The Deskbound Birder

Saturday, 4 June 2016

Alaska - 4th June (Day 8)

Today was to be a long day, we started at 06:30 and headed in to the Denali National Park, we were unable to enter the park until 10:00 so birded the 15 miles of accessible park before the main entrance gate. It was fairly slow going but we saw Grey Jay, White-crowned Sparrow, American Tree Sparrow, Wilson’s Warbler and Yellow Warbler. Denali Mountain, the highest peak in North America at 6190m and the only to exceed 6000m, was showing well even though located 76m from where we stood. The park has a system whereby one can only enter via a shuttle bus which takes you through the park as far as you want and you are able to hop on and off buses wherever you wish. However, this does mean that you are stuck on a bus with general tourists and the whole experience was somewhat painful so as soon as we got to Polychrome Mountain, about two hours into the park, we hoped off and spent the rest of our time here birding and enjoying the fantastic view. Highlights here were two distant Grizzly Bear, Northern Harrier, Peregrine of the race tundrius, Golden-crowned Sparrow and White-crowned Sparrow but the view was mind blowing and it was worth the journey just for this. We jumped on a 14:00 bus and were back at the park entrance by 16:15.

Moose - Denali National Park. This female had twin calves and we watched her at

close range just outside the park entrance.

Moose - Denali National Park

Moose calf - Denali National Park

American Tree Sparrow - Denali National Park

The snow covered Mount Denali in the distance (approximately 70 miles away)

Arctic Ground Squirrel - Denali National Park

Denali National Park

White-crowned Sparrow - Denali National Park

Peregrine of race tundrius - Denali National Park

Mountain peak - Denali National Park

We had a 135 mile drive between Cantwell and Paxson along the Denali Highway. The route passes from spruce forest in the west to tundra in the east and as a result of this birding along this route is exceptional and so we made many stops the highlights being Red Fox Sparrow, Grey-cheeked Thrush, Blackpoll Warbler, Cliff Swallow, Greater Yellowlegs, Lesser Yellowlegs, Slavonian Grebe, Northern Shrike, Bufflehead, Willow Ptarmigan, White-crowned Sparrow and Merlin of the race columbarius. We eventually arrived at the Denali Highway Cabins just to the west of Paxson at 00:30.

Blackpoll Warbler - Denali Highway

North American Porcupine - Denali Highway

Grey-cheeked Thrush- Denali Highway

Merlin of race columbarius - Denali Highway

White-crowned Sparrow - Denali Highway

Red Fox Sparrow - Denali Highway

Willow Ptarmigan - Denali Highway

Denali Highway

Links to the other days of the trip (click to view)

Day 1 – Background, international flights and Anchorage

Day 2 (Part 1) – Anchorage

Day 2 (Part 2) – St. Paul, Pribolofs

Day 3 - St. Paul, Pribolofs

Day 4 - St. Paul, Pribolofs

Day 5 - St. Paul, Pribolofs then fly to Anchorage

Day 6 –Seward

Day 7 – Kenai Fjords cruise then drive to Denali

Day 9 – Paxton Area of Denali Highway

Day 10 – Drive Paxton to Anchorage

Day 11 – Nome

Day 12 – Nome

Day 13 – Nome

Day 14 – Nome and travel to Barrow

Day 15 (Part 1) – Barrow

Day 15 (Part 2) – Barrow

Day 16 – Barrow

Day 17 – Barrow then travel back to Anchorage and international fli

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.