On Saturday the 25th of February, we (Deirdre, I and a temp.park employee, Ami) went for hike up the west valley of Indian river. I wasn't sure when we started up the trail that our destination was going to be in that direction, I had considered the falls, but the off trail experience seemed more compelling. We did not get off to an early start. On sunny Saturday mornings, I'm pretty interested in sipping my coffee while staring out the window at the bird feeder, so we hit the trail close to noon.
I decided to be bold and head up through the muskeg, then cross the river and to the big tree. This was bold because I hadn't gone that way when I was leading, but thought that it would be pretty easy to find my way. Fortunately, I was right.
The muskeg was snow covered, but it wasn't deep and the surface was quite firm. No post holing for us. There were lots of deer tracks in the muskeg and later in the forest. Didn't notice any other tracks though. Where we stopped for lunch was particularly thick with tracks and browsed Vaccinium.
The forest in the valley (like the forest along the lower trail) showed impact from the fall and winter wind storms. There were a number of both snapped trees and tipped trees in the forest, maybe more tipped trees, but I didn't keep careful count. Did notice that both types showed some nice growth of mycelium and/or wood that was chunky and orange-brown presumably due to the action of cellulose degrading fungi.

One of the casualties of the storm was the big tree. I found it in the typical way (for me) by thinking I had missed it, then seeing the distinctive large lower branches in the distance. Once we got closer, we could see that there was much tree debris on the ground nearby . It turned out to be the top of the tree. I must admit, I was a bit dismayed, okay bummed. It wasn't a surprise that it was damaged, after all there was a cavity in the center of the tree large enough for two people to stand in, but still, I didn't like to see this sentimental landmark change.

I'm not sure when the top blew out. I haven't found anyone that has been up in that part of the forest recently to help me pinpoint the timing. Haven't given up yet though.
On the way back down the west side of the river, we passed many more downed trees, most of which tipped over. Maybe there will be more Schistostega up there in the future? I wish that I had counted or even better mapped the tipped versus snapped trees as I'm curious which occurs more often in that valley. Guess now I have an excuse to return once again.

Not exactly breaking news, but it has been cold this week, extremely cold for Sitka. The temperatures started working their way down last Friday, sunny with a temperature range a fairly wintery 24-29). Saturday and Sunday saw a slow downward trend (19-30) and (14-24), with pretty mild winds and sunny skies. Monday and Tuesday were even colder with lows of 8 and 6 respectively. So far, the house seems to have survived the cold spell, the skirting on the east side of the house and having Deirdre at home tending the fire probably makes a huge difference in these conditions. The skiff has not been so happy; the telltale isn't showing water even after a long warm up and slow idle across the bay, fortunately it does not go into automatic slow down due to overheating, but does sound an awful alarm. I tend to associate pretty intense winds with these clear, cold periods, but this time we have been relatively fortunate. Sunday’s weather map showed a fairly minimal difference between the high over the Yukon and the low to our west, todays shows a slightly deeper low. Seems like the winds could be on the increase.

I was curious about previous episodes of single digit weather; apparently I've been in Sitka for at least two pretty cold events; one November 25th and 26th 1985 (lows of 3 and 2) and the other January 30,31 and February 1 1989 (lows of 4,4, and 8).
During the 1985 event, Jim, Dave, Paula and I were on a long Thanksgiving break hunting trip on the Romance. The boat log/journal speaks to the feast (wild Canada goose, pies, sweet potatoes), a sapsucker, deer and sunny, windy cold weather. I didn’t write anything about especially cold weather. By this time we had a small wood stove in the wheel house in addition to the oil stove in the galley, so it was a bit easier to keep the boat toasty in the evenings, but the heat didn’t hold at all once the fire went out. I remember being cold. The overall lack of notes about the extreme cold could be due to cold (19) weather during a hunting trip 2 weeks before. I wrote "clear and cold! NE winds at 50 knots, with higher gusts". I think that an adventure wading into the water up to my thighs at Brent's beach to retrieve a drifting inflatable might have colored my view of the temperatures. The other big difference in my perception might have been the amount of time I spent outside in those years; pretty much every other weekend was a hunting trip during the season, so I probably was a lot more acclimated to the cold than I am these days.
My main recollection of the 1989 event was lack of water. I was very new at water management in those days and a house with four adults (my parents, sister and I) and a baby went through the water supply at a pretty good rate. We were on a catchment system only at the time, so if it was dry, it didn’t take too long before things were marginal. If I remember right we were melting snow in buckets to flush the toilet and had to switch to disposable diapers until we could get more water. Happily, this year we have a half a tank (1200 gallons) of water and only two of us to use it.

Mostly Pine siskins at the feeder during the cold; they seem to be camped out by the feeder. The chickadees and juncos are feeding below the feeder under the tangle of wild apple and salmonberry. I suspect that the energy expended tussling with the siskins for feeder space is not worth the energy cost given that there is plenty of seeds on the ground below.

Deirdre found a dead murre (presumably a Common Murre) on the trail on Monday. Its head and a goodly portion of its breast and belly were missing. When I saw it on Tuesday, one wing was in a nearby shrubby hemlock, but the bulk of the corpse was still on the trail. I’m assuming an eagle killed it and subsequently dropped it on the trail. Not sure if an eagle or raven did the later damage. I’ll probably leave it on the trail to see how long it takes the scavengers to clean it up.

P.S. This morning the murre was gone, it seems that either a bird or a mink found the murre overnight. The wing was still in the tree

This years Sitka Christmas bird count fell on New Year's day which turned out to be a bit unfortunate for a couple of reasons; first it put a bit of a damper on the late night revels and the weather was on the hideous side.
I had planned on counting on Galankin Island and doing as much counting on the water as possible. Last year's trip around the south sound was pretty productive and I was looking forward to seeing lots of birds (and getting really cold) out on the water. Alas it was not to be; the forecast was for a gale with gusts to 40-60 knots with rain and snow turning to all rain. A double alas that the wind actually came to pass, but we were a bit fortunate in the rain (not too bad).
The wind could have been worse, as it was I didn't feel too stupid wandering around in the forest; the reported high gust was 43mph (weather underground) with steady winds between 22 and 29mph. I'm happy to say that there were no trees or large branches down.
I spent the day doing slow laps around Galankin island with one brief foray to the fuel dock to pick up Deirdre who had stayed in town. The trip to town was a bit intense, fairly bouncy around Breast Island and going with it wasn't too bad, but coming back out from the bridge was a bit worse, so ducked behind aleutski and Turning islands to avoid bucking directly into the rather steep and sharp seas. I did get a Rhinoceros auklet, 2 murrelets, surf scoters and longtails on the short trip.
All in all it wasn't a bad day in terms of species seen; 29 (couldn't bring myself to count the kinglets which I heard, what if it was a creeper?) which seems to be pretty similar to most years (last year was 37). Highlights for this year for me was finally finding a Varied Thrush on the island after months of not seeing any on the island, Red polls and seeing the Western Screech owl in the evening. I was also grateful that Pine siskins had found the deck feeder on Saturday.

1. Pacific Loon
2. Common Loon
3. Horned Grebe
4. Double crested cormorant
5. Pelagic cormorant
6. Great Blue heron
7. Mallard
8. Harlequin Duck
9. Surf Scoter
10. Long-tailed duck
11. Barrow’s Goldeneye
12. Common Merganser
13. Bald Eagle
14. Mew Gull
15. Thayer’s gull
16. Glaucous-winged gull
17. Marbled murrelet
18. Rhinoceros auklet
19. Belted Kingfisher
20. Common Raven
21. Chestnut-backed Chickadee
22. Pacific Wren
23. Varied Thrush
24. Fox Sparrow
25. Song Sparrow
26. Dark-eyed Junco
27. Common Redpoll
28. Pine Siskin
29. Western screech owl

One thing that struck me this year was that I almost always see everything I'm going to see on the island by 1pm, yet I am still compelled to go out until dark. At least this year, going out after dark was pretty productive.