Unlike most species of gulls, Bonapart’s gulls nest in trees.
Baby Bonapart’s gulls stayed in the nest for a day before jumping out and heading for nearby boreal ponds.
The aggressive and noisy Bonaparte’s gulls emit ear-splitting screams and drop hot, slimy poop bombs as they drive away enemies from their eggs and young, leaving enemies from ravens to eagles to nosy photographers diving for cover.
Bonaparte’s gull attacks!
To view video of Bonaparte’s gull click the link below.
October 2021 A late-season run of coho salmon is attracting some enormous predators. At low tide, Steller’s sea lions leave the sea to follow the salmon into fresh water at the mouth of the shallow river. Some of the sea lions pick a spot to wait and watch. Some strike a bear-like pose as they watch for a salmon to swim past and then make a surprisingly quick lunge and grab the salmon. Others inch upstream with their heads underwater ready to grab any salmon within range of powerful bearlike jaws. And their appetite is Ridiculous!
Stellar’s sea lion with spawning coho salmon.
For two weeks I’d waited along this frozen river in the hopes of photographing the semi-annual caribou migration. Altogether I saw about two hundred caribou, a mere trickle compared to some years. One large group (above) had close to one hundred fifty caribou and the remaining stragglers were in pairs or small groups. The bulk had passed to the west of here earlier.
I knew from past migrations that the freezing rivers naturally funnel the caribou to this big bend in the Copper River Basin. The river, frozen on both sides, was still open in most places down the middle. I had located four likely places on the big bend where caribou had crossed, places with enough cover for a photo ambush. I moved between my ambush points to stay warm and pack down the trail between them so I could quickly move from one to another. On most days I saw no caribou. Though painfully slow, action could come at any moment.
And when caribou are suddenly bearing down on my hide, I start forgetting things. Things like warm cabin and cold feet. And exactly, what is it I’m supposed to be doing with the camera? Luckily symptoms of buck fever are temporary.
Of course more often than not the caribou would decide to cross where I wasn’t. With tripod and camera over my shoulder I hurried down my trail trying to stay in camera range. Out of time and breath, I planted the tripod like a mono-pod into the snow and clicked away as they plunged in and swam across.
When I first noticed the caribou calf, it was in the river being carried past me by the current. He managed to climb onto an ice island in the middle of the river. After a couple of minutes he struggled to stand. Even though exhausted, the six month old calf, separated from his mom and in maximum migration mode, was pressed by the urge to keep going. Walking to the edge of the ice he stepped in with a plop and swam across the ten feet of open water but did not attempt to climb out. Instead he turned back to the island, climbed out, laid down and curled up. I stayed hidden knowing if he saw me now he might panic. The calf was in trouble and travel would wait. A rest and recharge now could only help tip the balance in his favor. Half an hour later the six month-old calf was still asleep on the ice. As I slowly moved away and headed home, I had a hunch this young caribou was a survivor.
Sneaking a peek from the thicket of salmon berry and mountain ash a brown bear checks to see if the coast is clear. The bruin wants to get to the spawning pink salmon but is often kept away by a herd of nosy and noisy bad mannered tourists. When the bear does arrive, rather than giving the bear plenty of room to feed, tourists often crowd the bear hastening his departure before he has had his fill.
Left: Soloman Gulch
The brown bear, hungry but shy pauses as he works up the courage to approach the salmon and the tourists. This reluctance is something I share with the big brown bear.
As the tide moves out exposing fish killed by feeding Stellar’s sea lions, the lanky brown bear cleans up. The Stellar’s sea lions, are afraid of the bear and move away from shore.
Like the brown bear, Stellar’s sea lions come to Soloman Gulch to feed on the millions of pink salmon arriving here to spawn. Over the past twenty -five years, I have witnessed an increasing number of Sellar’s sea lions spending the first week of July near the mouth of Soloman Gulch. This year I counted over one hundred sea lions together at a nearby resting site during low tide.
Pink salmon by the millions arrive at the mouth of Soloman Gulch to spawn.
A stellar’s sea lion bites a pink salmon in half. This is a common technique used by some of the sea lions. I overheard some guy telling his wife that they bite them in half so they can swallow the fish in two pieces. But what actually is happening is a bit different. Like the bears, the lea lions soon tire of a straight diet of salmon and quickly begin to be more selective. What they want more than anything are the eggs. That’s why both bears and sea lions both often drop the males soon often they are caught. When a sea lion catches an egg-laden female salmon they may bite hard at the head end of the fish then violently jerk the fish to the side, ripping it in half and keeping the salmon head and guts along with the eggs in its mouth. The photo above shows the sea lion had the wrong end of the salmon and was left with just a tail. Visitors often comment on how wasteful the sea lions are but nothing really goes to wast. Bears, gulls, bald eagles, sea otters, harbor seals get what the sea lions leave behind, not to mention all the other hungry fish and crabs and other marine scavengers.
The brown bear grabs a small salmon and carries it back to the seclusion of Soloman Gulch.
https://youtu.be/9ewR7-Rgeis
1850 still photos into a one minute video.
https://youtu.be/ZiuzOzNt80g
Each winter dall sheep migrate to their rugged, windswept slopes. It is here that their dramatic rut takes place.
A female great gray owl spreads her wings as she gently lands on the edge of her nest to resume incubating her four eggs. For two months this nest is the nucleus of activity for a pair of great gray owls. Owls do not build their own nests. Instead they use a variety of ready-made and vacant nests, like this one built many years before by northern goshawks. The great grays I had photographed three decades ago in Idaho prefered the bowled out tops of large broken pine trees for their nests.
Eggs laid in the third week of April must be protected from the weather, as incubation begins with the first egg. The female does all the incubating and will sit on her eggs for thirty days.
To gain access to the nesting great grays, more than fifty feet above the forest floor, I scabbed two long extensions ladders together and added an additional extension using two by fours. I had located the nest thirteen years ago. The three-foot wide nest was built by northern goshawks in a towering quaking aspen. Every spring I’d hike to the remote nest site to check its status. Goshawks had used the nest only once during the last thirteen years.
From my self-imposed confinement in the lofty, swaying photo blind, I witnessed much more than just the daily activities of the great gray owls. The female owl and I watched red squirrels, that rarely seen red squirrel predator, the marten, groups of migrating caribou, and a variety of bird life. Early one morning, not long after arriving, a huffing grizzly bear sow and yearling cub who had caught my scent quickly moved off beneath the blind. Once a curious cow moose who could hear my camera clicking finally looked up.
A couple of times a day the female flies off the nest to drink, cast her pellet and perhaps stretch before returning to her precious clutch of eggs.
The male hunts for his mate and has just arrived with prey, a baby red squirrel. The male, who hunts during the day using sight and sound, is an opportunist and preys on a variety of small birds and mammals. Red-backed voles are by far the most important prey but shrews, small birds, and young snowshoe hares are also prey. Adult red squirrels are usually too alert and quick to be given much attention by the hunting male. But young squirrels, probably raided from their grass and sphagnum nests, are regularly on the menu.
Pink salmon show up in estuaries in early July by the millions. Pink salmon are Alaska’ most common salmon species. They also have the shortest life cycle than other salmon species. Pinks return to freshwater to spawn when they are two years old and immediately begin to change from silver to green and dark gray. And, males form hooked jaws and humped backs. Continue reading
All summer and fall dall rams have shunned the groups of ewes and lambs. The rams prefer the high country where they hang out in small bachelor bands. With the approach of winter their association begins to fray as they begin to sort out a pecking order. The rams stand in tight groups, displaying their massive curls trying to intimidate. They kick, growl, shove, and finally engage in dramatic displays of head butting. For the most part dominance has been been sorted out when they join the herds of ewes and lambs already on the winter range.
Dall rams Continue reading
Taking a peek into a tributary of the Copper River in Alaska’s interior reveals a rarely witnessed but prehistoric cycle of life. Traveling nearly three hundred miles up the Copper River through a soup of glacial silt, sockeye salmon have reached their gravel spawning beds.
Since leaving the ocean and entering fresh water, sockeye salmon undergo dramatic changes. Their silver skin turns to crimson red and their head becomes green. The male sockeye develops a wickedly hooked jawed, an aggressive attitude, and a one track mind to reproduce. Continue reading
Long-billed dowitcher found interior Alaska still in the grip of winter.
What a difference one year can make. This spring came earlier than normal to the Upper Copper River country in interior Alaska. It was warm and without our
usual spring snow storms. But last year, during the first week of May and at the peak of spring bird migration we were hard hit by a freak blast of winter weather. More than two feet of heavy snow fell over a period of several days covering everything including most sources of food for migrating birds. Continue reading