Today’s forecast calls for snow and thunder. We drive through thick snow squalls to the Sheep Creek delta. Walls of light gray hide most of the channel and all of the Douglas Island mountains. There is no thunder. We have crows and mallards to watch as they feed on ground just revealed by the ebbing tide. They hunker in defensive, even grouchy postures.

A foghorn sounding near Lucky Me does not move the birds. In minutes, the U.S. Coast Guard Cutter Spar, a buoy tender stationed in Kodiak slips out of a diminishing snow squall.

When I walk toward the channel for a better photo opportunity of the cutter, a small raft of mallards lift off the channel in unison like a precision wing of harrier jets.