Life on the Outer Coast

I spent most of the week getting ready for the new semester and writing plant descriptions. When I stop to actually write down what I did, there was a bit more variability in activity.

Wednesday desperately felt the need to stretch my legs and walked up to the second bridge around noonish. It was a nice break before settling down at my desk. I needed a dose of walking with a background of forest, not so much for the exercise, but for the quiet time. Found a brown creeper on one of my stops to look around and listen. Decided that I still like just stopping periodically to see what is flying or growing. This habit would drive some of my friends crazy, but it works when I'm by myself. Found it difficult to stop at the second bridge, felt like finding the lower muskeg, but didn't have my boots on and needed to act like a responsible teacher. On the way back down, found a dipper (maybe the same one?) I found earlier in the fall. At any rate it was in the same area of the river, not singing, but bobbing and swimming. Once it seemed like it had an invertebrate in its bill, but I couldn't quite be sure.
Still haven't found the time to collect more muskeg soil for the mycorrhizae search. I still have plenty of cultures to maintain and more roots to look at, so I can wait for the right time. I did subculture the most abundant the fungi isolated from Kalmia on Friday. I'm hoping that the cultures grow fast enough that I can innoculate a few plants in early February. The wheat that I innoculated with a culture from Cornus suecica seem to be doing well. I'm crossing my fingers that I've successfully captured the most common endosymbiont.

I went back to the cemetary twice looking for more lichens. The first time to collect a slightly bigger piece of the potential Nephroma isidiosum. I found several more interesting lichens on that visit. I did find a larger piece of the same isidiate lichen, Peltigera collina, Nephroma resupinatum and Sticta fuliginosa. Not sure why I hadn't found this many Nephroma spp. previously. I checked through my field books and found a few collections of Nephroma arcticum and one of N. helveticum from Chichagof island, but none of the species I've found in the cemetary. The third trip this week was very brief, just long enough to verify the host trees and look for a bigger sample of the Sticta. No luck on that mission, in the time available. I sent the collections to Linda Geiser (F.S. Air quality lichen lab) in Corvallis for verification. Fortunately she had the time to look at them and had good memories of working with me on the Stikine a life time ago. My clearest memory of working with her is showing her how to load and safely carry a rifle, after I found out that the Stikene area was sending people to the woods with big guns and bullets, but no training. I've always been a little nervous about loaded guns.

One of the interesting bits of information I heard at the monthly Fine Arts camp board meeting was that Pam Kernin has had a pair of hummingbirds visiting her feeder continuously since the summer. One of the birds (a rufous ?)disappeared during the cold weather this fall, but the probable Anna's is still around. Hopefully, I can visit soon and see the bird. I was hoping that she had a digital photo of the bird, but no joy, another video.
The weather has been on the wild side this week. Saturday night the wind blew from the south-southwest for several hours, the peak was 57mph. No trees down, but there were alot of small Sitka alder branches down by the lake this afternoon. Did see a varied thrush in the commons. One surf, one black scoter, 3 mergansers, two mew gulls and 4 pelagic cormorants on the way to town.
Went in to town in the afternoon and managed to get myself stuck because of the extreme weather. I couldn't tell how windy it was from Harris island. There weren't any visible white caps or maybe I was too busy talking to look out the window. Once I got to Crescent harbor, it was quite apparent that the weather was extreme. The wind was out of the southeast, there was green water between the whitecaps, but it didn't seem like much green water. I decided to try to go home, but didn't get too far. The waves seemed to be about 5 ft inside the mouth of the harbor and they were stacked up in a nasty sort of way. The wind was screaming (I found out it was around 66mph). I only remember getting the the harbor mouth and turning around once in my commuting years. I must be a bit smarter most times. It was actually rather gnarly turning around in the harbor.
After about 3 hours, the wind had shifted to the west and diminished to a less intimidating level. The waves were steep and white capping from the west with a nice underlying swell. I had to slow down and turn enough that I wasn't in the trough all the way home. I turned the spot light off once I determined the wave direction, because seeing them was distracting and not at all helpful. It was also snowing.
Two red alders were down in the commons, and a few hemlock branches, no trees that I could see.
Nice to be out of the weather and home. I wasn't looking forward to scrounging a bed in town.