Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening
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Whose woods these are I think I know.
His house is in the village though;
He will not see me stopping here
To watch his woods fill up with snow.
My little horse must think it queer
To stop without a farmhouse near
Between the woods and frozen lake
The darkest evening of the year.
He gives his harness bells a shake
To ask if there is some mistake.
The only other sound’s the sweep
Of easy wind and downy flake.
The woods are lovely, dark and deep,
But I have promises to keep,
And miles to go before I sleep,
And miles to go before I sleep
June 1: I forgot to mention that yesterday we visited Earthquake Park, which commemorates the effects of the 1964 quake, located along the northern edge of Cook Inlet. It was such a perfect and sunny clear day that we could see Mount Denali (formerly Mckinley) over 150 miles away, towering on the horizon. Hopefully, we’ll get to see it again from closer range. The mosquitoes, AKA Alaska’s state bird, also thought it was a lovely day and showed their appreciation of our visit by assisting in our blood loss program. We ran for our lives. After recovering, we took a short drive around Lake Hood, the seaplane base for Anchorage, which hosts more seaplanes than any other place on the planet. It seems that almost everyone in Alaska owns a small plane or some sort. A lot of them die each year enjoying their pastime.
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| GOLDEN-CROWNED SPARROW |
We spent this morning and early afternoon a) writing and getting the blog posted, b) doing laundry, c) shopping for supplies, d) having brunch at the Varsity Grill of the University of Alaska at Anchorage new field house.
For our outdoor activity of the day, we drove 6 miles up Arctic Valley Road, a winding dirt set of washboard and rocks that took us into the mountains overlooking Anchorage and Cook Inlet. The view was quite spectacular, looking down on the sunny city, although it was cold and raining lightly at our high perch. We walked up the trails around the headquarters of the Anchorage Ski Club’s lifts. After a while, under pretty miserable conditions, we packed it in and returned to the parking area. A quartet of golden-crowned sparrows decided to entertain us before we left, ending our disconcertment.
Onward to Matanuska River Park, where we would rejoin the Beaches.
June 2: With a change of plans, we decided to drive northwest to Glenallen, then south on the Richardson Highway to the oil port city of Valdez at the north end of Prince William Sound. Along the way, we briefly checked out the Edgerton Highway, stopping for lunch at Kenny Lake, which was covered with a variety of water birds. Down, down, down we went for 30 miles, following a snaking river valley, until finally beginning a slow climb to Thompson Pass. At only 2674 feet, this area receives the highest snowfall in the world, due to the moisture laden air that blows in from the Sound. One year, over 83 FEET of snow fell and the one day record of eight feet of snow fell gently on its slopes. Still mostly snow-covered, we went for a short walk on a patch of wet tundra. Tiny alpine wildflowers, just exposed from under melting snow, were already putting up their shoots and even the alpine azalea, standing tall at 1/2”, with flowers of 1/4”, was in bloom! We continued through Keystone Canyon and past raging Bridal Veil Falls to end up at Valdez. I noted a sign pointing down a narrow dirt road to the site of “Old Valdez City”. The original town, founded in the 1860s, was a major point of landing for those seeking Klondike gold in the Rush of 1898. Those hardy and sometimes foolhardy prospectors had to climb up and over the lengthy pass we had just traversed, carrying massive amounts of gear and wearing clothes that could little protect them from the elements. Crossing the Valdez Glacier, they had to continue walking 100s of miles to Whitehorse, in the Yukon territory, to board a paddle wheeler up the Yukon River to Dawson City, before even starting out for the gold fields. We could still see their “goat path” along parts of the road. Old Valdez itself was completely destroyed in the earthquake of 1964, as the town was ripped apart and then buried by a series of tsunamis. The new port city is located further south and on slightly higher ground. The immense terminal facilities for receiving and shipping the Alaska Pipeline oil that comes here from Prudhoe Bay, 800 miles to the north, are across the Fjord and under high security. Despite the threat from our presence, we camped right next door.
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| THOMPSON PASS |
June 3: We went from sea level to alpine in almost no time this morning, first enjoying the placid waters of Valdez bay then straight up to Thompson Pass, still under 10 feet of snow in places. We stopped at Blueberry Lake Campground, just barely open as the melting snow receded. Up at the Pass’s summit, we reconnected with Shirley and Doug and the four of us hiked around the open ground along a ridge that afforded spectacular views of these jagged mountains.
A five hour drive north brought us to the beginning of the Denali Highway at the largely abandoned town of Paxson. This mostly gravel road crosses 140 miles of largely unoccupied (by humans) terrain that includes taiga forest and open tundra, at about the same elevation as Thompson Pass (2800’). In early spring, a large herd of migratory caribou cross the Denali Highway, but it is mostly covered in snow then. Despite its name, this road is not a part of Denali National Park, but sits just east of the park entrance. It was the original road to reach the park entrance before amodern highway was constructed between Anchorage and Cantwell. The Denali Highway immediately begins climbing out of the boreal forest until reaching the open tundra, with numerous glacial “kettle” ponds lining its sides. As far as I’m concerned, this is the best part of the DH, since it is the southernmost area of tundra that can be reached and you can drive through the whole place.
We were in search of several species of birds and mammals that inhabit this type of country and found a few this first evening of exploration. A pair of tundra swans were nesting in a small pond beside the road. From significant distance we were fortunate enough to watch a short-eared owl floating over the tundra, flopping its broad wings in moth-like style as it soared back-and-forth over its hunting ground. Then we heard this very strange guttural clucking sound. It sounded familiar to me but I just couldn’t place it. Then Shirley cried out, “ptarmigan” and we all enjoyed watching and listening to the bizarre noise emanating from this male willow ptarmigan as it proclaimed its territory. That was lifer #600 for Shirley, a major milestone, and she found it herself!
That being enough excitement for the evening, we pulled over to a roadside turnout next to two little duck, red-necked phalarope, gull and tern-filled ponds and called it a night. Well, almost. At about 10:30 PM, it was still quite light out, despite being overcast, so I went for a walk. No bugs, no bother. The small, still, kettle ponds reflected the partially snow-covered mountains. A beaver sliced the pewter water like a knife through mercury.
June 4: Woke up to pouring rain. We decided to retrace yesterday’s route on the Denali Highway, so we could reset the odometer to zero and better track our progress along the way, since there weren’t any milepost markers on the road. We stopped in at the Paxson /Denali Lodge and had a chat with Dr. Audubon Bakewell IV, owner of the lodge and co-author of the Bird-finding Guide to Alaska. He told us about a possible spot for gyrfalcon about a dozen miles away, just off the Richardson Highway, so we gave that a shot. Unfortunately, the weather was awful and after a couple of miles down a dirt road, the road became the headwaters of the Gulkana River, thereby denying further progress. No gyr. We returned to the DH and scanned the canyon from which gyrs are occasionally seen. No gyr. Onward to the pull off at mile 11.1. After a quick scan, I spotted a small white speck on the tundra hillside about 1/2 mile away. A long-tailed jaeger was sitting on the ground, possibly on a nest. This was a new species for Doug and Gale! Doug and I decided to hike up across the tundra to see if we could get a better look. Walking on the tundra is like walking on a giant uneven wet sponge, so we carefully picked our way up the slope. Tiny wildflowers of all different sorts were abundant, ranging from pale white and yellow to deep fuchsia. None were more than six inches tall and most were one or two inches from top to bottom. We carefully tried to avoid stepping on these tiny alpine gems. Suddenly, we saw a jaeger (German for “hunter”) hovering not far off and we watched with amazement as it worked its way toward us and then swooped right over our heads. These elegant birds of prey, which are actually members of the gull family, spend most of their lives out in the open ocean. They get their food by attacking other fish-eating birds and forcing them to drop or disgorge their catch. When they come to the tundra to breed, their diet switches to small rodents, small birds and bird eggs. But since jaegers have webbed feet for swimming, not talons for killing, they must use a different hunting strategy. They frequently hunt in pairs, chasing prey like a tag team, taking turns pursuing the prey until they simply wear it down. Then one jaeger will swoop in, grab the animal by the neck and sever its spinal cord with its sharp beak and carry it off in its bill to the nest. Fascinating creatures, birds. I love ‘em!
We said good bye to Doug and Shirley until we see them again in Denali National Park in a couple of days and Gale and I continued on the Denali Highway, heading west. It started pouring, so we pulled over, had lunch and took a nap, figuring we could go out late at night to see what we could find. But the weather gods were not smiling on us today and the rains only intensified. We pulled into the Tangle Lakes BLM campground for the night. At 10:30 PM, it’s still pouring.
Note: If you are over 62 or you plan on being so someday, make sure you get your Golden Age National Parks Pass. It costs $10 FOR LIFE! and entitles you to free admission to virtually every national park, beach, monument, facility, etc., PLUS camping fees are generally 1/2 price. This is definitely the best deal in history.
June 5: Cold and overcast this morning, but the birds were singing. I managed to get some shots of gray-cheeked thrush, Wilson’s warbler and American tree sparrow. Alder flycatcher was belting out its, “free beer”, call, but wouldn't pose for me. The pristine Tangle River was flowing quickly just below our campsite, providing a welcome backdrop to all the other natural sounds. This river connects the exquisite chain of Tangle Lakes, which are full of rainbow trout and arctic grayling, a northern trout with a dorsal fin like a sailfish. As we walked around the campground, there was a cow moose foraging on the slope above us with a 2-3 day old calf clinging to her side. A lot of legs for a little body! Before departing, we filled our water tank by cranking the hand operated rotary pump. Hard to do but not as tough as it was filling it the day before from an old fashioned hand pump which had no connection for a hose. We had to fill a gallon jug with water, carry it to the RV, pour it through a funnel that did not work very well, into the RVs water tank, all while being devoured by huge Alaskan mosquitos, which I have dubbed “moosequitos”.
As we headed west on the Denali Highway, we stopped for a couple of walks, one on the tundra and another through the spruce forest. There was a solo moose browsing at one extensive marshy area and another cow with two calves on a rocky talus hillside. A short-tailed weasel (AKA ermine) ran across the road in front of us, sporting its summer pelage of chocolate brown and a rather long tail tipped in ebony.
The road was in particularly horrible condition for most of the day’s drive, with very bad washboarding and tons of rocks both in and around the surface. Speed was limited to 15 mph for much of the time and our fillings almost rattled loose. We stopped at one roadhouse for some mixed berry cobbler (primary) and to watch a colony of cliff swallows (secondary) that nested under a river bridge. The birds were all involved in grabbing gobs of mud to build and stick their nests up under the bridge supports. Common ravens had learned to walk the supports, tear up the nests and gulp down swallow chicks. The rain started again for the final hour of the drive, but we safely pulled into the Brushkana BLM campground for the night, dry, warm and bug free in our cozy little home on wheels.
Today’s milepost: after eight weeks on the road, we have now exceeded 10,000 miles for the trip.
June 6: Guess what? Upon awakening, we see that the sky is still falling. Not much to do but hit the road, so we attack the remaining 30 miles of the Denali Highway. This takes about 1.5 hours, since the road is so bad and it’s pouring the whole way. We finally make it out to the pavement at Cantwell, which feels like we’re driving on the cloud. Is this another part of “the cloud”? Twenty-something miles north and we have arrived at the entrance to Denali National Park and Preserve. Nearby is a cluster of the fanciest and scruffy motels and hotels and every tourist junk shop you can imagine. After some shopping, dumping of tanks and refilling of others, we register at the park office. A cow moose is munching away on some greenery in the parking lot until a beer truck scares her off. We have a 30 mile drive to our campsite at Teklanika and Gale and I are both eagerly anticipating all the moose, bears, caribou, wolves and other wild things we will see on this stretch of park road. Unfortunately, it is raining and deeply cloudy and all we see is a snowshoe hare hopping across the road. The campsite is very nice, with good space between sites and set along the braided and broad Teklanika River. Doug and Shirley pull in shortly after us and park right next door. They saw a caribou on the way in! We did a bit of walking and a bit of birding before dinner when the sun actually appeared. I got some nice photos
of a boreal chickadee and a gray jay. A 180˚ double rainbow arced across the leaden sky, finishing on a snow clad peak. Then guess what? The heavens, having shown us their glory, now continued to dump rain. Good night, and good wishes for tomorrow.
June 7: Once you drive into your campsite at Teklanika (which requires a three night minimum stay), you can’t move your vehicle until you leave the park. All in-park transportation is either by foot or park shuttle bus. Although we have done a fair amount of walking, the only way to really see the park and its wild inhabitants is to ride the shuttle buses. Once you pay for one day’s ticket, that entitles you to ride throughout your park stay. At 8:00 AM we were all at the bus stop, and the outbound shuttle arrived right on time. The sun was shining, the air was fresh and crisp and we began our journey west into the heart of Denali. First stop was Polychrome Pass, a high area on the tundra where the narrow road is a thin slice into the side of a mountain. Due to an assortment of minerals in the soil, the surrounding slopes are an array of burnt umber, beige, dark reds and multiple shades of green from all the different types of vegetation, all shaped in rounded triangles that followed the contours of the land. Below was a braided river, easily 1/2 mile wide, a rough gray jumble of rocks and glacial silt-laden streams of water. The deeply snow-covered mountains rose majestically above this scene, leading my eye up and up to their jagged peaks. These pissant little 14,000 foot hills were just pikers, though, because as I let my gaze continue to rise and then rise some more, The Great One, Mount Denali, emerged from the clouds like a great white whale, dwarfing everything else around it. Some say this monster of a mountain is visible only one day in ten, so this was our lucky day! The four of us disembarked and walked about two miles on the serpentine dirt road, trying to find a gyrfalcon seen yesterday. It was tough to be disappointed every time we spotted a golden eagle that wasn’t “our” bird. Then we flagged another shuttle bus to forge westward. The ride took us all the way out to the Eielson Visitor Center, about 1/2 way through the park and as far as the buses go today. From there, we watched a distant grizzly bear (brown bear), blond in color ramble across a distant ravine, while two moose ran like trotters across the wide river bed. We saw herds of caribou and quite a few Dall sheep. One of the sheep had a one-week old lamb. This was obviously Mary.
June 8: If dawn cracked here, we would have been up at it. We were catching the first shuttle bus run of the year to Wonder Lake at the extreme western edge of the park, 85 miles from the park entrance. Our hopes were high for great looks at large mammals and we were not disappointed. Herds of caribou ranged up and down the slopes and across wide river valleys. A brown bear sow and her two cubs wandered across the tundra near Polychrome Pass. Great fun to watch massive mama bear amble along, her golden fur glowing in the early morning light, while two chocolate cubs bounced along beside, around and underneath her, scampering up a snowbank to keep up. Then, FINALLY, at the Polychrome Pass overlook, a young gyrfalcon was perched on the rocks right where it was supposed to be! We continued west, seeing a red fox hunting on a hillside, patiently waiting to pounce when its prey made the wrong move. Getting smaller, a tiny pika (related to rabbits) popped out of the scree rocks at the base of a talus slope. Just to put icing on the cake, Mount Denali was mostly visible throughout the morning, and even when the day became somewhat cloudy, the mountain loomed ominously as the north and south peaks periodically appeared above the clouds, towering over the entire world, or so it seemed. The return bus ride was no less eventful, as we saw another sow bear with two cubs sleeping at the edge of a ravine and a red fox with better luck devouring an arctic ground squirrel, whose lucky days were over.
The days are sometimes strange here. At 6:00 PM, under cloudy skies, it seems near dark. Then at 9:00 PM, the sun comes back out and it feels like the middle of a summer afternoon. Temperatures rise and fall dramatically with the sun or absence thereof. I’m getting used to it, however, but don’t take away my sleeping mask!
June 9: Packed up, drove out of the park. Dumped our tanks, took on fresh water. Nice walk around the Reilly Creek Campground, but the spruce forest was very quiet. One red squirrel chomping away on cones was it. Drove 250 miles to Anchorage, stopping en route in Sarah Palin’s home town of Wasilla to do laundry and a little shopping. Night at Chez Cabela, or Casa de Cabela, depending on your linguistic preference. Gale got new rain jacket, I got a new super warm hat with a brim and a fleece jacket.
June 10: Flying to Nome today! Our check-in email warned us that serious delays in security require us to get to the airport extra early. It took us one minute to check in and two minutes to get through security, followed by sitting on our butts for two hours before departure. I shouldn’t complain - it could taken us five or more minutes at security and then what would we have done?
The plane ride was 1.25 hours, cloudy all the way and uneventful. We touched down in Nome, on the Seward Peninsula, about noon, caught a cab to the Dredge#7 Inn and checked into our charming old lodgings, a converted early 20th century home. Long-tailed jaegers were flying around above the tundra area next to our parking lot. Both species of redpolls were happily chatting in the willows. Our ride for the week is a white Jeep Wrangler Sport with four wheels, so we took it into town, about a mile away. Nome has a permanent population of 3700 who enjoy freezing, 24 hour days and 24 hour nights, plus a few mosquitos during the former period that are happy to exsanguinate an unsuspecting soul in minutes. The town’s economy was and still largely is, based on gold mining, hence the “dredge” in our Inn’s name. Dredging for gold is not s a pretty sight and most of the edges of town are completely shredded pits or piles of gravel that were dug up and discarded by huge dredges while seeking the elusive. At one time or another most of Nome has burned down, but a few 100 plus year old buildings are still standing, side by side with much newer edifices. Gold mining is still going on, as numerous small to large dredge boats work the surrounding coastal area, pumping up the sea bottom, filtering it for bits of gold and then sending the remainder back to the ocean floor, which has now been thoroughly ripped apart.
We spent the afternoon driving around the immediate Nome area, exploring for birds. Each little pond, probably a dredge leftover, held breeding ducks, including long-tailed duck, many phalaropes and pairs of red-throated loons. A pair of Pacific golden-plovers wandered around a patch of tundra next to the hospital. We decided to ascend Anvil Mountain Road, which leads to some old Cold War era DEW (Distant Early Warning) Line listening stations, relics from the Cold War. The road was rough and lined with willows. Creeping slowly up the hill, a bright white hoary redpoll popped out, a new one for Gale, Shirley and Doug. Reaching the summit, looking down upon the town of Nome and the cold Bering Sea, we realized we were being watched by a herd of thirteen muskox! Two large gents, six ladies and four youths composed the group. Further down the hill, another herd of over thirty of the short, sturdy, long haired beasts was calmly grazing on the grass and those same roadside willows. We were thrilled and amazed to see them and to see so many, as this animal was one we all hoped to encounter during our stay here.
Back to town for a not too bad pizza dinner at an Asian-owned place called Molina’s that served pizza, other Italian fare, sushi, Japanese and Korean dishes, burgers and more. On the menu, sashimi was sandwiched between nachos and cheese fries. Only in Nome.
June 11: There are three birding roads to take from Nome, each radiating out from city center about 70-80 miles. All are dirt, in fairly good condition. Today we did the first half of the Council Road, which hugs Norton Sound of the Bering Sea. It was mostly sunny, except for an occasional fog bank that crept in from the ocean. Many ponds along the way held breeding pairs of red-throated loons, red-necked phalaropes and greater scaup ducks. Massive numbers of tundra swans occupied one large lake and at one point, a huge flock flew overhead. Most of the area is open tundra, and the singing award of the day went to lapland longspur, which sounds a lot like the happy bubbly chorus of a western meadowlark. Swarms of semipalmated and western sandpipers worked their way through the short grasses, looking for bugs to fuel them on the last parts of their journeys further north to their breeding grounds.
Long-tailed jaegers were very common - at one point we saw eight of them sitting on the ground next to each other. A couple of parasitic jaegers got into it with terns, trying to steal their food. They’re not called parasitic for nothing. They should be called klepto-parasitic jaegers. We walked through the soft sand out to the mouth of the Nome River and much to our surprise, found a large gathering of both Arctic AND Aleutian terns! On the way back into town, we checked this area again and found three bar-tailed godwits. Our drive was halted at the old mining town of Solomon, which wisely ended its tenure when a storm in 1913 destroyed the only bridge connecting it to Nome. A few buildings remain, but most interesting were the small old “Forny” railroad locomotives that the town bought from New York City and Chicago to carry the ore out to Nome for shipment. When the bridge went down, the engines had no further use and were left to rust where they stand today. Overall, an excellent first day in this extreme northern outpost of America.
June 12: Outstanding day! Getting it started, however, was not that much fun. Arising at 4:00 AM, our aim was to get an early start driving 72 miles out the narrow, winding dirt Kougarok Road. Why, you ask, would anyone in their right mind want to do this? Especially, as it turned out, 30 of those miles were through fog so dense I could barely see the road. Because at Mile 72, you get to park your vehicle and walk over a 1/2 mile straight uphill over spongy tundra that others have described as trying to walk on bowling balls. At the crest of this ridge lives one of the rarest birds in North America - the bristle-thighed curlew. This species primarily breeds in Siberia and winters on South Pacific islands. But a few of these long distance migrants cross the Bering Strait and breed on the hills of the Seward Peninsula. Hence, our attempt to find one at this regular nesting area.
We struggled up and across the tundra, with the temperature in the high 30s and a light wind blowing. We had emerged from the fog that swirled below us and bright blue sky was our new companion. This curlew has a very unusual call/song, especially for a large member of the sandpiper family. It’s a whistled tremulous yodel, interspersed with wolf whistles and sharp chatter between mates. As we climbed higher and higher, I caught a wisp of the song floating toward me on the wind. Now encouraged, we went faster up the slope until - there one was, about 100 yards away, walking on the tundra, pecking for bugs. We watched carefully and then saw another of these wonderful creatures, also walking up and down over the tundra tussocks. Then three more sailed overhead and they all started calling to each other, proclaiming territory or just catching up after a long winter on Tahiti. I wandered over to where the first bird was foraging for food and stood still, letting the birds come to me. And they did. One came within fifteen feet of me, stood tall on a tussock and then settled down into a small depression in the grass, shaking its body as it did so. I gasped and held my breath! Could it be that this bird had just exposed its brood patch and had settled on its nest? The curlew stood up again and walked away. I carefully approached the barely noticeable spot where the curlew had been sitting and was astonished to find four large camouflage colored eggs! I felt privileged and awed that I must be one of the few people who had ever seen a bristle-thighed curlew nest in North America. This simply couldn’t have been a better experience. Back down the hill and out.
We began our long drive back to Nome. An eastern yellow wagtail flew across the road and perched in a scrubby dwarf willow, long enough for everyone to get a good look at it. Further on, at the rocky crest of a hill, the metallic trill of an arctic warbler (an old world fly-catching thrush) rang out and we tracked that down. On
the other side of the road, the rock-strewn ground was pocked with circular frost heaves, covered in a multitude of purple, pink, yellow and white flowers, none more than an inch or two above the ground and stands of cotton grass, their white tufts billowing in the breeze. Doug and I wandered over this fascinating terrain, watching an American golden-plover doing a fake broken-wing performance to lead us away from its nest. From a few hundred yards away, Doug called over to me that he had found a northern wheatear, another of these species, like the arctic warbler and yellow wagtail, that cross the Bering Sea from Siberia to breed here. If the curlew was a home run, these three species were all triples. We stopped for lunch at Salmon lake Campground, seeing a short-eared owl perched on a shrub on the way in. At one of the last places we stopped on the return trip, a magnificent golden eagle swooped out from a high cliff and circled above us. Clearly, this was its terrain and we were the trespassers.
Back in town, the freezing wind was howling off the ocean, so all we could do was go to the Husky Cafe’ and eat sushi.
June 13: It was very windy and cold today. We decided to check the Nome River mouth and harbor areas before heading to the hinterlands and did so without any success. Unless you count as success not getting blown into the Bering Sea. We then drove northwest on the Teller Road, a 72 mile dirt road that connects Nome to the native town of Teller, located on the western edge of the Seward Peninsula. We made several stops along the way, marveling at the amazing number of long-tailed jaegers we were seeing - somewhere around thirty, either in graceful, buoyant flight, hovering as it hunted, perched on the tundra or just sitting on the road in a quite pedestrian posture. Even more interesting, we saw a half dozen short-eared owls, mostly hunting the tundra with their slow, floppy wingbeats and one sitting on a post placed to aid snow machine travel in the winter months (most of the year). Then, as we slightly gained elevation, we once more entered the fog machine for at least twenty miles, or an eternity, whichever comes first. The fog was so thick I did cut it with a knife and made a fog and jelly sandwich. Just kidding - I used peanut butter. We finally began to drop down to sea level and I reached the very small and poor town of Teller, beautifully situated between Grantley Harbor and Port Clarence, two large bodies of sea water that are naturally protected from the Bering Sea by long spits of land that almost touch, forming perfect harbors. There are no services in Teller, but we managed to use the facilities at the tiny laundromat, which was part of the Town Office building. After driving about 100 yards to the edge of the water where we could park the car and eat lunch, I decided I just couldn’t sit in the car any longer, so i grabbed my sandwich and wandered over to the rocky beach at the foot of a long sand spit that extended a mile into the harbor. I took one bite, looked up and saw a small white bird with a black face and a long tail and almost choked. It was a white wagtail, a very Asian bird extremely rare to these shores. To even my amazement, I sprinted (really) back to the car, probably faster than I had run in 25 years, grabbed open the door to our jeep and as I threw my sandwich onto the seat, shouted, “White wagtail. Get out now!” Similarly disposing of the sandwiches, some on the floor, everyone jumped out and followed me. Our little friend was still right where I had left him moments before and we all enjoyed what was a life bird for everyone. I was so excited I did a little celebratory dance! We walked further down the spit, watching a variety of ducks, cormorants and gulls, when a flight of eleven pomarine jaegers flew just overhead, probably going north to their breeding grounds. Doug was now so excited he almost fell over. A few minutes later, another group of these mostly sea going birds passed over us, showing their much heavier bodies and twisted black tail feathers that resemble spoons, showing what we birders like to call “full spoonage”.
For the long drive back to Nome, much of the fog had lifted about 100 feet higher, allowing enough visibility to actually see the road, oncoming vehicles, etc. We made one stop along a river, trying to find an exquisite little bird aptly called a bluethroat. We failed in this quest, but did encounter a rather beat up rough-legged hawk, which, having lost some of its wing and tail feathers, looked more like a tattered feather duster than a living bird of prey. Its huge nest of sticks was crammed onto a ledge of a nearby cliff face. This bird must not have been too adept at home building, since just below the nest, on the ground, a much larger pile of sticks sat there, apparently having fallen from their intended location. We gave the bluethroat one last try near a willow thicket next to the Feather River. Some unpleasant scratchy sounds began emanating from the thicket and Gale called out, “northern shrike”! A pair was scolding from the tops of these scruffy tree/bushes. I waded (almost literally, since it had been raining) into the thicket, wary that a moose, whose calling cards were everywhere beneath my feet, or a brown bear was waiting to either respectively, stomp me to death or have me for lunch. Lucky me, it was only the shrikes who were there and they let me take some fine images. Shrikes are fascinating creatures, sometimes called “butcher birds”. They are songbirds, but are rather carnivorous in their eating habits, preferring small birds and rodents to insects or berries. Their beak is composed of a maxilla that is sharply pointed and curved, suitable for tearing flesh, and also has two prongs just before the tip, where the very sharp mandible fits in neatly as it severs the spine of this bird’s favorite prey items.
Once back in Nome, believe it or not, we went to a Vietnamese/Japanese/Chinese restaurant for dinner and had delicious Pho, Yakisoba and egg foo yung.
