Unexpected Highlights

[Above: Sockeye Salmon stacked like cordwood in Bear Creek, near Seward, AK. Below: Making the leap. Sockeyes swim up rivers to spawn in the shallows of lakes, the only salmon to do this. Sockeye, by the way, is the best eating of the 5 Pacific Salmon. They're also known as "Reds" for the color they achieve once they reach their spawning grounds. It's worth asking what kind of salmon you're getting at the market or restaurant; if you find wild-caught Sockeye, it's worth whatever they're charging.]

A worker at the Bear Lake Weir became about the fifth person to ask me about our targets on the tour Mark Garland and I are leading.

I should have said, "Not sure, but I'll know them when I see them."

[Barrow's Goldeneyes on Bear Lake outside of Seward, AK.]

That the birding gets interesting AFTER you've identified the bird (or fish) could not have been more true than it was yesterday, as we watched Sockeye Salmon leaping while above them a pair of American Dippers fed their recently fledged young, and Varied Thrushes fluted in the spruces.

[Boreal Chickadee near Bear Lake. We'll be heavy into Boreal country the next few days - luckily, we also found a group of Chestnut-backed Chickadees yesterday, luckily because we'll be leaving their coastal forest habitat behind.]

[This American Dipper somewhat unusually foraged in salt water, pursuing small fish in the dipper plunging-and-swimming way right below us. Its nest was hidden behind the waterfall of a glacial stream cascading into Resurrection Bay, and it foraged in the same waters a pair of Wandering Tattlers used.]

The clear highlight of highlights today came by staying interested in birds you've already seen. Splashes of whitewash on a cliff wall led my scan upward to a Common Raven nest, with apparently one timid youngster remaining. We've been swimming in ravens this trip, yet they're always worth watching.

The young bird's two siblings had fledged and stumbled about on the scree below, sending occasional small avalanches our way, their funny falsetto croaking peaking whenever Mom or Dad returned with food. The poor little guy still on the nest never did get fed while we watched, though Mom and Dad made a point of flying past on each feeding trip, encouraging their youngest child to fly.

[Dad Common Raven feeds a crab claw to the older kids, while Junior squawks up in the cliff nest like a hungry teen whose voice hasn't changed yet.]

[Oh, how we suffer!]

Ruminations on a Boat in Resurrection Bay

 [Humpback.]

"I'd like to live in a cabin like that overlooking Kachemak Bay." That was Mark's friend Liz, many years ago, during her first visit to Alaska.

"You can," said a friend, or so Liz told me over dinner. Liz now lives in her cabin.

An amazing series of events led her there, but I told Liz the most unusual thing was that she had an epiphany of sorts in the first place, realizing where she wanted to be and how she wanted to live.

 [The massive Harding Ice Field calves into several fjords running down to the Gulf of Alaska. This is part of it, the Aialik Glacier. Blue means dense ice.]

Our boat captain, Curran, 30ish, has a degree in criminal justice, and was working on his master's but burned out, came to Alaska, and began working on boats, without much experience. Now he captains, works 5 months a year, and travels 7. He spent two widely spaced winters living "in the bush," alone in an isolated cabin on the Alaska peninsula, getting his head on straight and learning who he was.

I asked Curran if he would go back and finish his masters. He said he dropped out 3 times, and that his current lifestyle was pretty good for him for now.

 [Us and a piece of the glacier.]

When I explained to Curran that I used to work for New Jersey Audubon (which is how I came to leading this trip) but landed a job with the USFWS, he said, "You mean, like a permanent job? So, like, you're set?" Looing at me with icy blue eyes, sunglasses pushed up on wavy hair, a trace of envy on a face, he had told me, that recently wore a heavy Alaskan beard.

[The lifer odometer rolls on. Golden-spangled Kittlitz's Murrelets among the ice in Aialak Fjord.]

What does that mean, to be "set?" For a long time, I lived looking forward to when I would "get there." Soon as I did this, finished this, had that, I'd be there. Wherever there is. Now I'm here. I hope tomorow I'll be here again, and that I stay here when I'm back in Cape May. And I don't mean here in Alaska.

[I learned a little bit more about Red-faced Cormorants: lifetime observation time now over 10 minutes.]

[Puffins, puffins everywhere. This Horned Puffin has just left his burrow, a bit of grass caught in his feet.]

[Long fin of a male Orca, part of a resident pod. Resident orcas are highly social, living in family groups called pods, and eat mostly fish, finding them using echolocation. Transient orcas travel in small numbers and  silently hunt marine mammals. Which are you, reader? Writer?]

["Rhinos" - Rhinocerus Auklets.]

 [I think this whale is "set."]

On the Relative Importance of Two and One Half Lifers

Yeah, so two of the birds pictured below are new to me, Red-faced Cormorant and Aleutian Tern. My entire lifetime's observations of Red-faced Cormorants now total not more than 5 minutes, possibly less than two minutes, because we were on a moving boat next to a rocky island. Yes, we got good, identifiable looks - emphasis on the identifiable, I guess, since that would be, or should be, the standard for "counting" a bird - and I'm glad to have seen them, but the impact is small. Cool birds, neat face pattern, nice photo, the last digit on the life list number rolls over like a car's odometer, unseen since I only know the odometer reading on my North American vehicle starts with a 6 - -, no idea what the second two digits are and I don't really care.

I should say I don't really care any more, because since I know I broke 600 North American I must have cared once, right?  That was a long time ago.

I do care that I may not see a Red-faced Cormorant again for a long time, and barely had the chance to make its aquaintance. Except wait, in a half hour we'll embark on another boat trip out of Seward through Resurrection Bay into the Gulf of Alaska, and hopefull will find more.

The Aleutian Terns were more fun, since we were on our feet in some great habitat, Lincoln's Sparrows singing in the background, Wilson's Snipe winnowing overhead, and I heard their chi-deeps, knew it was a tern-ish bird, knew the sound was new to me, and there they were, graceful, heavier than Arctic Terns, flying past close by. Adding to the fun was my later reading on the species in BNA Online, which says, and I quote, ". . .no confirmed winter records anywhere." We really don't know everything about birds.

And on the half-lifer. . . while leading a tour in coastal California, somebody called Horned Puffin on a pelagic out of Monterey, I glanced over from getting someone on their life Black-footed Albatross to see what would be a life puffin for me disappearing behind the boat. 10 years or so later, that matter has been laid to rest.

Now, you should see all the eagles around here! And the Moose!  And the zillion murres and the dippers feeding young along the stream where the sockeye salmon are running, and while you're at it listen to the Varied Thrushes, or maybe it's flutes of Alaskan forest gnomes playing outside our lodge. . .

Wordless Wednesday in Homer, Alaska

Peace Out