Arctic Terns

 An Arctic tern rises from the water of Tern Lake after diving and catching a fish.

They'll be gone soon, making their annual migration to Antarctica.

Rare Edition of Half-Baked Alaska

 Mother Nature is watering the land so I'm stuck inside trying to avoid housework.   I decided to publish an edition of Half-Baked Alaska.   It's been many years, but some news of the day is just too good not to share.

Female mallard

1). A couple camping near Resurrection Bay in Seward were getting ready to eat some freshly caught and cooked halibut when a raven came too close.   As the husband turned his back to shoo the raven away, a bald eagle swooped down and took off with some nice cooked halibut.

Trumpeter swans with one cygnet.

2)  The Homer Police Department Dispatch received a report of theft.   A man exited a grocery store and began unloading his groceries from the cart.   He set a pack of ribs on the handlebar of the cart, and a bald eagle grabbed the package and took off.

       The reporting party said he had no hard feelings toward the eagle, and the eagle obviously enjoyed the dinner.

3)  A salmon hatchery in Southeastern Alaska has been experimenting with methods to keep brown bears from accessing public boardwalks near the hatchery.   In one effort, they shot a bear with a potato gun.

    The bear looked around to see what had hit it, saw the potato, and ate it.    Naughty, naughty,   Not supposed to feed the wild animals. 

Arctic tern.   These birds migrate all the way from Antarctica.

And, finally, a bit of KARMA from Alabama:

4). A man died of a heart attack while disposing of the body of his girlfriend,  whom he had strangled.   They were found side by side, and the man's pickup was still running.

That's it for this edition.

A hatchling red-necked grebe waits for food while safe on its parent's back.

Just a Note.

 This is just a note to explain my absence here.   It's spring/summer and that means I am out picking up litter along the Seward Highway every day I can.

To date, my friend Mary Mcdonald (sic) and I have cleaned up almost 24 miles of highway, including a number of really trashed pullouts.   Plus, we continue to pick up new litter in the areas we already cleaned.

Tern lake.

In other news, the Tern Lake trumpeter swans are nesting and we should be seeing cygnets soon.  They changed their nesting place to a site farther from the highway, so it will harder to see if their eggs have hatched.

Likewise with the regular pair of red-necked grebes, who chose to build their nest close to the highway so I can keep an eye on them.   I wish them the best.   Last year, they "lost" two clutches of eggs so there were no cute babies.

Yes, this is the nest.   

My favorite Alaskan birds, the American dippers, have hatched their eggs.

Grub hub delivery.  to the hatchlings.

Open wide!

Some pics from my litter journeys:

Yellow-rumped warbler.

Orange-crowned warbler.

Northern shovelers.   Those wide bills explain their name.

Ruby-crowned kinglet.  They are tiny, tiny little birds that don't hold still for a nanosecond.

Ruby-crowned kinglet.







Well, Blogspot is giving me uploading problems, so I'll sign off for now.

Ripping Off Roberts on a Rainy Day

 What to do when a gloomy, rainy day sends your outdoor plans gang aft a-glay?*

Rip off Robert Service to tell a Tern Lake Mini-Story.    The story is in black, while my comments are in red.

A bunch of the ducks were soaking up rain at the Tern Lake Mud Bar saloon;

L-R:   Mallard, two scaups, two ring-necked ducks.

The wigeon that  handles the music-box was hitting a  soulful tune;

American wigeon.

Back of the bar, on a solo run, swam the muskrat known as McChew,

Note the muskrat swimming into the party from lower left.   McChew?   Hey, something had to rhyme with Dangerous Dan McGrew.

And watching his luck was a gussied-up duck, the ring-neck known as Lou.

Lou is topmost, center.   Note the fancy white lines on her bill and the drake's.

 

When out of the east, came some frightened teals, and into the din and the glare,

Green-winged teals fled before the eagle and landed close, but not close enough for my lens.

Right on their tails came a frightful eagle, hungry and loaded for bear.

He flew like a raptor, long beak and talons, hunting to fill his plate.

But the mew gulls arose and chased it away, to the other side of the lake,

((No photos of the gulls chasing away the eagle, because they were too far away for my lens and too fast for me.)

 

Where it landed in grass, much to its dismay, and the ducks slowly came back,

To the mud bar they loved, though chilly and wet, and only the sun did it lack.

From across the lake came a mournful wail, like haunting notes of a bassoon.

A cry that was calling for its mate to come back, to a solitary, lonesome loon.

This common loon returned without its mate.

* Speaking of ripping off Roberts, that "gang aft a-glay" in the first sentence?   Comes from a Scottish Robbie (Robbie) Burns poem called To a Mouse, 1785, and means "often go wrong.).  

The 2025 Botswana Journals, Ch. 44: In the Company of Elephants

    This is the final chapter of the Botswana Journals, and I saved it for last.   This is the impression I want to leave with you.    

  I was thrilled beyond measure when I saw my first sable antelope in Chobe National Park.

    I was moved almost to tears when I saw elephants pausing to pay their respects to one that was dead.

    But this day?   This day will live in my memory forever.

***

    Once out of the riverbed, we begin to see several small elephant herds.   As we continue to drive in this area of the reserve, the number of elephant sightings increases.

    Mashatu Game Reserve bills itself as the Land of Giants, with an estimated 600 to 900 elephants roaming 104,000 acres of private land.   The reserve is not fenced, so the animals can come and go as they please.    Twenty-two giraffes were released into the reserve in 1984 after they had become locally extinct.   At the last game count, more than 700 were spotted.

    The elephants under a Mashatu tree in this video are consuming something small and yellowish.  Perhaps the berry-like fruit or dried fruit. 

    As the morning progresses, it seems that all the little family units have joined with others, and what happens next will touch my soul like nothing else has done.

    I have a lot to say about these videos that I made while in Mashatu Game Reserve in southeastern Botswana, but nowhere in these words will you find an accurate and all-encompassing description of how I felt sitting in an open Toyota Land Cruiser as dozens of wild and free-roaming elephants walked on either side of me.

    I am convinced there are no adequate words that can convey that feeling.   I have a pretty decent vocabulary, as well as a number of books that provide synonyms, antonyms, and rhyming words.

 

    But I can't find a single word to describe what I felt.

     Bellamy waits for his chance to cross to the other side of the mass of elephants.   He parks us a few feet beside their trail, close enough for us, but far enough that the elephants are not impeded.

 

 

    As you watch this last video, you will see an elephant cross directly in front of me and give a little head wag.  I’ve learned from my own experiences, and from talking with guides and camp staff, that this is elephant language for “Watch your manners.   Don’t come any closer.”

    I’ve seen that head wag several times.   One young bull in Chobe National Park threw a complete tantrum, trumpeting and thrashing the bushes, then trying to run after us when our driver spotted an opening and drove us away.

    Another time, I was gently rebuked by a camp staff member at

the Selinda Spillway for trying to get a little closer to an unobstructed view of elephants drinking and bathing in a small stream that ran past camp.   The elephant closest to me wagged its head and tossed its trunk and ears.  

    “You had your warning,” she said, as she urged me to back away.

    Sit back and immerse yourself in the wonder that is elephants.   See if you can feel some of the awe that I felt.

    Note how all the elephants tend to walk on the same path as those leading.   This is quite common.   Hippos, when they come out of the rivers at night to graze, also walk on the same path as before.

This one.   Be sure to watch this in the largest format your device offers.

    Those of us who live in countries where regulations and liability laws try to vouchsafe us from harm can easily forget—in the moment—that these are truly wild animals that don’t live by our rules.

    Back to how I felt: I can only offer my heartfelt gratitude to Marg Wood and Shelly Kurtz of Marshel Adventure Tours for the opportunity to experience this.   It was truly a once-in-a-lifetime gift.

"Got milk?"

    Unlike what you would expect from an enormous animal, elephants do not have hooves.   They have toes and toenails, though the entire sole is covered with tissue.   There are five toes on the front feet, and four on the rear.

X-Ray of an elephant's foot.

Involuntary Intermission

 There will be a delay before I post the next Botswana Journals chapter.  My Internet service  is " non-existent to "slower than evolution."  

The 2025 Botswana Journals, Ch. 43: Drama in the Riverbed

    This is our last full day at Mashatu Game Reserve before we head for home, and already the sun is setting.

    I am very sorry this wonderful trip is coming to a conclusion.   I wish I could stay here forever and ever.   Or at least, the foreseeable future.   I'm getting low on memory cards for the cameras, though, and I refuse to download the photos onto my little travel computer or an external drive, and then format the cards I'm using.   That's what everyone else does, but I'm not confident enough in my tech skills and am afraid I will lose all the photos.

    I bring home the cards with all the photos still on them, even though they are also copied to another external drive.   In fact, I still have the original memory cards with photos for every trip I've taken since I became interested in photography.   I sometimes need them to restore catalogues in my photo software.

    Anyway, we drop down into the riverbed.   It's in shade, and that's hard to expose for to get vibrant photos.   Everything looks blah.

    We come across this fellow sound asleep in the shade in the riverbed.

    We aren't going to get anything from him, other than a head raise to see what's there.

    He goes back to sleep, and we drive on.

    We find a leopard, also enjoying a snooze in the cool sand of the riverbed.   She, however, gets up, has a drink of water, and goes on a walk.

Video:   (Cell phones don't record well in the shade.)

    We watch as the leopard walks along the high riverbank.

Just an aside:   I asked Bashi if he had ever seen the river cut full of water.   He said he had, and that sometimes it overflows and floods adjacent land.   As for how fast it flowed, he said, "You would not dare put a boat in it."

    Suddenly, something ahead catches her attention.

    I look upstream and spot another leopard coming this way.

        The two leopards continue to converge.    The anxiety and tension among us are almost palpable.   I'm holding my breath.

    No one says a word.   We are all concentrating on the drama unfolding before us.

        The first leopard turns, and, crouching low and using some fallen branches for cover, moves out of the riverbed.

   

    Once the first leopard is out of sight, our guide moves up closer to the second leopard.   I'm hoping she doesn't catch the scent of the first leopard, but it is almost inevitable that she will.   The two are less than a hundred feet apart when the first leopard disappears.

    Someone, maybe me, asks what would happen if the two leopards meet.  The guide says, "They will fight."   He says the first leopard is the daughter of the second leopard, but that means nothing.   

    Leopards are solitary animals and very territorial, though young females often establish their own territory adjacent to their mother's.

The "blah" of photographing animals in the shade.

    Here, the second leopard enters an area where the late sun penetrates the river bottom.

      She walks right toward us.

    And passes in front of one vehicle.    Our tension is still high, but somewhat abated by the disappearance of the first leopard.    That won't matter if the second leopard comes across the first's tracks.

    To my dismay, the leopard goes up the bank.  Perhaps she has the scent of the first, after all.  

    Our guide hurries to find a trail leading up the riverbank and then searches for either of the two leopards in the riverine forest.   We can't find either of them.

    We compare notes with each other and agree that this event has all the tension of a well-wrought movie scene.   Except, it was real.

    The river bottom before we leave it.

    The sun has almost set, and it's time to head back to camp for our final night at Mashatu Lodge.

A Brief Intermission: Behemoth's Plight

 This time of year is known in tourism as the shoulder season, as is late autumn.   They are the before and after of tourist season.

Behemoth, my Ford F-150 pickup, might be excused his confusion, as he is being asked to shoulder (how'd ya like that pun, huh?) both firewood season and litter clean-up.   The implements of both are in his truck bed, ready for implementation at any time.

Except today.  New snow on the ground and light rain have dispelled any thought of going out to pick up beer bottles and diapers.

My 20th year of cleaning up litter along 44 miles of the Seward Highway, including all the pullouts, began yesterday, Saturday.   I spent three hours just cleaning up the pullout at Tern Lake.

That's where I always begin, because the snow melts the fastest there.

Three bags and the implements.

Another view. 

All done.    There's a lot more pullout behind the camera, too.

Three hours to fill three bags!   But, that included raking up all the cigarette butts, toilet paper, and dog/human droppings.   That takes a lot of time.

The 2025 Botswana Journals are nearing their end.   Just a few more chapters at most.

Most of my time from now until snowfall in the fall will be devoted to litter.    Endless litter: unpaid job security.