August 2020
Old Photos from Jan Ford
This is the view from Jan Ford's deck in about 2000. Because it is winter and the trees are bare the view of the homes on the other side of the pasture is better. The photo was taken because the pasture was flooded and this was unusual. The property of each home extends thru the pasture over to the Claremont rock wall.
The photo on the left is from about 2000. The photo on the right was taken August 1, 2020. Both photos were taken standing on Jan Ford's deck. I worked hard to align both photos. However, the only landmark that was the same is the very small fence in the distance. Basically, nothing is the same.
In the bottom left corner of the old photo you can see a fence that went along the rock wall. That fence is gone. In the old photo you can see houses and a hill in the distance. In the new photo trees have grown up obscuring everything in the distance. In the new photo there are poplar trees, one alive and two dead. There is no evidence of them in the old photo. (The two poplar trees blew over in our September 6, 2020, wind storm.)
The photo on the left is from about 2000. The photo on the right was taken August 7, 2020. Both photos were taken thru Jan Ford's back door. The old homes are gone and new houses are closer. The trees have grown.
Civic Mowing
This photo shows a portion of the wetlands below the townhomes. On the right we see the rock wall. The blue circles are around blue tape that appeared at about the same time as the native shrubs that were planted in the spring of 2020. I have drawn a blue line on the ground showing the area marked by the blue tape. The native shrubs were planted to the left of the blue line leaving a wide path along the rock wall that is free of shrubs.
Claremont Civic pays Showplace workers to mow along the rock wall. The workers have cleared the area between the rock wall and the pink line. Rather than clear a path along the rock wall the Showplace crew clears from the rock wall to the established shrubs, removing the young, native plants that were recently planted. This is typical of how landscape workers will mow an area. Cut the grass until you come to established shrubs.
Occasionally, the landscapers will leave a native shrub in the area that they have cleared. As the landscapers work around the shrub the bark gets cut. Often, all of the bark is removed from a section of the stem. After mowing a few times all, or virtually all, of the native shrubs get removed or are killed.
Hiker on far side of wetlands, August 14, 2020.
This photo was taken at the rock wall looking toward the creek. Because there are no mature shrubs from here to the creek the Showplace people have, in the past, mowed all of the way from the rock wall to the creek. In this photo they have gone about half way to the creek. Native shrubs were planted in this area.
It seems to me that the Showplace workers are doing exactly what they would be expected to do when clearing a park or when clearing along a path. Since this area is a wetland and not a park it is not appropriate to have landscapers working here. The landscapers are not properly supervised. And there is no need for this area to be mowed.
The wetlands are being professionally maintained by Clean Water Services. It would be nice if Claremont Civic left this area to the people from Clean Water Services.
Water Pennywort (Hydrocotyle ranunculoides) -- August 12, 2020
Water Pennywort is very common along the edge of the water in the wetlands. The leaves are often round have one slot that extends to the stem.
Last time I looked I could not find flowers. This time the flowers were easy to find but only if you looked closely. Each flower is very small, about a tenth of an inch wide.
Not only are the flowers small but they are nearly hidden near the bottom of the plants. This makes me wonder how the flowers are pollinated.
Spikerush (Eleocharis) -- August 12, 2020
There are multiple species of spikerush in our area that look similar and I do not know how to tell them apart. The clumps (shown on the left) are attractive. Each head consists of many flowers. In the photo on the right the top flowers have stamen with pollen. Eventually each flower will produce seeds and the shape of the seeds may be useful in identifying the species. I look forward to seeing the seeds in the fall.
Following an old road into the brush I found an abandoned bridge over the creek. My red day pack is on the bridge. I had been here a few times before but had not noticed the old gate. I cleared some of the brush away to get this photo. Growing on the bridge was the Moth Mullein shown below.
Moth Mullein (Verbascum blattaria) -- August 12, 2020
The Moth Mullein is a weedy plant native to Eurasia and Norther Africa. In the first year of growth the plant is just a rosette of leaves. In the second year the plant produces a stalk with flowers and seeds. I was surprised by the beauty of the flower on the right. The purple hairs have reminded people of the antenna of a moth which is why the plant is called "Moth". The pollen is orange. A purple style is tipped with a green stigma. (I had to look up these terms.) Incoming pollen is deposited on the stigma. A pollen grain then expands and sends a very fine tube down the style and into the ovary where the genetic material from the pollen is combined with an egg to start the growth of a seed.
A mystery. On the left we see a trail made by an animal. The trail starts at the creek. It continues in the middle photo. In the right photo the trail goes straight to the Oregon Crabapple. I followed it under the canopy of branches. The trail did not appear to continue. On the ground were lots of crabapples and, perhaps, the faint odor of vinegar. No bark had been eaten. Perhaps the nutrias gather here for desert?
Coyote scat, probably. We hear them. Sometimes we see them. And then there is scat. Generally, it is left in conspicuous places. A business card. Or maybe Kilroy was here.
Another mystery. While standing near the creek after a while the creek started making plop-plop sounds. Something was coming to the surface and quickly going back down. I spent some time photographing these events. Later, I found most of the photos showed nothing. There was a frog nearby playing dead. Still a mystery.
Red Osier Dogwood (Cornus sericea) -- August 19, 2020
This native dogwood shrub is common in our wetland. It has small clusters of four petal flowers. Some of the shrubs were obviously planted for wetland remediation but others appear to be natural. In the fall and winter sometimes the bark is distinctively red. When I needed a photo of the flower I searched this website and found that it had been left out.
Great Blue Heron (Ardea herodias) -- August 21, 2020
Starting at top left, the pounce and following activity. We watched the heron stalking, motionless for long periods of time. When I returned with the camera the stalking phase was over and I just captured part of the pounce. My friend, Walt, tells me that adults are more colorful and have plumes atop their heads.
Please Contribute to this Website
I was pleased that Jan Ford loaned me some older photos of the wetlands. Please feel free to contribute if you have photos or take photos. What would be especially nice is to find someone who can identify birds and could supply photos of the birds we have. Having more contributors will help make this website a community project.
Downy Woodpecker (Dryobates pubescens) -- August 21, 2020
I submitted the photo on the left to Google Images and it identified the photo as "Downy Woodpecker". That looks right to me. It is spooky when a computer program can seemingly ignore the branches and identify the bird. The following is from Walt. He points out that only males have the red spot on their head. Hairy Woodpeckers are larger, the size of a robin, and their bills are about as long as the diameter of their heads. What is amazing is that the Hairy Woodpecker's plumage is the same as the downy. The speculation is that the Downy Woodpecker benefits by mimicking the Hairy Woodpecker.
A hiker below the houses on the far side of the field.
Nodding Beggarticks (Bidens cernua) -- August 31, 2020
Here is what I saw from our deck a few days ago. Two years ago this area was a pasture.
The brown plants in the distance are Willowherb that has gone to seed. I was also able to recognize areas of Cattails. But I was unable to identify the shrubs in the middle of the field.
Thru binoculars I could see yellow flowers and I guessed that these were Nodding Beggarticks. I had seen a couple bushes last year and was wondering why I had not seen them this year.
Today, I attempted to walk over to these plant to get a closer view. I discovered that all of the ground in the field is a swamp. My boots got wet and mud splashed onto my pants. Eventually, I found some of the bushes that I could approach without getting water into my boots.
I took this photo at a distance. Any closer and I would get water in my boots. We see lots of flowers that resemble small sunflowers. The leaves are long and pointed and they come in pairs. We see a bumble bee. There are many flower buds that have not yet opened. This is a late summer and fall plant.
Flowers are usually about an inch across with eight ray petals.
A spider hides in full view, waiting for a small insect.
The back of the flower. People and pollinators look at the front side of the flower. Botanists look at the backside. Why? The front side of different species of flowers tend to look the same. Pollinators only visit flowers that look right to them. Flowers that don't look right don't get pollinated and don't make seeds. Thru this action pollinators reinforce flowers that look right and this may cause unrelated flowers to look very similar from the front. However, the back sides of similar looking flowers may be very different making flower identification easier.
Before this flower opened it was enclosed in "sepals". Sepals are modified leaves that protect the flower bud. In this photo we see green sepals that once protected the bud. Look at the arrow and you can see a second set of sepals that are not green. These sepals are unusual and really help with the identification.
This photo, by Steve Hurst of the ARS Systematic Botany and Mycology Laboratory, shows the seeds. If you look closely at the three or four projections you will see that there are barbs. These barbs help the seeds get caught in animal fur and on clothing. I presume that when these seed became attached to people's clothing it reminded people of ticks, resulting in "tick" being in the plant's name. This plant is also called Nodding Bur-Marigold. Later in the year many of the flower heads will start to point downward.
This is the view from near the weeping willow trees looking back toward some of the townhomes.
Normally the rabbits next to the rock wall don't let me get very close. This time I happened to catch this rabbit by surprise and my camera was ready. The rabbit does blend in and for a few moments it decided to stay motionless. Then it vanished into the rocks of the wall.
Continue to September, 2020