The Daily Bucket is a place to catch your casual observations of the natural world and turn them into a valuable resource. Whether it's the first flowers of spring or that odd bug in your basement, don't be afraid to toss your thoughts into the bucket. Check here for a more complete description.
Seattle
The Forest is always a little anti-climatic this time of year. So much goes on between February and May that it's truly impossible to keep up. Start a diary about wildflowers and the next day half a dozen migrating birds species show up and the Barred Owlets have a food fight.
You heard about the food fight. Maybe next year for blooming wildflowers or spring migrants. Too late now. Everything in the forest has greened out. Most of the wildflowers have finished blooming. The migrants have passed through. Many of the new resident bird kids have fledged. We're on to the next phase:
The first berries are ripening - I've been grazing on Salmonberry for a couple of weeks now and the very first few Red Huckleberries were delicious. The robins have pretty well finished off this year's crop of Osoberries.
The Chestnut-backed Chickadee and Downy Woodpecker nests that I mentioned last week were empty when I checked on Monday, though today I caught this little one noisily clambering up toward one of its parents. You can tell it's a kid by the orange crest.
June 30, 2011. Pileated Woodpecker kid. Its parent is out of frame up to the left.
This was a particularly sweet sighting. The hemlock snag where the Pileated Woodpeckers had been nesting came down shortly after last year's kid fledged, and they did a really good job of keeping the location of their new nest a secret. We didn't know if they'd started a new nest in the forest this year.
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What else please? Where are you?
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Here's what's happening next week
CitizenScientist is going to manage the queue and will toss up another bucket or two. Runawayrose has bucket(s) but needs to choose date(s). The rest of yins, step up please!
July 2: bwren
July 3: CitizenScientist
July 4: anyone??? you can write it over the weekend and schedule it for the 4th, or we could just post a flag and call it a Bucket.
July 5: belinda ridgewood
July 6:
July 7:
July 8:
July 9:
July 10:
July 11: