Spent most of the day on the island catching up with chores both outdoors and in. The ones outdoors included harvesting the apples off the very odd and unknown type of apple tree in the back garden and digging one of the beds of carrots.
The apple tree was given to me several years ago by Ed Buyarski who used to live in town. It was a tree that had lost its label, so no one had any idea what type of apple it is. It isn't a great one, but the apples make reasonable apple sauce and pies. Eating one fresh is not a wonderful experience. The tree is about 12ft tall and rather odd in appearance mostly because I've never been brave enough to prune it into a regular shape. It is probably long past time to take it in hand, but it seems to be doing fine as is (and I'm still a total chicken). The apples are often oddly shaped and there were several twin apples this year. The laundry basket was almost full, which is an excellent harvest for this particular tree. As I don't have another apple tree, I'm assuming that the many crab apples in the garden are serving as pollen donors.
The carrots looked more like prime examples of their kind and taste quite good. I left the last bed of carrots covered in remay in case the deer return or the weather gets colder. I have covered them up with kelp to keep the ground from freezing, but usually I just dig them so the carrots are close at hand for eating. I'll hopefully get to them some time in the next week or so.
There were ample birds in the garden today. Chickadees, juncos, song sparrows, varied thrushes, ruby crowned kinglets, a flicker and a hermit thrush (with pink legs). I was treated to some very interesting sounding group calls by a group of 4 ruby crowns working the mountain ash and maple for insects. What I'm interpreting as their "are you there" type of call is a funny nasal sounding note that I hadn't associated with this bird (or maybe hadn't heard before). They were hawking for insects with very short flittery little ventures from the branches. They seemed a bit more tentative in appearance than the hawking I watched a warbler do last spring at Moller park.
I heard a bird when I was in the garden that I couldn't place at all and couldn't find even though I heard it for quite awhile. I finally decided that I was hearing something on the water so ventured down the point east of the house where there is a good view of the rocks below. Never did find a likely bird, but did see a mink down on the rocks. I watched it get drenched (actually completely buried) by a wave, then scramble up out of sight. The cliff is rather overhung, so it isn't possible to see the actual cliff safely from the top. While I was searching the water and rocks for the mystery bird, the mink scrambled up to me, we both startled and it zoomed off again. Not sure why a tiny mink made me jump, especially when I knew it was in the area. I have managed to hold still once while a mink walked up to me, but I was rather numb at the time which might have helped. Nothing like wading up to one's thighs for a skiff in 19F weather with a 25knot wind to cool one down. After the mink scare, had to go inside and be a good mom and make cookies for a dinner.
On the way to town for the cross country dinner, saw a number of petrels. I really do love to watch them fly, they are really a pleasure that I look forward to in the fall.
The saga of the spruce grouse continues...Jan told me that she made a copy of the video for Kent to take to Fairbanks tomorrow to show the people at the museum. Apparently, he watched the video and agreed that it looked like a spruce grouse. I'm hoping that the Fairbanks folks agree. (yes, just for the glory of it all) It would be interesting to have seen the first documented spruce grouse on Baranof, but also because it will be fun trying to come up with the story of how it (or presumably they) got here. The ADF&G site says they can only fly for about a mile. Looking at the straits, the only possibility is from the mainland near Glacier Bay, down Chichagof and then to Baranof around Peril strait. I'm waiting for the verdict.
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