After yesterday’s break in the weather, gray skies returned.
I did not have time for any observations before calls for work started. By the time I was done with them, I was pushing for daylight to get my three observations for the day.
I needed to go to UAS to do a tech check for the talk I’m doing tomorrow evening, so I thought I would stop by Swan Lake and some other places along the waterfront to grab some photos of birds.
Unfortunately, there was a road grader working right by the peninsula at Swan Lake, so it wasn’t a great time to stop (and there weren’t many birds). I was surprised to see no birds at the turnaround on flood tide, and near Eliason Harbor parking lot, I only saw a couple of Buffleheads and a distant group of mergansers.
The channel seemed similarly empty, with just a few Long-tailed Ducks out in the middle.
On my way across the bridge I saw the crows staging for their nightly flight to roost, but it did not seem wise to stop for a picture of them.
I checked down by the work float in case any crows were still straggling, but they had all gone. Fortunately, I noticed some bright orange on a branch that had been pruned and left to rot.
While taking pictures of it, I noticed a couple of other fungi also working on the same branch, so I took pictures of them. I suspected one may be a repeat of a previously observed species, and another is probably one I will have trouble ever getting a name for, so I decided to go for a couple of other things, and grabbed an empty shell on the ramp in front of UAS, plus a picture of some dune grass (Leymus mollis) which, though yellow and getting brittle, was still standing near where I picked up the shell.
My iNaturalist Observations for Today
