Spotted Mistletoe Berry Eating Mountain Bird

One of the most common birds found here in SEAK and in the Pacific NW is the Varied Thrush, a close relative to another common bird, the American Robin.  Of all the birds found in the temperate jungles of SEAK, I think the Varied Thrush is the most representative of this primeval rainforest.
The song of a Varied Thrush isn't so much a song as it is an audible sketching of the mysterious and brooding beauty of this wilderness coast.  The song consists of burry whistles and trills spaced widely apart that compliment the hanging lichens, the dense stands of wild trees, and give voice to the spirit of this dark and intimidating forest.  The Varied Thrush's song fits this forest like the fog which so often lazily traverses the canopy and maybe that is the best way to describe it - the Varied Thrush's song is beautiful in the way that fog wrapping wraithing through an ancient forest is beautiful.  The song is sad and solemn sounding, lonely in its slow rhythm but always pleasing to hear.  It is an introspective song, a song of contemplation, a song of inner tranquility.  I can think of no other sound from no other animal that fits this ecology so perfectly.

Unfortunately, these are the best photos I have to offer of the subject of this post.  These birds tend to fly away when a person gets close and are usually hidden high up in a lichen shrouded tree so I haven't been very successful in convincing one of them to pose for photos.  The personality of these birds fits the nature of their song - they don't show off, they don't draw attention to themselves, they don't feel the need to impress.  Even if they could, I doubt these birds would partake in social media and let their egos run rabid in our unfortunate culture of "ME".

I don't know about anyone else, but I see a somewhat sinister smiling jack o'lantern in the black and orange markings in the above photo.

This suet feeder was the bait that brought this guy in close enough and long enough for me to get some adequate photos through my bedroom window.  This bird must be claiming the area around me as its territory as he has become a regular in my yard and the surrounding trees and provides me with some beautiful morning music that blends nicely with the sounds of the small creek flowing nearby.  The Varied Thrush song goes perfectly with the music of a small flowing creek in the way that the call of an owl goes with a quiet nighttime forest.

Oh, one last thing regarding the title of this post.  The scientific name of the Varied Thrush is Ixoreus naevius and I had thought that I had read somewhere that this name meant "spotted mistletoe berry eating mountain bird" but now I can't verify that.  Even if this isn't true, it is still appropriate and fitting and is a much more interesting name than Varied Thrush.

Pretty Boy

One of my coworker buddies has a very photogenic dog who posed briefly for me in the back of his truck.

Spring continues to spring here with daffodils and crocuses blooming in yards, rhubarb beginning to show itself, and a few sightings of bears roaming about after the winter sleep.  April has become a little rainy which is disappointing after all those weeks of sunshine but the rain is also very much needed as the lake that powers our hydroelectric plant is extremely low as is the town's reservoir.  There is some new snow falling high in the mountains as well adding at least a little more to the snowpack which is important to provide a constant steady flow of water throughout the summer.  April showers bring May flowers I guess but I'm still pulling for the Sun to come back!

Wrangell's annual Birdfest is approaching at the end of the month and with it the usual photography contest.  Unless I get some better photos between now and then, here are my entries this year.

The first two are a type of sandpiper called Dunlins which are a migratory shorebird that is a common traveler here in the spring.  The next two are of a Western Sandpiper which is probably the most common migratory shorebird on the Stikine River delta.  These guys are small but numerous and travel in flocks of hundreds and thousands that are mesmerizing to watch as they dodge and wheel through the sky.  

The last photo is obviously of a Bald Eagle which was perched in a tree above the body of a dead sea lion lodged by the river current against some logs.  

And............SPRING!

Well, this isn't the original post that I had written but somehow it just disappeared and I can't get it back and I'm too irritated to write it all over again.  My apologies but I try to keep the profanities to a minimum here and at the moment there are many of them trying to escape my thoughts after seeing the last half an hour of effort disappear.
So…...I'm just going to post a few of the first photos I've taken so far this spring.

A few sea lion portraits of two different huge sea lion bulls over at the seasonal haul out near the edge of the Stikine River flats where they gather in the spring to feast on hooligan.

The Trumpeter Swans are passing through and are currently hanging out at one of the nearby lakes where they are commonly seen in the spring and the fall.  There is still some ice on the lake but it is melting pretty fast.  The light was really interesting too.

I thought the combination of light, patterns, and broken reflections was interesting.

An incredible rainbow originating from the Stikine River delta the other day.  If only I would have had the ISO setting on my camera set properly!

Mushrooms

It is the time of year here in Southeast Alaska when the most interesting mushrooms and other fungi put forth their obvious above ground manifestations.  There are mushrooms to be found throughout the year but the late summer and early fall are when the most interesting, tasty, and beautiful ones emerge from the earth.  I have become increasingly fascinated with mushrooms in the last few years having evolved from a hunter of the more common and well known edible ones, to a true mycophile intrigued with all aspects of them not just their edibility or psychoactive properties.  Did you know that mushrooms (when I say mushrooms this includes all fungi) are more closely related evolutionarily to animals than they are to plants?  Did you know that 30% of healthy soil is made up of the mycelia of fungi?  Did you know that numerous studies from highly respected universities are finding overwhelming evidence that certain mushrooms are undeniably beneficial in treating addiction, depression, PTSD, phobias, and even dementia?  Did you know that mushrooms can regrow and/or reroute neural pathways in the brain?
My growing obsession with learning more about mushrooms was triggered by three things, all of which are episodes of the Joe Rogan Experience podcast to which I also have a bit of an obsession.  The first podcast which truly had me thoroughly engrossed and fascinated was episode #1035 with Paul Stamets who is a mushroom expert and researcher.  I don't know where I would even begin to summarize all of the incredibly interesting information he talks about so I will just very strongly recommend listening to it or watching it on YouTube if you have an interest in mushrooms.  He has made me view mushrooms as almost sentient beings.  Sounds like I've been living in rural Alaska for too long I know but listen to what he has to say and then judge me!

I have posted some photos and written a little about these mushrooms in the past.  These are the fly agarics which are one of the prettiest and well known mushrooms out in the forest.  This mushroom is in the Amanita genus which is the genus of mushrooms responsible for the vast majority of deaths from eating the wrong mushrooms.  This genus has species with common names like Death Cap and Destroying Angel so they are ones to be careful with.  This particular Amanita is very rarely deadly and has been used by many cultures in the world as a means to access the spirit world for insights into the world around them.  I don't have any personal experience with this mushroom as far as ingestion for a spiritual journey and from all that I have read about it, it seems a little too unpredictable for me to really want to experiment with.  I am an adventurous sort and love a good spiritual journey from time to time so I won't rule it out completely.  For now, I just really appreciate this mushroom for its beauty and mystery.  On the subject of hallucinogenic mushrooms, there has been a lot of interesting and very credible medical research in universities like Johns Hopkins and UCLA with the more reliable and "predictable" psilocybin mushrooms.  Medical research has found overwhelming positive benefit from the controlled use of psilocybe mushrooms to treat PTSD, depression, addiction, and to ease the mental duress of people with terminal illnesses.  It will be a slow transition for mainstream society to accept the true medical value of "magic" mushrooms but as we have seen with marijuana, results are hard to ignore.  There have also been a lot of interesting medical discoveries involving "normal" mushrooms over the last 5 or so years.  The Lion's Mane mushroom is not only very pretty but also regenerates neurons, regrows neural pathways in the brain, and has been shown to slow and even reverse the onset of dementia.  I could go on and on but will recommend listening to the podcast with Paul Stamets and some of his own video lectures as well as checking out the website fungi.com.  There are miracles in mushrooms!!

This hefty mushroom is one of the most prized and delicious of edible mushrooms but unfortunately for the photographer, it was a little on the rotten side when I found it.  This is a King Bolete.  This particular Bolete can weigh up to several pounds and get to a foot across at the top!  They are very difficult to find while they are still in a condition to be edible though here in Southeast AK as our wet environment causes them to rot quickly and insects seem to find them delicious as well.  Boletes are easily identified because instead of having gills underneath the cap like the prototypical mushrooms do, these guys have pores beneath the cap.

This was an exciting find for me as it was the first time I had seen this particular mushroom in the area.  I have seen them before but never in a place as easy to get to as this was.  This beautiful mushroom is called a scaly hedgehog.  It is edible but isn't really anything tasty enough to pick so I just left them to continue to look pretty under the trees.  These mushrooms are called toothed mushrooms as they have soft spinelike teeth underneath their caps rather than gills.

These two mushrooms are another type of toothed mushroom and are called hedgehogs.  You can see where the name comes from when you look at the soft spines underneath.  These mushrooms are excellent edibles.  I have several jars of them dried in my cupboard and usually pick some every year in my secret hedgehog place.  They go really well with some Sitka blacktail deer backstraps!  This is one of the easiest and safest edible mushrooms to identify as there are no dangerous lookalikes.  The teeth underneath and the look and color of a perfectly cooked pancake on the top are the ways in which I identify them.  Finding edible mushrooms in the forest, especially when you are intentionally looking for them, is a very pleasing experience.

Just some close up shots of the scaly hedgehogs.  I think they are really pretty.

Some macrophotography to show off just how pretty a mushroom can be.  This particular one looks metallic.

An aging Amanita.

Angel Wing mushrooms.  These are edible but are not particularly flavorful so I also leave these alone to do their thing in the forest.

This is not a particularly pretty mushroom nor is it edible but it is interesting from an arborist perspective as it provides a clue to the health of the spruce tree growing very nearby.  This fungus grows on the ground near the base of trees and indicates the strong possibility of rot within the nearby tree, specifically brown cubical rot.  In many ways, the various fungi are the orchestrators of how a forest grows.  The majority of fungi are not visible to us as they live underground interconnected with the soil and the plants growing in that soil, the mushrooms that mysteriously appear seemingly overnight sometimes are just the parts of the fungus that emerge to allow for reproduction.  It is fungi that provide the mechanism for so many processes that need to happen for there to be a forest at all.  They help trees obtain the nutrients they need from the soil in symbiotic partnerships, they weaken and kill some trees and then break them down into more soil, they provide food and protection to plants and animals and they offer we humans an opportunity to wonder at their mysterious existences.

Random

The summer of 2018 has more than made up for the lack of a summer in 2017.  We are in the midst of another hot and sunny stretch of weather with temperatures in the 70s and possibly the 80s with clear sunny skies.  There must have been at least 5 times as many sunny days so far this summer as there were all of the last.  Sandals, shorts, tank tops, sunscreen, and public service announcements warning of heat stress have been common this year.  Mmmmm, vitamin D!  

The lack of cloud cover has limited the number of Wrangell's incredible sunsets but a recent period of smoky haze brought here from Siberian forest fires on transcontinental winds did create some interesting Suns.

A few pictures of Castle Mountain one beautiful evening out on the water.

Father and daughter on another beautiful evening out on the water.  This is Bessie Peak on the left and Red Mountain on the right.  There is no alpine more beautiful than the alpine in southeast Alaska on a day like this.  When I am out on the water, I find myself looking longingly up at these mountains wishing I was up on their heights.

Just a couple of Bessie's north side.  It's hard to believe that these mountains are less than 4000 feet high, they look like they should be much higher.

A smoky sunrise while out on an overnight fishing trip, a successful fishing trip.

A pretty fish called a kelp greenling found near kelp beds oddly enough.

A well camouflaged ambush predator called a sculpin.  These are common but unwanted fish to catch while bottom fishing for more desirable fish like halibut or rockfish.

This last colorful fish is a yelloweye rockfish or just yelloweye, a prized catch and a beautiful fish with delicious meat great for tacos!  There are many species of rockfish with the yelloweye being one of the largest getting up to 36 inches in length.  These fish typically live in fairly deep water, over 100 feet, and can live more than 100 years!  The age of a fish is determined by counting the growth rings of their ear bones called otoliths.  This is done much like with a tree but is not quite as easy to do.  Notice the spines making up the dorsal fin of this guy?  That is another characteristic of rockfish, they have venomous spines on the dorsal fin that will zap you much like a bee or wasp sting.

It is deer, mountain goat, and black bear hunting season now in Southeast AK so I hope to have some more photos and blog posts in the not too distant future as I'll be getting out into the wilds a bit more.  Stay tuned