Diario de jenstr

Last week I had the chance to wander the lower intertidal zone of Golden Gardens during the extreme (-3.7) low tide on June 6. In general I don't think of GG as a great spot to tide pool, but at that depth one could actually find some interesting things.

It was cool to see a very young (if dead) Dungeness crab and to find some tucked away anemones in the sand and alongside eelgrass beds. I also got a nice look at some less found giant kelp - the holdfast at the bottom of the algae. Moon snails and cockles left detritus behind as well.

Hoping to make it to Constellation over at Alki for the next super low tides in July - they won't be quite as low, but over there there will likely be more to see.

About 8 weeks has elapsed since I last walked in Carkeek, and so many of the plants that were barely out in April have now already surpassed their bloom time, although there was enough around to see what had been, if not in full flower. Got one nice shot of the lovely Youth-on-Age bloom.

We entered at Norcross and immediately heard a bunch of birds, most of which we couldn't see but which Merlin helped ID. Along with the usual robins, song sparrows, towhees and crows, we heard Swainson's thrush, Pacific-slope flycatcher, nuthatch, creeper, chestnut-backed chickadees and Wilson's warblers. We also heard and saw ravens almost certainly protecting a nest/encouraging fledgelings. Merlin believes ravens are uncommon here, but really they aren't - occasionally they even fly over our house in Ballard. Most of these birds didn't show themselves, and even the robins and sparrows aren't interested in our crummy iPhone photography, so all of these are instead uploaded to Merlin.

I had a wish to find some liverwort and I saw some crescent-cup immediately on the wet side of the park on some mossy stairs. On the drier north-side trails, we came across a deer - she wasn't especially concerned though she kept well ahead of us and headed off on a deer path as we continued on ours.

Also on the dry side I found what I believe to be red root rot (porodaedalea) on a Douglas fir. A light scratch on the underside did not show a persistent dark mark. Contrast this with one of the many artist's conks I saw on the wet site (downed leaf maple) which did easily mark.

Interest in being an admin on this project to draw attention to interesting, unusual or heck, usual but still very cool observations? Let me know.

Please note there is also a Plant Guide for Carkeek on iNat with all the plants identified as in Carkeek by the Washington Native Plant Society.

https://www.inaturalist.org/guides/17304

I have an ambivalent relationship with the artistic side of "nature journaling". It's become clear to me that the act of sketching something found in the natural world makes a significant difference in how closely you look at it and how well you remember it. So I find it extremely helpful. However, much of what is called nature journaling that you may encounter online shows these impressively designed and presented drawings, paintings, and lettering that it feels like some kind of sacrilege to sully my notebook with my own feeble attempts. There are terrific tutorials online from many artists (John Muir Laws and Jed Dunkerley's are my current favorites) but sometimes I feel more distracted by the need to make some kind of art and realize I'm following their guides but not looking at the actual specimen. Which is fine for learning technique but difficult to translate into my own work sometimes. And let's not even discuss the issues of attempting to draw or paint in the field!

All that said, I am sorry that the Introduction to the Natural World course doesn't have at least some small section on keeping a naturalist's journal, sketches or not. I can see why - there really isn't a perfect option for it. We are encouraged to use apps to identify and learn about plants and animals (and it is much handier than carrying multiple hard guides). Some of them even keep a running life-list for you. The handiest ones use AI and crowd-sourcing to help ID and keep a list, iNat being the top in this area. As I've started posting more observations I struggle to find people to help ID some of the less obvious organisms. But a trick I've found is to post something wrong - at first I was just trying to get the correct family or genus, but I've found if you post a species as a guess you are more likely to get someone who is excited to correct you, heh. Though I worry about possibly contributing incorrect info that way.

I wish there was a good way to add sketches to the journal. I suppose one could add sketches as, or to, observations, but I'm not sure how well that would go over. I've been taking a shot at drawing some of these garden buddies over the last couple of days.

We had a lovely hike out from the Middle Fork Snoqualmie campground along the connector trail and then up Garfield Ledges. It is still gloriously bright green along the road out, and there are still native bleeding hearts blooming along the trail entrances. Up through Garfield Ledges there were several old growth stumps bearing new growth of primarily hemlocks. As we got to near the tree line on Garfield Mtn (not from elevation but due to sheer rocky face), the wood became almost entirely thin hemlocks, all trying to beat each other out for the sun and the right to grow large as the forest moves into the second century after clearcut logging there, Already there are failed combatants littering the floor. The view at the ledge looking back down the Middle Fork Snoqualmie Valley is incredible, I wish there was a way to post it here.

Found a bunch of interesting things on the way down, mostly, as I was looking around more at that point. Lovely mosses, including a leafy moss (probably dotted-thyme but could easily be something else related) that almost seemed like a liverwort initially. Terrific British soldier and fishhook lichen, deer fern finally out and proud, and some funky fungi, including a Bolete I'd like to know more about. Always fun to get a closeup of animals, so in addition to lots of Swainson's Thrush and Pacific Wren song, we saw a millipede (I think I always find at least one on this trail!) and a couple of large and fairly fearless garter snakes by the river.

Add in a nice riverside picnic and perfect sunny-but-cool hiking weather and it all adds up to a fun and productive day nature-spotting.