The Leaflet, September / October 2002
- Off the Beaten Path by Bob Kissel
- Our Alaska Adventure by Jim Hengeveld and Bob Kissel
- Grants Help Fund 2002 Audubon Adventures
- SAS Calendar for September / October 2002
- The Feather Quest; A North American Birder's Year by Pete Dunne book review by Jess Gwinn
Off the Beaten Path
By the time you read this, my first year as SAS President will have ended.
It has been a gratifying year marked by many great SAS programs and activities,
as well as unusual challenges. In addition, my birding travels have taken
me from a winter Atlantic Coast pelagic trip to the great West in
Utah and Alaska.
Mostly, your Audubon chapter is about people, our member volunteers, the kids in our Audubon Adventure classrooms, and your board of directors. Before September’s library program, SAS will hold its annual meeting. We will extend a huge thanks to outgoing board members Ross Brittain, Susan Hengeveld, and Vicky Meretsky. Their efforts and commitment the past four years have contributed substantially to SAS and our mission of creating a culture of conservation. New board members Carolyn Begley, Mike Clarke and Ron McCullick have big shoes to fill but each has made a commitment to further SAS’ environmental activities and initiatives.
One recent challenge, SAS’ proposed membership in the Bloomington Economic Development Corporation (BEDC), has moved forward. SAS was formally accepted by the BEDC in July as a scholarship member. Ross Brittain has agreed to represent SAS at the monthly BEDC meetings with your President as alternate. Our welcome into the BEDC has been cordial yet be assured that SAS intends to stay true to our environmental principles.
As noted in this column one year ago, my first SAS board meeting as President
was September 10, only a few hours before the horrendous events of 9/11.
It should not be surprising that “business as usual” relative
to environmental misuse and shortsightedness in the public and private sector,
local to national levels, has continued. Under the current guise of patriotism
and anti-terrorism, proposals for a national energy policy have been little
more than the status quo of consume more and produce more. While the US Senate
defeated a bill a few months ago to open the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge
for oil drilling, this was most likely only a temorary reprieve. Efforts
to raise car mileage standards proved weak and industry-voluntary. The events
of September 11 presented a unique opportunity to make forward-looking structural
changes in how we produce, use and conserve energy. It would appear that
this opportunity has slipped away and it remains to be seen who will show
the political foresight and personal courage to lead our country to true
and sustainable energy independence.
Our Alaska Adventure
For the first timer, exposure to Alaska’s immensity is immediate. Upon deplaning in Anchorage, travelers walk between stuffed, eight foot tall Polar and Grizzly Bears. In late May, Jim and Susan Hengeveld and I journeyed to the 49th state for a week of birding on the Kenai Peninsula and a week on St. Paul in the Pribiloff Islands.
After precious few hours of sleep following our nightime flight, our adventure started on the mudflats of the Knik Arm for Arctic Tern, Hudsonian Godwit and Mew Gull. We added Wilson’s Warblers, nesting Red-necked Grebe and the everpresent Orange-crowned Warblers in exploring Anchorage’s coastline. We later hiked Mt Rendevous north of Anchorage and discovered its spectacular panorama of all of Anchorage as well as a close-up view of Alaska’s state bird, the Willow Ptarmigan.
Turning southeast towards Seward on the Kenai peninsula, we surveyed wetlands for Northern Pintail and American Wigeon and found a male Rufous Hummingbird at the same restaurant (now closed) where Jim and Susan saw this species in 2000! Our mid-afternoon arrival in the old fishing port of Seward was rainy, overcast and windy. Yet Resurrection Bay yielded Marbled Murrelet, Harlequin Duck and Pigeon Guillemot within 20 yards of the shoreline road.
After a peaceful morning hike on the Resurrection River, we took our spots on the Major Marine cruise boat for an eight hour tour of Resurrection Bay and the islands and glaciers of the Alaska Maritime National Wildlife Refuge. The bay itself had Sea Otters placidly dining on Mollusks while Bald Eagles watched from nests high above the water. Horned Puffin and Common Murre darted by to nearby nesting spots. As the boat idled by Harbor Island, we spotted the blazing red bill of a Black Oystercatcher searching the rocks for food. The captain brought the 90’ boat seemingly only a stone’s throw from the 900’ high Holgate tidal Glacier. Yet we actually were a 1/2 mile away! Tidal glaciers are marked by continuous breaking off of varying size ice chunks at water’s edge. Our final cruise destination was the very noisy and busy seacliff nesting colonies of Red faced Cormorant, Black-legged Kittiwake and Tufted Puffin in the Chiswell Islands.
Our next stop was Homer, the end of the road on the southwest Kenai Peninsula. Our drive along the immense Cook Inlet brought us through miles of Spruce Beetle-ravaged conifers but it was only with Jim’s keen eyes that we saw our only Three-toed Woodpecker. Homer is world-renowned for its Halibut and sports fishing but is defined more by the Homer Spit, a four mile long jetty into Kachemak Bay. Fishing, eco-tourism and artistic activities bring a carnival-like atmosphere to this economic lifeblood of Homer. We took a water taxi across the bay to Gull Islands and were overwhelmed by the thousands of Common Murre and Black-legged Kittiwake on their nesting grounds. Our unsuccessful search for that one Thick-billed Murre was tempered by a close flyby of Kittlitz’s Murrelets. Summer’s dawn breaks early in Alaska and our early rise on the Spit was rewarded with many Common and a single male Steller’s Eider, all three Scoters and Aleutian Tern.
Perhaps most memorable of our week on the Kenai was an all day hike up the Skyline Trail. Located about half way between Homer and Anchorage, the trail rises some 2500’ from the trailhead to highest peak. We started up on a hot and dusty trail and eventually climbed through snow fields and vast meadows at higher elevations. Although we were unsuccessful in our search for White-tailed Ptarmigan, many Golden-crowned Sparrows plaintively sang “oh deear mee”. The trail views were breathtaking, the air delightfully crisp and Bloomington seemed so distant! Following our return to Anchorage we were joined by Dan and Allan Cristol for our PenAir flight to St. Paul Island.
St. Paul Island is a tiny island in the Bering Sea about equidistant from the west coast of mainland Alaska and the Aleutian Island chain (~250 miles) to the south. It is part of the Pribilof Island group, the other main island of which is St. George Island. Birders go to the Pribilofs to see the spectacular colonies of cliff dwelling birds, including the very locally breeding Red-legged Kittiwake and many alcid species, as well as with the hope of seeing Asian vagrants that get blown over to the islands from Russia.
Our flight from Anchorage to St. Paul Island took about two hours, including a re-fueling stop in Dillingham. I was expecting a barren, desolate scrape of rock and was pleasantly surprised to see a landscape of rolling grasslands dotted with freshwater lakes and associated wetlands. The island is treeless except for a few stunted spruce trees (affectionately known as the St. Paul Island National Forest) that were planted by federal workers stationed there. The weather doesn’t change—only the date. We had a high of 43º and a low of 38º (or very close to it) virtually every day. We had a couple of days during which we actually saw the sun (they average about 30 sunny days per year!) and had full-fledged rain throughout the day on only one occasion.
It’s a ten-minute drive from the airport to the King Eider hotel, which is located within the village of St. Paul on the south side of the island. We stopped at the salt lagoon on the way where we saw our first Red-legged Kittiwakes among the more numerous Black-legged Kittiwakes and Glaucous-winged Gulls. There was a small group of Bar-tailed Godwits foraging along the edge of the lagoon and we also saw a drake King Eider loosely associating with the local flock of Harlequin Ducks.
After settling in at the hotel and having dinner at the eatery just up the road (in a building that also functioned as a fish processing plant), we went out to Ridge Wall to view the nesting seabird colonies. On the way, we stopped at a gravel pit to see a female McKay’s Bunting that was paired with a male Snow Bunting and was nesting in a crevice in one of the sides of the pit. At the seabird colony, we had wonderful views of Northern Fulmars, Red-faced Cormorants, Black-legged and Red-legged Kittiwakes, Common and Thick-billed Murres, Parakeet, Least, and Crested Auklets, and Horned and Tufted Puffins.
Our daily routine consisted of three birding excursions in vans accompanied by one of the three birding guides, interspersed with meals at THE restaurant. Transportation and guide service is provided by the Native Corporation as part of the total birding package. Tours of three to eight days are available and we opted for the eight day tour to maximize our chances of seeing some Asian vagrants.
The first couple of days were fairly “slow” from a birding perspective, but we enjoyed the experience and there were always at least a few interesting bird sightings to keep us excited in addition to the fur seals that were preparing for the breeding season. Our anticipation was also building as there was a breeze blowing from the west and that boded well for the possibility of bringing an Asian species or two over to the island. During our first two days on the island, we saw Short-tailed Shearwater, one of the small and threatened subspecies of Canada Goose (leucopareia), both the Eurasian (Common) and North American subspecies (or species) of Green-winged Teal, Tufted Duck, Pacific Golden-Plover, several Ancient Murrelets, and a couple of Snowy Owls. These were in addition to the more common resident or breeding species such as Rock Sandpipers (the Pribilofs subspecies, ptilocnemis), Red-necked Phalaropes, Lapland Longspurs, and Gray-crowned Rosy-Finches (subsp. umbrina).
On May 29, our third day on the island, we were rewarded with some Asian strays. A Eurasian Wigeon started off the morning by showing up in the Polovina wetlands. This was followed by a Common Sandpiper (the Eurasian version of our Spotted Sandpiper, but without the spots) that was bobbing up and down along the creek at Antone Slough. More excitement was provided in the afternoon by a Common Greenshank in the bay adjacent to Antone Slough. While we were watching the greenshank, a Terek Sandpiper landed on the sandy beach less than 50 feet away.
We were elated with our good fortune in shorebirds and our luck continued with a couple of other goodies: a Mongolian Plover streaked past us at the Polovina wetlands on May 30 after we had gotten our fill of a Wood Sandpiper in the same vicinity. We would end up seeing multiple Common, Terek and Wood Sandpipers. A Common Cuckoo was seen near the Northwest Point by a single observer and we hurried to the location but could not find it. A bird that was initially though to be a Red-thoated Pipit also showed up at the northwestern corner of the island and, after studying some digital pictures of it (having arrived back in Indiana), we determined that it was a Sky Lark and not a pipit.
Our stay on the island was exhilarating and we were fortunate to have seen as many vagrants as we did. The experience of seeing the small Aleut village of St. Paul, hearing and seeing the magnificent Northern Fur Seals, playing hide-and-seek with the local Arctic Foxes (that run around the village like local pets), and enjoying the camaraderie of the other birders, made this an unforgettable adventure.
Grants Help Fund 2002 Audubon Adventures
South Central Indiana REMC recently provided SAS with a grant to fund 25 Audubon Adventures classrooms in Morgan and Owen Counties. We greatly appreciate SCI REMC’s continuing and generous support of this valuable environmental education program for children in our region.
Also, the Clarence E. and Inez R. Custer Foundation has funded 10 Audubon Adventures classrooms in Bartholomew County. Like the South Central Indiana REMC, this foundation has also been an ongoing supporter of Audubon Adventures.
SAS Calendar for September / October 2002
All outings and programs are free and open to non-members.
Saturday, September 7, 2002 “Early Fall Migrants”
Join us on a half-day trip to Monroe and Brown County hot spots in search of early fall migrant birds. We’ll look for land birds, waterfowl, shorebirds and raptors. Meet at 7:00 a.m. in the northeast corner of the K-Mart parking lot on east Third Street. Call Don Whitehead for information at 339-1782.
Friday, September 13 - Sunday, September 15 “Simply Living Fair”
The fourth annual Simply Living Fair is brought to you by the Center for
Sustainable Living, Bloomington Parks and Recreation, Bloomingfoods, and
Heartwood. The Simply Living Fair is a fun and educational event that inspires
the community to explore creative solutions to local and global environmental
challenges. The weekend will be complete with over 40 workshops, a children’s
tent, do-it-yourself demos, music, and a vendor area.
The Fair will be kicked off with a keynote address entitled “Living
in Intimacy with the Earth” by Chellis Glendinning Ph. D., noted author
and eco-psycologist on Friday September 13th at 7:00 p.m., at the John
Waldron Art Center Auditorium. The workshops will follow on Saturday and
Sunday at Third Street Park from 9:30 am until 6:30 pm. For more information
call 332-8796, e-mail tkinney@bloomington.in.us or visit the web at www.simplycsl.org/fair.
Saturday, September 21, 2002 “Fall Migration Continues”
This field trip to Lake Monroe sites will have us spending a half-day taking in the height of fall bird migration. We’ll search for warblers, raptors and other birds. Meet at 8:00 a.m. in the northeast corner of the K-Mart parking lot on east Third Street. For more information, call Jim and Susan Hengeveld at 988-1616.
Wednesday, September 25, 2002, 7:00 p.m. “September Program: Our Federal Public Lands: Wildlife Habitat or Livestock Pasture? ”
Livestock grazing in the western U.S. over the past four centuries has caused severe environmental damage to a variety of ecosystems. Riparian zones, deserts, grasslands, upland forests and subalpine meadows have all been impacted. Mike Hudak, Director of the non-profit group, Public Lands Without Livestock, will discuss the environmental and economic costs of livestock production on federal public lands. Everyone is welcome to attend this free event. Refreshments will be served. The program will be at 7:00 p.m., Wednesday, September 25 in Room 1-C of the Monroe County Public Library.
Saturday, October 26, 2002 “Northwest Indiana Trip”
Don Whitehead will lead an all-day trip to northwest Indiana to visit a variety of prime birding locations. Possible destinations include Kankakee Sands, Willow Slough, the shore of Lake Michigan and Jasper-Pulaski Fish and Wildlife Area where several thousand Sandhill Cranes stop annually on their migration southward. To make a reservation or for more information, contact Don at 339-1782.
Wednesday, October 30, 2002, 7:00 p.m. “October Program: Pribiloffs Adventure”
The Pribiloff Islands in the Bering Sea were first visited in 1786 by Gavril Pribylov, a Russian sea captain, who discovered their fur seal rookeries. Control of the islands was transferred from Russia to the United States with the purchase of Alaska (1867). More recent visitors include local ornithologist, Jim Hengeveld, who will share highlights of his recent birding trip to these remote outposts of biodiversity. Everyone is welcome to attend this free event. Refreshments will be served. The program will be at 7:00 p.m., Wednesday, October 30, in Room 1-C of the Monroe County Public Library.
The Feather Quest; A North American Birder’s Year by Pete
Dunne
Although written in 1989, this book could just as easily pertain to any year in the last few decades. Like the title states, the book follows the exploits of the author and his wife Linda as they journey across the North American continent searching for as many bird species as possible in one calendar year. To this end some of the most famous (and some of the more not so famous) birding hotspots are visited. Some of the places I have visited myself, some I have only heard about, and some are now new to my wish list of future vacations. Far from being considered an avid birder, the vignettes in this book were graphic enough to easily color my imagination with the scenes before the author’s eyes. From warbler fallouts at Cape May, NJ, or Point Pelee, Ontario, to enormous waterfowl flocks at Tule Lake, CA, the wonders of birding are vividly described. However, some of the adventures are more sublime such as his description of a Christmas Bird Count, an event I have participated in dozens of times. One common thread throughout is the infusion of a sharp wit set against the anxiety over the future of birds and birding. Overall, this book was one of the my most enjoyable reads in a long time and I highly recommend it to birders of any passion level.