Weather shifted to a more showery set up, with some sun breaks through the middle part of the day. Calm winds overall (at least when showers weren’t around). Showers often included graupel and snow mixed in.
Enough graupel and wet snow fell this morning for a layer of slush to form on the ground. It had mostly melted off by this afternoon in the central part of town.
I didn’t have a lot of ambition on my outing today.
At Sawmill Cove there I saw the Pelagic Cormorant with white neck patches again. Also other Pelagic and Double-crested Cormorants and Common Mergansers.
I didn’t work too hard at looking, but didn’t notice any murres on the bay.
Views of the mountains surrounding Silver Bay were quite lovely.
I delivered the last of my bird calendars while I was out that way. A snow/graupel shower hit as I was going down Shotgun Alley. Although it turned the road white, fortunately it didn’t get slippery. I was surprised to see a pretty radical change to the look at the bottom of the hill. What had been a small forested knob (former islet) with a cabin tucked behind the trees has been completely cleared and a very large house is going up.
I went as far as Harbor Point in the other direction. I appreciated the views, but saw very few birds and no sea lions or whales. The herring must have moved elsewhere.
I was a little surprised to see ravens picking at a deer hide along the channel. Deer hunting season ended last Tuesday. Presumably someone just got around to tossing out the skin.
With my binoculars I could see ravens doing their synchronized flight dancing over Verstovia. I took some pictures from the channel. On a stop at Crescent Harbor I could see them better (being nearly a mile closer certainly helped).
Connor spotted a Sharp-shinned Hawk perched in a tree as we were sitting down for lunch. I saw where it was (across the road and a house or two back), but couldn’t see it well enough to know what it was without binoculars. It took off before I could get a better look.
Motivated by a couple observations I recently posted from a full day last August, I started going through and organizing some of my collections. I found the ones I was looking for from that day. I got additional photos of the lichen, but will need to do a bit more organizing to have better access to my microscopes for the photos I need to work on for the mosses and liverworts.
My iNaturalist Observations for Today
