Thick overcast and periods of rain. Breezy at times. Temperatures in the 50s.
Looking out the window this morning, all I could see was flat gray beyond the closer trees. Gavan Hill was obscured by low clouds. They did finally lift in the afternoon.
We’re ending the month with more than twice the normal rainfall. Given this is the dry part of the year, we haven’t actually gone that much above normal for the year to date. We’ve just caught up from the dry February and March periods and are now exceeding normal by a bit. I guess we’ll see how the remainder of summer turns out. Maybe it will switch back to a couple of months of drier, sunnier weather.
I worked on my radio show for tomorrow, then met up with a visitor who wanted to get out birding.
Rick was in Alaska for birding, but made a side trip to Sitka for geocaches. He wanted to visit the oldest geocache in Alaska, it would be the 49th oldest state cache he’s visited.
I knew the area where the cache was hidden. I was aware of it due to a brief flurry of interest in geocaching in early 2005. At the time I visited several caches around town, including the second oldest cache in Alaska, placed only a day later.
We went out to Blue Lake campground to get the geocache before birding our way back to town.
There was a clearly worn social trail heading into the forest. I had noticed it previously and thought it was from folks going to the river to fish. After today’s visit, I’m thinking it’s at least as much due to geocachers.
We made birding stops along Silver Bay and Whale Park. From Whale Park we saw Rhinoceros Auklets and Common Murres well out on Eastern Channel.
At Eagle Way beach, a Bonaparte’s Gull was nice to see (though it didn’t stick around for long).
We looked for dippers at Indian River, but they didn’t make any visits to the nest while we watched. [Update: I heard from Rick the next morning that he seen them visiting the nest – so they’re still feeding young.]
After having Campfire Kitchen pizza, I dropped Rick off where he was staying and headed back to Thimbleberry Lake. The swan wasn’t there today.
This evening Rowan let me know she had seen a flicker disappear into the snag (where I had previously noticed one excavating a hole). It came out later. That makes me think they probably are nesting in the snag.
Geocaching sent me on a trip down memory lane, as I was reminded of the degree confluence point project another GPS-based hobby I pursued in the deep past (list of my confluence points visits). I was a little surprised to see some of the degree confluence points I visited have not been re-visited since (for example 46N 117W).
My iNaturalist Observations for Today
