Sitka Nature

Rowan and I went down and spent some time at the beach this morning. The tide was up, but there was still enough room for Rowan to look for shells and climb on the rocks. I spent the time soaking up the sun, watching flies, and taking pictures of kelp.

Weather: Clear skies with freezing temperatures overnight gave way to clear skies with temperatures in the 40s today. It was quite nice to sit out in the sun out of the breeze. There was a light wind form the North.

Birds: There was the usual assortment of duck family species off shore along Lincoln Street Beach. I heard some smaller song birds in the bushes and trees, but never got a good look at them. There was also at least one Song Sparrow in the rocks between the sandy part of the beach and the sidewalk above.

Other Notes: There were quite a few flies gathering on the drying seaweed that had washed ashore. They would fly off if you made any movements close to them, but they would come back shortly once you stopped moving. I took advantage of this to set up my camera in attempt to get some photos and I also watched what they were doing. They did a little hopping thing where they would flair their wings as they were hopping. Every once in awhile one would fly over and, as best I could tell, try to mount (as in copulate) with one of the other ones. There was a very brief tussle and they went back to what they were doing. Sometimes one would fly in from further away and get jumped on by several of the flies that were right there. I’m not sure what was going on. I’m also not sure where they have been waiting out the winter. I did get a couple of pictures, but not very close up, so I’m not sure how well they will serve for identification purposes.

Today was birding class and then this afternoon I had planned to go birding again later in the afternoon, but ended up just hanging out soaking up the warm sun on a rocky shore out of the wind.

Weather: It got down into the upper-20s overnight, but started warming up relatively quickly once the sun got up. The air temperature was probably only in the lower-40s but the sun felt quite nice. There was a light breeze that seemed to be coming out of the northwest this afternoon.

Birds: We didn’t observe too much in the woods while birding this morning. However, we did see at least three American Wigeons and two pair of Northern Pintails in Indian River estuary. There were also lots of mallards and gulls. Closer to the mouth were several Barrow’s Goldeneye and 2 or 3 Common Goldeneye. More gulls were on the beach and between the point and the visitor center we saw Buffleheads, Harlequin Ducks, Surf Scoters, Barrow’s Goldeneye, and a single Common Goldeneye in the water not too far of the beach.

This afternoon there didn’t seem to be much at Swan Lake other than the Mallards.

Someone apparently left some fish remains on top of the cleaning station off Alice Island. At first there were no birds there, but at some point a gull noticed the food. It didn’t take too long for several gulls to check it out, and only a couple minutes later the first eagle appeared. Pretty soon, there were several eagles and they had run off the gulls. The eagles were fairly aggressive. They would land on top of and/or grab other birds to pull them off a piece of fish. If one tried to take off and take a piece with it, it generally was chased by at least one other bird. Usually the piece of fished was dropped and sank before any eagle could get back to it.

Other Notes: Willows were starting to open up at Crescent Harbor.