7-Dec-2017 Mowich Road, Washington

Site location map. Click to enlarge

Rod Crawford and I had originally planned to sample east of Wilkeson along South Prairie Creek in Pierce County. But en route on the highway, something we ran over got stuck in the undercarriage and was dragging. Luckily, there happened to be a Jiffy Lube near our exit in Bonney Lake, and the folks there removed the "hitchhiker" for us (for free -- thanks, guys!). Since the road to South Prairie Creek was known to be quite rough, and we weren't sure of the condition of the undercarriage, we opted for an alternate trip plan that Rod had prepared. Our new destination became a stretch of Mowich Section Road (Rte 165) south of Carbonado.

Loose bark on fallen tree...

...harbored male Coriarachne
brunneipes, among others

Rod had carefully chosen the original and alternate sites because the region was experiencing a temperature inversion; both sites were high enough in elevation to be in warmer air than the lowlands, but not so high in elevation as to be snowbound. Or so we thought! As it turned out, any shaded ground was blanketed with snow. This meant that much of the forest understory would be unavailable for sampling. However, conifer foliage and sun-exposed roadside vegetation were dry, so we thoroughly sampled those microhabitats. In addition, Rod was able to find some cold but still productive alder litter, and I found a fallen tree suspended above snow level that had a variety of spiders beneath its sloughing bark.

Cone source was a dead tree

All cones were well opened

The snow created a problem for me in particular in that if there were any fallen cones, they were now buried. So I opted to tap the only cones available: Douglas-fir (Pseudotsuga menziesii) cones still attached to a dead tree. I picked and then tapped 34 cones and found one salticid exuvium and five juvenile spiders: two indeterminate salticids, one Cyclosa, one Araneus ?diadematus, and one Philodromus rufus. In other words, a typically arboreal sample.

You can read Rod's trip narrative here.

Oh no, snow!