Life on the Outer Coast

Started out rainy today and I thought I would be a good grown-up and clean the house for Thanksgiving. Now, I'll be thankful for nice weather, a good day outside and a messy house. Can't really imagine that my friends care what my house looks like, in fact if it is too clean, it will probably just make them nervous.

Walked around the island today. I'm trying to make it a weekly occurence. It fits well with my policy of generally not leaving the island on Sunday and I should have a better idea of how the island bird population changes over the course of the winter. At least I'll see how it varies week to week.

A dozen mallards have joined the Buffleheads in the lake. I didn't see the Ring-necked duck. I saw 3 juncos, 4 song and a golden crowned sparrow on the ground under the alders on the west side of the lake. One flock of pine siskins in the sitka alders, golden-crowned kinglets and chickadees in the conifers. 2 winter wrens were in a brush pile by the dock. There were 8 common mergansers and 3 Harlequins at the visible near the dock from the trail.

Once at the dock, decided to kayak out to the airport area. I was curious whether the alcids I was seeing last winter could be found out past the lighthouse and hadn't been out in a kayak for at least a month. Unfortunately, I didn't plan ahead, so didn't take the new kayak. When I put it in storage at the cabin, I removed the seat, air bags and paddles to the house so that they would stay dry. Too bad I was so uncharacteristicly tidy. Most of the parts of the red plastic kayak were at the dock and Ian was willing to met me half-way with the spray skirt.

Paddled past Rockwell island and across between Rose and Mitchell rocks to Mermaid cove. There was a mid size swell in Middle channel, just large enough to lose birds and push the kayak around, but not so big as to make me nervous. There were 5 White-winged scoters mid channel. I was close enought that the white mark around the eye and white secondaries were visisble without binoculars. Good thing, because the binoculars I brought with me weren't the greatest.

I saw four loons on my trip. Not feeling terribly confident about loon identification. I had settled on the presence or absence of white above the eye and a white collar on the neck to tell Pacific from Common loons, but am finding those features a little difficult to see at all times. I couldn't see a white partial collar on any neck, could see white eyebrows on two of the four. One may have been a yellow-billed loon. I was concentrating on the white area around the eyes, and finally glanced at the bill and noticed it was yellowish. Not really sure how variable the bill color is or how much the ambient light would affect the appearance of a light colored bill. Unfortunately, the loon dove as soon as I noticed the bill color and I couldn't find that individual again. So I could have seen one Common, one Yellow-billed and two Pacific, but I wouldn't swear to it.

Disturbed a flock of surfbirds (about 40) from one of the rocks near the runway. It occured to me that if there was an owl on the runway, I'd have a better chance of seeing it from a kayak than by walking around on Alice Island, so I paddled a bit closer to the runway than usual. Didn't see an owl, but the surfbirds were quite nice.

A couple of groups of mew gulls were in the cove and in middle channel. I enjoy their voices. The other gulls I noticed were Glaucous-winged. If were to judge the trip by the number of alcids, it wasn't terribly successful, found one common murre on the way back near Rockwell island. Fortunately, I'm not using that criteria.

Was fortunate enough to get a good look at a sharp-shin hawk near Galankin. It took off from a tree between Donahoe's and the Wade's houses and flew across the water to Kutkan Island. The size of the bird was right, the banding of the tail was a bit hard to make out, but it was long and narrow. The wings looked much broader (front to back) than the raptor I saw at the feeder on Moller St. The short periods of wing flapping alternating with gliding seems like it might be a good character to focus on when they are too far away to see well. According to what I read in "Hawks in Flight" accipters use the flap and glide flight, but falcons tend to use direct flight. I'm hoping that this pattern will help me a bit on my waffling with small raptors.

Saturday when walking down Sawmill Crk toward the park, I saw a much larger hawk with the same flight pattern and a longish tail. Judging by the size, tail and flight pattern I suspect it was a Goshawk.


When I moved the kayak from the trail, I found two clumps of youngish Armillaria ostyoe There were some older individuals which would have been rather difficult to recognize without the presence of the younger individuals. Also collected a few of the orange-brown Lactarius that I've been seeing around. They were growing under the alders in the mineral looking soil along the trail around the lake. The taste was mild, the latex white. The spore print isn't ready yet, but the other features led me to Lactarius alpinus var. mitis. Both the key in Arora and in the Pacific Northwest Key council led to the same spot and the description available on the PNW key site seems to fit. Found a handy link to Hesler and Smiths 1979 Lactarius monograph on the Mushroom Expert site. http://www.hti.umich.edu/cgi/t/text/text-idx?type=boolean;subtype=bib;c=fung1tc;cc=fung1tc;sid=ff6eadf0005555880318a8b131e50d19;q1=aac3719;rgn1=citation;op2=And;rgn2=author;op3=And;rgn3=author;submit=Submit%20search;view=header;rgn=mainheader;idno=AAC3719.0001.001

The Lactarius that I saw under the spruce in the SJ quad also seems to fit this species.