As promised (tho, a little late), the Chinook photos from West Milton Friday.
The fish clearly had dark spots on both lobes of the tail, the large oblong spots on the back and dark mouths and gumlines. The female was still digging when we observed them. And there were two jack males loitering about 40 feet downstream.
This observation is particularly exciting because I and others have not expected Chinook to spawn in the east branch. We certainly conceived of the West Milton project as benefiting coho salmon primarily. We'll have to see what future use occurs in this stream, but for now, it appears that the Chinook consider it useful habitat.
As mentioned in Friday's post, I had visitors from the GSP, or Green Seattle Partnership, including our former Stream Team Coordinator and now Seattle Urban Forester Katie Moller. This is Brad from Washington Conservation Corps, Joanna Nelson from Cascade Land Conservancy, Katie, and Seattle Public Utilities' Chris Woelfel. This was our serious picture, which turned out kind of fuzzy, so I'm including
our silly picture, which is funny because Katie is trying to be serious and you can clearly see she is unable to do this.
And Finally, Tree Rats
The Eastern gray squirrel is an invader in our parts, displacing our native Pacific Northwest squirrels and generally behaving like bushy-tailed rats with no sense of decorum or modesty. Apparently, they're even less-liked in Britain where D.T. Max writes of the effort to preserve the native red squirrel by exterminating those nasty Yankee grays.
