Author Archives: kwinker

A Very Unusual Dipnetting Season

Back in June the run of red salmon in the Copper River this year was predicted to be poor. And the Miles Lake sonar showed that this was indeed the case, so the Department of Fish and Game closed the season very soon after opening it. And then they kept it closed for most of June and July, with just five open periods of 24-96 hours. The king salmon run was reported to be good, and those who went in June generally caught more than they could keep (1 each). But red fishing was poor.
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Oh, What a Life We’ve LED

I hope everyone else is reveling in the cost savings that LED bulbs have meant. The light emitting diode (LED) is such a cool invention. Once the bulbs were being manufactured in huge numbers and their prices dropped, it made definite economic sense to replace our other bulbs with them. We swapped out our incandescents for compact fluorescents (CFLs) several years ago, but as those die we’re putting in LEDs. That time has also finally arrived with fluorescent tubes, too. The per-bulb cost for an LED retrofit lamp is now on par with a standard four-foot fluorescent tube, and the LEDs come with a five-year warranty. What’s not to love?
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Coyote in the Boombah?

One thing about deep snow and a snowshoe trail—if you make it, everyone in the neighborhood will use it. So I was out yesterday seeing who’s around. At various places in the trail I found the tracks of two moose, a fox, quite a few snowshoe hares and red squirrels, and a grouse or two. The neighbor’s dog had bounded through, too, as she sometimes does. But yesterday there was a new set of tracks I hadn’t seen here before: a good-sized canine that walked like the fox. I’ve seen a lot of coyote tracks, and this sure looked right. But how to be sure it wasn’t a dog?

When I was out today, I remembered that yesterday I’d caught a faint whiff of a funky, skunk-like aroma. I went back to that spot and spent some time looking, and sure enough, the large canid had scent marked. It was a female. I bent down and picked up a piece of the very darkly marked snow, stuck it under my nose, and took a good sniff. Yowza! Too much! I couldn’t get that nasty, rank smell out of my face for a good ten or fifteen minutes. I’m pretty sure it was a coyote.

Probable coyote tracks

This is an unexpected [probable] addition to the local fauna. I’d just remarked to Rose a week or so ago that I was surprised that we hadn’t seen evidence of a lynx yet. We’ve seen them in the neighborhood less than a mile away, and there sure are a lot of hares around. We’ll keep our eyes open for better visual confirmation. But my nose knows.

An Unusual Absence—Where are the Redpolls?

Normally at this time of year our bird feeder is packed with redpolls. They can usually be counted on to empty the thing daily, and we actually ration them so we don’t go through too many forty-pound bags of sunflower seed kernels.

But this year is dramatically different. They’re completely absent. They were scarce early in the winter, but I haven’t heard one for months. This absence became more and more puzzling as the normal late-January visits didn’t appear and the February and March hordes didn’t show either.

But then I realized that I hadn’t seen a single birch seed shadow all winter. These are common in normal years, when even a light breeze drops birch seed all over the snow.* A few years ago we had an astonishingly high birch seed year, but this year it looks like practically none were produced. And so I finally realized why we had no redpolls this winter. I am not sure what the cause is, but it is the first time in our 22 winters’ experience here that it’s occurred. We miss the little buggers.

* A five-year study published in 1972 found an average annual production in birch forest around Fairbanks of 23,303 seeds per square meter. This is why birch seed shadows are usually so visible all winter as these seeds periodically fall.

25 March update: Well, the redpolls read my post and sent a few emissaries. If I’d known things could work this way, I would have posted this in January. A small flock of four stopped by while we were eating lunch. Rose and I just started laughing. It’s amazing how excited you can get to see what’s usually an abundant bird.