Field reports

The understory along the trails at Sehome Hill Arboretum is dense and green right now, the bigleaf maples and vine maples filling in overhead so fully that the light comes through in patches. Down in the shrub layer, Indian plum has already made its move. While most shrubs are still in flower or just beginning to set fruit, Indian plum is ahead of all of them. The small, olive-colored fruits hang in loose clusters from branches that leafed out back in late winter, the earliest woody plant in the understory to do so. By early summer, those fruits are ripening to blue-black, and the Steller's jays know it. Indian plum is a native shrub of the Pacific Coast understory, common in second-growth forests, woodland edges, and the kind of mixed shrubby habitat that runs through the arboretum here. It flowers in late winter, sometimes while snow is still possible, and fruits months before most other shrubs in the same community. Oceanspray, which is blooming right now with its creamy white flower clusters, won't fruit until late summer. Snowberry holds its white berries into fall. Indian plum doesn't wait. That early fruiting is the point: it makes itself available at a moment when almost nothing else does, and the jays are one of the animals that takes full advantage of it. Steller's jays are corvids, closely related to crows and ravens, and they carry the intelligence of that family into everything they do with food. They don't just eat what's in front of them. They cache. A jay will take a fruit, sometimes swallow it whole, sometimes carry it to a branch and work it apart with its bill, and sometimes fly off with it to store it somewhere else entirely. In nesting season, which is happening right now, the behavior shifts slightly. Adults are feeding young, which means they need high-energy food reliably and often. Indian plum's fruits are small but calorie-dense, and the timing lines up with the period when jay pairs are making the most trips back to the nest. If you hear that sharp, scolding call somewhere in the canopy above you, and then a brief silence, and then the rustle of something moving through leaves, there's a reasonable chance a jay just landed in an Indian plum and is working through the cluster. The relationship runs in both directions. Steller's jays are effective seed dispersers. A jay that swallows an Indian plum fruit whole and flies two hundred meters before digesting it has moved that seed somewhere the parent plant never could. The seeds that pass through a bird's gut often germinate more readily than those that fall directly beneath the parent shrub, partly because the pulp has been removed and partly because they land somewhere with less competition from the parent plant's own root system. Indian plum's early fruiting isn't just about being first to attract birds; it concentrates dispersal at a moment when jays are active, hungry, and moving constantly through the forest. The plant is not passive in this. It produces fruits with thin, easily digested flesh around a hard pit, a structure that rewards quick consumption and increases the chance the seed survives the trip. Other birds use Indian plum too. Swainson's thrushes are moving through the arboretum right now, and they take fruit when they find it. Chestnut-backed chickadees will occasionally pick at the soft flesh. But Steller's jays are the most consistent and probably the most effective dispersers here, given their size, their range, and the distances they travel. The crows are present as well, and they'll take the fruit, but crows tend to work more open ground. The jays are the ones moving through exactly the kind of dense shrubby understory where Indian plum grows. The oceanspray is in full flower along the sunny edges right now, white and fragrant, and that will be the next chapter. But look into the shadier parts of the understory, where the Indian plum branches hang low and the fruit clusters are visible if you stop and focus. The fruits are small, maybe the size of a blueberry, dark against the green leaves. Watch for a few seconds. The jays don't stay long in one place.

Common milkweed is at peak flower this week, and monarchs first arrived on April 4—nearly a month ahead of the historical mid-May median. Early-arriving adults face a precarious window: host plants can still be sparse at that time, and a hard frost would be catastrophic. Yet this year, the timing has converged almost perfectly. By late April, females were already laying eggs on milkweed growing at a frantic pace, seizing the abundance now visible overhead. This early cohort will undergo two to three generations before the final brood emerges in late summer and heads south to Mexico—the same migratory generation that will survive through the winter in the oyamel forests. The phenological mismatch that threatens monarchs in other regions has, for now, dissolved into synchrony here.

Bobolinks and Eastern Meadowlarks — both now threatened — were both present here in mid-June, right at the heart of nesting season. Their arrival marks the start of some of the most vulnerable months in their year. Both species have collapsed to less than half the numbers they held in the 1970s, a decline driven largely by one mismatch in timing: farmers now cut hay in late May or early June, precisely when nesting bobolinks and meadowlarks are incubating eggs or tending nestlings. For bobolinks, the loss is especially acute — they fly here from the Argentine pampas each spring, and an early cut erases the entire season's reproductive effort. Late June cutting would allow most of the first brood to fledge, but the window for that timing grows narrower every year as agricultural schedules compress.

Water temperature reached 24.7°C today — a threshold that triggers acute thermal stress across the Cahaba River basin's rarest freshwater fauna. The endemic fish and mussels of this system rank among North America's most endangered, finely tuned to cool, clean spring flow. This single warm day is a symptom of a far larger problem: the two major waterways here are federally designated as impaired, with no restoration plans yet adopted. More than half of the region's permitted wastewater and industrial dischargers are operating in significant non-compliance, yet not a single penalty has been assessed. The regulatory framework is in place—one stream has a recovery plan on paper—but enforcement has stalled. When thermal and chemical stress arrive simultaneously at a basin so ecologically narrow, the margin for recovery narrows with the season.

Ebony Jewelwings (Calopteryx maculata) are on the wing this June — three adults patrolling the riffles in classic jewelwing fashion, their dark wings catching the light. For a stream ecologist, their presence is like finding a canary in the coal mine, except the opposite: their iridescent bodies confirm that water quality here is still acceptable. Jewelwings demand low sediment and high dissolved oxygen; they cannot tolerate silt. What makes that reassuring right now is the facility upstream, which dumped suspended solids at more than double its permitted level in both December and March. Stream recovery has a peculiar chronology: sediment stays in motion longer than we think, filling riffles and smothering the substrate where mayflies and damselflies depend on clean gravel. The jeweled damselflies vanish before the damage becomes obvious to the eye — they are early warning, not confirmation. The fact that they're still here suggests the water is holding, so far.

A Pacific invasive alga (Rugulopteryx okamurae) has now colonized three sites along this coast, from Hondarribia to Guéthary, with the northernmost record appearing just last summer. The species first arrived in Europe in 2002 and has been expanding steadily southward; its presence here marks a significant range extension into waters that were once beyond its reach. On southern Iberian shores, this brownish-red alga smothers native wracks and the dense invertebrate communities they shelter. Early summer is when its growth peaks most visibly, and the incoming year will likely bring further spread as water temperatures and seasonal conditions favor its establishment. The ecological consequences of displacement — reduced habitat complexity, shifts in food webs, loss of breeding ground for small crustacea and fish — remain poorly quantified but are certain to accumulate as the invasion deepens.

Tiburon mariposa lily (Calochortus tiburonensis) is fading from the serpentine hills here — a bloom window that closes by late June each year. This lily exists nowhere else on Earth, and its toxic, nutrient-poor soils have been its shield: where those minerals discourage invaders, the plant persists. Science only named it in 1971; for millennia before that, it simply bloomed and endured. About 200 observations documented the bloom across May and into June this year. The Marin dwarf-flax, another federally threatened serpentine endemic, blooms alongside it — two rare plants sustained by the same hostile substrate that has excluded the competition and development that would have erased them long ago.

American Bumble Bees (Bombus pensylvanicus) are persisting here with surprising frequency — over sixty confirmed sightings across the metro area over the past year, from spring bloom through late autumn. This species is federally threatened and has vanished from more than 90% of its historical range, making every sustained population a small victory against the broader collapse. Yet the ecological context remains dire. Fifteen of the twenty-five waterways assessed within a few miles of the most active sighting clusters are officially impaired — streams where dissolved oxygen runs chronically low and excess nutrients choke out aquatic life. The bee's survival here speaks less to landscape health than to the resilience of a generalist forager finding enough unmowed margins, roadside weeds, and woody patches to feed on while the waters around it fail. It is a fragmented landscape, but it is still holding something. That matters.

Fifteen dragonfly species patrolled Lady Bird Lake this week, their nymphs having emerged into adult form during the spring's flowing water. Among them was the Narrow-striped Forceptail (Aphylla protracta), a species that demands the vigorous current and oxygenation of flowing streams. Its presence this season speaks to conditions that were, until very recently, favorable for this kind of specialist. But the gauge tells a harder story. Creek flow touched zero in late June and now holds at just 0.24 cubic feet per second—a fraction of the seasonal average of 4.34. The nymphs that emerged in spring's abundance are gone, transformed and adult. Whether their offspring find enough water to complete their own development is the question hanging over the lake. In low-flow summers, dragonfly larvae crowded into shrinking pools face mounting stress from heat and competition. The species that thrives on flowing water may find itself, by midsummer, in standing water—or none at all.

Flat-headed mayflies (Maccaffertium spp.) emerged here in late May—a remarkable sign of clean gravel and flowing water. Within two weeks, the Muskingum swelled to nearly 3,800 cubic feet per second, a surge that scours the streambed and dislodges the larvae these insects depend on to complete their life cycle. Nearly 90 percent of assessed water bodies in this region are officially impaired. The mayflies' brief presence—fragile as it is—marks a narrow window of habitat quality in a landscape where most streams carry the legacy of mining, agriculture, and industrial discharge. Whether they will find stable ground to emerge again next spring depends on whether the flood-scour doesn't erase what little recovery has begun.

Orca sightings have been steady through spring — 57 records over six months, with both ecotypes present as of mid-June. The mix matters: Resident and Transient orca have very different diets and seasonal patterns, and seeing them together suggests variable prey availability across the region. Humpback whales are also moving through, 23 sightings in the same window, and the pattern tells a food-web story. Humpbacks have rebounded partly because Pacific herring populations are stable enough to support their spring feeding. Southern Resident orca, by contrast, feed almost exclusively on Chinook salmon — and those populations have not kept pace with recovery. One humpback sighting can mask the struggles underneath.

Henslow's Sparrow (Ammodramus henslowii) held territory this June alongside Bobolinks and two declining checkerspots — Baltimore Checkerspot and Silvery Checkerspot — along with flowering prairie false indigo and wood lily. These species signal something rare: intact native prairie holding its ground in the Pecatonica watershed. The sparrow's presence is particularly striking — its population collapsed by 95% as fire-maintained grasslands were plowed under, leaving it nearly extirpated from the region. Dickcissel also recorded here. These birds depend on the open structure and native forb diversity that traditional Indigenous burning once sustained. This patch still carries that signature — evidence that long-term stewardship can slow and even reverse some losses, though the wider landscape remains fragmented and threatened by erosion. The East Branch itself still carries the burden of impairment, but the upland prairie quality here offers the river real refuge and recovery potential.

Stream flow has dropped to a bare 74 cubic feet per second — roughly one-fifth of the high-water baseline — as upstream operations push the water column into a narrower, more concentrated state. When flows contract like this in summer heat, dissolved contaminants don't dilute; they concentrate. Mercury, the heavy metal that accumulates through food webs and doesn't break down, climbs steadily into forage fish, then into the herons and eagles that hunt them. The wastewater treatment plant upstream exceeded its mercury permit limit for two consecutive quarters — 38 percent over in Q3, and 27 percent over in Q4 — during a season when the stream's own ability to dilute that load was already failing. Four waterways in this region are already listed as impaired, with total maximum daily loads set by the state. In a system this tight, even small exceedances have room to compound.

Tree swallows are working steadily over the water this June, diving and banking to snatch aquatic insects mid-flight — the kind of feeding activity that looks peaceful but is actually a window into the health of the system below. The two river segments where they hunt are listed on the federal impaired-waters list, which means the water quality here is already documented as compromised. Yet the swallows are still here, still nesting, still feeding. The real test will come in July, when the chicks fledge. Chick survival and condition — how heavy they are, how soon they take to the air — is an ecological ledger that reflects what those insects carry in their bodies. Watershed contamination writes itself into prey quality before it shows in the birds. The fledgling count will tell us whether this margin is holding or closing.

Mississippi Kites are nesting throughout the city this spring—over fifty sightings from City Park south to Plaquemines Parish since late April mark one of the most robust urban breeding seasons in recent memory. The adults are in full hunting mode now, diving through the humid air above streets and rooftops to snatch dragonflies on the wing and carry them back to their nestlings in the canopy. A generation ago, these graceful raptors were rare nesters in New Orleans itself. Their shift into street trees and park oaks is tied directly to the post-Katrina replanting effort: as the city rebuilt its urban forest over the past two decades, the kites followed, finding in those younger trees the combination of nesting cover and open airspace they need. What once seemed like unlikely colonization now reads as ecological recovery—the city's green infrastructure becoming suitable raptor habitat almost by design.

Both showy milkweed and butterfly milkweed opened their flowers this week, marking the start of peak nectar season on the Front Range. These plants are critical refueling stops for monarchs in migration, and their reliable bloom timing anchors the pulse of the entire prairie ecosystem through early summer. Two-tailed Swallowtails have been active along the corridor — four sightings in the past two months confirm the broader butterfly migration is in motion. The landscape is waking up. Water quality remains a shadow over this seasonal renewal. Ralston Creek below continues to carry a pollution burden that triggered federal impairment designation; its cleanup plan remains pending, with no timeline set. For now, the flowering and the insects are thriving — but the stream that once powered this grassland sits on hold.

The stream has collapsed into summer crisis. In a single week, flow dropped nearly 90%—from over 3,100 cubic feet per second to just 419—entering June's heat at a trickle. When breeding season arrives at peak stream temperature and plummeting oxygen, the margin for survival narrows fast. Fish and aquatic insects that depend on cool, well-oxygenated water face acute stress exactly when they most need flowing habitat to reproduce. This basin has a long history of contested flows, and the ecological scars show. In past dry years, these low-water episodes have collapsed mussel beds downstream—communities that took decades to establish. What happens in the coming weeks will depend on how long the trickle persists and whether summer storms intervene. For now, the gage is dropping and the water is warming. Close watching is warranted.

Pennsylvania bumble bees (Bombus pensylvanicus) have been active across the metro area since mid-March, with over fifty observations logged through June. These federally threatened pollinators are crucial to spring ephemeral wildflowers and early garden blooms, yet they face a particular vulnerability: bumble bees overheat easily and cannot thermoregulate like honeybees can. Stream temperatures reached 31°C this past week, and the forecast shows peak summer heat ahead. The impaired waterways in this region—including the urban corridors where these bees forage—are already stressed. For an urban bumble bee population already operating at the edge of its ecological range, the real test will come if sustained heat and degraded riparian habitat converge over the coming months.

Austral ladies'-tresses orchids (Spiranthes australis) have bloomed in abundance across Tokyo's park lawns this month — over 40 sightings recorded at Ueno and Shinjuku Gyoen since early June. This native orchid is one of the gentler indicators of ecological continuity in the urban landscape. These orchids survive only where soil disturbance stays light enough for the fungal partners on which they depend. Once they threaded through temple grasslands and undisturbed meadows; now they anchor themselves to the edges of carefully maintained parks, where mowing regimes and visitor management happen to create a tolerable middle ground. Their persistence here speaks less to pristine habitat than to the deliberate restraint of the gardeners who tend these spaces.

Six threatened native orchids bloomed across the flatwoods in mid-June—Rose Pogonia, Simpson's Grasspink, and Leafless Beaked Lady Orchid among them—alongside three other species recorded from Jonathan Dickinson State Park and Savannas Preserve. This density of threatened orchids in a single two-week window is a marker of rare ecological integrity. These ground orchids depend absolutely on mycorrhizal fungi living in intact sandy soil; most of Florida's flatwoods have lost both through drainage and development. The presence of such diversity signals that the soil here retains its original fungal community, undisturbed enough to support plants that vanished from most of the coast decades ago. Where ground orchids bloom, the whole ecosystem—the mosses, sedges, and microbial web beneath—remains functionally intact. In a heavily altered landscape, finding this suggests a conservation priority worth protecting.

Rollins' Twinpod (Physaria rollinsii), a shale-loving mustard found nowhere but the Gunnison Basin, logged 24 sightings this spring across the shale slopes—one of its better-documented seasons. The rosettes emerged early in the dry year, their four-petaled flowers brief and bright against the south-facing terrain. Cheatgrass (Bromus tectorum) co-occurred across the same survey bounds, a pattern worth watching. In dry years the annual invasive can crowd out low-growing natives before they set seed, and with snowpack thinning across the region, twinpod's narrow footprint may grow narrower still. For now, spring moisture gave both species room, but the balance is precarious.

Lewis's Woodpecker (Melanerpes lewis) returned to its cottonwood territory in June, holding the same stretch of riparian woodland where it was spotted in late May. The 25-day interval between sightings suggests the bird is establishing a foothold here — a significant sign given the species' steep decline across the western interior. This cottonwood corridor continues to anchor a remarkably intact riparian ecosystem. Over the past two months, observers have documented 105 bird and wildlife species in the immediate area, a diversity that speaks to the structural and botanical integrity of the forest. For a woodpecker already rare across much of its former range, the presence of mature cottonwoods with suitable foraging substrate and nesting cavities remains critical. As long as the riparian strip holds, there is reason to believe Lewis's Woodpeckers will return.

Rapids Clubtail damselflies (Phanogomphus quadricolor) have returned to the swift reaches this early summer — seven sightings over the week of May 31 through June 7, an encouraging sign for this threatened species' resilience in the region. Their presence here is striking given the upstream context. Both the impounded waters that bookend this stretch—Barton Pond and Argo Pond—carry pollution listings and don't support the demanding habitat this clubtail needs. Yet the free-flowing gravel and cobble habitat between them, where current scours the riverbed clean, remains viable. The river ran 2.5 times its recent average flow on the day of observation, surging to 12.46 feet, conditions that favor both the damselflies and the aquatic prey they depend on. This is a quiet reminder that ecological recovery isn't binary. A threatened species can persist in refugial pockets even when surrounded by degraded water, so long as those patches of clean current remain unbroken.

Buttonbush is in peak bloom from Alexandria to Great Falls — a brief nectar window for bumblebees and sphinx moths. Nineteen of 26 nearby water bodies are officially impaired, yet this native shrub persists in floodplain soils. Not a clean bill of health, but the riparian fringe still holds.