Connor, Rowan and I went for a walk to Totem Park.

Rowan had started to drag toward the end, but Connor was still energetically walking.

Connor on the Trail.

Rowan decided to try making a snow angel.

Rowan decided to try making a snow angel.

Snowy Forest

For some reason I haven’t really been getting outside too much lately. I guess it’s easy to feel like staying in as the days get shorter, the rain falls, and the temperature hangs in the cool 40’s instead of the more pleasant 50’s.

Weather: After the Sunday and Monday sunshine, more typical October weather moved in on Tuesday. Clouds and rain with some spots of significant wind persisted through Tuesday and Wednesday. Today there were pretty big waves crashing out on the islands in the sound, but it was only a little breezy around campus.

Birds: A couple of days ago I saw Buffleheads for the first time this fall.

Today there were several Greater Scaups on Swan Lake as well as a couple of American Wigeons.

Flora: The alder trees in the back yard were really losing leaves in the wind on Tuesday.

I noticed a carrot family plant blooming on Lincoln Street today. I think it’s fairly safe to say that it will not have time to make seeds. I think it was a Kneeling Angelica.

Speaking of carrots, Connor and Rowan helped me pick some carrots in our small garden. They seemed to think it was a lot of fun.

The weather was nice again today, but the forecast for tomorrow is rain, so I decided to take advantage of the weather and spend much of the afternoon outside. We drove up Harbor Mountain again and this time Connor, Rowan, Melissa, and I hiked up to the top of the bowl and the small summit from which you can see town. The kids did very well climbing up and down the steep hillsides, though Melissa and I occasionally got a little nervous.

Weather: Partly cloudy with little wind. What clouds there were tended to be of the diffuse high altitude variety.

Birds: I heard a bird calling in the backyard that seemed a little more trill-y than Golden-crowned Kinglets. When I looked out the window, I saw a Brown Creeper fly from tree to tree.

We saw another hawk on Harbor Mountain, but not close enough for me to tell what it was. There were also several Bald Eagles soaring.

Plants: This evening I took a walk from the large Crescent Harbor Parking Lot back home along the harbor. It was striking how the different trees have lost different amounts of leaves. The alders have lost few leaves, while the cottonwoods have lost the vast majority of their leaves. The willows have lost much of their foliage, while some mountain ash have lost many leaves and others have not. There were a couple of mountain ash trees that were very colorful.

The clubmosses were quite evident in the subalpine areas of Harbor Mountain. Many of them had sporophytes evident.

Other Notes: Rowan pointed out moths on a couple of different occasions while on our hike and the drive back down. She seems to have quite an eye for them (though she calls them all butterflies).