Summer Walks

It's summer, and it has gotten very green under the trees at Abercrombie State Park.  I noticed that the ponds are thick this year with cow lillies.  Are they always this thick or did I just notice them this year? I also looked around for blueberries.  Last year we were picking them by early July, but this I could barely find any.  And the ones I did find are tiny and very much still green.  Not sure if it is going to be such a good summer for blueberries.  Nora and I will have to switch over to salmonberries!
Patrick

Woody Island Camping Trip

Friday night we went camping with the cousins on Woody Island.  Nora had a babysitting job until 4 PM - so immediately after her job ended we picked up the requisite Subway sandwiches and headed to Trident Basin to launch the kayaks and SUPs.  

Nora and I took most of the gear in our kayak cockpits while the others tucked their gear in dry bags under straps on the decks of their SUPs.  By 6:30 or so we were finishing up setting up camp on public land on Woody Island. Woody Island is amazingly close to town!

Since it is so close to town I was expecting where we camped to have been heavily used by other campers.  But we seem to have been the first people to go there this year.  I thought about it a bit and I think traveling by kayaks lets you camp where people using bigger boats fear to tread.  The bigger boats need a safe anchorage while with kayaks you just haul them up into the trees.  With no need for a safe place to anchor your boat there are far more choices of places to camp. 

Saturday morning we had hash browns, eggs and bacon cooked on the woodstove and then we were back in town by 10 AM.  So convenient.  Patrick

Nora enjoys the view of the sunset from her tent

Quick Dig

Finishing up removal of 1912 Katmai ash at start of dig

Since a week ago Monday, when the rain allows it, I have been leading an archaeological excavation.  We had 7 days to investigate what we hoped was a simple fish camp near a creek with a big silver salmon run.  A year ago when we dug a test pit at the site we had found a pile of netsinker preforms - beach shingles in the process of getting notched so they could be fitted along the bottom of a net to serve as a 'leadline' and hold the bottom of the net on the bottom.  Hence the name of the site - Kugyasiliwik - a place to make nets.  At the site we had hoped to investigate an aspect of the Alutiiq seasonal round - the fall fish camp by the seas.  In the past, we have already investigated fish camps found on Kodiak's interior lakes and rivers but the fall fish camp by the sea has not been documented all that well.

Right away, on removal of the 1912 Katmai volcanic ash, we found an exposed hearth.  We determined that it was inside a simple 'lean to' like structure that probably had a sod roof.  The only artifacts that we found were net sinkers, ulus for splitting fish, and an adze.  Fish camp at its simplest.

What makes the site easy to interpret is that it looks like it was only occupied once for a short while.  The features and the story has not been confused by repeated use of the locality.  Anyway, today we hope to finish up at the site, and I'll report on more of what we found in a post to follow!

Patrick

Excavation begins - the hearth was partially exposed right below the Katmai Ash

View of hearth looking towards entrance to structure

Netsinkers and ulu found in place right next to the hearth

Libby excavated the hearth

Molly with an adze used for carving wood

Libby in the doorway of the excavated structure

Popof Island Exploration

Sunday Nora and I went kayaking and standup paddle boarding with the cousins.  Nora kayaked while the rest of us used stand up paddle boards (SUPs).  As usual we picked up lunch at Subway and then launched the boats beside the floatplane docks in Trident Basin.  Then we paddled on over to Popof Island to eat our lunch on the beach and spent the afternoon exploring the island.

Despite how close Popof Island is to town and that you can see if from the road when you drive out of town towards the airport - I had never set foot on it until last Sunday.  It is a much bigger island than I expected and there was a lot to explore.  What's funny is that we saw very little sign of other people visiting the island. Far less sign than you find at Long Island which is much further from town.  It appears that I am not the only Kodiak resident who has been over-looking this nearby gem!
Patrick

Documenting the Giant Kelp

A mix of Bull and Giant kelp at the boundary between the 2 beds

A few years ago I noticed a weird type of kelp growing near our place on Afognak.  It had lots of little alternating bladders on a stem and multiple leaves rather than the usual bull kelp that has the big 'bulb' with fronds growing off of it .  Turns out the weird species is Giant Kelp - the type of kelp you ordinarily see growing off the coast of California and other places down south.  It was only recently discovered in Kodiak waters and it is thought that it may well be in the process of colonizing the area.  The Giant Kelp beds off the coast of Afognak represent the extreme northwest of its known range.

Anyway I wrote a few blog posts about it and referenced some of the literature I had read on the subject of Giant Kelp in Alaska (Click here and here for older posts).  And now every year when we visit Afognak I have been keeping an eye on the kelp.  Is the Giant Kelp spreading?  How is it doing vis a vis the Bull Kelp.  It has become my little science project.

This year I even made a video of my observations (click here for link to YouTube video of kelp documentation).  It is sort of boring and dry, but I hope that it will prove useful as a baseline of the conditions in 2020.  I did notice that the Giant Kelp likes the inshore waters while the bull kelp dominates the deeper water.  I'm wondering if the Giant Kelp will start to outcompete the Bull Kelp and slowly move in the deeper water replacing the bull kelp.

We'll see!

Patrick

Bull kelp

Giant Kelp

All Giant Kelp floating on the surface

Close ups

As I said in my last post, I've been using a telephoto a lot of late to take pictures of things in the distance. I've also still been taking a lot of super up close pictures of plants.  Ironically, the same lens does both really well.  In a way super close up and telephoto pictures share a similar viewpoint - both have you examining details you really don't generally notice.  The yellow stripe on the bird's head or the pollen dust on the willow flower.  Whereas with landscape and people photos you are basically capturing what you see.  Patrick

Little brown Birds

Thrush

Lately I have been using a zoom lens on my camera to take close up pictures of birds.  In the past, I generally never used a zoom lens.  Mostly I would just take landscapes, plant close ups, and people pictures, and there was no need for a lens with any sort of magnification power.  But I recently got a new zoom lens for my little Fujifilm camera, and it has been kind of fun to experiment with it.

With no big animals handy I have been taking pictures of the little birds I could find in my yard or on dog walks to the park.  I have not looked closely at these small birds for a few years and it has been fun to get re acquainted with them.  I actually used to do quite a bit of birding with binoculars, but once I stopped seeing any new birds around the house I sort of stopped.  But now with the new lens I get to learn about them all over again!
Patrick

Fox Sparrow

Winter Wren

Mallards

Fox Sparrow

Thrush - not sure if Swainsons or Hermit

Golden-crowned Kinglet

Fire on the beach

Stuey and Marcel with the fire they lit by themselves

Still a couple posts from the trip to Afognak the weekend before last.  Summer is starting to get busy with activity! Anyway, I did want to do a post of the Afognak beach fires.

Everyday in the early afternoon we would light a fire on the beach and cook hot dogs, quesadillas, and S'mores.  I lit the first fire but delegated the next few to Stuey and Marcel.  They took a piece of cedar and carved off wood shavings, put together a pile of small sticks, and lit the fire!  I did hear them get into an argument about using grass - Stuey thought green grass was good fire-starter but Marcel did not agree.

I did not help them at all, and as I leaned back up against the log in the sunshine I thought about how they were basically doing a science experiment - 'what works for lighting a fire' . Good stuff to know.

Patrick

Prepping s'mores on the beach

Quesadillas on the campfire

Teepee view towards the beach