Life on the Outer Coast

On the way to the dock this morning I found a pile of feathers near the junction of the trail to the house and the circum-lake trail. The flight feathers were solid gray and the plume feathers were grey with the apical 1/4 white. A junco? From the placement on the ground, it looks like the victim was plucked on the ground. The plucking site looked like what I was finding last fall from the western screech owl. I 've been looking on my walks home at night, but haven't seen an owl this fall.

On the way to town: 14 common mergansers, 3 pelagic and 1 double crested cormorant, 2 long-tails, one glaucuous winged gull.

Before lunch went over to Moller Park to give the sparrows another try. The dogs weren't out and the weather was much more user friendly. Watched the feeder in the yard across from the Path of Hope walk for quite some time. Long enough that I got to visit with the lady of the house on her return. She told me about the bird houses in the backyard and that they have so many feeders because one of their children sends a new feeder every year. It sounds like her husband might be house bound and enjoys the birds and his weather station. One interesting story she told me was about a set of parent birds (sounded like swallows) that left a nestful of unfledged birds. The grandson raised them in birdcages indoors, feeding them crickets from the pet store. Sounded like he let the birds experiment with flight indoors. During one flight training day, the window was open and one flew out and didn't return. The next day, all the fledglings were released.

Did see fox, golden crowned, white throated and song sparrows as well as an impressive number of juncos (both slate and Oregon) at the feeders and a winter wren in the salmonberries on the park side of the streeet. The white throated sparrow was not the boldly colored one photographed earlier and alas wasn't singing the "Sam Peabody" song I heard in New York last May, but was an interesting addition to the fall migration. I did a little searching for information about previous sightings of this bird. Found an article documenting the first record of this species in the state (1968). Also found out that a yard in Ketchikan has had white-throated sparrows annually for an unspecified number of years in the fall and early winter. So much for a Sitka first, I should have looked at Webster's paper...5 previous records, 2 of them not that long ago, 1991 and 1998.

When I first arrived at the park a large flock of pine siskins landed in a red alder closer to the access street. Just before I left the same one or another flock came chattering in and landed in the red alder across from the feeder yard. Another group of about 8 larger finch-like birds passed by, but I didn't get a good look at them.


Walked up to the Indian river muskeg late (3:30) in the afternoon to try to collect roots from Rubus chamaemorus. I knew that the leaves had died back, but hoped that the stem would be adequately intact to trace it to the roots. No such luck. The leaves were just laying on the muskeg, the stems were completely unattached to the plant bases and stems. I did collect one section of soil and roots from Empetrum for culturing.
Also had a chance to find the tree covered with Lobaria I saw last Tuesday. It was a hemlock and the Lobaria growth was lush. There was one small individual growing on a stump at ground level. The tree was easily accessible from the trail near the large notched tree. There were a couple of large root wads that looked like they might be Schistostega habitat, but it was getting too dark to see small moss.