Bird of the Week – Red-legged Kittiwake
There are only a handful of places in the world where you can see this gull.
Red-legged Kittiwake, St. Paul Island, Pribilof Islands
The Red-legged Kittiwake is found in the Pribilof Islands, a few of the Aleutian Islands and parts of Siberia. A small, handsome gull with the signature bright red feet, it nests on St. Paul Island. This bird’s bill is dirty from hauling grass and mud 3/4ths of a mile to a nest on the steep, high cliffs known as Kittiwake Condos on the northwest corner of the island. It’s two miles uphill from where the guides park the van, but it’s worth the walk.
The non-breeding, one-year olds hang around, too.
Red-legged Kittiwake First Year Bird, St. Paul Island
For more bird photos, please visit Frozen Feather Images.
Waigon weather.(some mre) I just realized I am older than your state of Alaska. Treat us elders with respect even when I don’t deserve it.
Of course we respect you, Mike. You’re the only Civil War veteran who comments on the ‘flats.
🙂
😉
How goes gardening in the forset with bears? Delighted to have you back. 🙂
You’ve been holding down the Flats magnificently mikey 🙂
Gardening is going very well, especially for here, bears are behaving so far, but forest had a couple scary patches with low humidity and high winds and high fire danger which hardly ever happens here. Only one lil brush fire which got smooshed right away- thank heavens.
Spuds are growing so fast you can almost hear them whistling up, squashes , which have a tough go in this usually very wet place, are blazing along under row cover and broccoli is brokking. I have so much spinach and lettuces and kales and other greens I can share some with neighbors already. Mints and chives and rhubarb are humongous already.
Have tiny cherry tomatoes starting on plants in windows along with lots of basil, sage, and oregano.
Flowers are gorgeous. Have to have flowers so the lil hummingbirds will visit them.
I love to sit amongst the flowers with my coffee in the morning and watch the hummers a couple feet away. Almost enough flowers now for them 🙂
I brought home some asparagus crowns and go look everyday to see if they are asparagusing … not yet.
I so hope they come up…
How does your garden grow?
So well I may have to post twice. IE causes all kinds of funny stuff to happen at this website so I may have to switch to Mozilla to get you updated. Taters are coming along nicely with all the rain we’ve been getting. Sweetcorn has a better stand than I thought. Onions were hit hard by hail,worse than I supposed. I don’t know how much more growing some will do with the stems broken off. Gourds finally emerged after nearly a month. Asparagus has been spotty,not as much came up as I expected and every stalk has been spoken for. Will cut another week and then let it go to seed. I have fertilized it twice,once with a straight shot of nitrogen and the second time with 10-10-10 fertilizer. I have two gooseberry bushes on a pile of dirt and they are loaded with berries. You can see a lot of the roorsystem on the side of the pile. Peach trees have barely gotten any leaves yet and butterfly bushes have no leaves whatsoever. Grandgirlies apple trees have some apples. We had frost when they bloomed,but some blooms survived. Patiently waiting for taters to bloom so I can pig-out on new spuds. Oh,and then there are deer tracks all through my garden. 🙂
Umbeah.
Rain-beautiful rain-glorious rain -magnificent rain. Brief heavy showers. boxer short lighter showers. No panty showers. No hail since Friday night’s inch of glorious rain. Rain for the next three or four days shoud make garden grow Beautifull rain falling gently down.
But are you getting any rain?
What’s your secret, Bud? Mikey begs for stick figures and gets crickets. Slip asks for ducks and gets geese and waterfowl,too. Color me jealous.
Haven’t seen any pics of ducks yet, have we? Only promises.
And if you believe that, the widow of the former oil minister of Nigeria would like to use your bank account to transfer $36.8 million to the U.S. She will only use your account for a couple of weeks, and will leave 10 percent and all the interest behind for you. Send her all your bank account info . . .
Still no ducks. Owls, gulls, hawks, but not a duck to be seen. This seems like discrimination.
WC is in fact a Duck. University of Oregon 1972. But we’ll see about some waterfowl shots in the next few weeks.
/WC
I’ve never seen this gull. Thanks so much for sharing Alaska’s birds with us.
Sorry,but if the gulls can drive a van,they surely can drive a four-wheeler closer to the nest and use it to haul nest building materials. Someone should point this out to the birds.