Life on the Outer Coast

Out of bed excessively early today to count Marbled murrelets at Whale Park. We were busy counting both murrelets and Rhinoceros auklets. There were well over 40 auklets and probably about as many murrelets. I'm a little sloppy on the numbers since I wasn't final recorder or maybe because I was on the sleepy side by the end of the count. There were also a number of rafts of common murres on the far shore west of the count island.

This was the last day for the forest ecology class at the Gavan hill site. I'll miss the motivation to be outside everyday, hopefully the ripening cloud and blue berries and the coming mushroom season will serve to entice me out. A friend told me that she had collected chicken of the woods last Thursday. I did see the first Lactarius of the season on the Cross Trail today. I planned on collecting them on the way out, but was beat by three hungry slugs. In 1.5 hours they had completely eaten the caps and most of the stems. Guess that will teach me to hesitate.

We caught and subsequently liberated 23 ground beetles, 5 millipedes and 4 spiders in five pit-traps in the plot over the weekend. The spiders had interesting color banded legs, but I've no clue as to their identity.

It's a nice rainy soothing sort of day today, but I do hope for a little less rain for the last class ascent of Verstovia tomorrow.