Category Archives: Juneau

Peace or Desolation?

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Little of today’s soft rain can reach Aki and I in this old growth forest. A stronger downpour, like we get in autumn, would drive off the peace by pounding on broad-leafed devil’s club bushes and ramp up the musical volume of the forest streams. But today the forest is a quiet place, its peace broken only a scolding squirrel.

Aki, who likes excitement and chance encounters with other dogs, might think the quiet forest desolate. But her ignorance of human language shields her from the rattle and squeak of radio news shows. She can find peace anytime in her kennel.

3We break out of the woods and find the beach empty except for a desolation of crows. Even the rain-rattled water between outer point and Shaman Island is vacant except for a pair of mergansers wandering near the point. On the north side of the island, other crows fly over surf scoters and a mated pair of harlequins. They photo bomb my shots of the ducks and the cloud-shrouded mainland.2

Rain

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It’s raining in Downtown Juneau, raining on Aki and I. It’s raining on cotton clothing and sleeping bags abandoned by Juneau’s homeless population and on a brace of ravens that are either scavenging or guarding the carefully folded gear. Soon thousands of visitors will stream down cruise ship gangways and walk by the scene in the rain.

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Looking for Swans, Finding Beavers

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This morning, I drove Aki out to the glacial moraine in hopes of seeing some transient tundra swans. Nothing, not even a merganser breaks the mirror surface of Dredge Lake. But it’s early enough that we have the place to ourselves. Moving through a cloud of bird song we walk a circuit of the other moraine lakes.

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Beaver leavings—dams, fallen trees stripped of bark, wood chips, scattered sticks marred by tooth marks—litter the trailside ground. Many of their diminutives logging roads cross the trail. On the eastern shore of Moose Lake I say, It’s funny little dog. We rarely see those responsible for all this mess. Just then, a beaver slips into the lake and paddles toward the glacier.

2Minutes later, another beaver scrabbles out from underneath a bridge we are crossing and plops into the lake. Aki paces up and down the bank while I measure the progress of its underwater swim by the trail of breath bubbles. Four meters from the shore, the beaver surfaces, see us, and crashes back under the water with a tremendous splash.

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We continued on our search for swans but find only a sole Canada goose. I give up the search after two birders tell me that the swans had left two days ago. Released, I can enjoy the morning light infusing new cottonwood growth and the personality of a yellow-rumped kinglet that shows itself to us.

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Migrants

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It’s Seven A.M. Strong sunlight hammers through the waters of Fish Creek Pond, turning its normally opaque surface transparent. Aki appears to squint. I do every time I look at the pond. A shy pair of mergansers hug the shadowed, far bank. Otherwise it appears as empty as the overhead blue sky. Then the crows possession of the place.

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We climb the small dike that separates the pond from the creek delta and spot a clutch of bristle-thighed curlews feeding among the rockweed. There are tundra birds, just passing through. The crows seem intent on making a meal of them or at least moving them on.

 

In the mouth of fish creek a harbor seal shatters the morning quiet with a series of unexpected crashes. Curlews, taking it personal, flee the scene.

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On the return loop, Aki and I watch an adult bald eagle launch from its spruce roost and fly with purpose over Fritz Cove. When it is a kilometer out, it kicks out its talons and crashes them into the water. But they are empty when the eagle regains the air. I am disappointed for the bird and amazed that it could target prey so far away. When we approach the eagle’s roost, it raises its beak and looks into the empty sky rather than down at the witnesses of its failure.

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Strong Forest Sun

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Today is a sunny as yesterday was rainy. I wanted an early start for our walk but we didn’t make it to the Rainforest Trailhead until mid-day. But the lack of early-morning bird frenzy is made up for by the sunshine that will only reach the forest understory for another hour or so. The bright light clarifies the greens of newly emerging leaves. It also makes the head of a red-breasted sapsucker shine like the queen’s jewels.

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The sapsucker is nervous. It flits from tree to tree, staying for seconds in one spot. The little dog and I aren’t responsible for it’s behavior. Each movement of the bird brings it closer. When it does come to rest, it’s on a tree ten feet away, which happens to be flooded in light.

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Discriminating Goat

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Back in Juneau, back in the rain. Aki, her other human and I splash down the Nugget Falls Trail. Ahead, a mountain goat focuses on the emerging alder and cottonwood growth. Beneath him, the falls charge into Mendenhall Lake. Later, when I upload photographs of the day onto the computer, I’ll find one in which the goat is staring at the little dog and her family. He could be looking at the glacier or one of the many icebergs it calved since spring. He could be distracted by the hoards of dark-eyed juncos bouncing around the trailside brush. I’d understand it if he noticed the brilliant yellow-green of the leaves he had been eating. Why look at Aki?

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The photo that I uploaded next shows the goat head searching for food, turned so that his rear faces our fronts. Back to business. Don’t take it personal, little dog. 

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Predator and Prey

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While Aki reads the scents left by dogs and other mammals along the trail, I search a disturbed section of the Gastineau Meadows for insect-eating sundews. The cry of another predator makes Aki cringe and startles me into an upward look. We both watch a red tail hawk continue its hunt across the meadow. The hawk’s distinctive cry, which  froze my little dog must do the same to its prey.

 

4I watch the red tail circle over the eastern meadow but rather than dive, it rises higher and higher, shrinking to a brown dot against the clouds disintegrating on the flank of Mt. Jumbo.

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It’s too early for the shooting stars to flower but there should be some other flashes of magenta on the meadow. I head up the trail to find some. Aki won’t follow so I turn back toward where we startled a Sitka black-tailed doe. Just our smell was enough to send it running for cover. I wonder if we carry the odor of the meat eater, like the wolves that leave tracks in the meadow snow.

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On a morning where events established Aki as possible predator and prey, we return home where the little dog hopes to hunt up some cheese to go with her breakfast of kibble.

Little Drama

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Two Canada geese are the only things moving on Saga Meadows. The larger bird started honking when I slipped on the gravel trail and hasn’t stopped. He walks to and fro, like an over trained Shakespearean actor, while the smaller birds feeds on the new meadow grass. They provide the most drama Aki and I have experienced on this Amalga Harbor visit.

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The rain, really a soft purgatory of drizzle, pockmarked the water in front of the salt chuck cascade where I fished in vain for dolly varden char. It soaked into Aki’s gray curls while I searched for whales or Stellar sea lions from a place where Aki and I have seen both in the past. Giving up on drama, I concentrated on five harlequin ducks that fished around my whale-watching promontory. The little hens didn’t show much color but the drake’s feather show almost equals that of a wood duck.

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Sunday Morning Coming Down

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Most of the ravens we pass on this Sunday morning stroll through downtown exude the confidence I’ve come to expect from the opinionated birds. They poise their rain-slick bodies on prominent cottonwood limbs or gather on newly green patches of grass. Some chase away eagles with triple their wingspan. But the two that we spot on the docks look hung over.

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Near the morose corvids, two large rafts of surf scoters dive on balls of herring that have formed under the new cruise-ship dock. The ravens appear to cringe when the scoters panic onto the tips of their wings and use them to run across the surface of Gastineau Channel.

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Under the partial protection of the Marine Park shelter, a homeless couple ignore the scoter’s din, dive deeper into their nest of castoff down sleeping bags, and try to gain a few more minutes of sleep. Soon city workers will start up their noisy power washers to hose down the docks. Then the homeless and the low ravens will have to find a quieter place to finish coming down.

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First Sighting, Nervous Geese

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Aki and I are walking along the north bank of Eagle River. A line of Canada geese cackle and slow walk to the river. We are not making the geese nervous. The little dog isn’t even in their line of sight and I am careful to keep a respectful distance from the birds. Something at the edge of the sand bars is stirring them. Through my telephonic lens I can just make out a mature bald eagle being chased by a Canada goose. The eagle climbs to hunting height and circles over a gathering of geese feeding on emerging grass. Several of this group cackle and fly, only to land a few meters out in the river.

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More geese stir when a northern harrier flies over at a low attitude. Its flight path takes it over our head. But even after all this negative attention most of the Canada geese continue to feed along the river. Only when a circus of children, and them on the southern bank of the river, make their noisy way to Boy Scout Beach do the Canadians take to the air.

3The kids swing over to a big tidal meadow and trigger another exodus—a big flight of snow geese that had been refueling on the meadow before continuing on to their nesting sites along the Bering Sea. The powerful fliers change from white line to a cloud as they move over Lynn Canal. It’s my first sighting of the legends even though I lived for years in Western Alaska less than 100 miles from their northern nests. Here in the rain forest elders tell children that hummingbirds migrate here burrowed in the feathers of snow geese. For the rest of the walk I will check each blossoming blue berry bush for hitchhikers.

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