Temperatures and mood are up throughout the Juneau area

After a brief and depressing snowfall, Juneau has been blessed with warm weather, rain, and even some sun! Spring is on its way, and soon I will be learning about botany! Last Saturday I went for a hike with Mac up Perseverance trail behind downtown Juneau. In spite of deep snow, we saw a red-breasted sapsucker Sphyrapicus ruber (a migratory species here), alders in bloom, porcupine tracks everywhere, and American dippers Cinclus mexicanus singing in the creek:

I got to do an afternoon of shrimp identification this past week with an invertebrate zoology class; I learned a lot and even identified three or four shrimp myself, but I forgot to take pictures again. I saw two hoary redpolls up close this past week, and didn't have my camera with me of course! However, I took some pictures of ferns on two of my walks.

This one is a small Asplenium viride:

And this is the very common “licorice fern,” Polypodium vulgare or P. glycirrhyza:

Finally, this is a neat Cryptogramma acrostichoides (or C. Crispa var. acrostichoides) I found on our latest hike. The brown leaves in the back are fertile fronds:

And I thought that with almost all news in Alaska politics being bad news (FBI raiding the offices of our elected representatives, etc.), I’d point out that our governor is pregnant! She’s actually quite popular in Alaska (even here in Juneau where she was feared as a proponent of the capital move), and there have been rumors going around that she’ll run with McCain. All right, let’s not get carried away here; she’s got very little experience even for a state politician, and McCain is in his 70’s so his VP should be a credible statesperson.