On The Trails: November trailside observations
- Mary F. Willson
- 10 hours ago
- 3 min read
By Mary F. Willson
Fall is not really a good time to look for wildflowers, but along several trails we have noticed that yarrow is still blooming nicely, even a bit past the middle of the month. There have been several of them with fresh-looking white flowers. In the first week of the month, I found one with a medium-sized fly quietly latched onto the inflorescence, but that fly may just have been resting. This species is self-incompatible, dependent on insects to transfer pollen among plants, so these late-bloomers will not be setting seed.
On a walk on the Treadwell trail above Sandy Beach, we found several good crops of stink current still hanging on their shrubs. Where are the birds that would usually be feeding on them?
On my home pond, a loose skim of soft, opaque ice covered the water, but a few mallards had visited, leaving trails weaving through the ice. The trails froze too, with a distinctive, smooth surface. The surface ice meant that the kingfisher that had recently been here every day would now have difficulty seeing its prey, and so it has sought other hunting places. Interestingly, bird activity at the seed feeder has increased again, with the departure of the active kingfisher. And then came a thaw, but the kingfisher was seldom there, no doubt having found better places.
In the middle of November, with a friend I strolled out on the Industrial Boulevard wetlands. Two short-eared owls were flying low over the edge of the meadow on the distant western side of the wetland. Back and forth—they were presumably foraging. On an old stump out in the middle of the meadow, my friend spotted a big pellet of tightly-compacted short fur, probably a regurgitated pellet from a foraging owl. By dissecting the pellet, we found that it also contained two vole skulls, one of them with the lower jaw still in place. In the mouth of that skull was a seed and even a bit of green vegetation!
The vole’s last lunch of greenery stayed green even when processed by the owl. Vole teeth are readily distinguished in the field from those of mice; the row of molars is flat, for crushing and grinding vegetation, and the individual teeth have a triangular pattern on the working surface. The row of molars of mice is bumpy with pointed cusps on the teeth.
A few days later, with a friend I walked up the Gastineau Meadows trail to the Treadwell Ditch and back. The day was rainy and drippy (one more in a tediously long series of the same) and there was no avian activity. But there was something of interest: at several places along the trail, we noticed small trees with some of the bark rubbed off. No tooth marks, and all the rubs were just a few feet up from the ground. This is the season when male deer have grown their new antlers and need to rub off the velvet, and I think that these were antler-rubs. Fall is also the mating season, and the bucks are out there, looking for willing does.
On another dreary day in mid-November, the only variety was full-on rain alternating with drizzle. I walked with a friend on the Rainforest Trail just to see what we could see. There was not much evident critter activity in the woods, but down along the shore we saw two harlequin ducks (male and female) perched together on a big rock. Then a little band of "harleys" drifted in and surrounded the rock, apparently disturbing the pair a bit. A pair of goldeneyes foraged nearby and, farther offshore, a loon dove. No surprises there — but on the way back up the hill we found a leaf-less blueberry bush in full flower! Lots of little pink-white flowers were open, with little-to-no chance of pollination. We sometimes see such renegades in very early spring, well before the main flowering season and maybe this shrub felt it was springtime? We wondered if November flowering would use up stored resources, such that the shrub might not have enough left to do a real spring flowering.
• Mary F. Willson is a retired professor of ecology. "On The Trails" appears periodically in the Juneau Independent. For a complete archive of Mary Willson’s “On the Trails” essays, go to https://onthetrailsjuneau.wordpress.com.
