Category Archives: History of hikes and outings

Chimacum Ridge

Chimacum Ridge is an over 900-acre forested landscape feature rising between Center and Beaver Valleys. Located among more than 2,000 acres of Land Trust protected farms, forests, and salmon habitat, the Land Trust has been striving to protect this land to keep it undeveloped and managed as healthy timberland and wildlife habitat since 2010. Now owned by Jefferson Land Trust, it is being transformed into a Community Forest to provide public access, plus ecological, social, and economic benefits forever. Many headwater tributaries flow from the ridge into Chimacum Creek, contributing cool clean water to the farms and salmon habitat downstream, and supporting one of the most successful community-based salmon recovery efforts in the area.

The forest has many different forest stands of varying ages, most of which are about 47-year-old planted Douglas-fir mixed with naturally regenerating Western redcedar, Western hemlock, Grand fir, Sitka spruce, Big-leaf maple, Red alder, Bitter cherry, and willows. Plus, there are understory shrub species such as Salal, Pacific rhododendron, Ocean spray, Serviceberry, Evergreen huckleberry, Oregon grape, and Elderberry. Abundant nesting resident and migratory birds, and other wildlife, extensively use the property throughout the year.

Rare Rhododendron Forests

Rhododendron

The native rhododendron, Washington’s state flower, is in glorious full bloom right now, and there is no place better to see it than on a drive out Coyle Road on the Toandos Peninsula. Here, over the past decade, biologists have discovered and mapped a globally rare type of rhododendron forest that represents the largest occurrence of its type left in the world! It seems only fitting for a county that celebrates the Rhododendron Festival.

Welcome to May

What a wonderful time this is to be immersed in springtime’s wonders with life growing all around us! Ferns are unfurling. Buds are spreading into new leaves. Flowers offer their color and fragrance to insects, encouraging the spread of genes into the next generation. And this is the peak of the spring bird migration in our area.  

Trillium

The Arrival of Our Songbirds

by Ken Wilson

April is perhaps the most dramatic transition month for birds and birders. Between the beginning of April to the end of the month, there is probably a fivefold or tenfold increase in songbird numbers. This abundance continues into May, declining quite a bit as the migrants continue onward, leaving a still substantial number of songbirds that will breed here. Most of these spring migrants are our ‘neotropical’ birds, mostly smallish songbirds that spend more of their lives in Central and South America than they do in our Pacific Northwest.

Orange-crowned Warbler


But why the late April arrival? Birds time their breeding cycle so that their food supply, often the juicy caterpillars that nestlings digest easily, is most plentiful when the parents have nestlings to feed. By arriving in late April and early May, the birds have available the intervening weeks for establishing territories, mating, nest-building, and incubation. These migrants arrive on schedule, plus or minus a week or so. They are cued more by daylength than by the unpredictable fluctuations of temperature from one day to the next. Go for a walk in late April and May when birdsong occupies nearly every habitat. It’s not essential to identify each song because the enjoyment itself is worth it. But an absolute must is to download an app called Merlin Bird ID. It enables your smart-phone to listen to singing birds and is astoundingly accurate in identifying each individual. Merlin will permanently change your relationship to birds. And not just in April. Enjoy.

Wilson’s Warbler

Salmon, Cedar, Rock and Rain: Washington’s Olympic Peninsula

by Tim McNulty, Coauthor

Immature Bald Eagle at Mouth of Elwha River

In my essay, I explore the peninsula’s natural diversity from its geological origins through alpine, forest, riverine and coastal ecology. I review the peninsula’s epic conservation history, the threats posed by climate impacts, the future of the ecosystem and transformative role of restoration — from the Elwha dam removals through the Skokomish watershed and Hoh River restoration efforts to numerous salmon enhancement projects on the North Peninsula.

Western Redcedar

Along with my coauthors David Guterson and Lynda Mapes, seven Indigenous writers representing five Tribal nations tell stories of their peoples’ long-standing relationships with the peninsula’s land and waters and explore Tribal sovereignty, language revitalization, self-governance, and the Tribes’ spiritual relationship with this place. More than 30 photographers superbly capture the peninsula’s beauty and diversity.

Spotted Sandpiper at Mouth of Elwha River