Denali Highway Road Trip, 2022, The Third Day, Part Three, Specks in Bushes

 The Third Day, Part Three

Specks in Bushes

 

 "How ya doing, Carrie? " I ask Leilani's friend who is visiting from Florida.   There's no answer.

She's in the front passenger seat and, when I look,  she's gazing down at her lap.  I realize she's reviewing photos on her camera.   I ask again, "Carrie?   How are your photos?"

A long pause and then, "Well......    I'm used to shooting big birds.  Not little specks in  bushes."

Flashes of the large birds of Florida--the cranes, herons,  spoonbills, and the anhinga with its wings hung out to dry--come to mind.   Then, I have to laugh because "little specks in the bushes are exactly what we're shooting.   "Shooting" as in photographing.  

 Below is a full frame photo taken with a 500 mm lens.   I'm about 25to 30 feet from the bird, as near as I can recall.

Not much of a photo, is it?

From that useless image, I crop it, tweak it to emphasize the bird, and BINGO!  A perfectly usable photo of one of the birds we drive all this distance to see--an Arctic warbler singing its heart out while perched in the early spring pussy willows along the Denali Highway. 

Much better.

I don't know what lens Carrie is using, but it looks a lot lighter than the behemoths that Leilani and I are carrying.  My main camera outfit weighs 8-1/2 lbs., and, at my age, it's a struggle to hold it still.  If I'm in the truck, I brace it against the windowsill.   If not, I try to use parts of the truck as a substitute tripod.   A real tripod won't work here.   The bird would be gone before I set it up.  Plus, having a tripod attached to the camera doesn't allow for quick changes of direction as the bird flits about.

Occasionally, I use a monopod.   That works fine except when it's constant in-the-truck, out-of-the-truck, and the camera has to be detached and re-attached from the monopod mount.

Finding a small speck in the bushes is the first step.   Getting a lens on it is another.

Wilson's warbler

Quite often, the below photo is what I get.   Or tail feathers leaving the side of the frame.   Or just bushes because the bird has flown.   

Or, the most maddening, is when they perch in the open and hold still but their backs are turned toward us, like the orange-crowned warbler below.

So I understand Carrie's predicament.

By the way, we are using my crew cab mid-sized Dodge Dakota pickup for this adventure.  The three of us can ride comfortably with a spare seat for gear and jackets.   Leilani is driving, something I always let her do because if I drive, her screams hurt my ears.

Believe that?   Actually, it's because of HER hearing.   It is acute.   She can drive with the window down and identify birds that chirp in the bushes.  My contribution is vision, though I can tell I'm slipping in that regard.

If I drive and watched for birds at the same time, the truck will often follow my line of vision.   By letting Leilani drive, we avoid many encounters with brush on the sides of the road.

Anyway, it works out well.

***

So, we're driving past a small lake when I spot a nesting gull.   Normally, we don't stop for gulls but this one was sitting on an attractive nest.   Then we realize the gull isn't alone.    There's a pair of red-necked phalaropes in the lake, too.

We had  checked a larger lake on the way in that usually has a large flock of phalaropes, so reliable that we call it Phalarope Lake, but there were none.  It is apparent to me that we are a week or ten days too early and that spring is late in arriving.   Many of the reliable places for waterfowl are vacant.  Thus far, we have seen only one trumpeter swan.

Herring gull.

 

Red-necked phalarope.

Phalaropes are small shorebirds that migrate from South America to Alaska to nest and raise their young.  They have a unique feeding habit that makes getting a clear photo of them difficult:

"Phalaropes are visual hunters. During the summer, their diet is principally freshwater insects and other invertebrates. The birds swim or walk in shallow water or at pond edges and pick adult or larval insects (such as midges and craneflies) from the vegetation or the water. When feeding in deeper water, phalaropes sometimes swim rapidly in a small circle and create a vortex. As food items are raised from the depths, the birds peck from the center of the circle..  "--Alaska Department of Fish and Game

Imagine trying to photograph a little bird that is spinning in circles.  

The gull is waiting for us to move so it can return to its nest.  Note the phalarope just below it.

The gull left the nest  and flew away when we got out of the truck.   It soon returned and when we realize it is back and wants to regain its nest, we load up and depart, as always thanking the wildlife for the privilege of photographing them.

A couple more from this trip:

An American wigeon flapping its wings, one of the few waterfowl we found.

This cute little bird is a male yellow warbler.   Keep in mind that the head and body of these warblers are about as large as a thumb, not counting the tail feathers.

 

 

 

 

The second bird we drive all this way to see is the American Tree Sparrow.   The first is the Arctic Warble pictured in a different post.

Denali Highway Road Trip 2022, The Third Day, Part Two

 The Third Day, Part Two

The Twilight Zone Continues

The Denali Highway is remote.   A hundred and thirty-five miles traverse a mountain valley between Paxson on the Richardson highway to the east and Cantwell  on the Parks highway to the west, with only a few businesses and private cabins along the way.

Twenty-two miles are paved.   The rest was chip-sealed a couple years ago and thank goodness for that!  I've been over this road when it was hell on wheels, so to speak, including everything above those wheels.   Wash-boarded, pot-holed, muddy and/or dusty or both at the same time.   Rental agencies prohibit their vehicles on the  Denali Highway.

Parts of the road are built on eskers, which are long, winding ridges of rocks, gravel, and sand pushed up by retreating glaciers.  The tundra is dotted with kettle lakes, also formed when a chunk of ice from a retreating glaciers was left behind.  It collected sediment and melts.

There are spectacular views all around and we're heading to one of the prettiest--the Tangle Lakes area.   At this moment, however, we are in what I think is a boring couple miles of willow scrub punctuated with tall, narrow spruce.   We rarely stop along here as we seldom see anything worth a photo.

I don't know why, but "this is a good place for raptors" comes to mind.  The tall spruce are good for lookout points, but the willows are thick, making it easy for prey to hide.   

"WHAT'S  THAT!" cries Leilani from the driver's seat.   She stops the truck and backs up.   "All I could see was a white back."

A little more backwards, a little more and a light-colored bird comes into view, perched at the top of a spruce.   It's far too small for a northern goshawk and the wrong color and size for a northern harrier, both of which are seen along this road.

Binoculars and long lenses identify the bird as a northern shrike.   It's the first time I've seen one.   That makes it a lifer for me.

Northern shrike.   Note the hook at the tip of the bill.

Shrikes are often called "butcher birds" because they prey on rodents and small birds and sometimes stash their kills on thorns or barbed wire for later consumption.

And once again, my old nemesis:  did I foretell that or did I cause it?

***

We drive on, quite near one of our favorite areas, the Tangle Lakes.  Before the road into the BLM campground, I suggest we turn into what Leilani and I call Doug's Circle.

A little back history:    Doug Lloyd, a fine wildlife photographer and mentor to many, came to the Denali highway for many season to photograph, often in the company of his birding buddies.   One year, he invited his friend Leilani to accompany them, and she in turn invited me.

It was the first time I met Doug, though we had often traded comments on the Facebook page Birds of Alaska that Doug had administered.  It was a wonderful trip.  The six of us, including Ron Tappana, Jamin Taylor, and Michael Clemens, took our meals together at Tangle River Inn, but we birded separately in pairs.  

 

Doug was battling cancer and he and Rob birded by truck.   Jamin and Michael strode off across the tundra to find special species.  Jamin was going to show us a pond not far off the road one evening.  We waited at the appointed place and time, and as I considered the route he described (thinking that we would attempt it alone), a grizzly appeared in the very spot where we would have to walk.   We canceled that option.

It was that first year that Leilani told me about the BLM pullout that Doug recommended.  It's essentially a rest area along the Tangle River, with two nice outhouses, a boat launch and places to park.

Fishing and boating.

And warblers.   It has warblers.

It also has white-crowned sparrows that greeted us with joyful songs.

And then, lo and behold, an alder flycatcher.

With that coup, we were off to the campground to see what we could see.

NOTE:   Shortly after this year's trip, Doug succumbed to his illness.   I had already started thinking of this annual trip in terms of  Doug, and henceforth it will be the Doug Memorial trip in  my  mind.

***

What surprises me this year is how many scaup we are seeing because, where I live, scaup are the last to arrive.

This pair was resting in a small pond with floes of ice near them.

Denali Highway Road Trip, 2022 The Third Day, Part One

 The Third Day, Pt. 1

The Twilight Zone, Episode One

Leilani is hot on the trail of a pika.   She can't see it yet, but she can hear it barking and this time, she isn't going to give up.

It's one of her favorite animals, those little furry critters that are related to rabbits and live only in rocks in higher elevations.   Well, we're at one of the highest elevations along the Denali Highway and parked below a massive jumble of rocks.

Leilani and Carrie got up way before I did.   I was bone tired and brain dead last night from too many nights with only a couple hours sleep.   After the long drive with two construction zones, I was spent.   I got up about seven, just in time to answer the door when Leilani knocked.   We agreed to meet shortly in the dining room of Maclaren River Lodge for breakfast.

This is part of the dining room at Maclaren River Lodge.  Leilani is not having beer for  breakfast.   This photo is from  2020 and it was dinner time.

So, after a hearty breakfast of French Toast (with homemade bread) and bacon, we set out to find Arctic warblers along with any other bird that cared to visit.   This is the area of the highway where we are most likely to find these particular warblers, so they were our primary objective.

Objectives change depending on where we are.

They had been a little ways west while I'd lingered in bed, so we headed east.  I might as well have stayed in bed.    Leilani, with her superior hearing and ability to recognize most birds calls, drove about 20 mph with her window down, listening to twitters, chirps, and trills.  As with the pika (yet to come), she could hear them, but they wouldn't show their faces.

Well, that was disappointing, but we'd be back in this area for another evening and morning, so there was hope.

And that was the situation when Leilani stopped at the mountain's jumble of boulders, intent of showing the pika to Carrie.   While she was listening and trying to determine where their little barks were coming from, I was still in the back seat.   I'd been here before on this useless search, but I was hoping she'd find one.  

Yes, this is their habitat, but for four years, no pika had appeared.   It was encouraging that she could hear them bark, though.

Wouldn't it be funny, I mused, if an Arctic warbler showed up while she's looking for those cute little critters?

I got out of the back seat and grabbed my camera.  "Leilani?"   I said.   "Look here."

And there in the willow scrub on the opposite side of the road, was a precious Arctic warbler.   It was skittish, impossible to get a lens on it to focus, but there it was.

Hold still, Stinker!

Finally, it got used to us and settled down, as much as warblers settle down.

Leilani went back to the pika.   "It's right there!"

Sure enough, a little head appeared over a massive boulder about umpteen miles away.  I switched lenses, putting a 600mm Tamron lens on my 46 megapixel Nikon camera, and took some shots.   

Pika on a rock in the boulder field.

And, once I got the photo on my computer, I cropped it and made the pika more visible.

These little fur balls, with no discernable tail, are six to eight inches long.   They live, as I said, in boulder fields in the upper elevations  above generally, 4000 ft. as they cannot tolerate temperatures above 78 degrees.    They don't hibernate in winter, but spend the summer and fall gathering vegetation and storing it for the winter.

Meanwhile, in the willow bushes, the warbler apparently realized it was no longer the center of attention and flew across the road to the boulders, where it landed in a natural amphitheater and sang an aria.

So, Leilani was happy; I was happy.   But, as we drove slowly farther east, I was left to ponder another in a long series of life-long conundrums.   Did I have some kind of  sixth sense that the warbler was going to appear?    Or did I cause it to appear?

Next:  The Twilight Zone, Episode Two

More Denali highway birds:

A pair of lesser scaup.   The male is the pretty black and white one.   Both have remarkable golden eyes.

Some Common Redpolls:

Warblers:

A Wilson's warbler with its black toupee

So tiny it fits in the cup of your palm.

 

Orange-crowned warbler.   I know, you don't see any orange.   But, when excited, the head feathers stand erect and exhibit  a definite orange color.

Blackpoll warbler.   These little birds with their extra long wings fly incredible distances non-stop for up to three days when migrating.

Denali Highway Road Trip, 2022, The Second Day

 The Second Day

 

 I'd like to say that Leilani woke us up at O-Dark-Thirty to get us on the road, but that wouldn't be correct because there is no dark-thirty at any time of day in mid-June in Southcentral Alaska.   In fact, just a few days from the Summer Solstice, there is no dark, dark-thirty or any other kind.

 Nonetheless,  she got us up at what is usually a couple hours after my bedtime, and had us on the road 5:30 or thereabouts.   First stop:   gas station a couple miles up the road in Palmer.

Then we were on the way, with Leilani and her friend Carrie in one car and me following along in my pickup.   They were going to Valdez after the Denali highway and I was going home, thus the two vehicles.

The photo above is interesting as it shows markers for the snowplow guys and travelers so they know where the highway is when they're out in a storm.  Trust me, they need them. 

 

Wrangell mountains in the distance.

 

 Next stop is Glennallen ( about 140 miles)  to top off the gas tanks.  The station is called The Hub of Alaska, or just The Hub, and it's been there for many years.  It used to have a cafe and sundries, now it's sundries, restrooms, a gift shop with Alaskana,  and snacks.

Roadside wildflowers.   I don't know what they are and this part of the highway is the only place I've seen them.

Busy place.

Again we headed north, this time on the Richardson highway.   The Richardson is the neglected stepchild of Alaskan highways, a narrow, winding, two-lane road with no passing lanes, narrow shoulders, and a lot of frost heaves.    Several decades ago, I recall "driving" the Richardson and the frost heaves were so bad that your front and rear bumpers hit the frost heaves at the same time.

Slowly but surely, as the saying goes, efforts are being made to upgrade the road and we were soon going to find two construction projects ahead.   One is a 12-mile and the other is an 8-mile, both with 24 hour flagmen and pilot cars for your driving entertainment.

Before we got to those points, however, we turned off the highway onto a gravel road  that made a couple turns and led us to a small, picturesque lake.

Dingo, Dango!   Whataya know!!!   Two horned grebe now inhabited the lake.   We'd never seen them here before.   What a find!

 

The grebes can raise and lower those yellow head feathers at will, thus the "horns."

 

Their eyes remind me of ripe highbush cranberries.

  And in the same lake, a blue-winged teal, another rare bird for us.

 

 

After leaving the lake, we soon found the construction projects and  waited our turns for the pilot cars.   The construction is pretty interesting as, in the first project, they have quarried a massive amount of rock from a cut in the alignment.   They are still drillinig and blasting for  more material.

 

Note the big yellow excavator loading the huge rock trucks.

 

 The construction areas wore me out.   That and just a couple hours sleep the previous two night.   I was really happy when we finally reached Paxson, about a hundred miles from Glennallen, and made the left turn onto the Denali highway.

 

 

 The first 22 miles of the Denali highway is paved.   After that, it is chip sealed.   Not exactly pavement, but a hard, dust-free surface that is a joy to drive considering the previous times I've been over it when rain made the gravel a pot-holed and wash-boarded surface.

 

We did a lot of birding on the way to Maclaren River Lodge, about Mile 40, but for this episode I am taking you straight to the lodge where we will stay two nights. 

Maclaren River Lodge.

 

I was in the second room from the right in these duplex cabins.

The lake in front of the cabins.

My upstairs neighbor is building a nest out of little balls of med it forms and carries.   There are little balls of mud all over the deck and the two chairs that are on the deck.

I always called them mud swallows, but their name is cliff swallow.

The swallows are relentless in their nest-building.   I lay in bed that night and watched their shadows on the curtains until I fell asleep.

 

 

Next up:   Birding the Denali highway.

Denali Highway Road Trip, 2022

 

 Below is a map of the major highway system in Alaska.   As you can see, we have a paucity of roads in a huge state.

 It took me all day Monday, June 13, to get ready for my annual trip to the Denali highway, illustrated in brown in the center of the map below.   My friend Leilani, and Carrie, her visitor from Florida, planned to drive to Paxon on the east end of the Denali highway, and drive through to Maclaren River Lodge, at aboout Mile 40 of the 130 mile road.

It took me all day because I kept losing things that were on their way to being packed but somehow never made that final destination.   In fact, my new Wingspan binoculars, the ones I bought to replace the previous pair that apparently fell off or out of my kayak into Tern Lake,  not only never made it to Packing Central, which is what I call the spare bedroom when I'm preparing for a trip, but still have not revealed their whereabouts.

 The first leg of the trip, for me, was to drive about 150 miles to Palmer where I would overnight at Leilani's.

On the map, look at the Seward highway shown in blue and the town of Seward.   Follow that road up to where it makes a sharp westward turn that leads to a black dot.    That is approximately where I live.

So, my journey began at that point, went through Anchorage where it joined the green Glenn highway and paused overnight in Palmer.

 Contrary to what some think, we were not going to Denali National Park.   For that trip, it's best to drive up the Parks highway (maroon on the map) and the Parks highway was not named for the national park, but for George Parks who was Alaska's first resident territorial governor back in 1925-1923.

However, the Denali highway WAS THE ONLY road to get to the Park up until the Parks highway was built in the early 1970s.   Except, you could always go by the Alaska Railroad.    Needless to say, the park did not have nearly the amount of visitors back then.

 

Now, the Denali highway is a scenic 130-miledrive through tundra south of the Alaska Range of mountains and northwest  of the Wrangell mountains.   There are lots of hiking trails and fishing spots, but few, very few,  accommodations.   No gas stations, except you can buy gas at Maclaren River Lodge, no B&Bs, until you're almost at the western end near Cantwell.

The first 22 miles are paved.   The rest is hard-surfaced with chip sealing.   Much, much better than it old gravel road and was often pot-holed and washboarded.

Got it?

Denali, the mountain as seen from an overlook along the Parks highway.

 

 Before I left, however, there was a mandatory stop near my house to check on all the baby birds at Tern Lake.

 

 

The resident trumpeter swans were hatching their six youngsters.

 

This photo was taken recently after the eggs started hatching.   Grebes carry their young on their backs for a while.

 

 The red-necked grebes had five eggs that were still incubating.   So, all was well.

 

 

Three construction zones and a rock abatement project* later, I arrived in Palmer late afternoon, in time to take a few photos around this  historic agricultural area.

As for Palmer, it's located in what is called the Matanuska-Susitna Valley, so-named for the two mighty river that run through it to empty into the Knik Arm of Cook Inlet.  They neglected to mention the Knik River.

 

Pioneer Peak and plowed fields in Palmer.

Something interesting about Palmer:  

"In 1935, the Federal Emergency Relief Administration created an experimental farming community known as the Matanuska Valley Colony as part of the New Deal resettlement plan. Situated in the Matanuska Valley, about 45 miles northeast of Anchorage, Alaska, the colony was settled by 203 families from Minnesota, Wisconsin and Michigan. The colony project cost about $5,000,000 and, after five years, over half of the original colonists had left the valley. By 1965, only 20 of the first families were still farming the valley.^"    

^{So sayeth Wikipedia.}

^{Tomorrow morning, Leilani will awaken us early early early and we will be on the road forever and a day until we reach Maclaren River Lodge, with multiple stops for birds and construction areas.} 

^***

 

 

^{*Rock Abatement Project is a multi-year contract aimed at eliminating rockfalls along Turnagain Arm on the Seward Highway near Anchorage.   It involves drilling, blasting, and clearing problem rock areas, as well as installing stanchions with rock-catching draped net material.   It's ugly, but if it prevents anyone getting killed with a VW-sized boulder falling on their car, all is forgiven.}

Road Trip June, 2022

 Five days, 900 miles through five construction zones and a rock abatement project twice, 1800 photos, and a little bird about four inches tall that confronted my truck and won!

And those eerie things that have happened all my life?   Happened twice.

 I am busy downloading all those photos and choosing the ones to show you.   Tune in again later!!!