robertmarsh's Journal

There is only one species of squirrel on UW campus, the Eastern Gray Squirrel. This species of squirrel is invasive, and highly territorial. It is also well suited for habitats that are influenced by humans. These factors account for the Eastern Gray Squirrels dominance, and for the subsequent decline of the Western Gray Squirrel. The Western Gray Squirrel is larger, and solidly gray, unlike the eastern gray squirrel which has a brown face. The Western Gray Squirrel is now on the threatened species list, and only three known populations exist in Washington State. An interesting piece of research into squirrels behavior found that squirrels are not very territorial when it comes to members of their own species, but do defend against the other variety of squirrel.

Beetles: Colioptera, or sheathed wing, is the order of beetles. Sheathed wing is an appropriate description, because beetles are defined by having two sets of wings, the foremost pair being elytra, or hard wing covers, that protect the more fragile secondary pair commony used for flight in beetles that can fly.
Interesting Beetle families:
Lampridae: Luminescent firefly beeltes (not all fireflies in Lampridae luminesce). Includes California firefly, distinguished by two red stripes along edges of Pronotum, doesnt luminesce, (see may 27 observation)
Brachypterous: Dwarfed wings not capable of flight.
Another

Location: Pac Forest Lodge
Time: Evening, March 31
Materials: Hand lense and branch specimens of all 17 native WA conifers.

Incense Cedar: Very serrated ventrical scales. Ventrical scales stick out further at tip of leaflet and at each individual scale set, than dorsal scales.
Yellow Cedar: Elongated and more cylindrical scales, greater ability for leaflets to cross over themselves and lose geometric shape. Ventrical and dorsal scales point outwards at roughly equal distances.
Western Redcedar: Geometrically feathered shapred leaflets, with rounded inflexion at the tips of scales due to ventrical scale length and slight inward curve. Short flat scales.
Noble Fir: Two distinct stomata on top and bottom of needles, gives a blueish tint in cold environments. Geometric symmetry to tree and branches.
Subapline Fir: One very thick stomata on the top of the needle, two stomata underneath. Otherwise similar to noble fir.
Juniper: Very three dimensional scaled leaflets. Radial dispersal of ventrical scales, and produces berries instead of cones.
Pacific Silver Fir: Full 180 degree array of needles on top side of branch, making the woody top of the branch not visible. No needles stem from the bottom 180 degrees of branch, leaving underside of branch bare, with woody stem visible. Prominent 2 stomata underneathe needle, no stomata on top of needle.
Western Larch: Alternate bunches of needles that are deciduous. Scarcity of bunches of needles leaves much of the woody branch visible.
Sitka Spruce: Stiff and very sharp pointed needles that are painful to grab. Bluish green coloured needles.
Western Hemlock: Short, flat, round, and blunt needles, unequal in length. Feathery flat splay of needles from branch. Untidiness of needle uniformity keeps needles from being completely flat coming off the branch.
Mountain Hemlock: Radial distribution of short, blunt, flat, round tipped needles of unequal length. Neeldes taste citrus-like, strong taste which hangs around in mouth for a long time.
Douglas-Fir: pointed needles radially scattered off of branch. Flat scar on branch visible when needles are removed. Groove on upper surface of needle.
Pacific Yew: Needles flat and very abruptly pointed at the tip, and evenly lengthed. Two prominent stomata underneathe needle, red coloured patches of bark. Branch with neeldes appears very flat.
Lodgepole Pine (Shore Pine): Needles in bunches of two..
Ponderosa Pine: Needles in bunches of three.
Western White Pine: Needles in bunches of five. Geometric whirls of branches off of main trunk.

Lichen are comprised of a fungal part and an algae or cyano bacteria part. In the mutualistic relationship between the two parts of a lichen, the algae or cyano bacteria provide the glucose through photosynthesis, the fungi provides nutrients obtained through hyphae. The lichen cross section appears like a sandwhich in which the algae or cyanobacteria are contained within a hyphae net produced by the fungi that forms the outer wall. A lichen is formed when a fungus and an algae or cyanobacteria meet in nature and form a mutualistic relationship that allows both to survive in places that they usually would not be able to.
An interesting use for lichens is their ability to measure air quality over time. A quadrat of lichen surface area over time will reveal a trend in declining air quality, or more specifically, pollution and sulfuric compounds which get absorbed by the lichen and cause it not to produce reproductive fruiting bodies.
Some common Lichens:
Antlered perfume
Lipstic cladonia (red fruiting bodies, sited in longmire Mt Ranier Nt park)
Lobaria (exclusive in old growth, Nitrogen fixing)

Burke Museum April 26

The evolutionary stories of ths weeks trip to the Burke museum of natural history revolved around the topics of Sex, treachery, and death.
The sex in evolution was vividly displayed by song birds, and birds of paradise in the museum collection, where the males were usually the more brghtly colored. One of many morphologic distincions of males that can happen as a result of sexual selection, another example being sexual dimorphsm.
The death aspect of death in evolution gave insight into how the burke museum can use their inventory of very old collections of birds to retroactively study the population dynamics of population of different species, a very useful tool.
Treachery provided some interesting cases to study within the context of evolution. Over time, parasitic relationships have led to a sort of coevolutionary arms race between those being parastized, and those seeking to gain an advantage. One way this happens is in the disguising of eggs. As Richard Dawkins put it there could be a gene for making your eggs look like the eggs of the bird who you want to raise your offspring for you, and there could be a gene in that bird for recognizing intruder eggs. Both genes have selective pressure for passing on their on genetic info.
The very interesting case study of treachery comes ith Cowbirds, for hom there has been a proposed mafia hypothesis that suggests that these birds ho parasitize a wide range of nests in a given year, will return to the nests of small birds whom it parasitized to check up on whether they are raising the cobird young, and if not, punish the host in a way that would take an impressive amount of memory. This theory is supported by the fact that the cowbirds brains increase in capacity or size during mating season. Hoever an alternative theory suggests that it is simply beneficial for cowbirds to terrorize as many birds nests as possible to encourage those birds to re-nest and provide more opportunities for the cowbird to parasitize them.

Aprl 12
Overcast.

A trip to Union Bay natural area provided an opportunity to practice using sketches as a natural history tool. The reasons for continuing to use sketches and hand made visual representation remain applicable because it gives the naturalist a chance to be subjective in the way they are interpreting hat they see, and to highlight features to increase the emphasis of certain aspects of a visual. It is important to realize that sketching is a tool that can be perfected with practice, so in UBNA, We practiced drawing critters, and plants of our choice using a few standard technques. The first was to be objective to the certain parts of something, and not to make assumptions of what something looks lke just because you know what it is. The second one, which practiced by drawing a willow tree, was to draw a set of increasingly zoomed in sketches f the same organism, thereby focusing on different levels of its characteristics from various distances. first drew the overarching shape of the willow tree, very recognizeable. Then I drew in more detail one of the branches such that you could see that it as comprised of bunches of curled leaves. Then I depicted one leafy bunch and how it unfolded from the stem, and then finally, the detail of an individual leaf.
I intend to practice this for a catalog of trees, admittedly a large project, because I am not a gifted artist.

June 4
6pm
Overcast
Location: Trail linking Schmitz park preserve to alki neighborhood, beach, and a publc sports park. Adjacent to resdential neighborhood and a small creek, only about 3 blocks from alki beach on the Puget Sound coast.

The pathway was a thin corridor of mostly natural habitat, surrounded by the residential horticultural scene, and often subject to pedestrian and canine traffic, and the sounds of softball being played n the nearby park. However I think that it is possible to distinguish the horticultural from the native in this setting. For comprehensive species descriptions and individual observations see the referenced inaturalist observations for this post at schmitz park.

The canopy was less than 50% tree cover in most places, making this an deal habitat for the shrubby pioneering species that ere prevalent, and the wide varieties of forbs. The pathway grew wetter and darker as you proceeded towards schmitz park (NE), and just as you would enter the park, the prevalence of stinging nettle, and western redcedar increased. This I think was because of the increasing proximity to the nearby creek.
Of the horticultural plants, the maple trees neatly ligned up along the esge of the pathway were the most clear. The red-osier dogwoods, and the prevalence of many dog roses indicate that they too were most likely planted. Those are not species that I commonly associate ith dominant flora.
The natural dominating understory was comprised largely of snowberry, thimbleberry, sword ferns, horse tail, and a variety of forbs that included buttercups, fringe cups, large-leaved avens, himalayan blackberry, a single sited stem of english ivy (which i pulled up), dock leaves, and a few stinging nettles, as well as a few other individually sited species.

The bird species were comprised of many of the local common residents. I spotted the smooth brown feathered winter wren with hs upright head and upright stubby tail for the first time clearly through my binoculars on ths trip. Also consistently flying overhead were two violet green sallows. There were american crows, a song sparrow (see observations), A hummingbird flew overhead that I assume was an anna's hummngbird because of the speed of its flight and that it went into the top of a tree, although im not certain. The calls of a robn and a spotted towhee could be heard at some point. Additionally there was an interesting call hich i did not identify, but can describe as a rising whistle like trill followed immediately by four or sometimes five chirps that sounded like tv laser beam sound effects "pew pew pew pew". This call was sounded repeatedly from a nearby tree that i couldnt pinpoint.

species list
Maple Tree (Genus Acer) (not bigleaf maple)
Bigleaf maple
western redcedar
red alder
Douglas-fir
Grass
Dog Rose (Rosa canina)
Blackcap raspberry (Rubus leucodermis)
Indian Plum (Oemleria cerasiformis)
English Ivy
Snowberry
himalayan blackberry
carrot family
california hazel
Dandelion
pacific ninebark
large-leaved avens
fringe cups (Tellima grandifolia)
Red-Osier Dogwood (Cornus sericea)
broad-leaved dock (Rumex obtusifolius)
estern buttercup (Rananculus occidentalis)
Bumble bee
Violet green swallow
winter wren (Troglodytes troglodytes)
song sparrow
American robin (Turdus migratorius)
Anna's Hummingbird