Not all birds leave Alaska in the winter. Some birds are tough and hardy and stick it out. Some just endure the winter, others adapt. Their very physiology changes to help them contend with the cold a little better.
I wanted to be like them and adapt when I stayed up here this year. I wanted to adapt but I found that I just endured. I’m more like most birds.
Most birds have decided that the best way to deal with winter is to avoid it. They migrate. I like that lifestyle. I can relate. So I am delighted that it is finally migration time.
It’s migration time in Alaska, and we’re all very excited to see our old friends coming back. Swans are everywhere, with reports coming in from friends in Anchorage, Fairbanks and McCarthy. Sandhill cranes are in Fairbanks, although our local Palmer flock hasn’t shown up quite yet. Any day now, though. Maybe when I go out to shoot the sunset this evening they will have arrived. One can hope!
Here in Palmer a huge mixed flock of Snow Geese and Canadian Geese was spotted in a farmer’s field, flushed by a passing eagle. The birds are flying north, more every day. Ducks are landing in ponds the minute the ice melts. It’s a birdwatcher’s dream all over Alaska, but there is one place in particular that will surely transport you to birder nirvana.
That place is Cordova. The fishing village of Cordova is the gateway to the vast and pristine Copper River Delta, one of the greatest wetland ecosystems in North America. Ninety percent of the birds migrating along the Pacific Flyway stop here, in the largest wetlands on the entire route. It’s a staging area, spring break for the birds traveling to their summer homes in Alaska from their winter abodes in places as far away as the tip of South America.
Nearly 5 million shorebirds depend on the Delta to rest and recharge. At high tide on the mudflats at Hartney Bay, endless flocks of sandpipers and dunlins perform an intricate aerial ballet. Look closer and you’ll find dozens of other species. Thirty-six different shorebird species, including the entire North American population of Western Sandpipers, inhabit the shoreline, in terrain varying from silty mudflats to rocky beaches.
And that’s just the beach. The marshes in the Delta are as fertile as the shoreline. Standing on the boardwalk at Alaganik Slough, an overwhelming cacophony of sound will greet you, the mating songs of a thousand birds reverberating through the twilight. The only thing louder than the trumpeting of the swans is the crazy braying of Dusky Canadian Geese. But the strange and eerie sound of a snipe performing its’ corkscrew skydive mating dance is the command performance in this incredible bird opera.
I was lucky enough to catch that show not once, but twice. But it’s been twenty years. I was hoping to make it back this spring, but Cordova is a bit off the beaten path.
Budget cuts to the Alaska Marine Highway have eliminated ferry service to Cordova outside of peak tourist season, so the only way in now is to fly. Cordova won’t be happening for me this year after all.
But I still want to take a birding trip to celebrate the transition from winter to summer. I need a spring break. I’m thinking about spending a few days at the end of another road, in the little town of Homer.
Homer doesn’t have as many birds as Cordova. Cordova is in a class by itself. But Homer has some great migrations passing through, too. And some of the birds are different. Homer is a lot farther west. I might even see a bird I’ve never seen before.
After that spring break, it will probably be time for me to take flight too, moving from the Matanuska Valley to the Wrangell Mountains and my home in McCarthy. I’ll wait for the snow and ice to melt, then follow those migrating birds, and greet them in the ponds along the way.
It will be great to see all my old friends, both human and avian, both the tough hardy ones that stick it out through the long cold and the ones who migrate.
Thank you, Tina, for this week’s Lens-Artist’s Photo Challenge, Taking Flight. It’s migration time. I’m so excited!
Alaska is a spectacular place to be. Amazing images as usual. Migrating is a fundamental way of living in order to survive. You describe it so well, and I cannot but envy you your chances to see, hear and live all this. The incredible bird opera.
Thank you, Ann-Christine. The spring bird migration in Cordova is one of Nature’s great spectacles. I feel so fortunate to have witnessed it. Clouds of birds numbering in the thousands dancing and swirling all around me was one of the great spiritual highlights of my life.
I had to laugh at your “adapt vs endure” analogy Dianne. And trust me, if Cordova is a “Bit off the beaten path” for you, it is SURELY off the beaten path for most everyone!! While Kiawah has nowhere near the number of migratory birds Alaska has, we have our own special breeds that do a stopover to rest and resuscitate. Most importantly, the Red Knots arrived here just this week. I’ve tried to get out to shoot them but so far no luck. Rest assured if I succeed you will see them on the blog. Apparently the flock this year is huge – perhaps due to pandemic? Anyway, thanks so much for this beautiful post and for sharing Alaska’s amazing birdlife.
Thank you, Tina. I’ve done a few programs in both Denali and Wrangell St. Elias on how all living things have to endure adapt, or avoid to survive winter, including humans, and how we use many of the same strategies the wildlife uses to make it happen. When I read your last post I was reminded of the spectacular birdlife you have on the southeast coast. Some day one day I’d love to visit and immerse myself in that ecosystem.
Good luck with the Red Knots!
Wonderful photos this week, Dianne. Is that first picture a spruce grouse? Pretty bird.
Thank you, Siobhan Yes, it certainly is a spruce grouse. They’re not the brightest birds in the Universe but they sure are pretty!
I love bird migration time! Robins are everywhere, lots of swans overhead, and I keep hearing geese but not seeing them as they fly north. Feel free to stop in at 12 mile as you migrate east from Palmer (we are vaccinated!)
I’ll have to do that. It’s been way too long since I visited with you folks, although I send a mental howdy and a smile every time I drive by your T-n-T antler!
Wow. Great photos!
Thanks, John!
We had whimbrels on the ice at Strelna Lake this week! I had been hoping to go to the shorebird festival this year too. It was pretty exciting to have some shorebirds come to us!
Migration does make a lot of sense – those birds know what they are doing! I love your shot of the eagle 🙂
Thanks, Sarah!
Magnificent photography!
Thank you, Manja. I’m so glad you liked it!
Ptarmigan? Don’t they grow white feathers for winter? I may be confused.
An Alaska winter is tough I imagine. Its the lack of sunshine that would do me in. Perhaps it would be easier for you if you had that weird heat exchange design some birds have in their feet to keep them from freezing.
http://askanaturalist.com/why-don%E2%80%99t-ducks%E2%80%99-feet-freeze/
And when I read things like that I realize Einstein was right. Things are a little too perfect in the Universe to totally not believe in the divine. Paraphrasing..mispelling too I think.
Yes, ptarmigan do turn white in the winter! The bird in the photo is a spruce grouse. They don’t turn white. The dark really gets to me. SAD syndrome – depression, cravings for salty junk food.
I agree – things fit together too perfectly for there not to be something bigger than all of us that we don’t understand – whether you call it God, the Divine, the Great All…. The Universe is an intelligence that we all are part of. Unexplainable.