Transcribed from April 7 notes.
Time: 630-830 am
Weather this morning was perfectly sunny, and hot for the beginning of april, the 630am weather reflected the day that it would turn into, but at the time was more chilly and full of bird calls. There were a few bird calls that stood out to me most recognizeable. A spirally trill which always came from the very top branches of one of the 27 yr old douglas fir trees, which is best described as spirally because of the way it started with slower intervals of notes and quickly sped up and then slowed and then sped up in a spiraled fashion, also fluctuating in pitch it seemed. I now think that that call belongs to an american gold finch, because I kept seeing the gold breast and black mask of one of them when it shifted its body so that the reflection of the sun would make it more clear against the background sky which often makes it hard to see faraway birds clearly even with binoculars. Another recognizeable call was the loud individual cheaping of the flicker which i saw one time in the top of a nearby douglas fir, but haven't got a photo of yet. The flicker had a long beak that curved slightly downwards, and a clearly black spotted white breast, it was just a fraction smaller than a common crow by estimation. A common call coming from multiple birds this morning that hang around in the canopy of both evergreens and bare deciduous trees was that of the black capped chickadee. The call was very brief series of cheaps that were much shorter than the flicker, they were also much more common and there was often multiple birds calling from the same tree. The black capped chickadee is recognizeable by a white mask over its cheeks expanding as it reaches the back of its head, with a black chin and a black cap; very small birds, white and sometimes yellowy breast, dark and top of tail. There was also the crow like call of the spotted towhee, and there were dark eyed juncos but i didnt recognize their calls.The last call i can recall but didnt identify was always coming from nearby objects on the forest floor, and it can i think be accurately described as sounding similar to a rotating ratcheted wrench, because it sounds very close to the sound made when you turn a ratchet around a bolt with the clicking noise, the bird was small and brown camoflauged all over its body.
The habitat in this location in carnation WA (about 450ft elevation south facing hill less than a mile from the tolt river to the south) is a western hemlock and western redcedar vegetation that was logged in 1985 by weyerhaueser and replanted densely with douglas-fir, which is currently the dominant species, although pockets of multi stemmed bigleaf maple create big zones on inhibition in the doug fir canopy due to their vast circular canopy. There are many hemlocks and western redcedars also, but they do not appear to be as old as the douglas-firs. The understory shrubbery consists of many of the common native plants in western hemlock vegetation: sword fern, salmon berry, salal, vine maple, himalayan blackberry in anthropogenic open areas, herb robert, bracken fern in the summer time but not today in early april, red huckleberry, etc. The plot is a sold off division of old logging land, the larger environment is the same thing, each subdivision being continuous for the most part except for frequent logging roads and increasing human presence.
Species list (for now)
western hemlock vegetation young forest, canopy not closed.
Transcribed from April 24 notes.
Time 630-830am
Our natural history group met in the wetland environment of the Union bay natural area on UW campus, that was adjacent to lake washington; it is a freshwater wetland system dominated by grasses, swamps, stands of deciduous trees, and the lake shore.
comprehensive bird list below, some of the more interesting/rarer birds require more talk. The yellow rumped warbler we identified by site when we were looking for the source of a call belonging to the unidentified bird in the species list below. The yellow rumped warbler was of a very dark bluish color with a faint whitish pattern on its body, but had a very recognizeable small but bright yellow patch square under his chin, and two white circular spots on the underside of his tail, one on each of two apparent tail feathers which were otherwise dark. Very exciting to see this bird, its presence was fleeting, but he liked climbing around on the bigger limbs of a nearby deciduous tree very close to the shore of the lake. The unidentified call that led us to the warbler was very loud and recognizeable as two distinct pitches, usually a high followed by a low, sometimes a followed by a repetitio of the higher pitch again. The pitches were formed by pleasent trills that lasted about 1/2 to 3/4 of a second each, much longer than a cheap. The bird itself was about the size of a flicker, and it had a long orange beak that was not downward curving, and a clear reddish brown breast that was split like two chicken breasts at the bottom where it turned white and having dark spots on that white region where the underside of its tail was. Its head was dark.
The American goldfinch was extremely easy to identify because it landed in a bush only a few yards from us where a spotted towhee and a chickadee were already presiding. The goldfinch was very bright yellow/gold with a bright orange beak and a very recognizeable black face mask and black ends of its wings. Its call was not exactly what I had heard from what I thought to be a goldfinch in carnation on April 7 (see journal), but it was close enough to that spirally call that I did not dismiss my previous identification, in fact it strengthened it a little bit in my opinion.
Bird species list:
black capped chickadee
virginia rail
great blue heron
red winged blackbird
yellow rumped warbler
kinglet
American robin
hummingbird
spotted towhee
American goldfinch
common crow
mallard duck
northern shoveller duck
cinnamon teal duck
unidentified bird (described above)
Transcribed from April 28 notes
time 11am-245pm
Hike on a mountain up to 4100ft elevation, located on a peak on the western perimeter of the cascade mountains, not far from interstate 90. Western hemlock vegetation, managed as part of washington department of natural resources. At the base of the mountain trees are dominated by a mix of large old coniferous and deciduous trees; primarily douglas fir, western hemlock, big leaf maple, and black cottonwood. Beginning of old growth classification. Very biodiverse and prevalent understory with vertical heterogeneity compared to higher elevation of the hike. As the top of the mountain was approached, tree diameter vastly decreased, and the prevalence of disturbance, fire, ligtning, and windthrow, was much more prevalent. The dominant tree species also changed drastically, with hardly any western redcedar present at the top, none beyond 15 years old. Budding of understory and deciduous trees was also far behind plants at the bottom of the mountain, huckleberry had no leaves and no forming berries as it did at the bottom, as a prime example. The snow level seemed to be just under 4000 ft on this mountain at this time of the year. Large presence of human hikers on the weekend encouraged the presence of gray jays and chipmunks, which dined on hiker snack food. also at the top were chickadees, a stellar jay, and a predatory bird of some kind-all black (see observations).