Playing The Pitiful Card

Day 349: If ever there were experts at playing the "pitiful" card, Grey Jays would take the prize. Their call is a plaintive mew, not unlike that of a very young kitten, and they understand the power of eye contact, shifting their glance from your trail snacks to your own eyes in obvious interspecies communication. Don't tell me I'm anthropomorphizing. I've studied the corvids and I've lived with psittacines. The term "bird brain" should be considered a compliment. They understand stimulus and response, the "stimulus" being their heart-rending begging and the "response" that you share your lunch with them. If you analyze that closely, it's a bit more sophisticated than pecking a green button to get a treat from a laboratory dispenser. They know how to work an audience.

The issues involved in feeding wild birds are complex, and humans aren't really the brightest crayons in the box when it comes to understanding anything more complicated than "Do this" and "Don't do that." The average hiker sees no difference between giving a Grey Jay a graham cracker and giving it a few raw unsalted sunflower seeds. The reward for the human is the same: Jay sits on your hand or your head, and you get to take a picture to share on Facebook. The Jay, on the other hand, gets a mouthful of chemicals, sugar and processed grain in the case of the graham cracker, or something not too far removed from its normal diet which is digestible and nutritious from the sunflower seeds. I am not against feeding wild birds outside the Park; I am against feeding them the wrong foods. That said, I speak out against the practice in general because humans are largely ineducable on the finer points. But no, the Sheep Lake lot didn't talk me out of my figs.

All For One Demo LIchen

Day 346: On October 6, I will be giving an "Introduction to Lichens" presentation for the Nisqually Land Trust, an indoor "nature walk" (as it were). To that end, over the next week and a half, I will need to gather specimens for demonstration, and of course I can't collect from inside the Park. Obviously, this means I'm going to need to go a bit farther afield, "farther" in this case meaning a 7-mile hike (round trip) out to Sheep Lake in order to obtain a sample of Letharia vulpina, a particularly interesting species. Since I was going to be hiking the PCT from Chinook Pass to Sheep, it seemed only logical to tack another 3.5 miles on in order to complete a MeadoWatch hike on Naches Loop. The weather could have been better, but the missions were both accomplished. Joe Dreimiller's assistance was greatly appreciated since he was able to reach a second lichen species (Bryoria fremontii) and pulled a chunk of it down out of a subalpine fir with his trekking pole. The remainder of my chosen samples will be easier to obtain from sites much closer to home.

Forecast Missed Mist

Day 345: It was certainly not the wettest or the coldest hike I've taken, but it was also not precisely the pleasant 45-degree, 20 percent chance of precipitation the forecast model was bold enough to suggest. Joe Dreimiller and I started out for Sheep Lake in thick mist in all our available layers of clothing: rain gear, gloves or mittens, warm hats and longjohns, shedding only one layer halfway there when we both began to overheat. "Just let me have one moment of sun at the lake," Joe implored the Weather Gods. They obliged with a two-minute break, but then followed it up with an increase in moisture and gusty winds. Sheep completed the first portion of our day's mission. There, I was able to gather a few specimens of lichen on the list of those I plan to demonstrate to participants in an upcoming indoor "nature walk" for the Nisqually Land Trust. A MeadoWatch circuit of Naches Loop Trail filled out the day, my last for the season. In total, we spent six hours in drizzle and hiked eleven bracing miles.