I began and ended my Petersburg birding day with the Lewis’s Woodpecker. At 7:30 it was fluffed up in the cold, and on or near the apples for about 10 minutes and then left and soon after returned. The store-bought apples are clearly its favorite, but they were frozen hard this morning and the woodpecker had to work hard to get its breakfast. After it had been gone awhile, I also left to see what other birds were around, which were mainly ducks near the shore.

It was a spectacular morning, with the sun turning much of the water golden as it lit up more and more of the surroundings.

Before I add more woodpecker pictures at the bottom of this post, I will give a sampling of duck photos, including Harlequin Duck, Red-breasted Merganser, and Surf, White-winged and Black Scoters:

After a drive up to the north end of the island, I then returned to the apple tree and watched the woodpecker some more. It does appear to be a young and/or molting bird with fluffy breast feathers and an incomplete tail. It is so amazing that it wandered so far from its home, probably in the western Lower 48 or southern Canada.

Periodically it left the apple tree, particularly when someone walked by on the nearby sidewalk, often to perch in the spruce tree very close to and above the apple tree.

The inserted video below shows the Lewis’s Woodpecker working hard to eat the frozen apple. What a wonderful bird!

I am now back in Anchorage thinking about what to do next.

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The first Lewis’s Woodpecker for Alaska was found about a week ago in Petersburg by Sunny Rice, and identified and photographed by Brad Hunter. Until today, however, I was not able to make a trip to Petersburg to try to add it to my state list and my AK big year list. Finally, this morning I boarded a very full plane flying via a bunch of southeast AK cities to Seattle. I got off at its second stop, Petersburg, my first visit there.

After getting a shuttle to my hotel and checking in, I met with Brad and we walked from my hotel to the apple tree where the woodpecker has been regularly, but not always, seen. Brad has augmented the tree’s apples by adding some store-bought apples on a stick (the tree is over his shoulder in picture).

As the apple tree came into our view, there was the LEWIS’S WOODPECKER at Brad’s apple treats. It immediately flew away, but we waited 20 minutes or so and it returned to Brad’s apples, where it ate on the apples and stayed in the quickly diminishing daylight for about 15 minutes before flying away into the darkness. I plan to be back there tomorrow morning for better pictures in hopefully more light, and then if there’s time before my flight, I’ll explore a bit more in Petersburg. Wonderful bird!!

 

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I had too many activities and matters to work on today, so did not leave the house to go birding. Many birds, however, came to me (or rather to our yard) so all was not lost. In addition to the birds shown below that were in our yard today, in or over are yard were Black-billed Magpies, Black-capped and Boreal Chickadees, Red-breasted Nuthatches and Common Redpolls. Shown below are: Pine Grosbeaks (male and female), Downy Woodpecker (on our birch tree near suet feeder and on suet ball feeder), Steller’s Jay (on peanut jar and mealworm feeder made from the base of a hummingbird feeder), and Hairy Woodpecker (on tree next to suet feeder where it had just been and on seed feeder).

Tomorrow I take a little flight to try for a new bird. Stay tuned.

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I drove south of Anchorage to about 15 miles past Girdwood this morning. It was chilly (about 17 degrees when I started) and a beautiful drive, with everything (except me) coming over the mountains, from the moon to the sun to a large flock of Rock Pigeons to Pine Grosbeaks to mountain sheep/goats.

Along the road there were a few birds, including a Black-billed Magpie, two Mallards that seemed like decoys but were actually swimming and moving about, a single Trumpeter Swan about three miles south of Girdwood, and a few Bald Eagles.

On the drive home, many cars were pulled over to photograph the mammals shown below. About 20-25 of them were in the mountains along the road. I’d welcome knowledgeable people to tell me if these are sheep or goats or both.

 

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Today I looked at yard birds not just of my yard, but also the Airport Heights area of Anchorage where I wandered about staring at people’s trees.

Highlights away from my yard included the usual Black-billed Magpies, a small flock of White-winged Crossbills that included at least one Common Redpoll all munching on spruce seeds, and a Bald Eagle perched on top of a spruce tree. Quiz: how many crossbills can you see in the third photo below?

 

In my yard were the usual Steller’s Jays and magpies, plus a small flock of Pine Grosbeaks in the afternoon. As I recall last winter the flock got as high as 15 in our yard, so there still is a ways to go yet from the four that were there today.

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A few more eiders, a lot more ice;
Some Ivory Gulls, would’ve been quite nice.

Yes, I cannot tell a lie – I went to Barrow (soon to be Utqiagvic) for the day to try one more time, unsuccessfully, for Ivory Gull for the year. The day was short and not too cold (about 15-20 degrees) but blessed with a bit of sun first as seen from the plane this morning just after I saw the very large moon, and then seen out at the base of the point, peeking through the clouds for the 3 or so hours of official daylight.

Although there were ice and snow on the land and shore, there were very few ice lumps visible in the ocean water and in fact the water near the shore had much less ice than a couple of weeks ago. Most of the day the most I could see at any one time was about 4 bergs a couple feet long and some little 6-inch lumps of ice. Initially because of low clouds out over the water I could not see whether any ice pack was visible but later in the day when it cleared a bit more I could see a thin white line that may have been faraway ice.

For quite a while I saw no birds at all, but then Common Eiders were periodically seen on the water, a total of only about 16 for the day. Toward the end of the day when there were  few more bergs and when it was almost too dark for pictures, one climbed a piece of floating ice (where I’d rather have seen an Ivory Gull). The only other birds for the day were three Glaucous Gulls seen toward the end of daylight.

The only nonhuman mammal was a single distant arctic fox.

My future birding plans are a bit fuzzy (like the fox picture). I can’t take any trips until Friday, and it’s possible that all the rarities (e.g., Lewis’s Woodpecker in Petersburg and some type of large white egret in Kodiak) will be gone by then. We shall see.

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In the early afternoon I went to Spenard Crossing. Although cloudy, the weather was warmer than average for winter (about 37 degrees) and not all of the path was icy.

The creek was flowing along and birds of a couple of species were splashing away in the chilly water. Although it did not bathe when I was watching, a Steller’s Jay came down the water, seeming to consider the possibility. Not so hesitant were the two Black-billed Magpies and one of the two Pine Grosbeaks that were along the water. Most of the other little birds (Boreal and Black-capped Chickadees, Red-breasted Nuthatches, White-winged Crossbills and a single Bohemian Waxwing) stayed up in the tops of the trees.

The ducks of course, including the over 80 Mallards, the at least one Gadwall and the Goldeneyes (mostly Common), as well as the couple of gulls that were there (probably Herring-Glaucous-winged hybrids) were already in the water.

The “Plus” in the title refers to the Pacific Wren that has periodically been reported at Spenard Crossing and which I finally was there to see today. The wren was scolding and creeping along beneath the fallen branches and logs, a typical wren behavior, but unlike wrens usually, this one came out long enough to let me see the whole bird for a couple of seconds (it really is there in the picture below). Still, it blended into the background and was not easily seen most of the time.

 

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Birds at home today, in addition to Steller’s Jays and Black-billed Magpies, included a Black-capped Chickadee and a Hairy Woodpecker, both eating seeds.

I took a brief trip to Potter Marsh in the late morning. At first I could not see or hear any birds there, although I thought there might be ducks around because there was more flowing water than I saw last time due to the warmer weather and rain that we have had. The sun was having a bit of a struggle to be seen, which made the late morning seem like dawn.

 

After I had been on the boardwalk for a while, I heard and then saw a Black-billed Magpie.

At the end of the boardwalk the usual Bald Eagle was perched.

Two surprising things at Potter Marsh were a singing Dark-eyed Junco (I don’t usually see them at the marsh and they usually aren’t singing in November) and a brief appearance by a Northern Shrike (I’m not sure I’ve seen one at the marsh before).

As I left the marsh as a light rain started, four Common Ravens appeared, two in the trees and two foraging nearer the boardwalk.

Just as I pulled out of the parking lot, a Mallard flew over. So there was a duck and a few other birds there after all.

303 species so far

 

In spite of my head-filling cold, I pulled myself out of my soggy misery a bit today and went birding at the Campbell Creek Science Center trails. It was a beautiful sunny day, with temperatures at about freezing. I wore my ice-grippers on my boots and had a very nice brisk walk along the mile road to the Center and back. Along the way, Boreal and Black-capped Chickadees were calling, and a few Common Ravens flew over.

At the Center, one of the Boreal Chickadees was hopping along on the snow, probably wondering where the bird feeders were (not out yet, probably due to the possibility of nonhibernating bears wandering through and being attracted to the feed).

Up on the spruce tree tops, which were heavily laden with cones, a small flock of White-winged Crossbills was silently feeding. This is a species that did not show up last winter in the Anchorage area, but I am glad that they definitely are around now.

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Almost all of the time I really try to stay upbeat about things, especially about my big year, which has been a great year! However, the combination of a cold, drizzly, freezing rain all day today and my being suddenly overpowered last night by my second sniffly, sneezy cold in less than a month has caused me not only to not leave the house today but also to feel a bit whiney.

I did feed the jays though, including “Beaky” who stayed on the porch quite a while all puffed up and periodically preening (his picture sort of looks like he felt as grumpy as I did today). I also saw Black-billed Magpies out in the yard so the day was not a total loss.

I also did a chart of the locations where I first saw each of the Alaskan bird species this year (so far). Because I began the year in Kodiak (Jan. 1-2), it wins the prize for the number of birds added to my year list, with Ketchikan second, Anchorage third and Juneau fourth:

ADAK 16 ANCHORAGE 36 BARROW 2 CHICKEN 1 DELTA JUNCTION 10 DENALI HIGHWAY 1 DUTCH HARBOR TRIP 6 FAIRBANKS 1 GAMBELL 14 GUSTAVUS 2 HAINES 1 HOMER 17 HOONAH 4 HYDER 20 JUNEAU 24 HAWKWATCH SITE 4 KENAI 5 KENNY LAKE 1 KETCHIKAN 38 KODIAK 52 NOME 17 OTHER 3 PALMER 1 SEWARD 1 SITKA 4 ST. PAUL ISLAND 20 SUMMIT LAKE AREA 1 WASILLA 1

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