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In 1955 – before Alaska was a state – the Territory’s leaders in charge of drafting a constitution allowed schoolchildren to choose what would eventually become the state bird. The Willow Ptarmigan was officially designated in 1960, when Alaska entered the union.
It seems like it was just a few weeks ago that I was writing about the Surfbirds, and the long trip to their Alaska breeding grounds. Well, they are back. This last week we took a trip over to the Pacific side of the Baja to see who had arrived back from their summer up north.
I spent the last week in Alaska chasing all kinds of excitement but finding fewer birds than I’d hoped. From Creamer’s Field to the University of Alaska campus, these big, gregarious birds bugle their presence proudly as they pass through town. Millions of birds around the world are making moves. Will you move with them?
With a Rustic Bunting in Homer, Alaska, Neil Hayward has tied Sandy Komito’s American Birding Assocation area big year record of 745 (+3) species. That is a lot of birds in what is essentially Alaska, Canada, and the lower 48 states in one year. But whats with the (+3)? That’s where things get kind of fun.
Fish and Wildlife Service/Alaska, Public Domain, [link] Source Given that Shanghai has a population that is about as large as that of the 10 biggest cities in the US combined, it may sound surprising that it is actually a decent place for birders. Then again, it is so mostly because it is on the East Asian-Australasian Flyway.
The Alaska Science Center has been working with chickadees for many years, attempting to solve the problem. They began work in 1999, concentrating on the Black-Capped Chickadees of Alaska. Although the Alaska Science Center concentrates on chickadees, they also study deformity cases in crows, nuthatches, woodpeckers, and jays.
Mike absconded from New York the day I returned and despite missing his connecting flight he is safely in Alaska right now. (At Sadly, it seems that Alaska lacks the internet or phone service, as I have not heard from him about what his Best Bird of the Weekend was. So that will be my Best Bird of the Weekend. At least, I hope he is.)
The Surfbird outside of the breeding season can be found along almost the entire Pacific Coast of the Americas, from southeastern Alaska all the way to Tierra del Fuego in southern Chile. In breeding season, Surfbird is found in mountain ranges scattered throughout Alaska and the Yukon Territory 1. Truly a West Coast species.
It breeds into Alaska. My yard is nicer than Alaska (sorry Claire.) I’m not mad at you, Calliope Hummingbird. But if you did want to come visit… The Rufous Hummingbird is best known for tenacity and toughness and widespread wandering. My life Rufous was wintering in New York just outside the Museum of Natural History.
They are a non-migratory species found in western coniferous and mixed-coniferous forests, breeding from Alaska, western Canada, and the United States south through western Mexico to Nicaragua. The Steller’s Jay ( Cyanocitta stelleri ) is one of the ubiquitous birds seen at Lassen Volcanic National Park in northern California.
The bulk of wilderness is in Alaska (more than 57 million acres), most of it designated by the Alaska National Interest Lands Conservation Act (ANILCA) in 1980. The most recent additions were approximately 1.3 million acres designated by the bipartisan John D. Dingell Jr. Conservation, Management, and Recreation Act in 2019.
West of Ontario cone crops are poor in the boreal forest in Manitoba and Saskatchewan but improve westward with average crops in southern Yukon and excellent crops in Alaska. Siskins should winter in Alaska and north-central Quebec where spruce crops are excellent. Birch seed crops are poor to average in the boreal forest.
First of all, the species only occurs semi regularly in North America in a small patch of Alaska where it occasionally breeds. Most of its range is actually in the Old World so if you want to see one in North America you have to arrange a trip to western Alaska in breeding season, not exactly an easy proposition logistically.
Because these lands include a variety of different habitats and range from Alaska to Puerto Rico and Hawaii to Maine, it is difficult to make generalizations about their impact on birds. Northern Fulmar : Approximately half of the North American breeding population in the Pacific Ocean breed in Alaska, with the remainder in northern Canada.
Species or subspecies the range of the Northwestern Crow extends from extreme northwestern Oregon through coastal Washington, British Columbia, and well into Alaska. Others say it is the west coast analog to the Fish Crow - a marine specialist that is a species in its own right. How sure am I? Not at all.
Alaska’s long-lining fleet now must have bird-deterrent measures in place, which means a lot more Laysan, Black-footed and Short-tailed Albatross are not being injured or drowned in fishing gear. Aleutian Cackling Geese on Buldir Island, Alaska, where they made their final stand. is on a boat in the Aleutian chain.
The vast majority of this area (about 85%) is in Alaska. Farallon NWR , a group of islands near San Francisco, hosts the largest colonies of breeding seabirds south of Alaska. For many, the journey ends in Alaska, where NWRs host staggering numbers of breeding birds, including more than 40 million within Alaska Maritime NWR alone.
Flights of Passage describes the seasonal travels of 67 species from different parts of the globe, “chosen to showcase migratory behavior,” the authors say, “across a broad spectrum.”
to the Rocky Mountains and beyond, Alaska, throughout the Caribbean, and in seven countries in Europe. And then there’s rufous, who journeys between Mexico and Alaska twice a year. Angela Minor has lived, traveled, and birded from the southern U.S.
I am actually jumping out of my assigned beat area, to share some photos from my trip to Kodiak Island Alaska. I am sure there is a regulation that requires any article that covers Alaska, must include a Bald Eagle , so here is mine. All in all, I add 17 new species to my Life List, not even a quarter of what I had hoped for.
Importantly, the paper offers support for the hypothesis that the ancestor of the entire clade came to North America by way of Beringia — the land bridge between Siberia and Alaska exposed at various times through Earth’s history.
Hoary Marmots , also called Whistle Pigs , inhabit rocky areas near the treeline in northwestern North America up into Alaska. Their warning whistles when danger approach are one of the coolest noises one is likely to hear when exploring northwestern mountaintops.
They are a colonial breeder, nesting only in western Alaska, on a narrow band of coastal sedge meadows 2. Among the several species we did see on the jetty however, is the Black Turnston e ( Arenaria melanocephala ). Click on photos for full sized images. The Black Turnstone is strictly a West Coast phenomenon.
Unfortunately, he didn’t check their range maps: Willow Ptarmigans – the state bird of Alaska – are only found in Northern Alaska and Canada, not the tropics. He loves the Willow Ptarmigan so much that he often uses their calls in his movies, such as Jurassic World and Indiana Jones : Raiders of the Lost Ark.
Only this week the extraordinary journey of a Bar-tailed Godwit travelling from Alaska to Tasmania in just eleven days has shown us all just how incredible these shorebirds are. Many different species of shorebirds travel the East-Asian Australasian Flyway to spend the non-breeding cycle of their lives here in Broome.
Godwits are spectacularly powerful fliers; the Bar-tailed Godwit makes an eight-day, non-stop flight from Alaska to New Zealand each autumn, a distance of more than 7,000 miles (11,500 kilometers). Long-billed Curlew ( Numenius americanus ) cc-by winnu Godwits Godwits are next: large, impressive shorebirds with awesome, upswept bills.
My real goal is to talk to the local people, and to let them know how much we love coming to their part of the world—whether that’s Woodworth, Nort Dakooootah, or Muddlety, West Virginia or Moose Jaw, Maine, or Salmon Shin, Alaska. They need to know that their local birds are special and worth protecting.
Are you in Alaska? The second-to-last North American bird to have its nest discovered, they split their time between a tiny chunk of Alaska and a smattering of Pacific Islands. Once you accept this basic fact, you will be surprised at the ease in which you will find yourself identifying peeps and plovers, left and right. A rocky shore?
In any case, screech-owls are birds of the Megascops genus, small nocturnal owls found in wooded habitats from southern Alaska to northern Argentina. I suppose that sounds better than “tremulous”, “modulating”, or “little hooting” owls even if any of those names would be more accurate.
They breed in Canada and Alaska, but in the summer they can be found across the United States, as far south as Florida, Cuba, and into Mexico, and as far north as the Pacific coast of Alaska and the Atlantic coast of Maine. Bufflehead are black and white ducks, the male sporting a large white patch on an otherwise black head.
The Black Oystercatcher ( Haematopus bachmani ) can be found along the Pacific Coast of North America from Alaska to Baja California. Click on photos for full sized images. I found these two on the North Jetty at Humboldt Bay foraging and relaxing on the rocky outcroppings.
If I make it up to the Canadian coast or Alaska I will most likely find a breeding adult to photograph. Here are a couple of photos showing the Mew Gull’s wings… and tail. I grabbed a series of shots while the youngster was preening. Then I’ll have to try to distinguish the breeding adults from one another!
I may have come all the way from Alaska for these Salvias. I even managed to get some good shots of their irridescent throats, which is not something I usually manage. The sudden flash they produce throws the camera’s light settings off.) I’m hoping to have learned something permanent. It was worth it.
Personally, I think that they should have had to go to the back of the line and not cut in front of Alaska and Hawaii. Finally, in 1953, Ohio was formally admitted into the union retroactively to 1803. PRO – Canton, Ohio is home to the Professional Football Hall of Fame.
In North America, the Greater White-fronted Goose breeds in open tundra areas of the low Arctic from Point Barrow, Alaska to northeastern Keewatin, Northwest Territories, and it winters south to Chiapas, Mexico, thus having the broadest latitudinal range of any arctic-nesting goose 1. Range map courtesy of South Dakota Birds and Birding.
A vagabond naturalist and environmental educator he’s done a little bit of everything, from small mammal research in Grand Teton National Park and southeast Alaska, to monitoring Bactrian camels in Mongolia’s Gobi Desert. Ken Keffer was born and raised in Wyoming.
The Red-breasted Sapsucker calls the West Coast home, ranging from southern Alaska south to Baja California. The bird shown above arrived at my house at the end of October, a new species for my yard list! Click on photos for full sized images. Range map courtesy of NatureServe. I spotted this sapsucker at Lema Ranch last February.
However, most states still have less than 100 species, including: Missouri (98, unchanged); Wyoming (97, unchanged); Georgia (94, up from 54); Nevada (93, up from 53); Delaware (88, up from 83); Maine (82, up from 76); South Carolina (82, up from 49); Louisiana (81, up from 73); Alaska (79, up from 34); Maryland (62, unchanged); Illinois (50, up from (..)
The Ruffed Grouse is a bird of the forests across much of North America, from Alaska and the mountains of the west through Canada, and in the east down through the Appalachians to Georgia. It is a beautiful bird and well worth taking examining closely if such a situation can somehow be arranged.
Whereas American birders may be familiar with Sooty and Bridled Terns as stormwashed vagrants to their shores, and might get the Aleutian Tern on a pilgrimage to Alaska, the Grey-backed Tern is a much more rarely seen bird. The Grey-backed Tern is arguably the less well known of the the terns of the genus Onychoprion.
Gray Jays are resident in the boreal forest from Alaska south as far as northern California, and across Canada to Labrador, which might account for another of their monikers, Canada Jay.
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