it all now...who knows.

I came home tonight feeling more inspired to work on our own book, and feeling glad to start getting to know another group of interesting and intriguing people who are so engaged in our natural world through their love of butterflies. As for Bob Pyle, I have admired him and his writing for the last few years. I would love to string together a career like his, writing and teaching about nature with the kind of passion that he surely feels for butterflies. I think that our work on Birding Washington is a good step in that direction. That is the hope...

Tuesday, June 4, 2002

For the second night in a row I was too late to respond to Abe's barking in the back yard to save a possum that he somehow caught. Instead of saving the possum, I had to deal with the second dead possum in as many nights.

Thankfully the story was much more pleasant over last weekend, when Natalie and I ended up saving a Western Bluebird that we found while driving down a country road near Wenas Creek in Eastern Washington. We were on our way to finding the Least Flycatcher when we saw a bluebird struggling as it hung by a string outside a bird house on a wooded fence post. We stopped the car and got out to try and free the bird, with Natalie working the fishing line off its leg as I snipped pieces of the line free with my Swiss Army Knife. Thankfully, when the ordeal was done for this little bird, Natalie was able to put it back in the hole to the bird house where it could tend to the five eggs inside.

Thanks go out to Diane Yorgason-Quinn for the photo. I was a little too tied up helping in the rescue to get a photo, but Diane took a few good photos of the whole situation.

Copyright © 2002 White Rabbit Publishing.

All rights reserved.