Crisp October days beckon a colorful hello

An early October day of high overcast, with filtered sunshine and temperatures in the low forties was a perfect day for a walk. I ambled out to the beach at the mouth of Eagle River.
The forest at the start of the trail was pretty quiet, with just the occasional chickadee and golden-crowned kinglet to be heard. But the devil's club leaves made the understory seem to glow with golden light. The river was low, with no water in the pools where we had earlier seen a bear capturing chum salmon. Trapped by the receding water, the fish were easy prey. The bear was high-grading, taking a bite or two from each fish and leaving the carcass to go catch another one.
In the alder grove between forest and meadow, numerous graceful strands of lichen added a bright hue. This is a species of Usnea, known as Methuselah's beard. Usnea lichens produce usnic acid, which is used medicinally for its antibiotic properties, although some people are apparently allergic to it. Usneas are very sensitive to air pollution, so they disappear around pulp mills and factories.
I noticed that the elderberry bushes bore leaves that were riddled with holes. In another part of Juneau, these perforations have been caused by the larvae of a sawfly (a distant relative of bees and wasps, named for the 'saw' by which the females open a gap in a plant in order to lay an egg there). The sawfly has been tentatively identified as the green alder sawfly - now on a previously unknown host. Entomologists will try to rear the larvae or capture adults beneath the bushes next spring. So we should know next summer if this sawfly really has a new host or if, possibly, it is a different species.
Bears had been digging in the big meadow behind the each berm, presumably for chocolate lily roots. A flock of Canada geese grazed peacefully, always with a couple of sentinel birds on lookout. Off to the side of this flock was a dark, animate object, too far from the flock to be another goose but clearly nibbling steadily on herbage. After some minutes, this object resolved itself into a porcupine, a long way from any tree.
The incoming tide slowly pushed the groups of glaucous-winged gulls up the beach. In the far distance, visible only by binoculars, an enormous flock of scoters loafed. A little flock of Barrow's goldeneyes came in, one male and five in female plumage.
Four fair-sized, plumpish shorebirds poked about in the shallows, occasionally harassed by the gulls. These shorebirds turned out to be Black-bellied Plovers, whose fall migration usually peaks at the end of September.
At the upper edge of the sand, just below the band of beach rye, I found dozens of tiny sand 'volcanoes', about an inch wide at the base, with an opening at the top. Perhaps some small critters had emerged from down below? Or could these be the marks of a probing shorebird bill, winkling out some buried prey?
On the way back to the car, I spotted a bunch of birds at the mouth of the little creek that goes through the Eagle Beach campground: three eagles, a raven, and four crows were having a fish party. The great, hulking eagles claimed the main prizes, which appeared to be the spines of long-dead salmon. But the eagles picked and plucked at these, while the crows and raven looked on, hoping for a chance to move in for a bite. Only after the eagles left did the black scavengers have their opportunity to glean whatever meager bits were left. The intense interest shown by the birds in these dilapidated scraps suggested that it was slim pickings at this time.
Source juneauempire.com