I like living in a place where I can encounter wild critters in so many places and so often. But some days are always luckier than others.
My walks in wooded areas this fall (October and early November) have been extremely quiet — hardly a bird to be seen, maybe an occasional squirrel. Fall is always a slow time for finding birds here, but this fall seemed worse than usual. The same was true at Point Louisa, several visits found often nothing visible on the water either.
Then my luck changed. Another visit to Point Louisa brought sightings of a flock of Barrow’s goldeneyes with a couple of bufflehead nearby and a gang of harlequin ducks. There was a loon, small with a pale bill, perhaps a red-throated loon. And there was a bonus of a bunch of sea lions quietly feeding off the rocky point. I took that as a sign that I should try some other watery places.
Another naturalist had reported good sightings from Riverside Pond the previous day, so I thought I’d try my luck there. I found mallards, hooded mergansers, widgeon, and bufflehead, not doing anything much. Not bad, but not as interesting as what was reported by the naturalist the day before. On that day, the showy male hooded mergansers were displaying their big crests and the females were showing their crests too. They splashed around, apparently bathing, but maybe displaying to each other. One merganser was caught by the camera with a fish in its bill. Mallards sat quietly, male and female side by side, or bathed near each other; that suggested that pair formation had begun for the next season. Ring-neck ducks floated and dove.
Surprisingly, the walkway at Riverside Pond was strewn with about six big chunks of chicken and a reserve supply of chicken rested in a bag by the flagpole. A young eagle, just getting its first white feathers, was quite interested in this offering but was too shy to come right down just then. Two magpies perched high in a nearby tree, keeping an eye on the situation. I saw no humans lurking around making observations. A few hours later, I went back to check; all the chicken chunks were gone, although the reserve supply was still there. I wonder if that eagle got brave enough to grab some grub! Hmmmm, I thought I’d heard that we are not supposed to feed the birds there…
As I drive along the highway this fall, I often see a lot of ducks on Twin Lakes. So I finally decided to go there on the foot trail to see what those birds might be. The crowds of ducks were, I think, mostly scaup and ring-neck ducks. Peering through the tangles of branches between the path and the ponds, I also saw a few buffleheads, some mallards, and a few widgeon were pulling up long stands of vegetation. This place might warrant another visit, although the loud traffic noise from the highway is obnoxious.
Then, in the middle of November, I walked with a friend on the Outer Point/Rainforest trail, somehow managing to leave my binoculars behind. Despite that handicap, I saw buffleheads and lots of harlequin ducks. A beach across the inlet was close-packed with gulls, waiting out the high tide. On a rocky point on the Rainforest side of the loop, another cluster of gulls rested. The trail there passes quite close to the point but the gulls were not very disturbed. They watched us closely but only a few slid down into the water for a bit, soon regaining their rocky perches. As we watched a group of harlequins diving, a little flock of talkative geese flew overhead. Another bonus: a tight little bunch of sea lions loafed not far offshore, just under the surface. Occasionally one raised its nose for a breath of air, seldom at the same time as another. That made it hard to count them; we guessed there were three.
One take-home message is obvious: Wildlife activity is so variable (often capricious, from our point of view) that one just has to keep going out to various places and looking. And, for a bit of added spice and as a bonus, there is always an outside chance of encountering some unusual, unexpected bird…
• Mary F. Willson is a retired professor of ecology. “On The Trails” appears every Wednesday in the Juneau Empire.
A female hooded merganser, not so flashy, is quietly elegant. (Photo by Bob Armstrong)
