We have oodles of signs of spring in Haines. The daylight returns, the temperatures warm and, boom, the birds arrive, the bears come out, and the plants emerge and bloom.
Mark Battaion saw a robin March 23. Since 1999, the earliest the first robins have arrived is March 1 and the latest is April 30. Sometimes a few stay all winter, but flocks of them arrive and sing during the big spring migration. Last year they arrived on March 2.
Varied thrushes, which have called as early as March 1, have been reported recently by several callers. Red-breasted sapsuckers also are back. These three, reddish birds are harbingers of spring and so far are right on time.
Following the songbirds are birds of prey. Sally Andersen saw a merlin and Battaion spotted a northern harrier.
Our feisty hummingbird’s earliest arrival was March 26. Most years the tulips and crocuses have emerged from mid-March on, but in 2011 the tulips emerged on Feb. 9 only to be covered by snow shortly thereafter.
Skunk cabbage usually shows up in early April. Bears usually emerge and stay out at about the same time. Dan Egolf and Korey Comstock both reported bears out and about in early February. A brown bear sow and cubs were reported to Dan by a skier. Korey saw a black bear. Bear sightings have picked up in recent weeks. Landfill workers have seen two single, brown bears and a sow with two cubs. Large tracks have been seen near Chilkoot Estates.
Scott Pearce and the Sheldon Museum hikers saw a strange phenomenon on Jan. 31. It was foggy as they hiked out to Moose Meadows, but as the fog began to clear, a transparent bow appeared. It looked like a rainbow but didn’t have the color. It was a fogbow, and is caused by the same factors that cause a rainbow.
The difference is the size of the water droplets that cause fog are smaller than those in rain. The smaller droplets do not reflect or refract the light in the same way as raindrops so the different wavelengths of light do not separate into the spectrum that characterizes a rainbow. A fogbow seen from an airplane is called a cloudbow. At night it is a lunar fogbow. Mariners may call fogbows sea dogs.
An interesting drama took place on First Avenue. Dwight Nash lives near a tree that has been used for years by nesting crows. When the crows returned, they were run off by ravens and then three eagles staked out the tree and ran off the crows. Crows and eagles are natural enemies that prey on each other’s young.
Ron Horn, Teri Podsiki, Greg Podsiki, Amy Johnson, Amanda Randles, Steve Vick and others all reported good aurora viewing in February. Aurorae tend to come in waves, called substorms that last two or three days. This is due to the 28-day rotation of the sun. In addition, the solar activity that causes aurorae occurs in 11-year sunspot cycles, and 2012 and 2013 are maximum years. Knowing this allows the University of Alaska Geophysical Institute to make predictions for probable aurora viewing.
Their daily predictions can be viewed at http://www.gi.alaska.edu/AuroraForecast.
Let us know what you are seeing. Go to http://www.takshanuk.org to enter your observations or see what others have observed, or email [email protected] or call 766-3542.