Date of volunteer work: 02/25/2018.
Site Name: Mitchell Creek Natural Area.
Number of hours worked: 2.
Field notes:
I parked at the pull off area on Vradenburg Rd at intersection w/ SE 162nd Ave. Inside of that corner is the 70 acres of Mitchell Creek Natural Area. The surrounding area is rural but still settled, with houses, farms, and some businesses nearby. The natural area itself is undeveloped with lots of trees, ferns, and underbrush, and small creeks running through out. There are no trails, so I picked my way through from the edge I parked down along 162nd Ave, then worked my way back North and did that back and forth a couple times. As described in my Parks Naturalist handbook, the area is dominated by two kinds of pine trees and what looked like mostly just one kind of deciduous tree. There were two camps I encountered, on by the road and one farther in along a creekbed, hard to say if they were occupied or abandoned. There was trash on each edge along the roadway, but barely any to none farther inside the woods. I saw no footprints human or animal, but did observe scat from two distinct animals and also some fur. The forest was very green with all the rain we have been having, with some melty snow on the ground in places. No blooming plants yet in the places I observed, and no wildlife sightings either.