Exploring the Pacific Greenway: from Portland to the Coast

Exploring the Flora, Fauna of the Tualatin Hills

This page is the introductory “splash” page leading into four sub-pages that catalogue those animals and plants you’re likely to run into while exploring the routes that I have suggested. While much of the “flora and Fauna” material is embedded in the trail descriptions I will do my best to extrapolate the plant and animal descriptions material into these pages to provide a comprehensive naturalist resource. The geographical scope of these plants and animals is limited to those found in the area from Forest Park into the North Coast Range. It is arranged in a vertical list with photographs, graphics and text descriptions arranged in a list format.

 For an excellent summary of the animal population of Forest park, and by extension these areas to the north of the park see:

 http://www.noivyleague.com/Pages/forest_p_residents.html

For a listing of flora and fauna species, see:

http://www.noivyleague.com/Pages/forest_p_l_clark.html

This page is still under construction, but these are some of the elements that will be included...

Forest Ants     (Formica neorufibarbis)

This widespread species has abundant populations throughout the continental and mountain coniferous forest of North America. These ants like to nest in dead wood of any type, above or in the ground. Foragers are always active, running on the forst floor, on plants - especially during ewarmer conditions. Their ant piles can growth to 4-5 feet n height, but such piles may be very old. In Europe I encountered such an antpile whose existence had been noted shortly after the farm it was located on was founded nearly 1000 years ago.