The Deskbound Birder: Alaska - 3rd June (Day 7)

Friday 3 June 2016

Alaska - 3rd June (Day 7)

An early start (05:15) for an exciting day, we loaded the car and headed down to the harbour at Seward to meet Jim for our boat trip out into the Kenai Fjords. The charter boat was the smaller of Jim’s two boats being faster and more nimble than his larger boat, we had chartered the boat from 06:00-14:00 for $1,298, Jim’s website is www.alaskawhalewatchingtours.com, Jim knows the location of the key birds and is constantly in touch with other boatman for sightings of cetaceans, birds etc. We spent the morning and early afternoon around the fjords, the scenery was spectacular with high forest and snow clad mountains dropping steeply into the sea. Birds included Black Oystercatcher (2), Bald Eagle (4), Parakeet Auklet (50), Tufted Puffin (many), Horned Puffin (many), Marbled Murrelet (c.50), Pigeon Guillemot (30), Common Guillemot (many), Black-legged Kittiwake (many), Goosander (10) and Red-throated Diver (2). Four stunning Dall’s Porpoise joined us bow-riding for a while before heading off and then being relocated a few minutes apparently in a feeding frenzy. Not far on we encountered two Orca, a male and a female which gave good and prolonged views. The highlight was spending just over an hour in the water amongst the ice at the foot of Glacier Aialik here Glaucous-winged Gull, Sea Otter and Harbour Seal were hauled out on the ice while our target, Kittlitz’s Murrelet was present with around seven present in the glacial waters. It was a fantastic experience spending time at the face of the immense glacier with occasional ice falls and gun cracks as the glacier slid down the valley.

All too soon it was time to head off and we were on our 350m trip northwards via Anchorage to Denali National Park, we eventually arrived at around 21:30, checked into the Denali Cabins located eight miles south of the National Park entrance, we had dinner and crashed.