You say Camano, I say Camino

My friend Chris has decided that he is into birding. On a Seattle scale this is not all that strange. Nor is it strange given that my roommate once decided he was into mushrooming. So when Chris called me up and asked if I had any plans this afternoon I decided to take the plunge and see what Camano Island had to offer.

I imagine that the first rule of birding is something like "Do no harm." We pretty much broke that within 30 seconds of arriving on Camano Island. Chris, Sarah, and I went to the first site suggested by the InterWebs. We saw three pheasants wandering around. They ran away from us. Into a big field that was full of hunters with dogs and shotguns. Not wanting to hang out near hunters we went on to another location, but it's hard to imagine that those three pheasants aren't cooked/stuffed right now. Sad. They were pretty.

Our second stop was on the north side of the island at the English Boom Preserve. With a name like "preserve" you would suspect there would be birds. You would be incorrect. We saw nothing. Not even a gull hanging out over the water. Not even a duck. The only three heartbeats belonged to Chris, Sarah, and I. It was pretty, though.


The feeling of deja vu was strong, only I was coming up zeros with birds rather than mushrooms. Hmm. We left for Site #3.

"Stop! Wild turkeys!"


Sure enough, we saw about 10 wild turkeys hanging out in a yard. We assume they were being fed by the homeowners, and we assume they aren't going to be alive in a couple weeks. Still, turkeys are underrated in terms of birds. They're quite pretty.

Site #3 (Iverson Spit Preserve Trail) was slightly more promising in that we could see actual birds. We didn't see a lot of birds, nor did we see birds that weren't part of the family "birdus genericus", but we saw live birds that weren't about to be killed. I would share pictures at this point, but one thing I did learn in my 4 hour birding adventure is that pocket cameras are worthless. Well, not worthless; they take great pictures of your friend taking pictures with his 100-400mm lens.



With the sun setting quickly we rushed to our last stop of the day: a state park on the southwest side of the island. The scenery was gorgeous (unfortunately clam season is closed, otherwise there could have been clamming in addition to birding). I got my best bird shot of the day. Sadly, my little camera could capture nary a feather of the giant bald eagle we saw (Chris got good pics, which you can see here). They really are amazing birds; we didn't see this one fly but even from a couple of hundred feet below its perch you could sense the power and size of the bird. I still like Ben Franklin's idea to have the turkey be the national bird, but the bald eagle is a strong second choice. We also may have seen a marble something-or-other.


Or, it may have been a log. 12x digital zoom = worthless.

The fruitless mushroom hunting trip was softened by the fact that I could buy morels in a grocery story. A no-bird birding trip would have been a blow to the ego. Luckily the eagle saved us, and the scenery was tough to beat.

Bacon that grows in the ground

As I've detailed in past posts, Huan and I have been desperately searching for morels in the hills around
Seattle, with really no success at all.

However, the beauty of the global economy is that if you can't find it in the wild, you should probably just look at your local grocery store. Or, brave the crowds and flying fish and go to Pike Place Market.

So rather than waiting until next weekend (there was a lot of rain today, hopefully foreshadowing good fungus growing weather), we bought some at the Market. It must be high season, because prices have dropped from $50/lb on Monday to $30/lb on Friday to $20/lb today.

Anyhoo, Huan sauteed them with garlic and butter. Wow. Fantastic. They definitely don't taste like mushrooms as much as they taste like meat... specifically, bacon. Now, obviously some of that taste is due to the butter, but there's clearly something meaty going on. All my life I've been waiting for something like this to come along: pork that grows from the ground. Is there anything better? Maybe doughnuts that grow in the ground, but I still think that gets the silver medal.


So I wholeheartedly suggest that you go to your local grocer, pick up a half pound of morels, and get on the pork fungus train. Great stuff.

The elusive morel

So we went mushroom hunting on Saturday. Huan, Tyler H, Tyler's friend Cory, and I woke up quite early and we started driving west* in search of morels. Huan and Cory have both been morel hunting elsewhere and were excited at the prospects of finding tasty mushrooms that are $50+ per pound in grocery stores. Tyler and I were kind of excited about finding mushrooms, but also just happy to walk around in the woods on a nice day.

Huan did some research and we decided to look start our search in Cle Elum, WA, which is about 80 miles east of Seattle. What we didn't do a lot of research on is the climate of Cle Elum at this time of year. When we got there around 10:00 it was cold. As in just barely above freezing. We didn't even need our ground thermometer/meat thermometer to tell us that we wouldn't find any mushrooms there.

Anyways, we drove back through Snoqualmie Pass and found a forest service road that led us to some promising spots. The ground was damp, it wasn't cold... one would think perfect conditions for mushrooms. We spent about an hour looking around and found... nothing. While we were packing up an old Scandanavian dude stopped by and asked what we were doing. Huan explained that we were mushroom hunting (not those sorts of mushrooms), and he started laughing. A lot. He claims that while our instincts were good we wouldn't find morels in that area until July. Three months later. We were dismayed, but not cowed.

We continued west towards lower elevations. We stopped at a state park and looked around, again for naught. We decided to bag the mushroom hunt and take a hike, as we were close to some water falls. On our way back, less than 100 yards from the parking lot, we passed an Asian family carrying baskets. The two parents had a bunch of weird greens, but the daughter had something else. Something brown and wrinkly and beautiful.

She had morels.

When Cory pointed them out the mother clearly thought that her daughter was going to be attacked by a bunch of 30 year old dudes. Huan asked where she found them, and the mom said "Not here", which we translated as "Go to hell white devils, the mushrooms are ours!"

To seal the deal that we'd be frustrated about our trip Tyler H stepped in dog poo in the parking lot, and actually threw away his shoes rather than trying to clean it up. A disaster all around.

Here are pictures.

* When I saw "west" I really mean "east". To me the mountains are "west", but in fact, in Seattle, water is "west" and mountains are "east".