Bite of Seattle is a summer food festival at which attendees sample dishes prepared by local chefs. Over the years, offshoot "Bite of" festivals have appeared in the Puget Sound area and elsewhere.

Yesterday seemed to be a multispecies Bite of St. Edwards State Park festival. Immediately adjacent to the park, in Bastyr University's medicinal herb garden, clouds of bees were working over the herbs that are now in bloom. Most fun to watch are the fat bumblebees pushing their way into foxglove flowers. These flowers are designed, I recently learned, so that the bee must push all the way to the top of the funnel-shaped flower to get to the nectar, receiving a liberal dusting of pollen on the way. Smart plant!

Not far along one of the trails through the adjacent woods, I stopped to admire a handsome, thorny stand of Devil's Club--easy to appreciate when you don't need to push your way through it, as I've sometimes had to do on backpacking expeditions. A big Douglas fir cone scale dropped in front of my toes from somewhere far above. A moment later, another, and then another. I looked around and noticed that the ground around me was littered with fresh cone scales--the sure sign of a feasting squirrel high overhead.

As for me, I wasn't going hungry, either. First course: some salmonberries and thimbleberries overlooked by other walkers. For an entree, along the lakeshore, I found Indian plum trees heavily laden with ripe fruits, and ate a handful. Then two first-of-the-season ripe trailing blackberries along the sunniest paths by the water.

Also near the lakeshore was ocean spray in full bloom. When I stopped to admire the clusters of tiny white flowers on one bush, I discovered a miniature feast in progress: the diners included dozens of small brown flies and many inchworms heartily chomping on the flower centers.

Everyone was eating enthusiastically, but some diners forgot their manners completely. First, around the next few bends of the trail, a junco was alternately singing and playing with his meal (a hapless insect, I think). Farther along, two red squirrels were having an outright food fight, yelling insults at each other at top volume and feinting attacks.

Another bend or two, and then a red currant bush offered me dessert, before the trail ended.