Category Archives: Alaska

In December, Alaska Was Hotter Than Pittsburgh

Alaska, Climate Change
A few of the record temperatures in Alaska on 26 December 2021 (map from data source: Alaska Geospatial Data Clearinghouse via Researchgate, data from National Weather Service Alaska)

5 January 2022

On 26 December 2021 the record high temperature for Alaska — for the entire state — was set at Kodiak Island when it reached 67oF at a tidal gauge. This was so unusual that the National Weather Service triple checked to make sure. Kodiak Airport was 65 degrees, Cold Bay was 62.

Pittsburgh also had record heat in December 2021 but not as hot as Alaska. Our record-tying high was 64oF on 16 December.

Meanwhile, across the Gulf of Alaska from the record heat was a record low temperature of 0 degrees F at Ketchican.

How could Alaska have such high and low extremes on the same day? The wildly wobbling jet stream pushed warm air up the western side of the Gulf of Alaska and poured cold air down its eastern side. This jet stream map, centered on the Gulf of Alaska, is explained at Axios: Alaska sets December temperature record at 67 degrees.

[image embedded from Axios] Wind speed and direction at about 30,000 feet above the surface on Dec. 26 centered on Alaska. This shows the northerly bend to the jet stream, which allowed milder air to flow in from the south. (Earth.nullschool.net)

The extremes caused trouble throughout Alaska as unusual rain turned to ice and heavy snow. Alaska is definitely the poster child for climate change.

(map from data source: Alaska Geospatial Data Clearinghouse via Researchgate, tweets from @NWSAlaska, jet stream winds from earth.nullschool.net embedded from Axios)

Up to 55 mph Non-Stop For 11 Days

Alaska, Migration, Water and Shore
Bar-tailed godwit (photo from Wikimedia Commons)

14 October 2020

Yesterday the news broke that a bar-tailed godwit fitted with a satellite tracking tag had flown non-stop over the Pacific Ocean from Alaska to New Zealand in 11 days. During his 7,500 mile trip he reached speeds of up to 55 miles an hour. He’s an amazing bird from an amazing subspecies.

Bar-tailed godwits (Limosa lapponica) breed in Scandinavia, Siberia and Alaska and spend the winter at shores from Europe to Africa, from southern Asia to New Zealand. Most travel over or near land (see map) but the Alaskan subspecies, Limosa lapponica baueri, flies down the center of the Pacific Ocean to New Zealand. According to Wikipedia, this subspecies makes “the longest known non-stop flight of any bird and the longest journey of any animal without feeding.”

Late last year the Pukorokoro Miranda Shorebird Centre in New Zealand satellite-tagged 20 bar-tailed godwits to find out where and when they go. Tracked by the Global Flyway Network, godwit 4BBRW left Alaska on 16 September and landed in New Zealand on 27 September.

Find out more and see his route at The Guardian link below.

Route of bar-tailed godwit 4BBRW, Sep 2020 (map from Global Flyway Network, embedded from The Guardian)

(photos from Wikimedia Commons; 4BBRW map embedded from The Guardian article, complete route from Wikimedia Commons; click on the captions to see the originals)

p.s. Next spring he’ll fatten up to return to Alaska on one of these red routes.

Limosa lapponica baueri migration routes (image from Wikimedia Commons)

And he’ll look a lot fancier in breeding plumage.

Bar-tailed godwit in New Zealand in June, breeding plumage (photo from Wikimedia Commons)

Smaller is Normal

Alaska, Bird Anatomy, Climate Change
Song sparrow, western Pennsylvania (photo by Steve Gosser)

From their 29% population decline to the continued loss of federal protection the news about birds has not been good in recent months. When a December 2019 study from Chicago’s Field Museum found that North American birds have been shrinking since 1978 you may have wondered, “Is this bad news for birds?” Not exactly.

The study published in Ecology Letters measured 70,000 window-killed birds collected in Chicago since 1978. Analysis showed that the 52 species significantly declined in body size during the 40 year period (1978-2018). This mirrors a 2010 study conducted at Powdermill Nature Reserve in Pennsylvania which used 46 years of banding data (1961-2007) to analyze the body size of nearly 500,000 birds in 102 species. Powdermill also saw a decline in body size.

Both studies correlated the annual mean summer temperature of the species’ breeding range and reached the same conclusion: As the climate heats up, birds are getting smaller.

We should expect this.

There’s a biological rule of thumb called Bergmann’s Rule which states that, within a species, populations living in colder climates have larger body size than those in warmer climates. Bergmann’s explanation is that large animals have a lower surface-area-to-volume ratio so they lose heat more slowly in cold climates while small animals have a higher surface-to-volume ratio and can cool off faster when it’s hot.

Song sparrows (Melospiza melodia) provide a good example of Bergmann’s rule because they range across North America from Alaska to Newfoundland and south to Mexico. I saw their variability up close in the Carnegie Museum of Natural History’s Section of Birds in December 2016. My photo below shows sparrows collected in Alaska in the top row, sparrows from Pennsylvania on the bottom.

Song sparrows in Carnegie Museum of Natural History collection, Alaska on top row, Pennsylvania on bottom row (photo by Kate St. John, Dec 2016)

Here’s a closeup placed side by side (below):

  • On the left, two song sparrows collected in Pennsylvania: Pittsburgh (leftmost) and Geneva Marsh.
  • On the right, song sparrows collected in Alaska’s Aleutian Islands at Unalaska (leftmost) and Sanak.

Alaskan song sparrows are so large that they have to be placed sideways in the tray!

Smaller size is normal where it’s warmer.

It isn’t bad news for birds and it tells us two additional things:

  1. Birds’ bodies have been registering climate change long before we humans noticed or admitted it.
  2. Birds can evolve quickly when they have to.

Read about the Field Museum study at North American birds are shrinking. Read more about the Powdermill study at Birds are getting smaller.

p.s. This article was inspired by Andrew Nikiforuk’s As The Birds Vanish.

(top photo by Steve Gosser, remaining photos by Kate St. John)

Why Arctic Wildfires Are Different

Alaska, Climate Change

The intense wildfires in Alaska this summer are different than those we’re used to in the Lower 48. These were sparked by unusual weather, they’re harder to put out because the soil is burning, and they’re causing their own feedback loop.

Heat and lightning are unusual in Alaska but they’ve experienced both this summer. Hot weather not only dries out the landscape but it generates thunderstorms which are rare in Alaska. Anchorage normally has two thunderstorms per year but by mid-June 2019 they’d already had four — and the season had only begun. (*)

When lightning starts a fire in the boreal forest or tundra it doesn’t just burn trees and shrubs. It also burns below the surface because the soil is like peat moss. These “underground” fires are extremely hard to put out.

And finally, the fires cause their own feedback loop. They’re generated by unusually hot weather and their byproducts — smoke and CO2 — result in more hot weather. The smoke deposits black soot on polar ice which makes it melt faster (warming the area) and the CO2 contributes to climate change. As the climate gets hotter it spawns more arctic fires.

This 13 August video from NASA tells more about the arctic wildfires and how they’ll affect us — both now and later.

(*) Lightning near the North Pole is extremely rare; it struck 48 times on 10 August 2019.

p.s. I saw some of these fires from the airplane and rode through the smoke during my Alaskan birding trip 13-23 June 2019.

(video from NASA Goddard)

From Hawaii to Alaska

Alaska, Hawaii, Travel, Water and Shore
Bristle-thighed curlew, Midway Christmas Bird Count, 2012 (photo by Bettina Arrigoni, Creative Commons license on Flickr)

Bristle-thighed curlews are so rare and hard to find that they’ve been called the birders’ Holy Grail. The word “Tahiti” in their scientific name, Numenius tahitiensis, tells us why. These birds are Pacific Islanders. Their remote breeding location in Alaska was not discovered until 1948.

Adult bristle-thighed curlews spend only two months on their breeding grounds at the central Seward Peninsula and Yukon Delta. They arrive in late May and begin nesting almost immediately.

Bristle-thighed curlew in Alaska, June 2016 (photo by Aaron Budgor, Creative Commons license on Flickr)

When the eggs hatch in June, the chicks are precocial and soon walk off the nest.

Bristle-thighed curlew chick in Alaska, July 2014 (photo by T.Lee Tibbitts USGS via Wikimedia Commons)

At 3+ weeks old they learn to fly but they aren’t independent yet. At 5 weeks their parents leave them with a few caretaker adults and depart for the staging grounds at the Bering Sea.

There they fatten up for the first leg of their journey home — a non-stop 2,500 mile flight to Laysan, Midway Atoll in the Hawaiian islands. For some curlews the final destination is much further, as shown on the map below. (Red spots are breeding range, white arrow is first stop, blue circles are wintering locations.)

Bristle-thighed curlew range (base map from Wikimedia Commons)

Young curlews follow the adults a few weeks later. They won’t return to Alaska until they’re three to four years old.

This year I happened to visit Hawaii and Alaska on the same schedule as the bristle-thighed curlews. My Life Bird curlew was a fly-by at Kahuku Golf Course, Kauai on February 28, photographed here by Michael McNulty. Then I saw curlews on their breeding grounds near Nome, Alaska in June.

Bristle-thighed curlew at Kauai, 28 Feb 2019 (photo by Michael McNulty)

Every year the curlews travel from Hawaii to Alaska. With a worldwide population of only 7,000 birds and sea level rise due to flood their home islands, this amazing bird is vulnerable to extinction.

p.s. Bristle-thighed curlews are closely related to whimbrels, whom they resemble. We saw and heard both species in western Alaska.

(photos by Bettina Arrigoni, Aaron Budgor, Michael McNulty and Wikimedia Commons; click on the captions to see the originals)

Chocolate Lilies And Other Delights

Alaska, Plants & Fungi, Travel
Chocolate lily, 18 June 2019 (photo by Kate St. John)

Last month we found chocolate lilies and other delightful wildflowers while on PIB‘s Alaska birding tour. Here are the best of them, mostly found at Turnagain Pass Rest Area on 18 June 2019. Please leave a comment to help me identify the ones I’ve labeled “mystery” flowers and correct any I’ve misidentified. Thanks!

At top, the chocolate lily (Fritillaria camschatcensis) is a gorgeous small flower that resembles a Canada lily (Lilium canadense) except that it’s the color of chocolate. What a treat!

Below, clasping twisted-stalk (Streptopus amplexifolius) has delicate bell-shaped yellow flowers that hang under the leaves. They remind me of Solomon’s seal.

Clasping twisted-stalk, near Anchorage, 13 June 2019 (photo by Kate St. John)

Nootka lupine (Lupinus nootkatensis) starts blue, becomes white at the tip.

Nootka lupine, 18 June 2019 (photo by Kate St. John)

Devil’s club (Oplopanax horridum) is covered in spines that are hard to remove if they get in your skin. Don’t touch!

Devil’s club near Anchorage, 13 June 2019 (photo by Kate St. John)

Woolly geranium (Geranium erianthum) looks like Pennsylvania’s wild geranium. The flowers and leaves are larger, though.

Woolly geranium, 18 June 2019 (photo by Kate St. John)

We saw liverleaf wintergreen (Pyrola asarifolia) in Seward.

Liverleaf wintergreen in Seward, 18 June 2019 (photo by Kate St. John)

What is the yellow flower shown below? It looks like a cinquefoil to me but the leaves are so big. (The flower is about the size of the first joint of my thumb.)

Mystery: Is this a cinquefoil? (photo by Kate St. John)

I believe this is salmonberry (Rubus spectabilis). Am I right?

Is this salmonberry? 18 June 2019 (photo by Kate St. John)

Threeleaf foamflower (Tiarella trifoliata), found in Seward.

Threeleaf foamflower in Seward, 20 June 2019 (photo by Kate St. John)

I couldn’t identify this flower at first, but thanks to Janet Campagna’s comment I think these are yellow marsh marigold (Caltha palustris), seen at Turnagain Pass Rest Area, 18 June 2019.

Yellow marsh marigold at Turnagain Pass Rest Area, 18 June 2019 (photo by Kate St. John)

And finally, dwarf fireweed (Chamaenerion latifolium) was easy to find along the Teller Road northwest of Nome.

Dwarf fireweed by the Teller Road outside Nome, Alaska, 21 June 2019 (photo by Kate St. John)

Please let me know if I’ve misidentified any of these. The solo yellow flower, 7th photo, remains a mystery.

(photos by Kate St. John, all of them taken with my Pixel 3 cellphone)

Incredibly Hot in Alaska

Alaska, Climate Change
Alaska high temperature forecast for 7 July 2019 (map from National Weather Service)

Don’t be fooled by the happy green colors on the watery edge of this map. The high temperature in much of Alaska tomorrow will be 85 degrees F.

Alaska is baking under a five-to-seven day heat wave caused by exceptionally strong high pressure that will break most temperature records. Alaskans aren’t prepared for it. The normal high in Anchorage this week should be 67 degrees F but that’s close to what the low will be (61).

The deepest red on the map is in the southwest interior near the Kuskokwim River where the temperature will soar up to 95 degrees. This area suffered last winter, too, when an early thaw shut down transportation to 13,000 people.

Not only will it be hot in Alaska but it will be hard to breathe. Baking temperatures, dry vegetation and lightning have ignited huge forest fires across the state. The Sunday 7am forecast for much of Alaska includes “areas of smoke” shown in gray below.

Alaska Predominant Weather forecast for 7 July 2019 (map from National Weather Service)

There’s only one place left that’s truly cold. That cold dot on the map is the peak of Denali.

Where is it cold in Alaska?

(maps from the National Weather Service; click on the captions to see the graphical forecast for Alaska)

Graceful Predator

Alaska, Bird Behavior, Birds of Prey, Travel
Long-tailed jaegar in flight (photo by Gregory “Slobirdr” Smith, Creative Commons license on Flickr)

If I had to pick a Best Bird on my trip to Alaska it would be the long-tailed jaegar (long-tailed skua, Stercorarius longicaudus), the most graceful arctic predator.

Long-tailed jaegars are the smallest of skuas, a genus of predatory seabirds that range from pole to pole. In flight their long tails and flowing movements remind me of swallow-tailed kites as they float over the tundra in pairs and loudly defend their territories. On the hunt they can hover like kestrels, as shown in the video below.

Though long-tailed jaegars are seabirds, their favorite foods in Alaska are collared lemmings.

Illustrations of Nelson’s collared lemming and Ungava collared lemming at burrow (from Wikimedia Commons)

How does a seabird without talons capture rodents? Well, he doesn’t use his feet.

Long-tailed skua calling (photo by Allan Hopkins, Creative Commons license on Flickr)

Birds of North America Online explains his hunting technique …

Long-tailed Jaeger hunts these lemmings by hovering or poising in a headwind at height of 1-10 m [3-30 feet] (usually about 4 m) above tundra, like a kestrel unlike other jaegers, and by watching from perches on small rises or frost mounds … Having detected prey, often pursues it on foot and pecks it until it is dead; never uses feet to capture prey.

Birds of North America Online

Though both sexes can incubate, the male long-tailed jaegar spends two thirds of his time hunting for his mate while she warms the eggs.

Long-tailed jaegar on nest (photo from Wikimedia Commons)

We could see her white chest far away on the tundra, waiting for her graceful mate to come home.

(photos by Gregory “Slobirdr” Smith, Allan Hopkins and from Wikimedia Commons. Click on the captions to see the originals.)

p.s. Click here to hear the long-tailed jaegar’s call.

Best Baby Bird

Alaska, Songbirds, Travel
Baby bird east of Safety Sound, Alaska (photo by Barb Bens)

Last Sunday our Partnership for International Birding tour saw this baby bird near the mouth of the Solomon River east of Nome, Alaska. It took us a while to identify him.

His looks like a sparrow with white outer tail feathers but his back has golden camouflage like a golden plover.

After much debate we decided he was a baby Lapland longspur. Click here to see a male in breeding plumage.

As we pulled out of the parking area his father arrived with food.

Best Baby Bird of our trip. Thanks to Barb Bens for the photo.

(photo by Barbara Bens)

The Closest Family Ties

Alaska, Travel, Water and Shore
Transient killer whales near Unimak Island, eastern Aleutian Islands, Alaska

Flying home from Alaska, 24 June 2019

Before my trip to Alaska I rarely thought about killer whales because I’d never had a chance to see them. Now I have and they are quite impressive.

Killer whales or orcas (Orcinus orca) are the largest oceanic dolphin, occurring around the world. Some are resident, some transient, others live offshore. Offshore orcas travel the wide swaths of ocean shown on the map below.

Orca range map from Wikimedia Commons

Killer whales are apex predators but what they eat depends on their lifestyle. Resident whales eat fish and are very vocal because fish don’t run away when they hear an orca. Transient whales eat marine mammals, especially seals, and are silent because seals flee at the sound of a killer whale.

Like other dolphins, killer whales are very intelligent and highly social. They swim with their families their entire lives. The family groups are matrilineal, lead by the eldest mother and made up of her sons, daughters, grandchildren and even great-grandchildren. Her knowledge and traditions guide her family long after her reproductive years and actually insure that her children live longer than those whose mothers died.(*)

Resident killer whales of the Pacific Northwest are so well studied that scientists recognize them as individuals from their unique saddle patches behind their dorsal fins. Censuses indicate the population is in decline. The killer whales’ food source, chinook salmon, is also in decline. Are these whales starving? A NOAA Fisheries study in British Columbia used a drone to find out.

From the drone’s photos and videos, scientists could tell if an orca was thin and weak or plumb and strong. During the study they filmed two brothers swimming together, just as they had their entire lives. One was very thin and the two were vocalizing a lot as they swam south. Eventually the weak brother dove and was never seen again. His brother swam back alone, vocalizing on the way. It appears that he accompanied his dying brother during his last moments.

Watch this 11 minute NOAA video to learn more about the resident killer whale population in the eastern North Pacific. Read more about them at NOAA Fisheries.

Unmanned Aerial Vehicle Offers a New View of Killer Whales from NOAA Fisheries on Vimeo.

Killer whales have the closest family ties.

(photos from Wikimedia Commons; click on the captions to see the originals)

(*) Killer whales live into their 90s and are one of only three animals that go through menopause. Humans and pilot whales are the other two.