Spring has sprung

After a slow start, the season has sprung into full swing. The early avian harbingers have been joined by lots of other speciesin the first part of May. Out on the wetlands, flocks of small shorebirds and little brown songbirds swooped around and settled invisibly in distant sloughs or the brown grasses. Some of those little brown songbirds eventually turned into Lapland longspurs, savanna sparrows, and (near the forest edges) white-crowned sparrows.

On one lucky day, I saw four mountain bluebirds perched on the fence posts at the edge of the golf course; later I saw three of them perched on the tall, dried seed-heads of dock plants. That same day, three species of swallow (barn, tree, violet-green) coursed up and down one short section of a tidal slough. A big group of northern shovelers hung out on the river, more than I’ve seen together in one place previously. A few American pipits ran along the grassy edge of a slough.

Two days later, there were no bluebirds to be seen; maybe they took advantage of the good weather to make the trip over the mountains to the Interior. From the dike trail, I saw twenty-two white-fronted geese huddled on the river with a single snow goose. Out over the dry grasses, a northern harrier (in brown plumage, therefore female or juvenile) flew low, back and forth, and then dropped straight down to the ground and began pecking repeatedly at some invisible prey. Three ravens chased a hawk with agitated calls, disappearing into the distance. I had to wonder what that hawk had done—or was suspected of doing…

In other places: Kingfisher Pond hosted red-winged blackbirds, tree swallows, and a coot, with yellow-rumped warblers flitting in the shrubbery. Another observer there recorded Wilson’s warbler, green-winged and blue-winged teal. Hermit thrushes began to be heard in the forest. North Tee Harbor reported female bears with cubs, prowling about. A big bear wandered through my yard in the middle of the month. Little white butterflies flitted over the dandelions and emergent greenery. And fern-leaf goldthread flowers appeared along some wooded trails.

Rufous hummingbirds always appear at my feeder a couple of weeks or more after they are reported from Fritz Cove Road. But they finally showed up, perhaps a pair, but they visit the feederseparately, usually in the afternoon.

A male hairy woodpecker landed on my deck railing and was chased off by a squirrel. He came back a couple of times and visited the peanut butter offerings. I was reminded that in a previous year a fatherly hairy woodpecker brought his fledgling to the deck for daily lunches. Could that happen again? The local red-breasted nuthatches are making lots of trips to the seed feeder for sunflower seeds, quickly zipping back into the spruces, sometimes returning so soon that I begin to think they are just stashing the seeds somewhere, for later eating. I hope they will nest here again. A varied thrush comes to collect seeds from the deck railing, but it spends most of its effort on a suet feeder—lunging up to jab the suet with its bill while madly flapping its wings (not a graceful hoverer).

The big excitement on my home pond was the unexpected appearance of two pairs of wood ducks. I’ve never seen them here before, although they’ve been rumored to nest occasionally in the lower Valley. As of this writing, the wood ducks have been here for over a week, and I saw one pair copulating. They nest in boxes and tree cavities, but I have no idea if suitable cavities are available near here. They got along peaceably with the mallards that remained on the pond.

Wood duck male. Photo by Bob Armstrong

Sometime early in the month, all the females and most of the male mallards departed from my pond. A lone male floated on the pond for a few days and eventually was joined by a solo female who stayed for several days; they often rested side by side on the bank. I’m guessing that she had laid some eggs but lost them to a predator, and she was here to start another clutch. Mallards are ground nesters, relying on camouflage and concealment (and luck) to survive the long incubation process, but the eggs are vulnerable to wandering dogs, bears, ravens, and other predators.

One of my favorite things in spring is watching the skunk cabbage plants. First, the little green spears emerge from the shallow waters, but I impatiently await the cheery, brilliant yellow spathes that announce the flowers of ‘swamp lanterns’. The hood-like yellow spathe (if not nipped off by frost or deer) surrounds the spike (or spadix) of densely packed flowers. Each of those flowers is female first—with pointy little stigmas sticking out for potential pollen reception. But the earliest plants to bloom, being all female, have no source of pollen, unless they can somehow pollinate themselves, as the flowers mature into the male phase. Eventually, all the flowers become male, producing yellow pollen. Now we begin to see insects hiding down deep in the spathe, sometimes tiny flies and dozens of black beetles. The beetles are thought to be pollinators, crawling over the male flowers, eating pollen and getting it all over their bodies, then carrying the pollen to later-blooming individuals, still in female phase. We never see as many beetles hiding in spathes around female-phase flowers as in spathes with male-phase flowers. And female-phase individuals often have no beetles at all, so it seems that beetle visits to females are intermittent, and I suspect that females send out air-borne messages that attract the beetles just when the time is right for pollination.

Early male-phase skunk cabbage flower, with pollen just starting to appear. Most of the flowers are in female phase, with pointy stigmas. Photo by Mary Willson

The red alder trees along the highway are popping out little leaves, catching up with some of the shrubs that leafed out earlier. Now every day may bring some new development for the season—such fun!

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Bits and pieces in early April

The first week of April brought us a little snowfall on several days. My home pond is still ice-covered, firm enough to support several transits by a big, galloping dog. The new berms are shrinking at last, and the one under my deck shows the old tunnels made by a neighboring squirrel in search of spilled seeds. One of my (indoor) cats is a regular window-shopper for squirrels, but one day his ears were unusually perked and he was very intently focused on something not far away. So of course I looked out that window—and saw a shrew exploring the old squirrel tunnels. The cat may not have seen one of those before, so his curiosity was roused.

Out on my deck, I’ve spread some bird seed on the railing, a temporary offering until I can restore the feeder than hangs over the pond. The winter gang of juncos is reduced to just a few (mostly males) and flocks are still seen in some places, although some can be heard singing and getting ready to mate; it seems like the juncos collectively aren’t quite ready for spring. The chickadees are fewer too, presumably setting territories somewhere. A pair of nuthatches seems to be resident and I hope they will raise another brood this year. Sometime in March, I began to see a pine siskin—just one. (How often does one ever see just one of them??). For two or three weeks, there was just one, and then suddenly there were two; an occasional third one was quickly chased off. Could they be nesting nearby?

A walk on the dike trail at low tide revealed a sizable flock of juncos; these were not yet setting up territories and advertising for mates. A loose flock of robins moved about in the grass, not settling long in any spot. On the river, eight or ten buffleheads, both males and females, kept together, occasionally diving but never straying far from the others. Dozens of mallards loafed on a sandbar, a few swimming desultorily just offshore. Not far from them was a very different duck, diving regularly. The bright russet head and upper neck suggested perhaps a Redhead; I did not see a pale crown stripe that would name it a European widgeon. Several trail-walkers notice a large, white bird, floating all alone, in a lagoon way across the river. We couldn’t tell which species of swan it was. Although tundra swans go to the far north for nesting, trumpeters don’t go so far and sometimes nest near the north end of Lynn Canal.

Photo by Kerry Howard

Along the Outer Point/Rainforest trails, wrens and varied thrushes were singing. A red-breasted sapsucker energetically tapped on a dead tree, sending out notices of his presence and readiness for the season. Not far away, I noticed a fallen hemlock trunk with old sapsucker wells all in a tidy vertical row. I’ve previously seen arrays of sapsucker wells that occupied patches of ten or twenty square inches on some trees. But those trees were willows and alders, which have smoother bark than hemlocks. So maybe the vertical row of wells was opportunistically exploiting a channel between thick bark ridges where the bark was thinner.

Sapsucker wells. Photo by Mary Willson

On the way down to the beach, a loud rattle was soon accompanied by a second one, not far away. It soon became apparent that two kingfishers were having a serious discourse, just above the tree canopy. They did not visit the rocks at the waters’ edge but went somewhere else, out of sight. Out on the beach, no mermaid’s purses (embryo cases of skates) had yet appeared in the washed-up piles of seaweed, although in other years they sometimes have shown up about this time. Just off-shore, a seal floated by on its back, sculling slowly along with just its nose and chin above water. Oddly, that seal was the only visible vertebrate critter in the bay; usually that place is more active.

Mendenhall Lake is still frozen and a few risk-taking skiers have been seen out there. The gulls are already circling and calling above the lake, contemplating a return to their nesting places on the west-side rocks, and then flying back out to sea–for now.

On a rainy day, the Boy Scout trail was a very quiet place. In grassy meadows, red berries of an herb sometimes called (very inappropriately) false lily of the valley or mayflower lay on the ground, awaiting the arrival of migrant thrushes that would gobble them down and disperse the seeds. Beach rye showed greenish shoots a few inches tall. Geese arrived in pairs, but there was one loner; eventually they all grazed together peaceably. I suspect these geese are our resident ones, already paired up. Gulls loafed on sand bars or frolicked in the water nearby. A scattering of big, empty horse clam shells dotted the lower beach. A flock of fairly small, apparently black birds with white wing patches whizzed by and may have been pigeon guillemots, although this seems a bit early for them. Two immature eagles were wading in the shallows while adults perched high in the trees. Not a single raven invited itself to a picnic lunch on the beach.

To end the week on a cheering note: the temperatures at my house crept up over fifty degrees for the first time this year.

Spring comes slowly

Winter came late this year—the good snows and cold temperatures didn’t arrive until after the new year began. One last observation from the winter: the creeks in the Dredge Lake area were frozen, and their icy surfaces held mini-forests of feathery ice crystals. A shrew had ventured out among those feathery tufts, mowing down a channel through them, leaving a trail rather like a big caterpillar. 

The vernal equinox has just passed and the now-dirty and rotten snow still lies over much of the ground. I looked out my front window at all that snow and my ice-covered pond a few days ago and was swept by a wave of nostalgia for the deciduous forests of the Midwest, with their wonderful array of flowering woodland ephemerals that bloom in early spring before the trees leaf out. When I was little, an elderly neighbor lady took me for walks, just to look at them. Years later, I learned to appreciate them in a different way, when my grad students and I studied the pollination biology of seven species of white-flowered ephemerals in Illinois woodlots. Other species soon flowered too, all taking advantage of the sunlight reaching the forest floor before the canopy closed. Never-mind that March is a tad early, even for those early-flowerers—I must be very ready for spring events here.

Trail-walkers comment on their impatience for the arrival of spring, and I’m just as eager as they are for the exuberant burst of spring that’s still in the offing. Meanwhile, signs of spring are appearing slowly, almost one by one. A couple of deer along the highway still had their thick, dark winter fur coats. But we hear juncos singing in many places, varied thrushes and wrens are tuning up, and robins forage in beach grasses. A dipper is singing at Steep Creek. The serious declines in bird populations here and elsewhere make each sighting or hearing more valuable than ever. Mountain goats are seen quite regularly near Nugget Falls, as they rest in the infrequent sunshine and look for edible lichens. Squirrels have done their mating chases. Elderberry buds are fat and almost ready to open; new shoots of devil’s club are becoming visible at the tips of the prickly stems.

As I await more and bigger signs of spring, there have been good things to see along the trails. One day at Fish Creek, a rotund otter rested at the edge of the ice that still covered most of the pond. After a few minutes, it dove and came back up in a crack a little farther offshore. There it dove repeatedly, but if it caught anything at all, the prey was very small.

Photo by Jos Bakker

Lots of elderberry bushes grow at the edge of the woods on the ‘island’ at the end of the berm. A friend and I were curious about bud development, so we inspected the branches. Yes, the buds were growing but, more interestingly, almost all the twigs at the branch ends were missing, chewed or torn off, although a few of the tallest branches had escaped mutilation. I have seen porcupines demolishing elderberry twigs and deer are known to browse woody vegetation in winter, especially when snow is deep, so there are two likely perpetrators—if they ever wander out to that ‘island’.

Out on the wetlands, an anomalous spindle-shaped form caught my eye, and binoculars revealed it to be the back view of a heron, standing sleek and still. It turned a little bit, and I had a beautiful view of its light-colored chest feathers, all fluffed out and fluttering in the breeze. I’d never seen such a huge ‘chest beard’ on a heron. No other herons were visible; maybe it was merely drying out its plumage (?).

Near Shaman Island, a harbor seal floated placidly, sometimes making short dives but mostly just looking round. A flotilla of red-breasted mergansers cruised by, two males and four females. The males had their long, green crests erected and occasionally thrashed the water with their wings; there may have been tension between them, but most of their cruise looked peaceable. One of the females drifted away and went foraging, but the others kept on sailing. Red-breasted mergansers often over-winter in salt water bays and estuaries and move inland to nest near big lakes and rivers. This merganser regularly nests on the ground, unlike our two other species of merganser. Their name derives from Latin words meaning ‘diving goose’, but they bear almost noresemblance to geese. The diet is mainly small fish, with some additions from invertebrates, snapped up by that narrow bill. 

My eagerness for full-blown spring will not hurry it along, so I’d best settle down and patiently(?) enjoy whatever I can observe as the days go by.

Weather and wildlife in March

On a sunny day in early March, a friend and I went to Eagle Beach, despite windy conditions and a forecast of thirty-to-forty mph gusts. The weathermen had it right. The north wind was roiling up sizable whitecaps on Lynn Canal. The beach was covered with snow, untouched by the recent low tides, and obscured by billows of drifting snow. Instead of heading north on the beach, as I usually do, we cleverly decided to turn our backs to the wind and, hoods up, we walked down the beach and tide flats toward Eagle River.

Across the canal, the snowy Chilkats gleamed in the bright sun. A gang of gulls and crows concentrated at the distant edge of the tideflats, near the water’s edge. Perhaps surprisingly, given the stiff gusts of wind, a couple of groups of gulls were swooping over certain places in the estuary, as if there might be some prey stirred up by the churning waters.

But that was all the wildlife sign we saw, until we’d post-holed over the big meadow to the forest edge. My companion heard pine siskins and we then saw them, working over the cone crops in some tall spruces. There were squirrel tracks and a chattering squirrel. A vole had traipsed across a small open area, leaving footprints and tail-drag.

Best of all: lying on the snow near a big spruce, we found dozens of clipped spruce branches, mostly branch-ends with two or three twigs, all the needle tips neatly nipped off. That porcupine had spent a long time in this spot, clipping all those branches and needles, leaving greenish urine stains here and there, and packing down a well-used trail back and forth across our path. It left some fresh porcupine tooth-work on the base of a nearby hemlock, too.

A bit farther on, we noticed several trees patched with old scars of sapsucker foraging. Material had oozed around the edges of each bird-pecked opening and congealed there, making a rough surface over every opening. The scars on each tree were conspicuously concentrated in dense patches, just above our eye-level, not lower, not higher. Perhaps once a feeding site was started, the flow of sap was greater or at least more accessible there, rather than in a new place. But why did the birds choose those particular trees and those specific parts of the trunks to start feeding?

Returning to the car, it was more post-holing through snow drifts, almost knee-deep. Well-buffeted by those gusty winds, I staggered along, ready for the hot tea that was awaiting us in a handy thermos. Not a long walk today, but a productive one.

The next day was bright and clear again, and very windy, at least in open areas. Four friends met near the visitor center and looked for a packed-down trail along the east edge of the lake. No luck; blowing snow had drifted well over that. So we opted to go toward Nugget Falls on a narrow, packed trail over the flats where the terns usually nest. But that, too, meant post-holing through knee-deep drifts. So we cut over to the usual beach trail and then to the main trail, where we noticed wind-blown alder seeds all over the snow.

Arriving at the base of the falls, sharp-eyed observers spotted two mountain goats on the far side of the creek. One perched on a little rock outcrop and one stood at the edge of a brush thicket. Neither one was moving much, so I had a hard time picking them out. Those two were the first of the year, for me.

Photo by Kerry Howard

As we approach the vernal equinox, day-length is rapidly increasing; the daily rate of change is greatest near the equinoxes (and slowest near the solstices). Humans and otherorganisms notice the lengthening days—eagle start tending their nests, magpies start leaving for the Interior, buffleheads begin to be seen in pairs, and there’s an occasional song of wren or song sparrow. Red squirrels in my neighborhood have been doing a lot of vigorous chasing lately, and food is not the principal focus. Although these squirrels are strongly territorial for much of the year, when females start coming into oestrus, territory borders are commonly crossed in the search for mates. Both sexes often mate with several other individuals, and so litters may have several fathers. Roughly five or six weeks after mating, litters of up to seven young ones appear in the females’ nests.

Although some of the felt-leaf willows have fat buds, other plants lag behind. You can be sure that they have noticed the longer days, but other factors, such as soil temperature, are not yet right for gearing up in ways visible to us. As the longer days gradually warm the soil, more and more plants will show signs of activity, some of them waiting to flower until well after the summer solstice when days are shortening again.

Felt-leaf willow buds. Photo by Kerry Howard

Seasonal transitions are always fun, as we notice each new sign of activity. After a slow start in late winter, the signs speed up through the spring and into the summer. Although skiers may revel in the persistent snow and longer days, others eagerly await the beginnings of green-up and the first flowers.

Weather and wildlife in March

On a sunny day in early March, a friend and I went to Eagle Beach, despite windy conditions and a forecast of thirty-to-forty mph gusts. The weathermen had it right. The north wind was roiling up sizable whitecaps on Lynn Canal. The beach was covered with snow, untouched by the recent low tides, and obscured by billows of drifting snow. Instead of heading north on the beach, as I usually do, we cleverly decided to turn our backs to the wind and, hoods up, we walked down the beach and tide flats toward Eagle River.

Across the canal, the snowy Chilkats gleamed in the bright sun. A gang of gulls and crows concentrated at the distant edge of the tideflats, near the water’s edge. Perhaps surprisingly, given the stiff gusts of wind, a couple of groups of gulls were swooping over certain places in the estuary, as if there might be some prey stirred up by the churning waters.

But that was all the wildlife sign we saw, until we’d post-holed over the big meadow to the forest edge. My companion heard pine siskins and we then saw them, working over the cone crops in some tall spruces. There were squirrel tracks and a chattering squirrel. A vole had traipsed across a small open area, leaving footprints and tail-drag.

Best of all: lying on the snow near a big spruce, we found dozens of clipped spruce branches, mostly branch-ends with two or three twigs, all the needle tips neatly nipped off. That porcupine had spent a long time in this spot, clipping all those branches and needles, leaving greenish urine stains here and there, and packing down a well-used trail back and forth across our path. It left some fresh porcupine tooth-work on the base of a nearby hemlock, too.

A bit farther on, we noticed several trees patched with old scars of sapsucker foraging. Material had oozed around the edges of each bird-pecked opening and congealed there, making a rough surface over every opening. The scars on each tree were conspicuously concentrated in dense patches, just above our eye-level, not lower, not higher. Perhaps once a feeding site was started, the flow of sap was greater or at least more accessible there, rather than in a new place. But why did the birds choose those particular trees and those specific parts of the trunks to start feeding?

Returning to the car, it was more post-holing through snow drifts, almost knee-deep. Well-buffeted by those gusty winds, I staggered along, ready for the hot tea that was awaiting us in a handy thermos. Not a long walk today, but a productive one.

The next day was bright and clear again, and very windy, at least in open areas. Four friends met near the visitor center and looked for a packed-down trail along the east edge of the lake. No luck; blowing snow had drifted well over that. So we opted to go toward Nugget Falls on a narrow, packed trail over the flats where the terns usually nest. But that, too, meant post-holing through knee-deep drifts. So we cut over to the usual beach trail and then to the main trail, where we noticed wind-blown alder seeds all over the snow.

Arriving at the base of the falls, sharp-eyed observers spotted two mountain goats on the far side of the creek. One perched on a little rock outcrop and one stood at the edge of a brush thicket. Neither one was moving much, so I had a hard time picking them out. Those two were the first of the year, for me.

Photo by Kerry Howard

As we approach the vernal equinox, day-length is rapidly increasing; the daily rate of change is greatest near the equinoxes (and slowest near the solstices). Humans and otherorganisms notice the lengthening days—eagle start tending their nests, magpies start leaving for the Interior, buffleheads begin to be seen in pairs, and there’s an occasional song of wren or song sparrow. Red squirrels in my neighborhood have been doing a lot of vigorous chasing lately, and food is not the principal focus. Although these squirrels are strongly territorial for much of the year, when females start coming into oestrus, territory borders are commonly crossed in the search for mates. Both sexes often mate with several other individuals, and so litters may have several fathers. Roughly five or six weeks after mating, litters of up to seven young ones appear in the females’ nests.

Although some of the felt-leaf willows have fat buds, other plants lag behind. You can be sure that they have noticed the longer days, but other factors, such as soil temperature, are not yet right for gearing up in ways visible to us. As the longer days gradually warm the soil, more and more plants will show signs of activity, some of them waiting to flower until well after the summer solstice when days are shortening again.

Felt-leaf willow buds. Photo by Kerry Howard

Seasonal transitions are always fun, as we notice each new sign of activity. After a slow start in late winter, the signs speed up through the spring and into the summer. Although skiers may revel in the persistent snow and longer days, others eagerly await the beginnings of green-up and the first flowers.

Waiting for spring

As February became March, the longer days and a streak of relatively warm days meant that folks on the trails were greeting me with “It smells like spring!” and “Spring is in the air!” Of course, we weren’t really done with snow—one day in the second week of March, I slithered and slewed, creeping through deep slushy snow on the North Douglas highway, and my driveway was thick with the same.  More snow came a few days later.

Critters and plants are getting ready for spring, too. Ravens carry sticks to build a nest. Eagles are building too, bringing sticks to a growing platform that will, one day, hold some eggs in a soft cup. Mallards are seen in pairs on the wetlands; mergansers too. Juncos begin to sing, but not yet in full voice. There is a report of snow geese, the first of their kind this year.

Eagles nest-building. Photo by Jos Bakker

Plants also know what’s coming. Skunk cabbage pokes sharp green tips of folded leaves above the surface of ice-fringed ponds. Buds on elderberry and cottonwood are getting fat, preparing to send forth young leaves in a few weeks; buds on the rose bushes at the end of the dike trail are also showing promising signs. Woolly cinquefoil on a rocky outcrop above the beach shows green leaves tucked under old brown foliage.

Meanwhile, we’re still ski-ing the campground and the Montana Creek trail. The big lake and the ponds in the Valley are still covered with (softening) ice. The slate-colored form of dark-eyed juncos that visit us from the Interior are still here, coming to feeders along with the local Oregon form.

We all have signs of spring that we await eagerly and greet with glee. Here is a sampling of favorite signs from a few trail-walking friends (a few of these examples have happened already!):

–Pussy-willow catkins, males presenting pollen

–the squalling of varied thrushes

The first crocuses on a sunny bank. Photo by Pam Bergeson

— the first bumblebees, coming to crocus flowers and willow catkins

–mermaids’ purses (egg cases of long-nosed skates) washed upon a particular North Douglas beach

–the rollicking song of ruby-crowned kinglets

— early yellow violets

–wren songs from the thickets

–footprints of a bear, just emerged from hibernation

–arrival of sapsuckers, their drumming and tapping and calling

–the appearance of rufous hummingbirds (in addition to Anna’s, some of which stayed all winter)

–a flight of shorebirds on their way north for the nesting season

Spring swans. Photo by Jos Bakker

Blueberry flowers. Photo by Bob Armstrong

–alder catkins starting to get soft and limp, in preparation for releasing pollen

–the refreshing aroma of cottonwood buds (after some warm days and nights)

Looking for signs of spring as they develop is a big part of the pleasure in taking a walk at this time of year. Given Juneau’s assortment of microclimates, we can expect to see things happening at different times in different places. And the lookingwill only get better in the next few weeks!

Spring medley

Spring is officially here: the vernal equinox has gone by and the days are rapidly lengthening. There are much livelier signs of spring as well. Sapsuckers have arrived in force, rat-atat-tating on rain gutters and stove pipes (and trees). Juncos trill at the forest edge and song sparrows are tuning up in the brush above the beaches. Pacific wrens sound off from invisible lookouts in the understory. Best of all, ruby-crowned kinglets can be heard, high in the conifers, calling ‘peter-peter-peter’ or singing their full, cheerful song. That’s when spring is really here, for me.

A walk on a favorite beach on Douglas Island was focused on finding mermaids’ purses—the egg cases of long-nosed skates. Every year, about this time, we find them washed up in the wrack at the high tide line—there must be a nursery just offshore. On this day, we found sixteen eggs cases, mostly black, dry, and in various stages of decrepitude. Just a few were still mostly whole and khaki-colored, and two had natural openings at one end, where perhaps the young skate had exited. All the egg cases had sizable holes punched into them. I would love to know if marine predators had nabbed the developing embryos or if the holes were made by a tardy, would-be predator just hoping that an embryo was still inside.

A good find in the rolled mats of rockweed at the high tide line was the body of a sea star, entirely eviscerated. All the gonads and digestive parts had been cleanly removed, neatly exposing the calcareous skeleton of the water-vascular system that runs from the center of the star out into each arm. In a living sea star, the canals of this hydraulic system are filled with fluid, mostly sea water. Numerous branches of the main canal lead to the tube feet (often visible in a live star, in rows under each arm) that function in locomotion and in opening clams. When the tube feet are extended, their ends stick to the rocks or the clam shell, and muscles in the feet contract, pulling the animal forward or pulling the clam shell open. We sometimes see a sea star humped up over a partly open clam while the star is having dinner.

A stroll on the Boy Scout/Crow Point trail led to the goose-flat covered with hundreds of crows fossicking in the dead, brown vegetation. Lots of searching and probing. Sometimes half a dozen crows would suddenly converge on another one, everybody poking at something. Apparently, successful hunts were not very common and the gang thought that sharing was appropriate.

Lots of Canada geese were scattered in small groups on the flats, in the river, and in the vegetation by the river. There were mostly head-down, intent on foraging—grubbing for roots and such, and of course talking to each other. Occasionally, two of them would take off and wing around in a wide circle before landing back where they started. One of these duos took off upstream—perhaps a mated pair about to look for a nest site in the forest.

As we often do, out there, we encountered a fellow we call the Raven Man, who carried a big bag of dog biscuits to feed the ravens. He does this from time to time, and the local ravens recognize him. As he passes through each raven territory, the residents come to greet him and cadge some biscuits. We watched some of these ravens carry five biscuits at a time, first stacking them up in a neat pile so they could be held in the bill. A dog, with some hikers, came along later and sniffed out places where ravens had cached their loot, covering it with grass or moss—surprising the hikers who were not expecting to see dog biscuits in the moss.

Most folks in Juneau are glad to see the snow disappear, at least at the lower elevations. But I loved the good snows we had in February, and here are a few flash-back memories.

–Weasels had been very active in the Peterson Creek meadows and Amalga meadows. They bounded over the clean snow, ranging widely. Every so often, the trail dove straight down under the snow and re-appeared a few feet beyond or disappeared under the overhanging edge of a frozen slough. I think they were hunting voles, whose tunnels run under the snow; did they dive down in response to the sound or fresh smell of vole or were the dives just exploratory? Another treat in one meadow were well-defined trails of mice, showing a good tail-drag.

–On the west side of Mendenhall Lake, one day I found a set of tracks running way out onto the snowy ice and right back again. It was clearly a member of the weasel family, probably a mink. What was it doing??

–A snowshoe trek up a creek out the road was a bonanza of tracks (and no recent human tracks). In the woods on the way up the hill, there were tracks of deer, mouse, weasel, squirrel, and maybe a marten. Big excitement of some large tracks that were surely those of a wolverine—the toes and the gait gave it away. The most fun was seeing a set of wolf tracks coursing over a frozen pond that sparkled with sun-struck hoarfrost.

Now the fun in the snow is finished for the year, and the fun of spring begins. Juneau folks typically love to note the progress of spring, as the season unfolds. Skunk cabbage emerging, pussy willows appearing, blueberry buds expanding, the gradual arrival of more kinds of birds, ravens carrying sticks for a nest—they all mark the progress of a favorite season.

Spring colors

There often comes a time in early spring when the seasonal progress seems to stall—there are still freezing temperatures at night, many ponds are still ice-covered, the iris shoots in the meadows aren’t getting perceptibly bigger, meadow grasses and sedges lie flat and dead, the lady ferns stay humped under their old dark fronds—and we get impatient for more signs of spring.

That is a good time to notice little spots of color in the forests and meadows. Folks who live in Southeast had better like green and gray, because those colors are the common background on the landscape—green conifers and frequent gray clouds. One can add ‘brown’ for all the dead grasses and sedges lying in the meadows. But the little bright spots of other colors are a visual treat, adding interest to a walk.

Touches of red pop up in several ways:

–Ruby red berries of so-called false lily of the valley lie nestled like glowing jewels in the moss. These are last year’s fruits that typically don’t ripen until they have overwintered. They will feed the early-arriving robins and then the hermit thrushes.

–Red twigs of the early-blueberry shrubs gleam, adding a pleasing contrast in the still-leafless understory. That observation brings up a question: why do these twigs turn red but not (or so I am told by those who know more than I do) those of the later-blooming Alaska blueberry?

–A few translucent red berries of high-bush cranberry hang at the ends of thin branches, uneaten by bears or pine grosbeaks or anybody else last fall or winter.

–A flash of red on the side of a tree trunk helps to advertise the presence of a red-breasted sapsucker as it hitches its way upward, tapping the bark.

–Along the roadsides, the male catkins of red alder make a swathe of a duller red that is nevertheless very noticeable against the conifers’ green. As the catkins mature, they droop and gradually open to release pollen, and the redness fades.

In residential areas, gardens of multicolored crocuses attract queen bumblebees, busily searching for nectar deep in the flower and grooming pollen off their heads. Some of them probably collect pollen too. Away from settled areas, however, those queens have only male pussy-willows as a source of nectar or pollen, until the early blueberries bloom (adding pinkish-white to the color-scape).

A favorite of many folks is the bright yellow of skunk cabbage. First appearing as a yellow spear emerging from wet places, the hood (or spathe) around the cylindrical inflorescence expands. It helps attract pollinating insects and also happens to provide shelter for the little beetles that come to the small flowers of the inflorescences to feed—and also to court and mate, and incidentally pollinate the flowers. Skunk cabbage provides a ‘progressive party’ of color, because different stands mature at different times as their specific locations warm up. Even one skunk cabbage is delightful; a whole pond full of them is spectacular.

Many of us look for purple mountain saxifrage in early spring. It likes to grow on cliffs and other rocky places, so it is very localized. We always feel rewarded when we find the first blooming ones each spring.

At somewhat higher elevations, Cooley’s false buttercups make splashes of yellow. And don’t forget to look for the violets!

Of course, impatience doesn’t suffice to hurry spring along. But it will come—flocks of robins now skitter along beaches, mallards congregate in the ice-free part of Riverside Park pond, the early songsters are heard more often. Ruby-crowned kinglets now serenade my house daily!

I never tire of watching the prolonged arrival of spring. The basic patterns are generally consistent, but always with some little variations and even surprises. This year, the big difference is what is missing: there is very little snow on the mountains. The rocky mountainsides are showing all too clearly and the usual cornice on Thunder Mountain hardly developed at all. The lack of snow ‘upstairs’ will surely have serious consequences, reducing our sources of water and hydropower and the water supply for the creeks where salmon usually spawn.

Spring happens!

The end of April and early May brought signs that our reluctant spring was finally happening, at least at low elevations. The bright yellow display of skunk cabbage made a welcome contrast with the somber greens of conifers and the still-leafless deciduous trees. A close look at the spike-like inflorescence showed that the numerous individual flowers were all still in their female phase, with no signs yet of the pollen that eventually appears around each pointed stigma. The small brown beetles that are the chief pollinators had yet to show up; they prefer inflorescences with pollen. Deer had munched off the tops of many inflorescences, leaving just a stub with a few flowers.

We found several fern-leaf goldthread plants with their wispy, narrow-petalled flowers, which are pollinated by small flies. The early blueberries were in bloom, their pinkish-white flowers waiting for bumblebees to visit. On sun-warmed cliffs along the Perseverance trail, the first purple mountain saxifrage plants made a splendid show; they are pollinated by bumblebees and probably some other insects. And there are reports of yellow violets along some trails.

We enjoy those floral offerings, but they are a dramatic contrast with what happens in early spring in the forests of the Midwest. There, the forest floor is liberally decorated by the early flowers of many species, including bloodroot, spring beauty, dutchman’s breeches, dogtooth “violet”, among others, many of which have showy white petals. Most of these species require an insect pollinator for seed production, and that job is often done by various species of native, non-social, solitary bees and by the non-native honeybee. Here in Southeast, I am told that such solitary bees occur, but almost nothing is known about their ecology.

The avian world was promising, too: Hooters on the hillsides. Kinglets in full song, along with wrens, robins, varied thrushes, and juncos. Fox sparrows starting to tune up. Other sparrows and early warblers arriving but not yet very vocal. Chickadees with nest material and – in some places—eggs in their nests. Sapsuckers excavating nest cavities. The first hermit thrushes skulking in the understory. Hummers zipping to and fro. Flights of violet-green and tree swallows swooping after flying insects. It is always such fun to see and hear the forest awakening each spring.

A few weeks ago I wrote about our local moose population, noting that population growth might be slow, given that only a few moose were known to be in this area. Well, now there are fewer still. A bear reportedly killed one in Cowee Meadows, and I found the remains of one, killed by a human hunter, in another place.

A little walk on the beach along the Mendenhall Peninsula yielded lots of ducks: the usual mallards, plus widgeon, greenwing teal, and shovellers. I was surprised to see hundreds of scoters rafted up in the lower reaches of the river; they are usually out in the bay. Shorebirds were migrating through, with pipits foraging among them.

Ravens had been turned over a cluster of mussels and barnacles, exposing an enormous hairy hermit crab with its abdomen tucked (inadequately) into a moonsnail shell. They were actively foraging on barnacles, nipping and hacking at the shells; we also found several regurgitated deposits of broken barnacle shells, where the birds had jettisoned the undigestible bits. A couple of ravens near a torn-up patch of sand drew our attention. With their powerful bills, they had just excavated three holes, about five inches deep, and extracted the clams that had been buried there, cracking open the clam shells to extract the meaty morsels inside. As we stopped to watch, a raven was just finishing off the last clam.

On my home pond, a few pairs of mallards found peace and quiet, with lots of spilled bird seed on the fast-disappearing ice. But by early May, the ice was gone. The duck crowd had grown, sometimes to twelve or fifteen, now squabbling over the spilled seed. Most of the females probably had a clutch of eggs in progress, but males were largely still in prime breeding dress, no doubt in hopes of some delayed mating opportunities.

Golden-crowned sparrow. Photo by Kerry Howard

A leisurely stroll around the Crow Point/Boy Scout beach area found a flock of golden-crowned sparrows in the woods along the river and a couple of groups of savanna sparrows along the grassy upper edge of the beach. A flock of dunlin (I think) swirled over the sand flats. In the big, broad meadow I call the ‘goose-flats’, several white-fronted geese mingled with the usual gang of Canada geese, all grubbing for tasty greens and roots, while, off to one side and separate, a flock of snow geese also foraging intently. I circled around all of them at a distance, and so disturbed them not at all.

Elderberry and wild currant bushes leafed out ahead of most other deciduous woody plants, but by the end of the first week of May, bits of green were showing also on willows and alders. In the beach meadows, green shoots were popping up everywhere. It’s “green-up” time!

Reluctant spring

Early April and, despite some earlier signs of spring, we seemed to be stuck in the middle of a long cold spell—freezing at night and daytime temperatures in the thirties or low forties. All the trails were icy, and it seemed as if I would never get all the ice chipped off my driveway.

A friend who had missed a Parks and Rec hike to Cowee Meadows during a warm spell in March wanted to check out that area. Where P&R hikers had waded ankle-deep in meltwater on the trail, in early April it was all frozen solid. We walked securely over the beaver sloughs and ponds—easy going! The only down-side was a very stiff and cold north wind, with gusts strong enough to send me off-balance occasionally. So we didn’t go out on the beach at all, but just wandered around the meadows to see what we could see. We hid from the wind behind some dense spruces for a comfortable lunch in the sun.

There was plenty of evidence that the horses from the ranch across Cowee Creek had paid their usual visits. They too had taken shelter in the lee of spruce thickets, leaving digested evidence of their sheltered stay.

Bird life was scarce. A woodpecker drummed, but it eluded our sighting. A couple of chickadees flitted by, at the forest edge. A group of nervous mallards fled down the creek well ahead of us. Two ravens performed their classic rolls as they flew overhead.

A solitary, hapless robin poked along the fringe of a frozen pool, where the sun had loosened the ice along the edges. There was little there to feed on; maybe it was getting a drink. In fact, there’s not much for robins to eat when the weather is like this—some invertebrates on the beaches, perhaps, and a few frozen berries in the woods; I wonder how they manage to survive.

Two little sparrows, buffeted by the winds, dove into the shelter of bent-over dead grasses. From their pale brown backs, I guessed that they were savanna sparrows, which frequent these meadows. They stayed under cover for some time—smart birds!

Later in the morning, and a little farther on, we came upon a bunch of six crows, all gathered around the edge of a shallow, sun-warmed pool with some remaining ice. They looked like they were drinking: they’d dip the bill into the water, then raise it up and tip it back—which is how many birds drink fluids. But what was so special about this pool, when the creek and some other pools were nearby?

A few green shoots emerged from one small open-water slough. But all the skunk cabbage shoots that had emerged above the surface of the frozen meadow had been blasted by the cold temperatures. It’s not unusual to see frost damage on the tips of skunk cabbage shoots, but out in these meadows, the cold had killed and blackened several inches of new shoots. Not a good start of the season for them.

There were deposits of moose pellets on the snow in several places, clear evidence that moose had been visiting the meadows this winter. Moose have been recorded from Cowee Meadows for several years, as well as a few other places in Juneau, where moose are usually a rarity.

Sweet gale, a wetland shrub, is widespread in these meadows. The volatile oils of this aromatic plant are reported to repel midges and mosquitoes, but moth caterpillars are said to love eating the leaves. Insect damage induces the plant to increase its chemical defenses, reducing further attacks. The volatile oils can also reduce some fungal and bacterial infections. Vertebrate herbivores include beavers and moose; the European mountain hare eats it too, leading me to wonder if our snowshoe hares might do so also. We noted that some of the sweetgale shrubs in the meadow had been browsed, possibly by the visiting moose, but we could not exclude the possibility that ranch horses might have done so.

Sweetgale is an interesting plant in other ways too. It harbors symbiotic bacteria in root nodules; the bacteria fix atmospheric nitrogen, making it accessible to plants. Although some accounts say that male and female flowers are borne on separate plants, in reality, some individual plants have both male and female flowers and, to further confuse the matter of gender identity, sometimes both male and female sex organs are found in the same flower. However, I have not found any information about the factors that might control sex expression in sweetgale. In any case, propagation is said to be primarily by vegetative means, via underground stems called rhizomes, rather than by sexual means and seed production.

Although this excursion to the meadows was very wintery, I just had a cheering report from a friend that ruby-crowned kinglets have arrived! Now spring can get serious.