My stay-at-home project this spring is to join Rob Dunn and his crew in their Wild Sourdough Project and also to participate in Michelle Jewel's 20 minute Fermentology Seminars to learn about "the applied ecology, evolution, history and culture of cultured foods". Both of these activities have open invitations from North Carolina State Public Science Lab. 

As a Wild Sourdough participant, I will be comparing ferments from three types of flour. I mixed my pastes today and in two weeks will be posting photos and data to the site.

Meanwhile...meet the new babies in our fermenting lab (joining our kefir, kombucha, sauerkraut, and my Seattle sourdough). 

Want to join me in a Zoom seminar every Thursday afternoon through August? See you there!

I am excited to share the link to my article, published Spring 2019 in Pacific Horticulture.

With everyone quarantined and staying at home, this is a wonderful opportunity to dig into your soil and to nourish your relationship with the flora and fauna in the neighborhood. 

Now, get outside and enjoy that spring sunshine!

Valentine's Day Bird Count began with two black-capped chickadees at my feeder.
Join me in getting out and counting birds this weekend?
Cornell Lab of Ornithology and E-bird make it easy!

I love waking up and finding evidence that wild animals have been exploring our backyard while we are not looking. This fresh dusting of snow let us see how the local raccoons circumnavigated our house and also that they were hoping to dip their paws in the birdbath. 

Do you ever wonder about how these wild animals survive in the city? 

First, why is this animal called raccoon (wikipedia):
The word "raccoon" was adopted into English from the native Powhatan term, as used in the Colony of Virginia. It was recorded on John Smith's list of Powhatan words as aroughcun, and on that of William Strachey as arathkone. It has also been identified as a reflex of a Proto-Algonquian root *ahrah-koon-em, meaning "[the] one who rubs, scrubs and scratches with its hands". 

Hill Raccoons are more than Bandits, 10/15 Brendan McGarry: REPOST from CHS blog
​
"Despite their nocturnal tendencies, we know they are around, scampering across intersections when we come home late at night or when they blunder beneath our tires. The main reason they’ve become so common in our urban world is that they’re incredibly intelligent and this is very adaptive for the variety of nuances they face in the city. Their common name is merely an english settler mangled Powhatan word for the animal; their latin binomial is telling. The genus designates them as before, “Pro,” dog, “cyon,” intimating that raccoons are indeed carnivores (though more closely related to bears than dogs). The second notes a common behavior, as lotor literally means “washer,” and raccoons are well known for their habit of “washing” their food using dextrous forelimbs.

Unlike us, raccoons don’t have very good long distance vision but instead rely on a suite of other senses. Based on their anatomy, raccoons do see better than us at night, because they possess tapetum lucida, tissues behind their retina contributing to superior light gathering, which many mammals have. You’ve seen this before in your dog or cat when at night a beam of light reflects in their eyes. Despite this nocturnal augmentation, both a sense of smell and hearing, much more acute than ours top vision in importance to raccoons. However, one trumps them all, and that’s their sense of touch.

​Though raccoons don’t have opposable thumbs on their forepaws like primates, they are only slightly less dextrous. raccoons have one of the most highly developed senses of touch for a vertebrate, with an inordinate amount of brain power devoted to the tactile. Their habit of “washing” is not related to a desire for clean food but instead related to the fact that they can feel more when wetting their paws, softening their footpads. I’ve routinely seen raccoons search about in the water with their paws (they love frogs, fish, clams, and all manner of invertebrates that habituate them to habitats with nearby water), and upon finding something, manipulate it throughly as a blindfolded person would an object handed to them for inspection. This is a prime way they see the world, so different than how most of us see things."

Thanks for your interest in our backyard visitors.
​Cheers, and enjoy the wild side.

Two new birds to end my year: an unusually marked sapsucker and a Belted Kingfisher.
We spotted these on Christmas Eve, near Duck Pond at the northern end of the Arboretum.

It was a handy coincidence that Union Bay Watch was on hand to take photos, and then to do a bit of research. According to Larry:
"It seems to me that this 2019 bird is most likely a hybrid between a Red-breasted and a Red-naped Sapsucker. However, the black mask surrounding the eye is rather puzzling. None of the four species of sapsuckers in North America have such a complete mask of black around the eyes. Three of the four have a black eye stripe running between white highlights, similar to the Red-naped Sapsucker. The Red-breasted Sapsucker is the exception. This 2019 bird appears to be a unique individual. The black mask around the eye appears to be personal variation. Maybe this is how a new species begins. If this bird's unique DNA is passed on maybe someday its progeny will form another species. They might even be called, Black-masked Sapsuckers."

​How cool is that? 
​Happy Bird Year 2020!

*** I may have neglected my blog this year, but not my bird friends! ***
​Project FeedWatch started in November and I have once again purchased a winter's supply of chili pepper suet. If you enjoy feeding the birds, but not the challenge of outsmarting squirrels, you will be delighted to find out that birds have evolved to eat chili pepper seeds and they are a harmless deterrent to suet-loving squirrels. 

Project FeederWatch
 100 common feeder birds have been cross-referenced on what they like to eat and where they like to eat it;  explore your region to see what you might be able to attract to your feeder this winter:
Common Feeder Birds

Seven Simple Actions to Help Birds
Small changes in the way you buy groceries and products, drink coffee, and garden will yield great rewards for your local ecosystem, as well as promoting fair-trade farmers across the world.
Nurture Nature.

It feels like autumn here in Seattle, and even though we most likely will have another round of warmish weather, it is the time of year when people are getting busy raking and tidying up for winter. This year, I would like to invite you to consider taking a less vigorous approach to cutting back your grasses and raking and composting leaves and fallen branches. Check out these tips from Audubon on how to enhance your backyard this fall to encourage more wildlife action.

Backyard birders: be sure to sign up for Project Feederwatch, This year's poster is a limited edition poster of backyard Hawks and Falcons of North America.  

If online learning is one of your passions, I suggest one of these Cornell Lab of Ornithology self-paced courses. Or, for a free quick fix:, check out their videos.

Wishing you lots of daydreaming and playtime in your backyard and neighborhood this fall!

Have you ever found a cool bug in your backyard, tried to I.D. it, and been frustrated because you could not find it in any of your field guides, in a google image search, or even in BugGuide.net?

Do not despair, as you are not alone! As you may know, insects are the most numerous animal life form on the planet, comprising about 85% of terrestrial animals. Not only that, insects come in all shapes and sizes, and do magic called metamorphosis after being nymphs or molting their hard exoskeletons as they move through instars on their way to sexual maturity.

"Arthropods are a highly-successful group of invertebrate animals that includes insects, centipedes, millipedes, spiders, mites, horseshoe crabs, scorpions, and crustaceans. In terms of species diversity, arthropods are second to none. That there are in excess of one million arthropods species that have been identified by scientists and there are estimated to be many millions that have not yet been identified. Scientists estimate there may be a staggering 30 million species of arthropods alive today, the vast majority of which are insects."

The insect world is currently divided into 32 orders. The largest order, the beetles (Coleoptera), contains more than 370,000 species. Other major orders are moths and butterflies (Lepidoptera, 150,000 species), bees, wasps, and ants (Hymenoptera, 120,000 species), flies (Diptera, 100,000 species), and bugs (Hemiptera, 80,000 species).

To make mystery bug I.D. even harder, remember that all insects go through metamorphosis-which means that most of them look completely different from adults when they are in their immature stages as larvae and instars-making it quite a puzzle to identify them, since field guides and websites often only show images of the adult stages of many insects.

For example, take mystery bug #1, found by my friend Lorene in her West Seattle garden:
after three fails (which included an image search, googling "green ladybug",  and BugGuide.net), I  googled "Seattle pest insects" and found a P-Patch reference document from the Seattle Dept. of Neighborhoods, that told me all about the invasive Green Stinkbug, which were first reported in Seattle in 2014.
Bingo! Lorene's bug turned out to be the 5th instar stage of the Southern Green Stinkbug Nezara Viridula. She found this insect alongside lots of little tiny black bugs (2nd/3rd instar) on a Dalia leaf, never before seen in her garden.

The thing to remember, when taking care of your backyard, is that often times immature stages of beneficial insects look very different from the adults. Be sure to be gentle when you are weeding and tidying up your garden for the winter, as many caterpillars overwinter in the grasses, leaves, shrubs, and woodpiles. These are your butterfly nurseries. If you do find a "pest" insect, such as the Green Stinkbug, please contact the Garden Hotline:  help@gardenhotline.org or call 206-633-0224.