April 19th
Annual AK naturalist trip to Pt. Brown, Kruzof island

24 people met at 5:45am at Crescent Harbor, miraculously everyone made it there on time. It was cold, sunny with light northwest winds. The winds were much less intense than they were on Friday. For me, the temperature meant wearing long underwear. Optimistic person that I am, I also brought my shorts. I probably could have exchanged the long pants for short ones in the afternoon, but I wouldn’t have been quite as comfortable.
Unfortunately, I was in charge of the field trip. I’d much rather be the person who periodically during the day leads the exploration instead of feeling like I needed to constantly encourage people to notice what is around them. For the most part, it was okay, but I was a little surprised that people grew tired of sitting, basking and minor independent exploratory forays in the muskeg.

The herring spawn continued to cover the intertidal algae, so the search for intertidal creatures was a bit tougher than during years without spawn. Probably because we lacked a dedicated intertidal person, people were much less interested in exploring the intertidal.
We did the usual walk from the drop off point to the caves then back around and up to the muskeg.

Around 50 Greater Yellowlegs and 4 Black-bellied plovers were on the beach when we arrived. Also saw mallards, Buffleheads, Barrow’s Goldeneyes, Northern Shovelers, and Green winged teal right off shore. Many Brant and 2 Canada geese flew over when we were on the beach and in the muskeg.

Found a variety of tracks this year, probably because I was paying more attention (thanks to Jonathan being around for the class). There were bear tracks along the tide line, as well as otter, mink, deer and mouse. The mouse tracks were found in the sand, under the Sitka alder by the forest. The tracking group found a dead Sea otter on the beach south of Pt. Kamenoi. Niphotrichum canescens var canescens was collected from the sand just below the alders on the beach.

A very simplified synopsis of what Cathy Connor shared with us was that the greywacke is a mixture of volcanic sandstone and mud from an older sea that has lithified. The next oldest rock that she mentioned is the flow of volcanic rock about 600, 000 years ago. The rock on the beach that is brown, white, black freckled (best I can do) is from this oldest volcanic flow. The cave material is from underwater volcanic eruptions that covered the greywacke. The softer material was weathered away by water etc and left the arch formation. The diorite that we find on the beach is probably from the Magoun island area. I asked about the possibility of small rocks being explosively moved with the ash eruptions to other areas (eg. Crow island). She said unlikely, but that the entire basin around Kruzof was probably "leaky" in terms of igneous rock and that small cracks were a more likely source of stray volcanic rocks. Some day perhaps I'll get a clue about geological processes that is more than superficial.

The muskeg vegetation was still mostly in winter mode, most of the sedges were still brown and dry. There were Carex livida starting up and some Empetrum nigrum blooming. I only remember seeing male flowers.

It took awhile, but we found Caddis flies in the reed-like tubes and dragonfly larvae in the ponds. We didn’t find Caddis flies in the ponds with Dragon fly larvae, but it wasn’t an exhaustive search.
Collected a few bryophytes in the muskeg including a small liverwort that on brief inspection looks like a tiny Mylia, but I haven’t confirmed the identification yet.
Racomitrium languinosum from a snag in the muskeg. Collected Riccardia latifrons from the undercut bank of a muskeg pond.
Also collected what seems to be Nitella from a pond. It is smaller and smooth to the touch which distinguished it from Chara. It also lacked the bad smell that stonewort is supposed to have. I haven't found a species key as yet to identify it further.

April 18th

I had promised to take Jonathan Goff out to the Pt. Brown area before the Saturday field trip so we set out Friday morning around 10am. It was sunny, cold and rather windy out of the northeast. In fact the wind was up enough that I had serious doubts about making it all the way to Kruzof, but thought it was worth trying. I've been getting a bit nervier about zipping through the Apple, Chaichei island route, so we went out that route. Actually it was the way to go in a north wind. Kasiana and Middle island blocked the worst of the waves. Now that I've gone that way a few times, it is alot less nerve wracking. Started out through the passage between Gagarin and Crow island, but saw that the path between us and Kruzof was looking gnarlier than I was interested in. Thought about going through the passage between Crow and Middle island, and around, but I didn't see any advantage to that approach in terms of avoiding the wind.

We decided to go to a beach on Crow island northwest from the Middle island Goodyera beach access. It was relatively steep, but accessible landing that was protected from the wind. The beach was mostly mid sized rocks, so it didn't look to problematic. Sucker beach. It was sunny, calm and covered with herring eggs, in other words quite inviting. Many ravens, eagles and maybe a few crows were in agreement about the beach.
Had a nice wander across the island to the windy, cold northwest side. The center of the island had more cedar than I'm used to seeing on small islands. The yellow cedar had the braided bark that I associate with older trees (of course I don't have any real basis for this impression). Gorgeous trees with lots of typical looking cedar epiphytes. Jonathan found a squirrel tracks and scat in a hummock with devoured spruce cones, I found a tarp shelter. I had a difficult time looking at the ground with the plethora of cedar, but managed to refocus a little bit. Both early and alaska blueberry were in bloom, didn't notice any salmonberry, but there wasn't really much habitat for that shrub.
Went back to the beach, shoved the boat around a little and ate. The beach seemed a little less steep at this point, but still okay. Slight error in judgement. Thought about using the kayak to anchor the skiff out deeper, but didn't think in necessary since we were leaving for Middle island after a short walk to pick up a tote we had seen on a neighboring beach. I wanted to collect some of the herring eggs for the garden, so the tote was a great find.
Shoved the skiff again and wandered off down the beach. Was totally distracted by the lichens in the alder along the way, not to mention the piles of unidentifiable seedlings, young dock leaves and impressive beach combing (batman t-shirt, broken lawn chair). In the back of my mind, I kept thinking I should go check the skiff, as we were beach combing during the beginning of the falling of the tide, but why listen to such voices when the sun is out and there is beach to explore?
The dock leaves were pretty tasty, nice and lemony. I might have to go back to determine which species we were eating. The seedlings weren't identifiable by their growth (cotyledons or taste), so who knows what we had tasted. Should have noticed that I was still on the dense side of my recent cold or perhaps blind without my glasses, when it had to be pointed out that the leaves were still cotyledons. I thought the one I ate had a bit of a mustardy flavor, but Jonathan didn't notice any.
The alders had alot of Ramalina, looked like R. farinacea and R. roesleri, but I haven't looked carefully at the collections. Also found abundant Tuckermanniopsis chlorophylla and Ulota phyllantha and crispa.
Ultimately decided that I couldn't ignore the tide any longer, but alas I had ignored it a bit too long. When we returned to the skiff with our plastic treasures, the skiff wasn't moving quite so freely in the water. There was still water all on all sides, just not quite enough. The water on the deep side was still over our boots, but the stern part of the keel was resting on a rock somewhat larger than the rest of the rocks on the beach. Despite alot of sweat inducing use of levers and implementation of roller logs and removal of cargo, the skiff wasn't moving.
We made the necessary phone calls (needed a bit of ridicule to go with the and proceeded to gather fire wood. Despite being a bit on the dense side, I had at least brought my fire kit. I guess that it was quite useful to get stranded with a fire builder as well. Jonathan had a pretty nice fire going in pretty short order and we had quite a pile of wood in reserve, alot of it drying behind the fire. I was too busy saving lichens from the fire. Found Coptis asplenifolia blooming in the Spruce/Calamagrostis zone just above the beach on one wood gathering foray.
It didn't seem like particularly tough duty, sun, nice fire, pizza, cookies, a nainamo bar, lots of water and a few cokes (salvaged from the skiff) and good company. It was nice getting stranded with someone who wasn't visibly ticked off by my error. I can imagine that many people wouldn't have been so easy going about the situation.
The only bad part of the adventure was going to be getting up at 5am after moving the skiff in the middle of the night. As it turned out, we didn't spend the evening on the beach. Jeff couldn't quite hear me well enough on the phone, so was a bit worried. Jonathan and I were just settling into the log by the fire and a skiff approached. Actually, it was headed to another beach, but soon came our way. I have to admit that I was a little disappointed at being rescued, both from the standpoint that I thought that it would have been kind of interesting and because Jeff was going to end up cleaning up my mess. The good part was that Jonathan made his dinner appointment and we both got some needed sleep.
We broke up the fire, packed up and went back to town. Saw a few Tufted puffins on the west side of Kasiana.
I was planning on heading back out with Jeff to retrieve the skiff, but didn't end up doing that either. I wanted Steve Langhorst to come with us (strength seemed good), he did, but Joanne decided to go along as well, so I stayed home. Steve and Joanne enjoyed the evening boat trip and the opportunity for teasing me about getting stranded with a younger guy. They suggested using an inflatable rock next time and bringing alcohol.
Jeff got home around 2am from the island. The heartless wretch at home was sound asleep at the time, but I guess that was the point of being resuced. Fortuntately, he could sleep in on Saturday. He was treated to multiple Great Horned owls calling. Happily, he enjoyed the evening on the island and didn't have much trouble getting the skiff off the rock. It still took a bit to get it off the rock that had us trapped earlier.
Nice blood red sun setting in the evening. Looking forward to visiting Crow island again, but perhaps will use the kayak to anchor the skiff. Or maybe not.

April 8th

Had a different sort of experience in a familiar place. Marty Johnson asked me to help transport his Marine Biology class over to the Port Krestof to Pt. Brown beach. There were 3 skiffs , 18 kids and three adults on this adventure. Josh Arnold was the other driver. We met around 7:45am at the work float, at least that was when I arrived, the rest slowly trickled in. The forecast didn't sound that great, but the morning was sunny, calm and rather cool. I took 5 students, two of whom fit in the cabin, the other three sat outside.
Because it was calm, we went the short way through the Apple Islands to Chaichei to Gagarin and on to Kruzof. It was nice just following along instead of thinking, but looking at the chart the path through seems pretty straight forward. Stopped to watch a large group of sea lions, two humpbacks, mixed scoters and Harlequins between Chaichei and Middle island. There were roughly 30 Harlequins which seems like more than I usually see in one spot.
Tried following Marty in closer to the middle of the beach, but decided against it. It was obvious that a larger boat was going to ground out before the water depth was comfortable for boot height. Did see a large number of frosted nudibranches and herring eggs on the eel grass on the way back out. Both Josh and I anchored near where the Allen Marine boats usually drop us off. The steep beach is alot more comfortable for a larger skiff or boat.
The sunny weather didn't last too long, it started snowing mid morning and didn't stop for too long the rest of the day.
The water was murky with eggs and the spawn was thick on the seaweed and rocks. There weren't windrows of herring eggs on the beach, but I suspect that there will be on my next visit. I've been visiting this beach every spring for the last 8 years and this is the second time that I've seen heavy spawn. The eggs were pretty fresh tasting off the rocks. The best to my mind were on the green algae, the brown kelps were a bit too chewy.
It was a more structured visit than I'm accustomed to at this beach. We had several specific tasks to complete, mostly looking at specific habitats and the creatures living in them. I'd rather just wander, but I can see the utility in being more organized.
Noticed several juncos, 2 Varied thrush and a Savannah sparrow while helping the splash zone crew with their survey. They were feeling a bit cheated because of the lack of diverse invertebrates in their zone. Found the Hermit thrush nest in the Aruncus on the cliff. It looked pretty tidy which makes me wonder if it is maintained year to year. The sparrow nests that I've found never look quite that smooth and neat.

Pretty much followed the same ritual as most trips, that is we eventually worked our way around to the caves. One of the large rocks near the cave had a bread crumb sponge about 2-3 ft across. Not sure why I hadn't noticed it on other trips.
Found most of the usual invertebrates including moon snail egg cases and a good variety of sea stars. We did find a creature in the sand that I don't remember finding on this beach previously, a sand lance. Alas, for the sand lance, the shovel that found it, also accidently murdered it.
The herring that we found in the intertidal were some of the largest that I've seen. I didn't measure them, but it seemed that they were approaching 9 -12 inches long. One of the giant herring was being eaten by a sunstar.
Other birds along the beach: one oyster catcher, 20-25 Buffleheads, around 40+ Barrow's goldeneyes, Golden-crowned kinglets (in the spruces) and song sparrows in the intertidal. There were large flocks of gulls by Brent's beach and in Hayward Straits, but it was too snowy and too far to get a good sense of which gulls were in the mixture.
The Cow parsnip was coming up and the Early blueberry blooming, but the rest of the flowering plant world was not visibly responding to spring.
It was snowy and cold enough that the kids lost alot of enthusiasm after lunch, so after they finished their last inventory, we packed up for home. We took the skiffs over to Port Krestof before heading back. Did see a couple of Canada geese, Common mergansers, Surf Scoters and the Buffleheads and Goldeneyes. There was one deer on the beach.
The wind had come with the snow, so the ride back was not as pleasant as the ride out. We went behind Guide Island and around Middle Island and had to slow down considerably. I was very happy not to be driving a lund, I have alot of memories of driving open skiffs in harsh weather that I'd just as soon not refresh. Marty's boat didn't catch up until we stopped on the lee side of Middle island. The weather just got worse for awhile, at one point the snow was heavy enough that I couldn't see where I was going. A compass is a nice thing to have. I did see a Pigeon guillemot near Kasiana in the midst of the snow squall. It was a cold ride back, my toes and fingers were on the numb side. Seemed like it took a couple of hours to completely stop shivering. It took roughly 12 gallons of fuel to make the trip.
Longtails at the north end of the channel both coming and going.

Decided that it was time to publish this somewhat half-baked entry from a week ago.

Happy to write that there are 367 plant descriptions completed as of Tuesday, April 1st. Started to work on the lichens which I expect to be challenging, mostly because of the restrictions on technical language. I haven't thought of an appropriate description of isidia yet, maybe columnar reproductive bodies?I'd probably get a few giggles out of that description, which wouldn't necessarily be a bad thing particularly since the text is somewhat dry. I've since moved on to trees and shrubs in the interest of making some forward progress.

Did get to visit Indian river a couple of times this week. There were several skunk cabbage flowers up, each about 6-8 inches tall, but not yet open. No salmonberrry flowers or Coptis asplenifolia blooming.

Collected several bryophytes and a pin lichen in my travels. Found a particularly large Bazzania which prompted reviewing the characteristics of the local species. This large Bazzania didn't have any deciduous leaves that would have immediately identified it as denudata, nor did it have the leaf characteristics of the other two common species, but wasn't large enough to be B. trilobata.

Laid out the Bazzania species side by side on a slide so that I could do some comparison.

Bazzania trilobata is much larger than the other species that I have available, but the difference wasn't as extreme as I expected. Particularly between the newly collected species and B. trilobata. What was apparent was that the leaves of trilobata overlap the stem more than those do of the unknown. There isn't as much overlap as in B. tricreanata or as what is described for pearsonii. The unknown Bazzania is much flatter than are the other species. Both trilobata and the unknown species have multiple slender stems from the underside and fairly regularly 3 toothed leaf tips.
At the moment I'll use the following characteristics to identify Bazzania species.
B. trilobata: size of stems (6mm wide), leaves somewhat overlapping, 3 toothed apex, ventral flagella present

B. denudata: stems to 2mm wide, 3 toothed truncate apex, ventral flagella, leaves deciduous

B. tricrenata: stems usually less than 2mm, leaves mostly overlapping on dorsal surface of stem, acute apex with 1-3 teeth, underleaves wider than long, with 3-4 lobes

B. personii: stems to 1.5 mm, leaves strongly overlapping on dorsal surface, leaf tips acute, underleaves longer than wide, less lobed than in B. tricrenata

I'm leaning toward calling the unknown Bazzania denudata despite the lack of naked stems.

The pin lichen seems to be Chaenotheca brunneola.

One of the other liverwort questions that surfaced this week concerned Herbertus. There seems to be 2 species in our area, H. aduncus and H. dicranus. I have to admit that I hadn't much thought about there being 2 species, so I haven't been paying much attention to which is where or for that matter how to tell them apart. One key feature seems to be whether the leaves are falcate or not (H. aduncus is falcate, H. dicranus is not). The collections I have from the class I took from Schofield look very different in growth form. H. dicranus is much larger, it looks a bit more like twine. Unfortunately after reading the species descriptions, I'm not sure if size differences can be relied upon.

Misc. notes:

salmonberries blooming near Galankin dock.

One streptopus amplexifolius popping up on Sunday 4/6

trimmed rugosa roses on 4/5

planted seeds of Thalictricum dekvayi var decorum, Aconitum sp. (climbing) and Cremanthodium that Les Brake sent from Wasilla on 4/6. I put the flats in the greenhouse, hopeful for some cool weather to chill the seeds.


4 marbled murrelets on Saturday. Humpback right in front of the house .


about 50 redpolls working the ground near UAS in the grass by the row of pine by the waterfront 4/4?.

Hummingbirds have arrived in town (Harris Island), not seen on Galankin yet.

I haven't done well recording my observations the last couple of weeks. Hopefully, I'll recall most of the highlights.
The end of spring break, just before Easter the red polls were abundant around town, I saw several large flocks up Indian River trail and in the commons on Galankin island. In both places the birds were both in the alders and on the ground near the alders. More than once, I stood or sat still and had the flock fly past and around me. It seemed that the birds kept coming back and around, but I'm assuming that the flock was large enough that it took a few minutes for them to pass.
The Pine siskins have been rather thick as well. For the first time this feeding season, siskins came to the feeder. There were also several in the garden on the east side of the house.

It snowed on Easter and several inches on the following Tuesday. Heard my the first Varied thrush on the 24th, they have been vocal ever since. The Song sparrows, Juncos and Winter wrens have also been singing/calling.
The first opening of the herring fishery was on Tuesday (3/25) near Big Gavanski Island. The second was on the eastern shore of Kruzof Island on 3/26. They fished in shallow water right off the shore and caught a tremendous amount of fish. The Infinite Glory caught 3 million pounds in one set which took 4 days to pump to the tenders. The last opening was on Monday the 31st.
I haven't seen any spawn around the south end of town. There have been a few pods of sea lions in the islands, but not much of a congregation.
Mary Willson came over from Juneau on Thursday to give a lecture. We walked up to the first bridge on the Indian River trail, I was hoping to show her the dippers that I've been watching this winter. It was a beautiful sunny day with about 6 inches of snow along the trail. The dippers behaved like I would expect, and weren't to be found on the way up. We did see one from the bridge. The bird was singing and in fact we heard it before we saw it. It was eating insects (?) from the snow on the small gravel bar in the river. It didn't venture much into the water, mostly staying on the snow on the gravel and from the top of a boulder on the bar.
Mary suggested looking on large rootwads or large boulders in or near the river for nests. She said that they sometimes build nests on the top of debris if there isn't suitably steep rock banks.

Found one bright yellow Skunk cabbage flower in a small snow free spot. The top was nipped off, but it was still bright yellow, not bruised looking.
Heard a Steller's jay on the way down near the boundary cut. Didn't see it, but it was rather distinct. Don't belive that I've seen or heard one this winter. I know that they are around, but I don't seem to hang out where they do and none have ventured to Galankin island.

Mary gave an overview of her studies on bird dispersal of fruit/seeds. She worked with red/orange salmonberries and red/yellow elderberries. The take home message for me was that birds are rather fickle and don't clearly prefer a certain color at least not in salmonberries or elderberries. They often prefer red fruit, but will choose orange/yellow fruit if it is easier to obtain. There doesn't seem to be much evidence that bird preference is much of a selection agent for fruit characteristics, at least not for salmonberries or elderberries. The birds are just too variable in their taste. There are more red salmonberries than orange in Southeast, which could account for the preference. However, in Oregon orange salmonberries are more abundant than red ones and the birds still prefer the red ones (at least in aviary experiments).

What was interesting to me was the 25% lipid content of elderberries and red osier dogwood berries. I'm curious to watch how quickly elderberries disappear when they are ripe. Those calories would seem to be quite attractive.
It seems that bears may disperse alot more blueberries than do birds. From what I remember the berries don't spend much time in the digestive track, just moving through in a rather rapid time. Germination was rapid, but there was alot of crowding of seedlings, so survival wasn't great. Not very surprising given the density of seedlings in a pile of bear scat. Seems like going through a smaller digestive tract might be a better deal for a seed. At least in terms of seed density.
I do wonder if the birds prefer red over blue berries. Most of the thrushes in the garden seem to be eating red huckleberries instead of blueberries.
Went to Juneau on Friday on the Fairweather. Beautiful sunny, flat calm day. Lots of scaups, mallards, goldeneyes, common mergansers, cormorants, scoters, 2 Canada geese and a couple of Humpback whales along the way.
Didn't get out much in Juneau, but did notice the willow catkins were out, didn't see any stamens or pistils, but they must be on the way. Briefly visited Mendenhall glacier (the lake was solid with lots of people skiing, walking on it) and the new NOAA lab out at Lena Pt. The labs were impressive, as were the magpies.
The ferry ride back was just as pleasant, but with low clouds instead of sun. Drove through the herring fleet on the way to the terminal. They weren't fishing, just wandering in search of fish. Large group of Common murres and several groups of sea lions were with the boats.

Today found several almost open salmonberry flowers by the Galankin island dock. Not quite open, but very pink.