Subject: Cruise Ship birding inquiry......
Date: Jul 10 08:48:51 2001
From: Guttman, Burt - GuttmanB at evergreen.edu


Maureen Ellis's request for help for her cruise in southwest Alaska prompt's
me to provide some free advice. My wife and I did a two-week tour of Alaska
last summer, the highlight being the same kind of trip that Maureen
describes through the sounds and straits and inlets of the southwest.
However, instead of going on one of the huge ships that you commonly see
advertised, we went on a CruiseWest ship, a wonderful small boat with only
about 100 passengers. I can't recommend it too strongly. The huge ships
(and, boy, they really are huge, as you see when they are tied up in port)
come complete with all the amenities of urban living, but sitting on the
water instead of in the heart of New York or Seattle. The CruiseWest boats,
in contrast, are very informal and are geared toward getting close to the
natural world. Their small boats are able to go into narrow passages and
get you close to the wildlife you want to see; they have staff who are
interested in the wildlife and try to get you into places where you can
really see it, and they take local naturalists on board for parts of their
cruise, so you can talk to them, get help in identification, and have the
kind of conversations that most of us really want to engage in. One of
these naturalists told us about going onto one of the huge ships, where he
was up on a stage talking to a big crowd of people as if he were just part
of their entertainment, when suddenly everyone started to get up to leave;
someone explained to him that it was time for some fancy dessert. That was
just a joke to the people on our boat; even though we had comfortable
quarters and were fed well, we were all primarily interested in really
seeing Alaska and its birds and mammals, and we were able to see a lot. It
was a very satisfying trip, and I highly recommend it. I do have to add one
negative note. Part of the tour was spending a couple of days in Denali
National Park, where you go through the area on buses. Now, the bus drivers
are very nice and quite knowledgeable, but they are almost exclusively
interested in showing you the large mammals, especially bears--and we did
see a lot of them. But few of them, I was told, know much about birds, and
unfortunately we got a driver who didn't know much about birds and didn't
make any special effort to see birds, even though I sat right behind him and
made it clear that that was one of my main interests. So you can't expect
to do much serious birding on your standard tour through Denali. But
otherwise we had a great time, and we really feel that we saw Alaska well,
including the native culture. You'll still have to arrange a special
birding trip to see everything, but you'll find the small boats are
excellent for seeing many of the water birds in the southwest island area.

Cheers,

Burt Guttman
The Evergreen State College 360-867-6755
Olympia, WA 98505 guttmanb at evergreen.edu

Reunite Gondwana


> -----Original Message-----
> From: Maureen Ellis [mailto:me2 at u.washington.edu]
> Sent: Tuesday, June 26, 2001 10:20 AM
> To: Tweeters News Group
> Subject: Cruise Ship birding inquiry......
>
>
> Folks,
> In mid-Sept, I'll be taking a family trip on an inside-passage Alaska
> cruise (round-trip from/to Vancouver, B.C.) I expect to be
> doing a fair
> amount of birdwatching from the ship's stern (bow is much too
> windy, I'm
> told) expecting to see a number of seabird species, all
> mostly life birds
> for me, including, hopefully, albatrosses. I'll be taking my
> 3rd edition
> Nat Geo Guide plus considering Sibley's guide and even the venerable
> "Seabirds of Great Britain and the World" by Captain
> 'forget-his-name.'
> Is there an Alaska specialty bird guide that would be useful to take
> covering most all I might see? There will be three port
> stops (Ketchikan,
> Juneau and Skagway) that might also allow some beach perusing for
> shorebirds (Dennis Paulson's guide?) and also a few hours of
> inland forest
> birding.
>
> The ship (a Holland-America cruise) does have a library that
> may have a
> number of bird and wildlife books, but I need to have one or
> two of my own
> on deck while birding. This is my first trip to Alaska or
> anywhere this
> far up the West Coast. While, this is not a bird-focus tour, the ship
> is slow-cruising a day in the Glacier Bay area for ice scenery and
> wildlife viewing, particularly, whales. Naturally, I'm very
> excited and
> expecting seeing a bunch of wonderful things on this trip.
>
> Any information or suggestions, especially from others who
> have also done
> cruise ship birding up the B.C.-Alaska coast is most appreciated.
>
> Cheers & Thanks, Maureen
> ****************************************
> Maureen Ellis, PhD, Research Scientist
> Toxicology Group at Roos 1, 284A
> Lab/Office phone: 206-685-1938
> Dept of Environmental Health, Mailstop 354695
> School of Public Health and Community Medicine
> University of Washington, Seattle, WA 98115
>
> Personal Financial Representative
> Primerica division of Citigroup, Inc.
> VoiceTell: 206-213-7430
>
> E-Mail: me2 at u.washington.edu
> ****************************************
> "Why are we now traveling into space? Why, indeed, did we
> trouble to look
> past the next mountain? Our prime obligation to ourselves is
> to make the
> unknown known. We are on a journey to keep an appointment
> with whatever
> we are."_____Gene Roddenberry
>
>
>