Mossy Green Riparian Forest

Mostly cloudy with occasional light rain. Overcast became thicker later in the day.

I walked down to the park this morning with the idea that I might catch the tide on its way up from the 7am low, but with enough beach left for shorebirds.

I turned out to be a bit late and the tide was higher than shorebirds prefer. I had a nice walk all the same.

I thought I might have heard a robin this morning before I got up, but did not see or hear any while I was out walking.

I did hear several Song Sparrows and a Pacific Wrens singing. The sparrows mostly in the neighborhoods and the wrens in the park. I noticed one Brown Creeper singing in the park as well.

I spotted a variable carpet moth (Anticlea vasiliata) resting on one of the walls of the visitor center at the park. It’s my first of the year.

I looked for fern-leaf goldthread blooming yesterday, and did not see any. In the same area today I found one that was just getting opened up. It was almost certainly there, though even less developed yesterday. It would have been easy to miss.

I still haven’t seen a salmonberry blooming, but a couple today were close, as were the furthest along red huckleberries.

The draping Pseudisothecium stoloniferum along one section of trail near the river caught my eye (again) today. I feel like there are probably some nice photos that I’m not quite seeing (especially when there’s nice light like today). There are so many crossing branches and then various shrubs and other trees, I’m not sure I have yet found a composition that works as well as I might like.

Along this same section, I made note of how eroded the far bank is. The organic surface layer has draped over the bank in places, still held together by tree roots.

The bank rises 8-10 feet up from the river to the forested area above, and appears to be made up of river sediment. This suggests at some point in the past the channel was 8-10 feet higher than it is now. I wonder if the rock was deposited when (relative) sea level was higher. It also raises a question for me about the dynamics of deposition and erosion. I’ve tended to think of it largely as a one-way process. Rivers cut down. Channels may move and gravel bars get deposited, but the overall level can’t rise up without something from outside (a landslide or log jam) changing things. I’m not entirely sure this is correct, however.

I had a taste of twisted stalk today when I found one coming up. I like to sample the greens each year, though I don’t usually eat too many of them.

Continuing my pattern of late, I seem to be able to make progress on one project a day. Today I didn’t make any progress on collections, iNaturalist observations, or my playing card project, but did publish several photojournal entries. I was approaching two weeks behind, and now am back to ‘only’ a week behind.

For some reason this morning my mind got caught up in the idea of getting 100+ people to 100+ species for Sitka in iNaturalist (currently there are 17 people with at least 100 species). Along the way, I thought it might be interesting to work on a guide a person’s first 100 species in Sitka and see if I can get 25 people to go through it as part of a celebration of me getting to 2500 total taxa for Sitka (which I will surpass when I do my next upload of observations).

I’m thinking this could take the form of an email a week with species to target, how to recognize them and pointers on where to find them. I could also turn it into an e-guide for visitors or people who want to go through things faster. However in that case, it might be better to organize things by easily accessible locations.

I need to get my playing cards project done before I devote too much time to this idea, however.

My iNaturalist Observations for Today