August 2007 Archives

My half-day or so in Fairbanks before the official start of the trip has turned out to be a lot of fun. While I was over at Creamer's Field checking out the sandhill cranes—as well as a zillion Canada geese—I also hung out for a while with some people from the Alaska Bird Observatory next door, who were banding birds. I had heard about bird-banding but had never seen it before. Basically they string these "mist nets" in various places throughout the woods—they look somewhat like badminton nets, only taller—and go check them every so often to see if any unsuspecting birds had flown into the nets and gotten tangled up. Then they extricate the bird from the net, put them in a cloth draw-string pouch, and take them back to a little quonset hut to measure them, record a bunch of data about them, and fit them with tiny little metal ID bands before setting them free again.

When I got there, they had just checked all the nets and "come up with a big goose egg," one of the volunteers told me. It had been a slow day. But they were going to check the nets again in about 20 minutes, so I hung around. When the time came to check them again, I asked which of the volunteers or staff I should tag along with in order to have the best chance of seeing a bird in the nets. "Whoever's going to the gully" was the answer. That turned out to be a guy named Tim, so I followed him.

As we went to the nets in the gully (passing about six or eight ruffed grouse along the way), Tim asked me where I was from.

"Pennsylvania," I said.

"Where in Pennsylvania?"

"State College—I work at Penn State."

"Really! I went to Penn State."

Turns out that Tim is Tim Walker, who got a degree in animal wildlife management (or some such) in the mid-1980s and now lives in Fairbanks. I mean, what are the chances of that?

On top of that, we got to the first net, and there were four yellow-rumped warblers stuck in the nets, waiting for us. So I got to watch and take pictures as Tim gently untangled each bird and put it in a pouch.

Back at the quonset hut, each of Tim's warblers got the once-over from another staffer, who checked under its feathers, measured it, determined its sex (she'd call out "FP," which apparently meant "female, based on plumage"), and then stuffed it upside-down into a plastic film canister to get its weight.

Afterward, Tim would take the bird outside and set it free—or, in this case, ask me if I'd like to do the honors. Basically it meant holding my hand out so he could put the bird in my hand and then let it fly off from there.

All in all, a very cool way to spend part of an afternoon.

Tonight I met the other 13 trip participants—we all went out to dinner together—and tomorrow morning after breakfast we shove off by bus for Denali National Park, which is a few hours south of here. We'll have lunch somewhere outside the park, then board a different bus to go into the park. We'll be staying in Kantishna, at the far end of the park—a 90-mile drive from the park entrance, and 80 of those miles are on dirt roads! Apparently it will take us six hours to get from the park entrance to Kantishna, in part because we'll be watching for wildlife the whole time, and anytime anybody spots something—a bear, a moose, or whatever else they've got up here—the bus will stop, the windows will go down, and the cameras will commence clicking.

We'll spend three days at Denali, during which time I expect I will have zero Internet access. So I'll report back when I get to the other side of that blackout—and I'm sure I'll have stories to tell and pictures to show!

So I finally made it to Fairbanks at 10 a.m. Wednesday local time, which is 2 p.m. back home. I had been traveling for just about 24 hours straight. I was thrilled beyond words that my checked bags actually arrived on the same flight as I did—they had been checked through to Fairbanks from State College, so when I spent the night in Seattle, I have no idea where my bags spent the night, and I really had little confidence that they would make it onto Alaska Airlines flight 81 from Seattle to Fairbanks this morning. But there they were.

Andrea, who will be our Natural Habitat Adventures guide for the next 12 days, met me at the airport and took me to the All Seasons B&B Inn. On the way there I asked if the sandhill cranes have arrived at Creamer's Field yet—in reading about things to do in Fairbanks, I saw that there's a migratory waterfowl refuge called Creamer's Field and that it's invaded by sandhill cranes in August. Andrea said yep, the cranes sure are there, and would I like her to give me a ride over there? So I dumped my stuff in my room, grabbed some camera equipment, and jumped back in the van. I ended up spending three or four hours over there, trying to get good photos of the cranes—a new bird for me.

Andrea also had mentioned that there was some bird banding going on in the woods adjacent to Creamer's Field, and I thought it would be cool to get some close-ups of migrating warblers getting little bands put on their legs. Little did I know that that would cause me to bump into a fellow Penn Stater! More on that in the next entry.

Man, it takes for-freaking-ever to get to Alaska from State College! It didn't help that the Northwest flight from State College to Detroit was late, causing me to miss all my connections. So I got rerouted onto USAirways and spent 12 hours just getting as far as Seattle. Got to a hotel outside the Seattle airport at 1 a.m. and had to be awake at 4 a.m. in order to catch the first flight out in the morning. That's not enough sleep....

On that Alaska Airlines flight from Seattle to Fairbanks (with an intermediate stop in Anchorage), I spent a lot of time talking with a wonderfully friendly flight attendant from Anchorage named Robin. She noticed my cat earrings, asked if I had cats, and returned a few minutes later with pictures of her two Abyssinian cats, Trapper and Keetna. The latter is named for Talkeetna, the Alaska town where she and her husband got the cats. We'll be visiting Talkeetna later in the trip.

Robin told me all about life in Alaska in the winter (the sun rises about 10 a.m. and sets about 2 p.m.!), about the difference between grizzly bears and brown bears (the former live in the interior, the latter along the coast), and how to pronounce some of the places we'll be visiting (Kantishna, the village in Denali National Park, is not "can TEESH nuh," as I've been calling it, but "can TISH nuh"). I had a million questions for her, and she enthusiastically answered every one.

On the second leg of the flight, from Anchorage to Fairbanks, the captain called our attention to a spectacular view of Mount McKinley out the left-hand window. I took a bunch of pictures, and Robin told me that Denali (a term that seems to be used interchangeably with McKinley) is actually made up of a bunch of peaks: the three she told me about were Mount Foraker (pronounced "four acre"), which is about 17,000 feet; Mount Hunter, which is about 14,000; and Mount McKinley, which is the tallest peak on the continent at 20,320. She also said that one of the meanings of "Denali" is "the shy one," which may explain why it's so often hidden by clouds.

The weather for the flight up was just gorgeous—clear and crisp—and I couldn't get over how lucky I was to be able to see Mount McKinley before even setting foot on Alaskan soil. I feel like anything that happens from here will be a bonus. What a great way to start the trip.