Sitka Nature

One of the Mallards that hatched out earlier this year is unusually pale. I am curious if the different coloring will persist as it matures.

One of the Greater White-fronted Geese that were here this spring seems to have been left behind. It seems likely at this point that the bird will remain for the summer and join with a south-migrating flock this fall.

I also noticed an American Wigeon when I was at the lake.

Sunlight on St. Lazaria Island on an early June evening.

I was reminded of a trip out to St. Lazaria earlier this month when I ran into someone I know who is spending the summer out there working for the Fish and Wildlife Service monitoring seabird populations. St. Lazaria is part of the Alaska Maritime National Wildlife Refuge and is home to hundreds of thousands of breeding birds, mostly storm-petrels and alcids.

I was interested to find out that most of the alcids have only just begun nesting, though the Fork-tailed Storm-petrels are much further along, with some chicks already present in the burrow nests. The Glaucous-winged Gulls also had chicks, but it sounds like many of them may have perished in an unusually strong storm for this time of year. The waves were crashing up on the outer cliffs, and even wrapping around the west end of the island and battering the usually well protected cove, totalling the skiff used by the FWS scientists and moving the anchor around to the east side of the island in the process. Carrie said she thought the waves were probably 18 feet high, splashing well up the cliff. The sound of the waves was impressive, creating a feeling like the cabin was shaking, despite not being directly exposed to the waves. Hearing about this storm reminded me of my desire to get out to a remote stretch of the outer coast before a large storm rolls in and watch the waves pound the shoreline (from a safe distance, of course).

Waves would have been crashing well up the cliffs shown here during the storm.

This spring it was hard to miss all the geese in Sitka as they flew honking overhead or fed and rested on lawns and beaches. Based on reported sightings, at least 250 birds visited town, possibly many more. Most are Greater White-fronted Geese, though there were at least one Snow Goose and a handful of Cackling Geese traveling with them. Geese often show up in town in small numbers during their spring migration, but seeing large flocks on the ground is unusual.

The first report of a large flock in town was Friday morning, April 24. A commercial fisherman noted a flock of over 200 geese at the Turnaround and reported it to the Sitka Birds e-mail list. Over the days that followed, there were several more reports from the Turnaround, Totem Park and Starrigavan.

A conversation with Paul Norwood about some observations he made on a recent kayak trip south of town provided a suggestion as to why they showed up like. He mentioned seeing 2000 geese flying north over Biorka Island on Thursday, April 23. He said there was a light Northwest wind at the time, but it strengthened throughout the day, and later there were many smaller flocks flying back from the north in toward land.

Marge Ward and Marlys Tedin said there had been a similar abundance of Greater White-fronted Geese around town in 2002. Thanks to their detailed records, I was able to find the first large flocks were reported on the morning of May first at Swan Lake. A quick check of the weather history revealed there had been a strong Northwest wind blowing most of the previous day.

Given the weather immediately preceding the arrival of geese in 2002 and again this year, a strong Northwest winds provides a plausible explanation for the goose invasion. However, it is not yet clear whether there were other years when the Northwest wind blew during migration and geese did not show up in town. Maybe the cold winter and early spring also played a role. With snow and ice still persisting on even lower elevation lakes, perhaps locations the geese might ordinarily prefer were not available. Or, perhaps the typical migration route for these geese takes them up Chatham Straight or further east along the mainland. It would be interesting to know if large flocks of geese move up the outer coast, flying across the mouth of Sitka Sound most years, only moving into town in years when unfavorable winds push them back.

This week’s wild food required a little more preparation than previous weeks. I thought it would be nice to have some spruce tip honey, but knew that it takes long enough to make, that it would not be possible to pick and prepare on Wednesday. Connor and Rowan had a day off from school Monday, so while we were at the beach we picked a quart or so of spruce tips. Later that night I worked on making the honey. As it turned out, I cooked it for too long and ended up with a syrup/honey that was too stiff to be conveniently used. (I couldn’t even spread it with a knife.) The next day I reheated it and mixed in more water, but this time I didn’t evaporate enough of the water off and it was more the consistency of light syrup than honey.

This week the Red Elderberries (Sambucus racemosa) have been blooming, and I had a recipe for elderberry flower fritters from Janice Schofield’s book, Discovering Wild Plants that I wanted to try and it seemed like they might go well with the spruce tip honey, so the kids and I picked some flowers. (Note that many parts of Red Elderberry are poisonous, but the flowers and berries, minus the seeds, are not.)

The recipe called for 4 cups of flowers, which were to be dipped in flour. We hadn’t picked quite that much, so I cut back on the batter ingredients slightly. I suspect I did not do it carefully enough and ended up with a batter that was thicker than it should have been. (This would have been easy to fix, had I done this before and realized what I needed.) As it turned out, I ran out of batter before running out of flowers, and the fritters were quite thick, consistently mostly of the bread-like fried batter.

The fritters were generally well-received, especially dipped in the spruce tip honey/syrup. Connor and Rowan said they mostly just like bread. Given the thickness of the fried batter, this is not surprising. I found the faint sour odor of the flowers an interesting part of the smell/taste mix along with the batter and spruce tip honey/syrup. Schofield says the fritters are not unlike fried clams, but that was not my experience. Perhaps with a lighter batter that allowed the flavor of the flowers a bit more room to expand, my impressions would have been different.