Life on the Outer Coast

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.