Seriocomic Horned Puffins crowd the ledges at Saint Paul. Photo: Gavin Bieber
Alaska’s Pribilof Islands lie some 300 miles off the North American mainland in the Bering Sea. We’ve scheduled our extended visit to the rocky island of St. Paul to maximize our chances at Asiatic vagrants, but even without the exciting strays for which these remote islands are famous, the sea cliffs will be bursting with thousands of breeding alcids and large numbers of the near-endemic Red-legged Kittiwake, and the first of the Northern Fur Seals will also be staking out their shoreline territories.
WINGS has an advantage on the Pribilofs in the form of our leader, Gavin Bieber. He lived on Saint Paul for almost two years and co-led and subsequently organized the birding tours offered by the island’s native corporation. When Gavin is with us on Saint Paul we have of course someone who knows the island’s nooks and crannies in detail but we also have our own vehicle, allowing us to search the best areas on the island for prospective migrants and to linger at the seal blinds or seabird cliffs as we wish.
This tour can be taken in conjunction with our Spring Gambell tour. Please contact the WINGS office for information about reduced prices for some tour combinations.
Day 1: Our Pribilofs tour begins at 6:00 pm in Anchorage. Night in Anchorage.
Days 2-5: We’ll depart the morning of Day 2 for our flight to the village of St. Paul in the Pribilof Islands. During our time here we’ll experience wonderfully close views of the nesting species at the busy seabird cliffs, with incoming and outgoing Common and Thick-billed Murres, Crested, Parakeet and Least Auklets, Tufted and Horned Puffins, Red-legged and Black-legged Kittiwakes, Red-faced Cormorants, and Northern Fulmars all vying for nesting territories. Given appropriate winds we can hope for migrating shorebirds and possibly a rare duck or passerine. Our previous tours to St. Paul at this season have recorded Common Pochard, Gray-tailed Tattler, Wood and Common Sandpipers, Red-necked and Temminck’s Stints, Common Snipe, Eyebrowed Thrush, Olive-backed Pipit, Siberian Rubythroat, Dusky Warbler, Gray Wagtail, Common Rosefinch, and Hawfinch. In addition to the birds the throngs of Northern Fur Seals that have made Saint Paul Island famous will be establishing territories along the rookeries. Nights in St. Paul.
Day 6: After a final morning at St. Paul, we’ll return to Anchorage in the late afternoon, where the Pribilofs tour concludes in the evening.
Updated: 13 July 2010
Prices
- 2011 Tour Price $3,300
- Single Occupancy Supplement $360
Notes
Maximum group size 7 with one leader, 14 with two leaders.