Kenai Peninsula, Alaska — Day Six

The five-mile long spit that stretches into Kachemak Bay from Homer, Alaska, points across the bay at Gull Island. Today, we rode with Capt. Karl Stoltzfus of Bay Excursion Tours to check the bay for seabirds, and to circle Gull Island. Highlight of the expansive bay were sea otters, dozens of them dotting the absolutely calm water (no chop, no waves a bonus). Then came Gull Island. This is two islands, actually, rocky humps rising steeply from the water. Thousands of birds nest here — Common Murres, Pigeon Guillemots, Horned and Tufted Puffins, Red-faced and Pelagic Cormorants, Mew Gulls, and Marbled and Kittlitz’s Murrelets. The birds call incessently. They wheel above the island. They come from and leave on feeding forays. It is birding bedlum out there. We circled twice, slowly, high tide allowing us to be within 20 feet of shore at times. It is birding bedlam out there. And it stinks. Years (centuries?) worth of guano stain the rocks. Nice place to visit, but you wouldn’t want to live there.

This entry was posted on Saturday, July 12th, 2008 at 7:44 pm and is filed under Bird biology, Bird travel, Go places to go birding. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.