North (Seattle) to Alaska 6/9--GLAUCOUS-WINGED GULL, Pigeon Guillemot, Bewick's Wren, Spotted Towhee

We took a cruise to southeast Alaska last week. It left from Seattle in the afternoon, so we had time to explore the neighborhood around our hotel in North Seattle, as well as to look for some birds in the harbor while waiting for the ship to leave.

I thought we had our first lifer of the trip when I saw a crow. According to Sibley's range maps, American Crows are not in the extreme NW corner of the US. Instead, they are "replaced" by the virtually identical Northwestern Crow. Sibley says the only way to to distinguish them is by voice. These crows all sounded somewhere between American and Fish Crows. However, he also adds that American Crows in the Northwest sound different than they do in the rest of the country. Still, I thought the crows we were seeing were good for Northwestern. But, according to eBird, American Crows are present in Seattle and Northwestern Crow is not listed as an option--instead you can opt for American/Northwestern Crow. Having no expert around, that's how I listed them. Getting Northwestern Crow would have to wait. (To 98% of the population, American, Fish, & Northwestern Crows, and probably ravens too, are all simply "crows.")

Walking around the neighborhood we saw common, expected birds & two FOY--a small flock of Bewick's Wrens & a Spotted Towhee singing in a tree. 10 or so years ago this wouldn't have been a new bird since back then it was lumped in with our Eastern Towhee and known as the Rufous-Sided Towhee.
North Seattle
Great Blue Heron  1
Northern Flicker  2
American/Northwestern Crow  20
Black-capped Chickadee  2    Heard
Red-breasted Nuthatch  1
Bewick's Wren  5
American Robin  4
European Starling  5
Spotted Towhee  1
Dark-eyed Junco  3
House Sparrow  1


Our first lifer came in the parking lot of a Sam's Club across from our hotel: GLAUCOUS-WINGED GULL--a very common bird on the west coast but one we missed last year in California. 


From the ship we could see a large flock of shorebirds on the jetty--judging from what should still be around in June they probably Black Turnstones, but they were so far away I couldn't legitimately call them. 


We did see a Pigeon Guillemot fly by for our first alcid of the trip. In the harbor there were lots more of the Glaucous-winged Gulls--when they're wheeling around in the air they're pretty hard to tell apart from boring old Herring Gulls. 

Seattle from aboard MS Westerdam
Photo: Shari Zirlin

Aboard MS Westerdam 6/10--NORTHERN FULMAR, LEACH'S STORM-PETREL

We sailed all day off the west coasts of Vancouver and Queen Charlotte's Islands. To get exercise, I walked, vigorously, around the promenade deck (3 laps = 1 mile) and on about the 4th lap I added LEACH'S STORM-PETREL to my life list. It was pretty easy to spot, a little bird with a white butt dancing atop the swells.

Later, sitting on our 'veranda,' Shari & I spotted 2 NORTHERN FULMARS fairly close up to the ship. Again, they had all the proper field marks.

So, 2 lifers in the North Pacific &, incidentally, 2 birds added to the Canadian list.

Juneau 6/11--NORTHWESTERN CROW, Mew Gull, Common Raven, Varied Thrush

Our port of call, Juneau, didn't work out as well as I had hoped. It started off propitiously coming up the harbor, Mew Gulls, Bald Eagles, & crows that were definitely NORTHWESTERN CROWS.

But, while Shari went panning for gold (too touristy for me), I had planned to bird Gold Creek Basin, not realizing what a hike it would be nor just how quickly Juneau peters out to wilderness.

15 minute walk outside Juneau

Once I had crossed this plank bridge I was still only about 3/4 of the way to destination, so I did some arithmetic in my head & realized that wouldn't have enough time to the bird the trail & be back in time to meet Shari.

I was beginning to bird along the road itself but along came a rain shower and looking into a tree for birds through water droplets on glasses and binoculars was not going to work. 

Walking out of town I hadn't huffed & puffed so much since the last time I was in San Francisco. They have impressive hills in Juneau. Still, people are determined to live on these hills. How these people expect to get their groceries into their new home, much less their furniture, I don't know.

Photo: Shari Zirlin

Back downtown I did run into a lot of Common Ravens--they are humongous and really quite impressive if you enjoy looking at ugly birds.

In the harbor, there were Pigeon Guillemots and even though they're relatively common, I just don't get to see alcids very often. 

Shari & I rendezvoused @ 4 & rode the Mt.Roberts Tramway 1800 vertical feet to the top. It was very much like riding the A train @ rush hour.

We had planned to walk & bird the 1/2 mile Alpine Loop, but it has been a cool spring in SE Alaska and snow has not melted, leaving parts of the trail covered with slushy snow over ice. Neither of us  felt like dealing with winter walking conditions in June, especially as we would have been slogging behind 50 non-birding, bird scaring tourists. 

We did take some pictures

Juneau from Mt. Roberts
Photo: Shari Zirlin

MS Westerdam from Mt. Roberts

So the only bird we added up there was Varied Thrush--we heard a couple clearly singing. There were other birds to be found up there, I'm sure, but every time we'd stop to look & listen, we'd be hit by an onslaught of tourists & their kids, so we had a drink & a snack at the restaurant & rode down the mountain, back to the ship.

Juneau

Black Scoter	Juneau Harbor
Great Blue Heron	Juneau Harbor
Bald Eagle	Juneau Harbor
Bonaparte's Gull	Juneau Harbor
Mew Gull	Juneau Harbor
Pigeon Guillemot	Juneau Harbor
Rock Pigeon	Juneau--downtown
NORTHWESTERN CROW	Juneau Harbor
Common Raven	Juneau--downtown
Tree Swallow	Juneau--downtown
Barn Swallow	Juneau--downtown
American Robin	Mt. Roberts Tramway
Varied Thrush	Mt. Roberts Tramway

Glacier Bay 6/12--MARBLED MURRELET, TUFTED PUFFIN, Pacific Loon, Pelagic Cormorant, Black-legged Kittiwake, Arctic Tern, Common Murre

More than half the species we saw today were lifers or FOY.

I can't begin to express just how amazing Glacier Bay is. It was definitely the highlight of the entire trip. Shari took lots of photos and I'll just let them try to speak to the bay's magnificence.

Grand Pacific Glacier, 2 miles wide, 42 miles long.

Margerie Glacier 250 ft high

Margerie Glacier spewing ice into the bay

Iceberg

Bald Eagle on iceberg

Black-legged Kittiwake

The birding highlights were the 2 lifers--a total of 7 TUFTED PUFFINS in 3 groups--not "field guide looks" but we saw them well enough to i.d. them both flying & in the water, & MARBLED MURRELETS--little flying footballs of the sea.
Glacier Bay
White-winged Scoter  27
Pacific Loon  2
Pelagic Cormorant  20
Bald Eagle  6
Black-legged Kittiwake  100
Bonaparte's Gull  1
Glaucous-winged Gull  15
Arctic Tern  20
Common Murre  1
Pigeon Guillemot  3
MARBLED MURRELET  10
TUFTED PUFFIN 7

Sitka 6/13--RED-BREASTED SAPSUCKER, Swainson's Thrush, Chestnut-backed Chickadee, Townsend's Warbler, Lincoln's Sparrow

Photo: Shari Zirlin

Sitka is, let us say, an unprepossessing town, too small to have a cruise ship dock--we had to be "tendered in" by one of the lifeboats that do double-duty as water taxis.

Shari had signed us up for a birding watching tour and while I realize that these sorts of shore excursions are geared toward the lowest common denominator, I didn't expect the tour guide to be in that cohort. Not only did I know more about birding than she did, I knew more about Alaska birding than she did.

However, get us to a place with birds and we'll do okay. The trip was to a wetlands of the Starrigavan Estuary. They were especially wet since it rained almost the entire time we were there. We heard lots of birds, starting in the parking lot. No matter what we heard, the guide identified it as Swainson's Thrush. I did hear a thrush very similar to a Veery. According to Sibley, that was the Swainson's.

The big moment of the day was when I saw a RED-BREASTED SAPSUCKER land on a tree trunk, giving us "field guide looks." There were a few serious birders on the trip, & one of them, Anne, from Texas, was as thrilled to see it as we were. One more--Williamson's--and we'll have all the world's sapsuckers.

There were a couple of novice birders from Singapore with us--everything they saw was a life bird. I envied them, in a way. A sweet moment was when one of them spotted a Lincoln's Sparrow sitting on the branch of a tree. 
As I said, the weather was lousy--they don't call it a rain forest for nothing--but after the trip we made our way via shuttle bus to Sitka National Historic Park--site of a great battle between the Russians and Native People (guess who won) to look totem poles that have been there for about 100 years. There we happy to find a few Chestnut-backed Chickadees and 1 spectacular Townsend's Warbler. The warbler was hopping around in low brush and branches & I was looking through two sets of rain splattered lenses, but all at once it popped into view, perfect & bright, & I almost jumped out of my shoes.

So given the conditions, I thought Sitka was successful & productive stop.

Sitka

Common Merganser	Starrigavan Estuary
Common Loon	Starrigavan Estuary
Great Blue Heron	Starrigavan Estuary
Bald Eagle	Outside Crescent Bay
Belted Kingfisher	Starrigavan Estuary
RED-BREASTED SAPSUCKER	Starrigavan Estuary
Common Raven	Starrigavan Estuary
Tree Swallow	Starrigavan Estuary
Barn Swallow	Starrigavan Estuary
Chestnut-backed Chickadee	Sitka Nat. Historical Park
Swainson's Thrush	Starrigavan Estuary
Hermit Thrush	Starrigavan Estuary
American Robin	Starrigavan Estuary
Varied Thrush	Starrigavan Estuary
Townsend's Warbler	Sitka Nat. Historical Park
Lincoln's Sparrow	Starrigavan Estuary

Here I am, low man on the etc. 

British Columbia 6/15--BLACK-FOOTED ALBATROSS, RHINOCEROS AUKLET, CASSIN'S AUKLET

We made a stop in Ketchikan on the 14th, another dreary Alaskan town surviving almost solely on tourism, where we toured a tiny part of the Tongass National Forest on an island that we reached by zodiac boat. In the picture, I'm not that happy & Shari isn't upset.

Eagles were everywhere. I was amused that by now it hadn't occurred to the rest of our tour mates that eagles in Alaska are as common as pigeons in New York. No one (except us) gets tired of seeing them and the guides seem determined to point out every one of them.

After Ketchikan we retraced our route down the west coast the British Columbia islands we'd passed on the way north. Early in the morning I was again taking my vigorous constitutional when I saw a huge bird flying near the boat. I got good looks at its features, particularly its white tail coverts--BLACK-FOOTED ALBATROSS. Another passenger saw me looking intently at the bird and asked what I was seeing. When I told her a bird she was disappointed--the people on the cruise with binoculars were mostly looking for killer whales another thing that amused me. It isn't like the whale is going to floating on top of the sea like a boat. You see a tail fin, you see the top of the head when it spouts, you see a lot of splashing. Not interesting to me.

Later in the day, Shari was sitting on the veranda when she banged on the glass door to call me. She'd spotted a huge bird sailing almost below our railing. My first reaction was fulmar, but after we looked at the pictures, we realized she had gotten her lifer Black-footed Albatross--this one was a juvenile since it had no white on its tail, but we did see some white on its face, not visible in the photo.

Farther south we began seeing flocks of little black birds too far out to identify, but I was pretty sure they were auklets. I did see one Common Murre fairly decently. Finally we saw two black birds a little closer in than they'd been earlier. Shari took some photos. One bird had a stripe on its face & an orange bill--according to the book Parakeet Auklet, but according to eBird, not there in that season. The only other auklet with a stripe is RHINOCEROUS AUKLET. Floating nearby was another auklet, with a gray bill--this, I'm certain, was the common CASSIN'S AUKLET. I'd sure like to see them better and have the feeling I'm going to be returning to the Pacific Northwest to do so.

We made a brief stop in Victoria. While Shari went to tour the famous Butchart Gardens, which she raved about, I took a long walk from the dock to Beacon Hill Park. Nothing of note there, but I did add a couple of birds to the trip list.
British Columbia

Canada Goose	Ogden Point Breakwater
BLACK-FOOTED ALBATROSS		Aboard MS Westerdam
Glaucous-winged Gull		Juan de Fuca Strait
Common Murre		Juan de Fuca Strait
Pigeon Guillemot		Ogden Point Breakwater
CASSIN'S AUKLET		Juan de Fuca Strait
RHINOCEROS AUKLET		Juan de Fuca Strait
Rock Pigeon		Ogden Point Breakwater
Northwestern Crow		Beacon Hill Park
Common Raven		Beacon Hill Park
Barn Swallow		Ogden Point Breakwater
American Robin		Beacon Hill Park
European Starling		Beacon Hill Park
Song Sparrow		Beacon Hill Park
House Finch		Beacon Hill Park
House Sparrow		Beacon Hill Park

Lakehurst NAES 6/7--UPLAND SANDPIPER, GRASSHOPPER SPARROW, 2 FOY

A couple of times in June of every year, NJ Audubon runs a trip to the Lakehurst Naval Aviation Engineering Station (think: Hindenburg disaster--"Oh, the humanity!"). Since it is a military base (part of the vast Fort Dix-McGuire Airbase complex) this is about the only time a birder can get onto the grasslands there and see the rare breeders that are found on one of the few remaining habitats of this type in the state. Shari & I have always wanted to go, but when we lived in Brooklyn, the logistics never worked out. Now we live 15 minutes away from the base. Its blimps fly over our house. The logistics worked out just fine this morning.

About 20 birders caravanned through the base, escorted by the base naturalist and one of its foresters. They first led us to the the "drop circle" a huge expanse used for parachute practice. Almost immediately a GRASSHOPPER SPARROW was noted, sitting and singing on the branch of a tiny pine tree in the middle of the field. Grasshopper Sparrows are hard to find in NJ and this was the first lifer of the day for us. Soon, a few Horned Larks were spotted on the road that we had just come in on, and then, behind us, an Eastern Meadowlark was spotted in some low grass in the field.

Then we saw the bird we had really come for: UPLAND SANDPIPER was heard calling as it flew along the tree line. 2nd lifer. We got decent looks at it in flight and then another. Walking back toward where the Horned Larks were we all scanned the field and soon we found one standing up in the grass. We could see its tiny head and long, and when the light it just right, its yellow bill. Pete Bacinski, of NJ Audubon said that in NJ the only places that they breed were there in Lakehurst, Atlantic City Airport, another airport I forget and more than probably Newark Airport! Airports with their open necessary open spaces provide perfect habitat for this non-shore shorebird.

We got a treat when another naturalist on the base drove up with the task of banding juvenile Grasshopper Sparrows. She marched through the field to the previous marked nest and took 2 of 4 sparrows out of the nest, placed them in a sack and came back to the road to measure and band them. One weighed 14 1/2 grams, the other a pinch over 13 grams. You could mail both of them with a first class stamp!

While she was walking back, she accidentally came too close to another specie's nest and flush a Common Nighthawk, affording us just fantastic looks at the bird with it sweeping flight and tell-tale white spots in the middle of the wings. She carefully place an orange flag near the nest so she could come back and band the babies in that one too.

While we were in that area a couple of more "Uppies" flew by very close and we studied their distinct flight pattern, a sort of stuttering flapping followed by a glide.

The caravan continued along a road with forest on one side and an open field full of utility poles on the other. Pete knew that it was a good spot to find American Kestrel and sure enough, one flew on to the top of a pole and posed while we all broke out the scopes. Just to the right, on a guy wire, a good-looking Eastern Bluebird perched.

Our last stop was a pond with a bog nearby where we saw Least Tern flying over the bog (very rare this far inland, though I wasn't surprised considering that we were probably about 5 miles away from Horicon Lake where I've been seeing them this spring). In a tall tree near where we all parked there was the most vociferous, multi-song Northern Mockingbird I'd ever heard. You could practice ear birding just listening to that mocker. It even mimicked a catbird--that I'd never heard--one mimid impersonating another.

A truly great morning of birding and I look forward to going back next year.

Our day list:

23 species
Canada Goose  11
Wild Turkey  5
Great Blue Heron  1    f/o Cathedral of the Air parking lot
Turkey Vulture  4
Bald Eagle  1
American Kestrel  1
UPLAND SANDPIPER  5
Least Tern  1
Mourning Dove  2
Common Nighthawk  2
Eastern Kingbird  1
Horned Lark  5
Tree Swallow  5
Barn Swallow  4
Eastern Bluebird  1
Northern Mockingbird  1
Common Yellowthroat  1    Heard
Eastern Towhee  1    Heard
Chipping Sparrow  1    Heard
GRASSHOPPER SPARROW  5    Watched as 2 juveniles were banded
Red-winged Blackbird  2
Eastern Meadowlark  1
Common Grackle  1