2006 Tour Narrative
Although most of the birdwatching tours to Alaska are conducted in June, I have always found July to be a wonderful time to travel in Alaska. The weather is generally warmer, and the scenery is lush from a summer’s growth of vegetation, including wonderful wildflowers. Birdwise, July is an interesting month. Although there is less song, bird populations are augmented by young of the year, and with a little bit of luck and effort, we find virtually all the specialties we see in June. This year’s July tour was very successful, and as with any trip to Alaska, it was full of incredible experiences unique to this spectacular state.
We began with a trip to the Kenai Peninsula, in particular Homer and Seward. Passing by rivers lined with salmon fishermen, we headed to the Homer Spit, a glacial gravel bar that sticks out five miles into Kachemak Bay. En route, a stop at the Kenai River produced a number of shorebirds, including Black Turnstone, Whimbrel, and several Long-billed Dowitchers. The Homer Spit is always fun as there are lots of loons and scoters to watch swimming offshore. We took a short three-hour boat ride in the Bay (with Captain Karl). This was very productive and we got wonderful studies of many Kittlitz’s Murrelets, as well as lots of Tufted Puffins, thousands of Common Murres, Harlequin Ducks, and both Pelagic and Red-faced Cormorants. Leaving the Homer Spit during high tide, a concentration of six Caspian Terns in with a huge flock of gulls was a real rarity. We next headed to Seward for our more extensive boat trip to Aialik Glacier. The trip was enjoyable despite difficult weather and sea conditions. Highlights from the trip included a close Ancient Murrelet, several Fork-tailed Storm-Petrels, hundreds of Rhinoceros Auklets, and the usual large numbers of both Horned and Tufted Puffins. Close-up views of the Aialik Glacier were also pretty amazing. In the forest near Seward we found most of the specialty birds, such as Chestnut-backed Chickadee, Townsend’s Warbler, Steller’s Jay, and “Sooty” Fox Sparrow. The culinary highlight of the tour was the incredible fresh Halibut and King Crab served in both Homer and Seward!
Next we headed into the interior of Alaska and Denali National Park. Everyone is always impressed as to the immensity of Mount McKinley. Clear skies on our trip north to the park meant the mountain was out in all its glory, as was the vastness of the wilderness surrounding the park. We had great success for mammals on our bus trip into the park, with excellent views of Grizzly Bear (VERY close!), Gray Wolf, Caribou, a bull Moose, and distant Dall Sheep. Several family groups of Willow Ptarmigans provided the avian highlight of the day. The Denali Highway was more productive for birds. Some of the better sightings included a family group of Trumpeter Swans, nice views of Bohemian Waxwings, a scattering of ducks including White-winged Scoter, Bufflehead, and two female Barrow’s Goldeneyes, a pair of Merlins, a surprising Osprey, and Arctic Warbler. Not to be forgotten were the fresh baked pies at the Gracious House where we dined for lunch! Our return to Anchorage brought us over Hatcher Pass above Wasilla, where for the second year in a row, we successfully found White-tailed Ptarmigan.
We concluded the tour at Nome, one of my favorite birding locations in North America. We did very well finding most of the breeding birds, as well as a nice selection of migrants and local rarities. A real surprise was seeing all four eiders, including an eclipse male Spectacled Eider and a female Steller’s Eider. Other nice birds included both American and Pacific Golden-Plovers, Gyrfalcons sitting up on their nesting cliffs, a beautiful adult Rough-legged Hawk, Golden Eagle, two different juvenile Bluethroats, lots of Northern Wheatears and Eastern Yellow Wagtails, a family group of Snow Buntings, lots of Red-throated and Pacific Loons, as well as an eleventh-hour Arctic Loon, numerous Arctic and Aleutian Terns, hundreds of Glaucous Gulls with numerous Slaty-backed Gulls mixed in, close-up views of both Parasitic and Long-tailed Jaegers, as well as an adult Pomarine, and generally large numbers of all the breeding sparrows and Hoary Redpolls. The scenic beauty along the roads outside of Nome is, in my opinion, unsurpassed! Mammal highlights here included a few Muskox grazing on distant hillsides, and a very close Red Fox that we watched catch (and eat) a rodent!
In all our midsummer trip in Alaska was full of fun birding (and mammal) experiences, and I hope the group enjoyed the trip as much as I did.
Gary Rosenberg
Updated: October 2006