Low clouds with drizzle fog for much of the day. The fog was heavy enough that the midday Alaska Airlines flight didn’t land.
After hearing about the mystery birds yesterday evening, the main part of my outside time consisted of walking around the neighborhoods with hopes of finding them.
Paul N. was interested in joining me, and mentioned lichens on a tree downtown. We took a side trip there first. Two small trees had quite a load of lichens on them. It would probably be worth revisiting and taking more care to explore what was there.
Maybe Physcia aipolia?
Walking up Lake Street a Northern Flicker flew up from the ground. It kept an eye on us, but didn’t fly off while we took some pictures.
The coot remains at Swan Lake. I’ll be interested to see if it makes it through the deep cold forecast.
I was reminded again how difficult it can be to count juncos.
In an adjacent yard and driveway along Sirstad Street many juncos were moving about. A scattered group of 15-20 or so would fly up. I thought that might be most/all of them, then moments later another similar group would fly up from the same area. This happened three or four times right there.
Paul spotted a caddisfly in flight. It landed where we could get pictures of it.
Walking the neighborhoods I spotted many mountain ash trees, but no birds matching the descriptions I heard. Also no Pine Grosbeaks.
I was amused by the old National Wildlife Refuge sign posted over the goat pen.
This evening when I checked iNaturalist, I saw an identification had been made on an observation I made of a small insect last fall.
Caurinus tlagu is a species I had heard about some years ago. I even made a couple unsuccessful attempts to find one. In the meantime it had generally fallen out of my conscious awareness.
When I first heard about it, I was told that brushing Scapania bolanderi over a sheet is a good way to find them. This one turned up in some liverwort collections I made out by Herring Cove.
My iNaturalist Observations for Today
