Lynn Barber's Birding Blog

This morning I visited a few Palmer areas, including the old Matanuska town site road, a few lakes, and fields southeast of Palmer, and then stopped at and hiked around Reflection Lake on the way back to Anchorage.

As I arrived at the town site road, a single Sandhill Crane flew by, called a couple of times and was not seen or heard again.

Reflection Lake clearly lived up to its name today.

The only waterfowl that I saw at the lake was a single Common Loon, mostly motionless, but periodically dipping its head underwater.

Everywhere I went today there were families of warblers and sparrows, often with begging fleglings. Birds seen included Orange-crowned, Yellow-rumped and Blackpoll Warblers (1) and Savannah, Lincoln and White-crowned Sparrows. Many of the birds were scruffy-looking and sometimes difficult to identify because of the disarray and incompleteness of their plumage. Especially on the far side of Reflection Lake the bushes and ground and trees were full of birds, and it came the closest I have seen in Alaska to a southern fall-out of birds, at least in the number of birds all around me. Really nice.

I’m not sure of my plans for tomorrow. I had hoped to go south a bit, but the McHugh forest fire south of Anchorage has become quite severe, and the highway has periodically been closed, or if open, heavily backed up in traffic.

288 species so far