Life on the Outer Coast

The cold weather arrived in force on Sunday. The overnight low on the island was 13F and I believe that the high was 19. The wind was fierce enough that I only ventured out to feed the birds and grab firewood. It was quite pleasant sitting in the sun at the table writing and watching the birds at the feeder. Jeff tried to run some errands in town, but was prevented from doing so by the frozen steering on both skiffs. A little time with a torch on the metal parts seemed to have done the trick because both skiffs were functional Monday morning.

The wind carried on through Monday evening, in fact I had one of the more uncomfortable rides home I remember having. Not because the water was exceptionally rough, it was gnarly, but manageable. It was the addition of the heavy freezing spray that added to the experience. Within about 5 minutes, the front and port side of the house were covered with ice, fortunately I could see out the starboard window well enough to get across without running into any islands or rocks. Happily, the weather was much nicer on Tuesday.
Tuesday morning there were roughly 50 gulls (mew and glaucous winged) near the island dock. Usually that many gulls aren't near the dock unless there are herring in the area. No sign of feeding, so I'm not sure why the congregation.

Spent time each day this week ice skating at Swan Lake. Not the platonic ideal of skating ice, but it has been very nice. Found a yard past the radio station that has a number of feeders in the garden bordering the lake. On Tuesday I saw Pine siskins, juncos, golden-crowned kinglets, a song sparrow and chickadees. Some of the siskins looked alot like redpolls, but it was difficult to see the red patch without my binoculars. Wednesday I took the binoculars skating with me, didn't see any red polls but did notice that several of the juncos were of the slate colored type. I was fortunate to get to learn a bit more about bird behavior when various predators were in the area. The first predator on the scene was a Sharp-shinned hawk. I first noticed that the siskins scattered at the same time as the neighbors dog was walking by. At first I thought it was the dog that alarmed them, but noticed the hawk. I'm assuming that it was the hawk, rather than the quiet dog that alarmed the birds. It was interesting that the juncos didn't noticably react to the hawk. The next predator was a cat. Completely opposite reaction. The ground dwelling juncos immediately flew up and the siskins just carried on with feeding. I didn't notice any change in calls in either case.

Finally saw one of the flocks of Bohemian waxwings this morning. I was walking through the courtyard at Mt. Edgecumbe and heard an odd call. Looked up in time to see several birds flying over the courtyard and the adjacent roof. The waxwings were in a shore pine when I walked around the building, at least they were there long enough for me to get a brief look.

Did the channel count this afternoon: 10 mallards; 4 pelagic cormorants;2 thayers, 1 mew, 48 glaucous-winged gulls; 7 common mergansers; 47 scaup and 2 ravens. No long-tails or goldeneyes. Previous channel counts had the following number of long tails recorded:

2002: 0
2003 :42
2004: 60
2005: 61
2006: 39

2002 didn't record any longtails until the 4th week of class, the other years the longtails were recorded from the first week through at least the 6th week.