Monday's Front

Skywatchers and cloud lovers living around the South Salish Sea got quite a show on Monday when a front moved in from the southwest. This day will be recorded as a "rainy day" or a "cloudy day"--but that hardly does justice to the clouds.

Above is a gallery of photos--the front, the rain (actually an umbrella-toting neighbor), and the evening skies afterward. Just hover and click to advance the photos.

The most spectacular part of the evening sky featured two hummingbirds I would not have seen had I not been gawking at the clouds. There were two in the top of a small tree, one perched and presumably enjoying the sky, the other doing that fantastic territorial flight straight up into the sky before a brief pause and plunge down toward the perching bird.

Who did not seem to mind the aggressive behavior or the sharp, loud single chirps. Who could not be moved away from its perch and out of the tableau of skyscape.

Seeing the Trees and the Forests

(Click on painting to advance image gallery).

Olympia artist Kathy Gore-Fuss captures the essence of our native forests in her beautiful and evocative paintings. Kathy is a pleine-aire painter who has set up her easel in many of our forested city parks--where grand old trees and a rich and tangled understory beckon.  These photos were taken at her recent studio show. Check out her portfolio here.

End of Summer Ramble

Driving 120 miles roundtrip for a 2-mile hike might not sound "worth it," but if you slow down and savor the sights along the Spider Lake loop trail, those 2 miles will take you worlds away.

Bring a good friend with maps and a forest-service pass. Bring coffee, chocolate-chip cookies, trail mix, two peaches. Bring your camera (and know how to work your close-up lens. Be willing to stop and marvel at everything. Bring Plants of the Pacific Northwest ("Pojars") and a guide to fungus. Do not think twice about getting down on your hands and knees to get a good look at a quarter-inch-tall fungus or beetle. Don't be surprised if your camera can't quite capture the colors, the details, the texture, the nuances of sunlight and shadow, the way the forest is telling you that summer is over. Have fun anyway.

Here are some of the the things we saw in this mature Douglas-fir, Western Hemlock, Western Red-Cedar forest: Vine Maple, Devil's Club, Stink Currant, Cascara, Ocean Spray, Salmon Berry, Thimbleberry, Red Huckleberry, Salal, Sword Fern, Maidenhair Fern, Bracken, Age on Youth, Red Elderberry, Beaked Hazel, Red Alder, False Solomon's Seal, Hooker's Fairybells, False Lily-of-the-Valley, Queen's Cup, Bunchberry, Foamflower, Vanilla Leaf, Scouler's Corydalis, Lungwort. And....shelf fungus resembling stingrays and the starship Enterprise, the shed exoskeletons of dragonfly larvae inside a hollow cedar stump, teeny tiny cup-shaped fungus, a small population of weather-worn tree stumps emerging ghostlike from the clear, blue-green lake.

Spider Lake is a small lake in the Olympic National Forest, halfway between Lake Cushman and the Skokomish River. It's not easy to find, especially since the driving directions in Day Hiking the Olympic Peninsula and on the Washington Trails Association website are not correct (due to changes in forest-service roads and access). I will be posting correct directions here and on the WTA Trip Report for Spider Lake so you can find your way to this gem of a lake and rich, satisfying ramble. The drive to High Steel Bridge after is well worth it as long as you are not afraid of heights, experience vertigo, lean over too far and lose your sunglasses, camera, or cell phone to the Skokomish River.

Meanwhile, enjoy the photo gallery above (just hover 'n' click on the photo to advance them).

Learn to Love Scrawny Petunias

I thought I was doing the right thing for my garden this summer with a little boost of all-purpose fertilizer. My garden is mostly drought-tolerant (save water!) flowering plants (feed the bees and butterflies!) mixed in with some garden vegetables (secure our local food supply!). This fertilizer is distributed by Down to Earth (eco-friendly!) in Eugene, Oregon (go Pacific Northwest!) and I bought this quart  at my local co-op grocery (buy local!) in a recyclable container (save the Earth!). However...I didn't read the fine print.

The main source of all this goodness for my plants comes from fish meal. This meal is not made from "unwanted" fish parts leftover after fish sticks are formed, but from whole small fish known as "schooling fish" or "forage fish." These include herring, anchovies, sardines, sand lance, smelts, saury, menhaden, and others that you don't see on dinner tables (but get picked off of pizza or taken canned on camping trips). These forage fish live in oceans around the globe and are suffering huge population declines from over-harvesting.

How much "fish emulsion" is the world using on their petunias? Garden fertilizer is just one application--but one we can easily do without. It's harder to get forage-fish-based food out of  our diets and our pet's diets. Forage fish are ground into meal for industrial-scale aquaculture (farm-raised salmon are fed red-dyed pellets made from fish meal, for instance), pig feed, cow food, pet foods, fish-oil supplements for humans.

What's the big deal about these little fish? They are critical in all marine ecosystems. They are a major, energy-rich source of food for larger fish, marine mammals, and marine birds (including the marbled murrelet). Depletion of forage fish triggers population declines in the rest of the food web; seabirds starve, cannot successfully breed, and cannot feed their chicks.

The conservation community--particularly national, state, and local Audubon Society chapters--are bringing the issue of forage fish to the forefront, with a focus on ensuring adequate supplies of forage fish for migrating birds along the Pacific Flyway.  

HOW TO HELP: The Pacific Marine Fishery Council is accepting public comments for its September 2014 meeting. The final deadline is Sept. 3 to submit your comments (it's fine to cut and paste these, below!). Please send an email thanking the Council for its work to protect currently unmanaged forage fish and asking it to move forward by:

• Incorporating unmanaged forage fish as ecosystem component species into each of its existing fishery management plans.
• Setting a limit on the amount of unmanaged forage fish that may be taken in existing fisheries for groundfish and other species.

Submit your letter to pfmc.comments@noaa.gov.

For more information and resources from Audubon Washington on this important issue, please click here.

If you live on the Atlantic Coast, read about what's in your fertilizer (menhaden!) here.