Tag Archives: pikes pines

Pikes/Pines | Hair ice: beautiful proof it is a wonderful chilly day between the 45th and 55th parallel

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Some Washington State hair ice (Image: CHS)

(Image: CHS)

Have you ever encountered something that you have no explanation for? Maybe it’s the way someone is behaving towards you. Possibly, an object out of place that you swear was just here. Or, it’s a nature encounter that leaves you unsure of what you’ve just seen.

That’s how I felt on a morning walk in the forest outside Marblemount, Washington several years ago. The night before had been quite cold, and as I crept through the riverine forest of alder and cottonwood lining the Skagit River, leaves crackled underfoot. Like any forest, dead branches were strewn about, jettisoned by a combination of decay and force. And then something caught my eye: curling out of several branches about me, was something that looked like hair. I stopped and looked closer. I gently touched one of them and it was cold and melted against my warm fingers. Maybe this was just a weird ice formation – but why was it only on these dead branches?

Without sounding conceited, I am very confident in my naturalist abilities. I am good at identifying plants and animals and I can develop a good working theory on most animal behavior I witness. Rarely does an encounter on or near my home ground stump me. But here I was looking at this thing protruding from rotting sticks that I had never seen before. So, like any good naturalist, I took some photos and notes, and trotted off to try to figure out what it was on the internet.

As it turns out, I was not alone in surprise and uncertainty when encountering hair ice.

In 1918 a German meteorologist, Alfred Wegener, formally described this enigma, and suggested that it was not just a new ice formation, but that it could be related to fungus undoubtedly lurking in the damp, decaying sticks he found it protruding from. Wegener is now noted for his theory of continental drift, but he was also a polar explorer who knew a thing or two about ice and he was pretty sure he wasn’t looking at only frozen water.

It took almost 100 years for anyone to reveal more of this. Wegener froze to death in an ill-fated expedition to Greenland in 1930 and offered no more on the subject. But researchers blessed with more advanced tools were able to discern and confirm what Wegner had deduced. Fungus was key to the formation of hair ice. Continue reading →

Pikes/Pines | The Capitol Hill Water Quality Project — and everything else helping to clean our runoff

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The Capitol Hill Water Quality Project bioswale in South Lake Union (Image: PG Psomas)

Even if the weather has been atypically dry lately, we all know this is Rain City. Seattle rain usually comes as a drizzle that we shrug off without an umbrella (actually, I love my umbrella and I’m not ashamed). But that doesn’t mean we don’t have plenty of it and that it needs to go somewhere.

We all know that water travels downhill because of, well, gravity. When it rains in a forest, a prairie, or even a wetland, water tends to move slowly to lower ground and eventually some sort of basin like a creek, wetland, river, or lake. When rain falls on paved city streets, on the roofs of buildings, and on our many parking lots, it has nowhere to go because it can’t penetrate and seep into the soil. Intentional and functioning designs in urban spaces direct water to places where it can drain away instead of sitting in place. The simplest place to send that water in an urban space is into a series of pipes that lead into a nearby waterway. In the case of the Hill that’s through drains that run into Lake Union, Lake Washington, and eventually Puget Sound.

This might seem innocent, but the stormwater that flows off our pavement and makes its way to the saltwater is the source of 75% of the pollution in the Sound. Heavy metals like copper from car breaks, high loads of bacteria and fertilizer from our lawns, polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons from vehicle combustion, wood stoves, and more, all taking a ride in stormwater. Just one acre of impervious surface like concrete can funnel a million gallons of polluted water into local waterways annually. Continue reading →

Pikes/Pines | Why mixed-species flocks enjoy communal winter meals on Capitol Hill

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A Ruby-crowned Kinglet (Regulus calendula), a less gregarious winter migrant to the hill. They are often found in mixed-species flocks but are outnumbered, at least 10-1, by Golden-crowned Kinglets. (Image: Brendan McGarry)

Everywhere I looked there were birds. Sprites in perpetual motion, determined to find their next meal. Kinglets, chickadees, creepers, nuthatches, and wrens worked through the forest understory as I sat watching. It hardly felt like they noticed me. If I kept still enough, I’d just melt into the background, or at least that’s how it feels when you encounter a winter feeding flock.

Back in October I started noticing mixed-species flocks of chickadees, Golden-crowned Kinglets, and a few Pacific Wrens around my yard. This is my personal cue for the changing of the seasons. When the last of the year’s fledglings are self-sufficient, the winter migrants have arrived, and breeding territories are moot, it’s officially winter. The majority of birds are now much more concerned with surviving the cold, less abundant months, than defending their corners of the forest or your backyard.

Call them mixed-species foraging flocks or winter feeding flocks, every year these groups of birds form during the non-breeding season on Capitol Hill and across our region. They move together, across the landscape, foraging as they go, all day long.

The birds that make up these flocks in our part of the world have a fair amount in common. They are all small, active birds that eat a lot of insects (but also seeds and fruit). Most of them glean their meals from tree bark crevices and the undersides of leaves. Some are faster moving and more balletic, like kinglets, twirling about foliage and eating unseen tiny morsels. And others feel more methodical, like Brown Creepers, who do as they are named and crawl up and down tree trunks in search of sustenance. But they all seem to see the value of keeping close together while foraging this time of year. Continue reading →

Pikes/Pines | Hey pilgrim, those hardworking earthworms having a feast beneath Capitol Hill are colonizers

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The worms in the bottom of a compost cone (Image: Brendan McGarry)

Amidst the pungent, half decomposed pile at my feet writhed a mass of life. Countless gnats whirled about, a Devil’s Coachman Beetle scurried to cover, and small, indeterminate grubs wriggled through coffee grounds and slimy banana peels.

And there were so many worms.

Staring at them, I realized a few things simultaneously. First, I have no idea what species I was observing. And two that I didn’t know if we have many native worms on the Hill or elsewhere in the Pacific Northwest.

I’ve been composting since childhood, in charge of emptying our family food waste into a worm bin and later into a lazy pile in our regular compost after my parents decided they couldn’t bother with worm bin upkeep. Memories of rodents scurrying about my feet during nocturnal visits to deposit kitchen scraps encouraged me to start using a plastic cone with a porous basket buried underground for our household waste. It restricts rodent access while allowing other creepy crawlies access to do their job. Continue reading →

Pikes/Pines | A vote for Barred Owls, Capitol Hill ambassadors to the wild

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A Barred Owl looking blending in beautifully in the bigleaf maples in the background (Image: Brendan McGarry)

If you have seen an owl on Capitol Hill in the past decade, there is a strong chance it was a Barred Owl (Strix varia). In our highly altered habitat melange full of rodents and other gulpable creatures, they reign supreme. These days, almost no other owl species are regularly seen on Capitol Hill.

I think Barred Owls are cool, but they also happen to be a sticky subject. They are recent arrivals, colonizers from Eastern North America. People paying attention to owl populations can agree that until the late 1990s, there were very few occurrences of Barred Owls in Washington State.

I recall a late 90s trip to Bainbridge Island to see a “for sure” pair of these owls during a 24-hour birding extravaganza. At that point in time it was worth the late night ferry trip even when our next destination was the mountains near Cle Elum. Today, that would be an absurd proposition (I suppose it always was but you get what I mean). I could probably choose any park on the Hill of decent size and adequate habitat and summon a Barred Owl with my moderately good impression of their barking,“Who cooks for you, who cooks for you owl” call.

Continue reading →

Pikes/Pines | Capitol Hill garden comrades can start next season’s garden today with a little anti-capitalist seed saving

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A Red Columbine seed head. (Image: Brendan McGarry)

I was doing laundry, dutifully emptying my pants pockets, when I came upon a little cache of seeds. Nestled into the seam was a handful of little roundish dark things that felt like pebbles when I probed the outside of the pocket. I knew exactly where they came from — the Red Columbine, Aquilegia formosa, I planted a couple years ago. At some point, I had walked by them, noticed a few lingering seeds in their cup-like seedheads, and emptied them into my pocket.

Tucking seeds away into any available container has become almost habitual for me over the past couple of years. It’s gotten to the point where I have to remind myself that I don’t need more seeds of certain plants. Now, I stow little baggies and old mint tins in my car and every bag I own. More than once this year I have found myself using a (clean, unused) dog poop bag to collect some choice seeds while walking the pooch.

It would be entirely fair to question this behavior. But it’s not new to me, or people, and it’s not clutchy hoarding — or, at least, not when I reign it in. I have been doing this in the little vegetable gardens I’ve had in my various homes over the years. Letting my kale, peas, and lettuce go to seed and collecting next year’s garden feels like a no-brainer and also supports pollinators.

What plunged humans into agriculture and in turn, year-round habitations around 12,000 years ago, was the knowledge of how to effectively grow plants from seed. There’s strong evidence that the first selective seed harvesting may have begun over 30,000 years ago, long before the dawn of agriculture. The food you buy from the grocery store literally rests on the knowledge our ancestors carried with them for generations. So to some degree I am just being a human.

But, why save seeds and not just buy them? There are many reasons to support certain seed producers — they have higher QC, their scaling and focus on growing seed means you can access more varieties with less fuss, and generally small businesses safeguarding heirloom plants are worth investing in.

In my instance, I am doing it as a low cost way to spread more native plants across my yard. Continue reading →

Pikes/Pines | The fungus among us and Capitol Hill summer gardens is powdery mildew

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Powdery mildew on a kale leaf. (image: Brendan McGarry)

I got a little overzealous when planting kale this year. In an effort to overcome the slugs that boomed this wet spring, I went hard and overseeded, banking on losing a lot or having to thin. And,  besides, we eat a lot of kale in our household. No big deal.

But then summer hit and we got busy and we didn’t inhale kale quite so much as I thought we would. Beautiful leaves kept filling in until our entire raised bed was covered. And with this dense, moisture trapping layer came powdery mildew — and lots of it.

Powdery mildew is a common summer affliction in this part of the world. Caused by a number of species in the Erysiphales order of fungi, even if you didn’t know the name of this plant pathogen, you’ve definitely seen it. The term powdery mildew is just a catch-all term for a number of species that infect plants worldwide, but it’s an apt description. It looks a lot like someone threw sifted flour all over a plant’s leaves.

What actually creates that layer of white are the mycelium of the fungus, spreading across the leaves and stems of the infected plant. Continue reading →

Pikes/Pines | The native berries of Capitol Hill summer

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The evergreen huckleberry (Image: WSU)

Every year, it’s harder and harder for me to feel excited about the Fourth of July. The waste, noise, and pollution is the most ridiculous way to celebrate a very dubious heritage (though I’ll admit having fun with friends and family outside is an exceptionally good way to spend a day). However, not only does the Fourth mark the end of Juneuary in my personal calendar, it also marks the beginning of berry season. The Pacific Northwest cup overfloweth with native berries to enjoy and that’s something to celebrate.

First, I will include the “Um, actually” part of this love letter to wild fruit. Not everything we call a berry is actually a berry in the botanical sense, even if from a culinary perspective we do. Botanists call any fruit grown from the ovary of a single flower a berry. They are mostly fleshy except for their seeds, which are inside the fruit. Blueberries are well named, while strawberries are not technically berries (though watermelons and tomatoes are). From the perspective of someone eating fruit, it really doesn’t matter that much, but several of the berries on my list below are not considered berries by botanists. But they also spend their days peering at the sexual parts of plants, so we can nod our heads and carry on enjoying these juicy capsules of sunshine. (Um, actually, if you like flowers, you too are a plant pervert.)

You might appreciate Himalayan Blackberries overtaking an unkempt corner or grow blueberries in a planter on your deck but we have many lovely native plants that bear lovely treats and have deeper roles to play in local ecosystems. These fruits have always been staples of the diet of the first people of the Hill and all across the Pacific Northwest. With plants as common as Salal and Trailing Blackberry, we can appreciate native plants and their connections to people and the more than human world. That’s what I think about when I consider the very muddled legacy of being an American – that we need to embrace the true heritage of the places many of us are at best guests.

But instead of being exacting and serious about the environment, genocide, and more, I am instead going to rank some native berries according to nothing but my personal opinions. I might as well be ranking 1996 hip hop albums releases, because I expect strong opinions and an overwhelmingly difficult time choosing the number one spot (just in case you were wondering, right now it’s Redman – Muddy Waters). And just like music, I am going to leave some options off the list because, well, they’re hardly palatable. The only requirement is that these “berries” need to have, at one point, grown on the Hill, and now find their way into our native gardens and restoration plans instead of maybe growing wild.

Osoberry (Image: Burke Herbarium Image Collection)

  1. Osoberry (Oemleria cerasiformis) – Leave ’em for the birds; too bitter for me to love them. Not only are they not actually berries, but drupes with a little pit containing the seed (true plums are also drupes). I’d rather eat their leaves, which taste a bit like cucumbers. And besides, as one of the first fruits to ripen, they get gobbled by the birds almost immediately and are already gone.

Continue reading →

Pikes/Pines | Three apps to help you learn more online when you’re offline in the great outdoors around Capitol Hill

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Jseattle gets around on iNaturalist

I will forever argue that finding people to learn with will always be better than learning only on your own. My recent escapades as a lifelong learner have had me diving deep into diverse topics like wooden spoon carving and contributing to the Washington Bee Atlas, where I started out “on my own.” Many people raised in the United State might have been subliminally led to believe that being “self-taught” is something to be deeply proud of. Certainly it can be. But this bootstrapping is just another way of saying you put in a lot of lonely hours into something. I took leaps and bounds in both these nerdy pursuits when I finally met some folks IRL – plus it was way more fun.

That being said, you don’t always have a bee expert at your side and we live in a brave new world of naturalist resources, often on our phones. With summer approaching, some of us spend more time outside and might even have some extra free time to ogle flora and fauna. It might seem ironic that in the days of disconnection from nature and an alarming decline of biodiversity worldwide, that we have more natural history apps than ever. But really it is because of this drifting away that people have developed said resources – we might need to get away from our phones more but we also might as well use them for good.

I might be willing to lug about a textbook called “The Solitary Bees,” but I wouldn’t recommend it. Your pocket computer has so much to offer and much of it is free. Here are three apps we should all have, that will make your summer more interesting, and might tell you what plants, bugs, and birds are about while sunning yourself at Cal Anderson. Continue reading →

Pikes/Pines | The reliable Butter Butts are back on Capitol Hill

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A “Myrtle” Yellow-rumped Warbler in winter plumage (Image: Brendan McGarry)

This time of year I am always listening for the next new arrival, no matter where I am. A surprise visitor is certainly more likely during spring migration — and, because I enjoy seeing common birds filter in and out as they pass by or arrive to breed. I have written about spring migration a lot on Pikes/Pines, but that’s because it is a source of renewed excitement about birds and phenology.

The same way we get excited about flowers blooming, seeing feathered friends arrive is a serious source of happiness and curiosity. Never is the movement of birds exactly the same each year because weather and other factors are never exactly the same – even with the help of Bird Cast and years of experience can’t you totally predict what birds show up (but boy, is it fun when you find that you’ve hit the mark). However, there’s always things you expect, like for instance Yellow-rumped Warblers (Setophaga coronata). Continue reading →