Life on the Outer Coast

Thursday, June 14th

I was happy to wake up to a sunny day since it was the day selected for a hike up Verstovia with the Forest Ecology class. We couldn’t have done the trip as a class without the help of an RA, Emily. We recorded trailside vascular plant species at 500 ft and every 250ft elevation gain after that to 2250ft. We took a few notes at our lunch site at 2340, but weren’t very thorough at that stop.

We first picked up Chamaecyparis nootkatensis at the 1000 ft, Cladothamnus pyrolaeflorus (or is that Elliotia?) at 1380, Tsuga mertensiana at 1500ft and Harrimanella stellerina at 1680, Veratrum viride at 2000ft stop and Luetkea pectinata at 2250. The next class trip we’ll stop at staggered elevations so that I have a better sense of the changes, maybe starting at 400ft. I still want to get a clearer idea of what elevation Picea sitchensis becomes more abundant, but I’m not there yet. On Verstovia it seemed to be around 1900 to 2000 ft.

It was the first climb up a mountain for 5 of the 7 girls, I think that having the releve stops helped a few of the girls make it to the top. It was a challenge for most of the class, but they seemed to be happy that they had pushed themselves.


There was Vaccinium ovalifolium and Coptis asplenifolia blooming on the ridge. It was difficult to listen to birds with all of the ipods and chatter, but I did notice several robins in the trees around the meadow at the ridge.
The Placopsis gelida was rather abundant on the rocks by the ropes.

June 15th
One of the girls found a live, but lost fledgling Townsend’s warbler in the middle of Nelson Logging Rd. today. She just barely saw it in time to avoid stepping on the bird. She moved it to the side of the road. The fledging didn’t make a sound, but the parents were chipping at us rather insistently.

I caught a couple of lovely yellow-green flies which I refrigerated in hopes of getting a photo. Hopefully they will survive until Monday in the lab refrigerator.