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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Fortress of the Bears

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Aki and I climb a gravel road that passes above Sitka’s Fortress of the Bears. I hold up the little dog so she can see into the topless tanks that once contained caustic chemicals for breaking down wood into paper. Large brown bears splash in a pond that covers the middle portion of one of the tanks. Memorize that smell, Aki, and let me know if you ever smell it during one of our walks.

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Earlier, the little dog had stayed in the car while her other human and I stood on a gantry above the tanks and watched four brown bears that would have been killed if not taken in by the fortress’s owner. Eagles and ravens roost in surrounding trees, waiting to pick up scraps left by the big carnivores. As much as I try, I cannot belittle the experience. While denied the hundred-mile range enjoyed by a wild brown bear, they don’t lay about with the nervous or dull look of a zoo animal. In minutes I relaxed, for the first time, in the presence of bears.

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Silver Light

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There is something comforting about this morning’s soft, gray light. Bright, almost hysterical sunshine broke our previous mornings in Sitka. But now, except for a pool of silver forming on the horizon, Sitka only offers calm overcast. Yesterday, everyone wanted to rush to some trail or beach. In this case, the “every ones” are rain forest dwellers familiar with the fleeting nature of sunlight. But we have also learned to value ubiquitous clouds. They make for the most interesting sunsets.

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Ease Dropping

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Still in Sitka, Aki and I walk down a forest trail near the mouth of Indian River. Totem poles line the trail like mile markers. There are no cruise ships in town so the forest is quiet enough to ease drop on the conversations of eagles and ravens.3

The eagle conversation appears one sided, a scolding really, that leaves me as embarrassed as a person caught listening in on domestic dispute. The ravens take turns delivering animated speeches. Each sets up a punch line that you would find funny if you had a raven’s skepticism. A squirrel chits in what sounds like a complaint and scrabbles downs his host tree, apparently so preoccupied with raven’s story that he almost runs into my little dog.1

Silver Bay

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Yesterday, Aki was whimpering under an airline seat. The airplane took the little dog and her two humans to Sitka, on the outer coast of South East Alaska. Today, she appears to have forgotten the traumatic twenty-minute flight. We walk on a causeway that links a series of small islands in Silver Bay. Most of the place’s original wildness has been tamed away by carpenters and landscapers. But it’s early summer here and the house owners years ago planted rhododendrons that are now flowering. When no boat is passing, we can hear the hermit thrush’s song and small waves dying on the rocks.2

Just offshore schools of dolly varden char worry salmon smolt into panicked balls. Some of the smolt leap in the air in an effort to escape the hunters. The pure, intense morning light overwhelms my digital camera. But the thing manages to photograph a large, green glass ball that someone us using as a float for their anchor line. These glass balls were once common as kelp in the fishing industry. Now you only find them in high-end tourist shops and museums. I am glad to see the owner of this one dedicated it to its intended use.1

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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