Life on the Outer Coast

Tuesday, July 3

Went to town at an amazingly early hour, 4:40am, to count Marbled murrelets. Finally getting up early paid off, we counted 49 murrelets flying through the count area of the spotting scope and another 10 in the area. For the first time I found the counter helpful to keep track of birds. Only one pigeon guillemot, no murres or rhinoceros auklets. The garbage can in the parking lot was knocked over while we were counting birds. It was fortunately an easy clean up. Why no Bear proof garbage cans?
I took a nap in my soon to be former office until it was time to meet the coring team for a Harbor Mtn sample. On the way up Harbor Mtn road noticed one Elliotia pyrolaeflora just starting to bloom. Also saw a strange woodpecker the size of a Hairy or Sapsucker. It had the typical tail pattern of the Picoides, but the rest of the coloring seemed a little odd. The back was a solid medium grey color without white or whitish bands and there was a small bit of red on the head. Looking in Sibley, it looks like a black backed woodpecker with a red head. Don't think so. Lacking a better choice, I might just have to assume that I saw a really odd Hairy woodpecker. There was a merlin flying the edge of the muskeg.

The coring site was the muskeg just to the left of the trail to the Picnic shelter at the first parking lot on the mountain. The peat at this site was 108 cm to a distinct ash layer. The peat was very dense compared to the Jarvis St. muskeg. It took two people pushing down on the sampler to cut through the peat on the way down and two pulling up to get the sampler out. At roughly 80cm there was a very light grey band that looked alot like a leached horizon in a soil profile, but it was gritty like ash. Below that there was more peat, then the typical orange ash at the base. There was some overlap in one of the cores, so I saved the extra (about 12cm) for a future attempt at processing. At this point, I had to leave for class, so I'm not sure what happened in the afternoon.
I did straighten out my misconception about the choice of sedge vs. sphagnum peat. The latter is soupy, but the larger issue is rate of accumulation. The sphagnum accumulates at a much greater rate without necessarily accumulating the pollen. The upshot is that the sphagnum peat cores are much deeper and the information yield often very low.
In bloom at the site: Pinguicula vulgaris, Andromeda polifolia, Vaccinium uliginosum, Carex pluriflora, Trichophorum caespitosum, Pedicularis sudetica, and one Gentiana douglasiana. Also saw in the area some Phyllodoce glanduliflora.
One weird taxonomic note: I heard yesterday that Ledum groenlandicum is now Rhododendron groenlandicum. The flower certainly has some similarities, but I suspect it was the genetics that drove the change.

The class went out to Starrigavan for the silviculture lesson. No weird animals today, but there was a large (ca. 9 inches) Coprinus comatus and a patch of Lycoperdon perlatum at the edge of the ATV trail by the rifle range. I'll have to try to get some sort of a photo of both species tomorrow, it is beyond time to lose the slides.
On the trail home coming down the hill from the lake, I somehow managed to look up at the right time (a total fluke) and saw a bird nest in a Vaccinium parvifolium on the east side of the trail. The shrub was growing on a ledge about a foot above the trail which must be why I've missed it before. Just looking at my feet when going down hill? The nest was empty, so I might collect it in a few weeks to show some class some day. There had been song sparrows in that area the last few weeks that had been scolding me, so perhaps it's their nest.
Didn't see any murrelets on the way home, but it was rather choppy. Could barely see when I went to town, but I vaguely remember 4 murrelets.