flora

Plants

Seaweeds

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Examples of Brown (Ochrophyta) and Red (Rhodophyta) seaweeds While writing the post about Sea Otters I was reminded that despite having good resources for getting started, I still hadn’t managed to get anything up on the wiki about algae, marine or freshwater. So today I found my copy of “Field Guide to Seaweeds of Alaska” … Read more

A few notes

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Just a couple of brief notes from a day spent largely in bed resting. Had the first ibutton malfunction so far. I was reading one today and found that the last recorded observation was from 13 November, though the device was not full and the mission was still active. Tracked it down to a non-functioning … Read more

Lost in Luzulas

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Small-flowered Woodrush (Luzula parviflora) along Indian River I was going to post some pictures from last weekend and write a note about the record snows we had in November, but ended up getting distracted by Luzulas on the wiki. In particular, I was looking at collections of Luzula piperi and Luzula wahlenbergii. Noticed a couple … Read more

Hunting Trip

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Great Blue Heron

A heron watched as we loaded up to leave

Today Connor, Rowan and I went out with my dad and a friend to see if we could find a deer at Deep Inlet. Connor was quite enthusiastic and hopeful that he would get to shoot his first deer, or at least be able to see one cleaned/prepared for packing out. It was a sunny pleasant day with little wind, a little chilly in the shade, but not like a day I remember when I was a kid.

After hiking up the hill together, Rowan and I split off from the others. We saw plenty of tracks, but no deer. The last time I was up there was probably when I was around Connor’s age, so though it wasn’t too familiar, I was kind of surprised that I recognized as much as I did. (One thing is for sure, the hike up the hill wasn’t nearly as bad as I remember.) We joined back up after a bit and hiked back.

Along the way back, we followed a bear trail that had some relatively fresh tracks (probably from the day before). I was also interested to see a spot where the trail led up to a sign tree and the vegetation in the trail was distinctly different than that on either side of the trail (or even further away from the tree along the trail).

We checked out where the dead Gray Whale had been hauled last spring. I was a little surprised to see how little of it remained. I guess people came out and salvaged the bones, as there were none of those left that we could see. All we were able to find was a patch of what appeared to be skin/blubber. It seemed odd that bears hadn’t eat it down, but perhaps it wasn’t so good for eating for some reason.

It was a pleasant trip back in the boat – the kids each got a turn at driving. It took Rowan a while to figure out how to keep things going in the direction she wanted to go. We ended up turning circles for long enough that I started to get dizzy, but she finally started to get the hang of it. At the green can out off Galankin Island we saw a lone Steller’s Sea Lion laying out in the sun. It raised its head briefly to look at us before relaxing again.

We ended up making it home by early afternoon.

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