I found the first Early blueberry (Vaccinium ovalifolium) blooming on the island on March 11. There are still early blues blooming (top photo), but many are on their way to being fruit. The now synonymized Alaska blueberry (Vaccinium alaskense) has been blooming for about a week. I haven't done a survey of flower color on the island, but the red ones do seem to be more abundant.
I've started tagging the blooming plants with labeled flagging so I can track the plants through to fruiting. I've never been convinced that the berry color is consistently darker in the Alaska blueberry, but that could be because I not sure which plant is which by the time they have fruit. I'm also hoping to collect a few leaves from each plant for DNA extraction/analysis to see if there is a consistent molecular difference. The work from last fall is a bit inconclusive as yet.
Golden crowned sparrows and a Hermit thrush have been on the island the last few days.

I've had a few posts planned this spring about trips and what is blooming when, but they don't seem to be materializing just from thinking about writing them. Strange.

I did have the opportunity to go to Three Entrance Bay on Friday with Scott Harris and Sandra Lindstrom (visiting phycologist). We had a couple of short hours on the island so that Sandra could collect taxa of interest to her and I could soak up as much information as possible. I need a seaweed refresher a bit more often than once every 4 or 5 years.
My eyes were pretty focused on the algae and my ears on the sounds of a Common loon, winter wren and a Varied thrush or two. I'm almost embarrassed to to say that I hardly noticed any invertebrates, yes there were black turbans, a gumboot chiton, green anemones, ochre & sunflower stars and a black katy, but I'm pretty sure that another person would have noticed many more. My eyes were feasting on the chlorophyll rich kingdom. The seaweeds look so lush this early in the year, that it was hard to see anything else. There wasn't herring spawn in that bay or outer coast, so it was easy to see all the features of the blades.
A few algal highlights for me was tasting the Alaria marginata (excellent), it seems like it would be a nice complement to the black seaweed. Alaria has the added feature that each blade is larger and may not be in as high of demand. Another was the Tokidadendron bullatum, a delicate little red alga which tends to get beat up a bit over the season, so early is best. One deeper tide pool had the sides covered with Monostroma grevillei (Sea cellophane) and the center with large tufts of Palmeria mollis and coral seaweeds.
The photo on the right is a bit odd, but shows the iridescence of Mazzaella phyllocarpa, a red alga. It is probably relatively common, but isn't so easy to notice except when the light/angle is right.
Crowberry (Empetrum nigrum) was blooming on the rocks.

The below freezing temperatures were behind us for a couple days last week. It might have been Monday that it was sunny and I managed to get to town early enough to walk to work. Rewarded with the sight of some early blooming crocuses. These were benefiting from a large heat sink (building and pavement) and a southern exposure. The latter doesn't seem to be enough to bring the crocuses in my garden out of the ground.

The return of warm weather over the last couple of days brought out a couple of birds that I haven't seen for several weeks. I flushed a snipe was in the small creek in the commons (the camera was safely tucked in the back pack) this morning on the way to town. This evening was lucky enough to spot a Western screech owl on a very short branch of a Red alder in the commons. It was near the two larger shops where I saw I've seen the last few birds.

I've been counting birds on my commute between island and Crescent harbor again this fall and winter. It took awhile for me to get motivated this fall as there just weren't that many birds to count in September. I've been fairly faithful about counting since early October, keeping the data in a daily calendar instead of a spread sheet. The data entry will no doubt be great fun.

For at least a month now, I've been seeing birds that I couldn't quite make up my mind about. They were definitely alcids of some sort, just hadn't a good enough look at to decide which one. At first they reminded me of guillemots, just lacking the white wing patch. Some sort of murre made the most sense based on the features I could see. Given that winter Common murres have a distinctive black line on their cheek and winter Thick billed murres have a mostly black head, I decided that the mystery birds were most likely winter Thick-billed murres. I saw or thought I saw white on the chest so decided that these birds weren't in breeding plummage.
This last week, I've managed to get close enough to get a few photographs. I'm not sure about all of the birds I've seen the last month, but the birds in the photo seem to be Common murres in breeding plumage. The bill is thick, but doesn't seem to be the quite the right shape, the flanks are streaked and I'd be hard pressed to describe this bird as blockier than the rest of the Common murres that I've seen.
About half the birds I'm currently seeing on the commute are clearly winter plumage Common murres and the other half the same species in breeding plumage or possibly Thick-billed in some cases. Given that the birds reminded me of guillemots (all black chest) it might be safe to assume that most of the birds were breeding Common murres. Hard to say for certain though.
Now I'm pretty curious about the timing of plumage change in murres. Does it start this early most years or is it pretty variable? Guess I should add notes about plumage in the future.

Finally managed to get up to the Upper Cross trail sampling site to change out the ibutton early in the afternoon. The trail was crunchy with ice and as I walked up the trail through the woods, Varied thrushes (at least 20) flew up and away from me. I was a walking illustration of a bird plow. Also saw several juncos and Pacific wrens, 2 Hairy woodpeckers and a Song sparrow. Heard Pine siskins, Crossbills, Chickadees and Kinglets.
I hadn't been in the Gavan site since I put out the ibuttons out on October 28th, so I assumed that it might take awhile to locate them. I was correct, in fact I was getting worried that I wouldn't find it in the time I had available. So in the interest of finding the tree again, I took a few photos.

The main commons on Galankin island looks like a place recovering from intense industrial activity. In fact the land is more the equivalent of newly deglaciated as most of the area is fill related to the quarrying of rock for runway expansion in the 1960s. I'm not positive if the fill changed the shoreline of the island significantly or if the fill was just to even out the access to the quarry.
The vegetation is mixture of native and non-native pioneer species: Alnus rubra, A. viride var sinuata, Salix sitchensis, Rubus spectabilis and a few very sad looking Picea sitchensis and Tsuga heterophylla. The herbs include: Ranunuculus repens, Veronica americana, Aruncus diocus, Equisetum varigatum, Heracleum maximum and several species of Carex.

There is a pretty wide footpath through the commons that is part of the trail system connecting the common dock to most of the island lots. There are also 2 large, functional but ramshackle sort of buildings, and a couple of sheds filled with semi-abandoned long-line gear and outboards.

There is a small creeklet from the lake that enters the ocean via the lot on the south end of the commons.

Besides being an interesting place to look at plant succession, the commons has been a great place to see a good variety of birds. The mixture of vegetation, open ground, puddles and the small creek draining the lake seem to provide a variety of food sources and cover. Last fall I stalked Western Screech owl(s) in the commons, but this year I'm seeking Common snipe.
This isn't the first year I've seen snipe in the commons, the creek and brush seem to be to their liking. Typically I see a single bird that disappears mid fall, but this year I've seen multiple birds and they seem to be sticking around (or surviving?) longer. The high count was 4 birds on the 5th of November. The last time I saw a single snipe was the 30th of December.

I found the snipe in the typical fashion, that is getting very close without seeing them, snipe exploding into the air, and me jumping out of my socks. I have tried walking slowly and quietly while watching/looking carefully while I walked through the commons to see if I could manage to get a bit closer before they flushed. These efforts have met with a variable amount of success. Snipe are really hard to see for those of us that rely on a bit of movement to see well camouflaged birds. They also are really good at holding still until the last second. The best I've done is when a flock of juncos were working the ground. The juncos weren't spooked or were at least more tolerant of my walking. This time the snipe walked out of view behind the brush. Trying to get closer was not so successful.
I was kind of hoping to get a photo of a snipe, so I've taken to walking with my camera ready through the commons. No photos of snipe yet, but some great blurry "art" photos of shrubs.

Armillarias seem to be one of the mushrooms that are found toward the end of the fall mushroom season. Not that they don't fruit earlier in the year, but that they seem to keep fruiting when most other species have given it up for the year. Although they fruit abundantly and don't get as gushy as say a Russula would with the heavy rains of October, individually they don't seem to hold up as long as other species, e.g. Golden chanterelles. The Armillarias seem to get mushy in a couple of weeks or less, while the Golden chanterelles seem to last for upwards of two months (it was very hard not picking the one near the trail to the house. I'm happy to report that the neighbors also resisted in the interest of learning just how long one of these fungi would hold up.


The mushrooms in the photos were fruiting in the lawn of the Crescent harbor green strip. The yellower ones were part of a large group fruiting under a couple of large Red alders and near a spruce tree near the basketball court. The darker red brown one was near the green sign between Lincoln St. and the basketball court.
The green sign individuals were growing in fairly tight groups, but not truly caespitose (not fused). They are darker, not striate at the cap margin and have fairly cobwebby veils that leave a ring zone on the stem. The caps had small dark fibrils or what might be called very minute scales. The stem base seems a bit bulbous, not not extreme. I cut cross sections of the gills and searched in vain for clamps at the base of the basidia.

The yellow-brown ones are both lighter in color and a bit different hue. The cap margin is noticeably striate. The veil didn't seem as cobwebby, but I didn't find many that still had intact partial veils. The other important feature is the fusion of the stem base. There were several groups of two or three in the lawn with stems fused at the base. There were minute dark fibrils, but nothing terribly noticeable without a dissecting scope.

In Trudell and Ammirati's Mushrooms of the Pacific Northwest there is a fairly accessible discussion of the species that are known to occur in the PNW which I'll summarize:

A. nabsnona: smooth reddish-brown cap, pale upper & dark lower stipe, not cespitose, hardwoods
A. ostoyae: dark scales on cap, strong brownish ring, stipes often fused in clusters or bases enlarged, conifers and hardwoods
A. sinapina: slightly smaller cap than ostoyae, more of a cobwebby veil, cespitose in smaller clusters than ostoyae, usually with conifers
A. gallica: pinkish brown color, white cobwebby veil, bulbous based stipe, not cespitose, hardwoods
Based on this book, I'm leaning toward A. sinapina despite it being fond of conifers. How far do away can the conifer be? Does buried conifer debris work? Trudell and Ammirati note in the text that ostoyae and sinapina can be difficult to distinguish from one another, so I'm not betting my savings on this identification.

Then there is the key to North American Armillarias posted by Tom Volk. There are a few differences in species options; no ostoyae, add in solidipes and NABS XI.

We can eliminate nabsnona (no clamps seen), NABS XI (lacks double ring), and solidipes (ring isn't thick, no scales). The character used to distinguish between gallica and sinapina, is the size of the annulus cells. I did find some that looked larger, but haven't managed to get the micormeter and slide in the same location as yet. A. gallica is rare in the west, so it is probably less likely to be in the green.
The treatment in Mushrooms Demystified groups all of the species in Armillaria mellea group so wasn't of much help in this case.

Hygrophorus pacificus

Fruiting near the entrance road to UAS and Mt. Edgecumbe hish school for at least the last month is a species of Hygrophorus that seems to fit H. pacificus. The mushrooms form a rather large group (about 70 individuals at one time) on the grass under a row of Sitka spruce. The are gregarious, and often quite close together, but I didn't see any stem fusion.

Characterisitcs:

Caps to 7cm across, slightly to moderately visicid and pale orange yellow to very pale yellow orange at the margins and strong yellow brown at the center ((ISCC-NBS color names).

The caps are convex when young, then upturned and a bit wavy when mature. The cap tissue doesn't react with KOH.

When dry the entire cap turns a medium brown (58)

The gills are pale cream, waxy and widely spaced and slightly decurrent. The gill trama is divergent (managed to get a decent cross section).

The stems are not viscid, cream in color without any noticeable surface features. The longest are close to 5cm tall.

The mushroom was somewhat aromatic, not almond-like though.

It keys out fairly easily to H. pacificus in both Arora and in the Pacific Northwest Key council site and the characteristics agree with the descriptions I found in the Hesler and Smith monograph.

These two photos of Bear Mtn were taken from just east of the Galankin Island dock. The first on the 6th, the second this morning. The weather is cooler at sea level as well, I've been building fires in the wood stove for about two weeks now. This year I'm trying to primarily use wood instead of electricity, not because of the cost, but because I'm finding the ritual of building a fire when I get home to be rather enjoyable. Good thing Ian chopped a lot of wood when he was home otherwise, this ritual might not be so easy to maintain.

On the third day of the trip we left Suloia bay to try yet again to venture up the outside coast of Khaz peninsula. We quickly figured out that was not happening. I had already lobbied to walk to Sea Lion cove if we had to wait another day (we had already visited the bad weather acessible parts of the wilderness). I had two excuses; it was a good way to spend a day waiting for the weather and I hadn't been there since I carried my then 9 month old daughter (now 22 ) on my back. It had clearly been way too long since I had been there.

The trail is in pretty good shape, I probably didn't need my boots except to get in and out of the skiff in the bay. We did notice that a bear had been digging under and taking bites (?) out of the boardwalk in a few places in the muskeg closest to the trailhead.

There was an impressive pile of obviously collected plastic garbage near the junction of the trail and the beach. Perhaps it is destined to get picked up?

There were a number of flowers blooming on the beach: Fragaria chiloensis, Arabis hirsuta, Carex macrocephala and Dodecatheon pulchellum and my favorite grass, Hierochloe odorata (by whatever name it goes by these days).

Calypso bulbosa was blooming under the spruce trees (near the surf board cache). It was interesting that we didn't see this orchid on the other uplift beaches we visited.

I spent some time with my nose in the uplift beach meadow looking for Botrychium, where I actually found it was right beside the trail.

There were several plants, B. spathulatum, all under 5 inches tall on both sides of the trail.

I suspect there is more of it growing further down the beach, but our time was limited, so didn't get to look on this visit. Given how quick the walk is to this beach, I really need to visit a bit more often.

We saw a large group of what was probably Sanderlings, one Dunlin and a Black bellied plover on the beach.

Day two of the West Chichagof trip: We woke up to much calmer conditions, so we made another attempt to head up the coast to Khaz Head. Once again we decided it was prudent to turn around not too far outside Fortuna Strait.

At the beginning of Fortuna strait (from Leo's) there is an intriguing looking beach on the northwest shore. Since we couldn't proceed north, we opted to stop and check it out. The bight has a large kelp patch and the swell can make its way in, but it was okay for the c-dory.

The beach landing was alot less bumpy for the kayaks than it was at Leo's anchorage and it looks like the site is used regularly by kayakers making their way north. Scott pointed out that kayakers could see the ocean conditions from the camp making it an ideal spot.

There were holes about a foot wide and 6-8 inches deep in the gravel just above the log line. In some of the holes it was evident that a bear (or more) had has been digging Heracleum maximum. Some plants were mostly dug out others just eaten to the base of the leaves. We found scat with alot of gravel in it, not something I've noticed before.

Draba hyperborea was blooming on the rocks, no Calypsos lurking under the trees here., but there were a few new shoots of Coral root.

We motored on to Suloia and hiked up the 1 mile of trail to the lake. I had assumed that the trail followed the creek, but not so. Lots of plants were blooming in the muskeg including Andromeda polifolia and Coptis trifolia. Saw one Pergrine falcon and many swallows over the lake.

The inner anchorage was suitable for the C-dory, seems like a spot to check out in the future with a larger boat. Nice show of Dodecatheon pulchellum and Ranunuculus occidentalis flowers in the estuary meadow. We had a much more restful night at anchor.

Went on the first of the Wilderness stewardship trips planned for this summer (May 20-24). Our plan was to visit sites in Slocum arm, Myriads, Khaz head and Leo's anchorage, we managed to get to some of those sites.

I went with Scott Harris and Jay Kinsman (FS archaeologist) aboard Scott's 22ft c-dory, the Alacrity. The idea was to run up the outer coast of Khaz peninsula the first day and slowly work our way up the inside waters of the wilderness stopping in sites of botanical or archalogical interest. The sea conditions turned us around in Fortuna strait, so we anchored in Leo's anchorage and went to shore in the kayaks. Lake Leo supports a run of sockeye that has been utilized by both First Nations and European americans for subsistance purposes.

There is just a short distance between the lake and the beach, the topography is flat and the vegetation relatively open and park-like. There were signs of recent use (camp fires) and of older use (culturally modified trees). Jay suggested that the trees were modified for sap production. We also found a few cedar trees that had been peeled.

We circumambulated the lake, not too troublesome, there was only one steep bit of shore line and it didn't require any scrambling.
A few of the areas of flat shoreline had small pockets of fen-like vegetation: Carex lenticularis and/or aquatilis dives, Callliergon cordifolium, Sphagnum, Sanguisorba and Caltha palustris. No sign of toads or beaver, but there was sign of bear and deer use.

There was a bit of trash and other less annoying signs of camping activity on the northeast side of the lake. Given the short and probably easy portage from the beach to the lake, I'm not too surprised.

The weather was sunny and calmish on our walk around the lake, but seems to have blown up rather fiercely from the south toward the evening. The boat was doing some serious bouncing around, so we opted to eat dinner on the beach . Managed to get back to the boat during a bit of calm weather, but had a pretty bumpy night in the anchorage.

A couple of weeks ago I found several (I counted 7) Gyromitra esculenta growing through the weeds and moss (R. loreus) near the burn pile. None were growing in the ash, although one was just out of the ash zone with alot of Funaria hygrometrica. The largest was just over 5 inches tall, the smallest at this point was around 2 inches. The fungi still look pretty fresh today.

To confirm identification I relied on the wrinkled, folded nature of the cap, detachment of the cap from the stem, the relatively slender stem and the presence of 2 oil droplets in the spores.

This fungus is typically listed as a saprophyte, but may also be mycorrhizal. I froze three of the sporocarps for DNA extraction. I'm hoping to build up a reference library to help identify the fungi we isolate from soil. Despite the species name, don't eat this one, it has been reported to cause fatalities.
Two good resourses online are: Tom Volks and Mushroom Expert's

Another fungus fruiting in the garden is Agrocybe praecox

Walked to the third bridge on Indian River trail on Sunday afternoon. Both Vaccinium ovalifolium and alaskense were blooming, as was Lysichiton americanum and a few Coptis asplenifolia.

The herring fishery had an opening in Eastern channel this afternoon. Earlier they were doing test sets. I think it is time for a telephoto lens...

I see individual Pelagic cormorants most days commuting to town, but rarely see them in groups on the water. On land, it seems to be pretty normal to see large groups, I've counted up to 80 cormorants on the rocks west of Galankin. Last week in Klag Bay, we saw a group of 12-16 more like I tend to see Pacific Loons, in fact the lighting was poor and I assumed that they were loons until I got a better look at them. Since that time, I've noticed a few large groups of Pelagic cormorants. Perhaps something that happens when large schools of herring are around or a breeding season behavior?

Totally unrelated, I saw a Little Brown Bat on the way home. It fluttered across the trail not to far below the house and into a group of young hemlocks.

All three tall shrubs of Vaccinium are blooming now on the island. Vaccinium parvifolium is usually the last to start. There are only a few shrubs blooming behind the garden next to the wood shed.

There are several Alaska blueberries (Vaccinium alaskense) blooming along the trail near the house. The Early blueberries are on the back side of full bloom, some flowers have lost their petals and look like there might be fruit developing.

I spent part of this sunny and warm day (52F in the shade) in the garden. Seems like a number of plants are getting started exceptionally early this year, including the French sorrel, lupines and rhubarb. I was pretty sure I saw a bumblebee working the Viburnun flowers, but didn't manage to document it.

This photo is from April 13, 2009, this same plant is blooming today, probably the earliest I've seen a blueberry flower in the garden. This particular shrub is usually the first to bloom in the garden. I'm not sure why it blooms first, it lives on the east side of the house, in a shady spot, about 10 ft from the house. There was also one crocus about ready to open in the garden.