Life on the Outer Coast

July 23-27 Marbled Murrelet trip


A reward that was offered to those who volunteered for last summers community marbled murrelet counts was the option to volunteer for a 4 day count at one of two Icy Strait sites. At first this didn’t seem like an option for me in terms of timing, fortunately when I figured out that I could go, it was still an option. I was assigned to go to the Couverdon side of Icy Strait along with Kameron Peresnsovich and Riley Woodford (ADFG).
Kameron and I left Sitka on the 6am flight for Juneau. Our flight to Couverdon was scheduled for 4:30 pm so we had the day to kill in Juneau. Handily, Kristen Romanoff left her car at the airport for us to use for the day. It turned out to be the beginning of a week of firsts for Kameron, the first new item for him was a bagel. Not sure how someone gets to be 19 years (living in Sitka and Moscow) and not eat a bagel, but he had managed it. For better or worse, his bagel experience began with a fresh Silverbow bagel, so he may have high expectations for future bagels. Then again he may have been so sleepy that he didn’t really notice. We did our camping trip shopping errands at Fred Meyer, Bought a cheap watch, allegedly with an alarm and miscellaneous small food items. Past experience with unknown people buying the food has taught me to bring a few supplies.
We decided that a trip to Mendenhall Glacier was the next time filler. The walk to the falls was pleasant, Kameron learned a few plants (Yarrow, River beauty, willow and Euphrasia) and we saw two dippers (an adult and juvenile) by the falls and a small family of Common Mergansers (4-5 young) in the lake. The trail has changed considerably since I first visited the glacier an uncountable number of years ago. Mary Stensvold took me on a Polystichum gathering trip here my first summer in Alaska. The trail was though the forested edge (alders and spruce) and I remember finding a lot of P. andersonii, P. braunii, and P. setigerum. The trail is out on the flats these days, maybe there are fewer encounters with wildlife than before?
Filled the rest of the time with lunch, more shopping (Kam was a very good sport) and playing on the computers at Egan library.
We caught a Wings flight (a beaver) from the airport. This was Kam’s second new experience for the day. Being that float plane rides are expensive, this seemed a lot more reasonable to have never happened. I encouraged him to take the front seat, but he was a bit nervous, and I was happy to sit up front. The view is tremendous. I had forgotten how much I like to fly in small planes. At least how much I like to fly in small planes on nice days. I tried to figure out how many times I’ve been on small planes and came up with somewhere between 40 and 50 flights as a very crude estimate.
The flight left from the float pond, out over the flats, and across Admiralty through the pass at Funter bay. We could see signs of beaver activity below, including a couple of dams. Hit a few bumps in Chatham/Lynn Canal, just enough to give Kam a complete first flight experience. It was a pretty short flight to the Couverdon area and soon the pilot was leaning over to ask me exactly where we were going. I felt more than a bit foolish, because I really had no idea. I hadn’t thought to ask Matt Kirchoff that question when he dropped off the food just assuming that the pilot knew where we were going. After all it was a special charter. Nice to start a trip feeling like a total idiot. Luckily, the 3 people who were returning to Juneau and Riley Woodford were standing on the beach with their gear. Taxied up to the beach, off loaded our gear and said hello/goodbye to the departing crew.
Entrance Island is a very small island about 0.9 miles long and at the widest point about . It is located just south of Couverdon Island on the north side of Icy Strait. Swanson Harbor where the Deception tied up on the way to Glacier bay is on the north side of Couverdon island. There isn’t a source of fresh water on the island, at least not that we found. This prompted a lot of conversation about whether or not deer need to drink water.

The beach where we landed our gear was of fine gravel and sand with a nice band of blooming Senecio pseudo-arnica just above the high tide line. Later on I noticed Mertensia maritima growing there as well. Landward of the beach sunflowers was a lush uplift meadow with most of the usual plants, plus the Ranunuclus orthorhynchus and the same array of colors of paintbrush that I found on Couverdon island. The trail to camp was a very circuitous route through the meadow.

The kitchen area of the camp was not too far inside the spruce trees. There were a couple of tarps, two ropes/pulleys for the food bags and a rigged up platform for the stove. It didn’t take long for Kam and I to add fire pit to the camp features. The tents were a short distance away by the opposite shore. The spotting scope had its own tent on the beach. The tent made the counting a lot more pleasant, a couple of days, the only time I took off my raingear during the day was when I was counting birds. Glad that I didn’t need the umbrella for counting that I’d brought along.
Riley gave Kam and I a brief introduction to the count schedule and procedures. The flyway count period is for 15 minutes and are done on the hour and half hour Shifts would last 2 hours, starting at 5 or 5:30am and end at 9 or 9:30pm depending on visibility. Basically that meant each person worked for two hours and had 4 hours off. We only counted Marbled murrelets on with the spotting scope. We only noted other species at the end of a count when we did a set arc survey with the binoculars.
The 15 minutes between counts were time to watch the beach, scurry back to camp for snacks or for me, do some yoga on the sandy beach.
Kam did a shift the first evening. The next morning Riley started at 5, I followed at 7am and Kam at 9 and on we went though out the three days. We each took one early shift, we didn’t count on the 27th as the plane was coming too early for us to pack up everything and count.
The weather on the trip was impressively rainy, on the morning of the 25th, we woke up to find the kitchen area tarps rendered useless by the strong easterly winds. The weather also put a stop to counting for a about 4 hours so we used the time moving the camp to a less exposed spot. We carried the coals to the new fire pit instead of counting on starting fresh.
The next day I was grateful to be able to take off my raingear and boots for a short time.
There was ample time to explore the island. The forest was of relatively young looking Western hemlock and Sitka spruce, with a pretty open shrub layer (blueberry, menziesia, Devils club and Ribes lacustre. Lots of browsed Deer heart in the understory.
The camp was roughly in the center of the island, just to the south of it, a higher elevation ridge that ran through the middle of the island. This area had the oldest timber. Below that toward the Icy strait shore was a band of forest in more of a stem exclusion sort of phase. There was very little understory, except Goodyera oblongifolia, Corallorhza (including one yellow form) and in a couple of spots Platanthera obtusata.
Along the shore on the southern point was Spruce, Calamagrostis nutkatensis, Ribes and Vaccinium. This area had abundant epiphytes including a lot of Ramalina menziesii.

The northern end of the island was more even in elevation and had a more shrubby forest. The exception was the very tip with open spruce and Platanthera obtusata in the understory. Platanthera obtusata is an unfamiliar species for me. I had thought it was a northern species, but it seems to occur on the southern end of southeast as well. The most abundant ground cover moss on the island was Rhytidiopsis robusta.
There was a large and abrupt “step” up from the beach fringe to the forest, similar in size to that on Couverdon island.
There was a uplifted meadow surrounded on three sides by forest not too far from camp. The meadow had Baneberry, Cow parsnip, Lady fern, Calamagrostis Canadensis, yarrow, Angelica lucida and A. genuflexa, Lathyrus, Trientalis, Geranium, Chocolate lilly, Paintbrush( both miniata and unalaschensis), and Columbine. The north end had a substantial patch of Thimbleberry.

I didn’t find Thimbleberry nor salmonberry or crabapple near the beach on this island. In fact I didn’t find any salmonberry or crabapple anywhere on the island. No roses either. Lots of Giant Vetch, Dune grass and Cow parsnip.
Did find several Mertensia maritima. I’d only seen this plant on Vixen islands before.
On the Couverdon island side of the island were a few patches of Salicornia which still tasted pretty good.

There were at least five deer on the island, including 3 fawns. Winter moose sign was not uncommon and we found a very large moose bed (with hairs) toward the north end of the island. The bed is so much larger than a deer bed, which shouldn’t be surprising, but was impressive.
Keeping the fire going wasn’t a challenge. The spruce on the island had abundant dead lower branches (open grown trees) that we could break off and burn. The fire burned rather deep hole in the duff layer. The first fire pit burned for a day after we stopped supplying wood despite the rain and us dumping water on it periodically.
Looking for firewood was a good way to find mushrooms. The most interesting of which was an Agaricus that I watched grow over the time we were on the island. It started out with nice pink gills which slowly turned dark chocolate brown. The cap had a light tan color with medium brown fibrils. The fibrils were densest at the center, with a few at the margins. The cap was about 3.5 inches in diameter, the stalk was about the same. There was a thick membranous veil. Below the veil that stalk was somewhat fibrous. It didn’t have a particular odor other than the usual mushroomy one. Unfortunately, I didn’t pick it and check for staining. Not sure if I can identify it to species without the staining info.

One morning after my shift I stood out in the meadow to listen for birds. Saw Orange crowned, Townsends, Wilson’s, and a Yellow warbler, Golden crowned and Ruby crowned kinglets, song sparrows, Chestnut backed chickadees, Siskins, and White winged Crossbills.
The grass around the spotting scope tent always had several song sparrows. There were juveniles begging, adults alarming. There was also a red squirrel or two in the beach rye near the tent. There were several piles of miscellaneous flower parts of the rye grass on the beach logs. We didn’t see a squirrel with the grass, but the other camp did. They told us about a red squirrel repeatedly leaping at the upright inflorescence and eventually knocking it over and eating the seeds.

There were many sign of people using the island. We found one areas that looked like a cabin footprint, a stove lid, old bailing wire around a tree and a lot of glass jars. More recent sign included three marked eagle trees and a bearing tree.
We found a number of examples of the rock formations in the photo. Not sure if it represents inclusions in the rock that wore away or something else.
On Thursday we counted 3,659 birds flying east and 8,673 birds flying west. Friday was 4, 243 east and 1,943 west (we missed part of the morning) and on Saturday 7, 461 east and 6510 west.
Riley Woodford supplied the photos.