The marbled godwits are back. I saw the first ones a couple of days ago and they have been on the lawn for at least part of each day since. There seems to be more this year than last. The most I counted last year at one time was 17. Today there were 20 or 21 of them on the SJC lawn. Yesterday there were fewer godwits, but a lot of smaller birds hanging out with them. These included a couple of dowitchers, a bunch of dunlin, and at least one smaller sandpiper (maybe a western sandpiper). Today there were just three or four dowitchers. I wonder if they are the same birds as last year with additional numbers due to successful breeding last summer. Will be interesting to see what shows up next year.
Found an interesting colored spider crawling on my arm today. Decided to take a closer look at it and try to get a decent picture of it. I happened to discover the spider while down on campus, but my camera was at home. In the mean time, while trying to keep it from getting too far away, I had a chance to observe some of its behaviors. It stick its back end up in the air and let off silk. Someone I was talking with speculated that it was trying to float away, but it seemed too big to have much of a chance of that. I finally realized that it was letting the silk out and waiting for it to catch on something. At that point it would crawl up the silk to wherever it led. (I discovered this when it crawled up off the stick I was keeping it on towards my face; a line of silk had caught on my hat.) I also realized that this is how the spiders must get their webs across wide spaces. I had tried to imagine how the spiders could managed to build a web across a puddle (to say nothing of the silk/webs that are frequently encountered across trails). It makes a lot more sense to let the silk drift across, then go along it then to somehow carry one end of the silk with the other still attached.
Pollen was in the air today. I suspect it was from spruce trees, but it may have been from something else. I was talking with someone outside today and noticed a strange something in the air. I thought it might be mist particles or smoke, but it did not feel like mist, and I could not smell any smoke. A while later Melissa called me to mention all the pollen that had accumulated on the car. That’s when I realized that what I had seen was pollen. Warm dry weather with some breeze probably resulted in all the pollen, I guess.
Went for a hike up Indian River valley yesterday. In the muskeg near the second bridge, I saw at least three different common snipes. I did not see any of them until they took off, but I watched where they landed and tried to approach carefully to get a picture. They blend in well and are easily spooked, so I ended up being startled a couple of times as they took off quite close to me (if only I had seen them first, I could have had a good picture). I do not know if they might nest in that location or not.