February COAAST survey

Despite the dreary-sounding weather report, the sun rose to display a pink sky and continued shinning all day long in a near cloudless sky. It was time once again for our monthly beach survey out at Boy Scout Beach. We packed a small snack and hit the trail a little earlier than normal. The 45-minute drive out to the trailhead gave us glimpses of blue sky and snow covered mountains. We weren't sure what the trail condition would be with the recent 4 feet of snow and then two days of rain. The twice a day shoveling I did while Tim was in Florida has reduced itself into patches of green grass and a few mounds of soft snow. I keep wondering if we shouldn't just ignore the snow when it falls as it always seems to melt a few days (or a week in this case) later.

We had our snowshoes but ended up only needing our microspikes. If you veered off the trail then you fell through the snow up to your (my) knee but it was a pretty wide pathway so wasn't too bad. There was only a few really icy spots but it was reassuring to have the microspikes.

When we finally made it to the beach the view was incredible and we slowing shed outer clothing as we got out of the forest and into the open. It was like a spring day. There was warmth from the sun and no wind.

And then we found a deceased adult Bald Eagle near the high tide mark from the previous high tide (around midnight). The bird had all of its outer parts but was just a carcass of bones and features. We didn't need the identification book this time to know it was an eagle.

With wings measure 110 cm and a tarsus measuring 60 mm it was a very large bird, so probably a female although we can't confirm.

Bald guy with the bald eagle.



We taged the bird with our designated Orange band and since it was our second bird it got another orange tag double orange (in COASST speak).

We remarked that if we had to find a deceased bird, that the weather conditions we had were the best for it. It would have been miserable if it had been pouring down rain or snow while we were taking measurements or trying to make notes on the data sheet.

December COASST survey

Even though it is winter, we still enjoy going out to do the monthly Boy Scout survey. Compared to past year's weather, this one was a pretty mild one. The trail only had a couple of icy spots and except for the 30-35 knot winds on the north side of the beach it was pretty pleasant.

Except for missing our hiking buddy, Oso, we had a nice walk along the beach and found no dead birds. We enjoyed a nice turn-around treat complete with hot cocoa (made with milk) and various cheeses and crackers. We toasted Oso with carrots.




And what a difference a day makes! Here we are out for an afternoon walk at the airport dike on sunday. Next time, Tim doesn't get to pick which day we do the survey!

New Year's Beach Survey

It was time once again, this last weekend, to do our monthly dead bird survey for COASST. It just so happened that we are having extreme high tides right now along with a beautiful full blue moon, high winds, and cool (for Juneau) temperatures. With some rain last week and the frosty temperatures that followed, many of the plants and trees are encased in sparkling crystals.


We like to do the survey at the higher tide because we feel that we are more apt to find bird remains and get to them before the other predators find them at a higher tide. There are eagles, ravens, crows, gulls, bears, and wolves that would probably love to munch on a bird carcass.

We found that the tide was so high that we weren't able to go our normal route and had to change directions several times. When we first came to a clearing and could see that Eagle River was rushing towards us instead of flowing down river (which would be its natural flow) we all had a feeling that we might not be about to go on our normal route to get to the beach.



We didn't have to bushwack too much - we were able to follow the tree line at the grasslands to get back to high enough ground to be on our way.

Around 1 pm - High Tide



Around 3:30 PM Receding Tide


The tide is very dramatic here - it went from 19.9 ft at 1 pm to a negative 4.3 ft by 7:30 pm. That's a lot of water shifting! We never did walk on the sand - we had to walk in the high grass and weren't able to walk the entire route. We dressed for wind but when we got to the beach it wasn't windy at all and we shed our gear. We had a nice picnic with lots of goodies and sat on our coats in the grass watching the incredible wave action.

It was very tempting to stay and take a nap but we knew we needed to hit the trail before getting caught in the dark on the return trip. There were several very icy patches on the trail and although there isn't a lot of elevation change, it does have a few ups and downs.

This was probably one of the most beautiful trips into boy scout beach we've ever had.

Oct COASST Survey/Fishing adventure

We had a beautiful weekend bird survey this month and celebrated our one-year anniversary of not finding any dead birds! YEAH! On this adventure, friends David and Kristy joined us on our quest.

In celebration, we decided to extend our stay on the beach and do a little casting. I would say fishing, but both Tim and David checked the regulations to see how many we could keep (6 each) and then I put an empty 40-gallon cooler in the back of the car. So we really only did some casting.


The wildlife viewing was really great though – we saw humbacks, harbor seals, a couple pods of killer whales, ducks, geese, ravens, eagles, and a ton of gulls. We even two a couple of fish follow the lures in but no bites.

We found something!

Last weekend was our 12th COASST dead bird survey on Boy Scout Beach. We chose a great time of the day to go - we got there about 30 minutes before the high tide. The day was overcast but warm - we wore t-shirts and shorts but had our rain gear with us just in case.

And we found a bird wing! whoo hooo - yippee!


We can't write it down on our survey sheet because it has to have a foot attached but we got out the identification book, measuring tool, and other scientific tools (plastic glove, etc.) and went through the motions. We knew right off it was a Glaucous-Winged Gull but we went through the identification process anyway just to make sure we remembered how to do it.

We did look around for other body parts but I'm sure they were picked up by a scavenger before we arrived.


We also saw a bunch of live birds too - mostly shore birds on their way south: Semipalmated Plover and some Least Sandpiper in a mixed group and a lone Whimbrel.

Robyn goes to Juneau

We had an awesome visit with niece Robyn at the end of May. It was a busy weekend with hiking, eating, sightseeing, shopping…a bit of everything. Here Tim and Robyn look at the view from one of the foot bridges along the Dupont Trail.

A visit to the Mendenhall Glacier provided lots of entertainment. There were about 4 cruise ships in town so there was lots of activity. Its is always interesting what tourists find intriguing. We watched an older asian couple who were fascinated with the dogpoop bag dispensers.

We didn't see any glacier calving but there were many icebergs in the lake.





Nuggest falls was flowing with winter melt-off water:

We had a brilliant day-hike to the boy scout beach for our June coast survey. The weather was awesome. Unfortunately we planned our hike when the tide was really low so there was a lot of beach to cover. But it has such a nice day that we didn't seem to mind. I will admit that I insisted we should take a short cut since the tide was so low. This resulted in having to jump over a little crevass where I immediately turned my ankle. After a couple of minutes I was able to continue on the hike. It didn't really bother me until we got home. Its been a little tender since then.




and here is what they were looking at:


And what overnight stay at the Olson's would be completed without a picture with Cappy!


Thank you Robyn for your visit!

Beach Survey

Its been gorgeous all week long - cloudless skys, temps in the 60-70s, and long sunny days. This is was the weekend for our COASST survey out at Boy Scout Beach and we thought we'd take advantage of the long day and go after work on Friday. It doesn't get dark until about 9:30 and since part of the walk from the beach back to the car goes through the woods where it can be dark even during bright daylight, we didn't want to be on the trail too late at night. The walk in usually takes between 30 and 45 minutes depending on how many little birds we stop to listen and/or look at. But this plan worked out perfect!

We are happy to report zero bird carcasses, but we saw an incredible number of people who had staked camping spots along the beach. I think there were about 5 or 6 groups - a few couples and some larger groups who either packed in all of their gear or brought it by skiff. In total we counted 48 people and 4 dogs. A much lower ratio than normal.



We were accompanied by Terry, Oro, Debr, David, and Kristi and feasted on great "turnaround snacks" a short way form the our turnaround spot. We finally got our beach walk where we could wear shorts and t-shirts! Its just too bad that we weren't able to come out eariler in the day with out beach chairs and cooler – what a day this would have been!

Hiking Adventures

We've had some really beautiful days down here in March encouraging us to get out and explore. The days are longer but haven't necessarily been that warm. The clear skies are courtesy of the north wind which can sometimes blow pretty strong. One nice place to walk when the sun is out is at the very end of North Douglas. There is a short trail through the woods from the end of the road that takes you to the beach along Stephens Passage between Admiralty Island and the Douglas Island. Here you can walk along the rocky beach or take to the trail just inside the forest. Both back for pretty nice walks. We tend to take the forest trail when its rainy and we keep pretty dry.

Every alert we came across this carcass on the beach and immediately thought it was a bird carcass and that we could use our COASST training to good work. But once we did some uncovering and moved the skeleton around it was obvious that is was a salmon. We haven't had the FISSH training so can't determine what species it is by the bone structure. My best guess it that it is NOT a king salmon.


It struck me as we made our way back to the house that this picture could have been taken at Summitt Lake if you traded the boat trailer for a snow machine trailer and pretended that the water was wave-frozen ice.

Coasst Survey - Blue Skys - 30 mph gusts

Fact: you often have blue skys when the wind blows at gusts of 30 mph.
It was cold.
At least it wasn't raining or snowing.
With those winds when it rains or snows the droplets hurt.
No dead birds found.

Coasst Survey - See what we found!

This weekend we went on our monthly survey of Boyscout beach looking for dead birds. We timed the tide perfectly - getting there just as it was going back out for the day. The wrack line and beach were clear of snow and from the high tide mark to the water was maybe 20 to 25 feet when we started out instead of what it is at the low tide between 50-75 feet.

We didn't find any dead birds but we saw live ones! Raven, Eagle, Gulls, Ducks, and we heard some songbirds while walking on the trail to get to the beach.

But look at what we did find:

A fishing plug


A beautiful silk rose


Along with the above we also collected : a cut-up plastic 5-gallon bucket, 2 unmarked tins of "food" that we thought might be salmon but turned out to be cat food, a plastic pop bottle, a plastic liquor bottle (the small size like you would get on a airplane), misc. plastic bags, a wire band like you'd get on a load of lumber, a glass pint liquor bottle (whiskey), a really smoothly-sanded aluminum can, and a couple of candy wrappers.

But was was really strange was the spiders. As we were approaching the beach we started to see a few spiders along the pathway.


And the we spotted several more. They all seemed to be heading away from the water and towards to trees. I know its hard to tell but all these black spots (minus the black spots that are on your monitor) are spiders. There were maybe a 100 spiders all slowly walking in the same direction.


Maybe they were a new hatch of spiders that got blown away from the trees in the wind?
Maybe they had been feeding on the wrack in the high tide (it was about a 19 foot tide)?
Maybe they were just out for a Sunday walk, like we were?

WInter Storm Warning

We made an agreement to survey the Boy Scout Beach once a month on the first weekend of the month so we had to venture to the beach for COASST. The road and parking area was nicely plowed and actually much better then the highway! Thank you David! We had our snowshoes and had great fun making our way out to the beach. A few others have gone in and a skier must have gone in earlier in the day or the evening before. There were a few places where the snow had drifted but it wasn't too bad. I mean, we never sunk up passed our thighs!



When we got to the beach it was low tide, very low tide and the beach was covered with a layer of snow. It was impossible to see anything and the wind was wicked. We made our way with the wind to our backs thinking about how cold it was going to be on the walk back. We were deceived many times by the small pieces of driftwood filled with snow that looked like turned-over bird wings but we didn't see any bird remains to identify. And the wind died down when we turned around and the walk back wasn't too bad. The trail out was nice as we had packed it down on our way in. Ran into a couple of skiers (Dave and Kristi) who were also out enjoying the day.

Boy Scout Beach and COASST survey

We had a rainy, warm weekend but hit the beach on Saturday to do our COASST survey. We signed up in the fall as observers for the Coastal Observation and Seabird Survey Team out of UDub. We are obligated to do a specific beach walk once a month looking for bird carcuses and body parts. We share the beach with another guy who walks it 2-weeks after us. We went through a one-day training and have all kinds of supplies and guide books to help identify bird parts. The training was actually really fun and I think it will help with our general identification of birds.

We were told that most of the time the body part that you will find are the feet - the least fleshy and delicable bird part (guess the COASST people don't do dim sum). The guidebook they gave us breaks idenfication down into several questions based on the look for the feet:

1. Are the front toes free, lobed or webbed
2. if free, does the foot have 3 or 4 toes
3. If 4 toes is the 4th nail strongly arched
4. Are toes fleshy or not
5. if lobed are the lobes single or multiple
6. if webbed is the webbing complete or marginal
7. if completed webbed does the foot have 3 or 4 toes
8. if 3 webbed toes, is the foot huge
9. Doe the 4th toe have a fleshy flap
10. Does the 4th flap extend nearly to tip of toenail
11. If the tarsus extremely thin, flat and wide
12. Is the heel swollen or flat
13. if feel flat is the foot huge

From answering these 13 questions you can narrow down the species. After you narrow it down there are other specific questions that you use to verify your find. We got to practice in the classroom with various feet and wings. Some of them were harder than others.

So when we see live birds we just have to get them to show us their feet!

We have rules, clippers, fixed point dividers, gloves, chalk and blackboard, measuring tape, and rain-proof forms that we take with us. We have specifc color-coded plastic ties and specific numbering system we use to mark the birds we find.

When we are at Boy Scout Beach we always see multiple eagles, a few ravens, lots of gulls. This last time we saw some bear prints in the sand. I think our chances of finding any bird parts that aren't scavanged pretty slim - but we enjoy the walk and its all in the name of science!