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Photography & Birdwatching in Gustavus & Glacier Bay Alaska
Photography
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Bird
Watching... (aka "birding")
Gustavus and Glacier Bay are great places to go birding because our
habitat is so diverse- woodlands, wetlands, intertidal areas, and
marine habitats.
We have resident birds that stick around, many that
come here to nest and fledge their young, and ones that migrate through
on their way to nesting sites further north. If you want to go birding,
most of the B&Bs and Inns in Gustavus have binoculars and bird books
for their guests to borrow.
The Gustavus foreland is the glacial moraine that was left when the ice
sheet that covered the mouth of what is now the national park melted.
Unlike the Tongass National Forest covering the rest of southeast
Alaska, we have wetlands and an emerging woodland.
We’re on the western
flyway, and in spring and fall, geese, cranes and swan spend days in
the area west of the Good River that is protected as the ‘Crane
Refuge’. They generally go north in May and south in September. A few
of the migrants stay and nest here during the summer. Thrush, robin,
hummingbirds and others also come to nest in the summer months.
On our southern border, the waters of Icy Strait is a rich area for a
variety of sea birds, including a healthy population of marbled
murrelets, a rare bird elsewhere. They are funny little diving birds.
Instead of getting together in large colonies, a single pair will make
a nest high in a spruce or hemlock tree and lay a single egg.
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After the
chick hatches, it stays in the nest being fed until it is strong enough
to make it on its own. When it is time for the chick to fledge, the
parents will take off one morning, and not come back. When the chick
finally gets hungry enough, it launches off the branch and flies off to find its own food.
No-one knows how the pair know how to locate the
nest high enough to give the chick ample room for the inaugural flight,
but they must succeed cause marbled murrelets have been around a while.
Glacier Bay also offers an abundance of birdlife; something like 240
species have been identified. On the day boat, you will see colonies
of nesting gulls, guillemots, puffins, and cormorants on the rocky
islands.
You’ll also see large flocks of phalaropes, molting sea
ducks, and foraging gulls; and we see loons, gulls, murrelets, and sea
ducks in the winter.
We’re worried about the Kittlitz's murrelets.
Their numbers have declined so drastically in the last 10 years that
they may soon be listed as a threatened or endangered. They nest in
recently deglaciated mountain areas, so Glacier Bay with the receding
ice, offers large areas for them. They are cute to watch because they
hop a few times, then skip on the water before they take off.
For more
information about them and other species, visit the US Park Service and
the Geological Service websites. They have lists of birds, habitat
information, suggested locations, and much more.
(Pictures and birdwatching text are compliments of the guests of Good River Bed & Breakfast. Thanks, Sandy!)
Good River Bed & Breakfast
Box 37,
Gustavus, AK 99826
www.glacier-bay.us
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