Blog From The Bog

Changing Seasons

Although it's only July 31st, there are signs all over the park of the changing seasons.

Some of the ferns are starting to turn yellow.  Others have gone from yellow to brown and are starting to die.

The lush green carpet of false lilies-of-the-valley are starting to die off. 

Leaves are turning orange all over the park.

The Himalayan blackberries are just beginning to ripen.

Dead leaves are beginning to fall on the boardwalk.

As well as falling needles.  In some places the needles have become thick enough to make the boardwalk very slippery.  Please watch your step.

Put all of those things together with the absence of songbirds, the disappearance of the frogs, the return of the great blue heron, and the busy webwork of the arachnids and you can't help but think that autumn isn't far behind.

Teri Lenfest

Great Blue Heron and Green Heron

I probably have at least a dozen photographs of great blue herons in my photo library, but have never been able to photograph a green heron until today.  Both great blue herons and green herons live in the wetland, but they're distinctly different in appearance.

This great blue heron was looking for breakfast at Marlake this morning.  Great blues are huge birds.  I had a great blue fly right over my head one day and his wing span looked nearly as wide as I am tall.  That was quite an impressive sight!

Here's another view of the same bird.  This is probably the same great blue heron that was sitting on the stump at Brooklake the other day.

Since the great blue heron is fishing at Marlake this morning, the female mallard at Brooklake regained her stump standing rights.  This is a very popular stump.  It used to be the turtle stump, but I haven't seen any turtles sunning there in years now.

Here's the green heron.  Green herons are only about half the size of the great blues and, whereas great blues are a beautiful grayish blue color all over, green herons are green and brown and white.  They're very difficult to photograph because they're so well camouflaged that they blend right in with the reeds.  A green heron can be working the edge of the reeds right on the other side of the lake from where you're standing and you're probably not going to see him.

I got lucky today because the green heron was standing on the dock.  He wanted to take a little siesta, but there were too many people around, so he finally gave up, circled the lake a few times, and then flew off.  It wouldn't surprise me if he headed over to Brooklake for a while.

Teri Lenfest

Dragonfly, Cattails, Fungus, Spider, Ants and Aphids

After watching the river otter disappear among the cattails, I decided to take a walk around Marlake and see if I could spot him again.  The cattails and grasses are really thick over there right now so I wasn't able to see where the otter went.  The water is so low that I was actually able to walk out among the reeds in places that are usually under water.  That felt very strange, I'll tell you.  I can honestly say that I walked some places today where I've never walked before. 

The cattails are sure pretty.  We usually think of cattails as being very straight and stiff.  Not these.  Look at how floppy and curly they are.

Dragonflies are thick around both lakes now, including one that is bright blue and easily twice the size of any of the other dragonflies.  I haven't been able to photograph that one yet.  It's much too fast for me!  Talk about Jurassic Park!  That giant dragonfly looks exactly like it would be right at home with the dinosaurs.

Here's a spider busily building a web.  Webs are everywhere right now and they're all different.  It's interesting to look around and see how many different types of spider webs you can find.

These thatching ants look like they're working an aphid farm.  Looks like they're doing quite well, too.  I would like to find the ant nest, but haven't stumbled upon it yet.  I bet it's huge!

And last, but not least, is this beautiful fungus I found growing on the side of a tree.  It reminds me of a fried egg with the yolk broken!  What do you think?

Teri Lenfest 

River Otter, Mouse, Squirrel, and Frog

Today we were trapped beneath a marine layer for most of the day, so the temperature remained about 59 deg F until around 2 p.m.  Fortunately, the sun broke out about the same time that I was leaving for the wetland.  Once the marine layer burned off and the sun started to shine, things began to warm up quickly, so I immediately headed for Marlake hoping to find some snakes out sun-bathing.  I looked in all of the usual snaky places and couldn't find a single one.  Just as I started to leave I noticed a wake traveling just in front of the cattails on the other side of the lake.  The wake was being created by the elusive river otter that has taken up residence there.  I've been looking for that otter for at least a month and finally got a glimpse of him.  This was the best shot I could get with my new camera and I only had time for a single shot.  Immediately after I took this picture, the otter swam into the cattails and disappeared.

I did the best I could to crop the photo and enlarge the otter.  That made the photo blurry, but it also allows you to see a few more details than you can see in the original shot.

I found this cute little mouse over in the area we call Jurassic Park, near the salal berries.  I wish you could have seen him, he was was hardly bigger than a nearby cigarette butt.  Look at how big his ears are, "The better to hear you with, my dear".

He's so cute!

I haven't seen a Douglas squirrel in the park in weeks, so was delighted to see this little fellow up in the tree munching away.  You can clearly see the Douglas fir cone in his hands.  He looks just like he's eating corn on the cob. 

Frogs have also become difficult to find in the past several weeks.  This was the only frog I could find today.  He had his own personal swimming pool all to himself.  What a great way to keep cool!

Teri Lenfest 

Frogs, Great Blue Heron, Wren, Salal Berries

This is a picture of the first ripe salal berries of the season two seconds before they went in my mouth.  Yum!  Oh boy, oh boy, oh boy!  You have to be fast to beat me to the berries!

On my way to Brooklake I discovered the tiniest little frog I've ever seen.  This frog was so small that I could have sat him in the middle of a dime and his brother could have joined him there with plenty of room to spare.  He was hardly bigger than a speck, which means that hiding under the bridge was a really good move on his part.

Because a great blue heron was hanging out on the duck stump at Brooklake and herons love to eat frogs.  This is the first great blue heron I've seen at Brooklake this season.  What a wonderful find!  I'm so happy to see him back!

On the way back over the bridge I noticed that the water below was really rippling.  I stopped to see what was causing such a great disturbance in the force, hoping to catch a peek of one of the muskrats or river otters.  Instead, it was just the water-strider racing-team zipping up and down the creek.  If you look at the insect's shadow you can see how his feet make little dimples in the water.  I love to watch these funny insects racing around in every different direction.  They're so much fun!

As I headed down the short end of the trail, I stopped at my favorite tree-well to look for frogs.  I hadn't seen any frogs there in a couple of weeks and you know how much I worry when I can't find my frogs.  The water in the tree-well is evaporating.  It's only about half the size it was several weeks ago.  At first I couldn't find any frogs, because I was looking on the boardwalk side of the well where they usually hang out.  Instead, this little fellow was hanging out on the opposite side of the well, where I've never seen them before.  He was such a sneaky little guy that I almost missed him entirely.  It's not fair to fool with Mother Teri!  Naughty, naughty, naughty!  I would have gone home worrying about my babies again.

A little farther down the trail, this little Bewick's wren felt the need to come check me out.  I love the way their tails stick straight up in the air. For a little while, I thought the only bird awake in that part of the wetland was the Great Blue Heron at Brooklake.  I'm used to the wetland being noisy with birdsong and I didn't hear a single peep out of anybody until this sweet little wren showed up.  Even the chickadees, who have been throwing a raucous party for weeks, were gone.  I couldn't find a single chickadee in the chickadee trees.

This was the last thing I saw on my way out of the park.  This poor plant was growing right beside the boardwalk and someone felt the need to snap it's top off.  They just couldn't walk out of the park without killing a plant.  This breaks my heart!  Why would anyone do something like this?  This makes me very sad.

Teri Lenfest

Frogs, Tadpoles, Robin, Mallards

We haven't had any rain in a while, so Marlake is beginning to shrink.  Not as bad as it did six years ago, but you can still walk out about three feet onto what should be lake bottom.  It's damp, muddy, and slick as snot, but you can walk on it.

All of the ground in this photo should be underwater.  Now it's high, although not exactly dry.

If you're careful, go very slowly, and are super quiet, you might be able to sneak out close enough to edge to see the tadpoles.  There are a lot of things around Marlake that like to eat tadpoles, so they're very alert and can move really fast.  If you look closely you can see one in this photo.  Can you find it?  It's above and to the right of center inside of a box-shape formed by leaf stems.

Here's another one.  These are really big tadpoles and they're going to grow up into really big frogs.

Those a bullfrog tadpoles.  When they grow up, they're going to look just like the frog in this photo.  Can you find the bullfrog?  He's just a little below the center of the photograph.

The mallards don't seem to care about the fact that the grass is full of bullfrogs, the water is teeming with tadpoles, and dragonflies are zooming every which way through the air.  The temperature was in the 90's today and these ducks were having some water fun.  They were splashing water all over the place and chasing one another around.  Sometimes there was so much splashing going on that you couldn't even see the ducks for all of the water in the air.    Boy, that looked like fun!

Today was the robin's day to sit on the bench.  This bench seems to be the most popular resting spot around Marlake.  At one time or another, just about every living thing around the lake seems to end up on this bench.  I wonder how they decide whose turn it is?  This was Mr. Robin's turn.  He turned his back completely on all of those youngsters carrying on in the lake.  He looks much too proper in his red breast and mourning jacket to ever consider participating in such nonsense.

One of our blue jays left us a gift in the meadow.  The perfect feather to stick in your cap.

The spiders have been so busy.  Those wonderful web-masters have draped the wetland in silvery-iridescent strands of thread, shining brightly in the sun.  The wetland is not only thick with webs, the webs are thick with threads.  Spider webs are such amazing creations, don't you think?

Teri Lenfest

Starting The Next Generation Of Bog Lovers

One of our local weather-forecasters, Jeff Renner, described today's weather as being right in the "sweet spot".  It's only supposed to last a few days, so Danny and Jess Emel decided to bring baby, Ella Blue, to the park so she could enjoy a little grass-time.  Ella Blue is destined to become the next generation of bog lovers.  I promised her that when she got bigger, I'd show her where all the frogs, salamanders, and snakes hang out.  For now, I think she's happy playing with little favorite piglet.  Jess and Danny found the perfect way to enjoy a perfect day.

I met Sean, Nasaun, Daunte, Jacob, and Nicole making their way out of the park as I was making my way in.  I asked the kids if they'd seen any snakes or frogs while they were in the park and they said no.  Nicole said they'd almost gotten lost for a while, so I asked the boys if getting lost in the wetland was a little scary.  Then, Sean said, "What time is it?", and all of the kids pumped their arms up and down in the air and yelled, "It's Adventure Time!"  Now, these folks know how to have fun!

As luck would have it, I found this handsome fellow crawling right beside the boardwalk just a short way down the trail.  Unfortunately, the kids were gone by then.

And then, not much farther along the trail, I found another one.  Sometimes you see them - sometimes you don't.  They don't make any noise, so you can't hear them moving through the brush.  When they're all warmed up they can move like greased lightening.  If they hear you coming, they'll just slide into the brush and you'll never know they're there.  The small ones blend in with the brush so well that you can hardly see them when you're looking right at them.  Aren't they beautiful!  Can you see his eyes?  Snakes don't have eyelids like ours, so they can't close their eyes like we do.  Instead of biting off chunks of food and chewing them up, snakes eat their food whole.  It takes a long time to digest something like a mouse, so snakes don't have to eat every day.  Depending on the size of their meal, snakes can go as long as a week without eating.  Don't worry, he's not big enough to eat you! 

Teri Lenfest

Plants, Fungi, Lichens

The Pacific trailing-blackberries are just beginning to ripen.  These berries aren't as large or prolific as the Himalayan blackberries, but they are native and the Himalayans are invasive.

The salal berries are just starting to ripen.  In 2004, when the weather was so dry, the salal berries were actually drying on the bushes, so weren't eatable at all.  I'm keeping a close eye on these.  I love salal berries!

There are two kinds of thistles blooming in the park right now.  There's a huge clump of small lavender thistles growing along the blue gravel trail between the cabins and the sign-in kiosk.  Their blooms are very small and the plants seem to prefer growing in groups.  This beauty, on the other hand, has a huge vibrant bloom and prefers to stand alone.  It's like the queen of thistles. This is the kind of thistle that makes a Scottish heart happy.

This is Prunella Vulgaris, or self-heal.  The grass around Marlake is full of it right now.  This plant was crushed and applied to wounds and boils.  It's not native to this country, but can now be found just about everywhere.

Once an expert took some of us on a moss and lichen tour of the wetland.  I remember her stopping us at the old sign-in kiosk and pointing out the enormous number of mosses and lichens that grew on the roof of that kiosk alone.  When the new kiosk was built I wondered how long it would take the composite roof to become as covered with lichen as the old roof had been.  I'm still waiting.  Apparently, the composite material is a lot more lichen resistant than the old roofing had been.  Today, as I crept out onto the dock at Marlake in an attempt to locate the bird that was calling in the reeds, I noticed the bench that sits on the end of the dock.  Gary, Heather, and I used to sit out here all of the time and watch all the ducks and geese on Marlake.  Gary and Heather raised ducks and geese, so had a lot of duck and goose food laying around, which attracted an enormous number of visiting ducks and geese to the lake.  Now that Gary and Heather have moved east, taking their fine-feathered friends with them, the number of ducks and geese on Marlake has dwindled considerably.  From the look of the bench, no one has sat on it since Gary and Heather left.  The bench is now liberally covered with lichens of all sorts.  Our friendly lichen expert would get a real kick out of this bench now.  I wonder how many different lichens she could identify on this bench alone.  It's become a huge piece of natural art!

The Nootka roses are beginning to shed their petals.  They look like tiny pink hearts scattered among the leaves and ferns.

Although it's only the middle of July, leaves in the wetland are beginning to change color and fall from the trees.  This is nature's way of letting us know that Autumn is fast approaching.  It seems so early this year.  We haven't had but a few days of summer yet and now we're seeing signs of fall.

There are also signs of other things afoot in the wetland.  Literally.  This is but one of a long line of footprints left in the mud by someone walking along the creek, instead of on the boardwalk trail.  I took this photo while standing in the middle of the bridge on the Brooklake spur and pointing my camera straight down.  That's a long way down.  That wasn't just a simple step off of the boardwalk.  What are people doing down there?  They don't belong down there.

As if the graffiti, trash dumping, and off-trail wandering weren't enough - someone decided to use one of our trees as an ashtray.  I think this is so disrespectful!  Don't you?

Teri Lenfest

Snakes, ducks, dragonflies, birds, and frogs

I was just looking through my old blog from six years ago and the difference between July 2004 and July 2010 is striking.  Here's a quote from my July 29, 2004 blog:

"The water level is extremely low throughout the park.  Many areas that used to be below water are now high and dry.  It feels really strange to realize that you can now walk on what used to be lake bottom!"

I took this picture of a frog sitting on the bottom of Marlake in July of 2004.  A week after this photo was taken the place where this little frog was sitting had dried out even more, sprouting deep cracks like a huge earthen jigsaw puzzle.

Remember the female mallard at Brooklake that I kept seeing atop the same stump for several weeks?  She was in the water today enjoying a wonderful, loud, splashing bath.  And, she was surrounded by three new baby ducklings!  My camera wasn't up to the task of photographing the ducklings.  They were just too small and far away for my camera to handle.  Cedar waxwings were flitting back and forth over Brooklake snatching insects from mid-air and a gorgeous Western tanager landed on a limb directly in front of me.  The coloration of it's yellow body, black wings, and bright red head was so breathtaking that I didn't even think about my camera until the tanager flew away.  Darn, another missed-opportunity!

Unlike the tanager, this beautiful dragonfly settled down right in front of me and waited patiently for me to get the shot.  What a handsome creature!

This little snake wanted to sun itself on the board that juts into Marlake beside the dock, but was unhappy with me because I was standing between it and the board.  He was so little that I almost stepped on him before I saw him. 

Not too far from the first snake, I almost stepped on another.  You really have to watch where you're stepping in that area.  There must be an entire family of snakes living on that side of the lake.

The mallards didn't care about the fact that the grass was crawling with snakes.  They were all tuckered out from the heat and having a little siesta.  The snakes had the opposite reaction to the heat.  They were all warmed up and zipping around like greased-lightning.

This new animal den has popped up right next to the blue gravel trail connecting the main trail to the orchard.  See the collection of plants it has piled up at the entrance to it's den?  That's just what Adele's mountain beaver does.  Maybe this is a mountain beaver den.  We have mountain beavers in the wetland and they've been spotted from time to time, but it's very unlikely that you'll run into one because they're not usually active during the daytime.

The chickadees are behaving like children.  They actually follow you around the park, going through all kinds of antics trying to attract your attention.  Look at me!  Look at me!  Look at me, I can stand on one foot!  Look at me, Mom, no hands!  Look at me, look at me, I'm here, I'm there, I'm everywhere....look at me!

The little sparrows seem so well-behaved in comparison.  They seem to enjoy playing hide-n-seek,  popping out to sing, then quickly popping back into the denser growth when you get too close.

I didn't see any frogs at all today, nor did I see any bunnies.  It was a beautiful day for a picnic in the park!  Hope you had a chance to get out and enjoy the weather.

Teri Lenfest

Ants, Snakes, Juncos, and Ducks

The park was pretty spooky this morning.  As I started along the trail, I didn't see a single sign of life, nor hear a single sound, other than the sound of airplanes flying overhead.  At this time of the year the park is usually filled with bird song.  It's like an enormous avian orchestra playing "Ode to the wetland".  The absolute silence I encountered this morning was downright eerie.  For the past several days the sky has been blue and cloudless, with temperatures ranging in the high 70's - low 80's.  The sky was overcast this morning, rain was threatening, and the temperature had plummeted back down to the mid-60's.  Perhaps the sudden drop in temperature has encouraged all of the wildlife to take cover for a while.

One of the first things I noticed as I headed down the boardwalk was that someone was leaving hatch-marks on this tree.  It looks as if someone's counting something - perhaps the number of times they've visited the wetland?  I love the fact that they've become a frequent visitor, but am not very happy about the method they've chosen to keep track of their visits.  Bark on a tree is like the skin on your body.  It keeps the good things in and the bad things out.  If visitors continue carving up our trees at the same rate that they have been, it won't be long before the trees die from abuse.  I don't know about you, but I'd really miss these beautiful trees.  Please refrain from carving hatch-marks, initials, or anything else into the trees or the boardwalk itself.

The next thing I passed was the fire stump.  Every time I pass this stump, I have to stop and stare at it.  It's obviously been badly charred, but there is no evidence of anything around it having been charred as well.  I wonder what set this stump afire and what put the fire out.  I also wonder when the fire occurred and why it didn't spread to the rest of the wetland.  There's an interesting story behind this single charred stump and one day I'm going to ferret it out.  As for now, it remains a mystery.

 
As far as I can tell, this mallard has been standing on this stump in the middle of Brooklake for the last five days.  Every time I visit the wetland, there she stands, on her stump, sometimes sleeping, sometimes preening her feathers, but steadfastly adhering to her personal stump.  As you can see, Brooklake is almost entirely covered by a mass of unsavory scum at this time of the year.  In a couple of months all of this scum will die off and disappear, but when it's in it's active stage, it covers nearly every inch of the lake.  I find this very interesting, as there's a constant flow of water into and out of Brooklake, so the water doesn't remain still or become stagnant, yet it becomes completely covered by this scum every summer.  Marlake, on the other hand, is a man-made lake.  It has an aerator in the middle of the lake on one end, but the aerator has been broken for years now.  Marlake is fed by rainfall, so tends to shrink considerably during prolonged dry spells.  And yet, so far, Marlake has shown no evidence of scum-growth.  Very interesting, indeed!

By this time the sun had started to pop out and things were starting to warm up a little bit.  In no time at all, the birds were back and singing their hearts out.  Look at the size of this junco!  That is one really round bird!

Snakes were crawling out of their hiding spots and looking for nice warm places to sun themselves.  Snakes are cold-blooded, so their body temperature is just about the same as the surrounding air temperature.  They're very sluggish when they're cold.  In order to be effective hunters, they need to bask in the sun to raise their body temperature.  Once warmed up, they can move like greased-lightening! 

I sneaked up on this collection of thistles trying to find a nice fat bumblebee to photograph, but the bees kept eluding me.  As soon as I'd get close enough to photograph them, they'd fly off in another direction.  Having just missed another bee, I suddenly noticed that the thistles were covered in ants.  Apparently, bees aren't the only things with a sweet-tooth.  See the big red head?  This is a western thatching ant.  I wrote about thatching ants in April.  They build huge mounds and are fierce warriors.  You don't one to mess with one of these ants.  They can leave you with a really nasty bite.

Teri Lenfest