true_islander's Identifications

Two female Pine Grosbeaks. They were foraging on a gravel road, and bathing in a puddle before shaking themselves off in a tree and then flying away. Very tame birds, as I did not even see them until I was about 15 feet away and they were unfazed that I had gotten so close.

Mapped location not exact for privacy reasons.

I had been squatting in one spot for several minutes, intently trying to photograph some small mushrooms growing out of a fallen branch. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw a line of bright orange or red wriggling quite quickly through the leaf litter. The only thing my brain could think of at first was "worm", but it was far too quick and the wrong color. I carefully inched towards it and realized with immense excitement and delight that it was a Red-backed Salamander! All of the darker portions of its body were difficult to discern from the wet ground and leaf litter below, thus effectively creating the illusion I had seen earlier of a thin wriggling line of bright color. I waited patiently for quite some time in hopes that it would start moving again so that I could photograph its head and tail too, but it stubbornly refused to give me anything more than this mid-section shot. It's never been my thing to try and handle amphibians and I really didn't want to harass or try to chase it through the thick leaf litter, so I went back to photographing the mushrooms and noted a short while later that it had slipped out of sight. I have been hoping to find this species for more than a decade now. This was the last amphibian species left for me to document on Vashon, and though my photo is not everything I hoped for, the moment of discovery and lasting memory are just perfect. :-)

I was carefully turning over wet leaf litter looking for interesting arthropods and was happily surprised to find this little one tucked underneath a large maple leaf. I took a few very quick photos and then covered it back up with the leaf. It remained motionless the entire time.