It was overcast this morning with some rain, but the clouds started breaking up around midmorning, and in the right parts of town, there was a fair amount of sun. There was also a fairly persistent dark cloud dropping rain out Halibut Point Road (though it didn’t reach to Starrigavan – at least the times I was out there).
Drove up Blue Lake road with KL. The gate was open, and a single car width was cleared through the lower avalanche.
We stopped to look at some Polystichum ferns that were unfurling with more of an elephant trunk approach rather than a fiddlehead approach.
The lake is already not far from spill level. I think in part that is due to Green Lake being run more over the winter. They had work to do on the intake there, and needed the lake level as low as possible. That left more water in Blue Lake, and unless they run it pretty hard over the next couple of months, I wouldn’t be surprised if it’s spilling in June.
This evening after ultimate, I drove out to Starrigavan on the chance of seeing a sandpiper someone had posted a picture of to the Sitka Birds email list. I didn’t find the bird, but was alerted to the presence of a bear by the behavior of a couple of other cars.
I ended up spending an hour or so watching and taking pictures of the bear as it grazed on the upper estuary meadow grasses.
There were several others along the boardwalk, all a good distance from the bear. It would occasionally look over in the direction of the road when a loud vehicle went by. Mostly it just worked on getting the food. To me the bear looked quite rotund. This seemed a little surprising given the season, but perhaps it was really successful in bulking up last fall, and had plenty of reserves after leaving hibernation.
Last night there was the best mix of moths I’ve seen yet at the house this year (three species), but only one remained this morning.
My iNaturalist Observations for Today
