Good Morning Alaska Peninsula Brown Bear, Ursus arctos gyas. Chignik Lake, October 3, 2018
Alaska Peninsula Brown Bears share the same genus and specific name as Grizzly Bears of interior Alaska, Canada and the Lower 48: Ursus arctos. They differ only in the subspecific name: gyas in the case of these Peninsula Brown Bears; horribilis for Grizzlies.
I present this image here at a 16:9 ratio because that works well on most screens. But when I print it to show, I will print it as a square and ask that it be hung at eye-level, as a kind of mirror. There is more going on behind those eyes than where the next meal is coming from.
And yes. My heart was pounding wildly to find myself suddenly this close…
Female Belted Kingfisher Chignik Lake, Alaska Peninsula, October 4, 2018
All Belted Kingfishers sport a broad band of stormy-sea blue across their upper chest. But females possess a second, rust-colored band further down. Both male and female immature specimens, such as the bird in the above photo, can be especially colorful, with rusty-orange mixed in with the upper blue belt and appearing more extensively across the belly and chest. They’re about the size of an American Robin, but bulkier. Their ratchety, rattling calls, which never fail to lift our hearts when we’re on the water, are often the first thing that gives away their presence.
Brown Bear in Sunshine Paradise Bend, Chignik River, September 24, 2018
We didn’t get a lot of days like the one depicted above out on the cloudy, windswept Alaska Peninsula. Blue skies reflected in the river, sunshine casting everything it touched in a patina of gold. I hurried through breakfast, donned waders and a camouflage jacked, packed my camera into its soft case and bungee-corded it to the front rack of my honda. Two-and-a-half miles down the Top Road I parked near the boat landing, slung 20 pounds of tripod, camera and long lens over my shoulder and followed a trail to the broad, seldom-visited collection of braided water and islands we called Paradise Bend – the best place on the Chignik to catch morning light. Along the trail there were bear and moose tracks in soft mud, the last Wild Geraniums and Yarrow barely holding onto their purple and white blooms respectively. A snipe exploded from a little swale – late in the year for that species to be hanging around. Curious Black-capped Chickadees called from alder thickets and approached on either side to examine the intruder striding through their world and from the river I could hear the ratchety cry of a kingfisher. Further out gulls squawked and chattered – Glaucous-winged and Short-bills -, and I could just barely hear the soft, murmuring quacks of Mallards and Green-winged Teal. A pair of eagles began piping.
As I reached the bend, the wary ducks rose and repositioned themselves further downriver. There were more bear tracks in the sand along with a set of wolf prints, fresh, probably from the previous night. I waded across a river braid out to an island covered in graywacke, set up in front of small wall of autumn-yellow willows and waited. The morning sun poured over my left shoulder, a light breeze touched my right cheek. Salmon splashed in the channel in front of me as well as in shallows two hundred yards downriver to my left. My eyes were drawn to the sky as I became aware of steady, high-pitched honking growing closer – a pair of Tundra Swans winging south.
What a day. All I needed now was for a bear to come by.
Greater Yellowlegs with a Nine-Spined Stickleback Chignik Lake, Alaska Peninsula, August 20, 2018
There are two species of yellowlegs – Greater, the larger of the two species and featuring a proportionately longer bill, and Lesser, the smaller of the two with a proportionately shorter bill. Until you’ve looked at quite a few of these birds, they are difficult to tell apart unless they’re near each other. We never encountered Lessers at The Lake, but from spring through early fall Greaters were common.
Yellowlegs stalk shoreside margins searching for any small fish. A quick stab is usually all it takes before they come up with a stickleback or salmon parr siscorred chopstick style between their bills. Close examination of photographs hints at small serrations in the roof of the upper bill, helpful in repositioning their catch for a head first swallow. Their piercing calls, delivered in sequences of three and four quick, sharp cries, can sound almost like a car alarm. Unlike most shorebirds, yellowlegs often perch at the very tops of trees, a behavior they share with Wandering Tattlers.
Clarks Bay Beach with Brown Bear Tracks in September A few hundred yards up the beach from where this photograph was composed, Clarks River debouches into Chignik Lake. Small enough to cross when wearing waders but large enough to navigate in a skiff equipped with a jet drive, Clarks provides major spawning habitat for Sockeye and Coho salmon. Lots of salmon. Lots of bears.September 13, 2018
Western Sandpipers, Hartney Bay, Cordova, Alaska, May 3, 2024
This was the scene about six miles from the heart of Cordova this past Friday morning, and this is but a sliver of the many thousands of shorebirds that stop for a short while to fuel up and rest on tidal mudflats near the town as they make their way to nesting grounds further north. Figuring in nearby barrier islands and additional flats in the Copper River delta, some five million shorebirds represented by several species will visit the Cordova area over a few days in early May. While they are here, these Western Sandpipers will double their weight. The delta is absolutely critical to the health of these avian populations as there are only a few places in the world that offer the sheer biomass of invertebrates and biofilm these birds require in order to complete journeys that in many cases cover thousands of miles. Look for a more indepth article on this incredible migratory event in the coming days.
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