Nature in Your Neighborhood

 

 

Around the Lark Bellingham apartment complex, the wild animal I tend to see the most are Eastern Cottontails by a large margin, along with a few Eastern Gray Squirrels as well. As for plants I recognize, Snowberries are a common one, and also lots of different fungi. I don’t know exactly which ones are native and nonnative but looking at a map of the Eastern Cottontail sightings across America and paying attention to their name, I believe it’s likely that the Eastern Cottontail is not native to the Pacific Northwest and was possibly introduced to this area. As for Snowberries and fungi, the snowberries I believe are native. I have always seen them in my neighborhood growing up in Seattle. The only fungi I was able to identify was the Mica Cap or Coprinellus micaceus, which I also believe is native to the PNW due to seeing it so often as a child.

In my neighborhood it’s not too hard to find a crack in the ground with some grass growing up, but something I don’t see all the time was the large grouping on fungi near the bases of trees, many in rather covered, wet areas. While this isn’t surprising given that fungi rely on trees complex root systems for nutrients and carbon, it’s not something that I notice often in my neighborhood.   

It would be hard for me to say the nature around my neighborhood is healthy for me. While there is a protected marsh area with a large variety of plants, there is also tons of garbage back in these places as well. I think the increased activity in an area that is specifically protected might be leading to a decrease in biodiversity in this area, unfortunately. While nature is still active in this area, humans are clearly causing negative impacts on these environments.