Some of you might have followed along when I worked at
Whitefish Point Bird Observatory last fall. I blogged every day for that season and although I enjoyed
doing it, I won’t be following that trend on St. Paul. I mean, I could but…
However, the first couple of days on St. Paul were
interesting enough (to me, at least) that this post will just cover one day.
I’m not entirely sure where to begin but the alcids seem
like a good place to start… this places is LOADED with them. Not a couple, a couple hundred, or a
couple of thousand… but way more.
A big part of that number comes down to one of the smallest alcid
species; LEAST AUKLET. They
breed on the rocky cliffs and even moreso in rocky areas with boulders. There are a few walls and bouldery
areas here that spawn these things out by the thousands. Here’s a quick look at a few I
digiscoped with my phone:
I’m sure we’ll get back to alcids later. For now, though, we’ll switch to
shorebirds. There is one thing
you’ll learn VERY quickly upon arriving to St. Paul and that is the ROCK
SANDPIPERS are nothing short of omnipresent. They’re likely the first bird you’ll hear when you get off
the plane and they’ll be hardly out-of-sight for the rest of your stay. They are EVERYWHERE. Perched on vehicles in town, sitting in
the road, hovering over you wherever you might be, you name it. In truth, I cannot think of a single
square foot of this island where I’d be surprised to see one. With that said, they’re freaking cool
birds. The subspecies here is
endemic to the Pribs and oh, they’re absolutely enormous too:
We did see one ROCK SANDPIPER that stood out as being
smaller and darker. Without having
looked into this topic any, it seems possible that this is of a different
subspecies (which does happen here from time to time). Here’s a picture of it (lower right):
Being fairly early in the year yet, it’s no surprise that
waterfowl were here waiting for us.
The most abundant diving duck that breeds on the island is the
LONG-TAILED DUCK which you can see on a number of inland lakes here. Here’s a male:
We also have had “ALEUTIAN” CACKLING GEESE around too which
is ironic considering I spend my winters with these very birds. I haven’t seen a collared one but that’d
be pretty ridiculous if I managed that.
One species of goose I was very keen to see was my long-awaited lifer
EMPEROR GOOSE. We managed a few at
Polovina Point which was a relief; those might be the last I see until fall. Here's a digiscoped picture I took with my phone:
Last but not least, it was fun to find a SHORT-EARED OWL up
by Webster Lake late that day.
Listed as uncommon in the spring, we all hope it departed right away
(there are no mice or voles on this island to feed owls). Regardless, here the owl is
diving for something (it didn’t catch anything and honestly, we have no idea
what it could have seen):
No true rarities had shown up by this point and I seem to
recall getting kind of anxious. Oh, but that thirst would be quenched before too long. Stay tuned...
