Continued (but much slower) Momentum

Yes… I have gotten behind in blog posts.

Proving that bad luck comes in three’s: in one week my Honda was stolen from my son in Florida, I broke my ankle, and my computer crashed.  The car has been found, but being held hostage by ASAP Towing & Storage in Jacksonville who won’t release it to Warren (or even let damage be inspected) until we can find a notary in the boonies of Alaska or Western Canada to provide him an original notarized document with permission to bail it out.  I have a cast, and can now help Chuck with enough camping duties that we decided we can at least continue, although with limited birding, since our 2015 Big Year Our Way rules require that we both identify the bird before adding it to our list. Staying with Chuck’s sister Salinda in Sainte-Marthe-Sur-le-Lac, Quebec allowed Chuck access to internet and the ability to upload fixes to my computer WITHOUT losing any of my files!  So… I begin catch up with Alaska and Western Canada birding travel:

We began our Alaska adventure by loading the van on to the Alaska Marine Highway Ferry in Bellingham Washington.  The first of our three ferry trips was 37 hours and included two nights.  When researching the trip, the website described what seemed like a romantic notion- to sleep under the stars on the back deck… in our own tent.  As we made our final preparations to board we aborted that plan.  What could I have been thinking? In my mind we are still in our 30’s.  Instead, with no state room booked, we opted for the next best option- sleeping on the heated solarium deck lounge chairs with about 30 other “campers”.  I also expected to bird from the ferry, but as it turns out, birding was severely limited by the level of vibration affecting use of the scope.  Instead of a focus on pelagic birds, we enjoyed stupendous scenery, sunsets, a rainbow, breaching whale, and a bit of a break from birding.

Our first stopover was Ketchikan where we got off the ferry for a one night stay at the Signal Creek National Forest Campground at Ward Lake.  We were disappointed with finding only one new species in the Ketchikan area, the Mew Gull, but did appreciate watching two clutches of Common Merganser chicks with their mothers.   For a birding location, Ketchikan was not our best choice, seeming mostly a cruise ship shopping stop.

The second Ferry stop in Juneau, though a huge cruise ship shopping stop in the downtown area, turned out to be a much better birding option. We stayed at the Mendenhall Glacier National Forest Campground for 3 nights. A 7 a.m. arrival was too early to check into our campsite so we
went right to the Glacier Visitor Center where, in near solitude, we were able to view the majesty of the glacier and get in a bit of birding.  Pictures we had seen of the glacier and even Chuck’s great shots cannot portray the wonder of seeing this blue ice in person.  Just before the visitor center opened, we spoke with a forest service employee who told us that over ½ million people will come to this visitor center this and that his main jobs were crowd control and traffic direction. Until we saw the crowds that began arriving, busload after busload from the THREE cruise ships docked in town, we didn’t really comprehend the importance of his job.  Luckily, we saw a White-winged Crossbill to add to our list before the birds were chased deeper into the woods by the thousands of tourists that visited that day.

Our unusually good weather luck finally ran out… We traveled Oregon, Washington, Ketchikan, and the first day and half of Juneau with beautifully warm sunny weather- unseasonable for temperate rainforests.  We put our rain gear to good use birding at Eagle Beach, where I walked toward the incredibly lifelike Eagle statue set up on a post on the beach, only to stop short when its head turned; majestic! There were easily 9 Eagles in one tree overlooking the beach; Eagles seem almost as common in Alaska as laughing gulls are back home.  In addition to seeing Eagles, we added three new birds, the Brant, Eurasian Wigeon, and Black Oyster Catcher. Later that day we found three more new species, Red Crossbill, Thayer’s Gull, and Western Wood-Pewee at the Shrine of St. Terese.  Beginning in Oregon, throughout Washington, and then up to this point, we had been searching for the MacGillivray’s Warbler. There had been times we were sure that we were hearing its call but we couldn’t get the bird to appear in our binoculars.  Finally, our last day in Juneau, following a location tip from a local birder, we heard the call and actually saw the bird… briefly, but enough to identify it.  A successful conclusion to our visit to Juneau.

We boarded the ferry by 5 am on June 5^th, Chuck’s 60^th Birthday, celebrating it in Haines that evening with Chuck’s golfing buddy Dan Harrington and his friend Sally. Dan met us at the dock, welcomed us to his home, toured us in and around Haines, and even cooked for us. From Dan’s living room window we had a beautiful view of the bay, and as luck would have it, one of the birds we were looking for, a Red Necked Grebe.  Dan happened upon Haines 35 years ago, loved the area, and stayed. 
As our tour guide and storyteller extraordinaire, we enjoyed a trip into Canada where he knew that we could find Ptarmigan; sure enough we found Willow Ptarmigan.   Chuck was happy to be able to play a round of golf in Alaska, on AstroTurf greens no less, while I visited some of the Haines museums.  I was struck by one exhibit which focused on survival and self-sufficiency skills and heard a docent declare with pride how much they can do without; this has been a refrain that I have heard throughout Alaska. How refreshing and inspiring it seems to me at this phase in life. Unfortunately we had to leave Dan, who was so incredibly generous in sharing the local culture, history, and wildlife with incredible knowledge and passion.  Thank you again, Dan!

From here we were on our own again, traveling into the Alaska mainland.