While walking home one day last week, I noticed some light-green new looking growth on a Mt. Ash (Sorbus aucuparia) along the Lincoln Street green belt adjacent to Crescent Harbor. A little further along, I noticed a tree that had a few flowers. This struck me as a bit odd, since I’ve been noticing how much it already seems like fall is coming on. The temperatures haven’t really dropped yet, but the leaves are starting to, and most of the flowers are long gone.

This year I have been trying to pay more attention to blooming times, and something that has been interesting to me lately is how few things seem to be blooming even though it will be a fair while yet before we are likely to have a good freeze. The plants that are still blooming seem to fall into three categories. There are the species that don’t start blooming until late summer, there are plants with an extended blooming period, and finally the plants that seem to putting out a second, much less abundant, set of blooms well after the primary blooming period has ended.

There are only a few species that I associate with a late summer primary blooming period including Kneeling Angelica (Angelica genuflexa) and Douglas Aster (Symphiotrichum subspicatum), Rattlebox (Rhinanthus minor), and the introduced Hairy Cat’s Ears (Hypochaeris radicata).

Species with a blooming period that has a long tail include, Fireweed (Chamerion angustifolium), Foxglove (Digitalis purpurea), Yarrow (Achillea millefolium), Cleavers (Galium aparine), Pacific Water-Parsley (Conioselinum gmelinii), and the introduced (and invasive) Spreading Buttercup (Ranunculus repens), and Common Ragwort (Senecio vulgaris). This last deserves special mention, as last fall I noticed it blooming until at least the second week of November, and the first plant I saw blooming this spring was in March (though it was May before I started noticing in commonly).

Finally, the group of species that are blooming well after their primary blooming period include Dandelion (Taraxacum officianale), European Mountain Ash (Sorbus aucuparia), and in other years I’ve also seen Giant Vetch (Vicia nigricans ssp. gigantea), and . This group seems to consist of two sub-groups, those plants that consistently do it and those where the blooming seems to be more accidental. The vetch and mountain ash definitely seem to be in the latter category, though I am not sure what might cause such an accidental flowering to occur. Dandelions (and probably the miner’s lettuce, though I’ve not noticed it specifically) do seem to have a late season push of flowers, though not nearly as abundant as in the early summer primary blooming period.

Late season new growth on a European Mountain Ash (Sorbus aucuparia).

St. John’s-wort is introduced in Southeast Alaska. While it is an invasive plant in many regions, to this point it does not seem to have made in-roads around Sitka, as I have only noticed it growing at the edge of the long term parking at the Sitka airport. It will be interesting to see what happens with it over the next couple of years, as it may have only recently been introduced here (though it’s been reported at other locations in Southeast for many years).

St. John’s-wort (Hypericum perforatum) at Natural History of Southeast Alaska wiki

Coral Slime (Ceratiomyxa fruticulosa) seems to be one of the more common slime molds around Sitka. Individuals growths are small and can be easy to to overlook when they occur in small clusters. I associate this slime mold mostly with rotting wood in coniferous forests. I’ve also only noticed it at lower elevations, though this may be due to lack of time spent at higher elevation forest.

More pictures of Coral Slime (Ceratiomyxa fruticulosa)

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This photo is from a hike up Indian River in 2006. I noticed a metallic gold beetle crawling on the zipper of my backpack while stopped for a break. Only recently did I get around to posting it on bugguide.net, where it was quickly identified as Lioligus nitidus by v belov, who noted it was a new genus for the site.

Looking on-line, I found very little about this beetle, but I did find one paper about a study done on Prince of Wales Island where this species was one of many invertebrates found in alder leaf litter. (That study was looking at diversity/productivity of conifer and alders, with a mind toward the management of second growth, and whether alder should discouraged, as it has been in past years, or encouraged.)

As far as I know this is the first breeding record for Pied-billed Grebe in Sitka, and it seems to be one of only a handful in the Alaska (a couple in Ketchikan and one from the Copper River). This summer I first noticed Pied-billed Grebe on Swan Lake early in June. I heard from a visiting birder that it had been observed singing within a day or two after. Subsequently, I thought I saw it again on 4 July, but did not get a good enough look to be sure, so I inquired from other local birders and heard that one was seen in late June. Last week I saw it again on two different days, with two birds observed the second time. Finally, this morning, I observed at least one adult (but I think probably two) and two juveniles seen in these photos.

Looking at the past reports of Pied-billed Grebes in Sitka, I notice there are a couple of years where the pattern of occurrence suggests possible breeding with observations in May and August. Given how difficult the birds have been to observe this summer after the first couple of days – several times I’ve gone by the lake looking for them and have not been able to find any, and on those occasions when I have seen them, they quickly swim away – it is not implausible that breeding took place.

Thanks to Bill Tweit and Carrie Hisaoka for reports of these birds. The information about prior breeding records comes from the paper “Birds of Ketchikan Area, Southeast Alaska” written by Steve Heinl and Andy Piston and published in Western Birds vol 40 no 2, 2009. Prior records for Sitka are referenced from Marge Ward and Marlys Tedin’s observations.

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In May Connor found and brought me this Thallophaga hyperborea which had been crawling up a stake he had pounded in the ground. It seemed a strange place to find a moth, but upon learning its identity (via bugguide.net) and reading a little about the life history, it made more sense.

Larvae of this species dine on conifers, including our local Western Hemlock (Tsuga heterophylla) and Sitka Spruce (Picea sitchensis) then spend the winter as pupa in the soil before emerging as adults in the spring. It seems likely this individual was just emerging when Connor found it.

Variable Carpet Moths (Anticlea vasiliata) are aptly named for their diverse array of color morphs. This May I photographed two different ones, to go along with one I photographed April 2009.

Information I’ve seen about larval food plants does not includes only raspberries, which many people raise, but they are not especially common. It is possible this species moved in with the introduction of raspberries, though I suspect they have other food plants that are native – perhaps salmonberries (Rubus spectabilis) which are abundant.

The photo which leads the post represents the least marked end of the spectrum for this species, with those shown below being perhaps more typical. Note the dark lines present in the relatively unmarked individual are also present on the other individuals, though the darker bands obscure them somewhat.

Connor and Rowan noticed this moth on the outside of my home office window, so I went out and took a picture of it. It’s been photo identified as Pearsall’s Carpet Moth (Venusia pearsalli) courtesy of Bob Patterson on bugguide.net, though it may be a similar looking closely related species.

The NPWRC account for Venusia pearsalli indicates that it is abundant and widespread in the wet coniferous forests of Western North America. The only larval food plant listed which occurs in the Sitka area is alder.