Blog post #4 Edmonds marsh

 

The Edmonds Marsh is a very important estuary to the region, providing a critical rest stop for over 200 species of birds. It also functions as a home for both salt and fresh water loving creatures which allows for wide variety of species one sees throughout the year. Unfortunately, I wasn't able to find our class on the Carkeek trip, so I don't think I was able to see the same wetlands the rest of the class experienced on the trip. Due to this I'm unable to compare the two.

After reading about the large amount of migratory birds that visit the marsh I was expecting to see a lot of activity on my trip, but I encountered no such thing. The only non-plant organisms I encountered were a common yellow jacket and two Great Blue Herons (pictured above). Even then, I can only assume it was that type of heron, as they were too far away to get a particularly good look. It was interesting to see how the heron's interacted with there environment. Most birds are very moment to moment and flitty creatures while the herons seemed like much more patient and pensive. I watched them for about 10 minutes straight and the heron that was fishing hardly moved save for its neck and beak, while the other tucked its head away and slept. The plant life on the other hand was dense. Most of that space was occupied by Washington's native cattail species, typha latifolia. Other than that, there were a few other tall grasses I sketched but was unable to identify. 

On the subject of restoring estuaries, I think the priority should be to restore the area to it's original function. Although non native plants and other organisms can cause complications, if they aren't too major, the function of the estuary is vital to migrating birds. Since the area does have these migrating species, rather than purely native animals, the non native vegetation may cause less complications due to the diversity of species. 

This trip was actually pretty informative. I was previously unaware of the function of estuaries and now know a lot more thanks to the informative placards at the site. I think it's cool that the area is also able to still serve it's purpose even with a lot of development surrounding it. 

My question is: why were the animals so sparse? Was I too far away to observe, do they use the tall grass as cover, or has the development surrounding the area put a damper on the amount that want to migrate there?