Life on the Outer Coast

Was in Juneau on the 18th and 19th of February to attend a day of interesting talks hosted by the Tongass Conservation plan consortium. The public day was proceeded by 2 days of discussion of 8 invited papers on various topics on the Tongass. The papers should be available on the Audobon website www.audubonalaska.org at some point, but nothing has appeared yet. Gathered a few ideas from the speakers (particularly P. Alaback) . One idea that wasn't exactly new to me, but I seem to have forgotten the language to describe it. In a nutshell the idea the a moderate level of disturbance leads to the highest diversity. It is one of those things that when someone points it out seems like an obvious sort of thing, but being reminded of it was useful. The herb rich gravel bars, alpine and upper estuary meadows around here seem to fit this model. I guess I'm thinking that disturbance can include browse, salt inundation, flood, snow creep, wind etc.
Also talked to Mary Willson about yellow beaks on winter dippers. Apparently some adult birds dark bills turn yellow or yellowish in the winter. She said that they put a bit of effort into trying to figure out a pattern to this, but were convinced that they understood why a given bird exhibited the color change.

Okay, the highlight of the bird week was the rather tame swans in Crescent Harbor. There were 2 juveniles and 2 adults. The first day, they flew low over the skiff, landed not too far astern and followed the boat for a few moments.

	February 16	February 17	February 20	February 21	February 22
Trumpeter Swan		4	4
Horned Grebe		1
Pelagic Cormorant	2			2	2
Great Blue Heron	1			1	1
Mallards	7	2		1	2
Long-tail duck	5	5	1
Surf Scoter			5
White-winged Scoter				6
Barrow's Goldeneye		2			7
Bufflehead					9
Common Merganser	4	9	3	3	2
Glaucous-winged Gull		2		1	2
Common Murre				1
Marbled Murrelet		1
Belted Kingfisher					1
Bald Eagle					1
Weather		Calm, pink sunrise	Calm	slight chop	east wind
Time	8am	8am	8am	2pm	4:30pm