Daily Observations

I went for a walk down to Totem Park yesterday. Today I was inside for most of the day, but spent some time playing frisbee out on the quad this evening.

Weather: The last two days have seen similar weather. The morning starts out with partly cloudy skies, the clouds build up over the mountains and extend over town, with clear skies out over the water. There’s been a pretty good breeze blowing on shore, also.

Birds: I watched the Hermit Thrush nest for a little while yesterday. I saw it bring in salmonberries, a centipede, caterpillars, and other bugs to feed its young. There were a few shorebirds (Least and at least one Western Sandpiper), but they left while I was there. I also saw tracks that I think might have been from Yellowlegs.

I think I saw a Merlin today. It flew in along the Red Alders near the battle site. It appeared to chase a bird and miss its target, then fly up to perch in the top of a spruce tree above the place where a short spur of the trail leads to the beach (as the main trail turns to start running parallel to Indian River). It sat there for a few minutes before taking off. It made an attempt at another small bird, missed again, and continued on across toward the islands across Crescent Bay. I got some photos, but I’m not sure if they will be good enough to confirm the id, as the bird was pretty high up.

Other Notes: There was an interesting moth on the beach. I don’t know what kind it was, but it seemed to be tired or have trouble flying in the wind (perhaps both). It tried to fly away from me a couple of times, but eventually just let me approach it to take pictures.

The pink salmon are really schooling up at the mouth of Indian River and in front of the SJC hatchery.

There are quite a few different mushrooms out in the park right now.

Tonight playing frisbee, it was pretty windy, but there were clouds of bugs that were flying up from the grass as we were running around. Eventually I guess we managed to get them all up and they went somewhere else. I would have thought the wind would keep the bugs down, and perhaps it was, until we ran through their resting places.