Transition to winter

In early November, I walked along a gravel road in the company of frost-decorated branches. A mat of old leaves lined the roadway, each leaf fringed with crystals, making a pretty mosaic in tones of russet, old-gold, and brown. In an open area, I found a collection of more old leaves, not matted down, each one with a distinctive cover of frost crystals. Quite aside from the interesting physics that presumably accounted for the variety of crystals, every leaf was a thing of beauty. As the poet (John Keats) said: A thing of beauty is a joy forever…

Photo by Mary Willson

The Lower Loop at Eaglecrest in early-mid-November was a fine place for a walk. A bit of fresh snow lay on the meadows, and above the white blanket the tops of old seed heads and Labrador tea plants poked up –as individuals rather than part of a mass of faded greenery. Tawny-gold grasses stood tall and colorful on that background. Dainty little grasses draped their dangling seeds artistically. Tufty pine branches bore small caps of snow.

Conditions for finding evidence of several local denizens were perfect. Porcupines had traipsed hither and yon, exploring endlessly, it seemed. Every few yards, one of their trackways crossed the path, sometimes running parallel to the path for a while. One of them left a long, orange-yellow dribble as a mark of its passage.

Squirrels had made their well-beaten routes from tree to tree and across the path. A small bird, probably a junco, had hopped out of brushy area into the open. Voles had scampered about; one made a nice tunnel under the snow, revealed only in spots where the snow-roof had collapsed. A shrew left a narrow groove on top of the snow and then dove into a tiny hole under a clump of grass. Another trackway suggested that a deer mouse had been active, making quite long leaps with its sizeable hind feet.

A few days after that Lower Loop stroll, in hopes that sea-level rains meant snow had fallen at Eaglecrest, I went back up there. But even the Lower Loop had lost much of that earlier snow. So I trudged up the road, circled the Hilda Dam cabin, and came back down the Trickster run, and had some fun there. There was a thin layer of fluffy snow on top of a very thin crust. Snow covered the moss mats, but groves of moss sporophytes stood up above the snow. As usual, porcupines had wandered about, and squirrels had dared to cross some open spaces. In a little dampdrainage, a shrew had scurried over the surface, supported by that thin crust. A deer had run downhill, covering dozens of yards before jumping a log and going back into the woods.

I found a trampled cluster of indecipherable smudgy tracks near a few seed heads that had been demolished, leaving scattered fragments on the snow. On the top of the smudges, I saw what looked like ermine footprints. But, despite some hints, the smudges were a puzzle. A few minutes later, however, I found a long trackway going from one weed patch to another and noted that Smudgy was bipedal and big enough to break through the thin crust, disturbing the snow layer and disguising any toe marks. Ha! The prime suspect was probably a grouse.

Some days after that, I went with a friend to Eagle Beach State Park, to have a look at the vegetated sand flats in the river. A thin film of soft snow covered the ground. On the way, we saw that squirrels had been busy, crossing the path in several places. Along the river shore, rather recent flood waters had piled up great stacks of fallen trees and combed the herbaceous vegetation into orderly lines. A mink had run on the edge of the riverbank, but there were no bird tracks to be seen out there. Looping back through the campground, we found the trackway of a vole, scuttling across an opening and under some grasses.Near the parking lot, a raven had strolled over the lawn, but no ravens came to mooch any part of our lunches as we sat on the bench near the river.

Some nice big white flakes were falling, but they soon changed to rain (of course). Then we waited to see if the forecast snowfall actually happened…and it did! By Thanksgiving time, there had been several good snowfalls, although the streams were not yet iced-over. One day on Douglas, I saw several tiny, delicate flies flitting about and resting on the snow. According to a local expert, they were probably snow midges, whose larvae like cold-water streams and typically emerge as adults in winter.They are quite tolerant of cold temperature and may survive for many days, as they search for mates.

Advertisement

Early September observations

The numbers of sockeye in Steep Creek had declined markedly, but there were still enough that a female bear with two cubs was able to catch five of them in about thirty minutes. When I came upon them, mama and one cub were busily chowing down on a fresh sockeye, while cub number two was perched up in a big spruce. Pretty soon, mama went out and got another fish—it took her maybe three minutes—to share (somewhat grudgingly, it seemed) with the first cub.

Suddenly, we all heard a loud ruckus just down the trail, as two young bicyclists approached. Fortunately, a ranger was on duty in the area and the raucous disturbance was quelled. But the bears were agitated, and cub number two was sent up the tree to join number one. After a watchful period, the female went back to fishing and caught three more fish in less than twenty minutes, but she didn’t share them.

Another pleasing bear observation: one day I drove up Riverside Drive, with no other vehicles in sight. Out of the brush on one side of the road popped a young bear. It looked both ways, saw me coming, and stopped. I stopped too. Then the bear took another look and rambled safely across the road. A street-wise bruin!

The Crow Point trail near the Boy Scout camp was littered with washed-up, pecked-over chum carcasses. I salvaged some nice clean vertebrae that still had all the ribs and dorsal spines attached: these were useful to me for clarifying a few long-standing puzzles of comparative anatomy—comparing the spinal columns of deer, bears, whales, and whatever else I can get my hands on.

Out on the sandy beaches, I found five dowitchers, all sleeping, with long bills tucked over their shoulders into their feathers. Some were standing on two legs, some on one leg. I was amused to see that as the tide came in, the one-legged individuals just hopped a few steps up-beach without bothering to lower the second leg—which of course was fully functional but resting comfortably up in the belly feathers. I’m not sure the birds even came fully awake—they seemed to go right back to sleep.

Signs of autumn were everywhere: gold leaves of mayflower, orange and red leaves of fireweed, all-shades-of-red leaves of highbush cranberry. Bands of migrating warblers were on the move, searching among the leaves for insects to fuel their southward journey. Mixed flocks of Lincoln’s sparrows and savanna sparrows rustled about in the brush. When I got back to my car, I fund a woolly-bear caterpillar crawling up a rear tire. I suggested to it that a wheel well was probably not a good place to pupate and assisted its transfer to a more productive spot.

Woolly bear caterpillar

Back home, I glanced out a window and saw a red squirrel trying to haul a thick, four-inch-long, white cylinder (maybe a mushroom stem) up a tree. The squirrel was having a tough time with this object, which often seemed to crumble or break, so the squirrel lost its tooth-hold. Somehow, the squirrel always managed to catch the thing when it started to fall, but progress up the tree was slow, irregular, and arduous. But the object got shorter with every attempt to haul it up to the next level; by the time the hard-working squirrel was out of sight, its prize was only about an inch long.

The annual Juneau Symphony whale-watching cruise was a treat: Great food, lovely string quartet, good conversations, and best of all, spectacular whale-watching. Several humpback whales were busy in the area just south of North Pass. All of them were lunge-feeding—making shallow dives and surfacing on their sides with mouths agape as they surged forward. A group of three whales seemed to collaborate; they came up side by side, so close together that it was hard to sort out which jaw belonged to whom. We saw an occasional pectoral fin waving, or half a fluke emerging. This activity went on a good long while; I had never seen such prolonged, concerted lunge-feeding before. We could not identify the prey that was so assiduously sought, but we did not see small fish jumping off to the side in efforts to elude the giant maws (as we often see when the whales feed on schools of small fish), so perhaps krill were the big attraction for the hunters.

Autumn is here in earnest

We pass the autumn equinox, and the days get ever shorter. They’ve been getting shorter ever since late June, but now we really begin to feel it. The fall rains are here, and when we look out our windows, we see gray gray gray. It’s seldom as bad as it might look, however, so it pays to get out and about.

In fact, I think that getting outdoors is an important part of living with short days and gray skies. Some folks flee the fall and winter by going south, but I have found several ways to enjoy staying here during those seasons. I try to get outdoors every day, talking a walk on one of our trails; maybe not a long walk, but I’m out in the fresh air, seeing something besides four walls. I sometimes play a game with myself: the challenge is to find at least one thing (preferably three things!) of esthetic or natural-history interest. Sometimes these things are connected: I like to recall the visiting musician who took a walk in the forest and found that the rich variety of green tones in the mosses and ferns reminded him of a piece he had just played; now every time he plays that piece, he’ll see the rainforest. I greatly enjoy the rich cultural life in town, especially the music; the visual and thespian arts are also alive and well, and various lecture series can be both instructive and entertaining. Also, I do best when I have a project or two to work on; it doesn’t much matter if it is writing or building bird houses—a project that engages what’s left of my aging mind.

When I’m out, there are actually several autumn things to look forward to. Great rafts of scoters gather in the coves and channels. It is fun to watch them do what I call ‘chain diving’—a whole line of scoters dives, one after the other, in the same spot; then they all come up, one at a time, a little farther away. I have not yet found anyone who can tell me exactly what they are doing or what food they might be finding or why they do it in that way.

Out on sandy, gravelly bars, there might be small flocks of shorebirds that spend the winter with us. Rock sandpipers and dunlins often hang out together. Adults in breeding plumage of both species have black belly patches, and some show the black blotches as winter goes on, so look closely to distinguish them. These shorebirds breed on the Arctic tundra of western and northern Alaska. Sometimes there are surfbirds on rocky reefs and points; they nest in alpine tundra of Alaska and the Yukon. I occasionally flush a solitary snipe, not only in the marshes and swamps where they might have nested but even along streams in the forest.

I look forward to spotting the first slate-colored juncos that arrive at the bird feeders; they come from the Interior to spend the winter with us. Oregon juncos live here all year but mix with the slatey ones in winter. At present, both kinds of juncos are classified as the same species but different subspecies or races.

Thinking about Oregon juncos reminds me to ask a question: these birds are distinguished from slate-colored juncos in part by a chestnut-brown back. Likewise, our chickadees have chestnut-backs that are lacking in the other North American chickadees. Is there a particular reason why chestnut backs are popular here? Is there something about rain forests that favors that plumage pigmentation?

Of course, the black-billed magpies come to us in the fall too. They temporarily monopolize bird feeders, tease the eagles, and sample leftover salmon carcasses. On a rare sunny day, the iridescence of their black feathers makes them quite spectacular.

Flowering season is over in fall, but you might spot a few late purple asters alongside the trail. Behind the Visitor Center at the glacier, there has been a very late blooming Romanzoffia sitchensis (the common name is Sitka mist-maiden). In the muskegs, look for tiny yellowish cups that might be mistaken for flowers. These are the seed heads of the swamp gentian. Each two-parted cup holds a little cluster of seeds; when a rain drop hits the cup, the seeds get splashed out and so dispersed. This ‘splash-cup’ dispersal is not common, but it is shared by the bird’s nest fungus.

Gentian seed pods

One of my favorite things to do is watch the coho arrive in local creeks. When they do, the bears—which have been waiting for them, ever since the sockeye run ended—get busy again in the streams, and that makes for great bear-watching. I think that many of our local bears really depend on coho to ‘top-up’ their fat deposits in preparation for hibernation. The amount of fat laid down in fall is important in determining how many cubs a female bear can feed while they are in the winter den and it is probably important for winter survival of juvenile, subordinate bears that are not yet expert foragers.

I don’t know all the factors that regulate the size of coho runs, but there is evidence that juvenile rearing habitat is one important factor that helps determine the size of a local coho population. Incoming adult salmon are commonly able to slither over or jump over most beaver dams, so dams seldom limit the spawners. However, juvenile coho rear in pools in streams and in beaver ponds, and research has shown that they grow really well in beaver ponds. Down in the Pacific Northwest, biologists have even re-introduced beavers to certain stream systems, so that their ponds will increase the available rearing habitat for salmon and help restore the diminished populations. Because salmon typically return to their natal stream when it is time to spawn, juvenile rearing success helps determine the size of the spawning run. Thus, when beaver dams are removed from streams where coho spawn (so that their ponds are drained), or when beavers are trapped out of a system and their dams (and ponds) are no longer maintained, and rearing habitat is thus reduced, there is reason to expect that the coho population of that stream will decrease. And that leads to the expectation that the bears living in the area would lay down less fat, possibly survive less well, and produce smaller litters of cubs.

Autumn bits and pieces

I’m inclined to think of fall as ‘dud’ season here. The birds are no longer nesting and few are singing; the forest is silent. Although we have our gorgeous, golden cottonwoods and sometimes some bright yellow willows, we don’t have the dramatic and spectacular show of fall foliage that the Midwest and New England enjoy. The days are getting shorter and shorter. And then there usually is the rain…

However, September brings us a number of good things too. Highbush ‘cranberry’ bushes had a bumper crop again this year, and soon the pungent aroma of cranberry ketchup-making will fill my kitchen. Their pink and red leaves brighten the forest understory. Devil’s club leaves make a fine yellow background for the bright red fruits. Brilliant scarlet dwarf dogwood berries dot the ground. In the muskegs, the leaves of shooting stars are bright yellow spears of light on a darker backing.

But the best color is in the alpine zone. The sedges and avens make a golden-brown backdrop for swathes of deer cabbage, whose leaves run the gamut of color from yellow through orange and red to purple. Dwarf dogwood is here, too, its leaves ranging from summer green to autumn crimson. Low-growing blueberry bushes make a purple-leaved carpet topped with a heavy crop of blue berries. Close up or from a distance, this is a color treat.

The blueberry crops on the ridges are rich pickings this year. With ‘berry rakes’, it is possible for two people to gather over twenty-five pounds in an hour, and leave the patch still loaded with berries for later foragers.

There are two species of low-bush blueberries that grow up on the ridges (and in bogs). One has leaves with smooth edges; the other has somewhat darker leaves with very tiny teeth along the edge. The blossom-end of the berry is slightly different: the one on the toothy-leaved species looks like a small bulls-eye. Once you train your eyes, the two species are readily distinguishable. And, at least for some of us, it is worth making the distinction—berries of the toothy-leaved species (Vaccinium caespitosum) taste better (although the difference may dwindle if the berries are cooked).

In late September, the upper meadows still feature a few late flowers: an occasional purple monkshood, sturdy little clumps of the blue gentian, and lavender daisy-like flowers of fleabane. On the way up to Granite Basin, we even found a thriving stand of miners’ lettuce in full flower, well past its usual blooming season.

Despite the paucity of bird song, there are a few treats for bird-watchers. Hawks migrate south along the ridges—Gold Ridge is a great place to see a variety of species, sometimes in considerable numbers. On a recent trip up to Naked Man Lake on Douglas, we spotted a lone female northern harrier coursing over the meadows and a sharp-shinned hawk dashing into a grove of trees. Flocks of pipits and lapland longspurs flit overhead in open habitats. In Granite Basin, we watched a flock of twenty-five or thirty ptarmigan fly up-valley and disappear behind the ridges. And occasionally, a soft, winter song of a dipper can be heard along the streams, or a song sparrow may trill from a shoreline thicket.

Townsend’s solitaire. Photo by Bob Armstrong

On the upper slopes of Ben Stewart, we saw a pair of Townsend’s solitaires, presumably on their way south. This long-tailed thrush is a rather rare bird around here; it is more common in the open forests of the Interior. It typically nests on the ground on open slopes, cutbanks, and even cliffs, often tucking the nest under an overhanging rock, log, or tuft of vegetation. Summer foods include all kinds of insects and other invertebrates. But in winter, in montane woodlands down south, it commonly feeds on juniper berries. This food resource is so important that each bird defends a territory around clumps of juniper trees, to help ensure its winter food supply. Other fruits may be eaten, especially if juniper berries are scarce.

 

Even though it signals the onset of dark days, snow shovels, and slippery streets, I rather enjoy watching the termination dust gradually increase on the peaks. At first it’s just a beautiful powdered-sugar dusting on the highest crags. It may disappear for a spell, but the inevitable accumulation is imminent.

Early October

The mallards on my home pond gradually molted into their breeding plumage, so I could now distinguish males from females, in most cases. Some males were already in good feather for breeding, while others lagged behind, sometimes way behind. So some of those brown ducks were just getting a few green feathers on top of their heads, and it would be a while before they caught up with the rest of the males.

Most of the cottonwoods were nearly leafless (and I would soon have to clean my rain gutters), although the alders were still leafy. A little stroll through Eaglecrest meadows gave us not only some tasty alpine blueberries but a few floral surprises: we found a single blooming bunchberry flower amid thousands of others bearing ripe fruits. One late-blooming pink bog laurel flower stood out against a background of mostly green. There was even a lonely shooting star, which commonly blooms in spring. These solitary flowers had gotten their hormonal signals crossed and had no hope of pollination at that late date.

Fall is mushroom season, and they were in full exhibit out around the Eagle Beach area. Big moss clumps growing way up on the side of a cottonwood tree sported great tufts of white ‘toadstools’ (but no toads, up there). Alder stumps were covered with crowds of brown mushrooms (I fear I’m sadly ignorant about mushroom ID). Tough little bright orange fungi poked through the packed gravel on the trail. Purple coral fungi (I do know that one) were common in the forest, growing in groups of slender, pale purple ‘fingers’.

Amanitas. Photo by David Bergeson

Beautiful, but poisonous, fly amanitas (or fly agarics) spanned all age classes from bumps newly emerging from the ground to decrepit and no-longer-beautiful old age. The cap comes in various colors: often red, but sometimes orange or yellowish. The ‘fly’ part of the name may come from an Old World custom of putting pieces of this widely distributed mushroom in a dish of milk; this apparently attracts and traps flies. Despite their well-known toxicity, many of the mature amanitas had nibble marks around the edges, where squirrels or mice had snacked. Amanitas are important components of the plant community, because they form mutualistic associations with many trees, providing nutrients to their partners and sometimes serving as links for transport of nutrients and defensive compounds between trees.

There was plenty of bear sign: tracks in the mud, a few scats with undigested high-bush cranberries mixed with vegetation fibers, and numerous shallow digs. Some of these digs had turned up clumps of the white nodules of rice root (a.k.a. chocolate lily), but these remained uneaten. Instead, the bears may have been after angelica roots, but that’s a guess, because there were few identifiable remains. Small brown slugs festooned themselves over the digs, enjoying the decaying leftovers.

We found two of the small brown slugs engaged in some sort of sexual activity. They circled each other, with penises erect, for many minutes. We went off to look at something else briefly, and when we returned, they had each gone their own way. So we don’t know if they were just thinking about mating, or if they were engaged in some post-mating display, or what. Slugs are hermaphroditic, meaning both male and female (Hermes was the Greek god of travelers and the handsome messenger of Zeus; Aphrodite was the goddess of fertility and love), and mating is generally reciprocal. After mating, slugs of some species chew off their mate’s penis, but there are many kinds of slugs, and I don’t know if that curious habit applies to these. One might well speculate about how this habit came about!

As the temperatures dropped below freezing around the high mountain peaks, the water levels of our glacial rivers dropped markedly, leaving sloughs and sandbars and exposing interstadial wood from forests that grew in the valleys before the Little Ice Age glaciers demolished them. We surprised a dense gang of gulls and six or eight ravens gorging themselves on stranded salmon carcasses in a slough beside the main river. Farther upstream, a broad sand bar had hosted a wolf party that apparently involved some dancing. One of the cavorting group had left enormous tracks in the sand, some of the largest we’d ever seen. What fun!

Early fall observations

All around town, the maple trees are flaunting their famous reds and golds, at least on certain branches. In the forest, devil’s club leaves are turning yellow, setting off the clusters of red fruits and brightening the understory. Highbush cranberry shrubs sport variegated sprays of red and pink and yellow and everything in between, with the occasional bonus of bright red berries. High on the mountain slopes the deer cabbage offers another colorful palette, of orange and russet and gold. In the valleys, cottonwoods and willows are spangled with gold and yellow amidst the bronzy green—visual treats against the backdrop of somber green conifers.

The sockeye run in Steep Creek is finishing, so the bears are roaming around in search of alternate foods, while they wait for the coho to arrive. Bear scats show evidence of much consumption of northern ground cone, with some devil’s club seeds, currants, and highbush cranberries. The fish are few, but one day I watched a familiar female bear run down a sockeye, pin it to the bottom of the stream, and then pick up the flapping fish and tote it into the woods near the observation platform. There she ate the whole thing except the gills, starting with the eggs; one by one, she also lapped up all the eggs that got scattered around in the grass.

Someone once told me, in no uncertain terms, that red squirrels cannot swim—if you throw one into the water, it will just sink. Aside from the fact that most folks wouldn’t do that in the first place, the statement is simply not true (at least if the animal is unhurt). I once watched a red squirrel swimming between two islands in Glacier Bay. And recently I watched one deliberately cross a creek, jumping right in and paddling across. Its tail didn’t even get very wet and its back stayed dry. A very competent swimmer, across the current of the stream.

Photo by Bob Armstrong

On a walk up the ‘new’ road at Eaglecrest, we found a few late monkshood flowers. No bees seemed to be flying to pollinate them, but we were curious about how the flower ‘works.’ That is, how are the male and female parts arranged, and how would a bee transfer pollen? So we opened up a few flowers. Just inside the natural opening, where a bee would enter, is a tuft of stamens, which would place pollen on a bee as it crawled in. Mixed in among the stamens are the female parts, which would receive pollen. But if male and female parts are in the same place, does this plant pollinate itself or is there some way to avoid self-pollination?

A little bit of research revealed that monkshood species are generally protandrous (first male), meaning that the stamens shed mature pollen before the female part of the same flower is receptive. Bees commonly work from the bottom of the array of flowers, with older flowers, toward the top of the plant, where flowers are younger, so they encounter mature female-stage flowers before they reach the mature male-stage flowers. Before they leave the plant, they pick up pollen from the last-visited flowers. Then, when they fly to the next monkshood plant, they start again at the bottom, where they can deposit pollen from the first plant on receptive female parts of the next plant. In addition, monkshoods are largely self-incompatible: mostly unable to fertilize themselves.

Still to be determined, however, is why the entire flower is so complicated in structure.

Why have that ‘hood’ on top? Those purple petal-like pieces that make the flower are not really petals, they are sepals (parts that are structurally external to the petals; they are green in many other kinds of plants). In the back of the flower, under the hood, are two arching structures that are the true petals, and the nectary is located in a spur at the upper end. But why put the nectary way in back, when the working parts are up front? Bees are said to enter the flower, find the nectar, and then back out the way they came in, passing over the sexual parts as they do so. But the flower does not need to be so complex if that’s all the bees do. Next summer we should try to observe bees as they visit monkshood flowers, to see if we can solve these little mysteries.

By dissecting a few monkshood flowers, we found out that the nectar spurs are quite short, so short-tongued bees should be able to reach the nectar easily, without resorting to nectar theft (chewing through the hood and spur to get nectar without touching the sexual parts of the flower).

But flower handlers beware! Monkshood is very poisonous, and very little of it is needed to produce a nasty effect. Even touching it with your hands and then eating something with your hands, or smoking a cigarette, can apparently have undesirable consequences. Large doses are generally lethal.

One day we walked out toward Herbert Glacier but were thwarted in the last stretch by high water. Along the trail we noted a large white slime mold, artistically draped over a low stump. At several points on the side of the trail were stands of the prosaically named purple coral fungus. It grows in damp soils, sending up finger-like fruiting bodies of a distinctive purple color. It is not to be confused with the unrelated but catchily named deadman’s fingers, which is generally blackish (with a white core) and usually grows on decaying wood. I also found a small specimen of what I think was a white coral fungus. Elsewhere I’ve noted fist- to head-sized clumps of a highly branched yellow coral fungus.

An early autumn

Fall came to Juneau in mid August. Cottonwood trees began dropping yellow leaves and alder leaves browned and shriveled. The air felt different, and it smelled different, too. On fine, sunny days, clouds of fireweed seeds, floating on their white parachutes, filled the air and collected in windrows on the shores. Mushrooms appeared all over the forest, as if from nowhere.

The grasses and sedges in the coastal meadows slowly changed from green to yellow and gold. Although the splendid pink flowers of fireweed were gone, the stems, leaves, and pods still filled fields with pink and red.

At mid elevations, a few fireweed stalks still bore flowers and some had, in fact, just started to bloom. But the deer cabbage leaves already showed yellow and orange and russet. As the rains increased, the once-fluffy heads of cottongrass drooped dismally, like small mop-heads. But there seems to be a bumper crop of highbush cranberries, glowing brilliant, translucent red (slightly less ‘bumper’ now, after my visit…).

Flocks of robins scoured the roadsides for grubs and worms. In Sheep Creek valley, robins, varied thrushes, and whole families of fox sparrows foraged on elderberries. Near Steep Creek, dozens of warblers flitted from bush to bush. Most were yellow-rumped warblers in immature plumage, but the flocks included several ruby-crowned kinglets and occasional Townsend’s warblers and orange-crowned warblers. I was interested to observe the reactions of the crowds of visitors who waited, mostly impatiently, for a bear to appear. Almost none appeared to notice the many warblers that flew back and forth across the creek and gleaned bugs from the shrubs.

If the bears were occupied elsewhere, many folks enjoyed watching porcupines—studies in slow motion. There were several small ones (known as porcupettes), born last spring, that frequented the Steep Creek area. They were now largely independent of their mothers, foraging on their own and growing perceptibly from week to week. Sometimes one would spend several days in a single cottonwood, taking long naps in between sessions of shredding and skeletonized the leaves. We watched one chomping on willow leaves for a while and then wandering to the creekside, where it avidly consumed dwarf fireweed and then drank from the creek.

The sockeye run in Steep Creek dwindled dramatically during the last two weeks of August. The few remaining pairs of salmon were attended by lots of Dolly Varden, which eagerly line up behind a spawning pair. Dollies, young coho, and sculpin all love to gobble up loose salmon eggs.

Foraging bears left partly eaten salmon carcasses on the streambanks, and it wasn’t long before the flies found them. Soon some carcasses were squirming with hundreds, maybe thousands, of fly larvae (maggots). I was initially surprised to see a bear lick up a pile of maggots and then show one of her cubs the tasty little morsels remaining from her snack. On second thought, however, there should have been no surprise, because bears eat grubs and ants and bee larva when they can. But this was the first time I observed bears eating maggots instead of salmon.

A family of well-grown mallards, still accompanied by mama, foraged regularly in the creek. They scarfed up unburied salmon eggs, enjoyed a snack of maggots on old carcasses, and enthusiastically ate fresh salmon meat when a bear abandoned its catch.