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