Denali National Park!

Today was awesome!!!

We left Trapper Creek this morning and drove to Denali National Park! It was too cloudy to see Mt. McKinley, but it was sunny to start out (a rarity up here) so I went for a hike! Margaret was not feeling up to a hike so I went out alone and chose a "moderately strenuous" trail through a spruce and birch forest along the ridge of a mountain! I was probably not in shape enough for a 400ft elevation change with 15% grades, but was beautiful and a ton of fun!! And hiking through the spruce trees, I was able to find a SPRUCE GROUSE!! Another life bird for me! It didn't take long while I was hiking for the blue skies to turn to poofy grey clouds that quickly began pouring rain. I got soaked, but it was a lot of fun anyway, and the rain even helped keep the mosquitoes away! Below are some photos from my hike!

After we left Denali, we drove though Healy and saw THE Fairbanks 142 bus that was used in the Into the Wild movie! An exact replica of the one that Chris McCandless actually stayed (and died) in. If you don't know what I am talking about, go read Into the Wild, and then watch the movie! It is an excellent book, and I don't even like reading. A little farther down the road, we actually passed Stampede Trail!!! The road that he hiked into Denali on and where he stayed in the bus for the summer. When I first found out I would be coming to Alaska, I hoped I would be able to see some of the places Chris McCandless was, like Denali and Fairbanks, but I NEVER imagined seeing the bus from the movie or seeing the actual Stampede Trail! I wish I could have hiked down that way a little bit but it was raining, and getting late anyway.

On the way to Fairbanks we saw a moose with a calf and then as I looked out on a little pond at some ducks, I saw ANOTHER moose getting a drink of water! Tonight and tomorrow night we are staying in Fairbanks. Tomorrow afternoon we will head out with some researchers who study breeding Boreal Owls. We will even get to watch them band some chicks out of a nest box!! I can't wait!

330 Year Birds for 2013!

Here are some trip numbers:

I have been gone for 23 days
I have seen 225 species of birds since I left Mansfield, Ohio on June 12th
72 species have been Life Birds!
84 have been new 2013 year birds
I have added birds in 8 states
and 2 Canadian provinces.

These have contributed to me seeing 330 species so far in 2013 and 362 life birds!

Today we left Homer and birded at a few locations between Homer and Soldotna, where we are staying tonight. We didn't see anything new or especially exciting,bird wise, but we did see another Harbor Seal and another Moose! I got out of the car to walk down a trail to try to see the moose better but it had vanished. I did see some evidence of a moose being around though!

My size 7.5 shoe with a fresh moose footprint!

We drove through Anchor Point, Alaska today, which is the most western city in the US that can be accessed from a highway! We also went to the most expensive grocery store I have been in yet, in Soldotna. I spent $29.08 on apples, bananas, a loaf of bread, and a Halibut filet. I cut the filet in strips and breaded and fried it tonight for dinner! It was caught in Homer, so I'm assuming it was fairly fresh and it was DELICIOUS!! It was the best fish I have had yet!

The view from the campground in Homer where we stayed last night!

HAPPY 4th!!!

I haven’t had reliable internet recently so that’s why you haven’t seen any posts from me. It has been an eventful few days though!!

Two days ago we mostly drove and didn’t do any real birding. Even still, I saw some Common Redpolls while I hopped out to take some pictures at a rest stop!! They are one of my favorite winter birds and I saw my lifer Common Redpoll on my birthday this year, I saw them again in the Upper Peninsula and finally had one on my feeder in March!!

Yesterday we drove through Anchorage to Homer, Alaska. Alaska is SO beautiful!! (Not that I doubted it would be!) We stopped outside of Anchorage to bird at Potter Marsh after we passed a MOOSE on the highway munching on leaves!! Potter Marsh was beautiful and I saw some nice birds! Probably the best were the pair of Artic Terns with their fledgling!! I watched (and took photos) as one of the parents continually caught small fish for the baby. The baby begged but the adult must have been trying to get the fledgling to eat on its own because instead of feeding the baby, it just dropped the fish in front of the baby! The baby continued begging and the adult continued dropping fish on the rock next to the baby! I also saw some fuzzy baby Mew Gulls!

Notice all the fish on the rock left by this fledgling Arctic Tern's parents!

Last night we stayed at a campground right on the Homer spit. I wandered along the spit and looked at lots of amazing artwork being sold by local artists. After I was bored with shops and people, I walked along the beach back towards the campground. I was talking to my mom on the phone and I nearly dropped the phone while grabbing my binoculars when five birds flew above my head… Brant geese!!! I knew what they were before I got my binoculars but they were life birds for me so I wanted a good look!! I got a great look and I was excited because these are geese that I had been searching for last fall in Ohio!!

This morning we went out on a boat to look for sea birds and other marine animals! It was a TON of fun and I saw several new life birds and mammals! I even saw a sea star, which hopefully one of my marine biology friends will be able to identify for me! My favorite animals of the trip were Tufted Puffins and a Harbor Seal!! So awesome! I also saw sea otters, pigeon gillemots, common murres, black-legged kittiwakes, pelagic cormorants, bald eagles, black turnstones, glaucous-winged gulls, a few herring gulls and a common raven! I even got to see one of the young bald eagles get a pigeon gillemot!

Common Murres on Gull Island 

An immature Bald Eagle right before its Pigeon Gillemot dinner!

Sea Otters hanging around Gull Island in Homer, Alaska

After the boat trip, we went birding at Wynn Nature Reserve. It was a beautiful park with a pretty nice trail system! Although, at one point we accidentally started following the trail maintained by the moose instead of the trail maintained by the park and ended up turning around when we reached a bog! I didn't see any moose, but I did see plenty of moose turds and I picked up some moose fur! Moose fur is hollow to keep them warm. I never knew that! (Or if I did, I forgot!)

Some type of Lupin in Alaska

Another lovely glacier view, this one is from Wynn Nature Reserve in Homer, Alaska

How do you catch a unique bird?

Unique up on it!!

Okay, so that joke isn't that funny... but we did discover quite a few unique birds this morning in North Dakota and then hit the road and found more interesting birds in Montana! Some of our best sightings in ND this morning, however, were NOT birds!! I spotted a moose at Lostwood National Wildlife Refuge and we saw Richardson's Ground Squirrels and Thirteen-lined Ground Squirrels! The moose was quite incredible and Lostwood also produced three more life birds for me: Willet, Baird's Sparrow, and Piping Plover.

 

Within two hours of crossing the border into Montana, I already had FOUR life birds!!! Chestnut-collared Longspurs and Lark Buntings were displaying in a field along the driveway of Medicine Lake National Wildlife Refuge. California Gulls breed there and I saw well over 100 of them along with American White Pelicans and plenty of Western Grebes! My fourth life bird was along US Route 2 and we turned around to see it! I never realized Black-billed Magpies were so big and had such a long tail! I didn't get a great look before/while it flew, but I was still amazed!!

As we were driving through Montana, I noticed that Cookie was lying in Chip's spot (Cookie and Chip are Margaret's dogs that are along on the trip!) I looked back to see where Chip was and it seemed that he was gone! We searched around and no Chip anywhere... I finally looked under the table that was folded down and there he was! It was pretty funny!!

In all it was a pretty great day!! I left North Dakota with 102 species of birds and a nice list of mammals as well! Margaret is up to 417 species for the year, and although I am not actively keeping a year list, my life list is continually growing with 29 new birds added since the start of the trip!!