December 10 - Woodard Bay Preserve

I drove out to Woodard Bay Preserve to see if I could find the Long-tailed Duck that Kyle Leader saw there last Friday.  The State acquired the property in 1987 and the Legislature designated it as a Natural Resources Conservation Area, administered by the Washington Dept. of Natural Resources, after the Weyerhaeuser Company closed its South Bay Log Dump facility.  I got there just as a light rain shower started, but it finished pretty quickly, and is just another reminder that in the Pacific Northwest: If you don’t recreate in the rain, you don’t recreate!

Woodard Bay in the rain . . .

I walked the ¾ mile walk down Witham Road, which is the trail along the paved, but abandoned, roadbed that goes out to the old WeyCo log dump.

The creosote-laden remnants of the piers and pilings provide habitat for important wildlife species like bats, seals, herons and cormorants.  However, these structures also obstruct important nearshore processes and contribute to the degradation of water quality. The DNR did a study, after which it removed 2100 tons of creosoted-material including the Woodard Bay railroad trestle, half of the Chapman Bay trestle, 600 anchor pilings from Henderson Inlet, and 12,000 cubic yards of fill from Woodard Bay.

Chapman Bay Trestle - There are thousands of bats here in the summer!

Half of the old trestle was left, as it is Washington State’s largest known bat colony, hosting over 3,000 Yuma and Little Brown Bats.  They also left a number of pilings where Harbor Seals haul out on the old log booms, making it one of the most important seal haul-outs in south Puget Sound.  There were about 4 dozen seals hauled out while I was there, and quite a few others in the water.

Log Boom with Harbor Seals and Double-crested Cormorants

There were also over 150 cormorants at the log booms, a few hundred ducks and grebes in the water, but I didn’t find the Long-tailed Duck.

Barrow's Goldeneye hen giving me the stink-eye

I returned along the Loop Trail, which was fairly quiet bird-wise, although there were lots of Pacific Wrens in the forest.

Licorice Ferns on Bigleaf Maple

 I ended up paying more attention to the mushrooms.

Witches' Butter

The Witches’ Butter (Tremella mesenterica or Dacrymyces palmatus?), is a Basidiomycete “jelly fungus”.  Back in my younger days, I used to add this, raw, to my salads for a bit of rubbery texture and for its color.  I’ve since read that you shouldn’t eat this raw, but I’d never heard of anyone having issues.  Of course: People are poisoned every year by eating wild mushrooms, often from eating a poisonous species that resembles an edible species. Although deaths are rare, there is no cure short of a liver transplant for severe poisoning!  Do not eat any mushroom unless you are absolutely certain of its identity! Do not trust my identification of Witch’s butter – be sure to cross reference my information with minimum two, preferably three other credible sources.

I was taken by these little white-and-black fungi growing from some decomposing wood.  This is an ascomycete: Xylaria hypoxylon, commonly called the Candlesnuff Fungus, appears throughout the year but is particularly noticeable during late autumn and winter. This ubiquitous little rotter is one of the pyromycetes or flask fungi and one of the last fungi to attack rotting wood.

Candlesnuff Fungus

Pat O’Reilley at First-Nature notes that “… while physically it seems to suggest a relevant physical comparison, the common name Candlesnuff Fungus is something of an enigma. It suggests something that once emitted light but no longer does so; however, in reality it is a bioluminescent fungus, and in a really dark place it can be seen to emit light continually as phosphorus accumulated within the mycelium reacts with oxygen and other chemicals in the fungus. Unfortunately the amount of light from this and most other bioluminescent fungi is very weak indeed, and to see it clearly you need either an image intensifier (such as those built in to night sights used by soldiers and spies) or to take a long-exposure photograph in a totally dark room."

I have no idea what these ‘shrooms are, but they looked photogenic

Random white mushrooms - Give me a holler if you know what they are

As I completed my walk, the sun came out and illuminated the Bay.  A fitting end to a late autumn excursion

Woodard Bay in the late afternoon sun

Woodard Bay Preserve eBird checklist here