June 5th Kenai Fjords cruise aboard the Alaskan Explorer

June 5th: Paul had to drop off Jim and Joan near the harbor for breakfast at 6:50 which gave me a little extra time to get ready and update this report. We plan to meet at 8:00 AM for the Kenai Fjords cruise aboard the Alaskan Explorer. There was talk that our longer trip may be cancelled for a shorter one which means we may not get the Kittlitz’s Murrelet. Luckily they decided to go for it even though we had 10-12 foot waves in some areas. Some people got sick, including Bill, and I didn’t feel well a few times, but managed not to get sick thankfully.


We had incredible and numerous sightings of thousands of Black Legged Kittiwakes, Common Murres, and large numbers of Tufted and Horned Puffins. The rarities/targets seen included: Kittlitz’s and Ancient Murrelet, Rhinocerous, and Crested Auklets, Red faced Cormorant and thousands of nesting Glaucous Winged Gulls. We also had sightings of Dall Porpoises, Pacific Humback Whales, Orcas, Stellars Sea Lions, Harbor Seals and 3 Mountain Goats.

The weather was cloudy, drizzly and the seas were rough on the open water to the bay. Overall a very pleasant experience. We watched some glaciers calve including Northwestern which is where the Kittlitz’s was found.

We arrived back in port at 6:05 PM, did a quick dinner stop at Subway and headed back to Anchorage, back to the Quality Inn for the night. Paul plans on dropping off the rental car tonight so that he doesn’t need to rush tomorrow prior to our flight to the Pribiloffs on Penn Air at noon. We need to have all the luggage on the plane before 10:30 AM. A total of 7 life birds for the day – so far a trip record.

Alaska June 4th: Drive to Seward, Kenai Fjords

June 4th: This morning the guys went to pick up the rental cars at 7:30 for our drive to Seward – about 120 miles. We left the hotel about 8:00 and made a 45 minute stop at Potter Marsh where we saw Red Necked Grebes and Mew Gulls nesting.

We stopped at a Bakery across from a large wetland where we had brief looks at Northwestern Crow.

We checked a few stops along the way for Varied Thrush which we heard a few times, but never saw. We did find a Townsend’s Warbler at one of the rest stops.

There was a beautiful campground along the way on Rt 1 at a Lake (Summit?) which I would love to camp at some day. We had two Merlins here actively calling to each other and perched at the top of Fir trees and a pair of Barrow’s Goldeneyes. I got a poor photo of a digiscoped Barrow's Goldeneye.


One stop produced a Porcupine who climbed a tree once he knew we were watching him. Our last stop was at the Kenai Fjords National Park where we took about an hour to do a quick hike to the bottom of Exit Glacier.



They had markers dating back to 1814 from where the Glacier had receded from. Amazing! We had very distant looks at 5 Mountain Goats up on one of the mountain faces close to the peak. It turned out to be a beautiful day despite the weather forecast of drizzle. High was about 66F, but near the glacier was very chilly.


Checked in to the Harborview Motel in Seward and going to Rays Waterfront for dinner and then a quick grocery shop to prepare for the Pribiloffs.

Paul and I both had Spinach salad with Salmon for dinner and a Crab, artichoke appetizer. The food was very good and the scenery of the port was fabulous. Snow covered mountains against the bay filled with small boats and a Celebrity Cruise ship. Black-legged Kittiwakes were abundant and a few Pigeon Guillemot, Marbled Murrelets and Harlequin ducks were swimming in the bay, but the best sighting was the very large cute sea otters swimming close to shore doing a back float and rolling.

An ebird report of a Boreal Owl came in reported by Todd in Hope Alaska which was about 1.5 hrs from our hotel so a small group of us, Bob, Paula, Dave, Paul and I decided to try for it. When we were partially there Dave realized Todd had made the report and luckily he had gotten his phone number. So after a quick call we learned he had only heard it, but we decided to try anyway, unfortunately with no luck, but we did get great views of a Varied Thrush and Olive Sided Flycatcher and returned to the hotel at 1:30 AM!

Alaska June 3: Kougarok Rd and back to Anchorage

June 3rd: A 6:00 AM start and we wanted to try for the Arctic Warbler one more time so we drove out Kougarok Rd about 20 miles or so to where Bill has traditionally had them very easily in trips past in July, but although the arrival date was supposed to be June 1st, there was no sight or sound of them. But we had another fox sighting. This one was mostly a dull white, but the poor thing was only using 3 legs.


Since we were flying to Anchorage later today we didn’t have too much time as we had to be back at the Aurora hotel to check out, return the rental vans and get to the airport at least 2 hours before our 1:20 PM flight. I planned to get a lot of “work” done at the airport, like writing this report, downloading photos, etc, but this didn’t happen again so I am now trying to catch up on all this tonight. Our flight actually stopped at Kozebue in the Arctic Circle before getting to Anchorage. It was a tiny airport with lots of ponds around the runways filled with a variety of ducks – definitely a unique airport. The Quality Inn airport shuttle took 45 minutes again to pick us up. We had to call them twice before they showed up and then once at the hotel, they neglected to tell us that our room was in a different building so we were riding the elevator looking for a room that didn’t exist. This hotel definitely has issues and I would not recommend it! Dinner was at Gwennies where I had Eggs Benedict and Paul had all you can eat Ribs. It’s now 8:30 PM and I am beat. It’s time to finish up some stuff and get to sleep.

June 2nd Council Rd.

June 2nd. A little later start today at 6:30 since we were driving the Council Rd which is the same one that went to Safety Sound, but the plan was to go further to look for Gyrfalcon, but also take our time to look for Loons, Eiders and other rarities. Unfortunately it seems that it may have been too early for Spectacled and Stellars Eiders as well as for Arctic or Yellow Billed Loon as we had no luck. So far each day we had been getting one life bird, but the chances didn’t look good today. We did have two very pleasant surprises in finding a Surfbird and a very pink Lesser Sand Plover (also known as Mongolian Plover).


We followed Forrest down the road towards Council and he put us on a nesting Peregrine Falcon and eventually a nesting Gray phase Gyrfalcon! So we did get our life bird with the Gyrfalcon. But the best sighting today was when we saw a gorgeous Arctic Fox pouncing on prey. His legs were black, very bushy tail and multicolored coat as he was losing his winter fur.



Dinner was at Airport Pizza again and this time I tried the burrito which was very good. So far this trip has produced very little exercise opportunities and too many opportunities to snack and eat… Hopefully this will change soon.

June 1st - Teller

June 1st. Our target destination today after leaving at 6:00 AM was the small community of Teller. Along the way we had great looks at Rock and Willow Ptarmigan and I actually counted them on the way back giving us 32 Willow and 8 Rock.


The landscape was not as mountainous on this drive, but a very rocky landscape, similar to the countryside of England. We managed to find a Northern Wheatear also, but the highlight was seeing a distant Wolf as it walked along the ridge line.




Not long afterwards we watched a herd of Reindeer run across a ridge, across the road and over to another ridge. We wondered if there may be other wolves around. Herds of Musk Ox also were seen after spotting an adult with one young one at the town dump. The town itself looked like a very rundown fishing village. There were a couple of dead seals on the shore and also some blubber that the gulls were picking at. The weather had gotten progressively colder. Birds we often see along the road include Hoary Redpolls, Golden Crowned Sparrows, Wilsons, Yellow and Orange Crowned Warblers, Tree and Fox Sparrow and Grey Cheeked Thrush. When we returned to Nome we took a short drive to check out the mouth of the Nome River and had scope views of three Aleutian Terns found by the Wilderness Birding Group. Dinner was at Airport Pizza. Paul had a very large burrito and I had a very good gyro with salad. It was another long day of birding as we finished at 8:00 PM. The sun seems to be strongest and brightest here at night and makes it hard to realize we need to go to sleep.

Alaska May 31: The quest for the Bristle Thighed Curlew

May 31: The quest for the Bristle Thighed Curlew brought us further down the Kougarok Rd and when we arrived Bill was very upset that a car was already there. If he had known, he would have asked the person (Todd) to go for the bird with us. We waited a short while as we could see the single man coming back down. He told us that he had played the tape, but the bird did not respond, but he did see one bird and showed us a photo of it. It was about 8:30 – 9:00 AM by the time we started the ascent up the tussocked hills.. It wasn’t steep, but we had to walk carefully as there were lots of holes that we may end up sticking our feet into between the tussocks and lots of small underground puddles. Once we made it up to where Bill usually gets the bird we waited a bit, but nothing so we moved on and we heard the kee-oh-wee call so we approached and saw a distant bird as it walked just over the hill out of site. Then we heard another call coming from the right so we walked over to that area and waited, had brief glimpses of the bird before once again it disappeared over the hill. We all decided to sit on the ground to wait but after about 15 minutes a few of us headed over to the original place we saw it and heard it call along with hearing calls of a Bluethroat! We ended up watching 2 Curlews fly further away and land on a distant hill. We moved closer and actually ended up getting great views of a male Bluethroat with its blue throat glistening in the sun. The day was actually a lot cooler than the previous days and I wore 4 layers along with a winter jacket and was comfortable! It was time to start heading back down since it was about 1:30 – how the time passed quickly. Just prior to leaving we watched a beautiful very large snowshoe hare run off as it had heard us in the snow. The drive produced views of a few Long Tailed Jaegers kiting or sitting on nests – what a beautiful bird!




Just as were almost to the cars we spotted 2 Whimbrels and since they closely resemble the Curlews, we had to take very close looks. On the drive back we stopped at Salmon Lake briefly and then headed back to Nome. Along the way we witnessed a heartbreaking event where we watched a guy put a young spaniel type dog on the back of his ATV, probably a hunting dog. We were on a dirt road and another car was approaching from the opposite direction. We were in the car with Dave behind the ATV when as the dog heard the car approach decided to jump off and ended up rolling under the back tire of the approaching car even though the car was going only about 10 mph. The car appeared to run over the dogs neck and the dog ran off as we were all in shock. It would be a miracle if that dog survived and being in the middle of nowhere I’m sure there was no vet anywhere near by. Very sad. After our 6 PM return we went to Milanos for pizza for dinner where Paul and I sat at a booth next to Forrest Davis from Hi Lonesone tours who was scouting for his group's trip to Nome. We had a nice chat with Forrest and he gave us some tips on birds he had found.

Alaska - May 30 Kougarok Rd Nome

May 30: 5:45 AM departure for our first drive out the Kougarok Rd. The scenery at Salmon Lake was stupendous with the snow-capped mountains reflecting on the lake. We had incredible looks at lots of Willow Ptarmigans, both male and female. The male was even doing a very cute strut and croak as he walked across the road.




We had fleeting looks at a female Bluethroat at Salmon Lake who was carrying nesting material. We got a quick look at her orange throat and although we watched her fly back and forth from her nest she never perched in a spot where we could get good looks. Paul also spotted a Rock Ptarmigan, another target and life bird up on a rock on a hill along with road! We walked onto the tundra a bit and spotted a beautiful American Golden Plover whose back was sparkling in the sun. We also watched a few Long Tailed Jaegars sitting on nests!

On the return trip we tried for the Bluethroat again for a very short time and the group split up, some wanted to stay for hopefully better looks at the Bluethroat while others including us started back to look for Gyrfalcon (which we didn’t find), Wandering Tattler and Golden Eagle. We spotted the Tattler in the river but it flew deeper away from the road so we bushwhacked a bit and got great looks. We also spotted a White Wagtail fly over and had some nice looks at Yellow Wagtails. Dinner was at the Vietnamese restaurant in Nome. 4:45 AM departure tomorrow morning for the Bristle Thighed Curlew.