Kenai Peninsula, Alaska — Day Four

Spruce Grouse were a target today, and with patience we were successful. The road we drove (slowly) wound through the Kenai National Wildlife Refuge. The terrain and vegetation closely resembes our Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness, complete with campers on lovely, isolated camp sites. We saw two moose. We saw Common Loons floating on still clear lake with a faint emerald color. Pine Grosbeaks were common. White-winged Crossbills could he heard twinkling in the tops of the spruce trees. They’d give us briek neck-bending looks before flitting away. What’s wrong with the tree next door? We went back to the Kenai River flats after supper (fresh salmon) to look again for our dark-phase Parasitic Jaeger. No luck. In his place was a Red-throated Loon, half a mile away across the river, the ID called with help of my host’s very good Leica scope. Today, we’re onto more back roads in lake country, looking for nesting Pacific Loons among other things.

Kenai peninsula, Alaska, day three

We boarded a Renown Tours boat in Seward for a five-hour trip to see whales, birds, and a calfing glacier. Our pilot was bird-alert; not all of them are. Mammals were encountered first — humpback whales, dolphins, sea otters, and then a pod of about 20 orca (killed whales). We passed a rocky point used by sea lions for basking and birthing. Baby sea lions look like big puppies. We passed close by cliffs used for nesting by Double-creasted, Pelagic, and Red-faced Cormorants, Black-legged Kittiwakes, and Horned and Tufted Puffins. There were a lot of puffins on the water, diving as we approached or flying off. Identification of these birds often requires good knowledge of bird butts. There were murrelets out there, but none close enough to positive ID. Later in the day we would drive a shoreline road out of Seward and get good looks at a pair of Marbled Murrelets not more than 40 feet offshore. Black Scoters were along that shore as well, along with a dozen immature Harlequin Ducks. Bird of the Day was the brown (grizzly) bear we found on the way home. Three cars parked along the road ahead of us and a wooded glen holding half a dozen people with cameras was the clue. The bear, a sow with cub, was less than 200 feet away, resting in the brush, but very alert. My host is a biologist familiar with bears. He pointed out that slowly advancing on the bears with digital cell-phone-size digital cameras cranking out bright little flashes each time a photo was taken was a bad idea. This was the basic approach of the viewers we watched. The bear was intently focused on us, its cub at its side. I took photos with the equivalent of a 900mm telephoto lens, keeping my distance. Well, I just made sure that one of the other photographers always was between me and the bear. It’s that old joke — I don’t have to run faster than the bear, just faster than that other guy. Glaciers, by the way, are big but don’t do much.

For the next few days I’ll be writing about a recent birding trip to the Kenai Peninsula, along the coast of the Gulf of Alaska, south of Anchorage. I was based in Soldatna, near the mouth of the Kenai River. Gulls and terns are nesting now, chicks hatched and being fed. Shorebird migrants are beginning to move south along these shores from Arctic nesting grounds. Short-billed Dowitchers and Whimbrels have arrived, and are feeding on the tidal flats. The gulf holds more gulls and terns, Red-faced Cormorants, murres, various auklets, loons, grebes, and ducks. Special a week ago was sighting of a pod of 90 Orca (Killer Whale), the largest single pod seen here in a decade. The first day for me was filled with a 5.5-hour flight to Anchorage from Minneapolis, and a three-hour drive south. The scenery was great, the highway weaving through mountain valleys, following one shoreline or another. Birding from the car was not good, however: the road demands full attention. A highlight was the sign near Soldatna warning about moose on the road. The highway department keeps track of moose fatalities: so far this year, 171.

Birding idea of the day:

My friend Charlie often would go birding with a large trash bag tucked into a pocket. He would fill it with trash found wherever we were — along a road, at a park, on a beach — and haul it home. Charlie believed he had an obligation to give as well as receive.