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Tag Archives: Alaska
Spring Angels
Returning Tundra Swans, flying above the Chignik River – Chignik Lake, March 17, 2017
At first it seemed counterintuitive to process this picture captured on a blue sky spring afternoon as a monochrome image, but I like the moodiness. I don’t know… what do you think?
On A Frozen Sea
The Chukchi Sea, April 21, 2012
In late winter and early spring, our Inupiat friends in Point Hope began talking about “breaking trail” across the frozen Chukchi Sea so that snow machines (snow mobiles) and hondas (ATVs) could be driven out to leads (open lanes in the ice) in order to set up whaling camps. “Breaking trail?” Informed by our experiences with freshwater lakes, we wondered, “Can’t you just drive out across a smooth blanket of ice?”
Well, as we learned, a frozen sea isn’t like that. As ice forms and expands and is pushed around by winds and currents, sheets separate (creating leads) and later are pushed together again, the resulting pressure ridges can heave up massive jumbles of jigsaw ice. Some of the chunks are as large as a garage. This was all new to us the first time we hiked out to a camp. In the above photo our eyes are drawn to an otherworldly sphere and pyramid lit blue in pre-dawn light.
Rothko Sunrise, Point Hope
One hundred twenty-five miles north of the Arctic Circle, on this date there still remained four hours and three minutes of daylight in Point Hope’s sky. This late in the year the Chukchi Sea was blanketed in ice, the sun barely ascending above the horizon. From November 18 to 19, nine minutes and 52 seconds of daylight were lost. The following day, ten minutes were lost – an additional eight seconds. The next day, 10 more seconds of light disappeared. And so it continued, darkness gathering momentum toward December 6 when the sun vanished, leaving only a glow on the horizon. The sun remained down for 30 days until January 6 when it peeked above the frozen sea at 2:03 PM and remained barely visible for 19 minutes and 20 seconds.
I first encountered art in the style of Mark Rothko’s colorfield paintings (a painting by an art student at the local college) in my teens. Like many others, I was fascinated by the juxtaposition of colors. I would shoot this scene differently now… but will most likely never get the opportunity. Happy to have been there, seen it, and come away with this photograph despite its imperfections.
The Swans at Broad Pool
Each March, residents of Chignik Lake begin checking Broad Pool for early signs of spring – arriving flocks of Tundra Swans. The best swan viewing occurs in years when the river is partially iced over and therefore closed to boat traffic. This expansive pool has abundant Water Crowfoot, an aquatic vegetation preferred by swans and dabbling ducks. The swans, which mate for life and can live to be over 20 years old, will rest here and in other quiet water in the Chignik Drainage for up to a few weeks before breaking off in pairs and heading to tundra nesting sites on the Bristol Bay (northwest) side of the Alaska Peninsula. As human activity continues to cause the planet to warm and years of ice become fewer on the Chignik, Broad Pool may no longer provide a suitable resting place for returning waterfowl. Things are changing… fast. Get out and observe, photograph, document.
Spring Green
Knighted by a Finch
Actually not grosbeaks at all but a member of the finch family, their large beaks are useful for feeding on leaf buds, much as ptarmigan which have similarly robust beaks.
I had only recently acquired the kind of camera equipment necessary for serious avifauna documentation when one fall morning as I was walking through the village, 20 pounds of camera, lens and tripod slung over my shoulder, a flock of Pine Grosbeaks descended all around me in the willows, scrub alders and salmonberry brakes along the dirt road. I knew the species from books but had never encountered them. Keen to get photographs, I set up to shoot. No sooner was I in position than one of their tribe flew over, rested for a moment on the long lens of my camera, and then hopped onto on my head. A passage from Walden came immediately to mind:
“I once had a sparrow alight upon my shoulder for a moment while I was hoeing in a village
garden, and I felt that I was more distinguished by that circumstance than I should have been by any epaulette I could have worn.” (Thoreau, Walden, “Winter Animals”)
I quickly made photographs documenting the species’ presence in that part of the world (David Narver did not observe them in the Chignik Drainage during his field work in the early 1960’s, and they are listed as “rare” or “uncommon” on peninsular checklists), but the species proved to be common in the years we were at The Lake and year by year I improved on those first pictures. As I continue sorting through the many thousands of photographs comprising “The Chignik Files,” I will show other photos of these beautiful finches… the Cardinal of the Far North.
Superb Owl Sunday!
I’ve gone around knocking on hollow trees most of my adult life, hoping a flying squirrel or owl would pop it’s head out. And then one day, it happened!
Down the Hatch!
Tommy Woodpecker
The red crown distinguishes this specimen as a male. Note the blue tint on the tips of his tale, an iridescence not often so easily observed in Downies. Like other woodpeckers, Downies use their stiff tail feathers as a kind of third leg to provide leverage is they drum or search tree trunks for insects.
It is suggested in T. Gilbert Pearson’s Birds of America (1917) that the moniker Tommy Woodpecker would better suit North America’s smallest member of the woodpecker tribe “…for his boyish, buoyant disposition makes friends for him wherever he goes.” Perhaps for a moment we can set aside the sexism and celebrate an era and it ornithologists who took such a personal and personified approach to avian studies. I’d like to see any number of birds renamed, starting with discarding all those appellations that are essentially slave names applied by the person who “discovered” a given species – Wilson’s Warbler; Audubon’s Oriole; Steller’s Jay; etcetera. But Downy seems apt for this six-inch bird with its soft breast feathers.
No woodpeckers appear in David Narver’s study of the Chignik River Drainage conducted in the early 1960’s. Range maps have historically placed the Three-toed Woodpecker on the Alaska Peninsula – with no mention of Downies -, but this is surely in error as historically there was essentially no suitable habitat for spruce-and-pine-loving Three-toeds in that part of the world. My guess is that someone conducting an early biological survey got a glimpse of a woodpecker, made a guess, and that became the text for the peninsula. Very recently, I’ve noticed that the Cornell Lab of Ornithology and other authorities have begun to make corrections.
Though they are often common – the woodpecker one is most likely to encounter throughout much of North America – even in the most suitable habitat Downies are seldom abundant. And although the above photograph was recorded in the Sitka Spruce Grove at The Lake, Downies are equally likely to be found in the peninsula’s alder thickets and occasional cottonwoods. Though they are generally listed as uncommon or rare on the Alaska Peninsula, they are in fact regularly seen along the length of the Chignik River. It is probably a lack of nesting cavities rather than a shortage of food that limits Downy numbers on the peninsula, so as the land becomes more forested and trees mature and die and cavities are created their numbers will increase. Listen for their distinctive Peek! Peek! call and then for tell-tale light tapping.
