I’ve gone around knocking on hollow trees most of my adult life, hoping a flying squirrel or owl would pop it’s head out. And then one day, it happened!
Superb Owl Sunday!
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Category Archives: wildlife
Down the Hatch!
Tommy Woodpecker
The red crown distinguishes this specimen as a male. Note the blue tint on the tips of his tale, an iridescence not often so easily observed in Downies. Like other woodpeckers, Downies use their stiff tail feathers as a kind of third leg to provide leverage is they drum or search tree trunks for insects.
It is suggested in T. Gilbert Pearson’s Birds of America (1917) that the moniker Tommy Woodpecker would better suit North America’s smallest member of the woodpecker tribe “…for his boyish, buoyant disposition makes friends for him wherever he goes.” Perhaps for a moment we can set aside the sexism and celebrate an era and it ornithologists who took such a personal and personified approach to avian studies. I’d like to see any number of birds renamed, starting with discarding all those appellations that are essentially slave names applied by the person who “discovered” a given species – Wilson’s Warbler; Audubon’s Oriole; Steller’s Jay; etcetera. But Downy seems apt for this six-inch bird with its soft breast feathers.
No woodpeckers appear in David Narver’s study of the Chignik River Drainage conducted in the early 1960’s. Range maps have historically placed the Three-toed Woodpecker on the Alaska Peninsula – with no mention of Downies -, but this is surely in error as historically there was essentially no suitable habitat for spruce-and-pine-loving Three-toeds in that part of the world. My guess is that someone conducting an early biological survey got a glimpse of a woodpecker, made a guess, and that became the text for the peninsula. Very recently, I’ve noticed that the Cornell Lab of Ornithology and other authorities have begun to make corrections.
Though they are often common – the woodpecker one is most likely to encounter throughout much of North America – even in the most suitable habitat Downies are seldom abundant. And although the above photograph was recorded in the Sitka Spruce Grove at The Lake, Downies are equally likely to be found in the peninsula’s alder thickets and occasional cottonwoods. Though they are generally listed as uncommon or rare on the Alaska Peninsula, they are in fact regularly seen along the length of the Chignik River. It is probably a lack of nesting cavities rather than a shortage of food that limits Downy numbers on the peninsula, so as the land becomes more forested and trees mature and die and cavities are created their numbers will increase. Listen for their distinctive Peek! Peek! call and then for tell-tale light tapping.
Harbor Seals on Lake Ice
Chignik Lake, Alaska, February 3, 2017
Various sources report that in the Northern Hemisphere, there are only five populations of strictly freshwater seals. These rarities are found in Lake Baikal and Lake Lagoda in Russia, Lake Saimaa in Finland, and Lac de Loups in Canada. Alaska’s Lake Iliamna also has a population of purely lacustrine seals.
Although the Harbor Seals of Chignik Lake have access to the ocean and travel into the salt water environment of the Alaska Gulf, they are commonly encountered in any month in the freshwater portions of the Chignik Drainage. Occasionally hunted for their oil by locals, harassed for their habit of poaching salmon from fishing nets and, particularly when hauled out like this ever wary of dogs and wolves, the Chignik’s seals tend to be rather shy. However, I’ve counted as many as a dozen hauled out on lake ice, and throughout the open water season on any given day you’re likely to see a seal or three cautiously pop their heads above water for a look around. In another photo in this series, there were nine seals. The light was a better in this shot, where eight are present. That’s a Common Goldeneye duck swimming in open water just in front of the arabesquing seal.
Tiny Balloons
Breakfast at The Lake
Plant a Sitka Spruce, Get a Finch… or when is a new species an invasive species?
Chignik Lake, February 3, 2017
Up and down Southwest Alaska’s Alaska Peninsula, Redpolls, Siskins, Crossbills and Grosbeaks – all members of the finch tribe – have typically been marked as uncommon, rare or absent, breeding in small numbers here and there but generally not species one expects to encounter on the windswept peninsula. However, as trees – particularly alders -, have become increasingly abundant in that part of the world, so too have the finches. Seeds of the tiny alder cones are relished by Redpolls; the tender leaf buds by Pine Grosbeaks. But nowhere has the recent emergence of trees more dramatically impacted avian life than in the village of Chignik Lake where 70-some years ago Sitka Spruce trees were transplanted from seedlings gathered on Kodiak Island.
Some of the spruce trees at The Lake now tower over the landscape, producing both shelter and food for a wide variety of birds. The seeds of mature cones draw Pine Siskins, Hoary and Common Redpolls, White-winged and Red Crossbills, Black-capped Chickadees, Black-billed Magpies and several species of sparrow. While they’re still soft and reddish-purple, immature cones are feasted on by Pine Grosbeaks. Meanwhile, the variety of invertebrates that have moved into the little groves of spruce trees provide sustenance for Downy Woodpeckers, Pacific Wrens, Golden-crowned Kinglets and Yellow Warblers. Great Horned Owls roost and nest in the dark shadows of spruce bows and Northern Shrikes, Merlins and an occasional Sharp-shinned Hawk hunt the songbirds attracted to the trees. My guess is that it’s only a matter of time – and not too distant time – before the first Steller’s Jays are reported at The Lake. In fact, based on a description a now deceased resident reported to me, I’m not sure they haven’t already been there.
But here’s a question: Are these trees actually an invasive species… like the Orange Hawkweed that only very recently has begun showing up at The Lake? Or, for that matter, the dandelions which have taken over the school yard (and also, in some years, provide food for the finches as they go to seed)? And what about the above-mentioned alders that are steadily crowding out what remains of the peninsula’s tundra?
For decades, the transplanted Sitka Spruce trees did not propagate themselves in the Chignik Drainage. But about five years ago that began to change when seedlings suddenly began volunteering themselves throughout the village. One might argue that even without human intervention it was only a matter of time before Picea sitchensis made its way down the peninsula. But couldn’t the same be said of the Orange Hawkweed, dandelions and even the Kamchatka Rhododendron that has naturally, over time, found its way to The Lake from its native grounds in far eastern Russia?
Dumping a bucket of carp or pike into a lake where they never before existed is one thing…
On the other extreme are dandelions and hawkweed, which seem to to have devised strategies to show up wherever environmental conditions suit them.
Somewhere in between are a vast array of flora and fauna that – with or without humankind’s assistance – are finding their way into new niches.
So, what do you think? Where is the line between happily-received newcomer and dreaded invader?
The Usual Suspects
Almost: Red Fox & Goldeneye, Chignik Lake
Slow work, going through the thousands of photographs we took in our years at Chignik Lake. But the late summer and fall of 2016 are “in the can,” and today I begin the February 2017 files. I honestly don’t know what I’ll find. So, we hope you’ll keep watching this space! Thanks!
Rare but Regular Visitor from Eurasia: Tufted Duck
CutterLight 