Nature in my Neighborhood - Valee

 

The Connelly Creek nature trail lays a few blocks from my house. it begins as a sprawling field of high grasses, accessible by a gap in the fence- just along the second bend of the road passing Joe's Garden. The meadow holds high piles of noxious Himalayan blackberry that offer hopping-grounds for the robins and rabbits. There is a slight hill. In summer it buzzes with thousands of mining bees that nest there. Sometimes I sit on the warm ground and watch the small piles of dirt stir as bees come and go. On the day I took these photos, I found a dead garter snake in the grass. A bird had dispatched it, it seems. A path descends to the forest and passes a Western Hemlock that I've grown to know well. 

Entering a dense path of red cedars, you find muck in the lowlands. The mud is dark, sulfurous, and rich with giant skunk cabbage. It comes up to my chest in places and makes me feel like a dinosaur! I love this trail, and explore it often. It is rife with mushrooms, you can see I found some spectacular witches butter and turkey tail. This creek seems to be a healthy place. I see all manor of birds, native berries, dear and bugs. In my third photo, I captured a photo of some cozy winter fireflies, cuddled in the moss of what I believe is a Green Alder. Tree identification still alludes me, but I am working on it. This was the first time I have seen these beetles, and what a delight! 

 

My favorite plants in these woods are lichen's and ferns. I've learned a lot about both this year,  Last summer, I was admiring some bracken fern when I spotted a the sky-blue of a robin egg. Turning my eyes up, there was a nest it the briar just at head height. A mother robin looked back at me, and I checked up on her nest for a few weeks. I watched her babies grow older and one-by-one disappear. I wish them the best. Lichens are hard to identify, but I love the sprawl of this one. I am enamored by the orange powdery vampire bites that line the sword fern. I put my cameras focus distance to the test! 

 

I love the Connelly Creek trail dearly, it blesses me with great bounties of salmon berry every late-June. I am pretty confident in my plant knowledge there, but hope to get to know the ground cover better. I enjoyed this excursion very much, and got some great photos.