Sitka Nature

Scott Harris invited me to go with him to Kruzof to check out the beach south of Kamenoi Point as a possible COASST observation site. We took his boat over to Crab Bay to take advantage of the Brent’s Beach Cabin mooring buoy. Scott dropped me off on shore and took his boat out to tie off at the buoy. While Scott was doing that and rowing his inflatable raft back in, I took a look at the beach and cabin. It has been several years since I was at the cabin, though last summer on an outing to Point Brown, I did get pretty close. The cabin is in a nice location. It is not one of the new larger cabins, but it would comfortably sleep a few people.

We hiked went up in the woods to take a fairly well used trailed and avoid the rocky and drift log strewn Kamenoi Point. It was a short walk to the beach just south of the point, and we walked to the end of it and back.

After getting back to the boat, we decided to take a quick side trip to look at Port Krestof before heading back to town.

Weather: The weather mostly cloudy to overcast. There was a rain shower that moved through (it was interesting to see it coming from the south). The sun broke out a little bit as well. Winds were light.

Birds: There was a Wandering Tattler in the corner of Crescent Harbor.

When we came out of the woods at Kamenoi Beach, there were several song birds in the trees. I did not get a good look at anything, but did see a Townsend’s Warbler. There were also some Song Sparrows in the grasses and logs.

We saw Spotted Sandpipers, though I am not sure how many, and a couple of Semipalmated Plovers on Kamenoi Beach. There were also a few gulls feeding on dead salmon. As best I could tell, they were all Glaucous-winged Gulls.

At the south end of the beach just offshore, there were four Common Loons. When walking back, I saw two Pacific Loons offshore of the south end of the beach. A pretty good sized flock of what appeared to be Surf Scoters was quite a ways offshore.

Ravens evidently like to wander around the beach, as there were a few different long sets of tracks.

On the boat ride, we saw quite a few alcids, including juveniles of at least three species, Marbled Murrelet, Rhinocerous Auklet, and Common Murre. We also saw a couple of small flocks of Red-necked Phalaropes.

The tide was in pretty far by the time we got to Port Krestof, so we didn’t really get a good look at much in there. I was interested to see several Marbled Murrelets and an Auklet in the bay, however.

Other Notes: It was interesting to see Chicken of the Woods growing out of a drift log on the beach.

There were not many mammal tracks on the beach overall, though I did see one track I think was a mink, and there was a nice set of bear tracks.

There were not many flowers, but I did see a couple of Sea Rockets still blooming, and just the very last of the False Arnica.

The kids and I took a walk down to Totem Park this evening.

Weather: Overcast and rain today.

Birds: There were quite a few Black Turnstones along the shore at the park. Connor spent some time trying to get pictures of them.

A couple of Spotted Sandpipers are still at the park.

I saw a single Least Sandpiper.

A lone Canada Goose was in the Estuary of Indian River.

Those of you who check the blog frequently may have noticed that suddenly a week’s worth of Daily Observations all showed up at once. Although I have been making brief notes to myself, I’ve been having trouble keeping up with writing entries daily. I finally managed to sit down and get it done today (though I still have a couple of other entries I intend to write, they’re just not of the Daily Observations variety). If you’re wondering what’s actually newly posted, this update started with the entry dated for 20 August.

I stopped by Swan Lake briefly a couple of times today, then went for a walk to Totem Park with Connor and Rowan this afternoon.

Weather: It was overcast throughout the day with a pretty good wind. It started raining this afternoon. Temperatures were in the lower-60s in the morning, but cooled off when the rain started.

Birds: At Swan Lake this morning I saw one Northern Pintail and one Green-winged Teal. While I was sitting there, 4 more teal flew in. Just afternoon, I did not see either the pintail or the teal.

At Totem Park there were quite a few Black Turnstones. The most I saw at once was about 30, but I think there were probably more than that, as they were spread out from near the Visitor’s Center all the way around to the river mouth.

There were hundreds of gulls between the Battlesite Point and the river mouth. There seemed to be more Mew Gulls today than a couple of days ago. There were also several Black-legged Kittiwakes and one Caspian Tern. Most of the gulls were Glaucous-winged, Thayer’s, or Herring Gulls. There were a few gulls up in the river feeding on dead salmon.

Other Notes:
Rowan found a couple of caterpillars on salmonberry bushes as we were walking along the trail. She has gotten pretty good at spotting them, I guess. They seemed to be variations on the theme of the ones she has been getting around the house. They were mostly brown, one had spots, the other didn’t. The spots were a little more yellow then the ones I remember seeing here, however.