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Today I heard an odd song coming from the trees and bushes on the slope behind the fire station. It started out like an Orange-crowned Warbler, but quickly veered off into unfamiliar (to me) territory. I was able to get recordings of it, but was never able to get more the briefest of glimpses of a bird moving through the bushes. Given where and how it seemed to be moving, I’m reasonably confident it was a warbler of some sort, what I don’t know is whether it’s a common warbler with an unusual song, or an a-typical warbler with its normal song that I just don’t recognize.

(Recording notes: I removed a lot of lower frequency sounds to minimize the sound of the traffic that was going by.)

This year down at the park I’ve noticed a bunch of mussel (Mytilus trossulus) shells washed up with the seaweed. I do not remember seeing so many in previous years. Apart from the ever present possibilities that I just didn’t pay enough attention or have forgotten what I did notice, I’m wondering if perhaps the Black Oystercatchers that have been frequenting the park all winter might have something to do with it.

On our walk to the park last Friday, I noticed that Indian River had essentially no ice in it. Given the extreme (for here) cold we had been feeling for the past several days, I was a bit surprised by this.

By comparison, last year after a few days of freezing temperatures that were not nearly as cold as this year’s, the river was nearly completely covered in ice at the park.

I heard from someone who hiked to Indian River Falls this week, and he said there was no ice on the river until after the first bridge – after which the river was almost entirely iced over. I have previously noticed this (at the time unexpected) ice distribution on Indian River and realized that the west fork of Indian River runs warmer and does not freeze. This is due to the fact that not far above the confluence, the entire flow of the river is underground in normal-low flow conditions.

My guess is the flow from the west fork this year is warmer than during the cold snap last year (it could also just be putting more volume out, taking that much longer to cool off to freezing, but the water levels didn’t seem that much higher to me). A plausible explanation might be the warmer and much wetter weather that occurred in December this year relative to last year. Perhaps this influx of relatively warm water takes a while to move through the ground, so the pulse of warmer water was still flowing even after a week or more of cooler weather.

A couple of questions come to mind that wouldn’t be that hard to collect data for: How do the west fork and the falls fork of Indian River compare in temperature over the course of the year. How fast does the river cool off moving down stream in cold conditions? The best way to answer the first question would be to place a couple of ibuttons in waterproof enclosures just up from the confluence along each fork of the river. (The trick would be getting them secure enough to avoid losing them in high water.) Probably the second question would be best looked at by actually measuring in several locations along the river during a cold snap.

Last July, Connor found a caterpillar which we thought we might try to rear by finding whatever food it wanted it. It didn’t take too long to discover that what it really wanted to do was bury itself in dirt, so we put some dirt in one of the kids’ buckets and left it inside a rearing cage on the porch. I took pictures and posted on bugguide.net, but wasn’t able to get an identity for the caterpillar.

Over the ensuing weeks, it was tipped over at least a couple of times by accident or when the wind blew the cage over – I wasn’t sure if that might be a problem for the cocoon (or is it called something else underground?), but figured it didn’t hurt to leave it out there. I was guessing that it would overwinter and emerge in the spring, but one mid-September morning the kids came in and told me there was a moth in the rearing pen on the porch and Rowan asked if I had put one in there. I told her I hadn’t and asked what the moth looked like. They said it looked like a woodchip. This didn’t inspire me to think that they had actually seen a moth, but I went down and took a look. Sure enough, an adult had emerged. I posted a picture of the adult on bugguide.net and was able to get an identification (with a little bit of a mixup due to mislabeled plates in the Moths of Western North America book I have). It was an American Swordgrass Moth (Xylena nupera).

They are found across the continent in a latitude band that includes Northern California to Southeast Alaska (though perhaps tending a little more southerly in the interior?). Larvae apparently eat many different things, and they overwinter as adults. It seems like a mid-September emergence leaves quite a long time for the adult to hang around until laying eggs in the spring. I imagine they must need to eat until the weather gets cold and they find a sheltered spot to spend the winter months.

I’ve never seen a moth like this before, and don’t really have any idea how common they might be around here, but it certainly was fun to have the mystery of the caterpillar identity solve. We decided to let this one go after watching it for a couple days. We put it out on the covered deck. Rowan checked on it from time to time, and it wasn’t too long before it flew off.

On a November hunting trip we followed a fairly long bear trail for a while. At one point along the trail we came upon a section leading up to a sign tree that stood out to me. I’ve seen several other trails where there were the worn in foot prints and noticed different vegetation at the base of the tree, but I don’t remember seeing such a distinct vegetation difference elsewhere along the trail.

In particular, I noticed there were different species of mosses and the sedges seemed to be largely absent. While I had previously figured the vegetation differences at the base of sign trees were due to the bears standing there repeatedly and moving around (as they rubbed their back against the tree or whatever else they did), I don’t think that is a good explanation for this trail. Given the distinct foot prints, I suspect most bears place their feet rather deliberately upon approach, in fact the ‘hot feet’ were even more worn in there than they had been elsewhere along the trail, which would suggest they got more consistent use. The elevation and ground of the trail didn’t seem significantly different than either side (that is, I don’t think it was better drained).

My current best guess is the difference was due to frequent urination by the bears on their approach and/or departure. Unfortunately I don’t have pictures from both directions, but my recollection is that one side had a longer portion of trail with the different vegetation than the other. I have the sense that bears probably urinate more on approach then departure (assuming they do it all, which I am not sure of either), but I don’t have a good reason why that might be the case, nor any particular evidence to support it at this point. I’ve heard of at least one person observing a bear pissing as it deliberately walked along one of those hot foot sign trails, which is what made me think of that as a possibility here. I also suspect urine would provide additional nutrients that could influence what species are most competitive.

One way to get some verification would be get a wildlife trail cam and monitor the location for a season to see what shows up. If I ever manage to do that, I’ll be sure to post a follow-up on the weblog.

Pictures of a fungus collected at the recent bioblitz in Juneau. It so far has proved to be a stumper, with even experienced mycologists not recognizing it, despite it’s distinctive coarse hair-like appearance.

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Collected from rotting wood during the Juneau Bioblitz, this unidentified basidiomycete has so far stumped all who've seen it.

Collected from rotting wood during the Juneau Bioblitz, this unidentified basidiomycete has so far stumped all who've seen it.

Collected from rotting wood during the Juneau Bioblitz, this unidentified basidiomycete has so far stumped all who've seen it.

Collected from rotting wood during the Juneau Bioblitz, this unidentified basidiomycete has so far stumped all who've seen it.

Collected from rotting wood during the Juneau Bioblitz, this unidentified basidiomycete has so far stumped all who've seen it.

While helping with environmental survey work at Blue Lake a couple of summers ago, this alder branch broke along where we had cut a trail through an avalanche path brush field adjacent to Blue Lake Creek. I am not sure what created the bore hole, but my guess is a beetle of some sort. It seems likely that the branch broke where it did because it was weakened by the hole. I may be that the hole provided an opportunity for decomposing fungi to get started, which would have further weakened that location. It’s probably not easy to get the identity of the borer based only on these excavations, so I suspect this will remain a mystery for quite some time.

The outcrop was basically a cliff that seemed to go well below the bay’s surface. It was a good thing it was high tide, or I probably would not have been able to get off and look around at all. During the course of my visit, I walked a short distance along a ledge that varied from a couple of feet to several feet wide, bare rock in some places with a fair amount of vegetation growing in others.

In the first spot of vegetation I came to, I noticed a handful of empty limpet shells scattered over a small area on a carpet of moss protected by the trees and shrubs growing there. A few feet away, I noticed another shell on top of a very small ledge a foot or two off the main ledge I was standing on. I had a bit of curiosity about the shells, but was mainly focused on looking for different-seeming plants, so I only paused briefly to consider the shells and did not take any pictures.

I continued walking down the ledge a little bit further before turning around. At one point I noticed a small dark brown bird fly along the base of the cliff below me, but I had not noticed any other obvious (to me) bird sign on the ledge.. I looked at the shells as I neared my pick up spot, but by this time I had my hands full with rock fragments and bryophyte collections, so it did not seem worth it to take the time to put it all down and take a picture of the shells and their context.

Of course it wasn’t long after leaving the cliffs and heading back into town that the limpet shell mystery started to dominate my thinking about the place. I was kicking myself for not taking some pictures, it would have only taken a minute or so, and I knew this was a location I would not be likely to get back to soon. It’s not that the photos would necessarily have helped me solve the mystery, but they would have made it easier to verify my memories of some of the details and check for things I might not have noticed at that time. Plus it would have been nice to illustrate this blog post (which is one of only a few that don’t have photo illustrations) to give others a better chance to offer suggestions as to what the shells may have been saying.

If anyone has thoughts/ideas about the shells and how they came to rest where they were, I would be interested in hearing them. I will share my own theories in a follow-up post.

Gulls feed on pink salmon spawning in Indian River.

While walking at the park yesterday morning, Connor and I noticed this fog/mist hanging over the river. Connor thought it was from the stink of the dying salmon, since he had apparently previously seen it on the flume when salmon were dying in it. I’m not convinced that’s what it is from, though I guess it might be related to the fish in the stream (I don’t really remember whether I’ve seen it when there aren’t salmon in the river).

Gulls feed on pink salmon spawning in Indian River.

Mystery Call: I have no idea what made this noise.
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Songbird Chirps: Context seems to be fairly important for identification at times. I’m pretty sure these are chirps from a Dark-eyed Junco right outside the window. I know it’s a small song bird, but without being able to see the bird, I’m not positive about the id. Normally such chirps would alert me and I would look to see the bird. Most likely, even a quick flash would be enough to id it at that point, but without more context, I’m not confident in the id with just the sounds.
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