What We Saw at Samuel P. Taylor State Park (September 2nd)

Here's Wendy's list of flora and faunt we saw during our two loop hikes at Samuel P. Taylor State Park:

Trees: redwood (including albino on Ox Trail), Doulgas fir (cones with "mouse tails"), hazel (soft leaves), California torreya (sharp, pointed needles), big leaf maple (winged seeds are samaras), tan oak (toothed leaves), buckeye (5 leaflets), Oregon ash, and alders, willow, madrone (red peely bark).

Ferns: sword fern, bracken, chain fern (AKA Woodwardia), 5 finger-fern, wood fern (and curled up dry goldback ferns)

Other plants: huckleberry, elk clover (with black berries), honeysuckle (vine with red berries), native California blackberry (sometimes called bearberry, spines less vicious than non-native Armenian berry which has leaves in 5s), trail plant (arrow-shaped leaves point in different directions), redwood sorrel (three heart-shaped “clover-like” leaves though it’s not in the pea family as clover is), wood rose (saw bright red rose hips), vinca (AKA live forever, periwinkle; an invasive non-native), poison oak (same genus as cashew, mango, and Japanese laquer tree), umbrella sedges (triangular stems), blue-green rushes (round stems with no nodes), ocean spray (flowers dried up)

Arachnids: filmy dome spiders

Insects: young box elder bug (eats leaves of big leaf maple as well as box elder, same genus)

Butterflies: CA sister, CA ringlets

Galls: Coyote brush midge galls (on buds)

Birds: American robins, dark-eyed juncos, a quick fly-by of a belted kingfisher, Stellar’s jays (named for the German naturalist George Wilhelm Steller who accompanied Vitus Bering on the voyage to discover weather Alaska and Siberia were contiguous), Townsends warbler. Remember how no one is allowed to name a bird for himself? Well, John Kirk Townsend had discovered a new warbler (he thought), when he discovered Nuttall (the guy Nuttall’s woodpecker is named for) was about to write it up and name it for him. So he gave Nuttall’s manuscript priority and “thus, although he is recorded as its describer, Townsend cannot be charged with naming a bird in his own honor, even if he worked the law of priority a bit overti me.” Townsend's warblers are most commonly seen in October and early November as they move south from breeding grounds in Washington, coastal Canada, and SE Alaska. Some will winter in Marin and others will head as far south as Panama.

(Heard: acorn woodpecker, chestnut-backed chickadee)

(Click here if you want to view and print a copy of this list. If you have Adobe Acrobat Reader on your computer you can print the document. Once you see the document on the "Scribd" Web site, click on the "Download" icon and then on the "PDF" icon to open the document on your computer).