Festival lectures: Getting to know your backyard birds better

Last weekend's 20th Annual Stikine River Birding Festival was not only a draw for birders hoping to see and learn more about the area's wildlife, but also was an opportunity for residents to learn more about them and others from around the state.

Researcher Dan Ruthrauff, for instance, shared his findings studying rock sandpipers wintering in Cook Inlet. A wildlife biologist for the United States Geological Survey's Alaska Science Center, he spent several years at the inlet's icy tidal flats, collecting data on the tiny species as they spend the season in the northernmost and coldest wintering site of any shorebird.

He first prefaced the presentation with an explanation: Though there are many species of birds that use shorelines, not all of them are taxonomically considered shorebirds. Real examples include pectoral sandpipers, plovers, phalaropes, turnstones and bar-tailed godwits – which are known to migrate the longest distance nonstop, traveling 7,000 miles from Alaska to New Zealand each year.

"Alaska's home to all these amazing long-distance traveling shorebirds," said Ruthrauff.

It is also home to amazing short-distance traveling species. While most shorebirds are highly migratory due to their preference for wetlands, preferably unfrozen, rock sandpipers are atypical. Four main populations are endemic to Western Alaska and its outlying islands areas, with a relative population of 155,000 summering there.

Those living along Bering Sea coastlines tend to winter in Southeast, and are sometimes counted during the annual Christmas bird count by local Audubon Society members. A small population numbering around 20,000 that live in the Pribilof Islands head up to Cook Inlet, however, defying ice and cold to spend the winter on several stretches of exposed mud flats.

"It's a really dynamic environment for these birds," Ruthrauff explained, with water and ice freezing and thawing, encroaching and retreating from the birds' preferred flats. One thing that remains consistent though is the cold, and it is not uncommon to spot rings of ice around the sandpipers' ankles.

They seem not to be bothered by it, with around 13,000 routinely arriving in early October and leaving mid-April. In preparation for the trip, the group fattens up in the fall, gaining up to 30 percent additional body weight. Thus energized, they can adopt conservative postures as they need to and fast for up to 80 hours. As a last resort, they also have the energy to migrate elsewhere if the winter proves too fierce.

To subsist in Cook Inlet, the birds scour mud left by retreating ice bergs, roosting on the sea floes to avoid predators. The population's relatively small number also acts as a protective asset, the scientist explained, because it is not quite enough to sustain a developed population of predators.

What rock sandpipers are after is a species of hard-shelled clam, the Limecola balthica, which they swallow, crush in their enlarged, muscular gullets, and digest in great numbers.

"They're really just feeding machines in the winter time," Ruthrauff pointed out. "This is essentially all they eat."

Baltic clams are widely found, but those in Cook Inlet are fleshier and thinner-shelled than most observed populations, and are quite abundant. So it makes sense that the Pribilof rock sandpipers keep returning.

"Those birds are here for a really good reason," he said. They are naturally well-suited to the chilly lifestyle, and are the only population of the species that are distinguishable by their winter plumage, which is grayer in color.

Closer to home, Juneau photographer and wildlife observer Bob Armstrong delivered a presentation on observing birds in the wild, using relatively inexpensive video equipment.

"This is a subject that I've been very interested in," he explained. An Alaska resident since 1960, he has long had an interest in photography. But he fell in love with video after recording with a camcorder a beaver struggling to move a log in the water.

The technology since then has improved, and prices dropped enough to where most people can become cinematographers. Hardy, weather-resistant and small in size, GoPro cameras were recommended for the outdoor observer of wildlife.

Armstrong explained the little cameras can be set up and left to observe on their own, recording hours of footage on land or underwater. He showed footage of a wide variety of subjects, from aquatic insects being displaced by spawning salmon (and subsequently eaten by American dippers), to a male Dolly Varden shimmying as best as he could to be noticed by a female counterpart. Other videos spied blow-flies acting as pollinators to stink lilies, ravens chatting amongst themselves, and a bear cub choosily searching for the perfect salmon.

More conventional cameras are also great for admiring wildlife, and a relatively inexpensive Raynox telephoto attachment can give one the viewing power of a 2,560 millimeter lens.

"It's always fun to find out what happens when you're not around," Armstrong said, but a long-distance view can be just as good. "You can capture things at some distance without disturbing them."

Useful free editing software is also available online, and his site http://www.naturebob.com lists a number of recommended programs for admirers of nature, along with examples of his own work.

Visitors and residents could get even closer to birds than

cameras could offer, with a bird banding held at City Park early Sunday morning. Forest Service biologist Gwen Baluss, aided by Wrangell counterpart Corree Delabrue, Armstrong and Ruthrauff, set out mist nets near the beach, catching songbirds in the fine webbing. Baluss

then demonstrated how to catalogue the birds and band

their legs for later identification.

The group had about a dozen captures, including a female song sparrow that had previously been banded by Baluss during her last visit in 2015. "It survived," she noted happily. The bird may not be a permanent resident though, as many such sparrows, along with Lincoln and Savannah sparrows, simply pass through the area as they migrate.

A bird walk put on the previous morning by Bonnie Demerjian at Muskeg Meadows Golf Course also yielded some success. Birders making their way around the links identified 21 different species in the area before the course's first tournament of the season teed off. It was just a small selection of the region's diversity, however. Online resource Avibase's Bird Checklist for the Stikine River lists 233 different species of bird found in the Stikine River basin, on both

sides of the border, four of which are considered globally threatened.