The Daily Bucket is a regular feature of the Backyard Science group. It is a place to note any observations you have made of the world around you. Insects, weather, meteorites, climate, birds and/or flowers. All are worthy additions to the bucket. Please let us know what is going on around you in a comment. Include, as close as is comfortable for you, where you are located. Each note is a record that we can refer to in the future as we try to understand the patterns that are quietly unwinding around us.
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On Saturday we drove down to Nisqually National Wildlife Refuge. Nisqually NWR protects the estuary of the Nisqually river and is important habitat for waterfowl and many other organisms. It is at the south end of Puget Sound between Tacoma and Olympia. Fellow bucketeer Elizaveta has written two buckets on Nisqually, the first of which, with many links to informative sites can be found here.
I visited the refuge briefly in June of last year but this was my first time to explore it thoroughly. It is an area of particular interest to me as the habitat is, in some ways, parallel to that found in a lot of coastal Florida where I make my permanent home. So I'm going to do a bit of a compare and contrast with what we saw at Nisqually and what I might expect to see at our local NWR at home, St Marks.
1) Woodland vegetation - in both cases the wetter freshwater areas are dominated by water adapted deciduous trees (bald cypress, tupelo in Florida, alder in Washington) with long leaf pine or live oak dominating drier areas in Florida. In Washington the elevational gradient is much larger and the lower areas were lots of maple and poplar (?) with conifers on the slopes above the estuary.
2) Woodland birds - We saw black-capped chickadee at Nisqually which is replaced by the very similar Carolina chickadee in the southeast. However Carolina chickadees are not very common at St Marks although abundant further inland. We also saw brown creepers which would be pretty rare birds in Florida and a flock of bushtits which was a real treat for us easterners. They are the most adorable tiny birds. In Florida common birds would be brown-headed nuthatches, red-bellied woodpecker.
3) Intertidal and subtidal vegetation. In Florida the vegetation is mostly grasses and reeds, salt marsh grasses in shallower areas and sea grasses in subtidal areas. At Nisqually there were expansive flats of pickleweed (genus Salicornia) a semi-succulent halophyte (salt tolerant plant) with salt marsh type grasss a bit higher up. I've seen Salicornia or something similar in Florida but rarely. Subtidally at Nisqually the vegetation appeared to be mostly algal.
4) Birds of prey. This was the most similar category between the two sites. We saw a bald eagle and a harrier both common birds at St Marks. We also saw two kestrels, which aren't quite as common on the coast in Florida. One interesting difference was the sex of the birds. The harrier was a male and almost all wintering harriers in Florida are females or immatures. The kestrels were female and I mostly see males in the winter near our house in Florida.
5) Ducks. I saw four or five species of duck at Nisqually: mallards, northern shoveler, blue-winged teal, hooded (?) merganser, and possible gadwall. All of these are species I've seen at St Marks but, with the exception of the teal, I'd be astounded to see them there for another couple of months. So way earlier duck arrivals here.
I'm guessing this is a hooded merganser based on habitat (in a marshy backwater) and size (small) but it lacks any hint of a crest or markings. Perhaps this is eclipse plumage - I don't usually see ducks at this time of year.
6) Shorebirds. I didn't see a single shorebird at Nisqually. It was high tide but still. I'm sure Washington has lots of shorebirds at this time of year but so far I've only seen a handful of Sanderlings at Discovery. Where are you Washingtonians hiding your shorebirds?
7) Wading birds. Lots of great blue herons at Nisqually. The rest of common wading birds in Florida would be rare (e.g. Great Egret) to completely absent (e.g. White Ibis).
8) Marine animal life. There were seals at Nisqually. It was odd to see them in such shallow water but in addition to the resting group there was a pair swimming about, presumably hunting. No seals in Florida but bottlenose dolphins frequently come very close to shore.
Nisqually has an excellent boardwalk that goes for a while over the mudflats. As I said it was high tide so mostly we were walking over shallow clear water. We were struck by the complete absence of (visible) animal life. No crabs and no small fish. Presumably the estuary has these animals (the herons, gulls, terns, and seals are eating something) so I was wondering why they are apparently so much more cryptic here.
9) Reptiles and amphibians. No alligators obviously at Nisqually. I didn't see any turtles on this visit but Elizaveta has a photo of one. It wasn't terribly sunny. Garter snakes and bullfrogs were present and possibly the exact same species could be found in Florida. I also saw this adorable Pacific chorus frog. Similar species of chorus frog would occur in a bit more 'upland' habitat in Florida.
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