Landscape with Horned Grebe Clarks Bay, Chignik Lake, Alaska Peninsula, May 14, 2019
In the photo above, we’re standing on the beach not far from where Clarks River debouches into Chignik Lake. When the lake is glassed off like this, the view from the beach in Clarks Bay gives the impression of an infinity pool, the horizon disappearing in fog or low clouds. This is the only photograph I have of a Horned Grebe at The Lake, the species indiscernible in this color rendition but the bird’s “horns” really popping in the monochromatic (black and white) version of this image.
Hidden – Female Pine Grosbeak Chignik Lake, Alaska Peninsula, June 7, 2020
To the best of my knowledge, no one has counted the number of feathers on Pinicola enucleator, – or if they have, they haven’t made their findings readily available via a Google search. At eight to 10 inches from bill tip to tail tip, Pine Grosbeaks are large as songbirds go. The smallest species of hummingbirds have slightly less than a thousand feathers; Emperor Penguins, which have huge numbers of tiny feathers to insulate them from the cold sport something like 80,000 feathers. In between these extremes, counts and estimates vary, but based on reports for specific species, something over three thousand is probably a good approximation of the total feather count for our friend in the above photograph.
Male Tree Swallow Chignik Lake, Alaska Peninsula, May 23, 2020
I was surprised this morning when I checked the Cornell Lab of Ornithology’s All About Birds site to note the absence of Tree Swallows on the Alaska Peninsula on Cornell’s range map. In fact these birds are common at least as far Southwest on the peninsula as the Chignik River drainage, particularly near settlements where nesting boxes have been established. Further down the peninsula they are listed as “uncommon,” their presence probably limited due to the lack of suitable hollow trees for nesting.
In villages throughout the peninsula the return of swallows each spring is widely anticipated as a true sign of spring. It is reported that one swallow consumes roughly 2,000 small insects (such as mosquitoes and midges) every day. Thus, a nesting box or two installed around one’s home can have a measurable impact on the population of bothersome bugs.
Elegant Redpoll (Acanthis flammea) Chignik Lake, Alaska Peninsula, April 25, 2019
Although peninsula checklists list redpolls as uncommon or rare, during our years at Chignik Lake they proved to be common, at times hanging around the village in flocks of dozens. The above bird is a male in brilliant breeding plumage. Although I photographed him in spruce trees and the original forest green background is pleasing, I like the way the black makes the red pop and brings out his eye.
Female Belted Kingfisher Chignik Lake, Alaska Peninsula, October 4, 2018
All Belted Kingfishers sport a broad band of stormy-sea blue across their upper chest. But females possess a second, rust-colored band further down. Both male and female immature specimens, such as the bird in the above photo, can be especially colorful, with rusty-orange mixed in with the upper blue belt and appearing more extensively across the belly and chest. They’re about the size of an American Robin, but bulkier. Their ratchety, rattling calls, which never fail to lift our hearts when we’re on the water, are often the first thing that gives away their presence.
The Lake: Waning Crescent with Venus I captured this image from our living room window on September 8, 2018
Month by month, photo by photo I’m making progress with this daunting task, key-wording, culling, editing, retouching the tens of thousands of photographs we’ve accumulated. The collection goes back to old print photographs we scanned into Lightroom, continues through our years together in Sacrament and on into our years in Alaska which have been punctuated with travels elsewhere and a two-year span in Mongolia.
Usually I’ve drawn energy from this project as I revisit memories and track the progress we’ve made as photographers. My editing and retouching skills have dramatically improved, and that too has been satisfying. But there have been low periods as well. Recently I pitched a story to the editor of a magazine. He liked the draft I showed him and asked for more. I finished the piece, sent it in… and nothing. It’s as though I’ve been ghosted. Unpleasant.
And so I find myself revisiting old questions. Have I lost the touch? Usually editors are enthusiastic about my work. Does “lost the touch” really mean “gotten too old?” Which leads to a downward spiral into the really big question I find hanging over my head at times: What if nothing ever comes of all this? What if this late-in-life push is, ultimately, pointless?
Things can get dark. But, are you enjoying your life? Barbra asks, trying to be helpful and cheering. The answer to her question is (on most days) an unequivocal Yes. And yet… and yet…
Faith in the past as an indicator tells me this moment of doubt will pass. That same past tells me that the only way to know is to keep moving forward. I suppose I could construct a metaphor about moons waning, disappearing… and then finding themselves again and waxing into fullness.
Five degrees, calm, a raven’s throaty croak echoing across the ice. Gaining about four minutes of light each day now, the earth moving into position to give us back our beautiful sunrises.
After a big Sunday morning breakfast we hiked across the lake and up into the foothills for a couple of miles. Otters, mergansers, other ducks and a pair of Pacific Loons in the little bit of open water where the lake empties into the river. The acres of tundra where we picked berries this past summer locked beneath two or three inches of hard ice, the result of snow melt and rainwater accumulating atop frozen ground and another cold snap. Icy snow firm as hardpan. Soft crunch under our boots. Easy hiking.
Once in a while a Red Fox trots across the lake or along the frozen shoreline. Arctic Hare tracks everywhere the snow is soft enough to show them. Yesterday I counted 80 birds at the window feeders – Pine Grosbeaks, Redpolls, Black-Capped Chickadees, Oregon-race Juncos, a couple of Pine Siskins. Bears denned up two months ago. Gulls and eagles gone. Wolf tracks lacing trails just beyond the village. We keep watching for a wolverine in the place we’ve seen them before. Tomorrows forecast says rain. Hope not.
This short video shows a group of Chignik Lake residents beach seining for Sockeye Salmon along the shores of Chignik Lake. The salmon thus harvested were later distributed to village members.
I didn’t have the lenses I might have preferred to have with me, and I have just barely begun the journey into videography, but on a recent hike up the lake to the mouth of Clarks River, an opportunity presented itself. Jake and Jamie pulled up to the beach in Jamie’s skiff and in a few minutes were joined by several other friends and neighbors who had traveled upcountry by honda. The plan was to do some beach seining along the lakeshore for Sockeye (Red) Salmon, with the request that since I was there, would I take some photos?
I’d made the hike in hopes of finding interesting macro shots, or perhaps a moose or bear in a landscape setting. The 105mm prime lens attached to my camera wasn’t ideal for the shoot at hand, but it was the lens in hand – neither long enough to adequately capture the bear that was fishing at the mouth of Clarks when I first arrived, nor wide enough to capture the sweeping landscape the netting operation was set against.
Nonetheless, I really got into recording this event, which has been occurring here in the Chigniks in one form or another for thousands of years. In fact, if you look closely along lake and river beaches where salmon harvesting has long occurred, you might get lucky and find stone artifacts such as the ones in the photo below.
From upper left, counterclockwise: The notched ends in the first three stones indicate that they were used as weights along the lead line – the bottom line – of a fishing net. The oblong object in the upper right is an ulu-like knife that would have been used to split salmon carcasses before they were hung to dry. It is still quite sharp. The two center pieces are arrowheads.
Most of the time in most places, salmon spawn over clean gravel or small rocks in clear-flowing rivers and streams. Sockeye Salmon, however, often spawn along lake shorelines where upwelling in the form of small underwater springs is present. There doesn’t have to be a stream as long as enough water is seeping up through lakebed gravel in water a few feet deep. There the female Sockeye will scrape out her nest, her redd, with her tail, deposit her eggs which a male at her side will fertilize, and then push gravel back over the eggs to protect them while they incubate. Shortly after they’ve spawned, all the adult salmon will die. Their decaying carcasses provide a vital source of nutrition for the various zooplankton and small insects upon which their young will feed until they’ve matured sufficiently to migrate out to sea.
This past season, beginning in late May or early June, over half a million Red Salmon ascended the Chignik River. While many spawn in the lake itself, many others spawn in the Chignik River as well as in several tributary streams and rivers. These salmon, along with the Pink, Chum, Coho and Chinook that also run the Chignik, are foundational to life here. They provide food for our abundant bears, eagles, otters, seals and other wildlife, provide a nutrient base for the lakes and rivers, and, with the help of Brown Bears, become fertilizer for berry flats, wildflowers and other vegetation which, in turn, feed everything from mushrooms to mice to caterpillars to songbirds. It would be no exaggeration to say that every living thing along the Chignik is connected to salmon. That includes the 50-some residents of Chignik Lake, among which Barbra and I are two.
Infinity This was the view looking across the lake from the beach near the mouth of Clarks River on May 14, 2019. The lake seems to disappear in mist where sky and water meet. From the village of Chignik Lake, the hike to this location is about three miles.
In addition to the landscape, which can be stunning, this is also a good place to view wildlife such as River Otters, Harbor Seals, Brown Bears, Bald Eagles, gulls, mergansers and other ducks, loons and migrating salmon. (Nikon D850 1/200 at f/11, ISO 250, Nikkor 24-70 mm at 24 mm with a polarizing filter)
Infinity
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