It’s getting colder up here in Homer as winter sets in, and our first snow was this week! Ice and frost has been covering puddles and the harbor, and now up on the ridge the snow is sticking. This week classes have been a lot of studying and getting prepared for presentations in November, but there was a fun detour due to a moose blocking our way to class one morning, which is something I never thought would happen coming up here!

As we prepare for group and individual presentations, we have been analyzing our data from excursions more to synthesize it. While looking at photos from our trip to Kenai Fjords National Park, two of the Steller’s Sea Lions from our photos had large wounds on them, both of which appeared to be healed. One of them barely even had a tail, most of it amputated, which is pretty intense to heal from! I have sent these off to researchers of Steller’s Sea Lions to see if they have identifications for these individuals or if they know how these wounds could have originated.

During Harbor Monitoring there were also some awesome sights with a huge pink jelly probably about two feet wide in the harbor and a crow that followed me for two of the plots that I went to. As the harbor gets colder with winter more of the Sea Otters haul themselves out to sleep and rest on the docks, and it is amazing to see how big they really are.

Hiking and grabbing camera trap data from the Inspiration Ridge Preserve was extra rewarding this week as there was snow! Only a tiny bit, but most of the ponds are starting to freeze over and it was so cool to see the starts of animal tracks around us in the light dusting. I’ve started to bring my camera out when the weather is nice enough, and it has been super rewarding with some nice landscape shots AND my lifer American Goshawk flew by this week!!

On Friday and Saturday I helped out at the National Maritime Wildlife Refuge discovery lab about ‘creepy’ animals for Halloween, and it was so fun to help so many kids learn about typically looked down on animals. I was at the owl table, where we talked about the different species adaptations and got to dissect owl pellets. I also had an awesome clam costume to wear that was the Coastal Studies archive, pictured below.

On Saturday I had the opportunity to try to go out to look for marine mammals and with one of the professionals that I am working with for a project and some other students. When we got to the harbor there was a Bald Eagle just sitting on the docks, and it is always so cool to see these huge birds all over normally when I barely saw them back home. The weather took a turn for the worst so we only got around 30 minutes on the water, but before the wind picked up we made it across the bay and found a huge raft of about 15 Sea Otters, and I even got a close up picture of a pup smiling.

Speaking of pups, there was also the cutest boat dog named Teddy who was very good at making sure our hands stayed warm from petting him.

I’ll end it off with the cutest moose calf that was seen tasting a tree on the trail camera photos I was going through, only a little over a month left here and so excited for the final push!!