Life on the Outer Coast

Friday
Had a wild ride into town in the morning. The petrels numbers seem to be up and they were thickest by the harbor mouth. Went behind the Centennial building on my way to the school to check the visibility of the petrels, a person didn't need a skiff to see the birds today.
Spent most of the morning and early afternoon working at Mt. Edgecumbe. The students poured gels and set up the electrophoresis run for yesterday's PCR samples. Unfortunately something went wrong with the PCR, even the positive control didn't yield any DNA. Also unfortunate is that the amplification program wasn't saved by the thermocycler, so it is difficult to tell what went wrong. We can try again on Monday.

While the class worked on the gels, I autoclaved media & poured the MMN and cornmeal agar plates. Obtaining my weekly dose of pizza allowed the plates to solidify and I innoculated them after lunch.
I surface sterilized the roots of Kalmia, Ledum, Empetrum, V. oxycoccus and Cornus serica with 2.5% bleach, chopped up the fine roots with a single edged razor blade and put approximately 5 spots of root on each plate. I used 3 MMN and 2 cornmeal plates for Kalmia, Empetrum and Oxycoccus, and one MMN for Cornus and Ledum. The plates are living on the bottom rack of the plant stand covered with foil. I'm thinking that they don't need light or much heat. I plan on starting the cultures from the sedges, Coptis and more Cornus on Monday. Decided that I needed a little time to do other tasks.

Worked a little on a bolete that someone had dropped by UAS for me to identify. Apparently it came from the old post office site on Japonski (not sure where that is). I'd like to find more specimens and know what the host tree is. I managed to prop the one I had so that the pore surface was on two microscope slides by employing random kitchen detritus. Good think I'm not that tidy. It worked well, I ended up with two slides covered with spores which made it easy to describe the color and look at the spores under magnification. The spores made a lovely light yellow brownto somewhat olive colored pore pattern on the slides. The spores were elongate and smooth. I desperately need a micrometer if I'm going to be serious about these descriptions. The cap is a warm nut brown or maybe medium toast colored. The pore layer was quite yellow, but has become browner because of the spores. The stem is yellow with scabers that can only be seen with a hand lens. The cap flesh is white and turns yellow on exposure or bruising. Both the cap and the stem turn dark in 3% KOH. I haven't cut sections of the cap as of yet, so I can't say what the microscopic structure looks like. The best fit is Boletus subglabripes aka Leccinum subglabripes.
The mushroom expert has a helpful discussion http://www.mushroomexpert.com/leccinum_subglabripes.html

Someone from Juneau emailed a photo of Hydnellum peckii or at least what looked like H. peckii. I asked some questions about the fungus when I emailed the identification, but haven't heard back yet. No idea who gave them my email address. Mary Willson?

On the way to town and again going back home on Saturday, the storm petrels were thick through out Crescent bay. There were probably 20 or 25 of them spread from the park to the bridge area.

The other odd sight today, was what looked like a hermit thrush with bright yellow legs and a strong eye ring perched on the deck railing near the feeder. Not very hermit thrush like behavior and the picture of the hermit thrush doesn't have very yellow legs, but that was most likely what it was. It didn't stay too long.