Just returned from a week in Alaska. Wow! Birds, birds, birds! I can't
wait to go back there this summer, and see what shows up when it's warm.

I asked about Alaskan birds at this time of year over on BIRDCHAT, and got
many responses telling me that there is nothing to see this time of year.
Boy, have they got *that* wrong. Also got a few people telling me that it
was a waste of money to go up birding there at this time of year - I had to
point out that people do go on trips for reasons other than birding! :)

Birds spotted: Raven, Gray Jay, Rock Dove, Ptarmigan, Snowy Owl, Black-capped
Chickadee, American Dipper, cormorants, loons, grebes, petrels, terns (I
couldn't get close enough to actually id each of these into exactly which loon
etc it was - just a general id), Canadian Geese, a woodpecker (couldn't id it),
magpies, redpolls, a kind of crossbeak (again, couldn't id it), spruce grouse,
snow bunting, bald eagles, murrelet, Northern Shrike, and a couple of puffin.
(and a couple of raptors that I couldn't id - perhaps a Northern Goshawk and
Gyrfalcons)

I thought at first that one of our guides was pulling my leg, as she kept
referring to "Wild Chicken". I thought she was talking about something
related to the Jackalope from Wyoming, but it turns out that's what they
call Spruce Grouse.

Animals spotted: Moose (gobs and gobs of 'em), caribou, mountain goats, mice,
squirrels, what the locals call "ice weasels", dogs dogs dogs, 1 cat (swimming
in the hot springs!). Lots of stuffed (and therefore dead) bears, no live
ones. (Whew!)


It was a tough trip, being a beginning birder without an experienced birder
along. And the people I was with could care less about birds, to start with,
so I really had to cajole them. (offering to buy the guides a beer that night
if they'd stop for any birds I saw, usually worked!) By the end of the week,
though, they would stop and point out birds to *me*! A lot of times I was
doing pure guesswork, but I believe that the birds listed above were really
what I saw. I went from tundra to ocean to mountains to marshes to forests to
city to shoreline to yukon river flats to cook inlet to islands, so I got a
bit of everything!

I highly reccomend Alaska in the winter - the aurora borealis was incredible,
and the birding was very exciting.

Susan Collicott susan at pmel.noaa.gov
Computer Services, NOAA PMEL http://www.pmel.noaa.gov
Seattle, WA (206) 526-6755