Adult female Wood Duck
Low overcast with light drizzle occasionally becoming heavier rain.
I wasn’t sure where I might want to go today, but headed out anyway.
Swan Lake is always a good spot to check, so that’s where I went first.
Since the ice melted out, several swans seem to be spending most of their time at the lake.
An American Wigeon was eating grass on the peninsula.
A male Gadwall was resting with Mallards.
It got up when I stepped out and drew the attention of the Mallards (who were coming over in case I had food).
Immature, female, and male Wood Ducks at Swan Lake
All three Wood Ducks were also at the Peninsula.
From the lake I ended up at south Halibut Point Rec.
In the past I’ve found some interesting small lichens on the spruce twigs. However, they’ve done a fair bit of trimming of the spruce branches adjacent to the trail which runs along the shoreline.
I didn’t find too much, but did notice a couple small lichens on a spruce twig.
A moss growing on a spruce trunk caught my attention. It seemed fairly obvious and maybe even distinctive, but I don’t remember noticing it before.
I couldn’t find any sporophytes growing from any of the several clumps I checked. I did notice there were gemmae, so maybe that will help me get a name for this one.
[Update: the next day, Kitty asked me why it wasn’t Ulota phyllantha. That had crossed my mind when I saw the gemmae, but I hadn’t remember seeing it with such straight leaves like this. This was faulty memory on my part. I have a very similar looking picture that may have even been from the same tree. That one had more gemmae on it, so I probably recognized it at the time because of that.]
This morning I mostly caught up publishing photojournal entries from this year. I just have yesterday’s (and now today’s) left to do. I’m considering beginning to publish ones from last year. In the past I’ve thought about prioritizing the more interesting ones, but I think it will probably be more effective if I just start working backwards. (This will help build my daily publishing streak going in both directions, which I suspect will be more motivating.)
My iNaturalist Observations for Today
