brooke's Journal

Ravenna Park 4/13/2012 4:00 PM Lat: 47.6715421, Lon: -122.303767
Weather: warm, sunny, blue-sky day with a slight breeze.
I go to Ravenna Park pretty often, on runs or sunny days, but this was the first time I looked closely at some of the species present. I saw tons of robins, especially around the open grassy field. Around the edges of the park are many trees in bloom with pink, white, and yellow flowers. As you go into the woods the vegetation begins to look more like the natural Pacific Northwest greenery. There are lots of little streams around the lower trails. There are pine, madrone, and maple trees, as well as what I identified as birch. The understory is mostly ferns and other green shrubs. There is some moss and lichen, but less than the amount at Pack Forest. One species I found particularly interesting was the giant horsetail. Lately I have seen these growing everywhere near water. Even in extremely polluted areas such as under the 45th street bridge leading to the university village. From my guidebook I learned that these grasses, which look like giant spiny asparagus, often grow near water or in moist areas. Native American tribes around the Pacific Northwest used to eat them.
Another interesting tree I hadn’t seen before was the Sticky Currant. It had velvety looking closed blooms but when you touch them they are sticky instead of soft. The leaves are also sticky and covered in little hairs. Nearby I found a related stink currant. Although I didn’t notice its smell, the serrated 7 lobed leaves matched the picture in the guidebook. The leaves sagged downward from the point where they were connected to the branch.
I found a tiny little snail under a log. When I got home I searched snails of the Pacific Northwest and I assume that it was an Oregon Forestsnail. When I picked it up the snail retreated into it’s shell so I didn’t see it’s body much. There were no other snails with it. I put it back on the ground and waited to see if it would come out of its shell or move but it did not.
After I went home I decided to research the history of the area. I wanted to know how long it had been a park, where the streams came from, and what was there before the park. The area that is now known as Cowen or Ravenna Park was once covered by the Vashon Ice Glacial Sheet. When the Glacier melted there were streams that connected from the park to Greek Lake. There is leftover glacial till and lots of little rocks in the woods and soil. The park has changed its name several times and shrunk in size over the years. The area has inspired many artists and authors over the years.

Species Identified
• Oregon Forestsnail: Allogona townsendiana
• Sticky Currant: Ribes viscosissimum
• Stink Currant: Ribes bracteosum
• Pacific Madrone: Arbutus menziesii
• Common Ivy: Hedera helix
• Giant Horsetail: Equisetum telmateia
• Paper Birch: Betula papyrifera
• Bitter Cherry: Prunus emarginata
• Pacific Crab Apple: Malus fusca
• Old man’s beard: Clematis drummondii

University of Washington Arboretum
4/26/2012 5 PM gray, cloudy, dry, slightly windy, about 50 degrees
The arboretum was beautiful and very much in bloom. The grassy hills leading into the park were covered in daisies and dandelions. The arboretum is interesting because it has the original plants of the Pacific Northwest growing naturally, as well as some carefully planned gardens. The area was good practice for tree identification. Many of the trees had young, small cones, making it easier to figure out which one I was looking at. I saw Big leaf maple, Dogwood, Sitka spruce, Douglas fir, willow, and many others. The sitka spruce had tons of little red cones at the tips of its branches growing in clusters and it made the tree look like it was in bloom with red flowers. I found it difficult to identify many of the flowering shrubs, but occasionally there were labels to help. The arboretum probably has all the different kinds of ferns that grow in this area, but the only ones I examined close enough to identify were sword, lady, bracken, and oak fern. The lady fern had lots of pairs of leaflets- the few I counted had between 20 and 30.
There was a red flowering shrub that I couldn’t identify. The flowers had 5 petals and were a dark/bright pinkish red. The leaves grew mostly in clusters of 3 or 4 and were oval shaped with thin, long white hairs on the top and bottom. There were no hairs on the branches or twigs.

4/29/2012 2:30 PM slightly overcast but some blue sky, humid, about 58 degrees
I went back to the Arboretum because I didn’t make it to the Foster Island, Duck Bay part of the arboretum and wanted to see some birds. I saw lots of mallard ducks, mostly in pairs. The female is brown/ tan with dark brown and black tipped feathers. She has a darker streak that goes from her beak, across her eye, and ends on the side of her head. The beak on both male and female is yellow and the feet orange. The male has a florescent looking dark green head and neck, dark brown chest, and gray wings and body. I saw one white chested male mallard. I thought it may be a different species, but after researching it at home I found that it is basically the same, just a common hybrid of mallards. It was acting just like the other ducks and seemed to fit in just well. In researching this subject I discovered that there are many hybrids or look alikes when it comes to Mallards. One of these is the Rouen, which looks almost exactly like a mallard except that it is bigger/ chubbier.
I also saw a few wood ducks, both male and female. The male had a green head, with a crown of feathers that looked like hair. The male has a white streak down it’s beak and up around its eyes. The chest was a rusty orange color with black speckles. The wings are dark bluish with white edges, and the body tan with a dark brown chest. The wood ducks were smaller and more stalky than the mallards.
I also saw seagulls and crows coming to eat cheerios that some little girls were throwing for the ducks. One of the crows flew by and scuffled with one duck for a moment. This was a new duck I hadn’t seen before. There was only one of this kind. The duck was mostly gray with lots of little black speckles on its head and chest. The top parts of the wings were light bottom and the bottom/ tail was black. The duck’s eyes were bigger than the other ducks. It stayed off to the side by itself. It closely resembles the Eurasian widgeon, but I’m not positive this is the proper ID.

Burke Museum
4/26/2012 Birds- Sex, Treachery, and Death
Today at the Burke we learned about mating, population, child rearing, nesting possibilities, eggs, fighting, and gender differences in birds. It was cool to get to see the different eggs, plumage patterns, and changes in species over time. The lesson was divided into three separate parts- treachery, sex, and death.
Treachery: Laying eggs and raising young is a costly investment for birds. It takes time and energy, but it is worth it in order to pass on genes. Colonial nesters, or birds that all nest in the same tree, often have different egg colors and patterns. This is so that parents can identify if someone has added an egg to their nest. The weaver egg can be white, tan, turquoise, and may be speckled or not. This helps them to identify if an intruder was trying to reduce the amount of work in raising their young. But some birds have adapted an interesting way of shortcutting this process. The brown headed cowbird (BHC) doesn’t build a nest at all, instead it lays its eggs in other birds nests, often the yellow warbler. Yellow warbler eggs are much less varied than weavers, and it’s obvious when a BHC has added an egg, but they get away with it anyway. This is possible because BHC eggs are 30% thicker, so it’s hard for the little warbler to break the egg. The warbler does have a sharp beak though, so sometimes it is possible. But they have to be careful to not damage their own eggs in the process. A quarter of the time warblers try to pierce a BHC egg they damage their own in the process, so they have to decide if it’s worth the risk. That is, if the warbler was willing to risk doing such a thing. BHCs will attack, kill, and bully other birds into raising their young. If BHC discovers that their young was not raised or properly cared for they will sometimes come back and kill the babies in the nest. This kind of enforcement is called the mafia hypothesis. Sometimes warblers will stack nests up on top of each other and wait to lay their eggs because BHC’s will continue to fill up their nests. This process of a bird laying its eggs in another bird’s nest is called parasitizing. Once the young are hatched the male warbler often feeds the BHC chick. Females tend to spread the food around evenly, whereas the male often feed the biggest chick, which is the BHC. Studies show that BHC brains get bigger during egg lying season in order to keep track of all the nests they’ve parasitized.
Death: We can use museums to infer many things about bird population structure. It is important to know about population structure to make sure populations are stable. The ratio of juveniles to adult, birth rate, death rate, life expectancy, and migration can all help figure out how bird populations are doing. Population graphs can be helpful in many ways, but they have one major drawback: they can’t specify where changes or problems are coming from. One interesting fact I learned in this lesson is that seabirds are often white underneath, to disguise and camouflage themselves form underwater predators, and dark on top so they are harder for predators from above to see. I also learned that when Townsend and Hermit warblers migrate the juveniles often end up higher on the mountain. This is because the males are territorial and come back and claim the best space at the bottom, then the juveniles arrive later and have to find places at higher elevations.
Sex: Male birds are generally bigger and more colorful to attract mates and ward off competition. Being this way is costly for survival, but it’s worth it because it’s good for reproduction. This is known as sexual selection. There are a few exceptions when males are smaller and less colorful than the females. In these cases the male is in charge of parental care. Females will often establish a territory and then have multiple mates but only one father cares for all the young. This is known as cuckeling- when a bird raises someone else’s egg. If there is one male that mates with lots of females in a species that species will have smaller testes in proportion to their body than if there is lots of males and the female has her choice. Gorillas, for example, have one male in the group that mates with whoever they want- so they have very small testes. Female chimps, on the other hand, mate with many males so chimps have larger testes in proportion to their body. A random interesting fact that I learned in this part of the lesson is that male pheasants have a sharp, pointed spur for fighting over mates.

May 8 2012 1:30 UW Campus Fungi Observations
In this lesson I learned many things about mushrooms and fungi in generally, as well as some interesting facts about a few local species. To begin with, what I learned about fungi in general is that they have a commitment to making lots of spores in order to reproduce, which can be done both sexually and asexually. Mushrooms are a type of spore. Researchers are currently interested in finding how different fungi function in the environment. What we currently know is that they are decomposers or saprotrophs, meaning they break down dead organic material. They are especially important in the decompostition of woody material. Wood is made of carbon, water, lignin, cellulose, and hemipectins. Soft rot and brown rot fungi help build soil. White rot can strip off lignin in wood and access the carbon underneath. A biotroph is an organism that requires a living host, and has a symbiotic relationship with it. There are quite a few invasive fungi in the Pacific Northwest, many of which are biotrophs. Fungi absorb material (such as carbon) through the cell wall at the tip of the spore. Fungi produce enzymes that break complex molecules down into simple ones, which can then be absorbed. The hyphae tips are where all the action occurs: reproduction, enzymes out, and molecule/nutrients in. Fungi spores often get darker with age. The rest is information I learned about specific kinds of fungi.
Agrocybe praecox: Grows in dense, overlapping patches in groups of 1- 50. The mushrooms sometimes spore print onto each other. There are big white cracks on some of the mushrooms. The younger mushrooms have veils that serve as a protective layer for the spores on the underside.
Coprinus: They have black spores. Some of the mushrooms shrink with age and melt and become inky.
Oyster Mushroom: white rot, edible, can order mycelium online to colonize log, native, used in cholesterol lowering drug. Hair is sometime used to absorb oil from oil spills then oyster mushrooms can be grown on the hair and break down the oil
Shitake Mushroom: Native to Japan, people inoculate and grow here- but it hasn’t spread to become invasive
Turkey Mushroom: white rot, native, often grows in huge numbers on logs, top has a suede fuzz, used in a cancer drug
Button mushroom: native, kind that people often buy in grocery store, start out pink then turn brown, Portobello are the mature version