Birding, Gamification, and Implications for Education

Amongst those strange souls who are wild bird enthusiastists, there are bird watchers, and then there are birders.  I often describe myself as a “bird watcher” because that describes my hobby in the most simple terms.  I go outside, I find birds, I watch birds.  Bird watchers enjoy birds on an aesthetic level, and are often keen to understand their behavior and natural history.  I also like the term “bird watching” because it is less opaque that the rather bizarre term “birding.”  In the past when I have mentioned to acquaintances that I spent the weekend birding, on more than one occasion I have been asked  what kind of shotgun I have, or how many pheasants I bagged.  After all, if you met some guy at the beach who claimed to be “fishing” with binoculars (but without a rod and reel or a net), you might wonder if he’d lost his marbles.

Birders are similar in many ways to bird watchers, but the term ‘birder’ usually connotes someone who is more serious about certain aspects of the hobby, particularly identification and keeping various kinds of lists.  Birders are more likely to consider their passion for birds beyond the realm of merely a hobby.  If you hear someone at a hawk watch debating the gender and age of a soaring raptor a mile away, or a person out on the mudflats discussing the exact parentage of an immature hybrid gull, you are probably listening to self-described birders.  They might travel extensively, hoping to add a never-before-seen species to their ‘life list.’  Birders are also more likely to do various flavors of Big Days or Big Years, in which they attempt to find as many birds as possible within a certain geographic area in a specified span of time.  As someone who has just completed a Big Year spanning the continental United States and Canada, I’m a birder too.

Essentially, birders have taken bird watching and converted it into a game.  And what a game it is.  If you think football is impressive with its 100 yard field and hundred-man teams, or think a five day cricket test match is something, you have never really pondered the epic scope of a North American birding Big Year.  The ‘field of play’ is nearly 8,000,000,000 square miles and spans from the Florida Keys (24° N latitude) to Ellesmere Island, Canada (83° N latitude) and from Newfoundland (52° W longitude) to the end of the Aleutians (179° W longitude).  There are 20 billion players in this game, perhaps 50,000 human teammates (or competitors?) and billions and billions of sparrows, hawks, woodpeckers, hummingbirds, loons, and warblers who don’t care a whit about playing a game with people but are nevertheless the star participants.  The game lasts 365 days in a row (the length of 2920 football games, at three hours each, played back-to-back).

Some of these birds are relatively easy to find, like Surf Scoter or Rough-legged Hawk:

Some of them require going to a specific place at a specific time, like Whooping Crane (Aransas National Wildlife Refuge in Texas) and Rufous-capped Warbler (Florida Canyon in Arizona).

Some are so rare that even within this vast playing field that you can’t really count on them to show up at any specific location, like Crimson-collared Grosbeak or Barnacle Goose.  You just have to ‘chase’ them if and when they show up.

The rules of this game are pretty simple: find and ID as many birds as you can in the prescribed geographic area within the time limit.  The birds have to be alive, wild, and unrestrained when they are seen.  No dead birds.  No pet shops.  No eggs (?!).  Oh, and you have to engage in ethical behavior while you’re watching them (no harassing or killing birds, no trespassing, no disturbing endangered species, etc.).  Other than that, you can pursue the game any way you like.  Want to rent a helicopter?  Or limit yourself to species seen on foot, bike, or kayak?  No problem.  Want to bring a friend or hire a guide?  Ok.  Want to count birds you ID-ed by song or call, but didn’t actually see?  Totally fine.  All of these variations are sanctioned by the American Birding Association.  Of course, you can also ignore the ABA completely and make up your own set of rules.  As birders say, “it’s YOUR list” – meaning, you can play whatever game you want to.

Beyond the epic scope of a Big Year, the things that make it fun are the many challenges.  Just finding a particular species can be tough.  Can you pick out the rare Eurasian Widgeon from a huge flock of American Wigeon?  Do you know where to go to find the tame but often maddeningly elusive Spruce Grouse?  Will you actually see that secretive rail or sparrow out in the endless expanse of saltmarsh?  And then there is the challenge of identifying some birds.  There are 11 species of flycatchers in the genus Empidonax, many of which are almost identical except for the tiniest differences in physical structure and plumage.  Some birds can only reliably differentiated by voice.  Others show important but subtle ID clues in flight.  Still others are best identified by a combination of range, habitat, and/or behavior.

And what you do “win” if you play this game?  Mostly a batch of enjoyable memories, a sense of accomplishment, and perhaps the thrill of discovering something new.  There are no cash prizes, no trophies, no fame for the “winners” – perhaps just a little recognition and admiration from the tiny fraction of the overall population that claims to be serious birders.  People often ask me how birding is “refereed” – how do you know that a birder has seen the birds that he or she claims to have seen?  The short answer is that birders operate on the honor system.  There are very few “cheaters” for the same reason that so few people cheat running marathons, or climbing mountains.  Sure, there are always a few people willing to take the subway, but most people run marathons for the sense of accomplishment.  They do it to get in shape, to push themselves, to join a community of runners, to add meaning to their lives.  Cheating would defeat the purpose.

Spending this past year playing my own version of a birding game while simultaneously visiting a large number of schools has lead me to think about the ‘gamification’ movement in education.  Evolutionary biologists tell us that the origin of play and games in many species may be an adaptive response to make learning new skills fun.  Lion cubs might play with each other to hone their hunting skills, while human cubs engage in games to sharpen their athletic prowess, intellect, or social skills.  Teachers look to capitalize on this natural fit between learning and games in their classrooms.  Games may help to motivate students to practice skills or gain knowledge, hoping to accumulate prizes or “level up” – or just because the act of playing is fun.  Playful learning can foster collaboration, creativity, and critical thinking.  Many games allow students to model the real world, and let them interact with this model in authentic and compelling ways.  Simulations can teach students cause and effect relationships, arm them with new strategies or tactics, or simply provide them with different perspectives or new points of view.

Of course gamification is not a panacea for all of our educational ills.  And it can be done poorly.  If the game becomes disconnected from meaningful learning experiences, it ceases to be a valuable education tool.  Some birders get so wrapped up in the game of birding that they also begin to disconnect from the other meaningful aspects of their hobby.  I’ve seen a few birders who will drive eight hours straight to see a new bird, watch it for all of 5 seconds, tick it off their list, and hop back in the car.  Gone are an aesthetic appreciation of the creature, a curiosity about its behavior and natural history, and a sense of wonder and connection with our world.  For these reasons, I try to remind myself that I am a bird watcher and not just a birder.  And when I go back to teaching this fall I will embrace fun and games with my students, but I will also remember that games by themselves cannot replace wonder, curiosity, and a passion for understanding our world.

Alaska Wrap-up

My Big Year is over.  What began at Falls Creek State Natural Area in Minnesota on June 13, 2012 ended at my house in Washington state on June 12, 2013.  My official tally is 647 species of birds – a few short of my goal of 650 (I was hoping to add about five species on my cancelled trip to Gambell).  But  this was the only possible measure by which my year fell short.  In all other ways, it exceeded my hopes and expectations.  I will be writing more about my thoughts and observations about the year in general later on this summer, but for now here is my Alaska wrap-up report.

Miles by car: 1802

Miles by bus (Denali): 95

Miles by boat (multiple trips): 30

Miles by foot: 25

Number of new Big Year birds seen: 23

Total species seen: 123

Number of moose I had to swerve to avoid on a four-lane road 5 minutes from the Anchorage airport: 1

Number of glaciers seen: 7

Number of new arch-nemeses/birding friends: 1

Coolest mammal seen: Lynx

Reason I did not get a picture of the coolest mammal: I was too busy sitting there with my mouth open, thinking “That is the most ENORMOUS bobcat I’ve ever seen!”

Coolest birds: Tie between Willow Ptarmigan:

Bluethroat (photos by Neil Hayward):

And Long-tailed Jaeger (photo by Neil Hayward):

Rarest bird: White Wagtail (photo by Neil Hayward)

Bird that I have a new appreciation for: Red-throated Loon (photo by Neil Hayward)

In Washington we mostly see them while they are in their winter basic plumage, so it was a treat to get to see them in all of their high breeding splendor.

Coolest Experience: Visiting the many seabird breeding colonies around Seward and Homer by boat, getting very close to thousands of nesting puffins, murres, and kittiwakes.  Here is a quick video I took of Gull Island near Homer: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G8sUJIJgwy4.

Quirkiest Town: Nome

There aren’t many towns in the U.S. with abandoned railway cars sinking into the tundra, a combo Subway/movie theater, and a caribou named Velvet who rides around in the back of a pickup.

On the whole, Alaska was an amazing experience.  I will definitely be back!

Coming soon, a post that attempts to answer the question many people have asked me recently: ‘After visiting all of those great schools and interesting teachers throughout the U.S., what did you learn about the state of education/effective schools/good teaching?’

Gambles That Don’t Pay Off, And Those That Do

The plan was to spend the last three days of my Big Year in Gambell, a tiny Yupik community on the very northwest tip of St. Lawrence Island.  It’s the bit of North American land that is closest to Siberia, only 46 miles away.  On a clear day, you really can see Russia from your house.  Even when visibility is less than perfect, you can see tomorrow.  The International Date Line is only 23 miles distant.  I wanted to go to Gambell.  I wanted to see tomorrow.  I wanted to see the millions of sea birds that are said to fly by the sea watch there.  I wanted to know what Siberia strays would get blown across the strait.  I wanted to see how people live in that tiny corner of our world.

But in order to get to Gambell, you need to take a tiny plane from a company like Bering Air.  But Bering Air doesn’t fly when the weather is bad, and lately it hasn’t been too pretty in Nome.  As warmer air blows in from the south, it hits the pack ice and cools, creating thick fog.  Thick fog means no flights to Gambell.

I went to the airport on Sunday morning.  The weather was marginal in Nome, but Gambell was completely socked in.  The flight was delayed.  And then delayed some more.  I updated my blog, and waited.  More reports came in.  The weather was still bad.  This was frustrating.  There wasn’t much to do in the small one room waiting area.

Then, miraculously, the weather in Gambell improved enough to maybe land a plane.  But in the meantime, the fog in Nome got worse, and now the plane couldn’t take off.  We waited some more.  Eventually, the flight was canceled.  I was stuck in Nome.  I scrambled to find a hotel room for my unexpected stay – there was one room at the Aurora Inn.  I was told that maybe we could go tomorrow.

It was still only 5pm, so I wandered the streets of town.

I stopped by the combination Subway/movie theater.  I’m betting it’s the only Subway in the world that has a movie theater inside of it.

The new Star Trek movie was playing – I could tell by the Nome-style movie poster.

I bought a ticket.  The theater itself was small, but really nice.  I enjoyed the movie quite a bit.

Early the next morning, it was still foggy – but… was it my imagination?  Was it a tiny bit less foggy?  I went to the airport.  It was my imagination.  The flight was delayed, and then delayed again.  Then, Nome got less foggy.  A flight to Savoonga actually left.  Gambell was marginal.  We might go.  Then the fog rolled in again, and the flight was canceled.  Maybe we would go at 4pm this afternoon.

I caught a ride into town, and toured Nome.  I went to the Nome museum, and learned about the native people who have lived in western Alaska for thousands of years.

I learned that Wyatt Earp actually travelled from Arizona to Nome during the gold rush of 1900.  He opened a saloon here, and sold supplies to the prospectors for two years before heading back to the Southwest with a load of cash.

I also learned about dog sledding.  Alaskans take their dog sledding very seriously.  Nome is the official ending point for the Iditarod Dog Sled Race.

I ate lunch at the Bering Sea BAR (and restaurant).

I admired the fact that at 65 degrees north latitude you can mount solar panels on the SIDE of a building.

I even went inside a store that sells real things.

I did not go inside this bar.

After a while, I took a cab back to the airport.  At this point, I have taken both cabs in Nome at least three times each.  Bering Air is still on weather hold.  I wait in the tiny room for news.  Then the news comes.  The flight is canceled.  Maybe it will go tomorrow, but the weather forecast is the same as today (and yesterday).  I call my wife to discuss options, and listen to her calm and thoughtful words over the loud and crackling static.  She is very supportive of anything I want to do.  I have now wasted two of my original three days scheduled for Gambell.  I don’t know when I will be able to get there.  And more importantly, I don’t know when I could fly back.  Bering Air has canceled the last five flights to Gambell, and no one has gotten on or off the island in almost three days.  I don’t want to be stuck there, especially since there are no restaurants and almost no places to buy food or supplies.  I am frustrated and discouraged.  I call Alaska Airlines and get reservations for the next flight back to Seattle, which is tomorrow.  I call Bering Air and tell them to take my name off my list for the morning Gambell flight attempt, and they start processing my refund.

I walk home through the fog, a bit sad.  I don’t know when I’ll get the chance to try to go to Gambell again.  This was supposed to be the grand finale of my Big Year, and instead it was a grand letdown.  After several attempts, I finally find a place to stay the night – at the Nugget Inn, and I begin to walk to the hotel through the dense fog and the surreal eternal daylight of summer Nome.  The evening is calm, the air is cold, and the gulls stare back at me from their perch on a small iceberg just offshore.

As I walk, I begin to think of the fog as a metaphor, both for my Big Year and for my life.  Fog can be frustrating – you think you can see a bit of the future up ahead, but it is hazy and uncertain.  Many times you just want to look across the strait and see tomorrow clearly – it seems so close – only 23 miles!  Sometimes you think you have things figured out, you think you know what’s coming – but then out of the mist comes an unexpected surprise, an unplanned wrinkle, an unforeseen detour.  Often these surprises that appear out of the fog are unwelcome, annoying, or even painful.  But occasionally out of the fog comes something wonderful: a kind new friend, a delightful new experience, a marvelous new view of the world that you weren’t expecting.  The fog helps to keep life mysterious and exciting, full of wonder and anticipation and novelty.

When I started my Big Year last June, I had some idea of what was in store, but so much was unknown.  I stared into the fog and tried to make out the landscape ahead.  But hidden behind a veil were a great deal of things I just couldn’t predict.  Many of them were wonderful surprises: bonding with my wife over two White-tailed Ptarmigan chases up Mt. Rainier, meeting amazing teachers at Bronx Science and Groton in the same week and becoming inspired by their shared passion and their different paths to educational excellence, seeing the amazing seascape of the Dry Tortugas and hearing Wes Biggs tell unforgettable (and hysterical) stories, watching master teacher Bill Palmer do extraordinary things with very ordinary resources, showing up in Massachusetts just in time to see mega-rare Northern Lapwing and Little Egret and enjoy a spectacular burst of late fall radiance on Cape Cod, and experiencing an extraordinary four days exploring the sea and tundra around Nome with my instant new friends Neil, Abe, and Joe.  I was graced with all of these surprise gifts appearing out of the fog, and I am so grateful for the opportunity to spend a whole year stumbling my way through this undiscovered country and uncovering unexpected wonders.  If it weren’t for the uncertainty of the fog, there are many experiences I probably would have skipped, and my year would have been immeasurably poorer (and I’d have fewer embarrassing and funny stories to tell).

When I got back to the Nugget, I was still a bit disappointed to be missing out on Gambell, but I had a new appreciation for the fog.  My friend and mentor, Than Healy, believes that metaphors can help us make sense of our lives and our experiences.  I will try to embrace both the literal and metaphorical fog in my life, and appreciate the mystery and majesty that it brings.  Even though I often tell myself that I hate surprises, the wonderful little surprises of my Big Year are what made it special.  There will be another time to visit Gambell, but for now the last surprise of the year is for my kids: Daddy is coming home a little early.

Roaming Nome

The last three days have passed in a blur.  With 24 hours of light (including 21 hours when the sun is actually above the horizon), there is a surreal sense of timelessness.  One day blends seamlessly into the next.  Fog rolls in, fog rolls out.  Rain changes to sleet, and sleet into brief bursts of sunshine.  The pack ice on the Bering Sea blows in, and then blows out.

The ice patches that still dot the landscape melt and re-freeze, making interesting patterns and formations.

Many times I’d forget whether it was time for breakfast, dinner, an outing, or bed.  I’d get back in the truck after a short hike across the tundra to find (to my amazement) that it was nearly 10pm.  One day I brushed my teeth four times, the next I forgot completely.  I couldn’t remember if an event happened earlier that day, or the previous day, or the day before that.  But the one thing I know is that Neil and I typically spent a good 14 hours in the field, sometimes longer, and we saw some amazing things.

Our trusty steed was a 2002 pickup with 149,000 miles on it.  It came with one half-flat tire, and one-quarter tank of gas.  But as soon as we pumped up the left front tire a bit and put about $100 worth of gas in it, it was good to go!

On our first full day, we headed out Kougarok Road.  Highlights included Northern Wheatear, Eastern Yellow Wagtail, and Rock and Willow Ptarmigan. A female Willow Ptarmigan even posed in the road for us:

We also saw Muskox; some were distant adults:

And one adorable baby muskox briefly ran along side the truck:

In the afternoon we drove back along Council Road, where Neil’s sharp eyes picked out a group of four rare Steller’s Eiders floating along on a small piece of sea ice.

They were too far away for my wimpy camera, but we got great looks through the telescopes.

The next day we explored the third road out of Nome, Teller Road.  A moose greeted us on the edge of town.

Our jaunt down Teller was another great success.  We found singing Bluethroats, and Neil got some amazing photos of this Old World thrush (or is it now considered a flycatcher?) that barely ranges into Alaska.  He promised to send me some of his pictures.  Neil also found a White Wagtail, a rare bird even for the Nome area.  This Asian vagrant fluttered about the edges of the Sinuk River near a bridge, and I snapped some blurry but identifiable photos for posterity:

For our final full day in the Nome area, Neil and I again teamed up with Abe to look for the mythical Bristle-thighed Curlew.  There is exactly one accessible location in North America where this shorebird breeds, and I use the word “accessible” loosely.  First you have to fly to Nome, via Anchorage (and maybe some other places).  Then you have to secure a vehicle and drive 72 miles north on the Kougarok dirt road.  Then you have to climb across the wet tundra up a mountain ridge to the Curlew’s nesting grounds, a hike that has been described as “walking on bowling balls” due to the nature of the low but very thick plant life there.  Then you have to identify the Curlew, which looks extremely similar to the Whimbrel, another shorebird that nests in the same area.

Neil, Abe, and I left Nome very early, stopping only to search (successfully!) for Arctic Warbler about 20 miles up the road.  We arrived at milepost 72 by 9am, and began the relatively short but squishy hike up the ridge.  I have to hand it to these curlews – they picked a remote but spectacular place to raise their young:

After getting to the top, the first large shorebird we spotted was a Whimbrel.  But a short time later, another bird came flying in, giving the Bristle-thighed Curlew’s characteristic call, and showing its distinctive unstreaked, buffy rump.  This is one of the hardest birds in North America to actually see, and we were all pretty happy about finding it.

We hung around for a while, watching an American Golden-Plover and some displaying Long-tailed Jaegers, and then headed back to the truck for the long drive back to Nome.  After vowing to “go to bed early for a change,” Neil and I were again out birding past 10pm before I finally convinced him to go back to Nome for dinner.  I was tucked in no later than about 1am.

This morning I was scheduled to fly to Gambell, a tiny Yupik village on St. Lawrence Island.  Unfortunately it is very foggy at the Nome airport today, and I’ve spent the last four hours in the waiting area at Bering Air to see if our flight will go out.  The only good part about this is that I’ve finally been able to catch up on my blog a bit.  Currently we’re still on “weather hold” and the fog does not appear to be lifting.  If the flight is canceled, I’ll try to find a place to stay in Nome tonight (the place I’ve been staying is full up!) and maybe try to get on a flight tomorrow.  Travelers to Alaska sometimes have to be flexible and patient.  But it’s worth putting up with the weather and the delays to be able to visit a special place like this.

There’s No Place Like Nome

After a week driving north (to Denali) and south (to the Kenai) from Anchorage, I hopped a flight to Nome in western Alaska.  Nome is a small outpost on the Bering Sea.  It is surrounded by tundra, mountains, ice, and some very cool birds that are hard to see elsewhere in North America.  There are three dirt roads leading out of town (some 75 miles each), so the plan was to rent a pickup truck and drive into the wilderness to see what I could find.

I met Neil Hayward from the Boston area a few months ago thanks to the miracle of the internet and the online birding community.  Neil is doing a North American Big Year in 2013, and what a year it has been so far.  He has been doing some amazing trips and seeing some great stuff, and he agreed to meet me in Nome for four days of intense birding.

I was so glad to have Neil along for this leg of my trip.  He is an excellent birder, and a great traveling companion.  I thoroughly enjoyed exploring the area with him.

We both arrived in Nome on the afternoon of June 5th, but our rental pickup wasn’t available until the morning of the 6th.  Fortunately we bumped into Abe Borker and his father Joe, who very graciously invited us to ride along with them in their truck for an afternoon of birding the Council Road and Safety Lagoon.  We didn’t need to be asked twice, and soon the four of us were off.

We had a fantastic afternoon.  Some highlights for the day were two Arctic Loons, Red Phalaropes, an Emperor Goose, and this Gyrfalcon (and three fuzzy babies) nesting under a bridge:

I got a few pictures of some birds that were close to the road, including Bar-tailed Godwits (two in their alternate breeding plumage and one still in basic winter plumage):

Numerous Red-necked Phalaropes:

And a second-summer Slaty-backed Gull (to the right of the white immature Glaucous Gull):

We also saw a fox, and the remains of a Tundra Swan that presumably had been the fox’s breakfast this morning.

Further along the road, there were reminders of Nome’s history as a gold rush town.  Gold was discovered in this area in 1897, and a few years later the area was inundated with prospectors.  It was the largest town in the Alaska Territory by the turn of the Century a few years later.  Reminders of this era remain in many places today, like this old abandoned gold dredging machine.

A railroad line was even planned and built in the early 1900s from Nome to Council City.  Although it was never completed all the way to Council City, the line ran for several years until about 1907.  Difficulties with construction, operation, and financing stalled the project, and in 1913 the line was wiped out by a huge storm.  The cars and engines still sit in the tundra where they were wrecked, nearly 100 years ago.

Abe, Joe, Neil, and I explored the Council Road area late into the evening.  With sunset around 1:30 am, there was seemingly no reason to end our trip.  We finally rolled back into Nome about 10:30 pm, and were fortunate to find one local establishment still open: the Bering Sea Bar and Restaurant.  After a meal, I headed to bed.  Sunrise would come early (4:28 am), and I had three more days of birding ahead of me.

I often end my posts with a pretty shot of the sunset, but this time you’ll just have to use your imagination.

The Crossover Event of the Season

During a long morning watching seabirds in Kachemak Bay east of Homer, I  decided that I needed my own reality television show focussed on birding.  If people actually watch the Kardashians and Honey Boo Boo and whatnot, certainly they would tune in to see a balding middle-age guy track down North America’s most interesting birds… right?  I mean, you’re reading this right now and it’s not even on TV!

As we were returning to the boat basin at Homer Spit, I saw something that gave me a sudden inspiration.

It was one of those crab boats from that show on the Discovery Channel.  I’d watched it a couple of times – the most interesting parts are the hundreds of pelagic seabirds that follow the boats around eating the bycatch.  What I really needed, I thought, was a television special – a “crossover show” featuring both the crab guys and me.  We could call it “Deadliest Birding.”  Or perhaps, less dramatically but more truthfully, “Most Uncomfortable Birding.”  Those fishing guys could catch some crab while meanwhile I would be up on the bridge (staying dry and warm) identifying the storm petrels, shearwaters, and fulmars flapping around the vessel.  Brilliant!

Sadly, the boat seemed deserted, and there was no one to listen to my fabulous pitch.  But I am seriously planning another kind of crossover.  I’ve been doing almost all of my birding solo this year.  But tomorrow I’m flying to Nome, and will be teaming up with another birder doing a Big Year (for calendar year 2013).  His name is Neil Hayward, and he is hard core.  He has already seen almost as many birds in the first 6 months of 2013 as I have in the last 12 months combined.  You can read his brilliant and hysterical blog here: http://accidentalbigyear2013.blogspot.com.  I’m counting on Neil to help me track down some tough specialties of the Nome region, and also to keep me from getting lost in the tundra or eaten by a Grizzly.

Finally, on an unrelated note, I have only about 10 days to go on my Nature Conservancy fund drive, and I still haven’t quite reached my goal.  A huge thanks to those of you who have donated already, and a plea for the rest of you to consider a contribution.  Even a small one helps!  Thanks!  The address to donate is: http://support.nature.org/goto/degrys

The Kittiwakes and I thank you!

The Kenai Peninsula

Travelling south, I passed through Anchorage and continued down the Seward Highway to the Kenai Peninsula.  This area is in many ways very different from Denali, but just as spectacular.  It borders Cook Inlet and Prince William Sound, so for one thing I’m back on the coast.  The Kenai area is also home to the Harding Icefield, which spawns several dozen glaciers.  I visited a number of them on a trip through Kenai Fjords National Park.

The photo above it Exit Glacier, which is one of the most accessible glaciers in the park.  You can drive to within a mile of it, and hike right up to its “toe.”  Exit Glacier is retreating, probably due to global climate change, having become over a mile shorter since 1895.

Glaciers are the outflows (the “drains” if you will) from the Harding Icefield.  The Icefield is a basin area that gets well over 30 feet of snow per year on average.  Over time this snow is compacted into very dense ice.  The ice slowly slides downhill, forming glaciers and carving out new valleys.

Yesterday I took a 9-hour boat trip out of Seward to tour Kenai Fjords, to see the glaciers and the wildlife of the area.  I was not disappointed.  The scenery was impressive.

Sea Otters were common, and not shy at all.

We saw five Humpback Whales, including this one very close to shore:

And this one farther out:

A transient Orca swam by, making some of the smaller marine mammals a bit nervous.  But these Harbor Seals in the shallows didn’t look too concerned.

Nor did these Steller’s Sea Lions high on the rocks:

Steller’s Sea Lions are one of several Northwest animals named after Georg Wilhelm Steller, who travelled with Vitus Bering on his 1740s expedition to Alaska from Russia.  Steller was a doctor and naturalist, and described a number of new species of flora and fauna unknown to the Old World.  Several of Steller’s namesakes are now extinct (Steller’s sea cow) or endangered/threatened (Steller’s Sea Eagle and Steller’s Eider).  Steller’s Jay, however, is doing quite well and can be seen in my yard back home in Washington state (and throughout much of the American West).

Glaciers were another highlight of the boat trip, and we spent some time at the incredible Holgate Glacier.

Holgate is a tidewater glacier, meaning it flows directly into the ocean.  You could hear thunderous cracks and booms as it calved giant boulders of ice directly into the sea.

The bluish color of the glacier comes from light that gets scattered by the densely packed ice.  Most frequencies of light pass through the ice, but blue tends to be absorbed and re-emitted by the electrons in the water molecules, scattering the light and making the ice appear somewhat blue.

Nearby, we could see the much smaller Surprise Glacier.

Birds, of course, were also a highlight.  I saw eight species of alcids, seabirds of the puffin, murre, and auklet family.  Seeing hundreds of Horned and Tufted Puffins was a highlight, as well as a half-dozen Parakeet Auklets up close –  a new bird for me.  The heavy clouds, drizzle, and rocking of the boat made photography difficult, and most of my bird pictures didn’t come out at all.  But I did get a few pictures of some Common and Thick-billed Murres resting on a cliff:

And hundreds of Black-legged Kittiwakes swirling around their nesting colony:

Kittiwakes are a kind of gull.  They make their nests on sheer rock walls on offshore islets to protect them from predators.

Returning to Seward, we passed huge rafts of murres on the water – thousands of them.

Despite the cold and wet weather, and some difficulty in finding some of my target species, I have thoroughly enjoyed my visit to the Kenai Peninsula.  I’ll be here another day or so, and then I’m headed northwest to Nome and Gambell.  I’m not sure when I’ll be able to update this blog again, but I will when I can.  I’m about to head into parts unknown (at least unknown to me!).

Denali

I had heard a lot about Denali National Park in Alaska, but none of that prepared me for the sheer magnitude and majesty of this place.  Denali is six million acres of protected wilderness in the midst of some of the most breath-taking geology in all of North America.  Almost everything about it is at least a little fantastical.

For starters, I’m just a couple hundred miles south of the arctic circle.  Sunset tonight is at 11:51pm, which is followed by several hours of twilight, and then sunrise again at 3:51am.  The sun rises in the north (NNE, actually) in an almost horizontal motion, slowing creeping above the horizon.  After five hours or so, the sun is halfway up in the eastern sky.  By midday (five hours after that) it’s swung around nearly overhead and slightly to the south.  For the next 10 hours it treks westward and then northward, finally setting again in the NNW, not too far from where it rose.

Even though tomorrow is the first day of June, in some ways it still feels like winter here.  The Denali lowlands got 9 inches of slow last week.  While daytime highs have been climbing into the 70s, I see ice and snow all around me, sometimes several feet deep.

Just getting here was an adventure.  Denali is 250 miles north of Anchorage, most of it on a two-lane road, the George Parks Highway.  I was swerving around moose in the middle of the road less than 10 minutes from the Anchorage airport, and things only got wilder from there.  On my journey north, I could see that spring is indeed late this year.  Many of the rivers were still in various stages of breakup, as the long winter’s ice cracked and buckled under the warming sun and the surrounding rush of meltwater.

I stood on the bridge over this river, and watched icebergs of various sizes and shapes float by, as thunderous cracks upstream heralded the arrival of new chunks of loose ice barreling downstream.

I stayed in the tiny town of Healy, about a dozen miles north of Denali’s main entrance road.

Aside from this sign, there are a few hotels, two restaurants, and one gas station in Healy.

There are a couple of different ways to experience Denali National Park.

There is a visitor’s center and some trails right at the entrance, and you can drive in the first 15 miles on the park road in your own car.  But if you want to go beyond the Savage River at milepost 15, you need to take an official park shuttle or bus.  The narrow and sometimes treacherous road that snakes west for 92 miles just isn’t built to handle the 400,000 people who visit Denali annually.  I bought a ticket to Toklat at MP 53; the road beyond that was still closed due to snow.  At 7am, I boarded the bus for the seven-hour round trip.

While Denali does have some interesting birds, the highlight here is mammals.  And what a highlight they are!  In two days, I got great looks at Dall’s sheep, moose, caribou, collared pika, hoary marmots, snowshoe hare, arctic ground squirrels, a gray wolf, and a lynx.

Arctic Ground Squirrel

Snowshoe Hare – still turning from his winter whites to his summer browns

Dall’s sheep, with babies

Caribou

WHY did my camera freak out and refuse to focus right when mama moose and her two cute mooselings appeared right next to the road??  I guess I’ll never know.

While Denali is the best place in North America to see large mammals, I saw a few birds too – including possibly my new favorite bird, the Willow Ptarmigan.

They are just so comical and charismatic, perched in the top of spruce trees and muttering their cackling chicken-language under their breath.  I found them utterly charming.

Even aside from the animals, there was so much to look at in Denali.  The landscape itself was breath taking.

 

 

I even got to see Denali itself (or Mt. McKinley, as the U.S. Congress still insists on it being called).  This 20,320 foot peak is the tallest in North America.  During the spring and summer months it’s often wrapped in clouds (it creates it own weather), but for a few hours yesterday you could see its glaciated summits.

And this was from some 80 miles away!  Later it rained, and I got to see my first Denali rainbow.

With near 24-hour daylight, it’s tempting to stay up all night walking the trails, reading my book, or planning the rest of my Alaska trip – but I think I will force myself to go to bed now.  It’s been 3 days since I’ve seen darkness (the blinds in my room don’t close all the way), but my body still needs sleep.  I think.  Right?