I awoke this morning somewhat unexpectedly motivated to get out somewhere. I debated going for a longer hike, but ultimately settled on a walk over to Indian River. I hadn’t really expected to stop there, but once to the bridge, I found that it was actually a little quieter than one might expect with a road directly overhead. I found a relatively comfortable spot on the rocks in the sun and just relaxed, enjoyed the warmth of the sun, and listened to the sound of water flowing mixed in with muted traffic noise and the occasional singing bird.
The sound of a dipper calling caught my attention, and I looked down under the bridge to see a couple of dippers there. I saw that one of them was a recently fledged bird – I suspect from the nest under the bridge. Mostly the adult(s?) seemed to be leaving it to its own devices, but from time to time they visited it. The young bird did not seem incline to move far, as it stayed on the rocks and shore under the bridge for the remainder of the time I was around (even though it seemed a bit uncomfortable with the attention I gave it).
Stirred to motion by the desire to check out the dipper, I started looking a little more at the vegetation on the down river side of the bridge. There’s a bit of a highwater backwash which deposits sand and such. The herbaceous vegetation was quite lush. I started to notice there were quite a few interesting insects – mostly flies. I know several were flower flies (Syrphidae), but I also saw a couple of different sawflies, and various other sorts of flies that I will need help identifying. It was fun taking pictures of them, with some being more cooperative than others. It’s the sort of situation where a longer macro lens might be handy.
The forecast had been for rain to develop during the day, but the clouds were mostly holding off, so with the sun still shining, it seemed like a good day to visit Harbor Mountain. I hoped to find some blooming bog blueberry (Vaccinium uliginosum), as I recently realized I do not have good pictures of it in bloom, and it’s already beyond that down at low elevations. Despite walking back to the talus field, I did not see any along the trail (there were plenty of dwarf blueberry (Vaccinium caespitosum), however).
This evening was frisbee up at Krueger field. It was sunny when I got there, but by the end, the clouds were definitely starting to move in. There were a couple of cloud formations I thought were interesting and took photographs of. One in particular looked like some sort of flying saucer thing, and the rain falling out of it gave it something extra. Unfortunately it had shifted to a somewhat less dramatic form by the time we were done playing and I had a chance to get some pictures.
(more photos to come)
