In past years, we have led outings to:
November is a chilly month on the Olympic Peninsula, and a time of transition to winter. In past years, our Natural History Society has visited these special places to explore the biodiversity:
•Fort Worden– Bring your plant guide and a hand lens, and try to identify plants that look quite different this time of year. Clues like lingering berries, bark, or autumn leaves can help.
•Cappy’s Trails– Walk slowly and watch for ways that plants and animals are preparing for winter. Find a map and learn about the Quimper Wildlife Corridor on the Land Trust’s website: saveland.org/protected-properties/quimper-wildlife-corridor/
•Waterfalls– Follow a one-mile trail to magnificent Murhut Falls near Brinnon, and a much shorter trail to Rocky Brooks Falls near the Dosewallips River. See how many different mosses and ferns you can find. While driving, keep an eye out for Roosevelt Elk. If you see them, stay in your car to respect their needs.
•Mushrooms– Bring a mushroom field guide and explore the dark, damp trails at Fort Townsend. Look for the features that distinguish one mushroom from another. Don’t plan to cook them unless you’re an expert!
•Indian Island– Cross the bridge to the island and turn right to park at the first County Park. Follow the trail that parallels the road toward the second County Park. Notice the beautiful Madrona trees, seabirds, and maybe a view of Mt. Rainier.
Here are recommendations from our Guiding Committee for watching birds this fall:
Dave Rugh:
As the sun dips lower with autumn’s arrival, many birds look south, flying to warmer, brighter lands. You can catch glimpses of these travelers from many strategic viewpoints, such as headlands, beaches, lakes, or ponds. Within short distances around Port Townsend, you could try Point Wilson, the beaches on either side of Point Wilson, Point Hudson, Kah Tai Lagoon, North Beach, and Fort Worden.
Ken Wilson:
It’s a nice break in the day to take in a bit of nature when you’re doing a few errands. Here are some specific suggestions.
If you’ll be near Safeway, Henery Hardware, or the Food Co-op, walk across the street, and saunter your way along Kah Tai Lagoon. Bird life changes during migration even from one day to the next. Keep your binoculars in the car, so you’re equipped for these spur of the moment walks. And it’s always relaxing to sit on the bench for a few minutes, frustrating the mallards who want to be fed. Do this venture BEFORE you have frozen food defrosting in your car.
Alternatively, on the other side of Sims Way, walk a short stretch of Larry Scott Trail from the Boat Haven parking lot. Always a few birds on the shore or on the water, or songbirds in the brush.
At the other end of town, when you’re on Water Street, walk out one of the docks. Especially as we get later into October and November our wintering waterbirds are arriving. Surely you have time to walk to the end of a dock!
Even more fun for a plethora of various gulls, sandpipers, and often oystercatchers, is to enjoy the spit at Point Hudson. You’ll see the unique Heermann’s Gulls, often a hundred or more — they fly here from their breeding grounds in Baja. Definitely worth 15 minutes to be blissfully enjoying the water and the views as well as the birds.
Lots of possibilities wherever you are. I didn’t even mention —till now— Fort Worden, Anderson Lake, and absolutely the bird bonanza of Oak Bay.
Wendy Feltham:
For the past six years, I’ve volunteered with a team of birders for the Seattle Audubon Seabird Survey at Ft. Flagler, one of the best places to see birds in our county. When you drive into Ft. Flagler, turn left at the stop sign, and park near the campground. Walk out along the spit to the left, looking towards Port Townsend, and on the water you’ll see our resident Rhinoceros Auklets and Pigeon Guillemots, as well as many birds returning from the north for the winter months. Look for black and white Surf Scoters with their colorful bills, gray and white Horned Grebes with their red eyes, and Common Loons still in their beautiful breeding plumage in September. If you are lucky, you might see Marbled Murrelets and Red-necked Phalaropes. Sometimes a couple dozen Harlequin Ducks line up and paddle parallel to shore. There are always lots of cormorants, sometimes all three species, and frequently a Bald Eagle in this area. Also look on the inside of the spit, facing the dock, for seabirds on the water. All along the spit you may see scores of shorebirds. (Careful not to scare them!) Check the grassy area near the playground to the left of the parking area, and you will often see dozens of Black-bellied Plovers (but this time of year, without their breeding plumage, they should probably be called by their other common name, Gray Plovers). Sometimes other shorebirds, like Dunlin, mix in with them on the grass.
We hope you are all healthy and able to enjoy the beauty of summer on the Olympic Peninsula. Once again this month, our Natural History Society won’t be able to lead an outdoor outing. That’s why several members of our Guiding Committee are sharing alternatives with you. You’ll find a fun scavenger hunt in the May newsletter, and here are a few more suggestions:
To identify what you find, this online guide for local species can be helpful: https://soundwaterstewards.org/ezidweb/
We will enjoy minus tides on these dates: July 1-9; July 17-24; July 29-August 6; August 15-21; and August 26-31. There are huge variations in times of low tide in Puget Sound, so be sure to check a tide table for the beach you plan to visit. This tide table provides 14 days of information. Scroll down to Admiralty Inlet (or elsewhere), choose your location, then scroll down to the bottom to enter the dates.
https://www.saltwatertides.com/dynamic.dir/washingtonsites.html#puget
When exploring tide pools, please follow proper beach etiquette, as explained by the Port Townsend Marine Science Center: Tidepooling Guide
Here are the suggestions from our Guiding Committee:
Hemigrapsus nudus (Purple Shore Crab)
Marcia Schwendiman: Shine Tidelands State Park
Shine Tidelands is located at the west end of the Hood Canal Bridge on Highway 104. Turn north at the junction with Paradise Bay RD then immediately east at the park. This is a fine place to beachcomb, dig clams and oysters (with a permit), launch a kayak, and look for migratory birds. The park entrance is signed and parking is plentiful at the park’s entrance on the shore of Bywater Bay. Two beaches can be explored. To the north, a two-mile round-trip leads to views of a backwater lagoon and ends with a feature called a tombolo which connects the mainland to Hood Head. If the tide is a minus 2 or lower, one can hike south, passing under the Hood Canal Bridge and then stroll along a usually deserted beach littered with glacial erratics, fine habitat for intertidal creatures. Be sure to return to the park before the tide starts coming in or you will not be able to cross back under the Bridge!
Oma Landstra: East Beach on Marrowstone
My low tide recommendation is to go to East Beach on Marrowstone and walk as long as you like along the shore. Opportunities to see seals, shells, sea stars and many interesting sights will unfold for you. This walk allows plenty of room for safe distancing and a relaxed walk. Observe what you see, the identifying characteristics that you see, the descriptions of the animals and their colors. Listen to the sounds.
Henricia (Blood Star)
Michele Olsen: Salt Creek Recreation Area
My location suggestion is Salt Creek Recreation Area. Tongue Point is great fun to explore at low tide and the park itself is free to access with great spots for picnicking as well as trails to explore. It is a one hour and twenty minute drive from PT. This Clallam County park was recently closed, so check to see if it’s open. If not, you can go early, drive past the park entrance, and down the hill you can park on the right-hand side in a small parking lot (with an outhouse) by Crescent Bay, or just above that in one of two overflow parking lots, then take the trail down to the public beach, on the right side of the creek. You can explore the island in front of the beach, and you might want to scramble over rocks to access Tongue Point. http://www.clallam.net/Parks/SaltCreek.html Happy Trails!!
Cucumaria miniata (Red Sea Cucumber)
Lee Merrill: Kinzie Beach at Fort Worden State Park
Kinzie Beach is one of my favorite places for tidal explorations. Things you might find are sponges, anemones and jellies, worms, mollusks, sea slugs, bivalves, crustaceans including crabs, echinoderms, cephalopods, seaweeds, and seagrasses. And there’s more sea-related animals and plants to be found surrounding tide pools, such as marine mammals, shore plants, and shore birds. If you don’t already have a PNW marine life field guide, an excellent resource is available for purchase here: https://shop.orcanetwork.org/product/ez-guide-to-common-intertidal-invertebrates-of-the-salish-sea/
Marcia Schwendiman: Miller Peninsula State Park and Thompson Spit
The state’s newest park has a trail leading to a deserted beach on a shoreline facing Protection Island. Traveling north from PT, the park is located off highway 101. Turn right at Diamond Point Road and travel 1.2 miles then turn left to the parking area. Print a map in advance, or take a photo of the map in the parking lot. Follow the fairly well signed trail to the beach, then turn right on the beach to Thompson Spit, known for birding and flowers. The best description of this 7.7 mile round-trip hike is found in Day Hiking Olympic Peninsula by Craig Romano.
Dirona albolineata (Frosted Nudibranch)
Wendy Feltham: Indian Island
Whenever there’s a minus tide, I head for Indian Island. You have two choices of County Parks. The first is immediately on your right when you cross the bridge to Indian Island. I like to walk down to the water and turn right, walk under the bridge and along the water’s edge to the old wooden tower. Be careful not to step on the thousands of Aggregating Anemones living on the boulders on the beach! Watch for Ochre Stars, Mottled Stars, Plumose Anemones hanging from the tower, and spectacular seaweed. The second County Park is about a quarter mile down the road, toward Marrowstone, on the right. Drive down to the beach and walk out to the end of “the cut,” a pile of rip rap filled with marine critters.Look for Red Rock Crabs, chitons, the large round egg cases of Lewis’s Moon Snail, and unusual marine worms.
Chris Jones: An alternative to looking in tide pools
On a warm summer evening, just after sunset, step outside wherever you are and look for bats doing their amazing sonar-directed chase for their food, flying insects. We have a lot of bats in our area and they are an important part of our natural environment. Darrell Smith’s presentation on mammals in Nature in Your Neighborhood class inspired this.
Natural History writings by Bernd Heinrich
Rather than focusing on just one book, this month we ask our readers to select any text by acclaimed naturalist Bernd Heinrich. Two books, Mind of the Raven and Life Everlasting: the Animal Way of Death, have been on our suggested reading list for several years. He has written twenty others, including The Homing Instinct about animal migration, and even one about ultra-running called Why We Run. We’ll discuss what it takes to be a serious naturalist, and what you learned from the book you chose to read by this author. You can find a list of his books on Wikipedia.
If the stars align, we may meet at Illahee Preserve where we can practice social distancing and enjoy being outdoors together. The back-up plan will be to have a Zoom meeting sponsored by PT Library. Either way, we’ll meet up on May 25th at 3:30-5:00 p.m. to discuss the book .