Life on the Outer Coast

Sunday evening successfully retrieved Deirdre from the potentially endless Christmas travel loop. She didn't suffer, American Airlines put her up in a large hotel room with free wireless near O'Hare airport. In fact she seemed quite rested despite having a rather long day. Fortunately, a year away from island life hasn't caused any noticable loss of skiff skills. Maybe it will always be there for her. Since I didn't teach her how to ride a bicycle or drive a car, I guess it is good I taught her some other transportation skills.


Monday's high tide wasn't quite as high as Sundays. At 15 minutes before the tide, there wasn't a moat around the lot 4 house and the trail was still passable around the north end of the island. Went out to Starrigavan around 1:30 to look for Friday's swans. Probably should have looked on Friday. Lots of mallards, scaups, common mergansers, a few Buffleheads and a Northern flicker. The water from the high tide was still covering the lower places in the meadow and in the forest between the longer side trail into the meadow and the bridge. There was still snow on the boardwalk of the estuary trail and the muskeg trail. There was a flock of about 60 Pine siskins in the alders by the Old Sitka parking lot.

Collected a small mushroom from an alder. It is a light tan to brownish fungus with an short lateral stem. They can be shelving or seperate on the branches. It is the same fungus that I've seen many times in the winter, but never quite finished the job of identifying it. Finally got a good spore print (white), checked the spores for an amyloid reaction (positive) tasted it (mild), cross-sectioned the cap (had a gelatinous layer) and decided that it fits Panellus longinquus. The mushroom acquires a purple/rosy cast as it dries. It is most likely var pacifica decribed by Susan Libonati-Barnes (a former graduate student of Stuntz that I knew at University of Washington). Mycotaxon 20: 205-212 http://www.cybertruffle.org.uk/cyberliber/index.htm. The biggest ones I found are slightly larger than the range described in Arora, but I'm not too bothered by that discrepancy. This fungus fruited on and off through last winter. I mostly remember seeing it on alder, but I believe that it also occured on Mountain ash. I'll have to keep my eyes open.


The bird feeder has been more active the last two days or maybe I'm just around more to watch it. The song sparrows which used to stick to the ground below the feeder have decided that the deck and railing are good for foraging. The juncos have moved to the tube feeder (they didn't go near it before), perhaps because the sparrows are in their former territory. The chickadees remain faithful to their habit of picking up a seed then flying away. I really wonder where they hide it all. I can almost imagine sunflowers blooming out of crevices in the hemlocks around the garden.



Christmas noonish the family walked around the lake during a lull in the hail/rain/sleet. We did take refuge at one point on a porch during one hail event.

Did a Christmas bird species tally on the island and the surrounding water: Common & Pacific Loons, Red-necked grebe, Pelagic cormorants, Bufflehead, Barrow's goldeneyes, Common merganser, Mew, Glaucous-winged, and Thayer's gulls, Bald Eagle, Raven, Northwestern crow, Common murres, Song sparrows, Varied thrush, 4 Robins, Oregon juncos, Chestnut backed chickadees and a Winter wren. Also found 2 dead siskins on the porch where we hid from the hail.

Also collected a small pleurotoid fungus from a very large (old growth) Menziesia near the cabin. The largest ones had caps about 2cm across. The caps were white with enrolled margins and smooth edged gills. It also has white amyloid spores which makes it a Panellus. I haven't decided which one yet.


Seemed to spend much of the afternoon in the kitchen, getting the lamb ready (with a hammer) to bake and attempting my first Christmas pudding. Printed the recipe from the NPR web site after being intrigued by the story a few days ago. Had to make a few substitutions in the recipe, forgot to buy rum and couldn't find the right kind of figs. After brieflly cooking the figs and raisins in brandy and rum (had to substitute scotch ), one is supposed to burn off the remaining liquor. I must have cooked it too long because despite trying several times the liquid wouldn't ignite. The rest of the recipe went pretty smoothly, only substituted blueberries for cranberries and added some walnuts. Managed to get the bundt pan in the big stock pot and steamed the pudding for the required 2 hours. Getting the cake pan out of the pan was a bit of a trick. There isn't alot of room between the stock pot and the pan particularly when wearing oven gloves to avoid being burned by the steaming water. The true pyromaniac moment is just before eating the cake. Heated up 1/3 cup of brandy to almost steaming, poured it over the cake and applied a match. Great blue flame. I applied the match a little fast, because there was still brandy in the saucepan. It also ignited. It is quite fun to pour flaming brandy on a cake. Although the cake tasted just fine, the highlight was definitely the blue flames.