Birder’s Notebook
Shorebirds are renowned for epic, long-distance migrations, some flying from arctic breeding areas to the southern hemisphere to escape winter cold and find abundant food.
But not so, the hardy rock...
Recently I visited the cottonwood groves at Pilgrim Hot Springs and Council’s spruce forest, hoping to get better acquainted with a magnificent forest predator––the great horned owl.
Great horned...
On a recent evening drive along Safety Sound, I was excited to spot four small, black-headed Sabine’s gulls flitting daintily up and down in the wind and waves along the Norton Sound beach. These...
Semipalmated plovers are plump little shorebirds sporting a black-and-white face mask and a distinctive black band across the white chest––eye catching, one would think. But it is said that this...
On a recent float trip down the Kougarok River, families of greater white-fronted geese hustled from the water’s edge, across gravel bars to disappear into the tundra as our kayaks approached. The...
Western sandpipers are the most common shorebird on the Seward Peninsula and one of the most abundant shorebirds in the western hemisphere.
Perhaps because they are so common, these little waders are...
The greater scaup is a handsome, solidly-built diving duck that breeds across the circumpolar north. They are a familiar sight in this region, since greater scaup are one of the more common and...
A recent Birder’s Notebook article featured the astonishing 11-day migration of bar-tailed godwit “B6,” and the Nome-based research project that documented the longest known nonstop migration in the...