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Gyrfalcons

 One of our top four targets to see well in the Nome area was Gyrfalcon as it was unlikely we would see it elsewhere. Due to various circumstances, our views on the second day in Nome hadn’t been that good, so it was a priority to head back up the Council road to see the birds again. Red-necked Stint Since this route took us past Cape Nome and Safety Sound, we spent a significant amount of time checking the sea, the lagoon and a couple of suitable shorebird spots on the way. We did a bit better for seaducks and saw all thee of the regular scoters, with Black being the commonest, but had no luck with any of the rarer loons or eiders. Along the south shore of Safety Sound, Andy found three Red-necked Stints that posed well for photographs. Further along the lagoon we found a couple of Emperor Geese and while looking at these, I noticed two Pale-bellied Brants, which are very rare in this area. Interestingly they were feeding apart from the nearby Black Brant flock. We were able to ge...
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The Kougarok Highway

  On June 3, we headed up the Kougarok Highway to Coffee Dome, the classic site for breeding Bristle-thighed Curlew. Since the birds were more likely to display early in the morning, we made an early start just after 5.00 AM and arrived at the base of the dome by 7 AM, despite a few photo stops for Musk Ox. The walk up the dome was uneventful but as we approached the top, we began to see Whimbrels. At the top, we noticed an American Golden-Plover and headed towards the area it was in as several of the recent ebird lists that had successfully recorded the curlew had also seen a pair of plovers. As we approached, we heard a displaying Bristle-thighed Curlew that then obligingly flew in and landed near to the plover. The curlew remained there and allowed a fairly close approach for great photographs. Given that this species can be tricky to see, we were delighted to see it so well with relatively little effort and descended back towards the car in good spirits, safe in the knowledge...
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There’s No Place Like Nome

 The afternoon of June 1 we flew to Nome for 6 days of birding prior to heading out to Gambell. After picking up our vehicle and settling into our accommodation, we had a couple of hours of daylight to head out to the nearby Nome River Mouth, where a Red-necked Stint had been reported the previous day. As we were driving along the coast road, Andy noticed a flock of geese heading west over the ocean. These were mostly Brant but contained seven Emperor Geese, one of our key targets for the Nome Area. On arrival at the river mouth, we saw another goose flock coming into land there, which included two Emperor Geese. These gave excellent views and ended any concerns about not getting good enough looks. Emperor Goose There was a small mudflat exposed in the river mouth with a good selection of shorebirds. A couple of Bar-tailed Godwits were immediately obvious and scanning through a flock of about 80 peeps quickly revealed the Red-necked Stint – a very bright alternate-plumaged bird – a...
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Return to the 49th State

  Over 30 years ago, I made my first visit to Alaska. Several more followed over the next few years and culminated in me publishing the state’s first bird-finding guide. I eventually sold 3000 copies before passing the rights on to the American Birding Association as the basis for a new guide. Since the mid-90s, I have only visited the state once, with my family in 2008. That trip was memorable for the wrong reasons as young son and daughter spent the long drives to Denali and the Seward Peninsula constantly fighting and bickering in the back of the car. Fortunately, they grew out of this after that. A return visit was always in my plans because of my goal to see again the great majority of western USA and European bird species. Two of my old UK birding friends, Paul Thompson and Andy Silcocks, were keen to join as they had never been to the Arctic or the Bering Sea area. After a fair amount of planning and booking, we arranged to meet up in Anchorage on May 30 and from there mak...
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End of a Nemesis

  Every birder has a few nemesis species that they keep on failing to see. From a Santa Barbara County perspective, I have a few. Of these, Crested Caracara has been the most vexing. About 10 months after moving to the county, one showed up on Vandenberg Airforce (now Space) Base in July 2001. At the time, my understanding was that there was no access to the base for the generic public. However, after learning several birders had gone into to see the bird, I found out that you could get a day permit to access the area it was in. I got a permit but the bird was no longer around when I looked. Since then, there have been a couple of periods where individual caracaras have visited the county several times over a period of multiple years. They have been extremely mobile and I have always been too late to catch up with one. In the last three years, there has been a caracara moving up and down the coast between Santa Barbara and San Diego. Several local birders have seen fly-by views o...
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Catching up with some spring migrants

  In my previous post, I alluded to a number of species that are distinctly commoner in spring migration than at other times of the year in Santa Barbara County. In between doing bird surveys up on the Strauss wind farm, near Lompoc, I have been making regular visits to Refugio Canyon, Goleta Slough, Campus Point and the Santa Ynez River to try to catch up with them. I also did a couple of seawatches at Point Conception Lighthouse, part of a volunteer migration monitoring program I organize each spring. The photo above is courtesy of Jamie Chavez. Initially, I failed to have much luck with the best being a few Blue-winged Teals arriving at Area K in Goleta Slough and the Santa Ynez River Estuary. Both my seawatches at Point Conception were not blessed with favorable weather for large movements, but we did have both a male Black Scoter and a breeding-plumaged Rhinocerous Auklet close-in on the water on April 5, while a White-winged Scoter flew by on April 12. Fortunately, things...
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The “Morning Flight” at Refugio Canyon

 Some 40 years ago, birders at Cape May in New Jersey discovered a ‘morning flight’ during which warblers and other “nocturnal” migrants migrated from the Avalon Peninsula back towards the Delaware coastline in the first two to three hours of daylight. A similar flight was discovered around that time at Butterbredt Spring in Kern County in the Mojave Desert of California. For a long time, the phenomenon was believed to be confined to a few locations but the discovery of another large morning flight at Bear Divide in eastern Los Angeles County heightened interest elsewhere in southern California and birders began to discover additional sites. Starting In spring 2018, I began spending more time in Refugio Canyon, about 13 miles west of Goleta, during periods of strong northwesterly winds as local birders had become aware that larger numbers of western migrants sometimes occurred in such conditions. One motivation of course was to find rarities but there are many western migrants, i...
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