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!
