Watch for Aurora Click Bait
Every once in a while over the last month or so, I have been seeing worrisome queries on aurora interest pages on Facebook. It all started with a classic click-bait headline, “2016 Is Your Last Chance to See the Northern Lights Before They Vanish.” How accurate is this? Is this true? These are some of the questions that introduce the post to others. The very easy, accurate and simple answer is, “Absolutely not. It’s complete hogwash.” Of course, once you click on the article, you get a rather perfunctory explanation of the solar cycle, and how the sun’s activity peaks…
Bird of the Week – Black Scoter
We’ll start the New Year with a new duck. Most Alaskans are unaware of the clade of scoters, genus Melanitta. That’s okay, science doesn’t know very much about them either. The Black Scoter is one of the three scoter species that breed in Alaska. The Black Scoter drake in breeding plumage is easy to identify: it’s the only black duck with two-thirds of the top if its bill – technically, its culmen – bright yellow and the rest black. Black Scoters breed in coastal zones and less commonly up the Yukon and Tanana drainages. WC has found nesting birds on…
Bird of the Week – Common Loon
The Common Loon is easily the best known of North America’s loon species. The male’s haunting call is a signature sound of lake country. It breeds in Alaska, Canada and the northern edge of the Lower 48. It winters along the in-shore coastline of the Atlantic and Pacific. The populations seem to be stable, but there is real concern that mining activity and tar sands mining are contaminating the water bodies that Common Loons rely upon for nesting, feeding and migration. Because Common Loons are top tier predators in their habitats, they suffer from concentrations of lead and mercury. When you approach…
Bird of the Week – Red-Throated Loon
The smallest and slenderest of Alaska’s loons, in breeding plumage the Red-throated Loon is a beautiful bird. This species is much better than other loons at taking off, needing a shorter distance. So it is sometimes found breeding on surprisingly small ponds. It breeds inland and on the Arctic Bering Coasts. It winters down the coast in in-shore waters, as far south as southern California. The species is in decline in Alaska, and science doesn’t yet know why. WC has found them to be uncommon breeders on alpine lakes, but always a treat to find. Camera geek stuff: f7.1, 1/320, ISO400….
Bird of the Week – Eurasian Collared-Dove
WC has received complaints that flycatchers are boring, and that readers want to see more unusual birds. All right. How about a Eurasian Collared-Dove at Maclaren River on the Denali Highway? If you look at a range map for this species, you’ll see that officially they barely make it into Canada. Yet this Marco Polo among doves turned up in the mountains of interior Alaska. Here it is picking through straw along the road from a dog musher’s winter camping spot. The species was introduced in the Western Hemisphere in the Bahamas in the 1970s, and has explosively expanded its range to…
Bird of the Week – Say’s Phoebe
One more flycatcher before we move to other birds: the Say’s Phoebe. The most colorful of Alaska’s flycatchers, the dark head and back and cinnamon chest and belly are distinctive. Say’s Phoebes breed on rocky cliff with ledges, but also nest on manmade structures. The outbuildings at Maclaren Lodge on the Denali Highway have hosted an extended family of Say’s Phoebes for many years. You can also find nests under highway bridges in alpine areas. The species is widespread in Alaska, but uncommon. It’s always a treat to find one. Neither of its cousins, the Black and Eastern Phoebe, occur…
Bird of the Week – Hammond’s Flycatcher
We should all love flycatchers; they eat mosquitoes and other bugs. Among flycatchers, the Hammond’s is famously difficult to identify. Its appearance, behavior and vocalizations are very similar to Gray and Dusky Flycatchers. Happily, neither the Dusky nor Grey Flycatchers are commonly seen in Alaska. So a big-headed, mouse-grey backed flycatcher with a two-toned mandible is probably going to be a Hammond’s. Hammond’s both hawk bugs, flying from a perch, and probe for bugs, working through leaves and small branches. They are among the earliest flycatchers to arrive in the spring. Interior Alaska is northern limit of this species range;…
Bird of the Week – Yellow-bellied Flycatcher
Another of the difficult Empidonax genus, this little flycatcher is believed to be a relative newcomer to Alaska. Most range maps show it not occuring in Alaska; this photo was taken near Chatanika, along the Steese Highway, northeast of Fairbanks. It’s one of the more distinctive members of the Empidonax species in its appearance and habits. The yellowish underparts and eye-ring make one of the more easily identified Emps. But it can be difficult to find in the field; its plumage blends well with both the mossy muskeg forests of its summer home or the Middle American rain forests of its winter home. In Interior Alaska, it…
Bird of the Week (Hallowe’en Edition) – Northern Shrike
It’s Hallowe’en, so we might as well have a masked bird, a “bad” bird, as our bird of the week. It’s a little scarier than your basic flycatcher. The Northern Shrike is a songbird that’s gone to the Dark Side. A predator, it has evolved that wicked hooked bill and carnivorous habits. This species is a determined pursuer of small birds and mammals, which it somewhat gruesomely impales on thorns and barbed-wire or wedges in forks of branchlets. Its nickname is “the butcher bird.” Its Latin name, Lanius excubitor, means “butcher watchman,” an appropriate name for this capable and alert predator. WC and…
Bird of the Week – Alder Flycatcher
Thurshes may be omnivore but the flycatchers pretty much limit themselves to bugs. There’s a genus of flycatchers called Empidonax, which would be on most birders’ list as the very hardest birds to properly identify. Except when they sing. And this handsome Alder Flycatcher was singing his tonsils syrinx off on a warm summer evening. The song, a lovely fee-bee-o, is the prettiest of all the flycatchers, in WC’s judgment. This is a largely boreal species, split from its cousin, the Willow Flycatcher, back in 1973. The Alder Flycatcher migrates to northern South America where– and you can trust WC on this – there are…