The other night I decided to try and come up with all of the different birds I have seen or heard so far this year that I could identify with relative certainty. I was able to come up with 26 different birds. I know that I have seen (and probably heard) more, but I am not able to identify all of the birds that I see. For example, I have not learned how to distinguish the various gulls, so they are not included. I did include the hairy woodpecker, although some or all of those sightings may have actually been a downy woodpecker.
- Golden-Crowned Kinglet
- Ruby-Crowned Kinglet
- Common Raven
- Northwestern Crow
- Varied Thrush
- European Starling
- American Robin
- Dark-eyed Junco
- Chestnut-backed Chickadee
- Bald Eagle
- Song Sparrow
- American Dipper
- Pine Siskin
- Red-breasted Sapsucker
- Hairy Woodpecker
- Pelagic Cormorant
- Common Merganser
- Surf Scoter
- Mallard Duck
- Bufflehead Duck
- Belted Kingfisher
- Rufous Hummingbird
- Steller’s Jay
- Great Blue Heron
- Winter Wren
- Trumpeter Swan
Plants sure seem to be liking the warm sunny weather of the last few days. The dearheart heart have really opened up, covering the forest floor in green. It looks like the black lilies are about to bloom near the beach. Twisted stalk have grown to a height of at least 10 cm when I did not see any at all the last time I was there. Spring violets are blooming in the open area across the street from our house. Ferns are showing their fiddleheads. Horsetails are growing. What I think are shoots of fireweed have shown up. It all seems to happen so fast once it really gets going. In just a very few days all sorts of changes have occured.
Although Mt. Edgecumbe looked like it had a fair covering of snow for most of the winter, the last few days of warm weather have shown how little depth there actually was. My recollection is that in most years there is snow completely covering most of the mountain above timberline well into the late spring and early summer. This year, after less than a week of truly warm weather, there are large bare patches on the slopes. Gavan Hill looks like most of the snow is now gone, although I am sure there are places where snow that had drifted into large snow banks are still there. I hope to get up there in the next week or so to find out.
This afternoon Connor and I were watching a ball that had been captured by the falling water of the flume falls. While we were sitting there, I happened to look over towards the bridge, and saw a mink standing there. I am not sure if it had come out from under the bridge or somewhere else, but it stopped and watched us. I was able to direct Connor’s attention to it before someone else came along and asked me where the gym was. The mink was apparently not comfortable with this person walking up and so it scampered across the bridge and down the other bank of the flume. At first it ducked down in the bushes and started across a pipe located in front of the culvert that goes under the street. After only a couple of steps, it retreated and then ran quickly across the street and down where I could no longer see it. Last fall, a couple of different students had mentioned seeing a mink near the flume. I wonder if it was the same one.