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It’s a Bird! It’s a Frog! It’s….a Mouse?

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By Emily Jankowski

 

 

“I mentioned there would be bushwhacking, right?”

“Yeah, but you did leave out the rock climbing so…”

I paused to pour sand and gravel out of my boot. We were either following or making a trail through one of our stewardship sites owned by Seattle City Light. It was sometimes hard to tell the difference. The steep and crumbly stream banks we had scrambled up and down however, were definitely not meant to be crossed that way. Or any way that I had seen. All things considered, we had done well just by making it to the other side without either of us falling in the water. As we continued trekking across the site, a sense of high adventure persisted. Any step could lead up to the edge of another precipitous stream channel and almost anything could be lurking in the woods!

A bit later in the day we walked a site that was no less exciting, but actually had a few trails. The thin, winding paths led us gently down toward the river. Under a few tall trees along the bank we found small piles of salmon bones. Although a bit morbid, the bones were a welcome sign of conservation working well, as wildlife apparently made good use of the area, staying well supplied with salmon. We continued along the shoreline, enjoying the cool shade of massive cedars and imagining how long they must have grown so near the water yet never quite being washed out by the fickle changes in the river’s path. A common merganser heard us coming and fled in a noisy rush of wings, bringing us abruptly back to the present. Our path led to a peaceful, muddy shore stamped with elk tracks. In front of us was a calm and wide stream, in stark contrast to the rushing Skagit just to our right. The sun warmed us as we paused a minute to watch small fish swimming in the sheltered waters. Birds sang in the trees and occasionally flew through the open airspace over the channel. The place felt like a secret treasure that I didn’t want to leave behind.

Unfortunately, we did eventually have to turn back. We retraced our steps partway and then turned to cross another section of the site. In a grove under some large trees we found a robin’s egg shell. Suddenly, movement caught my eye. Something small and furry had darted across my path and toward the base of one of the nearby trees.

“I thought I saw…a mouse? Or something fast? But it was…hopping.”

“An Oregon jumping frog?” Bengt asked.

“Well uh, no I don’t think so, it was definitely furry” I answered, volunteering the only visual detail of which I was certain. I moved slowly into a new position to see the base of the tree between the ferns.

“It’s a thing!”

“I believe it’s a thing, but it’s not this thing” I said, finally able to point out what I had only glimpsed the motion of before. Sure enough, a small mammal with dark brown fur and long white back legs clung near the base of the tree. Now that it wasn’t moving, it was clearly mouse-shaped. I took a couple cautious pictures with my cell phone before we scared our new friend away. It’s not every day you see an animal that moves like a frog but looks like a mouse. A quick internet search back at the office identified it as a pacific jumping mouse. So each of our instincts was about one third right.

No longer on a trail, we got hopelessly tangled up in the brush on our way back to the car. Even our most determined efforts made little progress. Sometimes the best way out is through, but often it pays better to change your approach. We muscled our way into a small clearing off to the side of the “path” we had been trying to make. From there we found a much easier way through and it wasn’t long until we made it back to the road. Reaching the truck closed one chapter of the day’s adventures as surely as it opened the next. In one day we bushwhacked, scrambled up and down steep slopes, saw wildlife and its signs, checked up on restoration plantings, decided on future actions to help sites, walked boundaries, and more. It was a busy and rewarding way to spend the day. Outside, helping to keep our watershed healthy.

Bivalve Buddies

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By Emily Jankowski

 

Freshwater mussel in the stream.

For the rest of the ecosystem, salmon migration is something of a taxi service. Mostly this means bringing nutrients from the ocean upstream again, but some slower moving animals take it a bit more literally. The larval stage of freshwater mussels, known as glochidia, hitchhikes on fish in order to colonize new areas of streams and rivers. Don’t worry, the fish are not bothered by their passengers!

When ready, glochidia drop off of the fish and settle to the bottom to make a home among the sediment. Often mussels will use their foot to pull themselves into a position that offers them protection among the rocks while also giving them plenty of access to food in the current. Because mussels are filter feeders, they help to clean our waterways just by living in them! And for many animals, including otters, muskrats, and raccoons, mussels are a favorite meal. Piles of empty shells are a common site along mussel-bearing streams, hinting at the predators and prey you may not see. If they don’t get eaten first, mussels can live 60 or 70 years. Some individuals have even been known to reach 100 years old!

Emily excited to have found a western pearlshell!

Mussels can blend in easily with the rocks in the stream, but not too long ago we got lucky and noticed one in Friday Creek (pictured). It appears to be a western pearlshell mussel (Margaritifera falcata). Like most mussels in our region, it favors salmonids as a host for its glochidia stage. Perhaps this mussel was once attached to the gills of a chinook! And if we’re lucky, the salmon we help make good habitat for today will host the glochidia of future mussels-that will grow up to help clean the water for future salmon!

Freshwater mussels across the US are struggling to keep up in a world that once harvested their shells for buttons and continues to pollute and sediment load their waters. Many species are endangered. If you’re interested in freshwater mussels, check out @musselsPNW for more information, or this section of the Xerces Society website for additional resources.

 

When Going With the Flow Leaves You Stranded

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By Erin Matthews

Chum salmon begin their life in a nest (called a Redd) built by their parents in a gravel bottomed stream usually in the lower sections of the river.  At barely an inch long, these newly hatched masters of evasion and disguise are only visible by a vigilant human observer.   Unlike other species of salmon, chum begin the long, treacherous,  journey to the ocean immediately after hatching—before they are even strong enough to swim against the currant!  They drift to the ocean, occasionally resting in off-channel habitat such as sloughs or ponds to rest, take shelter from the awesome power of the Skagit river currents, and to feed on bugs or plankton.  Those tiny fry that are lucky and strong enough to dodge birds, bigger fish, and other predators, spend a few months growing larger and stronger at the mouth of the river and estuary before leaving for the wide open ocean. 

But if a little chum takes refuge in a pond or slough, what happens if the river drops and strands them?  That is a question that the Skagit Fisheries Enhancement Group field staff were pondering on a lovely sunny Monday afternoon in early May.  At a stewardship site near Concrete WA called the Lower Baker Flood Plain, a team of staff, and volunteers dropped a research net into a pond that (despite being only a few meters from the banks of the river) had been disconnected from the Skagit for several weeks.  In a perfect, simple world, by early May all Skagit chum fry would be fat and happy living in the estuary where the Skagit River merges with Skagit Bay. 

Much to our surprise, we netted 17 chum in the shallow end of the pond.  Staff carefully recorded size and species of each individual fish, noting that these fish were especially large and well fed for their age, before releasing them back into the pond.  These little fish were doing well for now, no doubt benefiting from the nurturing environment of the pond which offered an abundance of shelter, food, and a water temperature cool enough for high dissolved oxygen levels but warm enough for the fry to grow larger faster than their counterparts in colder Skagit River water. 

Chum rarely rear in fresh water, and when they do they still must reach the ocean by the end of summer in order to survive.  Luckily for these fish, a heat wave washed over the Skagit in mid-May, which rapidly kick started spring snow melt and raised the water level of the Skagit enough to reconnect the pond and river, creating an exit for the fry.  If all goes well, the next time SFEG drops the research net into the Lower Baker Flood Plain pond we will not find any salmon.