On Friday after a morning of meetings and waking up a new born for the pure pleasure of holding him, I decided to allow myself another simple pleasure. I took a walk up to the first bridge on Indian river. At least I intended to stop there, failed to stop and walked up to the first muskeg because I could just see bits of blue sky between the trees. 
Didn't linger too long in the muskeg because it was a bit late in the afternoon. Wandered a little along the river to look at the extensive patches of Panellus serotinus (some quite large) on many alder, collect a piece of Polystichum and Conocephalum. Decided that I would be quite unlikely to confuse Conocephalum with Preissia no matter what the state of the collection. Also am convinced that the Polystichum in the valley bottom is braunii. Each pinnule definately narrows down to a short (very short) stalk. The species from the waterfall (P. setigerum) doesn't have a narrow base.
On the way down the trail on the boardwalk section (near the large spruce that fell over the river) were three or four pieces of bark. I was curious how many types of epiphyte lichens occured on each. So far I've identified 4 crustose lichens and a pin lichen; Mycoblastus sanguinarius, M. affinus, Pertussaria spp, what is probably a Biatora and Stenocybe (clavata?). The Biatora is very tentative. It is one that I've found before, but haven't been terribly satisfied with its identification. The thallus is green and seems to consist of balls of algae. The apothecia are unrimmed, pinkish brown with ellipsoid spores in spherical asci. No reaction to KOH or bleach. The species covered in Brodo aren't a very good fit, but neither is anything else I can find in the book.
I didn't see the Stenocybe until I had the bark under the dissecting scope. It is a very small ca. 1/4 inch tall black "pin" growing out of the bark. It isn't obviously lichenized, but they are generally treated with the lichens. Lichenized thallus? This genus is very host specific, the best I could do was S. clavata which occurs on western Hemlock. There have been a couple of collections from southeastern Alaska and British Columbia. The one I found has spores that are regularly 3 septate instead of 4 to 7 septate. I'll continue my search. For a more satisfactory answer.
Sunday was the Christmas Bird count for the Sitka area. The forecast wasn't promising, but the day turned out to be a rather nice one. My plans kept changing for the day, but I settled on doing the Herring cove to Beaver Lake to Theobroma route in the morning and skiff around Japonski in the afternoon with Scott Harris and Andrew Thoms. I was curious to see Andrew's paths through the area and thought that there was at least the possibility of a surprise type of bird. No such luck on the surprise bird. In fact we didn't see or hear a bird in the woods until a flock of siskins flew over us in the muskeg. No, I did forget a winter wren by the creek above the falls. Did get to catch up on local politics and stories on the way and went on a slightly different path than I had been on previously to the lake. Another place with alot of area to explore.
It started snowing as soon as we entered the forest, which was much more enjoyable than the promised rain.
Nothing in the frozen lake, nothing in river, or the campground. Did start finding birds when we were above the clarifying tanks at the mill. About 10 ravens, a crow and a junco...we were on a roll for a few minutes. Stopped to admire the bears in their tank. They seemed to enjoy their brussels sprouts. Was tempted to count the domestic geese and the chickens at the farm, but decided that we would do better on the water route.
Scott's boat wouldn't start, deadish battery for a 115 horse. The charger connected to the kicker wasn't going to do the job in the time we had available, so I drove the lee shore skiff.
The birding improved rather noticably on the water. Traveled from Crescent Harbor through Middle channel around Makhnati and Signal island, inside of Battery and back through the channel to Crescent. The greatest diversity of birds was in between the runway and Makhnati and the channel. The water was rough enough around Signal to make it rather difficult to focus on much of anything. Kind of like birding in a washing machine with better light. This was only a bit frustrating because there was an interesting group of shorebirds on the shore of Signal that I wasn't quite convinced of the identity. They just seemed a bit light to be the usual surfbirds. Andrew was convinced that it was a mix of surfbirds and black turnstones. Not unlikely, but they didn't look quite right.
Did see Bald eagles, Ravens, crows, Pacific and Common loons, Common murres, Marbled murrelets, Harlequins, Common mergansers, Pelagic and Double crested cormorants, Black, White-winged, and Surf Scoters, Common and Barrows Goldeneyes, Scaups, Long-tailed ducks, Mew, Glaucous winged, and Thayers gulls, Surfbirds, Black turnstones.
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