Week Seven

3:30 PM Thursday, May 29
Cloudy 60 degrees
Magnuson Park

My site continues to become more and more overgrown! This made searching for fungi this week even more difficult. Before I discuss the fungi I was able to find, I will provide a brief update of what I noticed at my site. First, I noticed the twin berries at my site are starting to get berries. Also bees keep getting more and more active- I noticed much more today than I have the past times I have been at my site. Also, sadly, the mallard family is now only 3 ducklings (at least that was all I saw today). I'm hoping I'll end up seeing the other ducklings again, but I don't think the mallard mom would intentionally leave her ducklings behind.

The three mallard babies. They were sitting right by me!

Twin berry getting its berries.

I was able to find many lichens at my site. I think I found a few mushrooms that were similar to some of the conks that we saw in class, but I also feel like they might be lichens. I'm not entirely sure. All of the species that I found were either on logs or on red alder trees (that is where I found the lichens).

There are two types of lichen shown in this picture, both crustose.  The white lichen is seen on many red alders throughout the region. The smaller yellow-orange colored lichen is also common on many trees. This was on the trunk of a red alder. 

This lichen was also on a red alder tree- this was on many of its branches. It is thin and papery with a sort of light green tint that is very hard to see in this picture. It is a foliose lichen.

This lichen is also very common on the red alder branches. It is a fruticose lichen and its long and white, green and yellow. Sort of hairy in appearance. 

This is a terrible photograph, but here are some more bright green crustose lichen I found on the side of a log. 

I am not entirely sure it this is a fungi or a lichen. It did not seem to have gills, but maybe pores. The bottom is green with red spots and the tops were more whitish. I found this growing on a log. I feel like it could possibly be a foliose lichen, but I think it is probably a fungi. 

This seems like some sort of conk fungi. It was whitish on the bottom and the tops are dark brown-black with some green. Again it seemed to have pores rather than gills, and it was growing on the side of a log. My guess is that it is a wood decomposer, but I have not been able to pinpoint its exact species. 

Another very similar sort of fungi. It is attached to the log much the same was the other ones were. The tops of this one are bumpy and light brown-gray in color. The edges were sort of rough, and it did not seem to have gills either. 

Week Six

3:30 PM Monday, May 19
Mostly cloudy, 65 degrees
Magnuson Park

At my site this week I have noticed grasses really starting to take over, especially near the water. Also on the trail walking to my observation spot, the trail keeps becoming narrower from the growing vegetation. Additionally, I noticed a new plant growing by the water that I couldn't seem to find in my field guide. It has long oblong shaped leaves with jagged edges all extending from on central stem. Some of the edges of the leaves are a reddish color. I also noticed a few plants blooming, including snowberry and red osier dogwood. Additionally I noticed two other white flowering plants that I am having a hard time identifying. One looks a lot like black hawthorn, but it has different leaves. I thought it was especially interesting because the flowers were in different stages of blooming all on one plant! I also saw another flowering plant with white flowers that had long eliptical petals.  The rushes out in the water also seemed to have something blooming on them, although it was hard to tell exactly what it was.

Unidentified plant starting to grow by the edge of the water.

Blooms on rushes. 

Red Osier Dowgwood blooming.

Unidentified plant.

Unidentified plant in different stages of bloom. 

I also found many species of birds at my site today. I briefly saw a house finch before it flew away as well as an american robin. It was flying around some cottonwood trees where I believe there was a nest, as I heard some unfamiliar squawking which I think were the robin's babies. I also heard the call of the marsh wren, but I never this species. I followed a black capped chickadee through some trees for a short while before it flew away. It jumped from branch to branch not staying on any of the branches for long, but also not moving a great distance each time it moved to a new branch. I heard its chirping song which it did a lot while it was in the trees. It stayed pretty low to the ground while it was moving around before completely flying away and I could no longer follow it. Its flying was very fast and short. I could see it off on another tree in the distance for a little while just flying in short little bursts. I also followed a pair of gadwalls for a while. They were intensely cleaning themselves while sitting in the water. Sometimes they would dunk their heads under and then continue ruffling their feathers with their bills and just generally splashing around a lot. When the female decided to fly off, the male followed, and they did not go far- just moved to another close pond. where they floated peacefully for some time before flying too far away for me to find/follow. Birds are difficult to observe- it was much harder to follow them than I thought it would be, and even harder to identify when I only catch a glimpse before they fly off!

Gadwall I observed doing some cleaning. 

The best picture I was able to capture of the black capped chickadee. 

Week Five

3:00 PM Monday, May 12

Sunny, 75 degrees

Magnuson Park

After being away from my site for a week, I noticed some pretty exciting changes this week! First I found a mallard with babies! I counted five babies total, which is far less than the number of babies the mallards have in drumheller fountain, which I am hypothesizing has something to do with no predators being in the fountain. I also saw a female gadwall floating in the water.

Female Gadwall.

Four of the mallard ducklings.

Additionally I noticed many plants blooming today. I found pink flowers on the nootka rose plant and white flowers on the thimbleberry at my site. Also, the tall oregon grape now has what seems like berries in the place of the yellow flowers it had when I first started observing at my site. I also noticed a few purple clover blooming along the edge of a log.

Blooming nootka rose.

Purple Clover flower.

Tall Oregon grape getting berries.

Thimbleberry flower. 

I additionally saw many species of dragonfly. I have yet to see dragonflies at my site so I was pretty excited! One I identified as a Pacific Forktail Dragonfly and one is a Meadowhawk and I am still uncertain about one of the species, however I know they all belong to the order Odonata. I also saw a white moth/butterfly (order Lepidoptera) and a species of fly (order Diptera). There were many other flies/bees flying around but they did not stay still long enough for me to ever get a good look at them. I additionally found some very tiny black ants (order Hymenoptera).

Meadowhawk dragonfly

Pacific Forktail Dragonfly