Hello again!
This week we had the incredible pleasure of exploring Ravenna Park. I had no idea so much nature was just a few blocks away from me. I will definitely have to return here again even after this class is over.
The coolest thing ever happened while we were there. At first, we began hearing owls hoot and our TAs knew it was the Barred Owl because of its very distinct call " Who cooks for you? Who cooks for you all?". I was jazzed by the fact that we were even hearing an owl during the day time. When we continued along our journey into Ravenna Park, we saw another group looking up into the trees and they told us that they could see the owl. Low and behold there it was! If you bent down a little and looked really hard you could see the owl held up in a tree not too far from us. We thought it couldn't get any better than this! And then it got better! The owl seemed to be too close for comfort for a group of crows guarding a nest or some sort of site of importance to them. The crows began to go after the owl and it was forced to abandon ship (or abandon tree) and it dipped down right in front of us. It was possibly the greatest sighting I have had in nature ever.
Also, I really enjoyed our class time out in Ravenna Park because we were able to get up close and personal with the trees and other plants that we have been talking about in class and we also were able to learn how to identify them!
Douglas Fir- Cones have "rat butts" on them, not a true fir, conical needles
Red Cedar- Scaly leaves and bark that can be stripped off and has a reddish tint, flat leaves
Big Leaf Maple- 3-5 lobed leaves, flower hangs from the tree kind of looks like a bunch of green grapes
Red Alder- small cones, broadleaf tree, yellow catkins hang from tree
Salmon Berry- a distinct pink flower and serrated, compound leaves
Redflower Currant- red to pink small flowers in bunches and 5- lobed leaves
Salal- waxy leaves that don't tear easily
Skunk Cabbage- smells like a skunk, big leaves surrounding a yellow flower
Sword Fern-tapered end
Lady Fern- has the shape of a lady leaves are small at the beginning get bigger and then get small again at the end
Licorice Fern- Seen growing on stumps, fallen trees, etc.
Knowing a little more about how to identify these plants made it all the more exciting to get back out to Discovery Park and begin identifying in my area.

April 12, 2013 8:30 am
Discovery Park South side
Weather: Overcast
This week I went to Discovery Park in the morning (8:30 am) to log my observations. The forested area was abuzz with bird calls, way more than last week when I went in the evening. I'm not sure if that is due to the time I went or if the birds are becoming more active as it gets farther into spring, perhaps a combination of the two. I could hear a variety of different calls from the sweet and soft to the loud and aggressive. I decided to branch out in my area a little more to see if I could find even more species than I did last time and boy was that a good decision. I saw a few of the birds that had been singing away all morning, but I had difficulty identifying them. Though due to their small size, shape, and brown coloring I assume they are in the Sparrow family. The robin decided today was a good day to pose for a picture or two. I couldn't get too close otherwise it would fly away, but I could see its reddish orange belly, yellow beak, and how the rest of its body was shades of brown.

Also, the first time I visited the site most of it was green with a small amount of brown on the ground. The second time I went the wildflowers had just begun to bloom. Not all the flowers had bloomed, but this had signaled the true beginning of spring. The best part of this was that it became a lot easer to identify the plants that were all around me. Seeing purples, reds, and yellows set them apart from one another in the sea of green. Now, I am just waiting for all the other flowers, bushes, and trees to bloom so I can identify everything in my little patch of the planet. One of the plants I was unable to identify had light purple flowers just about to peak out and simple leaves with a serrated edge. At the nodes where the leaves were protruding from the stem there were these spikey leaves that were purple with a green edge.
The most frustrating find of the day was a tree that had leaves that looked just like a fern. At first I thought it was a fern because the first one I encountered was a baby, but the woody bark made me question that. Then I saw a bigger one that had the same leaves, but was a tree. The leaves were compound and with around 13 leaflets (6 pairs and one on the end). After I got home, I googled and googled and looked on iNaturalist and I could not for the life of me pin down exactly what this tree was. The only tree I could find was a Mimosa tree, but it didn't seem to fit the bill completely.
One of the best things I saw was a hole in the ground. I nearly stepped right in it on my way to photograph some yellow flowers hiding up on  a hill. Previously our teacher, Tim Billo had told us that there are mountain beavers in Discovery Park and I believe that this was a sign that the mountain beavers are there. I am hoping in my future visits the beaver will poke his little head out and say hello. It will be my mission next time to find a mountain beaver, I will have to delve farther into that forest in order to do it!

Possibly Mountain Beaver Hole (Fingers Crossed)

 

I was able to identify so many more trees this time out. It was so exciting to see the rat butts on the Douglas fir cones and know exactly which tree it was, to see the big leaf maples all over the place when I had no idea what they were before, to feel the scaly leaves from the red cedar. All day at school I want to identify the trees on campus. It takes me so much longer to walk to school now than it did before I took Environment 280.

Douglas Fir Cone

Red Cedar leaf




Big Leaf Maple Flower



 Also, I saw two of the plants the we witnessed on our walk through Ravenna Park. No skunk cabbage, salal, or salmon berry though. Maybe next time!

 

 

 

 

 

Tall Oregon Grape

 

 

 

Redflower Currant

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

In addition to our normal observations this week we had the task of following Clare Walker Leslie's instructions for beginning sketching in her book The Art of Sketching, Chapter 2 entitled "Beginning Exercises and Basic Techniques". She has many different exercises to get you started on your sketches of the plants and animals you see out in nature. I followed her first eight exercises and read through her advise to get me started on my very first sketches of nature ever. Here are my sketches, including the eight exercises that she outlined and four other sketches.

 

 
I found that I did a lot better sketching than I thought I would.  Following her steps seemed strange at first, but then when I was done the end product benefited greatly from it.
 
Well that's all for now folks! More next week.