I’ve had meetings and projects lately, so have mostly been around home in Anchorage. A few bird photos from our yard follow, of squabbling, eating Steller’s Jays and a Dark-eyed Junco on a seed feeder.
The most exciting thing about our yard lately (until this morning) has been watching the fireweeds gradually turn a fiery red. The photos below were taken each day from Sept. 12-15, the first two days not being sunny, so the lighting also affects how red the leaves are. It is clear, however, that there is more red and less green in the leaves.
This morning’s excitement was invasion by the two neighborhood moose, mama and half-grown young, which munched on trees and sadly, on fireweed, in the back yard. We would never have noticed them in the middle of the night but our dog heard them and let out a curdling whine/bark at 3 a.m. I closed all the blinds and the windows that had been open so he couldn’t see or hear the moose and eventually he settled down and we went back to sleep. When we got up at 7 a.m., the moose were still there, visible in the half-light, munching some more before hopping the fence to browse on a neighbor’s bush.
I went out on the front porch to get a few pictures as they munched a few minutes later.
The mother then wandered into the street, followed by the youngster. It turned out the youngster was interested in something to eat besides vegetation so there was a brief feeding interlude out in the street before they both wandered farther down the road.
Tomorrow I’m again heading off to Nome for a few days to see what it’s like at this time of year. I expect that most bird numbers will be way down, but hope that there will still be ducks and geese.
Lynn Barber's Birding Blog 