Life on the Outer Coast

September 12
Another sunny day. Spent the day (9am to 6pm) with the elderhostel group. We started the day trying out geocaching at Starrigavan. It went fairly well, in that we had fun wandering around looking at plants, fish and birds with the GPS units. Unfortunately, the cache wasn't located despite determined searching. I know that we were in the right grove of trees, perhaps the age of the eyes is an important factor or maybe more interest. I was seriously distracted by the Hydnum repandums that I was finding under the trees. Some of the largest ones that I ever found were under the roots of one of the trees. I had wriggle my upper body under the roots to reach them, but it was worth the effort. I'll have to look again without the distractions. I wondered if I should have pre-located it, but I doubt if it would have been very satisfying having me tell them where it was. I did send them home with the mushrooms so they did get a better treasure than anything that would have been found in the cache.

We also walked around the muskeg trail and had a picnic on the beach below the campground. The shore birds were absent, but the group was happy with herons, kingfishers, gulls (herring, glaucous-winged, and thayers) and ravens. We did find chickadees along the trail which made one gentlemen very happy.

Mary did run the experiment to determine if Triantha absorbs nutrients from insects stuck on the sticky stems. She fed wingless fruit-flies labeled (N15) glutamate. She doesn't have the results yet, the plant parts are still in the freezer. I'm hoping that she has the results before her March visit.

We found one of the starch-slime and embedded seeds of the Skunk cabbage fruit structures. I have to admit that I hadn't noticed it before. She wasn't able to find any effect of the slime on germination of the seeds. Apparently the birds were happy to eat the seeds with our without the slime around. So why the slime? I'm not convinced that there is a why for everything, at least not that directly, the reason could be because of some chemical/structural holdover. Evolution can only work with what is already there.

After lunch I chased the report of a mushroom on the Mosquito cove trail. Didn't find anything unusual and had to run back to catch the group before they left for Harbor Mtn. Haven't run through the woods for a while, it is kind of fun, but not too good for seeing anything. It was more fun running down hillslopes than along a trail, but I did need to get back.

Harbor Mtn wasn't on the original schedule, but it was too nice of a day to pass up. I drove four people up and Mary took two trips to bring the rest. My four went up the trail and along the ridge a little way. They were inspired by an Australian couple to climb the highest overlook. Not sure that Karen would approve, but it was their idea. A very nice view, but I still prefer the boulder fields. We did find two Gentiana platypetala blooming along the trail. After I got those four back, another couple wanted to see the view from the ridge, so back I went. I did see a small flock of Golden-crowned sparrows below the trail.