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Spring Birding – Kenai, AK
Following my week in Homer and a couple of days at home, I went to most of the Kenai Birding Festival about 3 hours south of Anchorage, which ran from May 14-17. Some of the field trips at this festival were to shore areas for shorebirds, many of which were still around, and there were also field trips to some of the many nearby wooded areas.
Festival organizers and field trip leaders at the Kenai festival pride themselves on the fact that (unlike at the Kachemak Bay Shorebird Festival in Homer) there is no charge for registration for the festival or for participation in field trips (except if the trip involves outside charges, such as hiring a boat). Also, because the attendance is smaller, there is generally only one field trip at any one time and it is easier to meet the other birders who are there. There is also a strong emphasis on helping new birders become better birders and on involving children and youth in birding.
At the festival orientation on Thursday night, maps were provided for all the field trip sites as well as for other local birdy areas. The first field trip that I went to on Friday morning was to Centennial Park. It was a pleasant woodland walk through along the Kenai River with Brown Creepers, Ruby-crowned Kinglets, Yellow-rumped Warblers, White-crowned and Golden-crowned Sparrows, and Common Redpolls, singing from the spruce trees and riverbank alders, a quick view of a Merlin, and Arctic Terns calling from out on the river.
Following the woodland walk was a midday shorebird trip to Kasilof River Flats where we had hordes of Western Sandpipers with embedded Dunlin running over the mud, about 30 Short-billed Dowitchers, a couple each of Black-bellied and Semipalmated Plovers, one Whimbrel, Bald Eagles munching on something on a distant flat, and various ducks and geese.
After time for lunch, there was another shorebird hot spot trip to Kenai Flats, which had more heavily vegetated mud flats and a few different shorebirds, including Greater and Lesser Yellowlegs, Hudsonian and Marbled (rare there) Godwits, Pectoral Sandpipers, as well as a few Whimbrels, and ducks and Sandhill Cranes. Out on the river Arctic Terns were fishing and feeding their mates. Later that night after the evening program, I went back to Kenai Flats to unsuccessfully look for a Short-eared Owl that some weeks earlier had been seen out there.
As part of their encouraging of young people (and their parents) to become interested in birds, the festival program on Friday evening presented prizes to the young winners of a bird art competition, and also featured a live Snowy Owl for everyone to admire.
On Saturday I first went to a field trip to the Kenai National Wildlife Refuge, another pleasant birdy woodland walk, and then on a trail through a year-old burned area on Funny River Road. Our main goal for the second trip was woodpeckers as we trudged along a boggy muddy trail through mostly dead trees but at first there were no woodpeckers, just Black-capped and Boreal Chickadees, Orange-crowned and Yellow-rumped Warblers, Ruby-crowned Kinglets, a singing White-crowned Sparrow, Common Redpolls, as wells as first-of-the-year audios of an Olive-sided Flycatcher and a Western Wood-Pewee. We then tried a nearby trail along a much easier to walk road through the burnt trees, which yielded our goal, a pair of American Three-toed Woodpeckers.
Unfortunately, I needed to get back to Anchorage at that point so I missed the rest of the festival which featured Dr. David Sonneborn, who has seen more bird species in Alaska than anyone else. On Sunday there were more river walks and a backyard birding BBQ.
I recommend this Kenai Birding Festival for anyone wishing to get a taste of what Alaska’s Kenai Peninsula can offer in spring in the way of landbirds and shorebirds. It also makes an excellent follow-on to the Kachemak Bay Shorebird Festival that occurs the weekend before (see my last post on this ABA blog for my account of that festival).
Join the American Birding Association at www.aba.org!
Source: http://blog.aba.org/2015/06/spring-birding-kenai-ak.html
