Tracking signs of spring in four Seattle parks

This Sunday is Earth Day, a good time to take notice of the natural world. With signs of spring breaking out all over, Seattle parks are a good place to observe the season's best.

Right now, Seattle parks are veritable explosions of new growth as plants and animals within pull out all the stops to make sure they get noticed. This is the time to investigate trails, activities and programs via one of Seattle's four environmental learning centers at Carkeek Park, Discovery Park, Seward Park and Camp Long.

Talk to a park staff member or try out the newly launched SPARC system for online class registration (www.seattle.gov/parks), which brings everything from animal tracking to owl hoots, and bird walks to pond exploration just a click away.

To whet your appetite, we sought out Seattle's keen-eyed (and -eared) park naturalists to find out what's blooming, nesting, splashing and burrowing right now along their local trails.

Seward Park

For Seward Park naturalist Christina Gallegos, spring brings gifts of eagle song and skunk cabbage.

"The cries of the eagles from their nest and the giant 'dinosaur-day' leaves of the skunk cabbage are what I look forward to," said Gallegos, who has been working in Seattle parks for seven years. "After a long winter's sleep, everything begins to wake up, and the smell has a sweet kind of ripeness."

There's plenty of room to sniff on this lush 270-acre peninsula. With the largest stand of old growth in the city, Seward is home to Seattle's oldest Douglas fir, estimated at nearly 500 years old.

"Sometimes people get overwhelmed because we're such a big forested site," Gallegos said, "But you can't get lost ... all trails lead to the water." If you get off course, look for Lake Washington and head to the paved shoreline loop trail and walk either direction to return to the park entrance.

Gallegos begins her spring tour near the amphitheater parking lot, where the bald eagles' nest can be seen in the largest Douglas fir visible to the east. Listen for the wheeling cries of these birds, which have been nesting here for the past 11 years. From here you can walk east into the forest, where (especially at dusk) you might hear the resident barred owls (their hoots sound like, "Who cooks for you?").

Continue through the woods, past several nurse logs covered in mosses and fungi. Nuthatches, brown creepers and pileated woodpeckers can be heard among the blooming hazelnut, salal, huckleberry and osoberry (also known as Indian plum). Continue on the trail past the former fish hatchery, and take a left (north) onto the shoreline trail. Wetlands near the paved pathway are home to the large, waxy leaves and namesake odiferous spiky yellow flowers of skunk cabbage.

The newly planted red-osier dogwoods and willows along the shoreline provide food (insects fall from their stems into the water) and shade for juvenile coho, who spend time here growing strong before heading out to sea. Look closely to spy young fish, 2 ½ to 4 inches long.

From here, head back to the park entrance or explore the rambling trails of the park's northwest quadrant, Gallegos' favorite section for its wilder terrain. "You might have to swing yourself over a downed tree or two, but it's worth it."

Carkeek park

Brian Gay, a naturalist at this Northeast Seattle park, appreciates April for its unique quality of light: "With the periodic openings in the clouds, we experience an orange, golden light that's almost texturally different from that of other places in the city." Another sign of spring is easier to put into words: For five years running, Cooper's hawks have returned to Carkeek to raise their young — this year two pair are nesting.

"Another important impression of what this park is is moving water. We're in the middle of a bowl that drains a three-mile area," Gay said, explaining that at least five creeks wend their way to Puget Sound through Carkeek, the largest of which cuts the park almost in two, forming Pipers Canyon. "We are just past the scouring, rushing rain storms of winter, so you could call this a moment of calm, which makes it the right time for releasing salmon."

For many schoolchildren, spring at Carkeek is synonymous with fish. Their chum-release program has been active since the 1980s. In Carkeek's imprint pond, young salmon begin "memorizing their home address," as Gay puts it, tasting and smelling home so they can return here in three to five years.

One of the naturalist's favorite trails in spring begins immediately behind the Environmental Education Center (the red building). The path heads under archways of tree-frog-green osoberry and through stands of sword fern, salal, false Solomon seal and Hooker's fairy bells, to the serenade of Bewick's wrens and golden-crowned kinglets. The trail passes through what Gay calls a cathedral of Western red cedars. You soon hear the gurgling of creeks below, and the air smells of fresh, cool water. Here plant life crowds around you as ocean spray, red-osier dogwood, Oregon grape and red huckleberry vie for light. As you continue downhill, you'll discover the source of the water sounds as Venema Creek merges with Mohlendorph Creek. You soon come to the main park road.

"From here, everything is equidistant," Gay said. You can choose the North Traverse, Salmon to Sound, South Ridge or Pipers Creek trails, or visit one of Gay's favorite spots a short 50 yards from the lower meadow on Hillside Trail. He seeks out the cool quiet below a "hanging wetland" — created by underground springs and runoff on a sloping hillside — where he often finds wildlife tracks. Opossums, raccoons, voles and coyotes like it here, too, and leave their signature prints in the wet sediments.

Discovery Park

Spring is about the birds for Penny Rose, a 15-year naturalist at the Magnolia park. Naming every call in the forest, from the band-tailed pigeon's courtship croak to the rolling song of the tiny winter wren, Rose's ears are attuned to a parallel world. The fuchsia-pink flowers of salmonberry are her favorite harbinger of spring largely because the bright blooms announce the return of the rufous hummingbird, one of the first migrants to make the long haul back from winter in South America. "I've been staring into a lot of salmonberry lately in great anticipation," Rose laughed.

When asked about her favorite springtime trail, she answered without hesitation. Discovery Park's half-mile long Wolf Tree Trail is known for its botanical bounty, with more than 100 species, including six of fern and many rare woodland wildflowers.

The forest is thrumming with birdsong here. Listen for the voices of flickers, kinglets, chickadees and song sparrows, which nest under the overhanging fronds of trailside sword fern. There are things happening at every height along the trail, so take time to scan from your feet to the sky. Under downed trees you'll find the entrances to mountain-beaver burrows. These nocturnal animals keep a neat house, with separate "rooms" for pantry, sleeping and bathroom needs.

At eye-level, look for the orderly holes of the red-breasted sapsucker, drilled like secret messages into cedar bark (they return later to drink sap and eat the insects caught in it). Notice the delicate blossoms of miner's lettuce, oxalis, starflower, fringe cup, foamflower and the nodding heads of the white fawn lily. In the wetland areas are healthy stands of skunk cabbage — look for raccoon paw prints (like miniature human hands) at the muddy edges.

"Because we get into our cars and drive to work and go into buildings, we lose our connection with all the incredible magic of the season changing," Rose said. "It's a luxury in our modern world to have this all going on right here in the middle of the city."

And seasonal rituals aren't limited to the feathered and furry. Rose has also observed a spring rite of the human species: waxing your car in the parking lot.

Camp Long

Since 1941, this has been a focal point for nature study, and many local families still mark the change of season with the annual reopening of the park's rental cabins. "It's a sure sign of spring when people start calling to reserve their favorite cabin," said Jeanie Murphy-Ouellette, a naturalist since 1995, who is partial to a cabin called Mount St Helens for its location between pond and forest. While leading a night nature program several years ago, it was here she saw her first red fox trotting by, and in a tree nearby she snapped a treasured photo of three baby barred owls eyeing her from a branch.

In April, Murphy-Ouellette looks for returning violet-green and barn swallows, which can be seen darting acrobatically for insects above the park's large open field known as The Parade Ground. The swallows love Camp Long for the same reason Murphy-Ouellette and children do: Polliwog Pond.

"Our pond is one giant nursery," she explained, while pointing to a grapefruit-sized egg mass holding anywhere from 30 to 300 Northwestern salamander embryos — just one of four of the park's salamander species.

During the park's school pond programs through the next several months, more than 900 kids citywide will meet and learn to classify a writhing collection of critters — from dragonfly nymphs and pond mites to caddis fly larvae and water boatmen. The healthy ecosystem of the teeming pond also attracts great blue herons, kingfishers and mallards.

"Spring at Camp Long means kids in nature," said Murphy-Ouellette. "You hear the sounds of excited children liberated from the four walls of their classrooms as they explore the intricate relationships between the animals and plants."

Murphy-Ouellette starts her spring walk by exploring the edges of Polliwog Pond. From here she heads down the Animal Tracks Trail to a kiosk with nature notes on spring. She takes a right and heads over a tributary of Longfellow Creek and looks for the Ridge Trail on the left, which offers good views out over the stream-carved ravine where raccoons, coyotes and foxes find shelter, food and water. Giant mossy trunks of big-leaf maples sprout epiphytic licorice ferns where robins and bushtits gather nesting material.

Next, she follows the path to the Middle Loop Trail, then turns right (south) and heads toward the rappelling glacier and Schurman Rock, Seattle Parks' only outdoor climbing rock. At that point, hikers should carefully scan the sky and trees near the rock for Cooper's hawks; barred owls (unlike most owls, they are often active during the day); and great blue herons, which often nest near here.

From here, she says, one can walk back to the pond or head down below the rock to the Lower Loop Trail, which leads to the Longfellow Creek Legacy Trail — a 4.2-mile-long route along one of the last free-flowing streams in Seattle.

Murphy-Ouellette starts nature walks by having people stand quietly for a minute or two with their eyes closed. "When you walk into a forest, you need to use all of your senses to bring it alive," she said. "In order for animals to approach you and to be able to observe all the special nuances of the forest, you need to be still. Lots of things can happen when you're quiet and more open."