Discovery Park - (Final)

Lat: 47.35775, Lon: -122.4205
6/2/12
Day, 2012
4:20-5:00

At the GPS coordinates I was given, I ended up just off one of the trails in Discovery Park. The area was quite woody and deciduous. It was sunny and about 65 degrees F, maybe slightly cooler under the cover of all the trees. It had rained a few hours earlier but the area was relatively dry due to all the tall trees.

I think these were Oregon Ash trees. They were about 50-60 feet tall with bright green leaves towards the top of the tree. I could see no cones on the branches or any that may have fallen to the ground. The trunks of these trees were almost a foot wide and were covered in splotches of mosses and lichens. I observed common green shield lichen, Ramalina, possibly Candelaria concolor, Parmelia saxatilis, and a few more that I could not identify. Seeing as this was a very deciduous area, I was not surprised by all the mosses and lichen. I did notice that the bottom foot or so of these trees was covered in moss, which is something I hadn’t really seen before.

Among the leaves of these ash trees were several spotted towhee. There was perhaps 15-10 of these white-chested birds that were visible at the time. Aside from their white chests, the spotted towhee had a burnt orange color on their sides and a long, black, rectangular-looking tail. Their calls were persistent, starting off soft and gradually getting loud. They only slowed down on the amount of calls being there for about half an hour. This I was surprised about because usually when you go into an area where birds nest, they get quiet and stop their calls.

As this was a deciduous area, there was much understory under the ash trees. The dominating plant looked very similar to Himalayan blackberry though it was not fruiting and the stems and leaves were much less pokey. However, the flowers and leaf structure looked a lot like that of the Himalayan blackberry. This plant covered almost every area of ground that hadn’t been stomped down to make the small path. It’s white flowers seemed very attractive to these two bumble bees that kept coming back to one of them.

Along with a few bees, there were many other insects in this particular area. I observed mosquitos and red-eyed flies; and earlier in the park there was a metallic green fly (maybe) flying and hovering over a patch of dandelions and grass near the trail. There was also a lot of spittle bug spittle. Not just at this location but it seemed like every place in the park that I went to had spittle bug remnants.

The last thing I observed at this location was Oregon grape. This particular one was barely a foot or so off the ground and its berries were just starting to turn purplish-blue. I thought it was nice to sort of end with Oregon grape since that was one of the first things I learned about when we went up to Pack Forest and now I can easily identify it.

Species List:
False Lily of the Valley
Candelaria concolor
Common Vetch
Oregon Ash
Salmonberry
Pink Purslane
Oregon White Oak
Western Swordfern
Common Greenshild Lichen
Bracken Fern
Dull Oregon Grape
Big-leaf Maple
English Ivy
Dandelion
Ramalina
Parmelia saxatilis
Spotted Towhee
Meadow Spittlebug

Posted on June 5, 2012 06:51 AM by lisad22