This morning I did a little birding and made a return trip to Starrigavan to look at the rock again. Upon a second look, I thought I could almost discern some grooves that could be from glacial wear (see photo above and maybe use your imagination), but I definitely concluded that the rock out on the bay side is weathering differently (and much faster) than the rock closer to town. I don’t know, but wouldn’t be surprised if its’s graywacke, but for some reason it tends to crumble fairly readily. Perhaps the constituent materials were more like sandy, and the stuff elsewhere (especially in the central town area) that seems less prone to falling apart was made of silt. Unfortunately, the tide was up, so I couldn’t get an azimuth for the possibly hallucinated grooves.

New (for me this year) birds today included Short-billed Dowitchers and Western Sandpipers, though it’s still pretty slow on the shorebird front overall.

A Rufous Hummingbird checked out a piece of yarn hanging from a post on the deck – left over from some kid project – and appeared to try for some nectar. It quickly went to the feeders hanging nearby.

Weather was overcast with some showers, though there was a little bit of partial clearing this evening.

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While walking along the road finishing up the Estuary Life Trail loop at Starrigavan back in January, I was a little surprised to see a pair of Black Scoters in with a small group of Surf Scoters. My impression is that most winters only a few Black Scoters winter in the area, and only occasionally are they spotted from the road (unlike White-winged Scoters and Surf Scoters, both of which can be easily seen from the road in winter). Even better, they came up near the mouth of Ghájaa Héen (Starrigavan Creek). I couldn’t help but stop and try to get some pictures. I was grateful for the opportunity to get the chance to observe and photograph these birds.

While I’m on the subject, for some time I had been uncertain how easy it was to tell female Black and Surf Scoters apart. The males are pretty obvious (see picture below), but the females have less striking differences. What stands out to me the most (now that I’ve had a chance to observe female Black Scoters a couple of times) is the contrast between the dark upper and light lower split about in the middle of her face. On the female Surf Scoter, the lighter coloration is restricted to a couple of spots/patches.

It was also interesting to see some very hairy silverweed (Argentina spp) plants – the ones I remember noticing previously have all been lacking in much hair. Most of the ones I saw today were also without much hair, but a few, like the one pictured, were different. There are apparently perhaps 2 or 3 species of silverweed that could occur in the region, so maybe these hairy ones were a second – though I don’t know at this point which should be given which name.

Likewise, the ground dogwoods (Cornus spp) are a bit confusing here, with three different species, but additionally two different intermediate forms. The one pictured here seems to be intermediate between C. suecica and C. unalschkensis.

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[Work and visiting with family have taken up a lot of time the past few days, so I’m having trouble keeping up with these posts – as a result they’ll probably be brief and posted, but back dated, later than I prefer.]

We made it out to Starrigavan today to enjoy the sun and do a little birding for the Great Backyard Birdcount. The kids, my dad, and I walked around the Forest and Muskeg Trail, the Estuary Loop, and then out along the shore for a short distance of the Mosquito Cove Trail. Winds seemed to be mostly out of the North, so the shoreline near the start of Mosquito Cove was quite pleasant with its exposure to the midday sun and protection from the cold breeze. I was able to spot a Gadwall, which was a species that seemed to have been otherwise unreported on the count.

Although temperatures had warmed up enough overnight for precipitation to fall as rain first thing this morning, it did not take long for things to cool off again and the snow to return. The forecast had been for rain and snow mixed with no accumulation of snow, but for much of the day a heavy wet snow fell and accumulated at least a couple of inches. A couple of times, the sun broke out between snow flurries, but the bright sunshine and blue sky were short-lived in each case.

I wasn’t paying too much attention to the birds around the house, but did get out to Starrigavan for a brief look other stops at the kelp patch turnout and Sea Mart. More than 20 Common Ravens were feeding along with several Trumpeter Swans beside Nelson Logging Road. I suspect someone had thrown out food that both swans and ravens like. Snow was falling, so it was not very easy to get a good look and I didn’t notice anything other than the expected species. 20 or more Harlequin Ducks and handful of Surf Scoters seemed to be foraging in the kelp patch near that turnout – I also spotted a Common Loon just before it dove under again. Not far offshore at Sea Mart were a handful of Long-tailed Ducks, a Horned Grebe, and some gulls.

Perhaps this is old news, but it seems like Sea Otters are becoming pretty numerous near the road. There were at least 5 in the near shore kelp patch at the turnout, and another 3 or 4 by Sea Mart. It will be interesting to see what, if any, impact they and their voracious appetites will have on the size of the kelp patches in these easily observed locations over the coming years.

Made a brief trip out the road today. Highlights include 4 Trumpeter Swans swimming up to the river’s edge at Starrigavan to see if we had any handouts. Also noticed 5 or more Gadwall – a fairly high number for Sitka in any season, but especially winter.

The view from Sea Mart’s parking lot can be pretty stunning – though it was fairly muted today. I suspect most people primarily think of the view to the west out over the sound with Mt. Edgecumbe rising above the lowlands of a distant Kruzof Island. While that is no doubt the more striking view, a look inland reveals Harbor Mountain looming above in a view that isn’t too shabby either.

This evening I took a photo of one of the moths we accumulated last summer/fall.

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Thinking there might be handouts, Trumpeter Swans approach fairly close.

Thinking there might be handouts, Trumpeter Swans approach fairly close.

Mt. Edgecumbe seen from Sea Mart parking lot.

Mt. Edgecumbe seen from Sea Mart parking lot.

Harbor Mountain seen from Sea Mart Parking lot.

Variable Girdle (Enypia venata) collected Summer 2010.

I was once told by someone originally from Anchorage that it was darker here (in Sitka) in the winter than in Anchorage. My first response was to say that didn’t make any sense – Sitka is significantly further south than Anchorage, and so has more hours of daylight in the winter. In discussing the subject further, I came to realize that length of daylight is not all there is to the equation. Sitka’s relatively warm winters with a relative lack of snow combined with persistent heavy cloud cover make for pretty gloomy conditions. When the snow does fall, things brighten up considerably – especially if the snowfall is followed by clear skies. Such was not the case on this early December day, however.

One placement was in the valley bottom, and the other two at the upper edge of the clearcut on the north side of the valley (a south facing slope about 300-400 feet above the valley bottom). One was placed in the clear cut, the other at the edge of the old growth. There was very little difference between the clear cut and old growth placements, so I only included one of them in the following observations. It would be nice to place one on the north facing slopes on the south side of the valley, but access is more difficult, and that’s not happened yet.

In the plot shown (click for a larger version), the two lines are the temperature records from the ibuttons. The light gray vertical stripes indicate darkness, and the boxes are based on the official daily highs and lows (based on the weather station at the airport), with shading determined by the reported cloud cover (white is clear skies, dark gray is overcast).

Based on personal observations, I expected temperatures at Starrigavan to be colder than those at the airport, and this was fairly consistently the case, especially for the valley bottom. It was interesting to see that on many days, the slope temperatures were actually not too far off the airport temperatures, and tended to be less variable.

One of the most striking things about the plot is just how much colder the valley bottom gets compared to the slope, especially during clear weather. I have read about katabatic winds and the pooling of cold air in valley bottoms, but it’s still interesting to see how strong the effect can be. It might be intersting to have several placements along the slope to determine how thick a layer of cold air tends to develop and how sharp the transition is between it and the warmer air above.

It’s not unexpected that daily lows tend to occur just before dawn, with highs in shortly before sunset. However I found it interesting that this was not always the case. In particular, the highest temperature recorded in the period occurred after sunset and was presumably associated with a warm front moving in. The correspondence between daily temperature variation (the difference between the low and the high for a day) and cloud cover is not as strong as I might have guessed, but it seems like this may be due to the use of a single value for the daily cloud cover. It is often the case that cloud cover varies significantly through the day.

All in all, I am happy with the results for far. I’m looking forward to getting data from more locations to fill in some information about temperatures around town.