A sunny Saturday brought lots of visitors to the park.  A man and a woman were stopping to look at the new growth on many plants beside the trail.  I couldn't hear what they were saying, but it seemed they were identifying species and discussing their properties.  As a member of the Washington Native Plant Society, that sort of attention to plants seems so familiar to me, but it is rare enough in my park that it is notable, and refreshing.  I don't know why that couldn't be the norm, for people to observe and appreciate all the native plants growing beside the trail. 

Stone 63 is pictured above, which means I should have 63 species in the bag.  I have seen many more than 63 species, but it is not so easy to photograph and identify them.  Birds are much harder to photograph than Trillium.  I have photographed many lichens and mosses that are hard to identify.  Today, there was a green bug on Komu's snout.  The velvety brown background was perfect for a picture of this bug, but it flew away by the time I got the camera ready and the dog still.  If I'm going to hit 365 species, I will need more books, more time in the park, and more patience.  Seeing a bird is hard enough, but snapping a picture before it moves seems nearly impossible. 

Photography done well is really an extreme sport.  (Which is not to say that I'm doing it well.)  It requires the skills and abilities of hunting, patience, stamina, broad knowledge, and moderately expensive equipment.  I could easily spend $20,000 for my ideal camera toolkit.  And then I would need to go to school to learn to use that equipment.  My low-end-but-still-costly equipment does take excellent pictures.  You have to be there at the right time and place.  You also need to take twenty pictures for every good one.  Looking at all the amazing pictures of incredible species pouring in to Project Noah, it is easy to see that one could do nothing but take pictures of nature for the rest of one's life.