San Juan Islands Interpretive Panels
Five interpretive panels featuring 87 total species were created in partnership with the San Juan Preservation Trust. Each panel represents a different ecosystem found within the Marilyn & Fred Ellis Preserve on Shaw Island.
Explore the five panels below.
Forests
Long-toed salamander
Ghost pipe
Pacific wren sitting on a salal branch
Fairy slipper orchid
Twinflower
Nurse log covered in moss with a deer fern growing in front of it
Townsend's big-eared bat
Western starflower
Zoom in comparing bark differences between Western red cedar, Douglas fir, and grand fir
Varied thrush sitting on a branch with some varied rag lichen
Brown creeper with a Northern red belt mushroom
Marine Shoreline
Black oystercatcher foraging for food among rocks covered in pacific glasswort, muscles, barnacles, and limpets
Broadleaf stonecrop
Belted kingfisher with a fresh catch
Purple martin
A pair of Pacific loons
Pacific herring
Sea-blush
Puget Sound gumweed
Harbor seal sunbathing
Spiny scallop shell
Nuttall's cockel shell
Pacific oyster shell
Sea plantain
Pacific madrone
Details of berries and leaves of a Pacific madrone tree
American mink peeking out from behind a rock with an ochre sea star on it
Grasslands & Balds
Townsend's vole nibbling grass next to a goldback fern and a rock with cumberland rock shield lichen
Western rattlesnake plantain
Western banana slug
Common puffball mushroom
Chipping sparrow perched on a Garry oak branch
The humpback mushroom
Small camas
Western columbine
Lipstick powderhorn lichen
Chickweed monkeyflower next to a mossy rock
Smallflower woodland star
Merlin
Northern flicker
Broom forkmoss and maidenhair spleenwort
Hairy honeysuckle
Homestead Gardens
American goldfinch sipping from a bird bath next to a mourning cloak butterfly caterpillar
Mourning cloak butterfly in flight
Orange honeysuckle in bloom
Yellow-fronted bumble bee on a Douglas aster
Anna's hummingbird
Western tiger swallowtail on a blooming Henderson's checkermallow
Northwestern garter snake
Echo azure butterfly on a blackcap raspberry
Red flowering currant
Cardinal meadowhawk dragonfly
Little brown bat clinging to a chimney next to a woolly bear caterpillar
Deer mouse hiding beneath Cascade Oregon-grape
Osoberry branch showing both blooming and fruiting stages
Freshwater Wetlands
Northern red-legged frog next to a common yellowthroat
Pied-billed grebe
Muskrat swimming with some reeds to build a den across the pond
Common mare's-tail
Scouring rush
Common horsetail
Western yellow pond-lily
Blue-eyed darner
Pacific willow
Eight-spotted skimmer dragonfly and a tule bluet damselfly
Red-winged blackbird and a Virginia rail