Sitka Nature

This eggshell fragment was laying on the moss at the edge of a gravel bar on Indian River shortly above the second bridge. Given the size and color, I figured it must be a thrush egg. However, it seems a bit too early for Hermit Thrushes and especially Swainson’s Thrushes to have nestlings. American Robin eggs are pure blue, and the book I have about eggs and nestlings shows Varied Thrush eggs being pure blue as well. I took a look on the Birds of North America On-line account of Varied Thrush and found a photo there of eggs with light speckling. Though that example was not nearly as speckled as this, given the time and location, my best guess is this was from a recently hatched Varied Thrush. I do not expect the nest was particularly close, as it is my understanding that many bird parents will carry such things away from the nest in an effort to help avoid detection and predation of their young.

I could have included this my previous post on the Katlian Outcrops, but I thought it deserved it’s own post for a couple of reasons. First, it will make it easier to find in the future, and second I hope it helps me remember the lesson I should have learned many times before.

The outcrop was basically a cliff that seemed to go well below the bay’s surface. It was a good thing it was high tide, or I probably would not have been able to get off and look around at all. During the course of my visit, I walked a short distance along a ledge that varied from a couple of feet to several feet wide, bare rock in some places with a fair amount of vegetation growing in others.

In the first spot of vegetation I came to, I noticed a handful of empty limpet shells scattered over a small area on a carpet of moss protected by the trees and shrubs growing there. A few feet away, I noticed another shell on top of a very small ledge a foot or two off the main ledge I was standing on. I had a bit of curiosity about the shells, but was mainly focused on looking for different-seeming plants, so I only paused briefly to consider the shells and did not take any pictures.

I continued walking down the ledge a little bit further before turning around. At one point I noticed a small dark brown bird fly along the base of the cliff below me, but I had not noticed any other obvious (to me) bird sign on the ledge.. I looked at the shells as I neared my pick up spot, but by this time I had my hands full with rock fragments and bryophyte collections, so it did not seem worth it to take the time to put it all down and take a picture of the shells and their context.

Of course it wasn’t long after leaving the cliffs and heading back into town that the limpet shell mystery started to dominate my thinking about the place. I was kicking myself for not taking some pictures, it would have only taken a minute or so, and I knew this was a location I would not be likely to get back to soon. It’s not that the photos would necessarily have helped me solve the mystery, but they would have made it easier to verify my memories of some of the details and check for things I might not have noticed at that time. Plus it would have been nice to illustrate this blog post (which is one of only a few that don’t have photo illustrations) to give others a better chance to offer suggestions as to what the shells may have been saying.

If anyone has thoughts/ideas about the shells and how they came to rest where they were, I would be interested in hearing them. I will share my own theories in a follow-up post.

Most of today’s photos were take on a trip to Salmon Lake. The exception is a picture of The Sisters at Sunrise.

[View with PicLens]

On a small island of trees at the bottom of the street we live on, there’s been a squirrel that Connor and Rowan have been paying some attention to. Though I am unsure of their reasoning, they have taken to calling it Hola, and most times we walk by, one of them will point him out. (I am not convinced it’s a male squirrel, but I’ll go with their thinking regarding its gender until there’s evidence otherwise.)

The other day we were walking past the island and I noticed a lot of little hemlock branches on the ground. Upon pausing to consider how they came to be there, another one dropped a short distance from me. I looked up and saw Hola working at trimming the ends of branches. All the trimmed branches had cones on them, a fact which I hadn’t really noticed before.

Connor and Rowan seemed to be unsurprised by this behavior, and proceeded to show me a hole where Hola would go at times. Connor believed this hole to be Hola’s home, and he showed me where he had made an effort to help Hola with his work by putting branches at the entrance.

The next day Connor and Rowan were playing down on the island and I asked them about Hola’s activities while I waited for someone to stop by with a delivery. They told me that Hola had been gathering the trimmed branches and piling them at the bases of several trees. I guess that would make them more convenient for grabbing and eating from a favored branch, but the issue of convenience brings up the question of why he’s trimming the branches in the first place. He could just grab the cones from the branches as he wants.

I can think of a couple of reasons Hola harvests the cones in the way he does. The branches ends where the cones are located are quite flexible, and it seems unlikely that he would be able to hold on and eat while out there. That would require a trip to the end to grab a cone, followed by a retreat back to a steady location for eating. This seems like an inefficient process for getting food. Another reason might be that the cones will continue to mature if they remain on the tree. Sometime this winter when conditions are right, they will open up and release their seeds to the wind. Once trimmed, it seems the cones are much more likely to remain closed, leaving the seeds available for Hola to eat. One thing I wonder about though is the quantity of cones harvested. So far it does not look like very many cones have been collected. I would think only enough to last a few weeks, but not the whole winter. Perhaps some are being moved to locations where they are not so visible. I will try to pay attention over the coming weeks and months to see whether Hola continues to harvest and use cones in this way.