Back in Sitka!

It’s been really good here in Sitka for the past week. It was a bit strange coming into Sitka on a bright, sunny day, and with a brass band playing in the airport to welcome us back. Well, at least, to welcome some of us back. Of the ten people that left together to go to Iraq, two didn’t make it through medical screening (Petersen and Llewllyn), one had to go back early (Carson), and of the remaining seven only Sommerville and me came back on the scheduled flight.

I got an answer for my last bird pictures in Kuwait: The redstart was a common redstart, and the shrike was most likely an isabelline shrike! That shrike sure looked like a red-backed to me, but thanks to Julien and the book, I now know better.

As always, there are a lot of interesting things to do in Sitka. I attended an interesting totem pole inauguration ceremony. The pole was carved by Tommy Joseph, my carving teacher. I’ll try to go take pictures of it some other day and put them up in this blog.

Another great event was a Zen meditation practice and tea ceremony by a Japanese Buddhist monk. One of his ancestors was the captain of a Japanese seal hunting boat that sank in the harbor next to the University. The boat had been seized for poaching, and the captain killed himself on the way back to Japan out of shame that the expedition had failed. The highlight of the meditation practice was getting hit on the shoulders by a long, slender wooden paddle. It doesn’t hurt, yet it is strangely effective when I start to lose focus and think about my aches and pains.

I took some pictures on my walk from the house to Totem Park yesterday:

I got this photo of a male lesser scaup at Swan Lake:

I then saw a bunch of harlequin ducks on a rock close to shore in front of the SJ salmon hatchery:

And just before getting to the park, I found some interesting mushrooms that are probably Helvella lacunosa. They were growing in grass by the sidewalk, under a birch, a spruce and a hemlock: