On November 19th, the gang headed out from Wallace Hall at around 7:30 in the morning. We boarded the ferry to Whidbey Island form Mulkelteo, where we saw Glaucous-winged gulls and Cormorants. As the island came closer to view, we could see proof of its glacial formation, which included the stratified alluvial deposits that make up the bluffs on the sides of the island. We couldn't see the drumlins from our viewpoint, but the island is made up of drumlins, some of which exceed 1,000 feet. These drumlins run North to South, so we drove diagonally over them.
Our first stop was Beth Wheat's farm. I'm not going to lie, I kind of fell in love with that farm. Apple trees dropped their fruit in the driveway, not caring if there was a car underneath. I heard the bleat of goats, and saw a cat at the entrance of the barn. We jumped out of the vans, and what should be our first mission? Pet the goats, obviously.
We got our first mission knocked out, and then we headed out towards the creek, where we were to lay camera traps. Beth had asked us to set these cameras in order to document the creatures that come through her farm, so she can adapt her agricultural practices to suit their needs as well. This felt like real field work, so I was beyond thrilled to romp through the mud. To get to the creek, which is at the bottom of a drumlin, we walked across a wetland meadow, where rushes thrived on top of the clay soil. The creek also flowed over clay, which was deposited by the Vashon ice sheet.
We saw several interesting things near the creek. For one camera, we headed into a thicket where snags of old cedars hinted at a relic of the forest that had been. In a newer Douglas Fir, we spotted a beautiful Barred Owl. We attached another camera at a different location, marked by lichen-covered Alnus rubras. The air isn't as polluted as it is in Seattle, so all sorts of lichen thrive on the island. We identified antler's perfume and wax-paper lichen.
One of the most interesting piece of information came as we were leaving, where Tim told us the reason for the organized holes on the apples trees. A type of woodpecker, the Red-breasted Sapsucker, drills small holes in very neat columns and rows. I just thought it was crazy how neat and tidy the marks were, and how they covered the whole trunk of the tree.
We drove away from the farm, and I felt a twinge of sadness as we did. After forty minutes or so, we reached our main site for the day- Ebey's landing. We parked at the top of the hill, which was marked by gnarled and windblown trees. Many of them are quite old, but don't get very tall due to the wind. The wind plays a major role in the types of plants that grow here; short, with waxy coatings, swelling for water retention, hairs, or no big leaves. Even though Ebey's landing is in the rain-shadow East of the Olympics, the Sitka spruce trees growing there are able to get their moisture from fog that breaks at the top of the bluff.
In a Grand Fir, we spotted a Hairy woodpecker. We could distinguish it from a Downy woodpecker because our specimen had a bill that was equal to/longer than the width of its head. The trees were also coated with long clumps of Ramalina menziesii, a long foliose lichen that forms a web/net.
We parked at the beach, and walked up the hill along the bluffs, and walked down to the beach once we were past the spit. The cause for the spit was interesting. As debris falls from the bluffs, water current pulled it East, where the water slowed and caused the sediment to accumulate and form the spit. On our right, we walked passed prairies, which were once maintained and burned by Native Americans that inhabited the island. As we passed over the spit, we looked down to see Hooded Mergansers and Greater Yellowlegs feeding in the shallow water.
Since we saw so many different things, I'm going to make a giant list:
BIRDS:
-Horned Grebe
-Pacific Loon
-Greater Yellowlegs
-Harlequin duck
-Bufflehead
-Redbreasted Merganser
-Hooded Merganser
-Cormorant (couldn't ID specifically)
-Mew gull
-Bonaparte gull
-Ring-billed gull
-Western gull
-Glaucous-winged gull
-Bald Eagle
-Barred Owl
-Hairy Woodpecker
-Golden crowned sparrow
PLANTS:
-Gum plant
-Yarrow
-Symphoricarpos albus
-Searocket
-Glasswort
-Gaultheria shallon
-Poison Hemlock
-Opuntia fragilis, native cactus
-Ramalina menziesii
-Lipstick cladonia
-Douglas's Campion
We did our walk too fast, mainly because it was cold. But we didn't get out of the cold at all, because we ended up sitting by the water for a long while. The clouds broke for a while, and sunlight felt heavenly as I sat on some driftwood.
walk on the beach
the water
the sun
my landscape sketch
We headed out around 4:00, and drove for about an hour towards the Skagit River Wilderness Sanctuary, where our goal would be to spot some swans and possibly a great horned owl. To get there, we crossed over the Skagit river delta, onto Fir island. We drove down a straight road through farmland, watching the sun descend. We could see swans flying away from where we were headed, and we could hear their less-than-beautiful calls. They were most likely Tundra swans, which are more common to see in that area. Trumpeter swans are a little rarer, and are distinguishable by the pure black beaks, unlike the Tundra swan, which has yellow at the base.
It always makes me uncomfortable to find that many nature "sanctuaries" are hunting grounds as well. The Skagit River Wilderness Sanctuary is homed to many types of water fowl, which include Snow Geese in the winter, that migrate from Russia to ride out the winter. It's also SO crazy how far an individual bird can travel. It's mind-boggling.
We all filed out of the vans, and admired the darkening wetland landscape. We saw at least a hundred birds fly by during the half hour that we were there. Our main hope was to see the Great Horned owl that has been known to inhabit the area. We brought out a pretty retro speaker, to which Chris provided the auxiliary cord. Tim played the "hoo...hoo..." call, and sure enough, after three tries, a Great Horned owl appeared. It silently swooped into a snag in the wetland, and appeared to be watching us. Its silhouette was a bit frightening to me, for reasons which I can't describe. It must have been a combination of the lighting and the mythology of owls.
Then, we heard the call of another Great Horned owl, one that we didn't produce. We looked over at the tree where the first one had come from, and when we whipped our heads back around, there were two Great Horned owls in the tree! They showed copulating behavior, which caused us to assume that they were mates. Their tails were upturned, and their backs were arched in the same direction of their tails. At first, I thought it was aggressive behavior towards us. We kept playing our owl call from the speaker, which seemed to confuse them, because after about five minutes, they flew back to the cottonwoods that they came from.
Sketch of Great Horned Owl
Stylized Sketch of Swans
Overall, it was a good day, and we were luckier than Isaac Ebey- we didn't get our heads chopped off!
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