This week I skipped Thursday as it was Thanksgiving and I stayed on the island, should have gone kayaking as it was a very nice day.

	11/24/08	11/25/08	11/26/08	11/28/08	11/29/08
Common Loon		1
Pelagic Cormorant	3	3		5	4
Long-tailed Duck				2
Surf Scoter		26	22	6	7
Barrow's Goldneye			4	17	7
Bufflehead				7
Common Merganser				4
Mew Gull	1	1
Glaucous-winged Gull	2	31	5	1	5
Black-legged Kittiwake		1
Bald Eagle	1		1		1
Raven	1/

On the 24th I started to take notes about the birds I see on my way to the dock. Suffice it to say that it is alot easier to count birds on the water than it is in the woods. Most of that information will be presence instead of numbers and alot of the information on presence will be based on sound. At this point, the trail observations are still in my notebook, they may end up in a digital form this week.

First snow fell at sea level (at least while I was watching) this morning. Didn't stick around for long though.

Scared up a Western Screech Owl on the way home around 6:30pm. It was on the ground near a pond (or large mud puddle) near where I've seen the snipe. It flew up into a Red Alder and stuck around despite me trying to see the effect of a soft whistle. I'll have to look for feathers in the morning.

Decided that it was time to take better notes about when mushrooms are fruiting. Although I have a sense of which species I find through out the year, I don't have very good documentation of the phenology. The last couple of weeks, I've found; Hypholoma capnoides, H. fasiculare, Lactarius alpinus (1st photo), Hygrophorus olivaceoalbus, H. camarophylllus, Collybia acervata, Pholiota sp., Panellus serotinus, P. longiquus, Pleurocybella porrigens, Crepidotus spp. possibly Panellus mitis, Mycena epipterygia and probably two species of grey striate lignicolous Mycenas (so much fun). Also found a Psathyrella which I haven't managed to id to species.

I've avoided Mycenas for a very long time, mostly because it takes a sharp single edged razor blade and a skilled hand to cut miniscule cross sections of miniscule gills in order to look at the shape of the cystidia. The skill is a bit variable, but I can buy razor blades. The yellow stemmed Mycena fits the description of M. epipterygia. Another somewhat similar species is flavoalba. If I had Meltzers I could be a bit more certain as M. epipterygia has amyloid spores and M. flavoalba does not. I'm more comfortable with epipterygia because of the somewhat viscid stem (notice the debris stuck on the mushroom) and the habitat and coloration seems to fit epitpterygia a bit better. I've found it on well rotted wood (either moss covered logs or branches) in scattered groups and sometimes in fairly tight clusters.

The grey somewhat frosty looking Mycena in the photo was growing on a rotten conifer log. The frostiness developed as it dried. When wet it was uniformly grey with a striate margin. In the center of the rather bad photo of the gill edge, there is a structure that looks like it has several stubby projections. There were basidia with pretty tidy looking sterigmata, so I'm interpreting this structure as a branched cystidia. Could be wrong and I'll try for a better section later.

This one seems to fit the description of Mycena occidentalis in the very fun section of the Pacific Northwest key to grey or brownish species and their cystidia . The key led me to M. subcana, and a note at the end of the that species description sent me to M. occidentalis. The hygrophanous, frosty cap, striate margin, cystidia with blunt projections, and occurence in clusters on conifers are the characteristics that seem to indicate that occidentalis is a reasonable fit. It is hard for me to be too confident with some of these species.

http://www.svims.ca/council/Mycenoid.htm#n726b)

I've been keeping track of atypical birds that I see on my way to town in the morning for quite some time. Recently I've decided to count the birds on my way to town. I'll try to keep it up for a year. Most of the counts were done around 8am, the counts on the 22nd were at 9:30 and 2:30. The / indicates a double count. I'm counting from the Galankin Island Dock to my slip in Crescent harbor. I'm counting mostly the area of my path through the water, basically what I can see and identify without binoculars. I'm not counting gulls flying in the distance nor the eagles in the trees on the small islands.

	11/12	11/13	11/15	11/16	11/17	11/18	11/19	11/20	11/21	11/22
Common Loon	1									1
DoubleCrested Cormorant		1
Pelagic Cormorant	3	3	3	2	2	3	2	1	2	4/3
Great Blue Heron										1
Mallards										5/
Harlequin		3	3						3
Long-tailed duck					4
Surf Scoter	7	7	7	7	4	1	2
Barrows Goldeneye								3	2
Bufflehead								1
Common Merganser	2	4					1		1	1/
Glaucous-winged gull	1	14	1	2	2	4	3	3	5	5/
Common Murre	2		2	2	2
Marbled Murrelet	2			3
Belted Kingfisher							1
Song sparrow										1/

Started noticing the distinct smell of mink in the basement last weekend. The mink like to move into the rather large space under the house below the mudroom. They don't actually get into the house, but the odor is intense.

Cheap canned tuna seems to be the best bait for island minks. I've tried jam and salmon scraps, but their weakness seems to tuna.

This one was not that happy to be photographed or for that matter to be carried down the trail. Unhappiness was expressed by scrambling back and forth in the cage and by an impressive odor. emitted from its scent glands. Carrying the cage 1/2 mile with an unsettled mink was satisfying, but not necessarily a treat. This one went to town in the skiff and was released on the city dock. Last year I spray painted the tail of one captured mink to see if they would return and didn't see any sign of that one after its removal. Not exactly conclusive evidence, but I'm not fond of the idea of moving the mink further using the car or of killing the mink. I suppose if I wanted the fur for something, I might reconsider.

In other island animal news, the semi-tame deer seems to be missing, at least it isn't frequenting the common lot by the dock any more. I'm not really sure if another resident decided to eat the deer or if it wandered off, but I'm guessing that it is more likely the former explanation.

There does seem to be a snipe living in the commons lately. I've flushed it twice, once on Friday morning and on the way home tonight. Both times it flew up pretty directly, then dropped just as quickly about 100ft away. The first time I thought that the wind caught it (it was gusting about 35-40 mph). Tonight it was very calm and it did the same thing. I could be the vegetation that is dictating the flight path.

There are still at least 6 nuthatches visiting the feeder, along with an equal number of juncos and chickadees.

The Galankin lake surface is largely covered with ice.

Last year I half-heartedly tried to start a culture of Panellus serotinus. It was kind of a rushed job using spores and cardboard, I didn't bother to find a good container and didn't give it proper care. Oddly enough, it didn't produce anything.

Listening to Paul Stamets at Breitenbush rekindled my interest in getting this mushroom into culture and into a potentially larger project. Although it is edible, I'm thinking of Panellus mostly as an organism that had some potential use in local remediation projects. What started me off was the idea of feeding waste oil to Oyster mushrooms. In one of his lectures, Stamets suggested taking an oyster mushroom kit that was done fruiting, breaking it up and pouring waste oil on it as a food source for the spawn. I thought this idea (scaled up) might have some application for small villages in Alaska where waste oil is burned or shipped out for disposal.

Decided to follow through on this idea and ordered a Blue Oyster kit from Fungi Perfecti, the blue one is supposed to be more cold tolerant. It is busily fruiting away on the kitchen counter.

The other leg of the project is getting Panellus into culture. Last week I looked for Panellus where I had found it last year, but didn't have any luck. Fortunately this week I found a Red alder with a number of fruiting bodies. I'm trying to spend a bit more time on the preperation this time. I soaked some cardboard overnight, bought a small plastic container with a lid and peeled the outer paper off this morning. Following the instructions in Mycelium Running, I layered the corrugated part of the cardboard in the container and place between 4-6 pieces of the stems of the mushroom between the layers. I gave it a bit more water and added the lid. I'll keep the container in the mudroom of the house where it is a bit cooler, but above freezing.

I also started a few Crepidotus and Panellus longipes (sp?) in a smaller container.