Overcast to mostly cloudy with showers and a minor sun breaks. Light to moderate winds, temperatures in the 40s. Snow level was down to around 2500 feet (maybe lower in places).
I had thought today would be devoted mostly to inside work, but an invitation to get out on the boat changed things.
Paul and Connor were going out and planned to do some fishing. I decided it was worth going along to see what birds might be around and at least make some observations of fish.
Paul likes to try all the spots, and rarely stays in one place for more than a 15 minutes (unless he’s catching multiple fish he wants to keep).
The first stop was in Crescent Bay, and we worked our way out and across Eastern Channel (skipping the deepest parts).
Along the wy there were nice views of rainbows towards town. I also enjoyed the mix of broken clouds, forested hills and snow covered mountain tops when the clouds lifted a bit.
Six swans flew by and went into Camp Coogan. We eventually went in there to take a look.
Before going to the head of the bay we stopped for fishing. It happened to be near a shoreside cliff, so we checked that out next.
I made several observation and probably even more collections. Conditions were wet and I didn’t have anything other than paper bags for collecting, I will probably have a bit of trouble getting things sorting out. (I would do well to get the tackle boxes I use for collecting cleaned out sooner rather than later.)
We found the two adults and four juvenile swans at the upper end of the bay. Connor said he had seen a similar (probably the same) group at Swan Lake this morning. I’m guessing they’re a family group that is moving through on their way north, rather than one that wintered along the road system.
There were also plenty of geese (30+, I think) and some Mallards that took flight while we were there.
They fished their way back across to town. All told we were out for just over 4 hours.
I did some work on collections this evening. I spent most of my time on two from last week.
The one I spent time with today ended up being not worth much for the liverworts (not much material and/or stuff I collected separately there). However, it did come along with some soil and I took many pictures of diatoms. I’m not sure if all soil has so many diatoms, but thin soil on rocky cliffs near the shoreline seem to (based on the couple of times I’ve picked some up and taken a close look, anyway).
My iNaturalist Observations for Today
