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.