Streets of the World

May 16, 2026: Through the Eyes of a Naturalist

written by

Brenda

Salmon

You can easily remember the five types of Pacific salmon (and their common nicknames) using the Five Finger Method

  • Thumb: Chum (Dog Salmon) Trick: Thumb rhymes with Chum.
  • Index Finger: Sockeye (Red Salmon) Trick: Use your pointer finger to point or “sock” someone in the eye (Sockeye).
  • Middle Finger: King (Chinook Salmon) Trick: Your middle finger is the tallest and largest, just as King salmon are the largest of all the salmon
  • Ring Finger: Silver (Coho Salmon) Trick: The ring finger is the finger you wear a silver ring on.
  • Pinky Finger: Pink (Humpy Salmon) Trick: The smallest finger stands for Pink salmon.

Plants

Our naturalist was a self professed plant nerd. Here are a few things that he pointed out:

Fragrant shield fern starts on a rock and then dies off to make soil. This is the beginning of plant suspension.
Elegant Sunburst Lichen grows one mm per year. It starts with squirrel urine.
Dwarf Dogwood creeps along the ground and the leaves turn white and have red berries later in the season.

Mosquitos

Mosquitoes were HUGE.
The gulls come up from California to feast.
Our naturalist said that the first mosquitos of the season are big because they have lived through the winter in leaf litter. Their progeny will be normal size but there will be a lot of them.

Birds

Canada Jay
Spruce Grouse
Male  ptarmigan did his best to scare us off and keep us away from his female.
These new gulls have taken up residence on top of this car.
Remnants of the yellow-bellied sapsucker.

Mammals

Caribou and reindeer are the same animal just a different name. They don’t shed their antlers like the moose. Both the male and female have antlers. The male has a point in the middle and the females don’t. Reindeer are smaller than moose.

Snowshoe hare is changing from white to brown.
Ground squirrel slapped his flat tail as a warning
Denali National Park and Preserve (originally called Mount McKinley National Park) was created in 1917 to preserve the dall sheep from overhunting. We didn’t see one so this is from the visitor center.
Anchorage has the highest population of moose. Their preferred diet is willow and alder. The cities use salt for the roads and the moose come to lick it. The use of salt is not allowed in Denali.  

Pika are a small rock dwelling mouse. Every carnivore wants to eat them so they are hard to find.

Scat

Moose scat is everywhere. When it breaks open, it looks like sawdust.
The spruce grouse scat is a huge pile. That bird defecates after holding it all winter.

Alaska Train

We boarded the train from Denali to Anchorage. There were about 12 in our car. We met trains going up and it was standing room only.

Flagstoppers

A “flag stop” refers to a designated route where you can literally wave down a train from the side of the tracks to board, or ask the conductor to let you off in the remote backcountry. One flag stop train called the Hurricane Turn Train is one of the few remaining flag-stop trains in the United States. It runs along a 56-mile stretch of the Alaska wilderness between Talkeetna and Hurricane Gulch, serving as a vital lifeline for off-grid Alaskans and a scenic drop-off for hikers and rafters.

Denali

We asked the park ranger the proper way to say Denali. There are five different ways and all are acceptable. The word means The Great One.

Only 30% of the people who visit the park see Denali. Look above the clouds for the tip. It is 45 miles away. We joined the club!

One response to “May 16, 2026: Through the Eyes of a Naturalist”

  1. luv2latte Avatar
    luv2latte

    So glad you saw her! It felt like a festival the day she came out of the clouds for us.

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