On the Trails: Birds, leaves and mushrooms at the onset of autumn

On a dark and dismal day in late September, I cheered myself up by remembering some pleasing observations in recent weeks:

• On the dike trail, a harrier in brown plumage (female or juvenile) coursed over the meadow. A merlin zoomed out to accompany the bigger predator briefly, perhaps in hopes that the harrier would scare up a tasty little bird. In a lagoon, two dowitchers foraged side by side. One of them had just one good leg and could only hop, not walk. They stayed close together as if they were buddies, for as long as I kept them in sight.

• A rare dry day had a stiff breeze that sent a crowd of dry leaves dancing over the pavement. Not just scudding along over the road; much livelier than that. The leaves stood up on their edges and rolled in curved lines for several meters, sometimes spinning as they went. Those with pointed lobes waltzed on tiptoe (so to speak) along with the edge-rollers. Not something one sees very often in this place! Very cheering!

• On Sandy Beach, two dogs called our attention to a squad of sea lions cruising down the channel. The lions were clearly wary, nervous about the interested attention of one dog that pranced at the water’s edge in parallel to their route. That dog was clearly not aware of what the lions could do to it if they chose; eventually it ran out of beach for its attentive prancing and quit.

• A very long track in the sands captured my fancy. I followed it for many meters, over soft sand and packed mud. Neither of those substrates registered more than some narrow holes. Some strange invertebrate? Finally, sand of just the right density revealed the identity of the perpetrator: a raven. In addition to the marks left by the claws, here the toe-pads were also visible. Well! That made more sense out of such a long trail. What was it looking for?

• Out in the wetland meadows at the end of Industrial Boulevard, on a morning of periodical, partial sunshine, the wind made a field of silver from the upturned leaves of silverweed (earning its name). The tips of fireweed plants, with remnants of their fluffy seeds, gleamed silvery also. A harrier cruised around and little, dark sparrows stayed well in cover. A small hawk that was almost surely a sharpshin (with broad wings and long tail) interspersed briefly hoverings with glides on the wind. This is not the usual foraging style or habitat for sharpshins, who normally hang out in treed areas, but during migration, all sorts of other behaviors are sometimes seen.

• At Point Louisa, a few harlequins puttered about, just offshore, and a little bunch of sea lions swam by. Way out on the rocky point, an otter was busily chewing on some sizable prey (maybe a fish) that was mostly concealed by the boulders. Then out of the trees behind us an eagle swooped quickly down to the otter and its victim. The otter reacted rapidly, flipping back into the water, taking its prey along. The frustrated eagle just sat on a rock, still hungry.

• At my place, for the first time in memory, the pond hosted a teal swimming around with the usual mallards; the size difference was marked. A magpie stood on the deck railing, telling me something at length and in no uncertain terms, perhaps scolding me for the lack of goodies on offer. A pair of nuthatches visits periodically. They love the sunflower seeds, often taking one to a certain crevice at the edge of a beam for several whacks, then moving it to the top of the beam and hammering it repeatedly with full body blows until the kernel can be extracted. They have to work hard for every kernel.

• A walk near the mouth of Fish Creek was very quiet — little avian activity. We happened to walk out on the short bit of trail on top of the dike that separates the creek from the fishing pond. The striking thing about that trail was the abundance of mushrooms in a variety of sizes and shapes and colors. Colonies of fly agaric (Amanita muscaria) looked old, faded, and tattered, well past their prime and spores already mostly dispersed. Their yellow color was possibly a result of fading from the more usual red hue, although some young individuals are yellow throughout their development; young ones of both colors were still present at this site. Another common mushroom had also matured, now exhibiting a flat, black cap with a whitish rim. Colonies of this species commonly sported a flock of tiny white mushrooms (a species of Collybia) that grow on the decomposing parts of other fungi. Trying to find a name for the big, white-rimmed black ones was not easy — my books featured only one possibility, a toothed fungus with bluish or gray teeth and a dark stem. But the toothy undersides of these specimens were not blue or gray or dark. So I asked for help, and a local aficionada of fungi informed me that these are the mature and over-mature form of the familiar strawberries and cream or bleeding tooth fungus (Hydnellum peckii). Sure enough, when I went back there and searched more diligently, I found a few individuals in various stages of development, showing the usual young form and some transitional forms. I was glad to learn about that. Those red drops are the result of guttation, the process by which fungi rid themselves of excess water, with some red pigment from the fungus.

Thanks to Jenifer Shapland for useful consultation.

• Mary F. Willson is a retired professor of ecology. “On The Trails” appears every Wednesday in the Juneau Empire.