Watchful Dad

Posted on June 9, 2024 by Jack & Barbra Donachy

I’d always wanted to live where owls were my neighbors.

It was widely known that the village had owls. In fact, the village had always had owls. David Narver reported their presence in his study of the Chignik River Drainage in the early 1960’s. But no one knew, precisely, where the owls nested and roosted. I managed to unravel the mystery once and for all during our first winter at The Lake. After that, Barbra and I could fairly reliably locate at least one of our two resident owls on any given day.

But that didn’t make photographing them much easier. During daylight hours, the owls typically secreted themselves in the very thickest parts of an exceptionally healthy and dense copse of Sitka Spruce trees. Many times, only a hint of the large birds was visible – a patch of breast feathers, a vigilant eye, an alert ear tuft. In addition to the challenges presented by the dense spruce boughs, the copse of trees was situated in a hollow where the light was almost never what a photographer might call “good.” Not only did the owls bury themselves in the boughs of those trees, their favored roosts were fairly high up. And although I am fairly certain that I knew more or less exactly where the nest was, I was never able to put my eyes on it.

For awhile, I contemplated a variety of strategies to facilitate photographing the owls, but all of them involved bothering them in one fashion or another. I didn’t think I’d permanently spook them out of the grove, but I didn’t want to press them. Making a living in the wilderness by talon, hooked bill, eye and wit is tough enough without some human invading one’s personal space. Biologists (generally) no longer shoot specimens in order to “study” them, but I have to wonder about the merit of constant nest-watching and other practices involving invasive viewing of wildlife that are now in vogue.

And so although I regularly checked on our owls (they were along the way to one of our favorite fishing spots), I did my best not to disturb them. Every once in a while, they presented themselves, and when those times coincided with my having my camera along, I did my best to record an image.

Plant a Sitka Spruce, Get a Finch… or when is a new species an invasive species?

Posted on February 1, 2024 by Jack & Barbra Donachy

***Common Redpoll, Sitka Spruce Grove***
*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?