Lynn Barber's Birding Blog

Tomorrow I will give my first class on places to bird in Alaska, and my PowerPoint on places to bird in Anchorage is finally now done. It is huge with many, many pictures, because I know so many places to bird here. Nearly all of the pictures are those taken during my Alaska big year last year. Probably I won’t get through it all tomorrow and will need to finish it in other weeks where I have less material. This is an 8-week class at Ole! (Opportunities for Lifelong Education). Next week’s class will be on the Kenai Peninsula area (will include Homer, Kenai and Soldotna, Seward). Other classes will be on western Alaska (1 class each on St. Paul Island and Nome/Gambell), southern/western islands (Adak, Kodiak, Dutch Harbor), central/eastern Alaska, southeastern Alaska (Juneau, Ketchikan and much more) and Utqiagvik (Barrow)/North Slope.

Now that I have the first of the 8 PowerPoints done, and most of the second one done, I should have time to put together another presentation on my ABA big year as a whole so I can do my scheduled talks at the various Audubon and other birding groups in the coming months. It is clear that I could spend at least 8 hours doing that talk, so I will need to condense and rearrange things, concentrating more on the birds seen last year and less on where to bird in Alaska. In preparing for these talks it has been very helpful to me that I have been posting my birds on eBird, so when I am in doubt about where a picture was taken or when I saw a particular bird, I routinely have been checking my own eBird posts from last year. They are much more organized and much more readable than my old birding notes.

So, once again, not much birding today. Out in the yard a few birds came in, but it was frosty-foggy and quite quiet.

Tomorrow, who knows what I will do, except I know I will be at the computer much of the day after my class is over (begins at 9:15 and goes until 10:30).