Arctic Update!

So obviously a lot has been going on in the last three, almost four weeks of June. Where to start? I guess a little from the beginning. I was not intending to come back this year, it was a fluke that someone quit and I was asked if I wanted to come back, and made the decision to do just that. And with all of the other things happening in my life, it was a good fit. So here I am.

Musk Ox

It has been quite a different year so far. First off, the Kuparuk bridge was temporarily out again this year, but not for as long as last year. So we have been out there to do our surveys regularly without any problems. Well, except the other day there was a bear in the area so we did not do surveys that day. Speaking of bears! We have pretty regularly seen bears this year. Always from pretty far away, unfortunately no good picture opportunities. Yesterday, we saw a sow and cub near a group of 18 musk oxen with a few calves.

Up until a few days ago, we have been seeing a lot more Pomarine Jaegers. They typically only stick around if it is a good lemming year, since they are fairly dependent on them as a food source. I even found a Pom nest! We haven't checked it in awhile, but the other crew said they were not around when they were out by it a couple of days ago. I think we will be out that way tomorrow, so I can check on it then. I wouldn't be surprised if they have just abandoned it since we have seen less Poms and not many Snowy Owls (another species that sticks around for the lemmings) or lemmings for that matter.

Probably the only decent pic I will get of a Pom.

Pomarine Jaeger nest

The rehab pads have been fairly active. Not so much for birds on them, as much as birds nesting on them. We have 6 different species nesting on 5 of the 10 different sites. Two of the species, a Lapland Longspur and a Cackling Goose are on the edge of the pad, but do count. Of course we have our typical Semipalmated Plover nests, but we also have a Greater Scaup nest, two King Eider nests and a Short-eared Owl nest. The owl nest since yesterday has 7 eggs. 7 EGGS! I doubt they will all hatch and fledge, but we are hopeful a few will make it and we can see some cute little owlets.

Short-eared Owl nest

Lapland Longspur nest

Semipalmated Plover nest

I am currently taking a class through Coursera on Animal Behavior, or Behaviour, as the Aussies say. One of the class assignments is to have a field journal blog on a species. So I chose to do it on the Parasitic Jaeger pairs that are nesting near one of our rehab pads and a pair of long-term monitoring plots. I have fallen in love with them, and feel that I can ask some interesting questions, that could even turn into a future project if I find a way to pursue it. You can find that blog at this link.

Parasitic Jaeger nest

Dark-morph Parasitic Jaeger

The artificial nest project has not fared well this year. The Haul road transect was alright the first time we checked it, we lost a little over half the nests, but it wasn't so bad. Endicott however, failed miserably. We had a total of 8 nests survive the first check, out of 60. We had our fourth check today, and we have now completely lost Endicott. The first check we had an Arctic Fox predation and a Pomarine Jaeger predation caught on camera. The second check we had three camera nests get eaten by, likely a single pair of Parasitic Jaegers. I hypothesize this pair was in the same territory last year and have cued in our cameras as a source of an easy meal, and they just cleaned up this year. I guess we will see what happens with our second trial when we get that set-up. But, the failure of these nests have given me some free time to write today, and watch the U.S. World Cup match! Go USA!

A tasty nest, just for us? Don't mind if we do!

The Halibut Fishing Capital of the World

Day 4 of Alaskan Adventures with Joey

Mmm, tasty!

Our first, and only full day in Homer, so we drove down the 'spit' to find some seafood and look at boats. We originally discussed getting a boat taxi to take us across Kachemak Bay so we could hike around some glaciers and look for wildlife, but they were all really expensive. Oh well, we still had a good day and it was actually kind of nice to have a more mellow day. Well, it was mostly mellow.

We walked around on the spit, looking at the shops and boats. The Time Bandit, made famous on "Deadliest Catch" is docked in Homer, so we did the obligatory tourist shots of it. We stopped over at Captain Pattie's for some Kachemak Bay oysters, chowder and a beer. Afterwards, we went to Homer Brewing company to get some Alaskan beer. It was a cute little place, and a pretty tasty porter (China Poot Porter). We took our beer back to our cute little guest house and watched the Sandhill Cranes.

AMERICA! 

Teehee, *snort*.

That's a lot of netting!

So many fishing things everywhere! 

Time Bandit

Time Bandit and Joey

Homer Brewing Mascot

Our peaceful guesthouse

View from the back patio of the guesthouse

She also rents this yurt! You have to use an outhouse if you stay here.

Sandhill Crane flying by the guesthouse

Interestingly, we spotted a Northwestern Crow with an odd bill deformity. These are the best pictures I could get of it.

After that, the day got a little crazy! We wanted to go do a hike, and found this one where you get to climb down to the beach at low tide. It sounded pretty nice, and we would have gotten down as the tide would have started coming in, but the trail was closed. Actually, that didn't stop us. No, getting chased off the trail by a moose did though! We made it 100 ft or so down the trail when we saw a moose just standing in the middle of it. She looked at us for awhile and then started walking down the trail, so we sort of meandered with her. After another 100 ft or so, she turned around and started walking toward us. So we walked back with the moose following us all the way to the car. As soon as I opened the door, she wasn't having it, and went on her merry way. A little nerve-racking, but I think she was only curious and never seemed agitated by our presence.

Communing with nature.

After our experience with the moose we walked down to the beach then got some food and went home. I am not sure, writing this almost three weeks in to the field season if this is all that happened. But it is as much as I can recall. I will also write a quick update on what is going on here before I do the final post for the Alaskan Adventures with Joey.

 

Kenai Fijords

Day 3 of Alaskan Adventures with Joey

We got up early to drive down to Seward for our 11:30 Kenai Fijords boat tour.  The drive was pretty but we both slept through parts of it. We got into Seward a little over an hour before our tour. The tour was 6 hours long, give or take a half hour. Rather than bore you with all of the details, I'll just give the story of it through pictures. Needless to say, some new species for me!

Alaska sure is pretty.

Leaving the dock and monster cruise ship.

OTTERS!

ORCA!

This is one of the members of the AK6 pod. At least that is what I remember our captain saying. There was a research vessel that was following them around.

Horned Puffin

Common Murres 

Steller Sea Lions

A bunch of seabirds nest on the little islands. The tour boat went around some of those, specifically the Chat, Matushka and Chiswell Islands. Here we saw many Common Murres. The captain called them "flying potatoes" because they are fairly clumsy or inept fliers. They are not able to change direction that easily and hence come at you like a flying potato. I thought it was a pretty funny description of them. They are much more capable swimmers and divers, sort of like the penguins of the north, but with the ability to fly even if not that well. The Horned and Tufted Puffins were around these islands too. I've seen Tufted in Oregon, but there are no Horned there so it was a treat to see them as well.

Just some gulls. Galucous-winged Gulls that is. 

Not the best picture of a colony of Black-legged Kittiwakes.

It's as if I am looking up a giant's nose.

We looked at some more islands with breeding colonies of birds, more specifically one with a TON of Black-legged Kittiwakes. The picture above does not do it justice. The video below does. It was a very surreal experience, maybe even something akin to "The Birds." Not completely, since they were not trying to kill everyone on the boat, but they were going a bit crazy since there was a juvenile Bald Eagle trying to pick some of them off.

We finally reached the Aialik Glacier after some time on the boat. All of the glaciers in Kenai Fijords National Park are part of the Harding Ice Field which covers over half of the 669,983-acre park. The ice is several thousand feet thick. A look into the last ice age, these giant moving ice floes carve the valleys and fijords as they recede. It is strange imagining what this glacier looked like just a decade ago and how much farther it stretched before reaching the salty waters of the Gulf of Alaska.

I tried to get all of these in a line but it didn't quite work out, but you get the idea. Look at the tiny boat next to the giant glacier!

We spent a good 30-45 minutes watching the ice move. We had some pretty spectacular calving events (when large pieces of ice break from the glacier and fall into the water) as you can see in some of my pictures.

Our stoic captain and Aialik.

Harbor seal on ice in front of the glacier.

Glacier calving

Unfortunately, we didn't get to spend a lot of time in the Seward area, but would like to see more of it someday. Especially because we missed checking out the Alaska SeaLife Center, which I was super excited about. Aside from all of the other excuses (Denali) to come back to Alaska, that one is on the top of my list!

Black-legged Kittiwake

As we drove to Homer, the sky was darkened by smoke clouds from the forest fires. It gave a false sense of twilight or sunset, and was quite beautiful. Most wildfires in Alaska are allowed to burn, since it is a natural part of the ecosystem. However, if they threaten people's lives and homes, they will fight them.

With the end of this post, I must say that it took me a very long time to get this one together. I again apologize for that, but I do have a limited amount of free time at the moment, and a slow internet connection. But I appreciate all of you regularly checking it and promise that I will get more out as soon as I can! 

Bikes and Moose

Day 2 of Alaskan Adventures with Joey

After traveling all day and doing the hike the previous evening we were pretty pooped, so we slept in to about 10. With a quick bagel for breakfast in the morning, we walked down to the Tony Knowles Coastal Trail to check it out and walk over to Earthquake Park.

Sandhill Crane hanging out on the tidal zone

In 1964 a 9.2 earthquake devastated south central Alaska. 75 homes that sat on Bootlegger cove clay cliffs in Cook Inlet were destroyed in a landslide. Apparently Earthquake Park used to contain the debris from these homes, but has since filled in with trees and other vegetation. Later, we drove over to hike in Kincaid Park. Big mistake. It was fairly nice, and is one of the largest mountain biking and motocross tracks in the country (at least I think it is), which doubles as a cross-country skiing trail in the winter time.

Oh really?

But it may also have contained the highest density of mosquitoes in all of Anchorage. We were bit often and they really loved Joey. Poor guy had so many bites on his forehead... Sorry babe. After that fiasco, we went to dinner at Mamma O's Seafood. The only place in Anchorage where you can eat fish and chips with some udon if you so desire. It was pretty good, and decently priced for seafood.

Old VW Bug in Kincaid Park

Joey found a place where we could rent bicycles for a pretty good deal. If you rent after 5:30, you get the bikes for $16 a person and can return them at closing at 10pm or the next morning before 9am. It is called Downtown Bicycle Rental for those that may find themselves in Anchorage in the future. This trip was also the first time either one of us saw a moose and a moose calf! We spotted some people looking at something on the trail as we were riding by and when we stopped to ask them, we saw a female moose. They kept calling it a male, but whatever. She moved a bit and then we noticed she had a calf. They weren't too close so we were not worried but far enough that pictures weren't great. 

Our mighty steeds

We continued our ride and got out on some coastal bluffs at Point Woronzof and watched some planes fly right over head for a little while.

Semi-crappy photo of Downtown Anchorage from Point Woronzof

People on the beach below

Then we made it all the way to Kincaid Park on the trail; but we didn't stop or walk around inside the park since we learned our lesson earlier. When we passed the spot with the moose and calf on the way back they had moved quite a bit and created some excellent opportunities for picture taking! They didn't seem to care that we were there, and we weren't a threat so they kept moving and got really close. It was a nice end to a long, 18 mile bike ride.

Chowing down

Checking on baby

Getting a drink

I'm slowly getting these out. I have been pretty busy up here and it is only going to be busier as the days progress. So stay tuned!