Today’s bike ride took in the finally finished extension of the Big Soos Creek Park path.  The extension is just under one and one half miles long.

This rather scruffy looking rabbit lives next to the children’s play area. There’s another one, a mottled black and white if I remember correctly, which I did not see today.

The new path is generally concrete, set on pillars over the water.  It runs right through a wetland.

The Pileated Woodpeckers have been at this tree!

I enjoy the little sign here, even though it’s not nearly as steep as one would think from the angle shown in the sign.

There’s an artifical pond, which has already attracted dragonflies and tiny little fish. I don’t know what kind of fish are there, but I do know that Big Soos Creek has a salmon run, so it’s possible that these are baby salmon.

Finally, Xeract asked about the grub I found in the rose gall yesterday. It’s quite small, perhaps one centimetre in length. The grub can be seen looking like a little white comma, just below the middle of the gall.

I’m quite excited about the new extension–I think there will be some interesting wildlife sightings here in the next months.

Still no sign of birds at the feeders. I think they are too busy with the insects in my shrubs.

Sunshine was writing about the trouble she is having with caterpillers devouring one of her shrubs.  I don’t have trouble with the caterpillers, but on my bike ride this morning I did notice an interesting gall on the wild roses which line the side of the bicycle path.

I’m not certain what is causing the gall, but it’s fascinating. I opened it up when I got it home, and it turned out to be a tiny little white grub.

I’m also busy cleaning up my garden, trying to keep the blackberries from taking over. I found this blooming away:

Quite a reward for enduring the scratches of the blackberry canes.

Bad news–still no birds at my feeding stations.

TimberWolf was asking about waterfalls in the UK, and I thought I would share some photos of one of the most beautiful falls in the state of Washington.

 
This is Snoqualmie Falls

A little higher up on the falls, showing the deceptively placid lip of the falls.

Some of you may recognise this waterfall from its appearance in the television show, Twin Peaks.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Snoqualmie_Falls

Here is the link to TimberWolf’s thread:

http://www.wildlifeuk.net/waterfall-suggestions-t-372.html

I spent most of my morning not examining wildlife, or even having fun. Instead, I visited the dentist, where I got my teeth cleaned.

And, still no bird visitors at my feeders!

This past evening I was able to watch a total lunar eclipse.  I can not remember the last time I saw a total lunar eclipse, but it has to have been many years ago.

Unfortunately, the photos I took were not very good, but the eclipse was wonderful to watch, with the moon turning blood red at the totality.

Later in the day I was able to meet a member of one of the cycling forums I belong to, and we went for a long ride (almost 40 miles).  I didn’t get much wildlife viewing in (although we did spot a long string of Canada Geese) winging their way north, but I did have a great ride!  I didn’t get very good photos of the eclipse, but I did get a nice photo of the bikes in the early morning sun.

Riana asked about the taste of huckleberries.  Huckleberries taste like a tart blueberry.  Not everyone likes them (in fact, the woman I went cycling with today told me that she does not like them), but I like them better than domesticated berries.  And of course, the picking of huckleberries is a good excuse to get out there and enjoy a good hike in the mountains.

Huckleberries cannot (or at least, have not yet been) be domesticated.  They sell for around $40 a gallon (around 20 GBP/3.79 litres) because they are wild berries.

 And, still no birds at my feeders.

We headed out to Corral Pass, located on Forest Service Road 7174, just off Highway 410.  The road up to Corral pass is bumpy, rocky, steep, and narrow:

This is what the road looks like (note: this is NOT the bad part):

A plant on the side of the road–I haven’t identified it yet.

Corral Pass is the start of a wilderness area–no motorised vehicles allowed, and no bikes either! We were actually out to pick huckleberries, but figured I could throw in a nice bit of downhill mountain biking as long as I was there.
The start of the hike:

This is a nice ‘bowl’ at the bottom. We were heading for the higher elevations, about 600 feet above. There’s no real trail, just following the path put down by elk, deer, and bears. This was our goal, the top of the ridge:

Huckleberries were an important source of food for the native American Indians. They were gathered, dried, and pounded together with animal fat and dried meat to produce pemmican. This was a mainstay of the native diet during the winter, and also kept alive quite a few pioneers and fur traders. The specific species of huckleberry we were after is Vaccinium membranaceum, also known as the Thin-leaved Huckleberry. There are also another species of huckleberry up there, but more like the bilberries found in the UK. They are a tiny, sweet red berry:

Unfortunately, I don’t know the specific name for the above plant. They are much more difficult to pick than the large, dark blue huckleberry. The huckleberries are found in large patches, like this one:

We managed to find over a gallon of huckleberries, enough to keep us supplied for scone making for at least a few weeks. We didn’t manage to see a bear–bears are reputed to love huckleberries, and stories are always told of the unfortunate huckleberry picker who was run out of the patch by the local bear–but we did manage to see enough wildlife to have a good day!

An emetic mushroom

backside of the emetic mushroom

Amanita muscari

The gills underneath

Baby Amanitas, looking a lot more typical

Dogwood berries

Chipmunk lurking in his den

I think this is Orange Hawksbill. It’s not very common up there, and this one has been partially eaten by either deer or elk

A native stonecrop

Monkey flower

Native juniper. This always signifies a certain elevation (mid-alpine), and that the area is somewhat dry

Unknown plant, found in a dry waterway

Wild strawberries–delicious!

Right in the middle of all those huckleberries! This Columbian Black-tailed deer doe was too busy eating to really worry about us. Her fawn (still with spots) was not very pleased about seeing us, and hid. 

That was one busy day!

P.S. Still no birds at my bird feeding stations…sigh…

I am tired!  We have just returned from an area known as Crystal Mountain, just at the entrance to Mount Rainier National Park.

We went looking for huckleberries, and found them .

Photos and commentary to follow…

I have been thinking about my namesake here…I have been lucky enough to see a Kingfisher in the UK. We had been visiting some of me mum’s relatives, who were living in Wales.  They took us out to Cardigan, and more importantly, to the estuary of the river Teifi.  We were eating lunch when I noticed a flash of bright blue along the river.  Yes!  We had spotted Alcedo atthis, the Common Kingfisher.

http://www.wildlifeuk.net/kingfishers-t-334.html

So today I decided to go and visit a pond along my favourite bicycle trail which in the past has had Belted Kingfishers.  It seems that the pond has gotten rather overgrown, and much of it is no longer visible from the side path.  I was quite disappointed and had just turned to leave when I heard a familiar rattle.  Yes, the kingfishers were still there, even though I had not visited this pond in over two years.

http://identify.whatbird.com/obj/61/_/Belted_Kingfisher.aspx

A peculiarity of the Belted Kingfisher is that the females are actually more colourful than the males!  The female bird has an additional band around her belly, a bright chestnut colour.

 They have a most peculiar call–like an old-fashioned policeman’s rattle.  Unmistakable in sound, but their swooping flight would give them away even if they made no sound.

They are considerably larger than the Common Kingfisher, as they are almost twice as large. 

After having successfully found my Kingfisher, I returned home, although not by a direct route.  I decided to go on a Tour de Garage Sales.  There is no such thing as a boot sale here in the United States.  Garage sales, yard sales, patio sales.  In Hawaii lanai sales occur, too!   I did not find any gems, though, so I returned home and pondered where I could place a pond in my garden.  I think I do have a spot which would work, but need to check into solar powered pumps.

 For those keeping track, still no visitors at my bird feeding stations.

I thought I would make a summing up of the comments which have been posted through the short life of my blog, so in no particular order:

Riana:  Yes, we were very very lucky to see the White-winged Crossbill.  Both the Red Crossbill and the White-winged Crossbill are iruptive species. so they are not found with regularity in a certain area.  Yes, they are going to be found in coniferous forests, at higher altitudes, but it’s not possible for one to go to X spot on Y road and be able to see crossbills at ABC time of year!  Bohemian Waxwings are the same way…many birders here in Washington state have never seen the Bohemian Waxwings because they are generally found in the same coniferous forests as crossbills (but normally lower down). 

The hotel was a lucky fluke as well.  We had headed for one hotel, and decided against it because there was no wi-fi access.  Little did we know of the delights awaiting us!

And, as long as I’m at it:

This was the area we’d ridden on the day we saw the crossbill.  A gorgeous place.

Oh, and for those dying to know:  still no bird action at the feeding station .

Squirreler’s question about identifying Great Tits versus Blue Tits made me think about Chickadees and Titmice.  The Chickadees and Titmice are the North American equivalent of the birds known in the UK as ‘Tits’.

http://www.wildlifeuk.net/how-to-t-370.html

 There are seven species of chickadees to be found in the United States:

Black-capped Chickadee (Poecile atricapilus)

http://identify.whatbird.com/obj/680/_/Black-capped_Chickadee.aspx

Carolina Chickadee (Poecile carolinensis)

http://identify.whatbird.com/obj/820/_/Carolina_Chickadee.aspx

Mountain Chickadee (Poecile gambeli)

http://identify.whatbird.com/obj/818/_/Mountain_Chickadee_Breeding_Male.aspx

Boreal Chickadee (Poecile hudsonica)

http://identify.whatbird.com/obj/815/_/Boreal_Chickadee.aspx

Chestnut-backed Chickadee (Poecile rufescens)

http://identify.whatbird.com/obj/119/_/Chestnut-backed_Chickadee.aspx

Gray-headed Chickadee or Siberian Tit (Poecile cincta)

http://identify.whatbird.com/obj/816/_/Gray-headed_Chickadee.aspx

Mexican Chickadee (Poecile sclateri)

http://identify.whatbird.com/obj/819/_/Mexican_Chickadee.aspx

The whatbird site has excellent voice recordings of all the species. 

I have seen all but two of the seven species–Mexican Chickadees are simply not found anywhere near my state, and the Siberian Tit is found only in the state of Alaska, and far northern Canada.  For some reason, the Chickadees  all have black/white/gray/rufous colour schemes, whereas the tits to be found in the UK are generally brightly coloured.

 Ever since I first saw Blue Tits and Great Tits in the UK, I’ve wondered why the New World equivalents are so…plain.  It’s not that the chickadees are dull, they just aren’t colourful. 

This is a wonderful site on just about any question you can think of about chickadees:

http://home.jtan.com/~jack/ckd.html

 But still no answer as to why chickadees are ‘drab’, and the tits found in the UK are not (well, some are, but you know what I mean). 

But people here love chickadees just as much as people in the UK love the tits.  Chickadees are unstintingly cheerful and busy.  They don’t stop, even during the frosty chill of winter.  They have a lovely, happy call–chick a dee dee dee, and variants on that theme.

The chickadees can be determined by call alone.  The Chestnut-backed has a raspier voice.  So does the Mountain, but it’s not found in the same environment as the Chestnut-backed.  The local chickadees for me are the Black-capped and the Chestnut-backed.  Those are the two I am trying to entice to the feeding station.  I still have not tempted anyone to test my feeder.  I am SO disappointed…

 Perhaps tomorrow they will come?

I found a dead mole today when riding home.  It was on the bike path, as if it had been dropped by an owl, or other bird of prey.

The odd thing is that I’d never seen one before. I’ve seen many shrews, tiny little things, which have been obviously dropped mid-flight by owls, but I’d never seen a mole.

I went a slightly longer way home today. I’d had a terrible migraine at work, and decided to relax and enjoy a slow ride home.

Some of the acres of blackberries, with the lovely smell.

I finally remembered to take some photos of the Cliff Swallow nests. When I was a young girl, we had Cliff Swallows build their nests right above my bedroom window. We could hear them mewling at night. Every year my father would pull down the old nests after the birds had finished raising their brood. I thought this was cruel, until I realised that he was doing it so that the old nests would not be re-used by a house sparrow or starling, and also so that the birds would start out with a clean, lice-free nest.

One of the Evening Primroses, unidentified as yet.

It’s sweetly scented, and only open during the dark hours. It was still dark enough when I photographed it.

I tried later to get a photograph of one of my favourite nuts, the hazelnut, but discovered to my dismay that almost all the nuts had been borne off by humans!

Lastly, I surprised a Cooper’s Hawk on the ground as I rode by it. It took off and dodged into an old maple tree. It had been eating some small bird, which appeared to be a female American Goldfinch. The goldfinches have apparently already changed to their fall colours.

I still have not had any visitors to my new feeding stations, and am feeling sadly neglected. But they will come one day!