Life on the Outer Coast

I haven’t been very regular about posting for the last couple of weeks and this entry is a bit wordy and scattered as a result of that inconsistency. I'm taking advantage of the 2 hour wait on the tarmac in Sitka and an indefinite amount of time circling Juneau to write this entry. In the end, it took 3 hours between boarding in Sitka and landing in Juneau. The rest of the trip to Fairbanks went a bit smoother.

Sunday Feb. 24^th had the time and inclination to take the kayak out to search for birds. It was very calm, almost raining but not quite, at least not in the morning when I was out.

Used the plastic kayak as the yellow cedar one was in a spot not easily accessed by one person. It was windy enough last Monday that I thought the kayak could get blown off the dock so stowed it in the shop on the commons.

The plastic one isn’t anywhere near as light to paddle as the yellow cedar kayak, it is slower and takes more energy to move once in the water. The only advantage of it in general is that I don’t wince if I find ice or barnacles. Ice wasn’t a problem on Sunday.

I paddled around the lighthouse end of the island toward the cormorant rocks. The cormorants went on alert when I was not to far past the lighthouse. They are amazingly jumpy birds, it is hard to see them as prey for too many things, but my imagination must be inadequate. There was a large flock of mixed Pelagic and Double crested on the rocks and a few Harlequins, White winged and Surf scoters were in the area. There was an land otter or mink alarming when I paddles past, but I never did see the animal. Paddled west past the cormorant rocks toward Beardslee islands and Middle channel looking for alcids and shorebirds. Found the usual mew gulls, a couple of Marbled murrelets, and a Red-necked grebe in the channel by the rock across from the runway. Paddled back through Middle channel and along the town side of Breast and Morne island. Checked out the rocks and shore lines of the islands on the path, but didn’t find shorebirds. The rest of the usual commute birds were around; Glaucous winged gulls, Harlequins, Common mergansers, Barrows goldeneyes, Mallards, Buffleheads and Pacific loons. The trip seems a bit dull in the retelling, but it didn’t feel that way at the time, instead it was a rather pleasant way to spend the morning.

It was feeling a bit spring-like so figured it was time to check out the garden and look for signs of life. The witch hazel and the New Dawn viburnum were blooming, the latter has been blooming off and on through the winter. The witch hazel flowers are just starting to open. No sign of the early crocus yet.

The older deciduous shrubs and small trees (Vine Maple, Witch Hazel, Azaleas) in the garden have a number of lichens and mosses on the multiple trunks of the vine maple and branches. I haven’t done a species count yet from the garden, but I probably should. I suspect it is rather high. There are the typical array of Platismatias, Hypogymnia species and Hypotrachyna sinosa, with a lot of Ramalina and Ulota ssp. and Orthotrichum lyellii. This time one of the Ramalinas had apothecia, which was kind of exciting as it seemed like it would be easier to identify to species with that clue, especially since I didn’t want to collect the lichen to identify it. It was raining so I left the book in the house and traipsed back and forth with my hand lens. It was a bit silly, but I decided that I preferred the shrub lichens to stay living outside instead of ending up in boxes. The end point is that it is Ramalina dilacerata, a lichen associated with coastal exposure.

Also found on the vine maple another species that I associate with ocean exposure, Ulota phyllantha. It may have been growing there before, but it didn’t have obvious gemmae before, so I didn’t notice it. On the same branch was U. obstusicula, U. megalospora, and Orthotricum lyellii.

I didn’t get out much this week because I needed to get a lot done before leaving for Fairbanks and I managed to add a couple of events to an already busy week. Spending a morning at Baranof school sharing spinning and carding may not have been the best use of my time, but it was nice being around the kids and they seemed interested. I’ll have to remember to bring the mountain goat wool in the future (provided that I never learn to say no), since they see the Raven’s tail weaving at the park.

Between tasks this week spent some time looking at Tetraphis versus Aulacomium. They aren’t two mosses that I thought could be confused, but I hadn’t noticed that the old gemmae of Tetraphis elongate over the winter. The synopsis of the mostly macroscopic differences is as follows.

Habitat is a bit different, Tetraphis seems to prefer decomposing wood in shady spots and Aulacomium the same substratum, but in sunny locations.

The gemmae are generally fairly distinct, those of Tetraphis are in leafy cup-like structures and the Aulacomium look a lot like lollipops. The elongated stalks still have the leafy cups, the stalks are just a lot longer.

Up close the leaf cells of Aulacomium are papillose, I haven’t checked to see if this was visible with a hand lens.

Size; Aulacomium is typically much smaller than the average Tetraphis.

If the capsules are available, the four teeth of Tetraphis are quite distinctive.

Gemmae are a handy thing, both for the bryophyte that doesn’t need to go through the process of getting gametes together in order to produce and for the poor botanist trying to identify the creature. One recent example was Grimmia torquata. The specimen I had was without capsules, so lacked a lot of the features that were being discussed in keys and descriptions. Luckily I found gemmae in the upper leaf axils, without this structure I would have been stuck at a few likely species. Fortunately, the section descriptions of Grimmia in the BFNA clearly state whether or not the species have gemmae, so I could eliminate a lot of contenders. Apparently, this moss is rather common in southeast, I’ve just managed to overlook or ignore it until recently.

Also got to look at a small ascomycete this week, Pseudoplectania nigrella. It is a small member of the Sarcosomataceae. It is a stalkless, 2-3 cm broad cup shaped fungus that grows on wood. Both the hymenium and outer surface are black, but the flesh was white. The outer surface is hairy with a lot of short hyphae. After soaking in a bit of water, the outer surface became rather gelatinous. I was able to get a decent cross section of the apothecia, at least clear enough to see the spores, the ascus and the paraphyses. I really need a camera, the structures are quite appealing and it would be nice to have a photo of both the macro and micro features. Anyway, the spores were globose and the ascus did not react with iodine.

Thursday morning heard a winter wren singing on my way to the island dock. It sounded a bit tentative compared to the full-bodied singing that I typically hear. The sound was softer and the song a bit disorganized.

Counted the channel birds on Thursday during a particularly rainy moment. The notebook with all of the numbers is not with me, but I do recall the species (I hope):

266 Longtails, Common mergansers, Scaup (greater), Barrow’s goldeneyes, crows, Pelagic cormorant, Thayers, Glaucous-winged, Herring, and Mew gulls.

The commute birds included: Pelagic cormorants, Surf scoters, Harlequins, Common mergansers, Marbled murrelets, Glaucous-winged gulls, Mew gulls, Common loon.