Birder’s Notebook

DOWNY WOODPECKER – A male downy woodpecker is filling up on suet at a Dexter bird feeder. Three downy woodpeckers were seen this year, more than ever before in the Christmas count.

Christmas Bird Count yields a record number of species

It’s surprising how often the mid-December weather smiles on Nome’s Christmas bird count. But this year, for the 49th count, conditions were far from ideal. In the predawn hours of December 14, the...

BREEDING PAIR— A pair of rock ptarmigan pose in their rocky, alpine tundra habitat in early May during courtship. The male is in white courtship plumage, displaying his prominent red eye-combs. He keeps this plumage until his mate begins incubation and is no longer fertile. The female has already started transitioning into her summer camouflage. By the end of May she is brown, and able to sit unseen on her nest in the tundra.

Rock Ptarmigan ––A hardy grouse of the uplands

For the last two years, ptarmigan have been plentiful on the Seward Peninsula. They have been a boon to subsistence hunters, the wildlife that feeds on them, and anyone who enjoys watching their huge...

SIZE COMPARISON – Black-legged kittiwakes and a short-billed gull, both with black in their wingtips, are fishing next to a large glaucous-winged gull with gray in its wingtips, all in breeding plumage. Vega and American herring gulls are not the only gulls in the region with black in their wingtips. However, the much more common kittiwakes and short-billed gulls are distinctly smaller than vega and American herring gulls, which are similar in size to the glaucous-winged gull, shown here. The short-billed g

Meet the vega gull––formerly a subspecies of herring gull, but now a species of its own

The stew of life and energy along our coastlines can be exhilarating at this time of year when gulls, belugas and seals converge to feast upon schools of tomcod and rainbow smelt spawning in the...

ACCELEROMETER— A small electronic device called an accelerometer is fastened to the leg of this 17-day-old red knot chick to measure the chick’s activity. If this experimental technique is successful, the biologists hope to correlate the chick’s activity with insect abundance to determine whether chicks move more (work harder) when insects are less available. A chick wears the device for three days, then it is transferred to another chick in the brood.

Local research investigates effects of global climate change on red knots

For the last 15 years, rocky alpine ridges along the Teller Road have been the site of the world’s longest-running study of red knots on their breeding grounds. In 2009, when U.S. Fish and Wildlife...

DISPLAY – One of four black scoters (in a flock with white-winged scoters) rises up out of the water and flaps its wings––a common display. Unlike white-winged and surf scoters, the black scoter usually ends this display with an obvious downward thrust of the head, seen here. You can see the light, mottled belly, which identifies the bird as a juvenile. Black scoter juveniles and females have black crowns and light-colored cheeks and forenecks. The larger white-winged scoters have two light-colored facial s

Black Scoter: A tough and spunky little sea duck

I love this time of year. This period before freeze-up offers a chance for close looks at many of our diving sea ducks that linger in nearshore waters to feed enroute to their wintering areas. In...

JUVENILE – A juvenile rock sandpiper carries a marine worm that it found between the rocks of the Nome breakwater in October. Most shorebirds are long gone by now, but sometimes small flocks of juvenile rock sandpipers can be spotted feeding along rocky shores well into October. They are very well camouflaged, and can be hard to spot if they aren’t moving and flashing their white underwings as they flit between rocks.

Rock Sandpiper: A hardy sandpiper lingering late

Shorebirds are renowned for epic, long-distance migrations, some flying from arctic breeding areas to the southern hemisphere to escape winter cold and find abundant food. But not so, the hardy rock...

EAR TUFTS – An adult great horned owl perches in a cottonwood at Pilgrim Hot Springs. Great horned owls are named for their “horns” or "ears” that are tufts of long feathers, unrelated to hearing. Only some forest owls have these prominent tufts. The tufts are thought to break up the owl’s silhouette and help camouflage it in its branchy forest environment. Raising and lowering the tufts may also aid in nonvocal communication.

Great Horned Owl –– A top predator of the forest

Recently I visited the cottonwood groves at Pilgrim Hot Springs and Council’s spruce forest, hoping to get better acquainted with a magnificent forest predator––the great horned owl. Great horned...

NOME HARBOR – A juvenile Sabine’s gull is circling past boats in the Nome harbor, looking for fish. After spotting small fish, the gull dropped daintily to snatch its prey from the water’s surface.

Sabine’s Gull––A distinctive and unusual tern-like gull

On a recent evening drive along Safety Sound, I was excited to spot four small, black-headed Sabine’s gulls flitting daintily up and down in the wind and waves along the Norton Sound beach. These...

NEST DEFENSE— A defensive semipalmated plover parent spreads its wings before luring me away with a broken-wing display. The parents respond to human intruders by crouching and running or feigning injury. Note the partial webbing at the base of the plover’s toes, for which the semipalmated plover is named.

Semipalmated Plover––the shorebird in a tuxedo

Semipalmated plovers are plump little shorebirds sporting a black-and-white face mask and a distinctive black band across the white chest––eye catching, one would think. But it is said that this...

GREATER WHITE-FRONTED GOOSE – A greater white-fronted goose takes off after a stopover at Safety Sound during spring migration. This goose species is named for the band of white feathers around its pinkish orange bill. They often call in flight with a high-pitched laugh that inspired an old name – laughing goose. A very similar, but smaller species, the lesser white-fronted goose, lives in northern Asia and Europe.

Greater white-fronted goose––a goose with family bonds that can last a lifetime

On a recent float trip down the Kougarok River, families of greater white-fronted geese hustled from the water’s edge, across gravel bars to disappear into the tundra as our kayaks approached. The...