Sitka Nature

Weather: The forecast for overcast finally came to be. Today there were only a couple of small breaks in the clouds. When I went for a walk this afternoon, there was a breeze out of the southwest. There were a few very light sprinkles; not even enough to make anything begin to get wet. Although it was no colder than it has been, it felt cooler with no sun to warm my skin.

Birds: After watching the Winter Wrens yesterday, I thought I would go back and see if I could observe them again. On the way through the park I heard some Varied Thrushes practicing their buzzing trills. I managed to spy one up in a tree as well, but only because I heard it moving around. There were a few calls that sounded like kinglets as well with an occasional Winter Wren singing in the distance. There was also a call that sounded unfamiliar to me. It sounded like it was coming from across the river and I thought it unlikely that I could find the source, so I did not pursue it. Despite the calls and songs I heard, the overall feel in the park was quiet.

As I approached the estuary, there were a couple of Kingfishers rattling. They were both perched, and I am not sure whether they were rattling at each other or not. They were too far away for me to tell whether they were male or female.

When I got to the place I watched the wrens yesterday, I did not see them. I sat and waited for awhile but they did not appear to be in the near vicinity. I took a closer look at the beginnings of the nest and then moved on.

In the estuary and near the river mouth there were some Mallards, I counted at leat 5 pairs. There were also some ducks further out that were diving underwater. I think they were goldeneye, and I was able to get a good enough look at a male Common Goldeneye with what I assumed to be a female of the same species up in the river mouth (which was partially flooded by the incoming tide).

Having just learned one of the ways to distinguish Thayer’s Gulls from Herring Gulls, I decided to try getting a look at the gulls that were on the tidal flats. Due to time constraints and their wariness, I was not able to get too close to them, but I did take some pictures. Upon reviewing the pictures at home, I once again felt a little bewildered trying to tease out the variations in gull shape and plumage to get correct identifications. (Of the ones pictured here, I think the top photo shows a Herring Gull, but I am not sure about the bottom one. My best guess at this point is 3rd year Herring Gull.)

There were a couple of Red-breasted Mergansers in one of the flooded depressions that create a large tidepool when the tide is out.

Flora: There were a few blueberry flowers out. I think they may be a little hesitant after the recent cold snap. The huckleberry buds were starting to break open. The elderberry leaves are out of their bud but still quite small and not yet extended. Along Lincoln Street I alder catkins that had swollen dramatically. I have not paid close enough attention in the past to know for sure, but it looked to me like they were close to opening up completely.

Many people (myself included) find Gull identification to be challenging. Even some species of pure adults can be difficult, so adding in the various hybrids that occur as well as up to 4 years of changing plumages as the birds mature makes things even harder. I have recently decided to make an effort to learn the gulls a little bit better.

The only time I have seen a Bonaparte’s Gull, it was easy to distinguish with its black head. I did not have too much trouble with Glaucous-winged Gulls when I realized that they are pretty much the only ones with gray wing tips. (An occasional Glaucous Gull makes it down to Sitka, but that’s fairly exceptional.) Mew Gulls were the next species. Although I am still not entirely comfortable with making the identification of them, they seem to look different enough in overall appearance, that they’re not too hard to distinguish. Most recently, I have started to make progress on the other two gulls commonly seen around Sitka, Thayer’s Gulls and Herring Gulls.

I took the picture of the this gull at Swan Lake in February. (Incidentally, winter seems to be a good time to get photos of the gulls, as they are commonly fed by people around town, so they are less wary than at other times of the year away from town.) Just this week, I finally got around to trying to figure out what species it was. With a little luck and lots of help from others, I learned that the bird is a Thayer’s Gull.

The lucky part of this was that I happened to get a picture that showed the undersides of the bird’s primary feathers. Without seeing those, the Herring Gull can be difficult to reliably distinguish from the Thayer’s Gull. However, Thayer’s Gulls have light undersides of the primaries while Herring Gulls have dark undersides (one helpful person described the Herring Gull’s wingtips as having been dipped in black paint).

The birds do differ in other respects, including eye color, beak size, shape of the head, and some other subtleties. However, it seems there is enough variation that it is difficult to make a confident identification based only on those characteristics.