Life on the Outer Coast

The cold, clear weather has been around for most of the last week. The morning of the 16th was rainy, but it was sunny by noon.

There is still a very thin crust of snow and frost and a nice thick layer of ice on the trails. The Rhododendron leaves are curled up against the cold, also noticed that the Cornus canadensis looks a bit on the dry side. The shinier wintergreen herbs don't look to be as vulnerable to the cold and dry.

The last few nights, we had a nice view of Venus in the west and even luckier, we've seen Mercury just after sunset on the commute to the island.

I was trying to get a photo of where the sun came up and where is sits at noon on the Solstice. I wasn't terribly successful, the photos were definately on the bizarre side. The best description that I have of where the sun comes up is east of the Pyramids, near Deep Inlet over a low moutain locally (perhaps ) called Eureka Mtn at about 9:30am. At noon the sun was just to the west of the Pyramid mtn and not too far above the peak.

The photo of Cross Mountain was taken from the upstairs deck. Didn't have much to do with sunrise or noon, but the mountains have been rather beautiful in the snow and sun.


Celebrated the solstice by cutting 5 Sitka spruce for the auditorium. 3 were in the garden and would eventually block the sun getting to the vegetables. They had to go sooner or later and at least at this point they were relatively easy to move around, as the tallest was about 12ft. The neighborhood had a skating party and bonfire at the Galankin lake in the evening. The stars were out and the ice was very smooth. Most were skating with headlamps which looked pretty interesting gliding around the ice in the very dark night. I turned mine off a couple of times once I was pretty sure that the ice was smooth. Interesting, but a bit on the scary side.


There were 2 deer on the slope north of the green house when I walked home the other night. They were starting to walk off when I noticed them and stopped. I tried the low whistle, they stopped and listened, then resumed eating after a few minutes. One is now in the greenhouse waiting to be butchered. It had already shed its antlers which seems a bit early, but I guess I don't really know when is normal.

The trail count of birds remains pretty spotty, I did hear and eventually see a Brown creeper on the 20th and there was a robin in the garden on the 21st.

	12/15/08	12/16/08	12/17/08	12/18/08	12/19/08	12/20/08	12/21/08
Pelagic Cormorant	3		5	4	1	4	2
Scaup				2
Long-tailed duck			3
Surf Scoter	12	3	4	3	1	20	15
Barrow's Goldeneye	3		11	7	1	35	23
Bufflehead						10
Common Merganser			12	3	5		3
Thayer's Gull	1						1
Glaucous-winged gull	2	2	3	2	4		2
Gulls	5		6			2
Common Murre			1
Kingfisher						1
Bald Eagle		1	1			2
time	8am	8am	8am	8am	8am	2pm	10:30am
weather	calm, cold, isolated skim ice	calm, raining	calm, cold	calm, cold	ice, calm	small waves, cold	small waves, cold