Mostly sunny, highs in the low 40s.
Yesterday’s rain brought the year-to-date total at the airport to 99.87 inches (given the forecast, it will likely be late next week at the earliest before it tops 100 inches). It looks like the station at Geodetic Way is up over 120 inches. Both are well above normal.
The clouds cleared off early this morning. It was apparently shortly before daylight, because ice was just starting to form on the car when I went out just before 10.
After spending an hour as part of a panel on Raven Radio, I hopped on Paul’s boat and joined him and Connor for an outing.
They had already been fishing over towards Eastern Channel, and we headed through the channel towards in the other direction.
From time to time I see a cormorant or loon with a flatfish. It seems to take some effort, but they usually appear to be able to get them swallowed
We stopped several places among the islands. They dropped lines to see what they might catch. When they caught too many non-pelagic rockfish (which they couldn’t keep) or not enough of anything at a location, we moved to another.
I took pictures of several of the fish they caught. I think among them were at least a couple of new species for me.
Two species of rockfish that can be challenging to tell apart. The top one is Sebastes melanops, the lower Sebastes variabilis
Coming back we swung a wide loop through the inner part of the sound to see if there might be any birds of interest.
Conditions were a bit sloppy, so not ideal for seeing much. We did see a few murrelets and murres. They were mostly flying in the distance.
It doesn't take much distance for the developed part of Sitka to seem insignificant between the mountains and the sea
Upon our return, I checked some bird places in town. The three Wood Ducks were at Swan Lake.
I was a little sad to see the body of the coot surrounded by newly forming ice. I saw it yesterday and Connor said it was alive this morning. I’m not sure if it just starved, or if something else happened. This one seemed to be a bit charismatic in its behavior than other ones I’ve seen over the years. [Update: I’m pretty sure the one in the ice was a coot, but it was not the friendly coot, as I saw it again the next day]
I'm pretty sure this is a coot frozen in ice. It presumably died before the ice surrounded it earlier in the day or last night.
The tide was running 1.5 ft below predicted today. We’re a week out from the next low tide series, but if there’s a similar deviation then, it will result in the lowest tides of the year.
My iNaturalist Observations for Today
