Just got back from another trip to San Francisco. My daughter got accepted to Berekely as a junior, so I flew down to visit her and tour the campus. She's a geology major, while everyone knows that I love snakes and frogs, so we squeee over different things, but we both squeee over Berkeley. Some of my squees were so loud and excited that you might have been able to hear them clear up here in Federal Way. I had two travel days and four days of fun in the city, which included three concerts, consisting of seven bands. This old lady is pooped! Never-the-less, I felt compelled to visit the park the day after I returned home from my trip. It was a beautiful day and nature rewarded me for my effort!
The park is beginning to close down for the cold winter that lies ahead. This makes a lot of people very sad. Everything seems to be dying, as so many vibrant greens slowly turn yellow, then brown, then disappear. I think that every season is beautiful in it's own way. Instead of focusing on the dying aspect of the season, let's look for the beauty in the season. Come with me. Let's see what we can find.
The fireweed has turned to spiky fluff, which somehow manages to look both soft and prickly at the same time.
The thistles have also reached the fluff stage. Nature's objective is for these seeds to be light enough to be carried away on the wind, hopefully to land on a lovely spot far away where they can put down roots and grow. This plot to cover the earth with thistles seems to be somewhat successful, despite the fact that you can find thistle fluff lodged in some really peculiar places.
The northwestern thatching ants are really busy right now. Unlike humans, the park's creatures can't run over to Winco, or Fred Meyer, when the plants they live on die away for the winter. This is the time of the year when they're busy stocking their larders with as much food as possilbe, so they have enough food to sustain them until spring returns.
The squirrels are especially funny to watch at this time of the year. Squirrels are not only busy trying to find, collect, and store enough food to last them through the winter, which is the preferred method, but some of them seem to be actively involved in locating and stealing the food that other squirrels have already found and stored. Squirrel A may find an acorn, dig a hole, and bury it; but, as soon as Squirrel A leaves, squirrel B will run over, dig the acorn up, and bury it someplace else. No wonder they look so lost when it's time to retrieve their nuts, nothing is ever where they leave it. The acrobatics they go through to obtain their nuts rivals anything the woman's gymnastic team can do. Acorns grow on the very ends of branches, where the limbs are thinnest. The squirrels have to be very talented to get that far out and manage to capture an acorn without falling off. I've seen some of them flip completely over, ending up upside-down, facing in the wrong direction. I've seen some fall and somehow manage to snag a lower limb as they shoot past. I've even seen some of them fall and bounce off the roofs of cars parked below. I can't watch them without laughing my head off. Their antics are amazing! The Douglas squirrels in the park get very aggressive at them time of the year. They just want people to go away and leave them alone so that they can go about their business. This particular Douglas squirrel was being very vocal. Even after I finished photographing my frog and was well down the boardwalk trail, I could still hear this squirrel loudly chewing me out. They get so wound up that their whole bodies quiver when they yell at you.
Speaking of frogs, look at some of the beauties I found today. I seemed to find frogs everywhere, although people visiting the park seemed to scoot right by and not see anything at all. Most of the people I saw were moving quickly and talking up a storm. They never saw a thing. I love our little frogs! They come in all different sizes, shapes, and colors, and can be found in so many different places. For the most part, they don't even move.....they just sit there, sometimes for hours at a time.
Some are so well camouflaged that they're hard to see.
And, some are hiding.
But, others are sitting right out in the open. This one was actually sitting on the boardwalk!
I saw seven snakes today. Seven! Some were right out in the open, like this little fellow essing his way across the gray gravel trail.
While others were a little more difficult to spot.
Some were alone; but, in one spot along the back side of Marlake, I spotted four snakes all sunning themselves together.
Cooler nighttime temperatures are causing the leaves to begin to turn. These are red-huckleberry leaves.
Vine maple leaves are turning a vibrant, fiery, red-orange.
Look at this beautiful bracken!
Mother Nature is quite an artist. She leaves beautiful still-lifes all over the park. How many can you find?
Spiders are busy everywhere! This seems to be their most active time of the year. If you're among the first to visit the park each day, you'll have the honor of walking through all the webs they string across the boardwalk trail, clearing the trail for those who follow. I thank you for that. Getting smacked in the face by spider webs is not among my favorite things.
Some of the birds double-nested this year and the young from the second batch of eggs are nearly ready to fledge. These youngsters should be gone any day now, although mom and dad were still feeding them at the time that I took this photograph. These are barn swallows.
A busy muskrat poked his head up at me at Marlake. About a half a dozen mallards were also visiting the lake, the males having lost their beautiful mating plumage and looking a little shabby right now.
And, of course, this is the time of the year when all of the beautiful fungi appear. West Hylebos Wetland has a treasure-trove of fungi in every size, shape, color, and design that you can think of. The park is a fungi-lover's paradise!
Teri I. Lenfest
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