This week was filled with meetings and other preparations for school, so I did not spend as much time outside as I have through much of the summer.
Weather: It’s been pretty damp all week. This morning especially there was a lot of rain. Temperatures have continued to be in the upper 50s through the day with lower 50s at night.
Birds: I have heard Steller’s Jays and Northern Flickers calling around the neighborhood on most days this week. They do not seem to spend much time near the house, but they come through fairly often. I suspect it is the same birds day after day, but I do not know why they are coming by the house and moving on so quickly.
There was a small flock of maybe 5 to 10 robins that stopped by the back yard early this afternoon. The ones I saw looked like juveniles. They were actively feeding, but seemed pretty wary of me. I had some place to be, so I did not try to get too close to them before I headed on my way.
I saw a couple of different flocks of chickadees and kinglets at a couple of different places today.
There were several small ducklings at Swan Lake today. I also saw the Hooded Merganser with the Mallards. I did not see anything else unusual, but that may have been because a lady had been standing on the penninsula with her dog for awhile, and the birds scattered on to the lake.
Other Notes: I got a chance to meet with a millipede specialist yesterday. He was in town collecting millipedes, and was hoping to find people who live here that could send him collections. So far he had only found one species in Sitka.
Mushrooms are coming up in force. I’m going to try to get out to take some pictures this weekend. I wondered today how they time when to come up. This summer has been pretty wet, temperatures have been pretty similar for the last month or two, but only now are the Amanita muscaria coming up. They seem to come up around this time every year, which makes me think light must have something to do with it. However, it is unclear to me how the fungi would be sensing the light underground.