The Daily Bucket is a nature refuge.
We amicably discuss animals, weather, climate, soil, plants, waters and note life’s patterns.
We invite you to note what you are seeing around you in your own part of the world, and to share your observations in the comments below.
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October 21, 2019
Whidbey Island, PacificNorthwest
It poured rain for our journey out to the open coast a week ago. The rain didn’t deter a Northern harrier from hunting in the salt marsh across from the Keystone ferry terminal where we were awaiting our crossing Strait of Juan de Fuca last Monday.
This wetland is Crockett Lake, described by Audubon Society here:
Crockett Lake is an open, shallow, estuarine lake on the south shore of Whidbey Island. The lake is a mixture of fresh and salt water separated by a narrow gravel bar and a tidegate from Admiralty Inlet, and is usually brackish. The open water of the lake is surrounded by marsh and grassland. Fed by runoff from the surrounding area and by inflow through the tidegate, the water levels can fluctuate greatly. When water levels are low, extensive mud flats are exposed. This mixture of marsh, open water, grasslands, and mudflats is rich with the kinds of small invertebrates that are eagerly fed upon by a variety of birdlife.
birdweb.org/...
The tide was moderately high just then.
Fall is when the pickleweed — Salicornia — turns red. That’s part of its adaptation to the salty estuarine environment where it thrives.
This plant handles salt in two ways—as a salt excluder and a salt accumulator. Some salt is filtered out at the roots by sodium-potassium pumps in the plant’s cell membranes. Excess salt is pumped by other cells to vacuoles (storage cells) at the tips of the plant’s jointed segments. When the vacuoles are full and cannot hold any more salt, the cells break down and die, and the segment turns red and falls off. In the fall a meadow of pickleweed can be a red blaze of color.
www.aquariumofpacific.org/...
It will grow new green segments beginning in wintertime. Salicornia is an important food source and nesting habitat for birds. Rodents find shelter there too.
The harrier was searching out rodents: he hovered near the ground, intermittently flapping his wings, watching and listening for movement. Harriers are especially fond of voles and will try to surprise them...this raptor uses stealth, quiet and low overhead, rather than speed or brute force. On this occasion he had no luck. Hunting in nature is pretty evenly balanced between the skills of predator and prey.
Harriers are much more common in winter hereabouts. They are short distance migrants, mostly breeding east of the Cascade mountain range (www.birdweb.org/...).
Male harriers are known as the grey ghost of the fields. Females and juveniles are a more typically raptor-brown; only the adult males have this coloration. Like all harriers he has a white band at the base of his long tail, only visible from above. Occasionally I got a glimpse of that as this grey ghost danced above the vivid fall pickleweed in the rain this day.
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We’ve had every kind of weather this past week, including gale wind, hail, thunder/lightning, deluge of rain, but right at this moment back here at home it is calm and sunny.
What’s up in nature in your area today?
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