Birding Part 5

Mega Moose in the morning frost

Hurray for me! I actually took the binoculars today and was able to ID some birds. No camera though. It's too cold to mess with both.

Well the plovers I've been seeing are, I believe, Pacific Golden-Plovers.  *Ack*   Or maybe American Golden-Plovers. I't so hard to distinguish between them. Shorebirds make me as crazy as raptors.

There were dunlins and dowitchers, pintails, mallards, shovelers, green-winged teal, goldeneye, and what looked like a horned grebe.

The white-fronted geese appear to have dispersed. Maybe they took advantage of yesterday's good weather to head to their nesting grounds. I saw maybe a dozen.

There are many, many more birds along the Spit and in the lagoons around Homer. It's best to go out  when the tide is high or else the birds are a mile away. It's still very cold for birding but you do what you have to do....

Birding Part 4

We made our way to the coastline of Mud Bay, wobbling down the boggy clay slope. I got a bruised bum when my feet slid out from under me on the boulders at bottom. Quite a bit of the slope was lost to slumping from winter storms. Mega-moose was standing post in the bottomlands of our property where she gives birth every year. It will be a few more weeks before we have to worry about her protecting calves, but she is intimidating none-the-less. Fearing a fall in the wet ground I didn't carry binoculars or camera so don't you know we ran into a small flock of about two dozen whimbrels, some of those black bellied plovers I haven't yet seen well enough to ID and a bunch of ducks. Getting back up the slope again is much more difficult so I'm thinking next time I'll take the leashes and just walk the beach down to the boatyard where I can get up to the road using the ramp then hike back home along East End Road. It's a bit longer distance but the dogs will get a chance to dry out on the way. Will have to see if the old dogs are up to it.

Sunny Sunday / Tux's eyes

Pannus progress: Tux's eyes after 5 days of eye meds. Invasion of blood vessels into the cornea and cloudiness is still visible in the outer corners of her eyes, especially in the top photo. Ultraviolet light is involved with the onset of the disorder and this dog loves the heat and dazzling sunlight of the AZ desert. 

Snow Glow

Tux came to me with a heads-up at 5 AM. The odd glow in the windows meant snow was falling. Geese were bedded in the fields behind us last night. Maybe they sensed this was coming. I can hear them squawnking this morning as they fly over the cabin.

Geese from my window

Snow Glow

Still snowing lightly

Birding Part 3 - The Greater White Fronts

We've never seen so many Greater White Fronts here and Cordova is reporting unusually high numbers    as well because the interior is just not thawed. Wondering if delayed nesting means trouble for the young when it comes time to migrate in the fall.

Birding Part 2

There are hundreds to thousands of geese in the area. Mostly Canada and greater white fronted, a few snow geese. They are mixing it up with the Sandhill cranes in the fields around us. We spotted five plovers on the spit today. Not sure which kind. The males had black bellies but there are several plovers with black bellies found here and we didn't have binocs to take a closer look for better ID. If they all stick around awhile the shorebird festival will be hopping next week.

Strange things we find on the beach:

Mallard head

Probably leftovers from an eagle's meal.

Goodbye April / Pannus

The coldest April on record in Alaska. Goodbye. Good riddance. Don't come back.

No doubt there is more record cold in store for May.

Today Tux visits the vet to check out a strange cloudiness in her eyes. I hope it's nothing. This poor dog deserves a break after suffering abandonment, starvation, hip dysplasia and multiple rattlesnake bites.

Update:

Well it isn't good news. Tux has Pannus, a hereditary immune disorder that attacks the cornea. Shepherds (and border collies!) are prone to the condition. She'll require treatment the rest of her life. I'm starting steroidal eye drops twice a day hoping to stabilize and possibly reverse it a little. Worst case scenario leads to blindness. We follow-up with vet in three weeks to see how effective the medication is.

Poor dog. It's always something.

Birding

Huge numbers of birds arriving now. We think they are piling up, staging, waiting for the interior and north slope to thaw so they can move to the breeding grounds. It's still unholy cold up there, and not so warm here either. We went to the lighthouse wetlands yesterday to see what was up: shovelers, mallards, pintails, greater white fronted geese, Canada geese, swans. A few snow geese were at Bishop's Beach wetlands and a ton of geese and Sandhill cranes are in the fields around our place.

Cranes in the yard

Sandhill crane displaying

 

Eagle talons

Head

 

Cranes Return

Yesterday we sighted our first Sandhill cranes, a shorebird on the Spit (I guess a plover after only a fleeting glimpse), ducks of some sort and a pheasant patrolling the neighborhood. There is a steady rain today and the cow moose is persistent in feeding in (on) our yard. After nipping off some spruce tips she dined on what's left of the raspberries then moved to the roses. Figuring that was enough damage, Bob rolled a small ball near her hoping to scare her off but she stomped that thing good and was not the least deterred. A week of cold (in the 40's) but sunny days is forecast starting tomorrow.

Snow

What can be said about this snow? Cold enough to form, not cold enough to stick. The emotional effects of cold gloomy weather are cumulative. I am feeling housebound already and longing for the warm caress of sun on bare arms. 

One must walk regardless the weather with these dogs. Here is video of two immature bald eagles working on that carcass...