birds

[Tad Eareckson]

2018/06/12 Greg and Xavier procure rental vehicles and at a latish/civilized point in the morning we disembark from the Copper Whale. And the owner, Carol, wants to get a group shot with her iPhone for the Copper Whale Facebook site.

http://www.facebook.com/pg/CopperWhaleInn/

Copper Whale Inn Bed & Breakfast - 2018/06/12
Anchorage, Alaska

This Amazing group on a Naturalist Journeys Birding Tour have traveled from Nome to Anchorage to Denali and on to Seward!! They’re gonna have their minds blown by the Bird Rookeries in Resurrection Bay!!

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I'm the light green Death Valley National Park baseball cap with the Peregrine on the front - and absolutely nothing more.

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Anyway... Next stop - Potter Marsh, the southern end of the state's Anchorage Coastal Wildlife Refuge.

Anchorage side of Turnagain Arm between what the humans have built up and the westernmost extent of the Chugach Mountains.

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61°04'40.44" N 149°49'35.62" W

Where the Turnagain Arm starts majorly narrowing.

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It's a beautiful marsh with beautiful surroundings and over a thousand yards of Class A boardwalk and viewing platforms.

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32 - 61°04'36.41" N 149°49'33.80" W - 01510 feet
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33 - 61°04'37.66" N 149°49'30.46" W - 01140 feet
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Great excuse for scope time. Sky's clear but wind's rather stiff.

Greg points out areas in the north/entrance/boardwalk end in which the marsh is being taken over by alder. When it doesn't get managed/removed it's bye-bye marsh habitat.

Pair of Sandhill Cranes way the hell out for fun scope target practice and sharing.

Down the Seward Highway there are a couple pull-off areas for viewing the marsh. A lot more open water and visible and undoubtedly present birds - including ones tending nests. Mew Gulls, Arctic Terns, Red-Necked Phalaropes, Long-Billed Dowitcher, Wilson's Snipe...

Backtrack into Anchorage about five miles for a group lunch at the Firetap Alehouse, then on to Seward. Big picture:

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The route is almost indescribably spectacular and beautiful. Virtually unlimited lush green isn't an unpleasant change following lotsa early season Seward Peninsula and far side of the Alaska Range.

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Pick up a herd of Sheep grazing up on the steep slope on the left in fairly short order and the endless mud flats on the Turnagain to the right are intriguing and good for Eagles every now and then.

Clear all the rivers, creeks feeding into the head, drive two and two thirds miles downstream on the other side, cross Ingram Creek...

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...and turn SW into the Kenai Peninsula interior. Relevant stretch of the Seward Highway in red, Alaska Railroad where not parallel with the Highway in yellow.

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Five Stretches, starting from the Turnagain Arm end, running:
- 1 - SouthWest
- 2 - NorthWest
- 3 - SouthSouthWest
- 4 - EastSouthEast
- 5 - South

The high point of the Highway is about 1370 feet at Summit Lake near the middle of Stretch 3.
I'm so blown away by the beauty of this ride that I can't believe it I've never really heard of it before in this kind of context.

We get to Seward, check into the Best Western, and walk a couple hundred yards to the Alaska SeaLife Center at the end of the Seward Highway - which has been Third Avenue for very close to all of its final mile. It's a super first rate zoo / aquarium / rehab / display / museum / educational facility.

I start at the top with the birds - puffins and other alcids, sea ducks, kittiwakes... Fake cliff habitat above, surface at eye level, underwater viewing below. I could stay there all day watching and talking with the staffers. Down below there's a viewing tank with a scary looking bull Steller's Sea Lion making passes. I guess eighteen hundred pounds before finding the sign that says seventeen.

Back to the motel for a wee bit of settling in and reorganizing time before we mobilize for our group dinner at Ray's Waterfront. There's an Audubon bird group going out on one of the Kenai Fjords tour boats the next day - like we'll be - getting a briefing in a commons room. I eavesdrop and note that there's an older guy in the back who sounds like he's really got his shit together on these things. After they break up I ask him if it would be totally moronic to bring a scope along. "Yes." Yeah, I was afraid so. This was definitely gonna be a job for the stabilized glasses.

Several of us head up on foot, most do the van that Greg's driving, I ride shotgun. I'm looking to the side and notice a crow. We've had no shortage of Ravens and Magpies everywhere we've been but this is the first crow. I mention it.
Greg: "A crow? Not a Magpie?
"No. A crow. Fer sure. Just hanging out on four feet up on a branch ten feet off the side of the road."
He backs up. "Wow! New species! Northwestern Crow. Good eye, Tad!"
(Thanks, but not really. We weren't far from driving over him.)

He's a city park bird, not the least bit concerned with us, wide open clear view, beautiful light, got three buddies with him, an addition to the species list. We take him in, it's kinda cool, but he looks just like the Common Crow everyone and his dog sees by the hundreds every day of the week and year in the Lower 48. And there's an argument that this is just a subspecies of the Common anyway.

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We park and disembark near Ray's with some time to explore the harbor area before dinner. There's a pier at which the victims of the day's halibut boat expeditions are weighed in. Easy to find, follow your nose. Not really an unpleasant smell but no one isn't really concerned about being in the right ballpark. We've been advised that we're gonna score Sea Otters so I allow myself a little hope for getting my first ever in the wild.

But just beyond the weighing station and a few yards out from the near edge of this fishing/tourism industrial harbor with zillions of people all around there's half a dozen Otters floating on their backs and chilling out. This is NOT how I was expecting to see them. Really wasn't expecting to see any at all.

And there's this Border Collie going absolutely nuts. He thinks he's got stuff from Mars, has no idea what they are or what he's supposed to do with them. I'm pretty sure he's dying to round them up and herd them into a paddock. Finally parks himself down prone on the edge of the nearest dock and focuses like nothing you've ever seen before. I was pretty sure his owner was gonna need to hit him with a tranquilizer dart to get him back in the car and back home.

I knew some of this before but one of the SeaLife Center people had just brought me up to much better speed before with a pelt as a teaching aid. Sea Otters have zilch in the way of fat/blubber to serve as insulation and are totally dependent upon an extremely dense and heavy fur covering to keep them alive in these environments. And they spend a lot of time on the surface cleaning and grooming. The rear feet - which are essentially flippers - are bare skin and a substantial problem with respect to heat loss and you'll notice that they're held out of the water when these guys are basking on their backs.

Dinner with a beautiful view. Eagles and Ravens all over the place. I'd hoped to have had Mountain Goats well before this point in the trip and scanned the available slopes. Worked on a pair of candidates for a good while before having to write them off as rocks.

[Tad Eareckson]

Morning of 2018/06/13. Load gear, shuttle to the harbor for Kenai Fjords Tours excursion out to the Northwestern Glacier and back. I measure about 76 miles one way. And that's, of course, minus all the weaving around were gonna be doing near constantly to see stuff.

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It's a nice day and just eight days shy of the solstice but I'm wearing damn near everything I've brought on the trip - maybe six layers for my top half. If the wind's blowing ten and the boat's heading into it at twenty you've got some significant wind chill. Did OK but kept all the layers on at least a lot of the time.

Captain/Guide was Mike Boyce and I was pretty happy with the way he handled things and found and clued us into target items. Big boat but only draws six feet - makes things a bit less scary when maneuvering close around sharp rocky stuff. Huge flat screen display behind the bridge so's we can see and try to understand all the GPS nav stuff.

Started seeing Otters almost immediately and Dall's Porpoises interacting with us a measure afterwards. Great views in clear water.

Humpbacks had been reported in the Bay and we got in with them in no time. This was a first - a real biggie for me - and if we'd turned around at that point I'd have still counted it a pretty good day. We were seeing singles and doubles maneuvering to herd fish schools then charging and effecting the baleen whale thing. They'd blast forward such that maybe the first third of them would erupt from the water at about thirty degree angles with mouths open and closing or about to. And the gulls were pretty good at tuning us into where things were about to happen next but even they would blow the calls occasionally.

I think any one of us would've been happy sticking around and watching these actions all freakin' day but Cap'n Mike would apologetically tear us away and move us on for our own good.

Several areas of Humpback action then Killer Whales. They're not unexpected but I can die reasonably happy now. The crew's pretty familiar with a few local pods and can recognize individuals by their dorsal fins and know some family relationships and histories. They're mammals, they gotta breathe, we got a lot of great views. And they're breaking the surface enough for us to be able to get great unfiltered views of their striking patterns.

Farther on we saw a couple substantial icebergs stranded by the tide near the glacier from which they were calved.

Get into rocky cliff areas of the Peninsula and some islands with seabird nesting colonies. Same stuff we were seeing at the SeaLife Center but through the glasses and listable.

There was a Black Oystercatcher on some little hundred foot diameter rock real close to something bigger on the way out. I've had them before but everybody - Yours Truly included - loves oystercatchers. And I thought it was pretty amusing to watch this huge tour boat with scores of paying passengers on board circled around this little bird and his rock several revolutions. He maybe got more and better attention than the Humpbacks.

Into Northwestern Fjord (or Lagoon, but Fjord is a helluva lot more appropriate - and for some reason it's dubbed Harris Bay at its entrance). As we approach I think I'm seeing seals hauled out on a lot of the zillions of ice floes jammed up to our port. I am, but nobody's calling attention to them.

A crab net goes over the side and comes back with a beautiful clear chunk of ice that may have been formed five hundred years ago.

We bump our way through to a close but safe distance from the glacier, idle in position, watch and listen. A glacier moves at a glacial speed to its terminus. But it's ALWAYS moving and there's ALWAYS something happening when its terminus is a five hundred foot cliff towering over a fjord. There's nonstop rumbling, groaning, cracking and one never has to wait long for showers of lethal sized chunks to plummet into the water below. All this is more than a bit depressing though 'cause we know that the glacier is calving over six miles farther upstream than it was a century back.

Early this year I found myself seated at a performance at the Naval Academy next to an individual in whom I thought I detected a glimmer of intelligence and we engaged in a conversation that got into history, the Civil War, slavery. He identified himself as a Quaker and exuded some cheery notes over the large scale abolition of slavery and that the world was warming and that made for longer growing seasons and that too was a good thing. I was caught too off guard and was too stunned to respond as I should have - by telling him to go fuck himself - and engaged further by pointing out that the Civil War didn't actually do all that much to effectively abolish slavery and that the Great Barrier Reef was rapidly being converted to a massive heap of bleached concrete. To the latter point he responded that he disagreed. Oh, I stand corrected then. Everything's fine. Go fuck yourself, asshole. Ditto for the horse you rode in on.

And P.S. Thank you for making me better tuned into and prepared to deal with total dickheads such as yourself.

Meanwhile, back at the glacier, we turned and began the long return to port.

The Harbor Seals on the ice floes get addressed. There are scores of them and those floes are important habitat resources for them.

On the east side in the vicinity, I believe, of the Redstone Glacier somebody spots several Mountain Goats way up the slope and they turn into a moderate sized herd. I'm happy to be able to cross them off from my to-do list.

We get wired for the threatened Kittlitz's Murrelet - which for some reason is adapted to / dependent upon the marine habitat at the bases of tidewater glaciers. Farther back down the Fjord at Cataract Cove (59°42'48" N 149°49'20" W) we get a pair of suspect birds. They'll appear briefly at the surface for a breath or two then go under for freakin' ever.

There's somebody nearby on the port side who keeps spotting them and trying to describe position but I'm really frustrated 'cause about all I can ever find is empty water with an occasional maybe 0.3 second glimpse before another disappearance and ages before I'd have been able to hit them with the glasses. Greg eventually gets a good enough shot off with the telephoto to confirm identity.

We approach a Steller's Sea Lion rookery somewhere in the Harris Bay area. Some of the huge animals have really easily readable black alphanumeric codes on their sides and I notice some gulls and Ravens hanging out around a large stain of blood descending from a cluster. I talk to a guide/crewperson. Pups were branded - just like cattle - for the purposes of a long term study and, yes, somebody DID just give birth to a new one.

There's a radio report from another tour boat of BIG numbers of Killer Whales in the Gulf in the neighborhood of our return path and everyone goes into red alert mode. And guess who was first to nail them and get a lot of the taste of the recent Murrelet defeat out of his mouth.

"Got 'em! Eleven o'clock!" About five seconds later the same thing comes over the PA from the bridge. You heard it here first, folks.

This was a superpod of pelagic mammal hunting animals. The local guys we'd seen on the way out were coastal fish eaters. I got the impression that none of the crew had ever seen anything this spectacular before.

We closed on them in pretty short order and for quite some time there were towering dorsal fins all around us everywhere we looked. Pretty sure that the locals were joining up as well.

At one of the day's two encounters - I think this one - Cap'n Mike lowered a microphone into the drink and put it over the PA so's we could hear them talking. Yeah, unmistakable - just like on television.

One Orca came towards our port side like a very well targeted torpedo and someone called that he was gonna go under us. I was on the starboard and waited for him to emerge. He was rolled on his left side - maybe so he could get a better look, maybe to display his white patterns to us, maybe both. The water was crystal clear green and the effect was amazing.

Everybody wanted to stay with this forever but reality once again started rearing its ugly head and we reluctantly started easing away and getting back on course for port.

I think we took a fairly direct, open water route back north then entered the Bay and amused ourselves with landscape, Otters, Eagles. Disembarked, shuttled back to the Best Western, dinner at individuals' discretions but a fair clump of us just walked across the street to The Cookery.

[Tad Eareckson]

2018/06/14 is our last group tour day. Not even a day - we'll disintegrate substantially after lunch and totally after the shuttles runs to the airport right afterwards.

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Breakfast at the hotel. I prioritize organizing, packing, prepping for the day and then go down a bit on the late side to chow down sufficiently.

Got a little table out by the window for Yours Truly, food, laptop. Terry comes over with tray and asks if it's OK if she sits with me. "I dunno, lemme think about this for a bit... .... ... Sure, why not." : )

She wants to personally thank me for what she sees as my major contributions to the trip and group - including, big surprise, managing and sharing the scope at every opportunity. Very nice to hear, greatly appreciated.

We load up and roll about three and a half miles north, turn east off the Seward Highway onto Nash Road to cross the tracks, immediately turn right onto Salmon Creek Road, cross Salmon Creek in a quarter mile, immediately turn extra hard right onto Balmat "Street". And the first little cottage house is "Ava's Place". I've done my homework pretty well, read about Ava's Place as a destination, but have little freakin' clue what it actually is. I'm thinking a little commercial B&B, sandwich shop, combination of the above with lotsa feeders catering to bird junkies.

It's just a little home crammed with feeders of all sorts and beautiful flower gardens. It's lousy with backyard type birds and the only people around are us.

It's a freakin' gold mine for lotsa stuff I'd have expected to have previously had tons of but haven't seen because just about all of our time has been spent in rather extreme and/or special habitats.

I get Hairy and Downy Woodpecker, Varied Thrush, Black-Capped Chickadee, Red-Breasted Nuthatch, Fox and Song Sparrow, Red Crossbill, Pine Siskin... not to mention our only Kingfisher (a fly-over) of the whole freakin' tour. And there are a few other goodies that have been scored by others but that I've missed. And there's also a Rufus Hummer working the sugar water.

An Alaskan hummingbird was a biggie on my list. I'd hoped to land one and had come armed with a little hand feeder but, with three hanging feeders from which one irregularly appearing bird had to choose plus other constraints and priorities this obviously wasn't gonna be doable.

News flash... I'd first put up a hummer feeder here at home on Thursday, I think, but for maybe the first three days I wasn't seeing anything and the level wasn't going down. This item in the narrative prompted me to do another check and I just found it sucked virtually dry. Just made a fresh batch available.

Eventually Ava emerged and it was lotsa fun talking with her and getting toured around her garden. So she's just an individual who enjoys opening up her little queendom and sharing with kindred spirits. Pretty cool. Obviously had her shit together and I learned something about the local interactions with bears - both Black and Brown - some of them less than pleasant.

Back onto the Highway for another 3.4 miles to a left onto Bear Lake Road which winds around a little ways to get you to the Bear Creek Weir. The spawning mode salmon swim up from Resurrection Bay into Salmon Creek (which merges into the Resurrection River at the head of the Bay) and hang a left into Bear Creek - which drains from Bear Lake a bit under another half mile up.

At the Bear Creek Weir they gotta make the jump at a one-step ladder then continue on a few more yards to get counted. Eagles also seem to enjoy counting them around that general area. Greg asks me what I had back there. (I'd been looking up into the trees a bit back downstream.)
"Eagles. An adult and a three-year-old. Not very concerned about my proximity - kinda like city pigeons."
"Yep."

Watch the salmon negotiating and attempting to negotiate the ladder. I notice some aren't making it after a couple tries and worry that they're gonna exit the gene pool due to this failure but the staffers tell me, "Nah, they all make it in fairly short order."

Pick up another Dipper, roll north. Don't recall anything notable en route beyond the scenery of the Kenai Peninsula, Turnagain Arm, Potter Marsh. Probably picked up a few more Eagles on the Arm. Think we blew by the Marsh and descended again upon the Firetap for lunch and final existence as a physical group.

Good-byes are said, Xavier runs three of us to ANC - Bill for a flight out, HM and Yours Truly for a rental car for four more Anchorage days measuring from the middle of this one.

Xavier as a guide...

Short and powerfully built. Back home in Ecuador he's also a horse person and was possessed of a lot of horse sense.

My legs got swollen before the official tour had begun, kept getting worse, never had a real chance to start recovering. And with the scope equipment I was often dealing with a lot of weight. And I was pretty stressed out and worn down for the whole duration of the tour - not to mention well both before and after it. And I try hard to fake looking OK when I'm not but I'm really easily spottable anyway.

Xavier was ALWAYS looking after me and shepherding me along. He'd take a tenth of a second look at me bringing up the rear and IMMEDIATELY drop back to take a heavy bag off my hands. Compare/Contrast with Greg's "Over here, Tad!"

And whenever we had a scope stop Xavier would grab and set up the tripod while I'd start prepping the glass component. Ditto for collapsing, packing, stowing.

One time I'd left him with the scope for a bit and when I returned he was turning a particular knob on the PTH head counterclockwise. "NO!!! That's the CLAMP!" Probably wouldn't have come to that but it could've resulted in the scope freefalling to the ground. Then I showed him the dial and lever for adjusting resistance for tilt and pan respectively. But I liked that he tried to figure things out on his own even if his first effort was a bit dangerously wrong.

From the trip prep info from Naturalist Journeys:

ALASKA
Clothing and Gear Recommendations
EQUIPMENT AND MISCELLANEOUS

Spotting scope (optional). Guides will have a scope to share, but feel free to bring your own.

Oh the GUIDES (plural) will have A (singular) scope to SHARE - between themselves and the eleven individuals who are paying for the trip and the salaries and support of the guides. One scope for thirteen individuals. Can't see any problem there. All the birds in our target areas are world renowned for their cooperative personalities and patience. I wonder why binoculars aren't considered optional for participating individuals and there isn't one the guides will have available for sharing.

BUT feel free to bring my own. Thanks for granting me permission to arm myself as well as one of your guides at any given moment.

Also I may feel free to BRING my own and NOT share it with anyone. Sorry, I don't function that way. We're a group, we all have pretty much the same goals, we should be and virtually always are helping each other to lock onto all these once-in-a-lifetime viewing opportunities.

The more scopes the better the experiences. When it's binoculars a lot of time is expended on descriptions of locations of tough but high value targets. Lock one up with one scope and other scopes can be brought to bear quickly and efficiently and more people are able to score. If this trip needed two guides it also needed a minimum of two scopes.

Greg's was pretty good - 80 millimeters and, if I recall correctly, a Zeiss - but with a typical tripod head comparable to my DH101 spare. But I ALWAYS had the PTH in play when the scope was. Weighed (and cost) a ton but was way more stable and far superior for targeting, locking on, quickly adjusting for comfort and individual heights. And I'd spent a lot of prep time before the trip training myself to use and share it quickly, effectively, efficiently. And I performed pretty well - if I do say so myself.

Terry, just another party member, had made a point of personally and profusely thanking me for this contribution and associated efforts. Xavier didn't but didn't need to. His appreciation was implicit, obvious, constant. And he used my scope at every opportunity.

Greg, as far as I can recall, never once even looked through my scope and never expressed or implied the slightest appreciation for my contribution and efforts. And I'd wager that other group members got at least twenty times more view time with my scope than they did with the official Naturalist Journeys unit.

And let's not forget that this equipment - on top of the sickeningly high investment price - cost me an extra hundred bucks for two items of checked luggage to and from Anchorage. Prior to this trip I've always been able to get away with carry-on only.

I'm wondering if the lack of acknowledgement had something to do with a motivation to minimize attention to what Yours Truly was bringing to the party and Naturalist Journeys wasn't. Reminds me of the way ALL of the Flight Park Mafia dickheads would amuse themselves by pissing all over my AT release system.

We got the car, checked back into the Puffin Inn, decompressed a little, decided on this thirty-star rated Marx Brothers Cafe in downtown Anchorage.

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Little establishment that had started life as a house. Spectacular view of the Knik Arm out the back. The staffers are all really professional, competent, concerned about service and first rate food preparations. BUT...

I order half a dozen oysters on the half shell and they come with an inch and a half of crushed ice between them and the plate. The ice looks ever so slightly suspicious and I just pop a spoonful of it in my mouth to neutralize my curiosity.

SURPRISE! ROCK SALT!

I'm always looking to minimize waste and environmental impact in everything I do. Yeah, I'm getting on gas guzzling passenger jets and flying across continents to look at cool birds but I'm cutting ounces down wherever possible. I've got a little travel toothpaste tube and I load it with enough Crest to get through the trip with a five day reserve.

This totally infuriates me. Where did you get the salt, how much did it cost to get it here in terms of material and fossil fuel, what happens to it after I've finished enjoying it? You dump it into the landfill so it can start leaching into the groundwater?

I hated getting those damnable plastic straws I didn't want in those glasses of water I didn't ask for decades before that became cool. Just what are you guys thinking when you're pulling this shit?

Had started thinking about compression stockings a bit into this trip. Had always noted that my regular cotton work/athletic socks would function as compression socks and keep things in their limited areas of covering looking abruptly normal but my doc had never said anything along those lines. But one of our fellow travelers during the North Face Lodge stage was an MD and he said fer sure, go for it. But before the group broke up and we got the rental car I didn't have any viable opportunity to score.

But there was a Walgreen's on the way back to back to the hotel. Got there at 21:05, right after the pharmacy desk had closed, but there were still a couple guys around, one of whom helped me deal with the bewildering assortment presented on the nearby aisle. I score and we roll.

Back at the Puffin Inn probably a bit after 21:20 AKDT and I waste little time forcing these things on. Then I start into my cleaning, organizing, prepping rituals. HM crashes pretty fast. Ann also happens to be staying here at the Puffin prior to hopping another ride to Barrow for some really serious arctic turf birding but we never see her after the breakup at lunch.

At about 22:00 I head to the office in hopes of getting a key card that actually works. Path of least resistance is out the door and around the east end of the main building - about sixty yards. Don't get very far before I notice that the front/main parking area is flooded with city police cars and festooned with hundreds of yards of yellow police line plastic ribbon.

Haven't heard a thing. Or maybe haven't noticed a thing. Maybe just heard a couple sirens, wrote them off as routine, never filed them as anything of possible importance.

Guy's been shot maybe eight times and killed. Much later back in the room I hear someone outside who's just had her heart ripped out. Four nights later the suspect is arrested. Undoubtedly thought at the time that pulling the trigger - repeatedly - would serve to better his situation somehow. No subsequent updates.

Note... Was working on this post just about all yesterday, think I put out the fresh batch of sugar water about 13:00 EDT. Checked for and found my first observed yard Ruby-Throat about fifteen minutes later.

Just found out this morning that Naturalist Journeys had announced last evening that Greg had (finally) posted a trip report for our tour.

http://www.naturalistjourneys.com/pdf/trip-reports/201806-alaska-trip_report.pdf

I've been working on this report series in the absence of such, dependent upon a lot of memories of varying degrees of fuzziness. With this, along with another collection of notes that just became available, I'll likely be making some revisions, amendments, corrections.

But as fried as I was and fuzzy a memory as I have...

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Those three roads/routes out of Nome are - from east to west - Council, Kougarok, Teller. We did them, as I've reported, chronologically, Seward Peninsula Days:
1 - 2018/06/02 - Council - afternoon - coastal only
2 - 2018/06/03 - Council - full day - up to Bear River Bridge
3 - 2018/06/04 - Kougarok - full day - up to Curlew Hill
4 - 2018/06/05 - Teller - full day - up to Wooley Lagoon
5 - 2018/06/04 - Kougarok - morning - short outing

He's got us doing full Kougarok on Peninsula Day 2 and full Council on Peninsula Day 3. Un fucking believable. And take a moderately close look at the trip species list:

http://www.naturalistjourneys.com/pdf/trip-reports/201806-alaska-species_list.pdf

No shortage of sloppiness on that front either.

Dfinitely, Sherwater, área, wetalnds, Guilemot, nof, numners, Glaucaus, RIver, COmmon, Snowshore...

Proofread and run a fucking spellcheck before you put up an important document for the world to see.

Speaking of editing and appearances... Earlier today, starting at about 2018/07/24 15:15:00 UTC, I shuffled some early posts in this series around a little. Moved what was originally 2018/06/30 19:24:00 UTC up two slots 'cause that's where it belonged. And fortunately was able to do it seamlessly with no editing worth mentioning anywhere 'cause there were no relevant timing references.

[Tad Eareckson]

Morning of 2018/06/15 we head to the NNW a bit under two crowflight miles to Westchester Lagoon.

24 - 61°12'18.79" N 149°55'14.60" W - 05420 feet
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We'd missed it on 2018/06/07 when it was the other option for the tour and we did Eagle River. And when we'd headed to dinner the previous evening and gone through the area I was almost certain I'd seen a Cattle Egret - close in to the right/SE side of the Thruway in the smaller upstream section of the Lagoon. The impact of that had taken a few seconds to start registering 'cause of the zombie brain issue. But one should normally need to go back down to where I was watching the eclipse last August to start getting one's hopes up. I haven't checked the range but I realize that if I saw what I think I saw it's at least moderately important.

Under a gray sky we go to the public access at the easternmost extremity and bump into some local birders. I ask if there's a snowball's chance in hell that I saw what I thought I saw. Short answer... Not really. Good example of why it's a bad idea to convict and execute people on the basis of eyewitness testimony. But the Cackling Geese, Gadwall, Wigeon, Green-Winged Teal, Greater and Lesser Scaup, and gulls and terns were real enough and provided me with some more scope practice.

Then to near the NW end of the main body of water at Margaret Eagan Sullivan Park. Got some blue and sun but we're more exposed and feeling a lot of wind. Nesting Mew Gulls, Arctic Turns, Red-Necked Grebes. A local with dinky little placebo glasses wants to know more about what's out there and I set her up with the scope and help her with the goodies.

Head up a bit to the Ship Creek area...

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...get four Eagles soaring the slope on the other side of the Knik Arm in the strong rather cool SW wind. Sky's gotten pretty solid gray again.

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A bit north of west out to about the NW corner of developed Anchorage to the Alaska Native Heritage Center. First order of business - much needed lunch. It was a nice educational facility and I don't really wanna speak ill of it but...

Lunch is out of a little fast food / sandwich service window. Lotsa single use plastic for one's only option and don't recall it being easy or possible to recycle anything. Gotta eat on outside tables under tent-type canopies and it's cold, gray, windy. They know it's cold out there 'cause they're heating out there with these long vertical glass tubes full of orange natural gas (I'm guessing) flames. And I've gotta stake one out and stay close to it to keep from getting hypothermia.

It starts raining, then it starts raining hard and sideways and, after a bit, a gust slams through and distributes the second half of my lunch downwind across the patio. (Don't worry, I retrieved and finished it.)

And I'm thinking that a thousand years ago the ancestors of these people were doing a lot better with a lot less with pretty much zilch environmental impact. Oh well, at least I didn't see any conspicuously displayed mounted Grizzlies.

Spent maybe a couple hours checking out films, displays, artworks, live presentations then bailed for home base.

Weather stayed unpleasant, dinner back at the Lakefront where we could scan the surface of Lake Spenard for interesting stuff. Not much - rather distant Greater Scaup and an occasional Red-Necked Grebe appearance.

[Tad Eareckson]

2018/06/16...

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Start off the tourist part of the day at the Anchorage Museum at Rasmuson Center. Beautiful facility, you could spend all day in it no problem. What I remember most was an exhibit explaining and illustrating the very close evolutionary relationship between bears and seals. They're not Sea LIONS - they're Sea BEARS. Really easy to believe when recalling that huge animal doing laps in the tank at the SeaLife Center back in Seward. Also when looking at and comparing skulls.

The Alaska Zoo is in the SE Anchorage neck of the woods - about twenty miles NNE of the north end of Potter Marsh. Class act, reminds me a bit of the National Zoo in DC, get some more looks at some of the stuff we've gotten in the field plus ones of some of the stuff we've missed. Not to mention Polar Bear and Amur Tiger.

Give it a pretty good going over, do lunch at their Coffee Shop. Roll for Potter Marsh.

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The wind is BLASTING down the Turnagain Arm. There's nothing in sight at the main/near/boardwalk end - 'cept a local who lives in the foothills overlooking the southern area of the Marsh. Knows her birds, wildlife, the local scene, and... the tidal bore.

The Turnagain tidal bore is my main mission for the day and a high priority item for me for the trip.

Tidal bores are rather rare phenomena around the globe and are dependent upon several conditions:
- huge freakin' low/high differential
- shallow bay or river, wide at the mouth and narrowing inland

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The Turnagain Arm is pretty much textbook.

I've used:

http://www.alaska.org/advice/alaska-bore-tide
Alaska Bore Tide: When, Where & How To See It

for planning purposes. The tables are rather poorly organized and waste tons of space apparently for the sole purpose of confusing the reader.

They first give you a table for Bird Point which gets hit an hour AFTER Beluga Point.

Then they give you another table for Beluga Point. The times for the "latter" are all PRECISELY one hour AHEAD and the Tide Heights are all negative and exact duplicates.

Below is MY simplified table for Beluga Point only - date (2018); tide height in feet, all negative; time (AKDT). And I've ordered them ordered them from best to mediocre (and the stuff that ties stays chronological). High negative values good, low bad.

07/14 - 5.3 - 17:09
07/15 - 5.1 - 17:54
08/12 - 5.0 - 16:52
07/13 - 4.8 - 16:23
06/15 - 4.7 - 17:24
08/11 - 4.7 - 16:06
08/13 - 4.6 - 17:34
06/16 - 4.5 - 18:09
06/14 - 4.4 - 16:37
07/16 - 4.2 - 18:37
05/17 - 3.8 - 17:38
07/12 - 3.8 - 15:33
06/17 - 3.7 - 18:54
08/10 - 3.7 - 15:17
09/09 - 3.7 - 15:47
05/16 - 3.6 - 16:55
06/13 - 3.6 - 15:51
09/10 - 3.6 - 16:31
05/18 - 3.4 - 18:07
08/14 - 3.4 - 18:14
05/15 - 2.9 - 16:09
09/08 - 2.9 - 14:59
09/11 - 2.7 - 17:11
05/19 - 2.6 - 14:00
07/17 - 2.6 - 19:19
06/12 - 2.4 - 15:02
06/18 - 2.4 - 19:40
07/11 - 2.4 - 14:39
08/09 - 2.1 - 14:20
05/27 - 2.0 - 14:54

Today, 06/16, at -4.5 is eighth best of the year. The day before, at -4.7, was in a tie for fifth (with 08/11) but the weather sucked and I wasn't geared up for it.

Tide charts for the two relevant days. Frame 26 above - Fire Island is the really obvious / only one off of Anchorage's westernmost Point Campbell (and Beluga Point is at 61°00'25.01" N 149°41'38.39" W on the Seward Highway a bit upstream from the area at which the Turnagain Arm seriously narrows).

http://www.weatherforyou.com/reports/index.php?locid=2797&forecast=tides&alt=tides&hwvSmon=6&syear=2018
High and Low Tide for Fire Island

Alaska - Anchorage - Fire Island
- Times - AKDT
- Levels - feet
2018/06/15
Hi - 08:30 - +30.6 - 21:24 - +29.4
Lo - 02:54 - +02.6 - 15:19 - -05.7
2018/06/16
Hi - 09:19 - +30.0 - 22:13 - +28.9
Lo - 03:44 - +02.7 - 16:09 - -04.9

Note the roughly six hour intervals between lows and highs - that's typical for most points around the world.

I'm a little fuzzy on exactly what all these numbers mean but, for the purpose of the exercise, the farther away from zero the better.

Anyway... We continue on to the Seward Highway's main Potter Mash pull-off. More exposed and the wind's stronger but the bird action is infinitely better. Check things out and talk to a guy with a long lens on his camera. Then continue on to Beluga Point with an hour or so's worth of lead time.

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I'm thinking that this Turnagain tidal bore won't be that big a fucking deal for the locals and that not a lot of tourist types will be tuned in. WRONG. The extensive parking areas are about three quarters filled already. I scout around for prime viewing positions, talk with fellow travelers, return to the car to recover and get out of the wind.

Alaska.org says, "If the wind is blowing down the arm (the way it always blows--just look at how the trees grow), add another 10-15 minutes." I think it's blowing down the arm at fifty aloft - also fifty on the surface if you're standing in the wrong place at the wrong time - and adjust my internal clock accordingly. Then HM says, "Isn't that it?" I look out into the mouth and there's a distinct white line racing towards us. Right on time despite the katabatic blasting from glaciers to the SSW. I kick myself for assuming the delay and missing some of the action and alert other bore chasers in the vicinity. A couple guys emerge from a vehicle and ask what's going on. I tell em', "Get over there, look out into the mouth NOW! I'll explain later."

It was better than I'd dared hope for. Long, thin, mostly straight wave spanning the Arm and surging upstream into this horrendous headwind.

I'd managed to pair up with another local, Kathleen, who was an old hand at this and a wealth of information. Clued me into the way the Belugas would often follow the bore into the arm to take advantage of navigable water depth time. Came up empty on this score though.

The bore passed us and we could see the water depth along our shore increase dramatically and there was a small flock of insane wetsuited kiteboarders playing with it upstream.

My intention was to race it up the arm and keep observing it from available pull-offs. Kathleen advised me that if that was my intention I needed to go immediately. Said thanks and gave a reluctant good-bye and rolled.

I was and remained really confused about what happened next. I went just a wee bit over a Seward Highway mile to the next substantial pull-off.

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In it was a small herd of parked vehicles all obviously in place for the same purpose as mine. I was convinced that I'd passed the bore and the kiteboarders were still in a line across the arm below us apparently still working it.

The bore should've been quickly overtaking us but we never saw what we were expecting to. After things failed to transpire as I'd been expecting I took not of a nearby stick embedded in the exposed silt and used it to monitor tide increase. Stayed high and dry forever and then reasonably abruptly got drowned. Oh well, still rather spectacular situation in which to sit around bored (the monotony type) and the company was enjoyable.

Threw in the towel after about an hour and a half at that post, way back up the Seward Highway into Anchorage for dinner at Kinley's Restaurant & Bar not far from home.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ubmYx6HZgNo

[Tad Eareckson]

Morning of 2018/06/17 Alaska Center for the Performing Arts. Seeing as how the sun doesn't set this time of year if ya wanna see anything of the aurora borealis ya gotta go to their theater to see Dave Parkhurst's "AurorA - Alaska's Great Northern Lights".

http://www.alaska.org/detail/alaska-naturally-aurora-show
Alaska Naturally Aurora Show | Anchorage Northern Lights Show

He's spent a zillion hours filming and compiling spectacular displays in brutal near arctic winter night conditions and it's totally amazing. I complain, however, to the staff after its conclusion. The music was much too soothing and I slept through a couple substantial chunks despite by best efforts. They're familiar with the issue.

Straight west a wee bit over six miles from the Lakefront one finds the Alaska Botanical Garden. Huge trails complex through the forest, they can and do exclude Moose but can't bears, obvious that unimaginable degrees of development and tending efforts have gone and are going into it. You can hear the birds but it's tough to get them on visual. Mosquitos have had some time to ramp up a good bit by this point on the calendar. No problem with bears however.

Been wearing the compression stockings since acquisition religiously during the upright hours, taking them off as per the instructions for bed. They're helping a good bit but to some extent moving the problem up to the next runs of the legs. Can't complain though.

In the afternoon we're back at the Lakefront for a late lunch and what will also wind up as an early dinner. Weather's nice and I get to play some more with the scope and usual suspects out on the lake. Hoping for a Steller's Jay at the feeder but that doesn't happen.

Get to chatting with a couple other tables in our little patch of the patio. There's a Brit peak bagger who's gearing up for North America's highest. I forget what he'd already gotten under his belt but he's got his sights set on all of them. Very educational exchange.

The gals at the other table eventually identify themselves as being from Pine Bush, New York. No shit. You guys know Paul and Ryan? Not personally but... Yeah. I clue them into my relationship with those two u$hPa operative serial killing motherfuckers and give them a greatly abbreviated version of Kite Strings. They're pretty clued in to the level of relevant carnage perpetrated in their Ellenville neck of the woods and don't seem very surprised.

Got on Osprey. Dime a dozen here at home but the official tour had totally struck out on that bird.

The plane's rolling for SEA at 11:00 AKDT so more cleaning, inventorying, organizing, packing rituals back at the Puffin.

2018/06/18. Load, check out, ANC, dump the rental car, check the bags, navigate the usual five miles out to the assigned gate.

As I recall there was too much cloud around to get a last shot at Denali. And our pilot didn't have a fucking clue how to fly smoothly.

I don't think we were airborne more than fifteen seconds before we started getting the shit kicked out of us. Things were flexing bigtime and I was thinking that if a wing were gonna snap off this would be the time. At one point we in the back end went totally weightless. I was staying as rational as possible, controlling fear, keeping a poker face. But I looked across the aisle at a couple fellow passengers who weren't. I figured we were getting severely rotored by a really strong winds dumping over the Chugaches and when we - spoiler alert - landed at SeaTac I ran it by one of the crew. Yeah, that was exactly what was going on.

Smoothed out pretty fast with altitude, continued on our merry way.

I'd gotten myself a daylight rear east window seat for both the up and back trips of that Alaska Airlines run but as a consequence of Southwest causing us to miss our outgoing connection I got screwed on both selections. On the way up recall, I started out in the dark end ended up in the gloom with an east aisle seat. This time I'm on a rear window but on the west - seeing mostly ocean.

Kinda pissed off but I was able to catch some nice bits throughout the flight through the windows on the other side and our route was east enough for me to pick up some really cool stuff on my side that the east siders couldn't get. Towards the end I got Vancouver Island in its entirety and did not bad with Mount Baker. Then got lotsa great Mount Ranier time while we wiggled around getting into the approach pattern.

Sleep Inn for the night.

2018/06/19. Southwest SEA to MKE (Milwaukee) and MKE to BWI. Get a rear - second to last row back - north window for the first / 11:50 PDT takeoff leg. Keeps me from having to look into the sun but it sucks as far as Ranier is concerned. I'd gotten quality Ranier on the first pass into Seattle, maybe some leaving for Anchorage, definitely the previous afternoon.

This time I'm able to get some far shots through opposite side windows but the fucking dickhead on the window on the last row south has the shade closed so he can see his fucking iPhone screen better. I wish a sky marshal had blown the top of his head off and brought some sane level of order back to the cabin. One of the most spectacular mountains on the planet and this douchebag decides he's gonna block out the view for himself and at least eight other paying passengers in that section of the plane.

Those planes are built with passenger windows for a REASON and it totally sucks that a single asshole has that kinda power by virtue of snagging a particular seating position. I'd like to see those shades under the control of the captain with open by default and some legitimate reason for having one/any closed.

Lotsa cloud cover and layers over the rest of the country - both legs - until we got pretty east and it got pretty dark. Amused myself navigating.

My Garmin Nuvi 3590 does not handle jet cruising speeds and altitudes very well. Will often freeze up for a while when you change screens and is often/usually off a couple thousand feet at higher altitudes. And it doesn't do Great Circle. If you tell it to fly from BWI to SEA the plane will IMMEDIATELY start majorly diverting to the north of the line drawn by the receiver. It would be fun to play with a Garmin aera 660 and see how it performs but they don't give them away and the justification for having one would be extremely thin.

[Tad Eareckson]

With all the prep work - reading, studying, experimenting, practicing, field testing - with the scope I was real interested to get out in the demilitarized zone and see what was going on with other people's rigs and how they were being employed.

I never saw a rig that measured up to mine - even with the light DH101 versus heavy PTH plus Balance Rail configuration. This might lead one to think overkill - not a good power to weight ratio. But I also don't recall ever seeing a scope being used or carried any significant distance from a vehicle.

I don't think a birder's gonna do that except in extraordinary situations. Out on the trail his primary concern is usually to hit a relatively close and fast moving target within the next second and a half. And to do that you need two free hands and a harnessed binocular with a power of ten max.

So, ignoring airport type issues, there's no real downside to weight and bulk when they're serving legitimate purposes.

I think I only had opportunities to check out two other birder scopes on the trip - Greg's and the one pointed in the direction of Denali in the North Face Lodge commons area. Both of them with optical quality with which I had no problem. But I did get a quiet unsolicited comment (I think at the Kougarok Road Grizzly sighting) that mine was better (viewing-wise).

And...

At a lot of these public viewing areas - pull-offs, parks, overlooks, visitor centers - they have hardened telescope installations for public use. When I first had the inclination, opportunity, time - on the way back out of Denali at the Savage River stop (I think) - I gave one of them a shot. Herd of Sheep high up the slope.

Short story - ABSOLUTE JUNK. They're built and installed entirely for show and to not be demolished by the elements or stolen. And I can't imagine anybody who'd taken a two second glance through one would for a single moment be inclined to steal one.

- Zilch in the way of exit pupil. (No light gathering capability, field of view.)

- The one I tried had a quarter turn's worth of slop in the focusing wheel. I doubt it was capable of being focused - even if one had been inclined to put more time and effort into the effort.

- Two scopes on pipes. One was fixed at a height appropriate for the average five-year-old, the other at a height appropriate for the average ten-year-old.

- Not angled, of course, so bending down to get a shot isn't an option. Wouldn't be an option anyway 'cause they'd undoubtedly be fixed angled and rain would be a major issue.

- You can tilt and pan but there's no way in hell they're gonna balance when you're looking at anything.

- No tilt/pan resistance adjustment and no way to lock on a target.

And I watch people - adults and kids - checking these scopes out and nobody lingers more than two seconds. The experience is both useless, at best, and physically painful.

I've got my scope locked on the Sheep. I've got a small line behind it.

I forget all the other places I've seen scopes like these - Eielson Visitor Center, Captain Cook Monument, Beluga Point... Somewhere I encounter a binocular version... Hope your left and right eyes are separated the standard distance.

At the pull-off upstream from Beluga point where we're trying to figure out what the fuck's going on with the bore I've got both tripods set up for the scope and Canons - the scope 'cause it's fun to play with and the binocular for viewing the bore (if we ever find/identify it).

There's a dad, twelve year old kid, uncle or friend of dad's. The kid goes to the binoculars, I adjust the tripod, he stays GLUED to them for like an hour. (How many times does two seconds go into an hour? 1800?)

These park tourist scopes are so way the hell south of totally useless. All they're gonna do is turn people OFF to the idea of wildlife viewing. Do things right or not at all - to the max in this situation. And there's no fucking way in hell to do these public scopes right.

I didn't wanna broadcast this at the time but I don't think it'll do any harm...

I get to the Asa Wright Nature Centre and soon find that they've got some NICE scopes set up on their veranda - one of them a Leica - 24/7. (And you're not worried about anybody STEALING these things? (Guess not.))

Same deal at North Face Lodge. They got a nice scope set up 24/7. They've got a shop that sells everything from souvenirs and field guides to pretty decent binoculars - 24/7, unattended. You just take whatever you want and pay for it on the way out. (Granted, it would be a pretty bad idea to steal anything of value when you're dependent upon their permitted tour buses to get you back out through 85 miles of Grizzly infested tundra wilderness.)

If you wanna do this scope thing right you need an employee or volunteer like Yours Truly to set up and man a quality scope system. That's the way things work for astronomy set-ups. If you can't do something like that then don't do anything. Let them get what they can with their naked eyes and/or whatever they've brought with them.

And I get a big kick outta locking up a good target with the scope and handing it over or getting someone on target with the Canons and telling him/her to new hit the stabilizer button and hearing, "WOW!" And I hear that a lot when I'm in the right environments.

To end this one on something of a sour note...

It was driven home to me beyond the slightest shadow of any doubt this past trip that a binocular rain guard IS NOT an optional accessory - it's a vital component of the system, as is the harness. Those eyepieces spend 99 percent of their field time pointed UP and they need to be protected from stuff that falls DOWN at all times, rain or shine. The rain guard for these glasses is total crap. It falls off if you look at too hard and I don't know of any third party solution.

I briefly thought about bagging the Canons and bringing back my Leitz 7x42s as my primaries. And the fuckin' Canons are HEAVY - and that starts getting to one after a while. But the stabilizing advantage of the Canons is so enormous...

[Tad Eareckson]

At pretty much the beginning of this Alaska trip report project I had something like 16 Google Earth shots to aid with the narrative. And as of my 2018/07/29 18:00:00 UTC amendment to my 2018/06/22 21:29:57 UTC anchor post earlier today I'm up to 86. The more I start understanding about how this complex corner of the continent is put together the more illustrations and detail I need to understand and explain it.

But I'd been avoiding close-ups of the Anchorage area like the freakin' plague 'cause it was winter imagery which was just plain UGLY. I'm thankful that there are a few refuges for cold left on the planet for the time being but bird's-eye view shots of colorless landscapes, dormant and/or dead vegetation, frozen lakes and marshes are no fun to work with, look at, or share.

I think it was Thursday that Google Earth flashed me that a new database was available but that I'd need to quit and reboot the app for it to load. Thought, what the hell, I could use a little quitting and rebooting myself. So...

And in the process I flushed my trace of the Alaska Railroad's northern run on the Kenai Peninsula down the toilet 'cause I ASSUMED I'd properly saved it. (Cost me at least three hours to reconstruct.)

But... New summer season imagery for the Anchorage area and I was able to cover lotsa stuff I'd really wanted to with about seventeen new shots.

The old crap still on the east third of the frame:

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And the new...

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I just wanna stare at some of this stuff for a couple days. Might wanna go back and give these three pages a skim.

[Tad Eareckson]

A combination of a rare bit of useable downtime, a note from Brian, guilt prompts this short note - from Casona 2, Arenal Observatory Lodge, Alajuela Province, Costa Rica.

Blew the US 2018/12/29 and will return 2019/01/23 - by which time I have no doubt whatsoever that our current President will have finished Making America truly Great Again. Meanwhile we're covering a great deal of this crappy little shit-hole country in lotsa rather short stops and the trip has been pretty exhausting, stressful, punishing. But also lotsa really spectacular sightings and experiences - and a half decent report is gonna necessitate a pretty major book.

[<BS>]

Enjoy Costa Rica. At our current rate of "winning", the entire world should be "great" by the time you return.