Week 6

Date: Saturday May 11, 2013
Weather: Sunny and warm
Temperature: ~ 65 degrees F
Time: 8 am to 8 pm
Location: Nisqually Wildlife Refuge and Mt. Rainier National Park


This week's blog post will be about the field trip our natural history class took on Saturday May 11th. We left around 8 am, traveling south to the Nisqually Wildlife Refuge for bird watching. Although bird watching is not my area of interest, it was wonderful to walk around the restoration area and see the tremendous changes that have taken place in an effort to restore the Nisqually River Delta. Below is a list of animals we observed and some descriptions of their behavior that I noticed:

Yellow Warbler:
- Olive-yellow and bright yellow
- Last note of song goes down, song is cheerful and rapid
- Insectavore
- Stays high in the canopy
- Migratory
- Tends to be near water (woodlands near water)

Wilson's Warbler:
- Olive-green and olive-yellow
- Song stays the same pitch
- Stays lower in the canopy

Brown Headed Cow Bird:
- Parasitic nester
- Blackbird sub-family
- Males are dark and shiny
- Females are dull brown
- Aggressive males- we observed 2 males fighting over a female (puffing up their wings, standing tall and facing the other male). Another male flew in and quickly flew away, and the female followed him as if to say, "Your fighting is annoying." The 2 fighting males followed the other 2 birds away.

Sharp-Shinned Hawk:
- Small
- Angular tail
- Flies with fast wingbeats followed by glides

Bald Eagle:
- Immature adult eagle had yet to gain white head
- 2 mature adult eagles circling (white heads indicate at least 3-4 years of age)
- Immense wing span!

Turtle (in pond at Nisqually)
Robin
Raven (at Mt. Rainier)

Red-winged Blackbird:
- Aggressive males (as we observed at the Union Bay Natural Area)
- Males are shiny black with red on wings
- Females are streaked brown, smaller

Common Garter Snake:
- Yellowish back stripe
- Found dead on path

Cliff Swallow:
- Orange chin
- Glides in circles, high in air

Tree Swallow:
- Shiny metallic blue back
- Snowy white belly
- Tail notched
- Habitat is wetlands

Northern Pintail Duck:
- Waterfowl family
- Females quack while males "prip prip"
- Marshes, ponds
- Gray bill
- Long pointed tail
- Dabbler

Mallard Duck:
- Waterfowl family
- Male has gray body and wings with green head
- Female is mottled brown
- Ponds, rivers, marshes
- Dabbler

Coot:
- Knows how to count eggs and will kill extra eggs!
- Black body, white bill
- Shaped like a duck, acts like a duck, but not a duck

Yellow-Leg Shore Bird
- Didn't actually observe this one, but heard it described by others

Dowicher:
- Long, thin bill
- Skinny legs


After eating lunch at Nisqually and driving for 2.5 hours, we arrived at Mt. Rainier National Park. We moved up 3 elevation gradients, stopping at each one and observing the changes in vegetation and glacial presence. We visited the Kautz creek, which had its last major flooding event in 2006. This is a glacial melt river that flows off of the mountain. A glacial outwash event, like one at Kautz in 1947, can occur when a built-up lake inside a glacier breaks free and causes a huge flood in a single valley. These disturbances regimes are very important for the habitat in order to create early-seral ecosystems of Red Alder. We learned that the last eruption on Mt. Rainier was 5,000 years ago, and it is still a very active volcano. Our final stop was at Paradise (approx. 5,300 ft of elevation) with a beautiful view of the mountain as storm clouds gathered above the peak. We slid down banks of snow and discussed the firs that dominate the high-elevation glacial ecosystems. The field trip was a wonderful opportunity to explore Washington and spend a sunny Saturday outside.